Evolution News - How Humans Evolved Social Behaviour and Cooperation

Neanderthals may have had less prosocial behaviour than modern humans. They had smaller social groups and may have had a polygynous social structure with more male-male competition.

What oxytocin can tell us about the evolution of human prosociality - Universitat de Barcelona

One of the more nonsensical creationist talking points you still hear occasionally, is that evolution can't account for altruism because survival of the fittest means the selfish survive at the expense of others less selfish. This is demonstrably untrue because the result of evolution show that cooperation at all levels of organisation, from intracellular organelles to social groups of multicellular organisms, is better than conflict, and human society especially demonstrates the truth of this where any tendency towards freeloading is moderated by social ethics and the affiliative needs of individuals.

Now this reasoning has been supported by research which shows that human evolution included improving the ability to empathize. Empathy, of course, is the basis for all human prosocial behaviour and is even acknowledged in the Judaeo-Christian holy books with the invocation to do unto others that which you would they do unto you - the 'golden rule', common to all human societies.

Modern human societies are characterised by comparatively high levels of prosocial behaviours such as intraspecies empathy, social tolerance, cooperation and altruism. Now, Constantina Theofanopoulou, as part of her doctoral thesis carried out under the co-supervision of Cedric Boeckx, ICREA researcher at the Institute of Complex Systems at the Universitat de Barcelona (UBICS) and Erich D. Jarvis, professor at Rockefeller University, has shown that this has an evolved genetic basis involving the genes that control oxytocin and vasotocin receptor in the brain. Oxytocin, also known as the 'love' hormone, is responsible for social bonding as well as sexual attraction and parent-child bonding.

By analysing the genomes of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans as well as non-human primates, the common chimpanzees, bonobos and macaques, Theofanopoulou and her colleagues have shown that there are five sites in the oxytocin and vasotocin receptors where modern humans are unique in one of their two (or more) variants compared to archaic humans and non-human primates, and which are at the same time found in more than 70% of the modern human population.

The scientists have published their finding's, open access, in the journal, Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology.

The Universitat de Barcelona news release gives more details:

Variants unique to modern humans in more than 70% of the population

Past studies that compared the entire modern human genome with the Neanderthal or the chimpanzee genomes have focused on changes that are fixed or nearly fixed in modern humans. This has led to them identifying sites where, for example, all Neanderthals had Adenine (one of the four nucleotides that with guanine, cytosine and thymine form the DNA) and nearly all modern humans (say, 98%) have Guanine. In this study, we searched for differences on locations where, by definition, not all modern humans share the same nucleotide, namely on polymorphic sites, where for example, 70% of the modern human population has Adenine and 30% Cytosine.

[the differences] might be relevant to the smaller social groups attributed to Neanderthals and Denisovans or to the decreased modern human androgenization. They might also be relevant to a different social structure, i.e., Neanderthals have been linked to a polygynous social structure and a higher level of male–male competition than most contemporary modern human populations.

The sites that are unique in both us and archaic humans versus non-human primates can elucidate the genetic underpinnings of the progressive social tolerance needed for the intensive cultural transmission of technological innovations (e.g., fire use) in the evolution of humankind, as well as for the reduced aggression indicated by several markers in early hominid evolution, such as the reduction of male canine size and the accelerated demographic success.

The convergent sites in modern humans and bonobos could be insightful for understanding the posited similarities in prosociality, social tolerance and cooperation between us and bonobos, and the differences of both compared to chimpanzees. For example, bonobos outperform chimpanzees on tasks relevant to social causality or theory of mind and are more attentive to the face and eyes, suggestive of higher empathic sensitivity.

Understanding developmental disorders through evolutionary lenses can aid into us achieving what we call an evo-devo (evolutionary and developmental biology) understanding of these disorders. If indeed “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, then deciphering our evolutionary trajectory may shed light to new genetic spots for clinical research that might, in turn, lead to earlier disorder diagnosis.

Constantina Theofanopoulou, first author
PhD Candidate
Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language
Rockefeller University, New York, USA
And Institute of Complex Systems
University of Barcelona
Catalonia, Spain

Considering the evidence on modern human prosociality and on the involvement of the oxytocin and vasotocin genes in social behaviours, the researchers hypothesized that the evolution of these genes might elucidate the genetic basis of the evolution of hominin prosociality. With this aim in mind, the study explored the differences between modern humans, archaic humans and non-human primates in polymorphic heterozygous sites in the human genome – locations where at least two alternative sequences are found in a population.

The study compared the available genomic sequences of these genes between modern humans, non-human primate species (e.g., chimpanzees, bonobos, and macaques) and, for the first time, archaic humans.

The researchers identified five sites in the oxytocin and vasotocin receptors where modern humans are unique in one of their two (or more) variants compared to archaic humans and non-human primates, and which are at the same time found in more than 70% of the modern human population. Next, they conducted functional and frequency analyses to establish whether the variants are relevant. They performed a range of analyses on the five sites and found that some of the variants are highly functional, indicating that they have an effect on the molecular function of the proteins activated by these genes.

The researchers also found that these sites are encountered in genome regions that are active in the brain, particularly in the cingulate gyrus, a brain region involved in social cognition-relevant pathways. Moreover, all these sites have been associated in other studies with a plethora of social behaviours or social deficits, such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), aggression, and so on.

These findings may help to explain some of the social differences between modern humans and what we presume to know about the social behaviours of Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Variants present only in modern and archaic humans

The study also found two sites on the oxytocin receptor under a positive selection in modern and archaic humans: that is to say, modern and archaic humans showed a variant that was not present in any other non-human primate. This means that these sites are found in very high percentages in the modern human population (in this case, more than 85%). These same sites have also been associated with a great many social behaviours or deficits, and one of them was predicted to be a highly functional site in their regulation analyses.

Convergent sites with bonobos

Lastly, the researchers found three sites where modern humans and bonobos, a primate species that shows convergence of prosocial behaviours with humans, have the same nucleotide.

