Science

huge-telehealth-fraud-indictment-may-wreak-havoc-for-adderall-users,-cdc-warns

Huge telehealth fraud indictment may wreak havoc for Adderall users, CDC warns

adderall, ADHD, CDC, department of justice, Done Global, fentanyl, fraud, health, illicit drugs, overdose, prescription drug, Science, stimulants, telehealth / /

Tragic —

The consequences are dangerous, possibly even deadly, for patients across the US.

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Ten milligram tablets of the hyperactivity drug, Adderall, made by Shire Plc, is shown in a Cambridge, Massachusetts pharmacy Thursday, January 19, 2006.

Enlarge / Ten milligram tablets of the hyperactivity drug, Adderall, made by Shire Plc, is shown in a Cambridge, Massachusetts pharmacy Thursday, January 19, 2006.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday warned that a federal indictment of an allegedly fraudulent telehealth company may lead to a massive, nationwide disruption in access to ADHD medications—namely Adderall, but also other stimulants—and could possibly increase the risk of injuries and overdoses.

“A disruption involving this large telehealth company could impact as many as 30,000 to 50,000 patients ages 18 years and older across all 50 US states,” the CDC wrote in its health alert.

The CDC warning came on the heels of an announcement from the Justice Department Thursday that federal agents had arrested two people in connection with an alleged scheme to illegally distribute Adderall and other stimulants through a subscription-based online telehealth company called Done Global.  The company’s CEO and founder, Ruthia He, was arrested in Los Angeles, and its clinical president, David Brody, was arrested in San Rafael, California.

“As alleged, these defendants exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to develop and carry out a $100 million scheme to defraud taxpayers and provide easy access to Adderall and other stimulants for no legitimate medical purpose,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “Those seeking to profit from addiction by illegally distributing controlled substances over the Internet should know that they cannot hide their crimes and that the Justice Department will hold them accountable.”

Deadly consequences

According to the Justice Department, Done Global generated $100 million in revenue by arranging for the prescription of over 40 million pills of Adderall and other stimulants, which are addictive medications used to treat ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). Done Global allegedly eased access to the drugs by limiting the information available to prescribers, instructing prescribers to prescribe Adderall and other stimulants even if the patient didn’t qualify, and mandating that the prescribing appointments last no longer than 30 minutes. The company also discouraged prescriber follow-up appointments and added an “auto-refill” feature.

Prosecutors further allege that He and Brody continued with their scheme after becoming aware that patients had overdosed and died.

The CDC cautioned that the disruption from lost access to Done Global prescriptions comes amid a long-standing, nationwide shortage of Adderall and other stimulant medications. For patients with ADHD, the disruption could be harmful. “Untreated ADHD is associated with adverse outcomes, including social and emotional impairment, increased risk of drug or alcohol use disorder, unintentional injuries, such as motor vehicle crashes, and suicide,” the CDC warns. Further, a loss of access could drive some to seek illicit sources of the drugs, which could turn deadly.

“Patients whose care or access to prescription stimulant medications is disrupted, and who seek medication outside of the regulated healthcare system, might significantly increase their risk of overdose due to the prevalence of counterfeit pills in the illegal drug market that could contain unexpected substances, including fentanyl,” the CDC said. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.

The Drug Enforcement Administration recently reported that seven out of every 10 pills seized from the illegal drug market contain a potentially lethal dose of illegally made fentanyl, the CDC noted.

This post was updated to clarify that the DEA’s data indicated that 70 percent of illicit pills seized contained “potentially” lethal doses, which was not included in the CDC’s warning.

Huge telehealth fraud indictment may wreak havoc for Adderall users, CDC warns Read More »

to-kill-the-competition,-bacteria-throw-pieces-of-dead-viruses-at-them

To kill the competition, bacteria throw pieces of dead viruses at them

bacteria, Biology, evolution, phages, Science / /

Murderous —

A network of mutual murder ensures that diverse populations of bacteria survive.

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A green, lawn like background with an orange item consisting of legs, a narrow shaft, and a polygonal head.

Enlarge / This is an intact phage. A tailocin looks like one of these with its head cut off.

Long before humans became interested in killing bacteria, viruses were on the job. Viruses that attack bacteria, termed “phages” (short for bacteriophage), were first identified by their ability to create bare patches on the surface of culture plates that were otherwise covered by a lawn of bacteria. After playing critical roles in the early development of molecular biology, a number of phages have been developed as potential therapies to be used when antibiotic resistance limits the effectiveness of traditional medicines.

But we’re relative latecomers in terms of turning phages into tools. Researchers have described a number of cases where bacteria have maintained pieces of disabled viruses in their genomes and converted them into weapons that can be used to kill other bacteria that might otherwise compete for resources. I only just became aware of that weaponization, thanks to a new study showing that this process has helped maintain diverse bacterial populations for centuries.

Evolving a killer

The new work started when researchers were studying the population of bacteria associated with a plant growing wild in Germany. The population included diverse members of the genus Pseudomonas, which can include plant pathogens. Normally, when bacteria infect a new victim, a single strain expands dramatically as it successfully exploits its host. In this case, though, the Pseudomonas population contained a variety of different strains that appeared to maintain a stable competition.

To learn more, the researchers obtained over 1,500 individual genomes from the bacterial population. Over 99 percent of those genomes contained pieces of virus, with the average bacterial strain having two separate chunks of virus lurking in their genomes. All of these had missing parts compared to a functional virus, suggesting they were the product of a virus that had inserted in the past but had since picked up damage that disabled them.

On its own, that’s not shocking. Lots of genomes (including our own) have plenty of disabled viruses in them. But bacteria tend to eliminate extraneous DNA from their genomes fairly quickly. In this case, one particular viral sequence appeared to date back to the common ancestor of many of the strains since all of them had the virus inserted at the same location of the genome, and all instances of this particular virus had been disabled by losing the same set of genes. The researchers termed this sequence VC2.

