Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Divine Malevolence Gives us Dementia

Viral infections including COVID are among the important causes of dementia – one more reason to consider vaccination

What is not generally recognised is the role of viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2 which caused COVID-19, have in causing dementia. Now recent research has shown that 'Long Covid' is emerging as one ot the most important causes of dementia.

Now, with many countries discontinuing the policy of isolating people with COVID-19 and allowing them to continue to work and mix socially, the virus is becoming endemic in the population, so the long-term effects, such as dementia are going to increase.

The following article by Professor John Donne Potter of the Research Centre for Hauora and Health, Massey University, New Zealand, reproduced from The Conversation under a Creative Commons open access licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency, highlights the role of viruses in dementia. The original article can be read here.

Viral infections including COVID are among the important causes of dementia – one more reason to consider vaccination

Credit: Sven Hoppe/picture alliance via Getty Images

John Donne Potter, Massey University

With more of us living into old age than at any other time, dementia is increasing steadily worldwide, with major individual, family, societal and economic consequences.

Treatment remains largely ineffective and aspects of the underlying pathophysiology are still unclear. But there is good evidence that neurodegenerative diseases – and their manifestation as dementia – are not an inevitable consequence of ageing.

Many causes of dementia, including viral infections, are preventable.

COVID and other viral infections are centrally involved in insults to the brain and subsequent neurodegeneration. COVID-positive outpatients have a more than three-fold higher risk of Alzheimer’s and more than two-fold higher risk of Parkinson’s disease.

A study of almost three million found risks of psychiatric disorders following COVID infection returned to baseline after one to two months. But other disorders, including “brain fog” and dementia, were still higher than among controls two years later.

🚨I wrote about “brain fog”—one of the most common & disabling symptoms of long COVID (and many other pre-pandemic conditions), and one of the most misunderstood.

Here’s what brain fog actually is, and what it’s like to live with it. 1/ https://t.co/Gq8iylgfBr

— Ed Yong is on sabbatical (@edyong209) September 12, 2022

Among more than six million adults older than 65, individuals with COVID were at a 70% higher risk than the uninfected for a new diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease within a year of testing positive for COVID.

More than 150,000 people with COVID and 11 million controls have been involved in a study of long-term consequences of acute COVID infection. A year after infection, there was an overall 40% higher risk (an additional 71 cases per 1000 people) of neurologic disorders, including memory problems (80% higher risk) and Alzheimer’s disease (two-fold higher risk). These risks were elevated even among those not hospitalised for acute COVID.

These 12 things can reduce your dementia risk – but many Australians don't know them all

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, can invade brain tissue. Other viruses can also cause direct damage to the brain. A study of almost two million people showed the risk of Alzheimer’s was markedly lower in those who had been vaccinated against influenza.

The cost of dementia

Dementia is characterised by progressively deteriorating cognitive function. This involves memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, language and judgement, often accompanied by changes in mood and emotional control.

It is one of the major causes of disability among older people. Worldwide prevalence exceeds 55 million and there are almost ten million new cases annually. It is the seventh leading cause of death. In 2019, the estimated global cost of dementia was US$1.3 trillion and rising.

The best known form of dementia – Alzheimer’s – was first described in 1907. Dementia is generally described as developing in three stages:

• impairment of memory, losing track of time and becoming lost in familiar places
• further deterioration of memory with forgetfulness of names and recent events, becoming confused at home, losing communication skills and personal care habits, repeated questioning, wandering
• increased difficulty walking, progressing to inactivity, marked memory loss, involving failure to recognise relatives and friends, disorientation in time and place, changes in behaviour, including lack of personal care and emergence of aggression.

Omicron-specific vaccines may give slightly better COVID protection – but getting boosted promptly is the best bet

Treatments largely unsuccessful

There are no cures and no resounding treatment successes. Management involves support for patients and carers to optimise physical activity, stimulate memory and treat accompanying physical or mental illness.

Dementia has a disproportionate impact on women, who account for 65% of dementia deaths and provide 70% of carer hours.

We may know less about the pathology of dementia than we imagined: some key data are under scrutiny for possible inappropriate manipulation.

Alzheimer's theory undermined by accusations of manipulated data – but does not bring dementia research to its knees

But we do know about many of the causes of dementia and therefore about prevention. In addition to viral infections, there are at least four other contributing causes: cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes (especially if untreated), traumatic brain injury and alcohol.

The brain has its own immune system – cells called microglia. These play a role in brain development, account for 5-10% of brain mass and become activated by damage and loss of function. They are also implicated in Alzheimer’s and their inflammation has been shown to be central to its pathology.

Dementia is preventable

In the absence of effective treatment, prevention is an important goal. The association with viral infections means we should pay careful attention to vaccine availability and uptake (for influenza, COVID and any future variants) and place greater emphasis on combatting misinformation regarding vaccines.

The association with atherosclerosis and stroke, as well as diabetes, supports primary prevention that involves healthier diets (plant-based diets low in salt and saturated fats), physical activity and weight control.

Alcohol consumption is a major problem globally. We have allowed high intake to be normalised and talk about no more than two glasses per day as though that is innocuous. Despite the myth of some beneficial aspects of alcohol, the safest intake is zero drinks per week.

My article speaks about a study that showed that people who chronically consume alcohol and become unconscious because of it, their chances of having dementia increase 10 fold. https://t.co/0DOFf9X5Zx @mrcopsych

— Hannah (@Hannah46221416) September 29, 2022

This requires a complete national rethink around the availability and acceptability of alcohol as well as assistance with alcohol addiction and treatment of alcohol-related disorders.

Traumatic brain injury is associated with sport and, more importantly, falls and car crashes. It is recognised as a global priority and there is increasing awareness of the preventability of falls among older people. The management of head injuries is being ramped up in contact sports.

However, data on the impact of best management of the initial injury on subsequent risk of dementia are lacking and risk remains elevated even 30 years after the initial trauma.

The evidence that dementia has preventable causes, including viral infection, should better inform policy and our own behaviour.