All the sites identified in this study have also been independently associated with disorders that include social deficits, such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

Because the same sites were not found in the common chimpanzees, with whom we share common ancestry with bonobos, the team reasoned that the three sites which humans and bonobos have in common is most likely a case of convergent evolution. This emphasises the selective advantage in this mutation in bonobos, in which prosocial, empathetic behaviour is highly developed.

More detail is given in the abstract and highlight section to their paper:

Copyright: © 2022 The authors.
Published by Elsevier B.V. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

Highlights

• We compared the oxytocin/vasotocin receptors in modern humans, archaic humans, and non-human primates.
• We found 5 sites with modern human specific variation.
• In these sites, the modern human allele is the major allele in the global population.
• Several sites were predicted to be functional and with selection signatures in modern humans.
• We also identified 3 sites of convergent evolution in modern humans and bonobos.

Abstract

Modern human lifestyle strongly depends on complex social traits like empathy, tolerance and cooperation. These diverse facets of social cognition have been associated with variation in the oxytocin receptor (OTR) and its sister genes, the vasotocin/vasopressin receptors (VTR1A/AVPR1A and AVPR1B/VTR1B). Here, we compared the available genomic sequences of these receptors between modern humans, archaic humans, and 12 non-human primate species, and identified sites that show heterozygous variation in modern humans and archaic humans distinct from variation in other primates, and for which we could find association studies with clinical implications. On these sites, we performed a range of analyses (variant clustering, pathogenicity prediction, regulation, linkage disequilibrium frequency), and reviewed the literature on selection data in different modern-human populations. We found five sites with modern human specific variation, where the modern human allele is the major allele in the global population (OTR: rs1042778, rs237885, rs6770632; VTR1A: rs10877969; VTR1B: rs33985287). Among them, variation in the OTR-rs6770632 site was predicted to be the most functional. Two alleles (OTR: rs59190448 and rs237888) present only in modern humans and archaic humans were putatively under positive selection in modern humans, with rs237888 predicted to be a highly functional site. Three sites showed convergent evolution between modern humans and bonobos (OTR: rs2228485 and rs237897; VTR1A: rs1042615), with OTR-rs2228485 ranking highly in terms of functionality and reported to be under balancing selection in modern humans (Schaschl, 2015) [1]. Our findings have implications for understanding hominid prosociality, as well as the similarities between modern human and bonobo social behavior.

Theofanopoulou, Constantina; Andirkó, Alejandro; Boeckx, Cedric; Jarvis, Erich D. (2022)
Oxytocin and vasotocin receptor variation and the evolution of human prosociality
Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology 11 100139; DOI: 10.1016/j.cpnec.2022.100139

Copyright: © 2022 The authors.
Published by Elsevier B.V. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

It is entirely possible therefore that modern human groups were able to out-compete the archaic hominins because we were able to sustain larger cooperative groups, with reduced internal conflict stemming from male-male rivalry, than the archaic hominins could manage. This improved social cohesion gave us an evolutionary advantage, hence it came to predominate in the human gene pool, in a classic example of evolution by natural selection.

No doubt, despite evidence such as this to the contrary, we will still get creationists denying the common ancestry of humans and other apes and asserting that natural selection can't account for altruism and love because it would favour selfishness. Creationism requires its dupes to stay stoically ignorant of 'toxic' science. No doubt too that creationists will still make the increasingly forlorn claim that the TOE is a theory in crisis, despite the evidence such as that in this paper that it is fundamental to our understanding of biology and the only scientific theory that makes sense of the evidence without resorting to magical mysteries and childish fairy tales.

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Evolution News - How Salmonella is Evolving to Resist Antibiotics

Researchers find that the Salmonella vaccine for poultry contributed to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the UK.

Image Credit: Mary Parker, Quadram Institute (CC-BY 4.0)

Salmonella vaccine for poultry contributed to rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria | PLOS

A new investigation into the evolution of Salmonella bacteria infecting Brazilian poultry shows that the introduction of a Salmonella vaccine, combined with increasing antibiotic usage by Brazilian farmers, has led to the rise of strains that are more antibiotic-resistant, but less likely to cause disease in humans. This is the conclusion by Andrea Micke Moreno of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, Alison Mather of Quadram Institute Bioscience, UK, and their colleagues, who conducted the investigation.

Their findings are published today the open access journal PLOS Genetics.

Information provided by PLOS ahead of publication explains:

Americans Increasingly Ignore Their Church and Support Same Sex Marriage

Same-Sex Marriage Support Inches Up to New High of 71%

A sure sign that a religion is losing its grip on the people is when public opinion differs markedly from its teachings. This is a manifestation of an increasing tension as social ethics progresses and leaves behind the fossilised ethics of religion from an earlier age. The local religions then have to change to keep up but in doing so, they alienate the traditionalists who tend to become an ever-diminishing minority, pushing it further out to the fringes, or leave the church in protest at its increasing abandonment of sacred principles.

The problem is a direct consequence of the control of public morals religions presume they have entitlement to and their claim of the divine authority of an omniscient god for so doing. This means they can adopt change only by abandoning their justification for their control and in effect, giving up the pretence that morals come from an omniscient deity who, by definition, is never wrong. The reality, of course, is that morals are a social construct that change and develop according to the developmental needs of society, and have no divine, objective basis save what goes to create a cooperative society that is pleasant to live in.

So the progressive forces in society produces a tension between them and the regressive, traditionalist forces of religion and the needs of religions to keep control of their people and so the livelihoods and power of the priesthood. A useful analogy is that of a rope by which religions try to hold back social progress until either the rope snaps and the people give up on that religion, or the religion is dragged, kicking and screaming into the modern age.

Christianity Faces Extinction in the UK Within 40 Years

Church of England ‘R number’ suggests bleak future, says mathematician

The Church of England (CofE) faces extinction within 40 years, according to the calculations of Dr John Hayward, a mathematician at the University of South Wales.