Many phages have a stereotypical structure: a large “head” that contains their genetic material, perched on top of a stalk that ends in a set of “legs” that help latch on to their bacterial victims. Once the legs make contact, a stalk contracts, an action that helps transfer the virus’ genome into the bacterial cell. In VC2’s case, all copies of it lacked the genes for producing the head section, as well as all the genes needed for processing its genome during infection.

This made the researchers suspect VC2 was something called a “tailocin.” These are former phages that have been domesticated by bacteria so they can be used to harm the bacteria’s potential competition. Bacteria with a tailocin can produce partial phages that consist only of the legs and stalk. These tailocins can still find and latch on to other bacteria, but when the stalk contracts, there’s no genome to inject. Instead, this just opens a hole in the membrane of their victim, partially eliminating the boundary of the cell and allowing some of its contents to leak out, leading to its death.

An evolutionary free-for-all

To confirm that the VC2 sequence encodes a tailocin, the researchers grew some bacteria that contained the sequence, purified proteins from it, and used electron microscopy to confirm that they contained headless phages. Exposing other bacteria to the tailocin, they found that while the strain that produced it was immune, many other strains growing in the same environment were killed by it. When the team deleted the genes that encode key parts of the tailocin, the killing went away.

The researchers hypothesize that the system is used to kill off potential competition but that many strains have evolved resistance to the tailocin.

When the researchers did a genetic screen to identify resistant mutants, they found that resistance was provided by mutations that interfered with the production of complex sugar molecules that are found on proteins that end up on the exterior of cells. At the same time, most of the genetic differences among the VC2 genes occur in the proteins that encode the legs, which latch on to these sugars.

So it appears that every bacterial strain is both an aggressor and a victim, and there’s an evolutionary arms race that leads to a complex collection of pairwise interactions among the strains—think of a rock/paper/scissors game with dozens of options. And the arms race has a history. Using old samples, the researchers show that many of the variations in these genes have been around for at least 200 years.

Evolutionary competitions are often viewed as a simple one-against-one fight, probably because it’s an easy way to think about them. But the reality is that most are more akin to a chaotic bar room brawl—one where it’s rare for any faction to obtain a permanent advantage.

Science, 2024. DOI: 10.1126/science.ado0713  (About DOIs).

To kill the competition, bacteria throw pieces of dead viruses at them Read More »

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How the “Nutbush” became Australia’s unofficial national dance

cultural studies, dance, fads, human culture, line dancing, Nutbush, Science, Tina Turner / /

“A church house, gin house” —

Most Australians learned the “daggy” line dance in primary school starting in the mid-1970s

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Embassy employees, men and women, in a bee-shaped line formation doing the Nutbush

Enlarge / US Embassy Australia employees learning to do the Nutbush to honor the late Tina Turner in 2023.

The whole world mourned the passing of music legend Tina Turner last year, perhaps none more so than Australians, who have always had a special fondness for her. That’s not just because of her star turn as Aunty Entity in 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome or her stint as the face of Australia’s rugby league.

Australians of all ages have also been performing a line dance called the “Nutbush” at weddings and social events to Turner’s hit single (with then-husband Ike Turner) “Nutbush City Limits.” Turner herself never performed the dance, but when she died, there was a flood of viral TikTok videos of people performing the Nutbush in her honor—including members of the US Embassy in Canberra, who had clearly just learned it for the occasion. Dancers at the 2023 Mundi Mundi Bash in a remote corner of New South Wales set a world record with 6,594 dancers performing the Nutbush at the same time.

The exact origin of the dance remains unknown, but researchers at the University of South Australia think they understand how the Nutbush became so ubiquitous in Australia, according to a paper published in the journal Continuum. “What we seem to know is that there was a committee in the New South Wales education department that devised the idea of the Nutbush,” co-author Jon Stratton told the Guardian. “Whether they devised the dance itself, we don’t really know. But what’s interesting is that nobody has come forward.”

“Nutbush City Limits” was released in 1973. However, the authors note that the song peaked at 87 on the Australian charts and didn’t appear at all throughout 1974—only to start charting again from March to May 1975 and again from June–October 1976, peaking at No. 14. (It charted once again last year when Turner died.) They suggest that “Nutbush City Limits” was a great “dance floor filler,” especially in the 1970s disco era, so people were purchasing the single over a longer period of time.

But another likely explanation was the spread and development of the dance now known as the Nutbush during this same time period, initially as an educational activity in Australian primary schools. An homage of sorts to Turner’s hometown (Nutbush, Tennessee), the song features a hard 4/4 stomp beat laid over a funk rhythm, making it ideal for a line dance. There are anecdotal reports of people doing the Nutbush to different tunes, like Starship’s “We Built This City” (1985), which also features a 4/4 beat.

Knee, knee, kick, kick

Dancing has been incorporated into education since the 1920s. “Line dances work very well in classrooms because the teacher can stand at the front and give instructions to the lines,” said Stratton. “The idea must have been to provide students with an enjoyable way of exercising and learning coordination. Whoever designed the Nutbush succeeded beyond any success they could have hoped for. What makes it special is that it’s moved out of schools to become the dance of choice at many Australian social events.”

It’s unique to Australia, but the Nutbush shares some similarities with the Madison—minus the calls—another popular line dance that emerged in the 1950s thanks to teen dance shows like American Bandstand and The Buddy Deane Show. (The latter inspired the 1988 John Waters film Hairspray.) In fact, in a 2016 Reddit thread, P.J. Fletcher suggested in 2016 that the Nutbush was actually a bastardized version of the Madison with misremembered steps and drew a faulty diagram of those steps. Fletcher traced its origin to 1978 when the New South Wales Department of Education launched primary school teacher retraining initiatives, initially for a Sydney school district and spreading to other regions from there.

Let’s do the Nutbush again.

Stratton and his co-author, Panizza Allmark, dismiss this theory. For one thing, they discovered that the Nutbush was already being taught at a technical school in Victoria in 1978, so the dance was already well-established by then, at least in Victoria. They suggest the dance originated in 1975 in New South Wales and spread from there. Also, the Madison is difficult to perform to 4/4 songs like “Nutbush City Limits” since it is based on a six-beat pattern. Thus, “One possibility is that somebody in the school system in Sydney developed the Nutbush because they found that school students had too much difficulty learning the Madison to make it either enjoyable or worthwhile,” the authors wrote.