John Donne Potter, Professor, Research Centre for Hauora and Health, Massey University

Published by The Conversation.
Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

It seems then, that if you've fallen for the intelligent [sic] design hoax, you must now accept that the malevolent designer who designed the SARS-CoV-2 virus intended it to cause dementia in those who survived the initial attack. Unless, of course, you believe that it is a stupid designer who doesn't know what the organisms it is designing will do and is incapable of correcting its designs when it realises the consequences of what it’s done, if it has any concerns for those consequences. If the latter, you believe the designer has all the characteristics of a mindless natural process without a plan, exactly like evolution by natural selection.

Malevolent Designer News - How Ticks Are Designed to Make Us Sick

European tick, Ixodes ricinus

Study demonstrates for the first time that ticks weaken skin's immune response

Creationism's divine malevolence is nothing if not a fanatical perfectionist for whom no detail is too small in its quest to find ways to make its creation sick - or so you must believe if you've fallen for the intelligent [sic] design hoax.

Here for example is a paper in which the scientists have shown how well-designed ticks are for passing on infections to its victims, including humans and our livestock. The scientists found that tick saliva contains a powerful immuno-suppressant the prevent the body from reacting to the nasty little organisms it injects along with its saliva when it takes a meal. This also solves the mystery of why ticks are such powerful disease vectors. It almost seems they were designed for it.

The team of scientists led by led by Georg Stary (MedUni Vienna's Department of Dermatology, CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Rare and Undiagnosed Diseases) in collaboration with the research group of Hannes Stockinger (Center for Pathophysiology, Infectiology and Immunology at MedUni Vienna) have published their paper, open access, in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The Medical University of Vienna news release, explains the research and its significance:

Creationism in Crisis - How the Precursors of Paired Fins and Limbs Evolved

Life reconstructions of the fossil Tujiaaspis vividus.

Qiuyang Zheng

September: Galeaspids | News and features | University of Bristol.

There is little doubt now that the paired terrestrial tetrapod limbs, possessed by all terrestrial vertebrates, and those such as whales and turtles that he reverted to a marine existence, evolved out of the paired pectoral and pelvic fins of fish that first crawled onto land. The remaining question was how did these paired limbs evolve in the early fish? Because of gaps in the fossil record, it had looked as though fins suddenly appeared fully formed.

That question has now been answered by an international team, led by Min Zhu of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology, Beijing and Professor Philip Donoghue from the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, whose discovery shows the primitive condition of paired fins before they separated into pectoral and pelvic fins, the forerunner to arms and legs.

The evidence was found in fossils in the rocks of Hunan Province and Chongqing and named Tujiaaspis after the indigenous Tujia people who live in this region. Unlike previous fossils records which are mostly just the heads, these fossils contain the whole body.

Earlier fossils either had fins or they didn't, with no fossil record of transition to paired fins. That gap has now been filled by Tujiaaspis. There had been a hypothesis that fins probably began as folds but is was just that - a hypothesis awaiting confirmation or falsification. That confirmation has now been provided.

As the press release from the University of Bristol explains:

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Have Reconstructed the Genome of the Earliest Mammalian ancestor

Morganucodon, one of the oldest known mammal-like species

Source: FunkMonk (Michael B. H.), CC BY-SA 3.0
via Wikimedia Commons

Revealing the Genome of the Common Ancestor of All Mammals - Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research

The creationist delusion that the Theory of Evolution is a theory in crisis, about to be replaced in mainstream biology with their childish, evidence free superstition based on the ludicrous idea that nothing evolves and everything is made by magic, took another blow today when an international team of scientists led by scientists from the University of California Davis and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), Berlin, Germany, published their computed genome of the stem species from which all mammals evolved.

Such a project would not have been mooted had the scientists had the slightest doubt about evolution being the explanation for biodiversity, nor would it have been possible to compute this ancestral genome if the DNA of mammals did not form consistent hierarchy of nested clades resulting in evidence that the genomes of the ancestors of modern mammals form a family tree with a single origin, which lived about 200 million years ago.

The scientists' work is published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

As the scientists explain in the news release from Leibniz-IZW:

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Show How Large Molecules Self-Assemble - No Gods Required Again

Attraction between the dipoles of several macromolecules leads to their mesomorphic assemblies, in contrast with typical polyelectrolyte behavior.

Credit: Shibananda Das

Game-changing New Theory Upends What We Know About How Charged Macromolecules Self-assemble : UMass Amherst

The recent rum of bad news for Creationism just got worse, with the news that scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have discovered how large molecules such as proteins and DNA can self-assemble with nothing more than the laws of chemistry and physics. As always when one of Creationism's favourite gaps is snapped shut by science, no gods were found and the 'mystery' required nothing more than the operation of the natural laws of chemistry and physics.

In the words of one of the researchers:

The significance of the discovery that dipoles drive the assembly of polymers is immense because it throws new light on one of the fundamental mysteries of life’s processes, [how biological materials know how to self-assemble into coherent, stable structures]. The theory changes the paradigm of how we think about these systems, and highlights the unacknowledged role that dipoles play in the self-assembly of biological materials.

Professor Murugappan Muthukumar, senior author
Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

What is a dipole? Dipole Definition in Chemistry and Physics

As the University of Massachusetts Amherst news release explains:

Malevolent Designer News - The Asian Longhorned Ticks Are Spreading Fast in USA

Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis

Longhorned tick discovered in northern Missouri for first time, MU researchers find // Show Me Mizzou // University of Missouri

News today of another stunning triumph for Creationism's malevolent designer!

The Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis is spreading fast in the USA. Worldwide is causes millions of dollars in lost revenue for cattle farmers. It was first reported in New Jersey in 2017 and has now spread to Missouri. The tick is responsible for spreading the organisms that cause bovine theileriosis, which is similar to anaplasmosis in that it causes weight loss, reduced milk yield and death in cattle.