He arrived at this date by applying a technique normally used for assessing the increase or decrease in the spread of a pandemic such as COVID-19, which calculates at 'R' number. The 'R' number calculates how many people someone with the virus passes it on to on average. An 'R' number of one means the number of cases in the population remains constant; above 1 means it is increasing and below 1 means it is decreasing.

Interestingly, this view of religion and how it is spread is almost identical to the view expresed by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene that religions behave like a parasitic virus in the human memepool.

The 'problem' the CofE and other Christian denominations face is that they are not infectious enough. Dr Hayward has calculated the CofE's 'R' number at 0.9, the same as that for the Catholic Church and an 'R' number that a COVID-19 epidemiologist would have welcomed at the height of the Pandemic. This means their congregations could disappear by 2062. The Methodists, with an 'R' number of about 0.85 could be extinct by 2040, lingering on little longer than the United Reformed Church with an 'R' number of about 0.8.

Other Christian denominations in the UK fare even worse and only a handful have 'R' numbers about 1 - the Elim Pentecostal Church and the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches.

Source: Heyward, J. Growth, Decline and Extinction of UK Churches

Source: Heyward, J. Growth, Decline and Extinction of UK Churches

Several churches in Wales and Scotland face extinction before 2050 (i.e., within the next generation). They are the Welsh Presbyterians, the Church in Wales, the Welsh Independents, the Church of Scotland and the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Source: Heyward, J. Church of England 2001–2019

The scale of the catastrophe facing the CofE can be seen from the change in membership since 1800, when 17% of the population were registered as members on the electoral role. That figure is now just 1.7%, i.e., a 99% decline in membership which fell below 1 million for the first time in 2019, at a time of population growth.

Given that rate of decline and the fact that the CofE now represents only a tiny minority of the population, the time is now well overdue for a review of its role in public life and especially its right to insert bishops into the UK's legislative upper chamber, the House of Lords.

The role of the monarch as titular head of this unrepresentative minority cult now needs to be abolished on the succession.

It's time to disestablish the Church of England

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Common Ancestor News - Like Humans, Chimpanzees Have Complex Language

Chimpanzees Asanti and Akuna vocalising.

© Liran Samuni, Taï Chimpanzee Project

Chimpanzees combine calls to form numerous vocal sequences | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

How human languages evolved is something of a mystery. I'm not talking about the neurological and anatomical development that made us able to vocalise and comprehend spoken communications because this is an obvious case of gene-meme co-evolution. What I'm talking about is the evolution of the various sounds into words and so into coded information that conveys a meaning.

This is an even bigger problem for creationists because, apart from the childishly implausible and contradictory accounts in their favourite textbook, the Bible, it offers nothing by way of a rational explanation. Firstly there is the tale that all the descendants of Noah spoke different languages, to account for the handful of Middle Eastern languages the authors were aware of (Genesis 10:1-5). Then we have the contradictory claim that the whole world spoke one language (Genesis 11:1) but God confounded their tongues so they all spoke languages incomprehensible to one another [sic] because he was afraid they would work together to build a tower up to Heaven - which in those days was just above the sky over the Middle East and accessible via a tall enough tower.

But nowhere does the Bible say anything about how we learned to combine different phonics into words. The assumption of the Bible's authors was that, right from start, language was fully formed as some sort of universal given. Even the talking animals (Genesis 3:1-5, Numbers 22:28-30) and plants (Judges 9:13) spoke with human language, using the recombination of human phonics to make the words they spoke, like humans do, even though they lack the neurological and physical means of doing so. Even when God spoke his first words (Genesis 1:3) he used a human combination of human phonics to make meaningful (to humans) words and sentences - in that case, in a language then spoken by no-one else, since there was no-one else to speak it - Ancient Hebrew.

It is of course, nonsensical. Our ability to cooperate in social groups and develop cultures in which agreed combinations of phonetics has agreed meanings, so we can construct new information by an agreed set of rules, is an evolved ability and one which we probably inherited from an ancestor we have in common with chimpanzees, as the work of scientists from the Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod, Lyon, France, the Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive Sciences, Leipzig, Germany and the Taï Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse de Recherche Scientifique, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, shows.

They have discovered that chimpanzees :

Catholic Child Abuse News - Will Italy's New Senior Cardinal Launch a Historical Child Abuse Enquiry?

Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna, Italy
President of the Italian Bishops' Conference

Cardinal Matteo Zuppi is the new president of Italy’s Catholic bishops’ conference | Catholic News Agency

The appointment by Pope Francis of Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna, to the powerful post of President of the Italian Bishops' Conference, raises the delicious possibility of another major investigation into historical sex abuses by Catholic Priest in a devoutly Catholic Country, and of course the likely haemorrhage of membership from the church and loosening of the Church’s grip on national politics when the truth is revealed, as was seen in France, Spain, Ireland and elsewhere.

Zuppi is regarded as a liberal and was appointed by the Pope when Italian Bishops declined the Pope's invitation to be given the power to elect their president from amongst themselves. This gives him power in Italy second only to the Pope, who as Bishop of Rome is also Primate of Italy. He is believed to have strong links with the Sant’Egidio Community - a liberal-leaning, humanitarian community which describes itself as:

Sant’Egidio is a Christian community born in 1968, right after the second Vatican Council. An initiative of Andrea Riccardi, it was born in a secondary school in the centre of Rome. With the years, it has become a network of communities in more than 70 countries of the world. The Community pays attention to the periphery and peripheral people, gathering men and women of all ages and conditions, united by a fraternal tie through the listening of the Gospel and the voluntary and free commitment for the poor and peace.

Although it doesn't mention LGBTQ issues on its website, the Sant’Egidio Community is believed to support an inclusive approach to members of the LGBTQ community.