“Unlike formal dancing where you needed a partner, the Nutbush didn’t involve holding hands or touching anyone of the opposite sex,” said Allmark, who danced the Nutbush herself as a primary school student in Perth in the early 1980s. “In primary school, when learning folk dancing, there was great awkwardness in having to dance with a partner of the opposite sex but with the Nutbush, you didn’t need ‘to take a partner by the hand.’ You could enjoy the dance moves and be part of a communal experience without all the sweaty handholding.”

Regardless of how the fad took hold, hearing the song’s opening bars and the lines “A church house, gin house” will likely keep bringing Aussies enthusiastically to the dance floor for years to come.

Continuum, 2024. DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2024.2331796  (About DOIs).

Ike and Tina Turner perform “Nutbush City Limits” in 1973.

How the “Nutbush” became Australia’s unofficial national dance Read More »

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SCOTUS rejects challenge to abortion pill for lack of standing

Abortion, mifepristone, miscarriage, reproductive health, Science, SCOTUS, Supreme Court / /

“Near miss” —

The anti-abortion defendants are not injured by the FDA’s actions on mifepristone.

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Mifepristone (Mifeprex) and misoprostol, the two drugs used in a medication abortion, are seen at the Women's Reproductive Clinic, which provides legal medication abortion services, in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, on June 17, 2022.

Enlarge / Mifepristone (Mifeprex) and misoprostol, the two drugs used in a medication abortion, are seen at the Women’s Reproductive Clinic, which provides legal medication abortion services, in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, on June 17, 2022.

The US Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a case that threatened to remove or at least restrict access to mifepristone, a pill approved by the Food and Drug Administration for medication abortions and used in miscarriage care. The drug has been used for decades, racking up a remarkably good safety record in that time. It is currently used in the majority of abortions in the US.

The high court found that the anti-abortion medical groups that legally challenged the FDA’s decision to approve the drug in 2000 and then ease usage restrictions in 2016 and 2021 simply lacked standing to challenge any of those decisions. That is, the groups failed to demonstrate that they were harmed by the FDA’s decision and therefore had no grounds to legally challenge the government agency’s actions. The ruling tracks closely with comments and questions the justices raised during oral arguments in March.

“Plaintiffs are pro-life, oppose elective abortion, and have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to mifepristone being prescribed and used by others,” the Supreme Court noted in its opinion, which included the emphasis on “by others.” The court summarized that the groups offered “complicated causation theories to connect FDA’s actions to the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries in fact,” and the court found that “none of these theories suffices” to prove harm.

Weak arguments

The anti-abortion medical groups, led by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, argued that the FDA’s relaxation of mifepristone regulations could cause “downstream conscience injuries” to doctors who are forced to treat patients who may suffer (rare) complications from the drug. But the court noted that there are already strong federal conscience laws in place that protect doctors who refuse to participate in abortion care. Further, the doctors failed to provide any examples of being forced to provide care against their conscience.

The plaintiffs further claimed “downstream economic injuries” by way of having to divert resources from other patients and services. But the court flatly knocked down this argument, too, noting that the argument is “too speculative, lacks support in the record, and is otherwise too attenuated to establish standing.” Further, the organizations claimed that the FDA’s actions “caused” them to conduct studies and “forced” them to engage in advocacy and outreach efforts. “But an organization that has not suffered a concrete injury caused by a defendant’s action cannot spend its way into standing simply by expending money to gather information and advocate against the defendant’s action,” the Supreme Court ruled.

In a response to the ruling, reproductive health rights group National Institute for Reproductive Health blasted the lower courts’ actions that brought the case to the Supreme Court and described it as a warning. “This case should never have made it to the Supreme Court in the first place,” Haydee Morales, interim president of NIRH, said in a statement. “Anti-abortion operatives brought this case with one goal in mind—to ban medication abortion and they failed. This case was a near miss for the science and medicine community and it won’t be the last attack.”

SCOTUS rejects challenge to abortion pill for lack of standing Read More »

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May contain nuts: Precautionary allergen labels lead to consumer confusion

Features, food allergies, Science, undark / /

can i eat this or not? —

Some labels suggest allergen cross-contamination that might not exist.

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May contain nuts: Precautionary allergen labels lead to consumer confusion

TopMicrobialStock, Getty Images

When Ina Chung, a Colorado mother, first fed packaged foods to her infant, she was careful to read the labels. Her daughter was allergic to peanuts, dairy, and eggs, so products containing those ingredients were out. So were foods with labels that said they may contain the allergens.

Chung felt like this last category suggested a clear risk that wasn’t worth taking. “I had heard that the ingredient labels were regulated. And so I thought that that included those statements,” said Chung. “Which was not true.”

Precautionary allergen labels like those that say “processed in a facility that uses milk” or “may contain fish” are meant to address the potential for cross-contact. For instance, a granola bar that doesn’t list peanuts as an ingredient could still say they may be included. And in the United States, these warnings are not regulated; companies can use whatever precautionary phrasing they choose on any product. Some don’t bother with any labels, even in facilities where unintended allergens slip in; others list allergens that may pose little risk. Robert Earl, vice president of regulatory affairs at Food Allergy Research & Education, or FARE, a nonprofit advocacy, research, and education group, has even seen such labels that include all nine common food allergens. “I would bet my bottom dollar not all of those allergens are even in the facility,” he said.

So what are the roughly 20 million people with food allergies in the US supposed to do with these warnings? Should they eat the granola bar or not?

Recognizing this uncertainty, food safety experts, allergy advocates, policymakers, and food producers are discussing how to demystify precautionary allergen labels. One widely considered solution is to restrict warnings to cases where visual or analytical tests demonstrate that there is enough allergen to actually trigger a reaction. Experts say the costs to the food industry are minimal, and some food producers across the globe, including in Canada, Australia, Thailand, and the United States, already voluntarily take this approach. But in the US, where there are no clear guidelines to follow, consumers are still left wondering what each individual precautionary allergen label even means.