Wikipedia - Theileria

The longhorned tick is closely related to other ticks in the Haemaphysalis genus which are found extensively in Asia and Australasia, all of which can and do transmit bacterial and viral diseases.

I described in The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good how another tick, the black-legged tick, Ixodes scapularis transmits the disease anaplasmosis in humans by injecting the rickettsia bacterium, Anaplasma phagocytophilum when it bites.

The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good

Map showing the spread of the tick from New Jersey since 2017 (as of July 2022.

Source: Drovers

The spread of this nasty little arachnid has probably been facilitated by two things:

1. Climate change, meaning the warmer temperatures in the US mid-west are creating a more conducive environment for it.
2. the fact that females can breed parthenogenically, meaning they don't need to mate to produce thousands of fertile eggs - all of which are female with the same ability. This mean in a few years, a single female can quickly establish a very large population.

Creationists might like to marvel at that stroke of genius in their putative designer's design for the tick, while wondering how, what is so obviously an advantageous adaptation can be presented as 'devolution', to comply with the latest attempt to replace the failed 'Intelligent [sic] Design' hoax.

The University of Missouri news release explains the problem and how it was discovered:

Evolution News - How The Bird-Hipped Dinosaurs Evolved

Shaking the dinosaur family tree: how did ‘bird-hipped’ dinosaurs evolve?

Two Herrerasaurus chasing a Silesaurus down a stream in the Triassic period. Two Plateosaurus are in the background.

Mohamad Haghani/Stocktrek Images

It's been another terrible week for Creationists.

First there was the news that plants have a ludicrously complex process for correcting the mistakes made when DNA is replicated, and how this shows common descent of plants and animals with the news that this process works when inserted into a human cell. Then there was yet more evidence of the malevolence of any creator who could come up with a design for a trypanosome flagellum that makes it easier for tsetse flies to inject it into us and cause sleeping sickness, and the news that a redesigned fungus is killing the frogs that would eat the mosquitoes that spread malaria. And lastly there is the news that the Theory of Evolution shows no signs of being abandoned as the best explanation for biodiversity but can even be applied to cultures with the finding that chimpanzees, like humans, form different cultural groups.

In fact, of course, most weeks are bad news weeks for Creationists because so many new scientific papers, especially in the fields of biology, archaeology and geology, refute Creationism without even trying, simply because, unlike Creationism, science is firmly grounded in observable and verifiable reality.

Now there is news that scientists from Cambridge University, UK, have shown how a group of dinosaurs, the remote ancestors of modern birds - the bird-hipped dinosaurs - evolved from a 'transitional', i.e., stem group, of dinosaurs, the silesaurs, which had been identified ten years earlier. They have published their finding in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

The Cambridge University News release explains how this discovery was made:

Malevolent Designer News - Creationism's Divine Malevolence is Killing the Frogs That Help Protect Us from Malaria

Malaria Spike Linked to Amphibian Die-Off | UC Davis

Panamanian golden frog, Atelopus zeteki, a victim of the fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.

On the face of it, there is no connection between frogs and malaria, but scientists have discovered a correlation between the decline of frogs due to the fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, and a spike in malaria cases in parts of Latin America, particularly in Costa Rica and Panama.

Readers may remember how I described the world-wide devastation of amphibian populations with the fungus, B. dendrobatidis (Bd), and how a team of researchers from the University of California at Davis had reported a link between these deaths and an increase in malaria, probably due to this removal from the ecosystem of major predators on mosquitos.

To be a Creationists is to believe this fungus, the effects it is having on global amphibian populations and the knock-on effects this is having on the ecosystem and human health, is the intended outcome of a supernatural intelligent [sic] designer, with this obviously malevolent intent.

Unintelligent Design - God Hates Frogs
Malevolent Designer News - God Doesn't Hate Frogs; He Just Loves Mosquitos and Malaria More.

I also write about this fungus in my popular, illustrated book, The malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good, as an example of what can only be described as malevolent intent, if the modification to this otherwise harmless soil fungus to turn it against the world's amphibians, really was the work of Creationists' putative intelligent [sic] designer, as their dogma obliges them to believe.

The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good - Rosa Rubicondior

The mystery, as ever, is why Creationists would prefer us to see their favourite god as a malevolent monster, forever scheming to increase the amount of suffering in the world, rather than ascribe these things to a natural process with no mind or morality involved.

The same UC Davis team has now reported a close correlation between the major die-off of amphibians in Costa Rica and Panama with a spike in malaria cases in the region. At the spike’s peak, up to 1 person per 1,000 annually contracted malaria that normally would not have had the amphibian die-off not occurred, the study found.

According to the UC Davis news release:

Unintelligent Designer News - A Moss RNA Repair Mechanism That also Works in Human Cells

Moss repair team also works in humans — University of Bonn

The editor PPR56, - which only acts in mitochondria in the moss, edits more than 900 different positions in nuclear transcripts in human cells. The size of the respective nucleotide (A, U, C, G) shows how often it occurs at this position of the targets additionally edited by PPR56 in the human transcripts.

© Elena Lesch/University of Bonn

If ever a scientific discovery was designed to embarrass Creationist's, this is it. It is the discovery by scientists at the University of Bonn, Germany, that an RNA editing process which is normally used in plant mitochondria and chloroplasts, works in animal cells, including human cells.

What the scientists discovered is that if they transfer the RNA editing machines PPR56 and PPR65 from moss into human cells, they still work and edit RNA as they would in plants cells.

The process repairs mistakes in the RNA transcribed from the DNA. Although the mistakes are in the RNA, they are correct transcriptions of mistakes in the DNA itself. The mistakes in the DNA are left alone - which means they accumulate over the generations. In animal cells DNA is repaired (albeit imperfectly) when the cell is replicated, but not so in plant mitochondria and chloroplasts.

Now, there may be advantages in allowing mistakes to accumulate over time because this means there are more mutations for natural selection to work on so giving the organelles more evolvability. However, since the transcribed RNA is repaired, this doesn't seem to be an explanation because the resulting proteins will be the same, regardless.

