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| Pataxó people in Brazil speak Portuguese and a revitalized version of the Pataxó language, called Patxohã. (Cristiano Babini/Alamy) | |||||
Losing language means losing medicineThreatened Indigenous languages convey unique knowledge of medicinal plants. Researchers analysed ethnobotanical datasets for North America, northwest Amazonia and New Guinea, which link more than 3,500 medicinal-plant species with 236 Indigenous languages. They found that 75% of the medicinal uses for these species are known in only one language. And those languages are the ones at greatest risk of being lost forever. “We found that those languages with unique knowledge are the ones at a higher risk of extinction,” says ecologist Jordi Bascompte. “There is a sort of a double-problem in terms of how knowledge will disappear.” Mongabay | 7 min readReference: PNAS paper |
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How to understand the US pandemic nowWidespread vaccination will affect the immediate future of the pandemic in the United States — and it might diverge from what happens in other largely vaccinated countries. “The difference between the UK and the US isn’t just that fewer Americans are vaccinated. It’s that fewer of the most vulnerable Americans are vaccinated, and they tend to cluster together,” write three science writers in The Atlantic. The Atlantic | 11 min read |
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Who is allowed to have physics’ wild ideas?In Fear of a Black Universe, Black theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander asks: is the search for answers in modern physics hindered by an establishment that’s afraid to entertain the ideas of those it considers outsiders? An accomplished jazz musician, Alexander describes his narrative approach as an improvisation. It’s a dazzling, but challenging, approach for readers, writes reviewer Anil Ananthaswamy. For those who can keep up, the book makes a poignant case for why every scientist deserves equal opportunities to let their imagination soar. Nature | 6 min read |
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‘Playing possum’ shows animals know deathThe opossum’s death display, known as thanatosis, demonstrates that animals have some understanding of death, argues philosopher Susana Monsó. Not because opossums themselves necessarily have a concept of death, but because their predators must. “The distribution of thanatosis in the animal kingdom points to how extended the concept of death is likely to be in nature,” writes Monsó. “The concept of death should also be counted among those characteristics to which we can no longer resort to convince us of how very special we are.” Aeon | 14 min read |
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An unsung pioneer of virologyDuring her lifetime, Marguerite Vogt did not receive a single major prize, but her work remains a gold standard in virology. Her painstaking, dangerous effort to grow the poliovirus in the laboratory was instrumental to the development of Albert Sabin’s oral polio vaccine. She was a musician and a mentor, but above all she was a scientist: at 14 she published her first paper, and her last at age 85. Science News | 8 min read |
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Ebola can remain latent in human survivorsThe genome of the Ebola virus that caused a 2021 outbreak in Guinea barely differs from that of the strain behind an epidemic nearly five years before, indicating that the virus remained dormant in survivors. “The unexpected observation that the virus can persist in the human body for such a long time has considerable implications for public health and care of survivors of Ebola,” writes virologist Robert Garry. Vaccines should be deployed strategically to ensure that the people most at risk of infection, such as health-care workers, are protected. Survivors, who face myriad personal and societal challenges, must not be further burdened with stigmatization on the basis of these findings. And researchers must determine whether vaccinating survivors can prevent the re-emergence of the disease. Nature | 7 min readThis News & Views article is available to readers with subscriber access to Nature. Click here for help getting logged in with your institution’s subscription. Reference: Nature paper |
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| The Ebola virus genome accumulates mutations with a relatively regular frequency as it replicates and passes from host to host, representing a molecular clock that tracks the history of the virus. An analysis of the genomes of the virus from an outbreak this year in Guinea showed a much smaller number of mutations between the outbreaks than would be expected if it had continued replicating and being transmitted between hosts during this period. | |||||
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