Italian bishops have long resisted calls for an enquiry into the sexual abuses of children by Catholic clerics but recently, they agreed to launch an enquiry into abuses over the past 10 years, having rejected one going back 50 years. Obviously, they know they have much to fear from such a long historical period going back to a time before the historical abuse scandals swamped the church and prompted actions to prevent them; a time when deference and a code of silence allowed abuses to go unreported and the abusers to continue their predation without let or hindrance. Similar enquiries in other countries have usually revealed thousands of victims of hundreds of priests, nuns and monks in most Catholic diocese and institutions, and a culture of tolerance, cover-up, facilitation and bullying of victims who dared to complain.

Zuppi's rise has been relatively rapid, having been ordained in 1981 and serving as an auxiliary bishop in Rome. He was appointed bishop of Villanova by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 and Archbishop of Bologna by Pope Francis in 2015. He was made a cardinal by Pope Francis just 3 years ago, but he needs to tread carefully, as a too liberal approach with too much revelation of the murky world of Italian Catholicism, could alienate him from the powerful conservative wing of the Church which is especially strong in Italy, and that could scupper his chances of becoming the next Pope - a position for which he is currently regarded as a leading candidate.

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Christian Child Abuse News - 700 Sexual Predators Found on a Secret SBC List

An annual meeting for the Southern Baptist Convention, which has almost 14 million members.

Photo: Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News, via Associated Press

Southern Baptist Sex Abuse Report Stuns, From Pulpit to Pews - The New York Times

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention in the USA have decided to release a formerly secret list of child abusers known to senior figures in the Convention. The list was originally started as a research project for an SBC committee in 2007 but was officially discontinued shortly after. However, a staffer continued to maintain it until 2022. It's existence was unknown until discovered by Guidepost Solutions, a firm employed as part of a multi-million dollar investigation into how the SBC handled abuse cases.

According to this report, the 205-page list contains details of cases involving "pastors, Sunday school teachers, camp counselors, music ministers, bus drivers and missionaries, with about 400 tied to SBC churches from Alaska to Alabama. In almost all of the cases, the abuse had led to arrests and jail time.". The compiler, whose name has been redacted from the released file, and who remains anonymous in the Guidepost Solutions report, has added the following disclaimer:

Evolution News - Evolution is Occurring Faster Than Previously Thought

Rhesus Macaque, Macaca mulatta

Photo: Timothy Gonsalves, CC BY-SA 4.0,via Wikimedia Commons

Wild animals evolving much faster than previously thought - ANU

The precondition for Darwinian evolution is genetic difference between individuals in a population. This is the 'fuel' which drives evolution in an environment in which certain genetic variations are more advantageous than others, so the amount of this variation in any given population, is the main determinant of the rate of evolution.

In order to quantify the amount of this 'fuel of evolution', an international team led by Dr Timothée Bonnet from the Australian National University (ANU) spent three years trawling through reams of data, after which they were able to quantify how much species change occurred due to genetic changes caused by natural selection.   It turned out to be about two to four times what was previously thought and evolution can go much faster than Darwin originally thought.

The Australian Nation University news release explains:

Evolution News - Observing Evolution by Horizontal Gene Transfer in Action

There are two types of plasmid integration into a host bacteria: Non-integrating plasmids replicate as with the top instance, whereas episomes, the lower example, can integrate into the host chromosome.

Source: Wikipedia
By User:Spaully - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5

Drug resistance molecule can spread though bacterial 'communities'| Research and Innovation | University of Exeter

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) plays an important role in the evolution of microorganisms like bacteria, but a lesser, though not unknown, role in multicellular organism. In bacteria, which freely share small bundles of DNA known as plasmids, even amongst unrelated species, HGT can be the means by which, in the right environment, a beneficial trait such as antibiotic resistance can spread rapidly through an entire microbiome. Plasmids are shed by bacteria into their environment where they can be picked up by other bacteria.

This was demonstrated recently by a study led by the researcher, Arthur Newbury, of the Environment and Sustainability Institute on Exeter University's Penryn Campus in Cornwall, UK. The significance of this finding is that it shows how antibiotic resistance can be spread by plasmids in waste water, for instance.

The Exeter University news release explains:

Malevolent Designer News - What Is Monkeypox?

Monkeypox causes lesions that resemble pus-filled blisters, which eventually scab over.

CDC/Getty Images

What is monkeypox? A microbiologist explains what's known about this smallpox cousin

The third in a series looking at monkeypox and asking whether this is creationism's putative divine malevolence's latest attempt to increase the misery and suffering in the world with another of its nasty little creations.

If not, then creationists need to explain why it either didn't design this virus, or, if it did, why it didn't realise what it would do - and what else it was designed to do. Unlike the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is causing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which is an RNA virus, the virus that causes monkeypox is a more complex, DNA virus that, again unlike the SARS-CoV-2, has the ability to repair mistakes in its DNA when it replicates, so mutations are much rarer.

Monkeypox viruses are from a subset of the Poxviridae family, known as Orthopoxvirus, which includes smallpox and cowpox (but not chickenpox).

An expert in the field explains what the monkeypox virus is, probably why why we are experiencing the current outbreak and what we can learn from the history of the closely-related smallpox virus.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The Conversation is a charity set up to allow experts in the field to give expert insight into items of current public interest and to counter the deluge of lies and disinformation with which politically-motivated extremists are flooding the social media in the Trumpian/Putinesque so-called ‘post truth age’.

What is monkeypox? A microbiologist explains what’s known about this smallpox cousin

Rodney E. Rohde, Texas State University

On May 18, 2022, Massachusetts health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed a single case of monkeypox in a patient who had recently traveled to Canada. Cases have also been reported in the United Kingdom and Europe.

Monkeypox isn’t a new disease. The first confirmed human case was in 1970, when the virus was isolated from a child suspected of having smallpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Monkeypox is unlikely to cause another pandemic, but with COVID-19 top of mind, fear of another major outbreak is understandable. Though rare and usually mild, monkeypox can still potentially cause severe illness. Health officials are concerned that more cases will arise with increased travel.