Overview of Transcription - Khan Academy

What plant organelles have ended up with is the equivalent of a master document which it to be photocopied lots of times, but which has spelling mistakes in it. Then, instead of correcting the master copy, each photocopy is scanned for mistakes and corrected, while the mistakes are left in the master copy. When a new master copy is needed, it is made by copying the old master copy, mistakes and all, and any new mistakes intoduced in that process also go unrepaired.

On the face of it, this doesn't seem to be a process that could be described as intelligently designed!

As the University of Bonn news release explains:

Moss repair team also works in humans

Researchers at the University of Bonn transplant RNA editing machine of a moss into human cells

If everything is to run smoothly in living cells, the genetic information must be correct. But unfortunately, errors in the DNA accumulate over time due to mutations. Land plants have developed a peculiar correction mode: they do not directly improve the errors in the genome, but rather elaborately in each individual transcript. Researchers at the University of Bonn have transplanted this correction machinery from the moss Physcomitrium patens into human cells. Surprisingly, the corrector started working there too, but according to its own rules. The results have now been published in the journal "Nucleic Acids Research".

In living cells, there is a lot of traffic like on a large construction site: In land plants, blueprints in the form of DNA are stored not only in the cell nucleus, but also in the cell’s power plants (mitochondria) and the photosynthesis units (chloroplasts). These blueprints contain building instructions for proteins that enable metabolic processes. But how is the blueprint information passed on in mitochondria and chloroplasts? This is done by creating transcripts (RNA) of the desired parts of the blueprint. This information is then used to produce the required proteins.

Errors accumulate over time

However, this process does not run entirely smoothly. Over time, mutations have caused errors to accumulate in the DNA that must be corrected in order to obtain perfectly functioning proteins. Otherwise, the energy supply in plants would collapse. At first glance, the correction strategy seems rather bureaucratic: instead of improving the slip-ups directly in the blueprint - the DNA - they are cleaned up in each of the many transcripts by so-called RNA editing processes.

Why living cells make this effort, we do not know. Presumably, these mutations increased as plants spread from water to land during evolution.

Dr. Mareike Schallenberg-Rüdinger, co-senior author
Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany (IZMB)
University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.

Compared to letterpress printing, it would be like correcting each individual book by hand, rather than improving the printing plates.

In 2019, the IZMB team led by Prof. Dr. Volker Knoop succeeded in transplanting RNA editing processes from the moss Physcomitrium patens into the bacterium Escherichia coli. It was shown that the repair proteins of the moss can also modify the RNA of these bacteria.

Our results showed that the land plant correction mechanism also works in human cells. This was previously unknown.

Elena Lesch, first author
Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany (IZMB)
University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.

Now, researchers from the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany, together with the team led by Prof. Dr. Oliver J. Gruss from the Institute of Genetics at the University of Bonn, have gone one step further: They transferred the RNA editing machinery from the moss into standard human cell lines, including kidney and cancer cells, for example.

But that's not all: the RNA editing machines PPR56 and PPR65, which only act in mitochondria in the moss, also introduce nucleotide changes in RNA transcripts of the cell nucleus in human cells.

More than 900 targets

Surprisingly for the research team, PPR56 makes changes at more than 900 points of attack in human cell targets. In the moss, on the other hand, this RNA corrector is only responsible for two correction sites." There are many more nuclear RNA transcripts in human cells than mitochondrial transcripts in the moss," explains Dr. Mareike Schallenberg-Rüdinger. "As a result, there are also many more targets for the editors to attack." Although the editors follow a particular code, at this stage, it is not yet possible to accurately predict where the editing machines will make changes in human cells.

However, the abundance of RNA editing targets in human cells also offers the opportunity to find out more about the basic mechanisms of the correctors in further studies. This could be the basis for methods of inducing a very specific change in RNA in human cells by means of a corrector. "If we could correct faulty sites in the genetic code with RNA editing methods, this would potentially also offer starting points for the treatment of hereditary diseases," says Schallenberg-Rüdinger, looking to the future. "Whether that will work remains to be seen."

Copyright: © 2022 The authors.
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

The team have published their findings in an open access paper in the journal Nucleic Acids Research:

Abstract

RNA editing processes are strikingly different in animals and plants. Up to thousands of specific cytidines are converted into uridines in plant chloroplasts and mitochondria whereas up to millions of adenosines are converted into inosines in animal nucleo-cytosolic RNAs. It is unknown whether these two different RNA editing machineries are mutually incompatible. RNA-binding pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins are the key factors of plant organelle cytidine-to-uridine RNA editing. The complete absence of PPR mediated editing of cytosolic RNAs might be due to a yet unknown barrier that prevents its activity in the cytosol. Here, we transferred two plant mitochondrial PPR-type editing factors into human cell lines to explore whether they could operate in the nucleo-cytosolic environment. PPR56 and PPR65 not only faithfully edited their native, co-transcribed targets but also different sets of off-targets in the human background transcriptome. More than 900 of such off-targets with editing efficiencies up to 91%, largely explained by known PPR-RNA binding properties, were identified for PPR56. Engineering two crucial amino acid positions in its PPR array led to predictable shifts in target recognition. We conclude that plant PPR editing factors can operate in the entirely different genetic environment of the human nucleo-cytosol and can be intentionally re-engineered towards new targets.

Graphical Abstract

Plant mitochondrial PPR-DYW deaminase specifically edits cytidines in nuclear-cytosolic transcripts in human cells. The editing enzyme can be re-directed to new targets via modification of single binding motifs.