Pull a packaged food off an American store shelf and the ingredients label should say if the product intentionally contains one of nine recognized allergens. That’s because in 2004, Congress granted the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate labeling of eight major food allergens—eggs, fish, milk, crustaceans, peanuts, tree nuts, soybeans, and wheat. In 2021, sesame was added to the list.

But the language often gets murkier further down the label, where companies may include precautionary allergen labels, also called advisory statements, to address the fact that allergens can unintentionally wind up in foods at many stages of production. Perhaps wheat grows near a field of rye destined for bread, for instance, or peanuts get lodged in processing equipment that later pumps out chocolate chip cookies. Candy manufacturers, in particular, struggle to keep milk out of dark chocolate.

The FDA offers no labeling guidance beyond declaring that “advisory statements should not be used as a substitute for adhering to current good manufacturing practices and must be truthful and not misleading.”

Companies can choose when to use these warnings, which vary widely. For example, a 2017 survey conducted by the FDA and the Illinois Institute of Technology of 78 dark chocolate products found that almost two-thirds contained an advisory statement for peanuts; of those, only about four actually contained the allergen. Meanwhile, of 18 bars that carried no advisory statement for peanuts specifically, three contained the allergen. (One product that was positive for peanuts did warn more generally of nuts, but the researchers noted that this term is ambiguous.) Another product that tested positive included a nut warning on one lot but not on another. Individual companies also select their own precautionary label phrasing.

For consumers, the inconsistency can be confusing, said Ruchi Gupta, a pediatrician and director of the Center for Food Allergy & Asthma Research at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. In 2019, Gupta and colleagues asked around 3,000 US adults who have allergies or care for someone who does about how different precautionary allergen label phrases make a difference when they are considering whether to buy a particular food. About 80 percent never purchase products with a may contain warning. Less than half avoid products with labels suggesting that it was manufactured in a facility that also processes an allergen, even though numerous studies show that the wording of a precautionary allergen label has no bearing on risk level. “People are making their own decisions on what sounds safe,” said Gupta.

When Chung learned that advisory labels were unregulated, she experimented with ignoring them when her then-toddler really wanted a particular food. When her daughter developed a couple of hives after eating a cereal labeled may contain peanuts, Chung went back to heeding warnings of peanut cross-contact but continued ignoring the rest.

“A lot of families just make up their own rules,” she said. “There’s no way to really know exactly what you’re getting.”

May contain nuts: Precautionary allergen labels lead to consumer confusion Read More »

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Ancient Maya DNA shows male kids were sacrificed in pairs at Chichén Itzá

Science / /

Tossed into the sacred sinkhole —

Twins play an auspicious role in Maya mythology, most notably in the Popol Vuh.

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Detail from the reconstructed stone tzompantli, or skull rack, at Chichén Itzá.

Enlarge / Detail from the reconstructed stone tzompantli, or skull rack, at Chichén Itzá, evidence of ritual human sacrifice.

Christina Warinner

Inhabitants of the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá are well-known for their practice of ritual human sacrifice. The most prevalent notion in the popular imagination is that of young Maya women being flung alive into sink holes as offerings to the gods. Details about the cultural context for these sacrifices remain fuzzy, so scientists conduced genetic analysis on ancient remains of some of the sacrificial victims to learn more. That analysis confirmed the prevalence of male sacrifices, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature, often of related children (ages 6 to 12) from the same household—including two pairs of identical twins.

Chichén Itzá (“at the mouth of the well of the Itzá”) is located in Mexico’s eastern Yucatán. It was one of the largest of the Maya cities, quite possibly one of the mythical capital cities (Tollans) that are frequently mentioned in Mesoamerican literature. It’s known for its incredible monumental architecture, such as the Temple of Kukulcán (“El Castillo”), a step pyramid honoring a feathered serpent deity. Around the spring and fall equinoxes, there is a distinctive light-and-shadow effect that creates the illusion of a serpent slithering down the staircase. There is also a well-known acoustical effect: clap your hands at the base of the staircases and you’ll get an echo that sounds eerily like a bird’s chirp—perhaps mimicking the quetzal, a brightly colored exotic bird native to the region and prized for its long, resplendent tail feathers.

The Great Ball Court (one of 13 at the site) is essentially a whispering gallery: even though it is 545 feet long and 225 feet wide, a whisper at one end can be heard clearly at the other. The court features slanted benches with sculpted panels depicting aspects of Maya ball games—which were not just athletic events but also religious ones that often involved ritual sacrifices of players by decapitation.

“Evidence of ritual killing is extensive throughout the site of Chichén Itzá and includes both the physical remains of sacrificed individuals as well as representations in monumental art,” the authors of the new Nature paper wrote. Decapitation was just one method of sacrifice favored by the Maya over various historical periods. The Maya were equally fond of cutting out the still-beating hearts of victims, accessing the organ either from below the diaphragm or through the sternum. There were also rituals that involved binding victims to a stake and shooting arrows at a white target painted on the heart.

The site features underground rivers with natural sinkholes, called cenotes, providing water to the local inhabitants. One of those is known as the Cenote Sagrado (“Sacred Cenote”), or the Well of Sacrifice, some 200 feet (60 meters) wide and surrounded by sheer cliffs. As its name implies, the Maya would regularly sacrifice valuable objects and the occasional human by tossing them into the sinkhole to appease the Maya rain god, Chaac. (If the 89-foot (27-meter) fall didn’t kill them, drowning would.)

We know this from the writings of Friar Diego de Landa, among others, who wrote in 1566 of the Maya custom of throwing men alive into the sinkhole during droughts, as well as other prized objects. Dredging the Sacred Cenote with a bucket-and-pulley system in the early 1900s yielded artifacts made of gold and jade, as well as pottery, incense, and human remains. There were also archaeological excavations in the 1960s that yielded even more such objects, including flint, shell, rubber, cloth, and wood preserved in the water.

El Castillo, also known as the Temple of Kukulcan, is among the largest structures at Chichén Itzá, and its architecture reflects its far-flung political connections.