I’m a researcher who has worked in public health and medical laboratories for over three decades, especially in the realm of diseases with animal origins. What exactly is happening in the current outbreak, and what does history tell us about monkeypox?

A cousin of smallpox

Monkeypox is caused by the monkeypox virus, which belongs to a subset of the Poxviridae family of viruses called Orthopoxvirus. This subset includes the smallpox, vaccinia and cowpox viruses. While an animal reservoir for monkeypox virus is unknown, African rodents are suspected to play a part in transmission. The monkeypox virus has only been isolated twice from an animal in nature. Diagnostic testing for monkeypox is currently only available at Laboratory Response Network labs in the U.S. and globally.

The name “monkeypox” comes from the first documented cases of the illness in animals in 1958, when two outbreaks occurred in monkeys kept for research. However, the virus did not jump from monkeys to humans, nor are monkeys major carriers of the disease.

Monkeypox belongs to the Poxviridae family of viruses, which includes smallpox.

CDC/ Cynthia S. Goldsmith

Epidemiology

Since the first reported human case, monkeypox has been found in several other central and western African countries, with the majority of infections in the DRC. Cases outside of Africa have been linked to international travel or imported animals, including in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The first reported cases of monkeypox in the U.S. was in 2003, from an outbreak in Texas linked to a shipment of animals from Ghana. There were also travel-associated cases in November and July 2021 in Maryland.

Because monkeypox is closely related to smallpox, the smallpox vaccine can provide protection against infection from both viruses. Since smallpox was officially eradicated, however, routine smallpox vaccinations for the U.S. general population were stopped in 1972. Because of this, monkeypox has been appearing increasingly in unvaccinated people.

Indonesia began screening travelers after a monkeypox case was reported in Singapore in May 2019.

Source: Jepayona Delita/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Transmission

The virus can be transmitted through contact with an infected person or animal or contaminated surfaces. Typically, the virus enters the body through broken skin, inhalation or the mucous membranes in the eyes, nose or mouth. Researchers believe that human-to-human transmission is mostly through inhalation of large respiratory droplets rather than direct contact with bodily fluids or indirect contact through clothes. Human-to-human transmission rates for monkeypox have been limited.

Health officials are worried the virus may currently be spreading undetected through community transmission, possibly through a new mechanism or route. Where and how infections are occurring are still under investigation.

Signs and symptoms

After the virus enters the body, it starts to replicate and spread through the body via the bloodstream. Symptoms usually don’t appear until one to two weeks after infection.

Monkeypox produces smallpox-like skin lesions, but symptoms are usually milder than those of smallpox. Flu-like symptoms are common initially, ranging from fever and headache to shortness of breath. One to 10 days later, a rash can appear on the extremities, head or torso that eventually turns into blisters filled with pus. Overall, symptoms usually last for two to four weeks, while skin lesions usually scab over in 14 to 21 days.

While monkeypox is rare and usually non-fatal, one version of the disease kills around 10% of infected people. The form of the virus currently circulating is thought to be milder, with a fatality rate of less than 1%.

Vaccines and treatments

Treatment for monkeypox is primarily focused on relieving symptoms. According to the CDC, no treatments are available to cure monkeypox infection.

Because smallpox is closely related to monkeypox, the smallpox vaccine can protect against both diseases.

Evidence suggests that the smallpox vaccine can help prevent monkeypox infections and decrease the severity of the symptoms. One vaccine known as Imvamune or Imvanex is licensed in the U.S. to prevent monkeypox and smallpox.

Vaccination after exposure to the virus may also help decrease chances of severe illness. The CDC currently recommends smallpox vaccination only in people who have been or are likely to be exposed to monkeypox. Immunocompromised people are at high risk.

Rodney E. Rohde, Regents' Professor of Clinical Laboratory Science, Texas State University

It seems that creationism’s putative designer saw an opportunity created by medical science when smallpox was eradicated altogether, so routine vaccinations against it were stopped as unnecessary, and repurposed a related virus to try to make up for what it had lost in terms of making people suffer with smallpox. At least, that's the conclusion if we assume for one moment that the childish notion of a magic designer of these things. For a creationist, the idea that this could be an evolutionary change which exploits the niche once occupied by a related species of virus with a common ancestry has to be ruled out by dogma. Inexplicably, it is thought more important that people regard their beloved creator god as a pestilential sadist rather than that they accept that evolution works and explains these things without the need for gods and magic.

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Malevolent Designer News - What You Need to Know About Monkeypox

European outbreak of monkeypox: what you need to know

The second in a series looking at the monkeypox outbreak and whether it is creationism's beloved pestilential malevolence's latest attempt to increase the suffering in the world.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Malevolent Designer News - Is Monkeypox the Divine Malevolence's Next Pestilence?

Monkeypox Q&A: how do you catch it and what are the risks? An expert explains | The Conversation

The first in a series on monkeypox, reproduced from The Conversation, an open access online source aimed at providing trustworthy information by experts about subjects in the news.

How thrilled should creationists be that their divine malevolence appears to be having another go at spreading suffering and misery with another of its nasty little viruses?

Tory Corruption News - Sue Gray Report in Full

The full report into partying at 10 Downing Street, under Boris Johnson's leadership, during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, when such gatherings were illegal. Johnson misled parliament when he stated that there were no such parties and that all the rules were followed at all times.

The full Sue Gray Report into illegal partying at 10 Downing Street.

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Covidiot News - Now Even More Reason to Get COVID Vaccines

This study provides more evidence that Covid vaccination is safe for both current and future pregnancies, and shows in a mouse model that immunization during the earliest stages of pregnancy provides antiviral antibodies to the fetus throughout the rest of pregnancy.

Image Credit: Hannah J. Lee (CC-BY 4.0)

Data contradict fears of COVID-19 vaccine effects on pregnancy and fertility.