Elena Lesch, Maximilian T Schilling, Sarah Brenner, Yingying Yang, Oliver J Gruss, Volker Knoop, Mareike Schallenberg-Rüdinger
Plant mitochondrial RNA editing factors can perform targeted C-to-U editing of nuclear transcripts in human cells
Nucleic Acids Research, 2022;, gkac752, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkac752

Copyright: © 2022 The authors.
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

This raises several problems for Creationists, especially those who believe an intelligent [sic] designer is responsible for these processes:

1. Why is this not evidence of a common origin of plants and animals?
2. Why would an intelligently designed process by an omnipotent, omniscient designer result in mistakes that need repairing?
3. Why would an intelligent designer use such an unncessarily complicated process to correct the mistakes in DNA replication when it uses a simpler process in animal cells, which doesn't mean mistakes continue to accumulate in the Genome?
4. If there are no advantages in carrying out the repair at the RNA level instead of at the DNA level, why 'design' two different processes to achieve the same result?
5. If there are advantages, why not use the advantageous process for animals as well as plant organelles?

No doubt all those problems will be waved aside with the ultimate in non-answer, "God works in mysterious ways!", whilst still insisting that intelligent [sic] design is real science, not religion in a lab coat.

Evolution News - Earliest Vertebrate Heart From 380 Million Years Ago.

We found the oldest ever vertebrate fossil heart. It tells a 380 million-year-old story of how our bodies evolved

Although they probably don’t realise it, the function of the heart is as good evidence as it gets that the Bible wasn't written or inspired by the god described in it. No such omnipotent creator god would have assumed the heart was the seat of emotions when in fact it's simply a muscular pump for circulating blood around the body. Such silly mistakes are understandable if the Bible was written by ignorant people who lacked even basis science, of course, but not for any alleged creator of all life, including mammalian.

So, news that scientists have discovered the earliest fossil record of a mammalian heart from 380 million years ago, will come as a shock to Bible literalist creationists, if for no other reason than that it refutes the childish notion that the Universe was created by a creator god just a few thousand years ago, and the same creator created the human heart as the seat of emotion.

And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

Mark 11: 22-23

The scientists who made the discovery have published their findings in the journal, Science and have written about them in The Conversation. Their article is reprinted here, formatted for stylistic consistency, under a Creative Commons licence. The original article can be read here.

Creationism In Crisis - Scientists Find Evidence of Domesticated Animals From Thousands of Years Before God Allegedly Created Them

What ancient dung reveals about Epipaleolithic animal tending | Plos One

Reconstruction of the Epipalaeolithic hut showing a person sitting on the area outside of the hut where dung had accumulated.

Credit: Andrew Moore, CC-BY 4.0

A paper published today in PLoS One, will make grim reading for anyone still trying to cling to the discredited notion of Bible inerrancy in matters of science and history, because it shows that humans had domesticated cattle at least before 12,300 years ago., i.e. 8,000 years before Bible literalists believe Earth was created.

The evidence was found by Alexia Smith of the Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, U.S.A, and colleagues, in the shape of crystals of dung spherulites — tiny calcium carbonate clumps found in the dung of animals - at Abu Hureyra, Syria, at a site which had been occupied for several thousand years, spanning the transition of human culture from hunter-gatherers to farming and cattle herding.

It is also evidence of that transition because those who kept these small herd of animals, probably mostly sheep, were still hunter-gatherers, so this marks the beginning of cattle herding in the area.

PLoS describe the finding and its significance in information released ahead of publication:

Creationism In Crisis - Modern Humans Were Cleverer Than Neanderthals Because of a Small Mutation in a Single Gene

Microscopy picture of a dividing basal radial glial cell, a progenitor cell type that generates neurons during brain development. Modern human TKTL1, but not Neandertal TKTL1, increases basal radial glia and neuron abundance.

© Pinson et al., Science 2022 / MPI-CBG

Modern humans generate more brain neurons than Neandertals: MPI-CBG

The scientifically nonsensical claim, often parroted by Creationists, is that all mutations are deleterious, therefore mutations can't be the basis for evolution. Although still pretending Creationism is science, following the repeated failure to convince a court of that, the reason Creationists give for that idiotic view of mutations is because, so their favourite myths say, all life was created magically and perfect by a perfect creator, so any change from that initial perfection must be imperfect in some way, and this was only possible because of 'The Fall'.

In other words, the dogma is barely disguised fundamentalist religion, plain and simple, and ignores the fact that many mutations are demonstrably advantageous and came to predominate in the species gene pool for that reason. There is of course, no mechanism by which a deleterious mutation can accumulate in the gene pool, let alone become fixed in the species, unless it rides on the back of a much more advantageous mutation in an associated gene.

And now a team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany, have discovered that a single mutation in a single gene could have given modern humans the intellectual edge over Neanderthals, and probably other archaic hominins. It will take considerable mental gymnastics for the frauds to present that as supporting Creationism to their cult.

The mutation was a single nucleotide change in the gene which changed a codon from that for the amino acid, lysine in Neanderthals, to that for arginine in modern humans. The research team have shown that this small change in the resulting protein, means modern humans have many more neurones in their brain, especially in the frontal region, which is responsible for cognition. This may have meant moderns were quicker to learn and generally more intelligent than Neanderthals.

The news release from the Max Planck Institute explains the research and the significance of this discovery:

Unintelligent Designer News - When Yesterday's Soltion to the Problem You Created Earlier, is Today's Problem Waiting To Be Solved

These female hummingbirds evolved to look like males — apparently to evade aggression | UW News

Female white-necked jacobin hummingbird with male-like plumage

Irene Mendez Cruz

If you share the childish creationist belief in intelligent [sic] design, you must accept that the designer behaves like an amnesiac or an idiot, constantly discovering that the solution it designed to solve yesterday's problem is today's problem waiting to be solved. The result is an almost infinite number of examples of arms races and their results to be found throughout nature. An offshoot of this process is various forms of mimicry, where one species comes to resemble another because that helps protect it from a predator on both.

A case in point, but one with a slight twist, is the fact that one in five females of the white-necked jacobin hummingbird, Florisuga mellivora, have bright 'male' plumage instead of the usual duller ‘female’ plumage, however, they still have the lighter female bodyweight and have female patterns of behaviour.

Males of the species have dazzling blue-and-white plumage, as do all juveniles. Males are also aggressive in defending their territory and food sources. About 80% of the females develop a duller, green and white plumage as they mature. This pattern, where males are brightly coloured and the females are duller is common in birds, where males display to defend their territory and to attract a mate, while the females which don’t need to display to attract a mate, can afford to be duller and more difficult for predators to see.