Enlarge / El Castillo, also known as the Temple of Kukulcan, is among the largest structures at Chichén Itzá, and its architecture reflects its far-flung political connections.

Johannes Krause

Archaeologists also uncovered a full-scale stone representation of a massive tzompantli (skull rack) and a subterranean chamber near the Sacred Cenote, likely a repurposed water cistern (chultún) that had been enlarged to connect to a small cave. The Maya viewed both cenotes and chultúns as connections to the underworld, and this particular chultún housed the remains of over 100 children.

Rodrigo Barquera, an immunogeneticist and postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and his fellow Nature co-authors conducted their in-depth genetic analysis on 64 child remains recovered from the chultún, along with stable isotope analysis of bone collagen and nitrogen and radiocarbon dating. They compared the genetic data to the genomes from blood samples taken from 68 present-day Maya residents of a nearby town (Tixcacaltuyub).

Most of the children had been sacrificed between 800 to 1000 CE, per the radiocarbon and nitrogen dating. Barquera et al. were surprised to find that all of the remains sampled were male and from the local Maya populations. Nearly one-quarter of those were closely related to at least one other child interred in the chultún, and the related children had similar diets, so were likely raised in the same household. The most surprising discovery: two sets of identical male twins. All this suggests that the Maya selected pairs of male children for sacrificial rituals associated with the chultún.

Ancient Maya DNA shows male kids were sacrificed in pairs at Chichén Itzá Read More »

more-seizures,-intubation-from-microdose-candies:-12-sickened,-10-hospitalized

More seizures, intubation from microdose candies: 12 sickened, 10 hospitalized

CDC, chocolates, diamond shruumz, fda, health, microdose, mushrooms, outbreak, poison, psychelics, Science / /

Potent microdoses —

FDA updates alert after the latest case fell ill on June 9.

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Diamond Shruumz's

Enlarge / Diamond Shruumz’s “extremely potent” infused cones in “sprinkles” flavor.

More people have reported severe poisonings in an ongoing outbreak marked by people seizing and needing to be intubated after consuming microdose candies made by Diamond Shruumz, the Food and Drug Administration reported Tuesday.

There are now at least 12 reported cases across eight states. All 12 people were ill enough to seek medical care, and 10 needed to be hospitalized. The symptoms reported so far include seizures, central nervous system depression (loss of consciousness, confusion, sleepiness), agitation, abnormal heart rates, hyper/hypotension, nausea, and vomiting, the FDA reported.

In Tuesday’s update, the FDA also expanded the products linked to the illnesses. In addition to all flavors of Diamond Shruumz’s Microdosing Chocolate Bars, the agency’s warning now covers all flavors of the brand’s Infused Cones and Micro Dose and Macro Dose Gummies.

According to the FDA, the most recent case fell ill on June 9. On June 7, the FDA issued its initial warning on Diamond Shruumz’s chocolates, reporting that eight people had been sickened in four states, with six people hospitalized. The agency advised the public not to sell, serve, buy, or consume the chocolates and instead discard them.

The candies are available nationwide. They are sold online—where they remain available for purchase as of Tuesday evening—and can also be found in various retail locations throughout the US, including smoke/vape shops and retailers that sell hemp-derived products.

The current tally of cases includes one from Alabama, four from Arizona, two from Indiana, one from Kentucky, one from Missouri, one from Nevada, one from Pennsylvania, and one from South Carolina.

Diamond Schruumz has not responded to multiple requests for comment from Ars. The New York Times also reported that the company was unresponsive.

It remains unclear what exactly is in the candies and what could cause such severe toxicity. The company does not provide ingredient lists for its products on its website. The term “microdosing” typically suggests a small amount of psychedelic compound is present, and Diamond Shruumz markets its products as “trippy,” “psychedelic,” and “hallucinogenic.” But lab reports posted on Diamond Shruumz’s website indicate that its candies do not contain the notable mushroom-derived psychedelic compound, psilocybin.

The company only says that its candies contain a “primo proprietary blend of nootropic and functional mushrooms.” Nootropics are compounds said to affect cognition, though supplement makers have used the term dubiously in marketing.

In an April 2023 blog, Diamond Shruumz said its chocolate bars contain a blend of Lion’s mane, Reishi, and Chaga mushrooms, which are all non-hallucinogenic mushrooms used in herbal and traditional medicines and supplements. “Lion’s mane is a natural nootropic that can enhance cognitive function, while Reishi is an adaptogen that helps the body adapt to stress and boosts the immune system,” the company claimed. “Finally, Chaga is rich in antioxidants and can help reduce inflammation in the body.”

The FDA, along with America’s Poison Centers and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is still investigating the cases and working to determine the cause. In a response to an inquiry from Ars, the FDA declined to comment on whether it is in contact with the company and if it is recommending a voluntary recall.

6/12/2024 3: 50pm ET: This story was updated to include the response from the FDA. 

More seizures, intubation from microdose candies: 12 sickened, 10 hospitalized Read More »

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Let’s unpack some questions about Russia’s role in North Korea’s rocket program

kim jong-un, launch, North Korea, russia, Science, Space, vladimir putin / /
In this pool photo distributed by Sputnik agency, Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un visit the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur region in 2023. An RD-191 engine is visible in the background.

Enlarge / In this pool photo distributed by Sputnik agency, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un visit the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Amur region in 2023. An RD-191 engine is visible in the background.

Vladimir Smirnov/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin will reportedly visit North Korea later this month, and you can bet collaboration on missiles and space programs will be on the agenda.

The bilateral summit in Pyongyang will follow a mysterious North Korean rocket launch on May 27, which ended in a fireball over the Yellow Sea. The fact that this launch fell short of orbit is not unusual—two of the country’s three previous satellite launch attempts failed. But North Korea’s official state news agency dropped some big news in the last paragraph of its report on the May 27 launch.

The Korean Central News Agency called the launch vehicle a “new-type satellite carrier rocket” and attributed the likely cause of the failure to “the reliability of operation of the newly developed liquid oxygen + petroleum engine” on the first stage booster. A small North Korean military spy satellite was destroyed. The fiery demise of the North Korean rocket was captured in a video recorded by the Japanese news broadcaster NHK.

Petroleum almost certainly means kerosene, a refined petroleum fuel used on a range of rockets, including SpaceX’s Falcon 9, United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V, and Russia’s Soyuz and Angara.

“The North Koreans are clearly toying with us,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “They went out of their way to tell us what the propellant was, which is very deliberate because it’s a short statement and they don’t normally do that. They made a point of doing that, so I suspect they want us to be wondering what’s going on.”

Surprise from Sohae

Veteran observers of North Korea’s rocket program anticipated the country’s next satellite launch would use the same Chollima-1 rocket it used on three flights last year. But North Korea’s official statement suggests this was something different, and entirely unexpected, at least by anyone without access to classified information.

Ahead of the launch, North Korea released warning notices outlining the drop zones downrange where sections of the rocket would fall into the sea after lifting off from Sohae Satellite Launching Station on the country’s northwestern coast.

A day before the May 27 launch, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported a “large number of Russian experts” entered North Korea to support the launch effort. A senior South Korean defense official told Yonhap that North Korea staged more rocket engine tests than expected during the run-up to the May 27 flight.

Then, North Korea announced that this wasn’t just another flight of the Chollima-1 rocket but something new. The Chollima 1 used the same mix of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants as North Korea’s ballistic missiles. This combination of toxic propellants has the benefit of simplicity—these liquids are hypergolic, meaning they combust upon contact with one another. No ignition source is needed.

A television monitor at a train station in South Korea shows an image of the launch of North Korea's Chollima-1 rocket last year.

Enlarge / A television monitor at a train station in South Korea shows an image of the launch of North Korea’s Chollima-1 rocket last year.

Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Kerosene and liquid oxygen are nontoxic and more fuel-efficient. But liquid oxygen has to be kept at super-cold temperatures, requiring special handling and insulation to prevent boil-off as it is loaded into the rocket.

Let’s unpack some questions about Russia’s role in North Korea’s rocket program Read More »

polarized-light-yields-fresh-insight-into-mysterious-fast-radio-bursts

Polarized light yields fresh insight into mysterious fast radio bursts

astronomy, astrophysics, CHIME, fast radio bursts, Physics, Science / /

CHIME-ing in —

Scientists looked at how polarization changed direction to learn more about origins

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Artist’s rendition of how the angle of polarized light from an FRB changes as it journeys through space.

Enlarge / Artist’s rendition of how the angle of polarized light from a fast radio burst changes as it journeys through space.

CHIME/Dunlap Institute

Astronomers have been puzzling over the origins of mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) since the first one was spotted in 2007. Researchers now have their first look at non-repeating FRBs, i.e., those that have only produced a single burst of light to date. The authors of a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal looked specifically at the properties of polarized light emitting from these FRBs, yielding further insight into the origins of the phenomenon. The analysis supports the hypothesis that there are different origins for repeating and non-repeating FRBs.

“This is a new way to analyze the data we have on FRBs. Instead of just looking at how bright something is, we’re also looking at the angle of the light’s vibrating electromagnetic waves,” said co-author Ayush Pandhi, a graduate student at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics. “It gives you additional information about how and where that light is produced and what it has passed through on its journey to us over many millions of light years.”

As we’ve reported previously, FRBs involve a sudden blast of radio-frequency radiation that lasts just a few microseconds. Astronomers have over a thousand of them to date; some come from sources that repeatedly emit FRBs, while others seem to burst once and go silent. You can produce this sort of sudden surge of energy by destroying something. But the existence of repeating sources suggests that at least some of them are produced by an object that survives the event. That has led to a focus on compact objects, like neutron stars and black holes—especially a class of neutron stars called magnetars—as likely sources.

There have also been many detected FRBs that don’t seem to repeat at all, suggesting that the conditions that produced them may destroy their source. That’s consistent with a blitzar—a bizarre astronomical event caused by the sudden collapse of an overly massive neutron star. The event is driven by an earlier merger of two neutron stars; this creates an unstable intermediate neutron star, which is kept from collapsing immediately by its rapid spin.

In a blitzar, the strong magnetic fields of the neutron star slow down its spin, causing it to collapse into a black hole several hours after the merger. That collapse suddenly deletes the dynamo powering the magnetic fields, releasing their energy in the form of a fast radio burst.

So the events we’ve been lumping together as FRBs could actually be the product of two different events. The repeating events occur in the environment around a magnetar. The one-shot events are triggered by the death of a highly magnetized neutron star within a few hours of its formation. Astronomers announced the detection of a possible blitzar potentially associated with an FRB last year.

Only about 3 percent of FRBs are of the repeating variety. Per Pandhi, this is the first analysis of the other 97 percent of non-repeating FRBs, using data from Canada’s CHIME instrument (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment). CHIME was built for other observations but is sensitive to many of the wavelengths that make up an FRB. Unlike most radio telescopes, which focus on small points in the sky, CHIME scans a huge area, allowing it to pick out FRBs even though they almost never happen in the same place twice.

Pandhi et al. decided to investigate how the direction of the light polarization from 128 non-repeating FRBs changes to learn more about the environments in which they originated. The team found that the polarized light from non-repeating FRBs changes both with time and with different colors of light. They concluded that this particular sample of non-repeating FRBs is either a separate population or more evolved versions of these kinds of FRBs that are part of a population that originated in less extreme environments with lower burst rates. That’s in keeping with the notion that non-repeating FRBs are quite different from their rarer repeating FRBs.

The Astrophysical Journal, 2024. DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad40aa  (About DOIs).

Polarized light yields fresh insight into mysterious fast radio bursts Read More »

as-nasa-watches-starship-closely,-here’s-what-the-agency-wants-to-see-next

As NASA watches Starship closely, here’s what the agency wants to see next

Science, Space / /

Target and Chaser —

“What happens if I don’t have a Human Landing System available to execute a mission?”

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The rocket for SpaceX's fourth full-scale Starship test flight awaits liftoff from Starbase, the company's private launch base in South Texas.

Enlarge / The rocket for SpaceX’s fourth full-scale Starship test flight awaits liftoff from Starbase, the company’s private launch base in South Texas.

SpaceX

Few people were happier with the successful outcome of last week’s test flight of SpaceX’s Starship launch system than a NASA engineer named Catherine Koerner.

In remarks after the spaceflight, Koerner praised the “incredible” video of the Starship rocket and its Super Heavy booster returning to Earth, with each making a soft landing. “That was very promising, and a very, very successful engineering test,” she added, speaking at a meeting of the Space Studies Board.

A former flight director, Koerner now manages development of the “exploration systems” that will support the Artemis missions for NASA—a hugely influential position within the space agency. This includes the Space Launch System rocket, NASA’s Orion spacecraft, spacesuits, and the Starship vehicle that will land on the Moon.

In recent months, NASA officials like Koerner have been grappling with the reality that not all of this hardware is likely to be ready for the planned September 2026 launch date for the Artemis III mission. In particular, the agency is concerned about Starship’s readiness as a “Human Landing System.” While SpaceX is pressing forward rapidly with a test campaign, there is still a lot of work to be done to get the vehicle down to the lunar surface and safely back into lunar orbit.

A spare tire

For these reasons, as Ars previously reported, NASA and SpaceX are planning for the possibility of modifying the Artemis III mission. Instead of landing on the Moon, a crew would launch in the Orion spacecraft and rendezvous with Starship in low-Earth orbit. This would essentially be a repeat of the Apollo 9 mission, buying down risk and providing a meaningful stepping stone between Artemis missions.

Officially, NASA maintains that the agency will fly a crewed lunar landing, the Artemis III mission, in September 2026. But almost no one in the space community regards that launch date as more than aspirational. Some of my best sources have put the most likely range of dates for such a mission from 2028 to 2032. A modified Artemis III mission, in low-Earth orbit, would therefore bridge a gap between Artemis II and an eventual landing.

Koerner has declined interview requests from Ars to discuss this, but during the Space Studies Board, she acknowledged seeing these reports on modifying Artemis III. She was then asked directly whether there was any validity to them. Here is her response in full:

So here’s what I’ll tell you, if you’ll permit me an analogy. I have in my car a spare tire, right? I don’t have a spare steering wheel. I don’t have spare windshield wipers. I have a spare tire. And why? Why do we carry a spare tire? That someone, at some point, did an assessment and said in order for this vehicle to accomplish its mission, there is a certain likelihood that some things may fail and a certain likelihood that other things may not fail, and it’s probably prudent to have a spare tire. I don’t necessarily need to have a spare steering wheel, right?

We at NASA do a lot of those kinds of assessments. Like, what happens if this isn’t available? What happens if that isn’t available? Do we have backup plans for that? We’re always doing those kinds of backup plans. Do we have backup plans? It’s imperative for me to look at what happens if an Orion spacecraft is not ready to do a mission. What happens if I don’t have an SLS ready to do a mission? What happens if I don’t have a Human Landing System available to execute a mission? What happens if I don’t have Gateway that I was planning on to do a mission?

So we look at backup plans all the time. There are lots of different opportunities for that. We have not made any changes to the current plan as I outlined it here today and talked about that. But we have lots of people who are looking at lots of different backup plans so that we are doing due diligence and making sure that we have the spare tire if we need the spare tire. It’s the reason we have, for example, two systems now that we’re developing for the Human Landing System, the one for SpaceX and the other one from Blue Origin. It’s the reason we have two providers that are building spacesuit hardware. Collins as well as Axiom, right? So we always are doing that kind of thing.

That is a long way of saying that if SpaceX’s Starship is not ready in 2026, NASA is actively considering alternative plans. (The most likely of these would be an Orion-Starship docking in low-Earth orbit.) NASA has not made any final plans and is waiting to see how Artemis II progresses and what happens with Starship and spacesuit development.

What SpaceX needs to demonstrate

During her remarks, Koerner was also asked what SpaceX’s next major milestone is and when it would need to be completed for NASA to remain on track for a lunar landing in 2026. “Their next big milestone test, from a contract perspective, is the cryogenic transfer test,” she said. “That is going to be early next year.”

Some details about the Starship propellant transfer test.

Enlarge / Some details about the Starship propellant transfer test.

NASA

This timeline is consistent with what NASA’s Human Landing System program manager, Lisa Watson-Morgan recently told Ars. It provides a useful benchmark to evaluate Starship’s progress in NASA’s eyes. The “prop transfer demo” is a fairly complex mission that involves the launch of a “Starship target” from the Starbase facility in South Texas. Then a second vehicle, the “Starship chaser,” will launch and meet the target in orbit and rendezvous. The chaser will then transfer a quantity of propellant to the target spaceship.

The test will entail a lot of technology, including docking mechanisms, navigation sensors, quick disconnects, and more. If SpaceX completes this test during the first quarter of 2025, NASA will at least theoretically have a path forward to a crewed lunar landing in 2026.

As NASA watches Starship closely, here’s what the agency wants to see next Read More »

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Stoke Space ignites its ambitious main engine for the first time

Science, Space, stoke space / /

Get stoked! —

“This industry is going toward full reusability. To me, that is the inevitable end state.”

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A drone camera captures the hotfire test of Stoke Space's full-flow staged combustion engine at the company's testing facility in early June.

Enlarge / A drone camera captures the hotfire test of Stoke Space’s full-flow staged combustion engine at the company’s testing facility in early June.

Stoke Space

On Tuesday, Stoke Space announced the firing of its first stage rocket engine for the first time earlier this month, briefly igniting it for about two seconds. The company declared the June 5 test a success because the engine performed nominally and will be fired up again soon.

“Data point one is that the engine is still there,” said Andy Lapsa, chief executive of the Washington-based launch company, in an interview with Ars.

The test took place at the company’s facilities in Moses Lake, Washington. Seven of these methane-fueled engines, each intended to have a thrust of 100,000 pounds of force, will power the company’s Nova rocket. This launch vehicle will have a lift capacity of about 5 metric tons to orbit. Lapsa declined to declare a target launch date, but based on historical developmental programs, if Stoke continues to move fast, it could fly Nova for the first time in 2026.

Big ambitions for a small company

Although it remains relatively new in the field of emerging launch companies, Stoke has gathered a lot of attention because of its bold ambitions. The company intends for the two-stage Nova rocket to be fully reusable, with both stages returning to Earth. To achieve a vertical landing, the second stage has a novel design. This oxygen-hydrogen engine is based on a ring of 30 thrusters and a regeneratively cooled heat shield.

Lapsa and Stoke, which now has 125 employees, have also gone for an ambitious design in the first-stage engine tested earlier this month. The engine, with a placeholder name of S1E, is based on full-flow, stage-combustion technology in which the liquid propellants are burned in the engine’s pre-burners. Because of this, they arrive in the engine’s combustion chamber in fully gaseous form, leading to a more efficient mixing.

Such an engine—this technology has only previously been demonstrated in flight by SpaceX’s Raptor engine, on the Starship rocket—is more efficient and should theoretically extend turbine life. But it is also technically demanding to develop, and among the most complex engine designs for a rocket company to begin with. This is not rocket science. It’s exceptionally hard rocket science.

It may seem like Stoke is biting off a lot more than it can chew with Nova’s design. Getting to space is difficult enough for a launch startup, but this company is seeking to build a fully reusable rocket with a brand new second stage design and a first stage engine based on full-flow, staged combustion. I asked Lapsa if he was nuts for taking all of this on.

Are these guys nuts?

“I’ve been around long enough to know that any rocket development program is hard, even if you make it as simple as possible,” he responded. “But this industry is going toward full reusability. To me, that is the inevitable end state. When you start with that north star, any other direction you take is a diversion. If you start designing anything else, it’s not something where you can back into full reusability at any point. It means you’ll have to stop and start over to climb the mountain.”

This may sound like happy talk, but Stoke appears to be delivering on its ambitions. Last September, the company completed a successful “hop” test of its second stage at Moses Lake. This validated its design, thrust vector control, and avionics.

This engine is designed to power the Nova rocket.

Enlarge / This engine is designed to power the Nova rocket.

Stoke Space

After this test, the company turned its focus to developing the S1E engine and put it on the test stand for the first time in April before the first test firing in June. Going from zero to 350,000 horsepower in half a second for the first time had a “pretty high pucker factor,” Lapsa said of the first fully integrated engine test.

Now that this initial test is complete, Stoke will spend the rest of the year maturing the design of the engine, conducting longer test firings, and starting to develop flight stages. After that will come stage tests before the complete Nova vehicle is assembled. At the same time, Stoke is also working with the US Space Force on the regulatory process of refurbishing and modernizing Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Stoke Space ignites its ambitious main engine for the first time Read More »

neutrinos:-the-inscrutable-“ghost-particles”-driving-scientists-crazy

Neutrinos: The inscrutable “ghost particles” driving scientists crazy

Features, neutrinos, Science / /

ghostly experiments —

They hold the keys to new physics. If only we could understand them.

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The Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan.

Enlarge / The Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan.

Kamioka Observatory, ICRR (Institute for Cosmic Ray Research), the University of Tokyo

Somehow, neutrinos went from just another random particle to becoming tiny monsters that require multi-billion-dollar facilities to understand. And there’s just enough mystery surrounding them that we feel compelled to build those facilities since neutrinos might just tear apart the entire particle physics community at the seams.

It started out innocently enough. Nobody asked for or predicted the existence of neutrinos, but there they were in our early particle experiments. Occasionally, heavy atomic nuclei spontaneously—and for no good reason—transform themselves, with either a neutron converting into a proton or vice-versa. As a result of this process, known as beta decay, the nucleus also emits an electron or its antimatter partner, the positron.

There was just one small problem: Nothing added up. The electrons never came out of the nucleus with the same energy; it was a little different every time. Some physicists argued that our conceptions of the conservation of energy only held on average, but that didn’t feel so good to say out loud, so others argued that perhaps there was another, hidden particle participating in the transformations. Something, they argued, had to sap energy away from the electron in a random way to explain this.

Eventually, that little particle got a name, the neutrino, an Italian-ish word meaning “little neutral one.” Whatever the neutrino was, it didn’t carry any electric charge and only participated in the weak nuclear force, so we only saw neutrinos at work in radioactive decay processes. But even with the multitude of decays with energies great and small happening all across the Universe every single second, the elusive nature of neutrinos meant we could only occasionally, rarely, weakly see them.

But see them we did (although it took 25 years), and for a while, we could just pretend that nothing was wrong. The neutrino was just another particle the Universe didn’t strictly need to give us but somehow stubbornly insisted on giving us anyway.

And then we discovered there wasn’t just one neutrino but three of them. For reasons the cosmos has yet to divulge to us, it likes to organize its particles into groups of three, known as generations. Take a nice, stable, regular fundamental particle, like an electron or an up or down quark—those particles represent the first generation. The other two generations share the same properties (like spin and electric charge) but have a heavier mass.

For the electron, we have its generational sibling, the muon, which is just like the electron but 200 times heavier, and the tau, which is also just like the electron but 3,500 times heavier (that’s heavier than a proton). For the down quark, we have its siblings, the “strange” and “bottom” quarks. And we call the heavier versions of the up quark the “charm” and “top” quarks. Why does the Universe do this? Why three generations with these masses? As I said, the cosmos has chosen not to reveal that to us (yet).

So there are three generations of neutrinos, named for the kinds of interactions they participate in. Some nuclear reactions involve only the first generation of particles (which are the most common by far), the up and down quarks, and the electrons. Here, electron-neutrinos are involved. When muons play around, muon-neutrinos come out, too. And no points will be awarded for guessing the name of the neutrinos associated with tau particle interactions.

All this is… fine. Aside from the burning mystery of the existence of particle generations in the first place, it would be a bit greedy for one neutrino to participate in all possible reactions. So it has to share the job with two other generations. It seemed odd, but it all worked.

And then we discovered that neutrinos had mass, and the whole thing blew up.

Neutrinos: The inscrutable “ghost particles” driving scientists crazy Read More »