Two of the bogus antivaxxer claims with which the politically-motivated covidiot antivaxxer movement is trying to scare women into not getting vaccinated against COVID-19 are:

1. The vaccines cause birth defects if given during pregnancy.
2. The vaccines reduce fertility or cause sterility in women by producing antibodies against the protein syncytin-1, which in humans and related primates is involved in attaching the placenta during pregnancy.

Now both of these antivaxxer claims have been exposed as lies by Alice Lu-Culligan and her colleagues of the Yale School of Medicine, in a paper published open access today in PLOS Biology.

The second piece of disinformation was based on the fact that a small part of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that antibodies are produced against by the vaccines has a short sequence of amino acids that is also found in syncytin-1.

This is hardly surprising since syncytin-1 is the remnant of an ancient retrovirus that has been co-opted to aid in the attachment of the placenta in many primates. In fact, it's one of many pieces of evidence of common descent since it is present in all the old-world primates, but not in the new-world primates. The Wikipedia entry for syncytin-1 reads:

Syncytin-1 also known as enverin is a protein found in humans and other primates that is encoded by the ERVW-1 gene (endogenous retrovirus group W envelope member 1). Syncytin-1 is a cell-cell fusion protein whose function is best characterized in placental development.^[3][4] The placenta in turn aids in embryo attachment to the uterus and establishment of a nutrient supply.

The gene encoding this protein is an endogenous retroviral element that is the remnant of an ancient retroviral infection integrated into the primate germ line. In the case of syncytin-1 (which is found in humans, apes, and Old World but not New World monkeys), this integration likely occurred more than 25 million years ago.^[5] Syncytin-1 is one of two known syncytin proteins expressed in catarrhini primates (the other being syncytin-2) and one of many viral genomes incorporated on multiple occasions over evolutionary time in diverse mammalian species.^[6]

ERVW-1 is located within ERVWE1,^[7][8] a full length provirus on chromosome 7 at locus 7q21.2 flanked by long terminal repeats (LTRs) and is preceded by ERVW1 gag (Group AntiGen) and pol (POLymerase) within the provirus, both of which contain nonsense mutations rendering them non-coding.^[9][10] Syncytin-1 is also implicated in a number of neurological pathologies, most notably, multiple sclerosis, as an immunogen.

According to information made available ahead of publication by PLOS, Lu-Culligan and her colleagues:

Malevolent Designer News - Creationism's Beloved Sadist Targets People With Particular Genes

Researchers find genetic factors played a greater role in a person’s overall wellbeing as the pandemic wore on.

Credit: Gary Butterfield, Unsplash (CC0)

Increased genetic contribution to wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic | PLOS Genetics

Creationist mode:

A new study by Lude Franke and colleagues of the University of Groningen, Netherlands has shown that some individuals were more affected than others by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to their genes.

Of course, any omniscient designer of those genes and of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, such as the one intelligent [sic] design creationists believe is the creator of everything, will have been fully aware of that fact when it created the virus, so can't escape the charge of deliberately targeting certain individuals because of their genetics.

The difference is to be found in how well or badly individuals coped not so much with infection by the virus, but with the overall social effect of the pandemic, including the measures to mitigate and control it.

The new study was published a couple of days ago in the open-access journal PLOS Genetics.

According to information made available by PLOS, in advance of publication:

Evolution News - How the Maltese Evolved a Distinct Genome in Isolation

Reconstructed view of the burial caves of the Xagħra Circle
(Libby Mulqueeney after an original by Caroline Malone).

Source: Malone et al.2009. Mortuary Customs in Prehistoric Malta.Cambridge: McDonald, pp 375, 377. Malone, C., Stoddart, S., Trump, D. & Bonanno, A. (eds.). 2009. Mortuary Customs in prehistoric Malta. Excavations at the Brochtorff Circle at Xagħra (1987-1994). Cambridge: McDonald Institute.

How seascapes of the ancient world shaped genetic structure of European populations - Trinity News and Events

A group of researchers from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, and their international colleagues, have shown how relative isolation on the small Mediterranean islands of Malta (and neighbouring Gozo) produced distinct genomes in the population, due to a combination of the 'founder effect' and a small population reduced at time to just a few hundred inbred individuals.

Contrary to current thinking, which sees oceans as highways at the time, allowing migration and mixing more easily than travel overland, this result suggests that over the period in question, the Mediterranean acted as a barrier to isolate the population of Malta, consequently they failed to acquire some of the genetic signatures that mark migration across the rest of Europe at the time.

Analysis of the genome of ancient (4500–5000-year-old) individuals from a cave burial at the Xagħra Circle on Gozo, compared to the genomes of individuals of the same age from burial sites around Europe, show evidence of a small population numbering in the hundreds and of inbreeding, which is to be expected of a small, isolated population. One of the individuals examined turned out to be the offspring of second-degree relatives.

The Trinity College News release explains:

More Bad News for Creationists - Their Putative Designer Designed Death and Suffering, Allegedly.

Buck Scientist Uncovers Clues to Aging in Mitochondria
For the want of a better answer, Bible-literalist creationist will tell you that before Adam and Eve and 'The Fall' there was no death in the world and that death is the result of 'sin', not designed by their god at all, so their god can't be held responsible for all the lethal organisms that cause so much ill health, death and suffering in the world. They never manage to explain where the food Adam and Eve ate was alive during the whole of the eating, digestion and metabolism of it though, or whether their god made an exception in that case and allowed a little bit of death, just not human death.

Now, however, they have some more mental gymnastics to perform with the discovery that it is the mitochondria in all our cells that are responsible for aging - a process that leads ultimately to death unless illness of some sort intervenes. Scientists have known about this for some time, but a team of scientists from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging have worked out how it happens. Mitochondria, the powerhouses inside every eukaryote cell, are believed to be the descendants of a bacteria related to rickettsia which became incorporated with other organelles inside prokaryote cells.