So ,the question is, why do about 20% of F. melliflora hummingbird develop a 'male' plumage while retaining a lighter female body and behaviour? This was the question scientists from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA and the University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA set out to answer.

The answer turned out to be an unusual case of mimicry, where the females are not mimicking another species for protection, but males of the same species. This works because the males are bullies and cowards, and tend to pick on the light-weight females while avoiding picking a fight with other males and with juveniles (which also seem to be getting protection against the cowardly males by, unusually for birds, having adult ‘male’ plumage as juveniles).

As the news release from Washington University explains:

Transitional Species News - Yes! It's More Transitional Fossils!

The Gunflint formation, north-western shores of Lake Superior.

Research News - Discovery of New Types of Microfossils May Answer an Age-old Scientific Question | Tohoku University Global Site

The bad news for the failing Creationist cult just continues to pile up. Not only do scientists regularly find fossils of 'transitional organisms' coming partway between an earlier taxon and a later one, but now they have found evidence, in 1.9 billion-year-old micro-fossils, of transition between the earlier, prokaryote cells and the more complex eukaryote cells that multicellular organisms eventually evolved from.

To conform to Creationist superstitions, though, they should not be that old and they should not be transitional between major taxons. The yawning gap between what Creationists are obliged to believe and what science shows to be true just got a bit wider.

The discovery was made by a research team from Tohoku University, Japan, and the University of Tokyo, Japan, who analysed micro-fossils from the Gunflint Formation which traverses the northern part of Minnesota, USA into Ontario, Canada, along the north-western shores of Lake Superior.

The news release from Tohoku University explains the finding and its significance:

Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Favourite Pestilential Malevolence Might Soon Try for Another Pademic

Laboratory staff wearing full PPE.

AAP Image/Joel Carrett

5 virus families that could cause the next pandemic, according to the experts

Creationism’s pestilential designer never tires of designing new ways to make us sick and die, or modifying old ways by improving their ability to harm us. It normally uses one of five different families of virus, its favourite until recently has been the Orthomyxoviridae family that includes the influenza virus, but it made good use of the Coronaviridae family recently with SARS and MERS as practice runs, and eventually SARS-CoV-2 that caused the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.

But it also has several other families in stock, so to speak, and can modify any of them to cause the next pandemic.

That's if you believe the Creationist claims that all life is designed by a magic designer and any change in its genome can only occur with divine intervention to make it happen. For incomprehensible reasons, they would rather we thought of their putative designer god as a pestilential malevolence than accept the scientific Theory of Evolution.

The following article from The Conversation by four Australian experts, outlines five different virus families from which the cause of the next pandemic could come. It was written by Professor Allen Cheng, Professor in Infectious Diseases Epidemiology, Monash University, Victoria, Australia, Dr. Andrew van den Hurk, Medical Entomologist, The University of Queensland, Australia Associate Professor Cameron Webb, Clinical Associate Professor and Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia, and Professor Damian Purcell, Professor of virology and theme leader for viral infectious diseases, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

It is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original article can be read here.

AAP Image/Joel Carrett

5 virus families that could cause the next pandemic, according to the experts

Allen Cheng, Monash University; Andrew van den Hurk, The University of Queensland; Cameron Webb, University of Sydney, and Damian Purcell, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity The CSIRO has delivered a comprehensive report on how we should prepare for future pandemics.

The report identifies six key science and technology areas such as faster development of vaccines and onshore vaccine manufacturing to ensure supply, new antivirals and ways of using the medicines we already have, better ways of diagnosing cases early, genome analysis, and data sharing.

It also recommends we learn more about viruses and their hosts across the five most concerning virus families. These causes of disease could fuel the next pandemic.

We asked leading experts about the diseases they can cause and why authorities should prepare well:

1. Coronaviridae

COVID-19, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), severe acquired respiratory syndrome (SARS)

The first human Coronaviruses (229E and OC43) were found in 1965 and 1967 respectively. They were low-grade pathogens causing only mild cold-like symptoms and gastroenteritis. Initial understanding of this family came from study of related strains that commonly infect livestock or laboratory mice that also caused non-fatal disease. The HKU-1 strain in 1995 again did not demonstrate an ability to generate high levels of disease. As such, coronaviridae were not considered a major concern until severe acquired respiratory syndrome (SARS-1) first appeared in 2002 in China.

Coronaviridae have a very long RNA genome, coding up to 30 viral proteins. Only four or five genes make infectious virus particles, but many others support diseases from this family by modifying immune responses. The viruses in this family mutate at a steady low rate, selecting changes in the outer spike to allow virus entry into new host cells.

Coronaviridae viruses are widespread in many ecological niches and common in bat species that make up 20% of all mammals. Mutations spread in their roosts can spillover into other mammals, such as the civet cat, then into humans.

Coronaviridae genome surveillance shows an array of previously unknown virus strains circulating in different ecological niches. Climate change threatens intersections of these viral transmission networks. Furthermore, pandemic human spread of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) has now seeded new transmissions back into other species, such as mink, cats, dogs and white-tailed deer.

Ongoing viral evolution in new animal hosts and also in immune-compromised HIV patients in under-resourced settings, presents an ongoing source of new variants of concern.

– Damian Purcell

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Read more:
Long COVID: How researchers are zeroing in on the self-targeted immune attacks that may lurk behind it

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2. Flaviviridae

Dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, Zika, West Nile fever

The flaviviridae family causes several diseases, including dengue, Japanese encephalitis, Zika, West Nile disease and others. These diseases are often not life-threatening, causing fever, sometimes with rash or painful joints. A small proportion of those infected get severe or complicated infection. Japanese encephalitis can cause inflammation of the brain, and Zika virus can cause birth defects.