The mitochondria in our cell still have their own DNA and replicate inside our cells, although much of their original genome has been incorporated into the cell nucleus. Because only the head of the sperm penetrates the egg at fertilisation and the head contains no mitochondria, we get all our mitochondria and so all our mitochondrial DNA from our mother and none from our father.

Basically, aging is caused by imperfect mitochondrial replication which is accumulated over the years until the mitochondria start to malfunction. Because they have given up some of the DNA into the cell nucleus, they need to reactivate some of it and import the products of it before they can replicate themselves, and this is where the process begins to go wrong, according to the Buck team.

The Buck News release explains what the team led by Buck Fellow Chuankai (Kai) Zhou, PhD, has discovered:

Evolution News - Tracing Our Cousins the Denisovans

Views of the TNH2-1 specimen.
a. Occlusal, b. inferior, c. mesial, d. distal, e. buccal and f. lingual

Ancient tooth suggests Denisovans ventured far beyond Siberia.

Until recently, the archaic humans, the Denisovans, cousins of the Neanderthals and probably cousins to modern humans, were known only from a few fragments of bone and teeth from a single site - the Denisova Cave in Siberia. One fragment turned out to be from a girl who was the child of a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother, showing that the two species co-existed and interbred, at least in Siberia.

Since then, there has been increasing acceptance that, because up to 5% of the genome of many people from South East Asian and Oceania, including Native Australians and people from Papua-New Guinea, is Denisovan DNA, Denisovans probably occupied South East Asia and interbred with modern Homo sapiens as they migrated to and through it.

There was also the intriguing discovery that the genes that help the inhabitants of the Tibetan Plateau live at high altitude were from Denisovans. The initial assumption was that they must have been acquired from people from lower altitudes because Denisovans would probably not have lived on the Tibetan Plateau. This would have meant that the Denisovans must have evolved these genes for a different purpose, possibly related to prolonged physical exertion, and that modern humans exapted them for high altitude survival.

Malevolent Designer News - Why Creationism's Beloved Malevolence Has Its Work Cut Out

Even as the structure of SARS-CoV-2 changes with different variants of the virus (gray), the J08 antibody (blue) can still bind it, Scripps researchers showed.

Credit: Scripps Research

Scripps Research scientists explain what makes COVID-19 antibody “J08” so potent | Scripps Research

Creationist mode:

Creationism’s beloved malevolence is going to have its work cut out it it is to outdo bio-medical science in their search for a definitive cure for the COVID-19 virus it created to cause the current COVID-19 Pandemic. So far, it has come up with several variants, the latest being the Omicron variant that is much more contagious than earlier variants, but, at least in a population where a large proportion of the people have been vaccinated, is mostly, though not always, a relatively mild infection.

Nevertheless, it has managed to achieve nearly 6.3 million deaths worldwide, 1 million of them in the USA where, due to the incompetence and narcissistic Dunning-Kruger stupidity of the president when the pandemic started and was most dangerous in 2020, and because of the opposition to measures to control it by fundamentalist Christians and the super spreader events they insisted on holding in their churches, deaths were far in excess of anything seen in most other advanced economies.

But now, a collaborative effort between scientists at the Scripps Institute and scientists in Italy and France may have found an antibody to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that not only treats and prevents known variants of COVID-19 but will probably be effective against future variants. The antibody is currently undergoing stage II/III clinical trials in Italy. The antibody, known as J08 was isolated from the blood of people who had recovered from COVID19 by scientists at the Scripps Institute and Toscana Life Sciences.

The question creationist devotees of the magic, pestilential sky man whom they believe designs these things, is just how is it going to find a way round this new prevention/treatment so it can continue the chaos and suffering it created? Only time will tell.

Evolution News - Ecology Before the 'Cambrian Explosion'

A group of Ediacaran specimens of Fractofusus and Plumeropriscum from the “E” surface, Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, Newfoundland, Canada.

Credit: Charlotte G. Kenchington (CC BY 4.0)

Creationists are fascinated by the so-called Cambrian Explosion, believing it to have happened over a very short time span and claiming it to be evidence of spontaneous creation of a wide variety of body plans. Of course, it took place over tens of millions of years and was preceded by the Ediacaran biota in which a number of novel body plans evolved in the second major wave of multicellular evolution.

Now, According to a study by Rebecca Eden, Andrea Manica1 and Emily G Mitchell of the Zoology Department, Cambridge University, UK, published today in the open access online journal, PLOS Biology, these early animals formed complex ecological communities more than 550 million years ago, setting the evolutionary stage for the Cambrian explosion.

The Ediacaran period is itself divided into three periods of evolutionary radiation, named after the locations where representative fossils have been found: the Avalon, White Sea and Nama radiation. The Avalon (575-565 million years ago), shows relatively limited ecological and morphological diversity, unlike the White Sea radiation which shows a large increase in morphological diversity, including probable bilateralism and with it an increase in ecological diversity and environmental influence. Some this was followed by a mass extinction leading to a loss of taxonomic diversity but the evolution of biomineralization, such as shells, in the third, Nama, radiation.

Biomineralization implies the need for protection and that implies the prior evolution of motility and predation and the beginnings of evolutionary arms races between predator and prey, and with that would have come environmental pressure to evolve sensory organs such as eyes. Predation also requires digestive and excretory systems.

According to information supplied by PLOS ahead of publication:

Evolution News - How the Environment Made a Difference with Penduline Tits

Eurasian penduline tit, Remiz pendulinus

Chinese penduline tit buries eggs to prevent them from blowin’ in the wind | Science Linx News | Science LinX | University of Groningen

First off, if you came here attracted by the title, hoping to see something about large busty substances, you're in the wrong place. This is about a couple of closely related birds known as the Eurasian and Chinese penduline tits and about how subtle differences in their environments can cause differences in behaviour that act as barriers to hybridisation and so reinforce the evolving divergence into different species. If you're so shallow as to be looking for the former on line, you're probably too shallow to be interested in the latter.

The Eurasian penduline tit, Remiz pendulinus, is so called because males build a relatively large, dangling (penduline) nest on the end of thin willow branches or reeds, often over water. He then tries to attract a female to use the nest and, if she approves, he mates with her, and she begins to lay a batch of eggs over the next 14 days but won't permit the male to enter the nest. This choice of location is probably to make it difficult for predators to reach the nest.

The strange thing is each day she covers the eggs in the bottom of the nest before going off to feed herself. This is thought to be due to inter-sex rivalry because either one or the other parent is going to take responsibility for the incubation of the eggs and rearing the chicks and the female needs the male to hang around to mate with her and the male needs her to stay and use his nest so his offspring are in the eggs she lays.

When the batch of eggs is complete, the female, more often than not, incubates them and the male leaves to find another mate, but frequently, it's the female who leaves the male to do the incubation and rearing. Very occasionally, neither parent takes responsibility, and the nest and eggs are abandoned. But the male won't start to incubate the eggs until the batch is complete. Burying the eggs is thought to be an evolved strategy for keeping the male interested until the batch is complete.

Chinese penduline tit, Remiz consobrinus

However, a closely related species, the Chinese penduline tit, Remiz consobrinus, has a different pattern of behaviour. The make builds the next in the same way and in a similar position to his Eurasian cousin, and attracts a female to use it. However, she doesn't exclude him from the nest but they both roost in it together at night, and both sexes share responsibility for incubation and rearing the chicks. But, like her Eurasian cousin, the female Chinese penduline tit still assiduously buries her eggs every day. The question is, if this isn't due to inter-sex rivalry as with the Eurasian species, what is it due to? The answer has turned out to be due to subtle environmental differences.

To investigate this difference and the lack of aggression between the sexes by which the Eurasian female keeps the male from entering the nest while she is laying her batch of eggs, Jia Zheng, who had completed her master’s degree under Professor Zhengwang Zhang, from Beijing Normal University, and was now completing her PhD at the University of Groningen, conducted a number of experiment to test out various hypotheses.

The Groningen University News release explains how she went about it:

Malevolent Designer News - Creationism's Favourite Malevolence Suffers Another Blow From Science

Congenital melanocytic nevus.
These can be very large and often involve the head, face or genitalia.

Skin drug treatments may regress dangerous birthmarks and prevent melanoma

Creationist mode:

The malevolent designer that creationists worship must be getting really pissed off with modern bio-medical scientist, the way they keep finding ways to combat the nasty things it designs to increase the suffering in the world, and all because someone scrumped one of its apples, allegedly.

Fresh from science's partial victory over the SARS-CoV-2 virus with which the divine malevolence caused a major pandemic, killing millions, ruining economies and businesses and making even the survivors suffer long-term complications, we have news that scientists led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), MA, USA may have come up with a treatment for a rare form of melanoma that about 20,000 babies a year are born with.

The congenital melanoma is usually in the form of a large mole or 'giant nevus' that covers part of the face, head or other parts of the body and carries a very high risk of becoming malignant. Because of the high risk of malignancy, the treatment up to now had been surgical removal, which was not always successful in that the melanoma could recur, and which often left a large, permanent scar. Congenital giant nevi are normally caused by a mutation in the gene NRAS, which, as any intelligent [sic] design creationist will tell you, only happens by design.

QAnon/COVID Conspiracy News - The Flights of Fancy Go Stratospheric

Dr Bryan Ardis, Chiropractor and acupuncturist.
"Covid-19 is not a virus, it's snake venom" [sic]

The King Cobra Venom Pandemic: Stew Peters Unveils a New COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory | Right Wing Watch

It's amazing how, the more QAnon's ludicrous conspiracy theories are debunked, the more risible they became in trying to justify them, like toddlers caught with their hands in the cookie jar, rather than admit the game's up and they've been rumbled.

The even more amazing thing is that adults, even adults holding responsible positions, like Representative Marjorie Taylor-Green (R-GA 13) and Senator Doug Mastriano (R-PA 33) continue to fall for these tactics.

One example of how far into the stratosphere QAnon conspiracists have gone in the justification for opposing measures to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, which is about to achieved its millionth American death, on the grounds that it's all a plot, somehow linked to a Satanic, cannibalistic paedophile, deep state conspiracy run by Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama and the Pope, and including Bill Gates, Andrew Faucci and others, is the so-called 'explosive report' by medical quackticioner, Dr. Bryan Ardis.

His 'explosive' report which he revealed on the far right Stew Peters Show, is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 is not a virus at all but a modified snake venom which is passed on deliberately in drinking water. Seriously!

Here is how he arrived at that conclusion, not by analysis of drinking water, or by subjecting samples of the virus to biochemical analysis, but by a form of logic of which any self-respecting toddler might be proud, until they grew up enough to cringe in embarrassment at their childish thinking.

Here is his 'reasoning':

SCOTUS Now Represents Only a Small Minority of American Religious Extremists.

Attitude towards abortion by religiosity and political leanings. States set to make abortion illegal in all circumstances will be complying with the opinion of Americans who attend church every week, especially Republicans.

Source

Personal Religiosity and Attitudes Toward Abortion

The evidence from Gallop is that, if SCOTUS as expected overturns the 1973 ruling in Roe v Wade and allows the criminalisation of abortions in all or most cases, they will be empowering states to impose the views of a small minority of religious extremists on the rest of America, as the following charts show.

SCOTUS, whose prime purpose is to uphold the Constitutional constraints on government action, will be explicitly endorsing a flagrant imposition of Conservative Christian dogma by incorporating it into state laws.

On every measure, the opinion that abortions should be illegal in all circumstances - including where pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or the woman is very young, and even when there is severe foetal abnormality such that independent life will be impossible or there is a serious risk to the woman's life - is an opinion not shared by most Americans. It's not even the majority opinion of those Americans who go to church every week.