While all these viruses may be spread by mosquito bites, when it comes to each individual virus, not all mosquitoes bring equal risk. There are key mosquito species involved in transmission cycles of dengue and Zika virus, such as Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, that may be found in close to where people live. These mosquitoes are found in water-holding containers (such as potted plant saucers, rainwater tanks), water-filled plants, and tree holes. They also like to bite people.

The mosquitoes that spread these viruses are not currently widespread in Australia; they’re generally limited to central and far north Queensland. They are routinely detected through biosecurity surveillance at Australia’s major airports and seaports. With a rapid return to international travel, movement of people and their belongings may become an ever-increasing pathway of introduction of the diseases and mosquitoes back into Australia.

A Sri Lankan health worker sprays insecticide to curb mosquito breeding earlier this year.

EPA/Chamila Karunarathne

Different mosquitoes are involved in the transmission of West Nile virus and Japanese encephalitis. These mosquitoes are more likely to be found in wetlands and bushland areas than backyards. They bite people but they also like to bite the animals most likely to be carrying these viruses.

The emergence of Japanese encephalitis, a virus spread by mosquitoes between waterbirds, pigs, and people, is a perfect example. Extensive rains and flooding that provide idea conditions for mosquitoes and these animals create a “perfect storm” for disease emergence.

– Cameron Webb & Andrew van den Hurk

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Read more:
Japanese encephalitis virus has been detected in Australian pigs. Can mozzies now spread it to humans?

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3. Orthomyxoviridae

Influenza

Before COVID-19, influenza was the infection most well-known for causing pandemics.

Influenza virus is subdivided into types (A, B, and rarely C and D). Influenza A is further classified into subtypes based on haemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N) protein variants on the surface of the virus. Currently, the most common influenza strains in humans are A/H1N1 and A/H3N2.

Zoonotic infection occurs when influenza strains that primarily affect animals “spill over” to humans.

Major changes in the influenza virus usually result from new combinations of influenza viruses that affect birds, pigs and humans. New strains have the potential to cause pandemics as there is little pre-existing immunity.

An Israeli worker disposes of chicken eggs to contain the spread of bird flu.

EPA/Atef Safadi

Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been four influenza pandemics, in 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009. In between pandemics, seasonal influenza circulates throughout the world.

Although influenza is not as infectious as many other respiratory infections, the very short incubation period of around 1.4 days means outbreaks can spread quickly.

Vaccines are available to prevent influenza, but are only partially protective. Antiviral treatments are available, including oseltamivir, zanamivir, peramivir and baloxavir. Oseltamivir decreases the duration of illness by around 24 hours if started early, but whether it reduces the risk of severe influenza and its complications is controversial.

– Allen Cheng

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Read more:
My year as Victoria's deputy chief health officer: on the pandemic, press conferences and our COVID future

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4. Paramyxoviridae

Nipah virus, Hendra virus

Paramyxoviridae are a large group of viruses that affect humans and animals. The most well known are measles and mumps, as well as parainfluenza virus (a common cause of croup in children).

Globally, measles is a dangerous disease for young children, particularly those who are malnourished. Vaccines are highly effective with the measles vaccine alone estimated to have saved 17 million lives between 2000 and 2014.

One group of paramyxoviruses is of particular importance for pandemic planning – henipaviruses. This includes Hendra virus, Nipah virus and the new Langya virus (as well as the fictional MEV-1 in the film Contagion). These are all zoonoses (diseases that spill over from animals to humans)

Hendra virus was first discovered in Queensland in 1994, when it caused the deaths of 14 horses and their horse trainer. Infected flying foxes have since spread the virus to horses in Queensland and northern New South Wales. There have been seven reported human cases of Hendra virus in Australia, including four deaths.

Nipah virus is more significant globally. Infection may be mild, but some people develop encephalitis (inflammation of the brain). Outbreaks frequently occur in Bangladesh, where the first outbreak was reported in 1998. Significantly, Nipah virus appears to be able to be transmitted from person-to-person though close contact.

– Allen Cheng

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Read more:
What is this new Langya virus? Do we need to be worried?

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5. Togaviridae (alphaviruses)

Chikungunya fever, Ross River fever, Eastern equine encephalitis, Western equine encephalitis, Venezuelan equine encephalitis

The most common disease symptoms caused by infection with alphaviruses like chikungunya and Ross River viruses are fever, rash and painful joints.

Like some flaviviruses, chikungunya virus is thought to be only spread by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Australia. This limits risks, for now, to central and far north Queensland.

Many different mosquitoes play a role in transmission of alphaviruses, including dozens of mosquito species suspected as playing a role in the spread of Ross River fever. Many of these mosquitoes are commonly found across Australia.

But what role may these local mosquitoes play should diseases such as eastern equine encephalitis or western equine encephalitis make their way to Australia? Given the capacity of our home-grown mosquitoes to spread other alphaviruses, it is reasonable to assume they would be effective at transmitting these as well. That’s why the CSIRO report notes future pandemic preparation should work alongside Australia’s established biosecurity measures.

– Cameron Webb & Andrew van den Hurk

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Read more:
How can the bite of a backyard mozzie in Australia make you sick?

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Allen Cheng, Professor in Infectious Diseases Epidemiology, Monash University; Andrew van den Hurk, Medical Entomologist, The University of Queensland; Cameron Webb, Clinical Associate Professor and Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney, and Damian Purcell, Professor of virology and theme leader for viral infectious diseases, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

Published by The Conversation.
Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

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Space News - First Exoplanet Photo. No Life Yet, But It's Only a Matter of Time

NASA/ESA/CSA, A Carter (UCSC), the ERS 1386 team, and A. Pagan (STScI)

The Webb telescope has released its very first exoplanet image – here's what we can learn from it

NASA's James Webb Space telescope, which is performing much better than expectations, has just produced the first image of an exoplanet. The planet, HIP 65426b, is a gas giant rather like Jupiter, orbiting HIP 65426. It's presence had been inferred from data in 2017.

As a gas giant, it is not suitable for living organisms to have evolved but, with so many exoplanets being discovered, with over 5,000 discovered so far, and so many stars with potential planetary systems, it can't now be long before signs of life are detected on one or more of them.

When that happens, of course, it will destroy any remaining arguments from Creationists that the probability of a self-replicating molecule arising by chance is too small to be credible as an explanation for how life got going on Earth. It will show that, if the conditions are right, chemistry and physics alone are quite capable of producing that and the probability of a planet with those conditions being discovered, increases with every new exoplanet discovered.

The chances of finding such a planet are greater the closer the planetary system is to Earth for the simple reason that telescopes such as the James Webb, see distant objects as they were when the light left them, so a planet say, 10 billion lightyears away, will appear as it was 10 billion years ago. We know it took the Universe 10-11 billion years to give rise to Earth before life could get going some 500 million years later, so distant object may not have had time when we are seeing them, to have reached that stage. Closer objects will have had more time.

The image from the James Webb Space Telescope, and its significance is explained in an open access article in The Conversation by Professor Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland, Australia. The article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original article can be read here.

Evolution News - How Australia and New Guinea Got Their Diverse Populations of Rodents

A hopping mouse of the Notomys genus. Hopping mice have evolved highly efficient kidneys to deal with the low water environments of Australia’s deserts.

Credit: David Paul/Museums Victoria

'Impressive rafting skills': the 8-million-year old origin story of how rodents colonised Australia

I've remarked before about how well the Theory of Evolution as an explanation for the biodiversity in animals, plants and fungi we see all around us, consistently meshes with other strands of science. For example, plate tectonic and the timing of the splits and collisions of land masses that have occurred exactly coincides with the deduced evolutionary divergence in major branches of the tree of life, so explaining the relationships between species on unconnected land masses such as Africa and South America or Europe and North America.

Here we have an account of the colonisation of Australia and New Guinea and neighbouring islands by rodents, and their evolutionary diversification, that exactly meshes with the rise and fall of sea level during cycles of glaciation and glacial regression, and with known periods of mountain building in New Guinea that transformed it from a group of small islands into a single large mountainous island.

The study, led by Dr. Emily Roycroft, a postdoctoral research fellow with the Australian National University's Division of Ecology and Evolution, Research School of Biology, Acton, ACT, Australia, and Pierre-Henri Fabre, of the Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France, with colleagues from the Australian National University, and the Science Department, Museums Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, is published in the journal,Current Biology. Sadly, the main body of the paper is behind a paywall, despite the journals claimed support for open access publishing. However the abstract is available here.

Lead author, Dr Emily Roycroft has also written about their research in the open access online magazine The Conversation which, if you want factual, objective analysis of news, is well worth reading. Her article is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistence. The original article can be read here.

Unintelligent Design - Seahorses Show How Creationism's Amnesiac Designer Creates Different Solutions for the Same Problem

Credit: Charlotte Bleijenberg / Shutterstock

Seahorse fathers give birth in a unique way, new research shows

Like an amnesic, Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer often forgets what it designed earlier and starts again. It did it with all the different forms of wing for flying organisms, for example, and with the seahorse and pipefish family, which it bizarrely designed so the male would be the pregnant one of the sexes, it designed a different mechanism for giving birth, even though it had designed a perfectly good mechanism for other viviparous fish and the one it would design later for mammals.

The male seahorse has a pouch at the front base of its tail which acts as a uterus, which, like in mammals, even contains a placenta to nourish the growing babies, so we would expect the same designer who designed both this and the mammalian uterus to use the same method for expelling the baby when it was time for birth, but not a bit of it!

Instead of smooth muscle contacting under the influence of oxytocin without conscious effort, as with the mammalian uterus, the male seahorse uses his skeletal tail muscles under conscious control, even though a 1970 study had shown that the fish equivalent of oxytocin, isotocin, induces labour-like behaviour in male seahorses. Apparently, the designer hadn't realised he could have made the pouch out of smooth muscle and achieved the same result. The designer only seems to have realised that millions of years later when designing mammals - something any omniscient designer would know he was going to do, and according to creationists, did on the same day!

Unintelligent Design - Giant Viruses Designed Only to Kill Another Of the Designer's Creation?

(A) General location and local geography of the Milne Fiord epishelf lake in 2015 (adapted from reference 7). Gray areas of map indicate lake ice detected by RADARSAT-2 imagery. (B) Cartoon showing accumulation of freshwater behind Milne Ice Shelf and the bottom topography of Neige Bay.

Giant Viruses in Climate-Endangered Arctic Epishelf Lake | ASM.org

Readers may recall how I wrote very recently about a 'giant virus' that is designed to infect and kill an amoeba, but whatever designed it, also designed a bacterium to defend the amoeba from it, in a seemingly pointless excercise in design for no apparent reason. That's if you see everything in terms of the childish intelligent [sic] design hoax.

Now scientists have discovered another 'giant' virus' that lives in a remote arctic lake and does nothing other than kill the cyanobacteria that also live there, which, presumably, Creationists believe were designed by the same designer who designed the 'giant virus'.

If you can't see the flaw in the reasoning that this must have been designed by a intelligent designer, then it's highly likely that you have fallen for the intelligent [sic] design hoax yourself, or your definition of 'intelligent' is at odds with the way the rest of the English-speaking world uses it.

Just a quick reminder about these "giant viruses": These are a goup of very large viruses that are several times larger than normal visues such as the COVI-19-causing SARS-CoV-2. They have a relatively complex genome which includes genes normally only found in cellular animals, plants and fungi. They are harmlees to humans since they only infect single-celled organisms such as amoebae and, in this case, cyanobacteria. They are relatively common in a marine environment and can have an impact at the lowest level of the food chain by killing the organisms that recycle nutrients from dead organisms from higher up the food chain. How and why they got their complex genomes is the current subject of study, but may be the result of horizontal gene transfer during evolutionary arms races between them and their hosts.

The discovery was made by microbiologists from Université Laval, Québec, Québec, Canada. Their findings are published, open access in the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology. How the discovery was made and its significance in terms of climate change are explained in the ASM news release: