NCERT Solutions for Class 12 Biology Chapter 3 Human Reproduction is framed by subject experts and comprises detailed answers for reference. All the questions given in the exercises from the textbook are answered here. Students can refer to these answers to prepare for the board examinations. The answers provided in the NCERT Solutions for Class 12 are beneficial to enhance conceptual knowledge.

Chapter 3 Human Reproduction of Class 12 Biology is formulated according to the CBSE Syllabus for 2022-23. Solutions provided are solved skillfully with the use of student-friendly terminologies simultaneously aligning with the standards that are to be followed for solving the NCERT Solutions for Class 12. Practising these solutions can prove to be extremely beneficial not only from the board examination point of view, but can also help Class 12 students to outperform in the upcoming competitive examinations.

Exercise

1. Fill in the blanks:

(a) Humans reproduce _____________ (asexually/sexually)

(b) Humans are _____________ (oviparous, viviparous, ovoviviparous)

(c) Fertilisation is _____________ in humans (external/internal)

(d) Male and female gametes are _____________ (diploid/haploid)

(e) Zygote is _____________ (diploid/haploid)

(f) The process of release of ovum from a mature follicle is called _____________

(g) Ovulation is induced by a hormone called _____________

(h) The fusion of male and female gametes is called _____________

(i) Fertilisation takes place in _____________

(j) Zygote divides to form _____________which is implanted in uterus.

(k) The structure which provides vascular connection between foetus and uterus is called _______

Solution:

(a) Humans reproduce sexually.

(b) Humans are viviparous.

(c) Fertilisation is internal in humans

(d) Male and female gametes are haploid

(e) Zygote is diploid

(f) The process of release of ovum from a mature follicle is called ovulation

(g) Ovulation is induced by a hormone called luteinizing hormone (LH)

(h) The fusion of male and female gametes is called fertilization

(i) Fertilisation takes place in ampulla of oviduct

(j) Zygote divides to form blastocyst which is implanted in uterus.

(k) The structure which provides vascular connection between foetus and uterus is called placenta

2. Draw a labelled diagram of male reproductive system.

Solution:

The diagram of male reproductive system is as follows:

3. Draw a labelled diagram of female reproductive system.

Solution:

The diagram of female reproductive system is as follows:

4. Write two major functions each of testis and ovary.

Solution:

Two major functions of each are as follows:

Testis:

Ovary:

5. Describe the structure of a seminiferous tubule.

Solution:

Structure of seminiferous tubules:

6. What is spermatogenesis? Briefly describe the process of spermatogenesis.

Solution:

The phenomena of sperm production from the immature germ cell in males is termed as spermatogenesis. The process occurs in the seminiferous tubules located inside the testes. In this process, a diploid male germ cell or spermatogonium enlarges (in size) for the formation of a diploid primary spermatocyte which inturn goes through the first meiotic division or meiosis I. This division is a reductional division for the formation of two equal haploid secondary spermatocytes, each of which further undergoes second meiotic division or meiosis II for the formation of two equal haploid spermatids.

Subsequently, four haploid spermatids are formed from a diploid spermatogonium. The spermatids hence produced alter to form spermatozoa(sperm) through the process of spermiogenesis.

7. Name the hormones involved in regulation of spermatogenesis.

Solution:

Some hormones involved in the regulation of spermatogenesis are as listed below:

8. Define spermiogenesis and spermiation.

Solution:

Spermiogenesis It is the phenomena of transformation of non-motile spermatids to mature, motile spermatozoa.

Spermiation It is the phenomena where mature spermatozoa are released from the Serotoli cells into the lumen of the seminiferous tubules of the testes.

9. Draw a labelled diagram of sperm.

Solution:

The diagram of sperm is as below:

10. What are the major components of seminal plasma?

Solution:

The major components of seminal plasma are:

11. What are the major functions of male accessory ducts and glands?

Solution:

The major functions of the male accessory ducts and glands are as follows:

12. What is oogenesis? Give a brief account of oogenesis.

Solution:

Ooogenesis is the phenomena of formation of haploid female gametes known as ova from diploid oogonia in the ovary, Graffian follicles, to be precise. This process is discontinuous which is initiated during the period of foetal development that is terminated only after puberty sets in.

The process of Oogenesis takes place in three phases:

Multiplicative phase

13. Draw a labelled diagram of a section through ovary.

Solution:

The diagram of a section of an ovary is as follows:

14. Draw a labelled diagram of a Graafian follicle.

Solution:

The diagram of a Graafian follicle is as follows:

15. Name the functions of the following:

(a) Corpus luteum (b) Endometrium

(c) Acrosome (d) Sperm tail

(e) Fimbriae

Solution:

The functions are as follows:

(a) Corpus luteum It is formed when the Graafian follicle ruptures. The corpus luteum secretes the hormone progesterone during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. When progesterone is secreted in high levels, the secretion of LH and FSH is inhibited which further prevents ovulation. The corpus luteum facilitates the endometrium of the uterus to proliferate and prepare for the process of implantation.

(b) Endometrium as the name suggests, the endometrium is the innermost lining of the uterus comprising glands that undergoes cyclic changes during different stages of the menstrual cycle in order to prepare itself for the embryo-implantation process.

(c) Acrosome The acrosome is located in the anterior section of the head of the sperm, resembling a cap-like structure. It consists of the hyaluronidase enzyme that hydrolyses the outer membrane of the egg which facilitates the sperm to perforate through the egg during fertilization.

(d) Sperm tail the sperm tail makes up for the longest part of the sperm, enabling the movement of the sperm, once it has entered the female reproductive tract.

(e) Fimbriae Towards the ovarian end of the fallopian tube, finger-like projections emerge. These are the Fimbriae which assist in gathering the ovum after the ovulation process. This is facilitated by the beating of the cilia.

16. Identify True/False statements. Correct each false statement to make it true.

(a) Androgens are produced by Sertoli cells. (True/False)

(b) Spermatozoa get nutrition from Sertoli cells. (True/False)

(c) Leydig cells are found in the ovary. (True/False)

(d) Leydig cells synthesise androgens. (True/False)

(e) Oogenesis takes place in corpus luteum. (True/False)

(f) Menstrual cycle ceases during pregnancy. (True/False)

(g) Presence or absence of hymen is not a reliable indicator of virginity or sexual experience. (True/False)

Solution:

17. What is menstrual cycle? Which hormones regulate menstrual cycle?

Solution:

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NCERT Solutions For Class 12 Biology Chapter 3 - Human Reproduction - BYJUS

Governor Murphy highlights budget investments in education

Governor Murphy highlights budget investments in education at a ribbon cutting in Passaic On Aug. 23, 2022.

Tariq Zehawi, NorthJersey.com

New Jerseys school districts are getting creative about how they will teach sex education in state-mandated health classes this year as they try not to offend parents while adhering to the states requirements.

Some districts are bending the rules in the process and some are outright breaking them.

There is some wiggle room on how the state standards are taught because the state law leaves it to individual school districts to create their own curriculum, provided they comply with learning standards issued by the state Department of Education.

Related:School districts that don't teach new sex ed standards will be disciplined, state says

The state released a statement on Sept. 9 reminding school leaders that it is mandatory to implement standards and not doing so could result in disciplinary action.

An outcry from conservative groups that began in spring has carried into the fall as school districts begin to implement changes to sex education in the Comprehensive Health and Physical Education portion of the 2020 New Jersey Student Learning Standards. The changes require students to be familiar with mature sexual terminology and introduce sex and gender at earlier grades than the previous 2014 standards.

Eighth graders, for example, are now expected to know definitions of vaginal, oral and anal sex, whereas earlier standards limited discussions to broader topics like sexual attraction, contraception and pregnancy. Fifth graders are expected to know the connection between sexual intercourse and human reproduction, whereas earlier standards discussedpuberty.

After a summer of heated and sometimes vicious school board meetings featuring hours-long presentations and question and answer sessions by tired administrators on what they propose to teach in health class, most communities now know what to expect. School boards are required to vote and approve all new curricula before they are taught in class.

Many districts, like Clifton, are following the law and implementing the health standards with detailed presentations to assuage parent concerns and outline what students will learn. Others, like Garwood and Millstone, appear to be ignoring the new health standards by teaching them partially, or leaving portions to be taught at home.

A May presentation at a Clifton school board meeting indicated the district would implement the standards while emphasizing abstinence (also required by law) and age-appropriate content. The presentation is available on the district's website at: https://www.clifton.k12.nj.us/domain/460

The presentation touched upon the most criticized changes in the 2020 health standards, including:

An age-appropriate example for meeting the requirement for second graders to be able to name human genitals would be to define the testicle as a male organ that produces cells. At higher grades, the definition would be expanded to say that the testicle also produces sperm.

The Clifton school district cited the American Academy of Pediatrics in its presentation, saying: in early childhood, parents can teach their children the name of the genitals, just as they teach their child names of other body parts. This teaches that the genitals, while private, are not so private that you cant talk about them."

The district addresses gender stereotyping in second grade, also a new requirement in the 2020 standards that right-wing activists have protested, using a two-minute Thomas The Train video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWkrQMVqB3s.

The entire lesson on social and sexual health in grades K-2 would last one class period, according to the Clifton presentation. The fifth-grade class on the same topic would also be only one class period. A class on mental and personal health would last one to two class periods. It would limit discussing gender identity and sexual orientation to definitions created by the Mayo Clinic, administrators said. Gender identity is how you feel while sexual orientation is who you love.

Clifton also addresses what is among the most controversial changes in the 2020 health standards for eighth graders by discussing anal, oral and vaginal sex from the lens of sexually transmitted diseases or STDs.

Human sexuality topics always begin with ABSTINENCE. Here in Grade 8 we see minor changes to the standards. For example, we have taught that vaginal and oral sex can lead to contracting sexually transmitted infections and diseases as well as pregnancy. Anal sex has been added as there are misconceptions by young people that this is a safe method of sex. Our focus is on health to prevent STIs, STDs and Pregnancy, according to the districts website.

Some districts plan a safer route that involves parents while also complying with the law. The Hoboken school district said in April that it was considering hosting a family night to teach some of its health classes, by hosting adiscussion on social and sexual health for students in the fifth to seventh grades at an event open to parents and children. The district already uses this approach to discuss the Holocaust, allowing parents to log in remotely while those who choose not to attend are provided with other resources. It conducted one such family health night on May 12, where an expert talked families through topics in health. Superintendent Christine Johnson did not respond to comment for this story.

Garwood school districts K-8 health curriculum, approved on Aug. 16, does not address many of the changes to the 2020 health standards. For example, it mentions fertilization and pregnancy , but does not demonstrate the connection between sexual intercourse and human reproduction which the new standards require for fifth graders. The eighth-grade curriculum omits any mention of vaginal or other types of sex, but discusses gender identity and sexual orientation.

The districts curriculum guide reinforces its position on the states changes to sex education by linking to a resolution passed in May. That resolution says district schools would not adopt curriculum set forth by the 2020 health standards because doing so would allow the school district to demonstrate topics inclusive of sexual activity in classrooms.

Many elements of Millstone Townships Family Life lessons will be left for parents to teach at home, according to curriculum guides on the school districts website. For example, the entire topic of sexual intercourse leading to reproduction, sexual orientation and gender identity are excluded from in-class learning for fifth grade. Strategies used by sex traffickers and laws around consent that are designed to keep children safe from pornography are also excluded from instruction and described as At Home Learning Standard.

Parents can view a comparison between the 2020 and 2014 health standards using a document posted on Clifton's School District site at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YiRJGwyNwnkPQ51jql9-PU-6-Cv6vkMz/view.

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Here's how some NJ schools will teach sex education. Will they avoid state discipline? - NorthJersey.com

Published 8:30 pm Friday, September 23, 2022

To the Editor:

On Sept. 15, I had the opportunity to attend Virginia Organizing Grassroot Gathering Reproductive Justice workshop. There were about 40 people at the workshop. One of the questions was: What does reproductive justice look like to you? The answer was the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.

Ever since Roe vs. Wade was overturned, Im trying to wrap my head around the fact that courts and politicians would interfere with women making decisions about reproduction.

Even through Virginia has abortion laws that support women if they want to have an abortion. What about other women in other states that have made it illegal for abortion. Did you know our own Gov. Glenn Youngkin has stated his support for a 15-week abortion ban and put together a work group to draft and carry the bill in the 2023 session? He further said he will sign any bill banning abortion that makes it to his desk whether a 15-week ban, 20-week ban, or an absolute ban.

Im glad we have Rep. Elaine Luria representing the women in my district. She is for women making their own decision about abortion. I never thought I would see this day. Thank you for being the womens voice in a time like this.

Cleo Johnson

Virginia Organizing

Chapter leader for Suffolk

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Letter - Landscape has changed for women on reproductive issues - The Suffolk News-Herald - Suffolk News-Herald

With the intensified direct-to-consumer marketing of male sexual medicine treatments, the recent legislative changes in reproductive rights and their unknown long-term effect on assisted reproduction availability for infertile men, and the explosion of telehealth, the practice of male sexual medicine is evolving at a breakneck pace. Specialists in male sexual and reproductive medicine have been tasked with digesting the evolving literature and forming evidence-based treatment guidelines for men with erectile dysfunction, Peyronie disease, infertility, and a host of other conditions. Compared with other areas of urology and medicine in general, male sexual and reproductive medicine has a disappointingly small number of well-designed prospective studies, along with a significant gap in funding for male reproductive health compared with female reproductive health. Several manuscripts published in 2022 started to narrow this gap and provide valuable level 1 evidence supporting (or discounting) key areas within sexual medicine and infertility.

For men with severe male factor infertility and nonobstructive azoospermia, surgical intervention is often indicated to retrieve sperm. Testicular sperm aspiration (TESA) and microdissection testicular sperm extraction (mTESE) are 2 commonly used approaches. A recent study by Jensen et al compared the efficacy of these 2 approaches in one of the few prospective randomized-controlled trials in male infertility.1 In the study, 49 patients were randomly assigned to mTESE with a sperm retrieval rate of 43%, and 51 patients were randomly assigned to TESA with a sperm retrieval rate of 22%. Men with failed TESA then went on to salvage mTESE with a combined sperm retrieval rate of 29%. Participants in the mTESE arm, however, had decreased postoperative testosterone levels, and 24% of participants experienced de novo hypogonadism at 6 months. Prior literature has suggested the testosterone drop is transient and that it will likely recover by 12 months. In summary, the study results showed that mTESE remains the gold standard for treatment of nonobstructive azoospermia, but patients should be counseled on the risk of de novo hypogonadism.

Despite this, mTESE success rates remain modest and are subject to the expertise and skill level of the laboratory and andrologist processing the tissue. Multiple hours can be spent trying to find the few viable sperm hidden among a sea of distractors. A recent study by Lee et al examined the power of artificial intelligence to detect human sperm in semen and mTESE samples using bright-field microscopy for nonobstructive azoospermic (NOA) patients.2 They first trained the program to identify sperm from semen samples of fertile patients. After validating the effectiveness of their algorithm, they retrained it to identify sperm in tissue from NOA patients that had been spiked with large amounts of sperm. When testing it on samples containing 3000 to 6000 sperm among other cell types, they achieved 84.0% positive predictive value and 72.7% sensitivity. Finally, without retraining their algorithm, they tested it on samples containing 10 to 200 sperm, replicating the rare sperm phenomenon seen in patients with NOA. Their model was able to detect 2969 sperm cells out of a total 3517 with an 84.4% PPV and 86.1% sensitivity. The clinical applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning in medicine continue to expand and have made their way to male infertility. Although this is not ready for immediate clinical use, it does highlight the need for further work to harness the power of technology to improve workflow of andrologists and in turn increase the success of infertility care for patients.

There has been a rapid rise in the need for male sexual health and reproductive specialists as the population ages and the number of comorbidities rise, although certain disease processes that fall within this specialty may be able to be addressed by a general urologist. In an analysis of the current educational landscape, Asanad et al call attention to the need for a structured educational curriculum in residency for male infertility.3 In a survey of urology residents, 54 of 72 respondents (75%) reported that male infertility comprises less than 10% of their training. Compared with residents who did not learn from infertility-trained faculty, residents who were exposed to infertility-trained faculty were 14.4 times more likely to feel confident performing infertility procedures (P < .001) and were more likely to feel confident performing fertility procedures after residency (P = .001).3 For trainees, their career depends on what they are exposed to. Smaller subdisciplines within urology may be more difficult to teach uniformly, and perhaps there are ways to improve the exposure to these areas for motivated residents (eg, visiting other programs).

Within male sexual health, one disease process that all urologists should be able to diagnose and initially manage is erectile dysfunction (ED). With studies citing the prevalence of ED as high as 52%, the demand for providers to manage ED remains sky high. Current treatment options include phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE5is), intracavernosal injections, vacuum erection devices, and penile prosthesis. A newcomer to the field is shock wave therapy, which uses controlled energy to induce angiogenesis.

The short-term effectiveness of focused shock wave therapy for patients with moderate ED was investigated in a double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled trial.4 In this study of 70 patients with moderate ED, 35 were randomly assigned to low-intensity shock wave therapy (LiST) and the other 35 were randomly assigned to sham therapy. After a 4 week washout from PDE5i, patients underwent LiST or sham twice weekly for 6 weeks. One month after treatment completion, 59% patients in the LiST group experienced an International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF) score improvement of at least 5 points, compared with 1 patient (2.9%) in the sham group (P < .001). This effect remained present at 3 months post treatment. Thus, the short-term data for LiST are compelling and suggest this may be a viable option in the management of vasculogenic ED for men with mild/moderate ED. Further studies are desperately needed to validate these findings, and urologists have an obligation to provide patients with an honest assessment of the data and only recommend treatments where the risks (including the financial burden) are outweighed by the benefits.

In stark contrast to focused therapy, radial shock wave therapy uses low-pressure radial shock waves to treat ED. In order to characterize its effectiveness, a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled clinical trial enrolled 80 men with mild to moderate ED.5 Patients were treated weekly with either radial wave therapy or sham therapy for 6 weeks, and the primary outcome measured was change in the IIEF score between baseline and after treatment. Study results showed that there was no significant difference in IIEF scores between groups at 6 weeks or 10 weeks after randomization. Study results displayed the lack of evidence to support the use of radial wave therapy.

Despite the evidence of their ineffectiveness in managing ED, shock wave therapy and particularly radial wave therapy have been heavily marketed directly to consumers in the US. A recent article using a secret-shopper method found troubling marketing and practice trends in the US. The authors noted that patients often are not adequately educated on the different types of treatments and may not know if the administrator is a licensed medical professional.6 With the average cost of treatment ranging from $2600 to $3900 per cycle, clinics offering radial wave therapy have an obvious financial incentive to continue marketing despite the lack of evidence of its effectiveness.

Recent advancements in the field of male sexual health and reproduction present a bright future for the field with new diagnostic and therapeutic options on the horizon. However, it is apparent that demand still outpaces supply for mens health specialty care. Urologists must work diligently to fill this void to not only increase access for patients to receive evidence-based care, but also to prevent men from falling to prey to practices looking to take advantage of this unmet demand and a vulnerable patient population.

References

1. Jensen CFS, Ohl DA, Fode M, et al. Microdissection testicular sperm extraction versus multiple needle-pass percutaneous testicular sperm aspiration in men with nonobstructive azoospermia: a randomized clinical trial. Eur Urol. Published online May 19, 2022. doi:10.1016/j.eururo.2022.04.030

2. Lee R, Witherspoon L, Robinson M, et al. Automated rare sperm identification from low-magnification microscopy images of dissociated microsurgical testicular sperm extraction samples using deep learning. Fertil Steril. 2022;118(1):90-99. doi:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2022.03.011

3. Asanad K, Nusbaum D, Fuchs G, Rodman JCS, Samplaski MK. The impact of male infertility faculty on urology residency training. Andrologia. 2022;54(8):e14457. doi:10.1111/and.14457

4. Kalyvianakis D, Mykoniatis I, Pyrgidis N, et al. The effect of low-intensity shock wave therapy on moderate erectile dysfunction: a double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled clinical trial. J Urol. 2022;208(2):388-395. doi:10.1097/JU.0000000000002684

5. Sandoval-Salinas C, Saffon JP, Martnez JM, Corredor HA, Gallego A. Are radial pressure waves effective for the treatment of moderate or mild to moderate erectile dysfunction? A randomized sham therapy controlled clinical trial. J Sex Med. 2022;19(5):738-744. doi:10.1016/j.jsxm.2022.02.010

6. Weinberger JM, Shahinyan GK, Yang SC, et al. Shock wave therapy for erectile dysfunction: marketing and practice trends in major metropolitan areas in the United States. Urol Pract. 2022;9(3):212-219. doi:10.1097/UPJ.0000000000000299

Continued here:
Male sexual health and reproductive medicine: All that glitters is not gold - Urology Times

Scientists generally agree that evolutionary biology was born in 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species. The idea that species can mutate (i.e., change over time) was not new. Decades earlier, Darwins grandfather, Erasmus, had proposed something similar, designing a ladder-like diagram to show how humans evolved from single-celled organisms. Darwin went a step further, suggesting that natural selection was the mechanism by which species adapted to their environments.

But theres more to the story, admits Steve Dorus, associate professor of biology at Syracuse University. Darwin surmised that natural selection wasnt just about survival. He argued that some of the most dramatic differences between species were reproductive traits like ornaments and armaments, says Dorus, referring to peacock tails and beetle horns, respectively. These traits came about because they were subjected to a type of selection associated with reproductive competition.

Darwin called his new theory sexual selection, which he outlined in his 1871 tour-de-force, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Whereas Origin sidestepped human evolution, Descent tackled it head-on. The thought of males vying for access to females, who, in turn, desired the biggest, most attractive mates, brought evolution into sharp focus. Natural selection and sexual selection explain how species have evolved over time, Dorus adds.

Analyzing the origins of biodiversity is at the heart of the Center for Reproductive Evolution (CRE) in the College of Arts and Sciences. Housed in the biology department, the CRE explores patterns and processes of sexual selection, including their underlying molecular mechanisms and genomic consequences.

The center was co-founded by Dorus, Weeden Professor Scott Pitnick and Professor Emeritus John Belote in 2016. A shared interest in the study of reproductionalong with a recognition of the potential synergism of combining our research efforts, Pitnick sayspersuaded everyone to join forces. The 2019 appointment of Assistant Professor Yasir Ahmed-Braimah has brought additional expertise in genomics and bioinformatics.

Our philosophy is grounded in interdisciplinary science, says Dorus, who, like his colleagues, studies diverse biological systems, including flies, beetles, mammals, birds and fish. The Center for Reproductive Evolution offers complementary approaches to fundamental questions about sexual and ecological selection, diversification and speciation, and evolutionary genetics and genomics.

The teams workhorse is the common fruit fly. Formally known as Drosophila, this small, ubiquitous creature is one of the oldest, most effective genetic model organisms. That they are easy and inexpensive to culture in a lab environment is a boon to the CRE.

And thanks to new and emerging technologies (along with funding from agencies like the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation), the CRE is helping rewrite the rules of biological research. The center is collecting, storing, analyzing and disseminating information like never before, Dorus says. What was once impossible is now commonplace.

The CRE is part of the Universitys Big Data and Data Analytics research group. Established in 2018, the group develops and applies data analysis methodologies to various fields, including genomicsthe study of an organisms genes. Working at the nexus of evolutionary biology, genomics and computer science means dealing with copious amounts of data, says Dorus, who helped found the group with Pitnick and several others, including Professor Chilukuri Mohan, an artificial intelligence expert in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

In addition to resolving behavioral, morphological and physiological mechanisms of reproduction, the CRE excels at genetic mapping and characterizationdetermining the location and function of genes that confer specific phenotypes. Such research explains why individuals of a species often have similar, but rarely identical characteristics. (Think eye color, skin tone or face shape in humans.) Genetic mapping also provides insights into complex evolutionary processes stretching back millions of years.

Ahmed-Braimah is part of a new wave of Syracuse scientists fluent in omics-based technologies and advanced algorithms. (Omics refers to subdisciplines like genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics.) Technology is rewriting the rules of biological research, says Ahmed-Braimah, the Big Data group's first biology hire. Whereas we used to have lots of theory and little data, were now inundated by data.

To appreciate the science of the CRE is to understand the complex relationship between sperm and the female reproductive tract (FRT). Only since the 1950s have scientists confirmed that the FRT plays a key role in sperm maturation, a process in which sperm cells become competent to fertilize eggs. Sometimes sperm are not compatible with the FRT where they reside, leading to what is known as idiopathic infertility. Its a major human health burden, says Dorus, adding that the disease strikes about 30% of infertile couples worldwide.

Technology is rewriting the rules of biological research. Whereas we used to have lots of theory and little data, were now inundated by data.

Caitlin McDonough-Goldstein G20, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, became interested in idiopathic infertility while a student at Syracuse. Under Dorus and Pitnicks supervision, she tested thousands of tissue samples from Drosophila FRTs. Analyzing the flies gene expression and protein production helped McDonough-Goldstein understand the FRTs molecular nature. It also made her realize how changes after mating can regulate reproductive events and ensure fertility.

McDonough-Goldsteins work serves as a blueprint for other studies of ejaculate-by-female interactions. For instance, it has informed those by former CRE postdoctoral researcher Erin McCullough, now an assistant professor of biology at Clark University in Massachusetts, and former Syracuse Ph.D. student Emma Whittington G19, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oslos Natural History Museum.

Whittington, in fact, discovered that female-derived proteins contribute to sperm composition in the FRT. Although the precise ramifications of her findings are still being evaluated, they suggest that males and females contribute to sperm production. The development of sperm transcends the male and female reproductive tracts, requiring sophisticated molecular continuity and cooperation between the sexes, says Dorus, adding that Whittingtons findings were the subject of a recent cover story in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Zeeshan Syed, a fourth year CRE postdoctoral researcher, revels in laboratory and computational biological research. Witness his involvement with the CREs Drosophila Evolutionary Phenomics (DEP) project, which considers the evolution of biodiversity on an unrivaled scale.

Syed is part of a team of researchers quantifying about 25 complex traits in 150 different species of fruit flies. The traits include body dimensions, sex-specific lifespan, patterns of reproductive aging, sperm and egg morphology, courtship and remating behavior, to name a few. Its work thats 50 million years in the making, he says.

Involving colleagues from Cornell and Stanford universities, the DEP project aims to sequence the full genomes of all 150 species. Its hard to imagine a bigger Big Data project than this one, says Ahmed-Braimah, adding that such initiatives are a dream for scientists of his ilk.

Still, the DEP project is an exercise in logistics, what with maintaining live cultures of many different species and running myriad experiments to measure their diverse traits. One of Syeds jobs is to organize the activities of a small fleet of undergraduates. (Some 30 biology majors have logged more than a thousand hours on the project over the past four years.) Hes also responsible for providing individualized training in fluorescence microscopy and morphometric analysis, the latter of which is used to measure the length of fly sperm.

If you want to conduct big data science, you need to be prepared to lead a diverse team of researchers, Syed says. Working with professors Pitnick, Ahmed-Braimah, Dorus and Belote on the DEP project has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, turning me into a well-rounded, highly integrative biologist.

Pitnick, for one, thrives on working with young researchers. Our undergraduates are curious, insightful and creative, he says. Many of them improve our research in meaningful ways, and nearly all of them co-author multiple publications.

Case in point: Pitnick protg Amaar Asif 22 was among a handful of undergraduates who co-authored a major paper for the peer-reviewed Cells. The lead author was Pitnick, who, while measuring fly sperm, uncovered a novel developmental mechanism enabling flies with small testes to produce unusually long sperm. For Asif, the chance to contribute to such a discovery was transformative.

Our undergraduates are curious, insightful and creative. Many of them improve our research in meaningful ways, and nearly all of them co-author multiple publications.

Theres so much we dont know about this mechanism, and there are very few science papers to reference it, says Asif, who earned bachelors degrees in biology and neuroscience. Its uncharted territory.

An ongoing priority for the CRE is to understand the evolutionary link between sperm and FRT length. Pitnick laid the foundation in the 1990s, when he found that sperm in some species of Drosophila can grow up to two and half inches in length20 times longer than the fly itself and a thousand times longer than average human sperm. Pitnick also realized that as sperm became larger and fewer in number, the females got less of them per copulation. As few as a couple dozen sperm per mating, in some cases, he points out. This caused the flies to mate more often.

The takeaway here is that big, high-investment sperm have a better chance of penetrating the limited storage space of the FRT. Making giant sperm isnt easyit takes a lot of energy, Pitnick continues. Our research demonstrates that female choice and male competition require considerable investment on both sides. Thus, CRE strives to figure out how genetic and molecular mechanisms work together in an evolutionary sense.

The CRE helps us make sense of biodiversity and our place in it, not to mention the problems facing humanity, like disease and climate change.

Of course, tasks that used to take years to complete, like assembling an organisms genome, can now be accomplished in days or weeks. And with breakthrough studies of cellular and molecular mechanisms, scientists like Ahmed-Braimah can interrogate trait evolution with unrivaled speed and clarity. His current research into the changes that female Drosophila undergo after matingchanges that influence feeding behavior, metabolism, immune function and egg productionis incumbent on a slew of materials and methods.

Because functional genomics research provides a vast readout of cellular and molecular processes, we can access an immense amount of information. This helps us develop testable hypotheses more quickly, says Ahmed-Braimah, a computational and evolutionary genomicist.

Pitnick agrees, lauding the incredible variation that stems from natural and sexual selection in terms of the traits themselves, their underlying genetics and their interactions. This variation helps us make sense of biodiversity and our place in it, not to mention the problems facing humanity, like disease and climate change, he concludes. Perhaps part of the solution is found in a fly buzzing around your overripened fruit.

This story was published on September 20, 2022.

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Sex, Selection and Biodiversity - Syracuse.edu - Syracuse University

Its time to reimagine the debate around abortion. We are trapped in the tyranny of a binary choice: one side sees baby murderers; the other, patriarchal dictators who want to control womens bodies. This diametrically opposed pro-life/pro-choice discourse is a closed-loop. The result: a country that is dumbed down by polarisation.

Im a millennial raised in San Francisco, pro-choice and reproductive rights might as well have been my lullabies. At 15, I darted over to my nearest Planned Parenthood health center to get birth control pills. I wasnt sexually active and I hadnt even had my first period, but I pocketed them with pride a souvenir of personal choice.

Throughout adulthood, the pro-choice/pro-life binary gave me a comfortable foothold in the abortion debate and a prefabricated enemy to address. That changed when I met Sister Teresa Forcades, a former medical doctor, theologian and Catholic nun who supports abortion rights.

In our catchphrase country, complexity is like dirty dishwater opaque and best avoided. But after the Supreme Court decision to strike down Roe v Wade, it is precisely what we need. The majority of Americans refuse to think in such absolutes when it comes to abortion. Most of us are more inclined to say it depends.

We need a common framework broad enough for the heart of the abortion debate: what does it mean to be a human with dignity?

Based in Barcelona, Spain, Sister Forcadess vocal opposition to the churchs stance on abortion has earned her the moniker Europes most radical nun. Christian fundamentalist news sites have dubbed her The Abortion Nun and The Nun of the Devil. In 2009, the Vatican sent a letter demanding she withdraw her abortion views and be disciplined (yes, even nuns risk getting cancelled!). Instead, Forcades replied with a theological argument for reproductive rights so rigorously articulated that it silenced her Catholic cohort. Thirteen years later, the Vatican is yet to respond.

But she wont be called pro-choice. She says this binary limits the possibility that she can simultaneously believe in the sanctity of life and abortion rights.

Her argument is also deceptively simple. The essence of the classic pro-life argument is that the mother who aborts a pregnancy is choosing to kill her child, and must be forced not to. But take another example: a father whose child needs a kidney transplant to survive.

She asked: Is the church ready to force the father under punishment of imprisonment, or ex-communication, to give the kidney to the child? The answer: The church is not.

It will not make the father feel that the whole rage of God is going to fall upon him if he does not offer a little bit of his body to save the life of his child. No, its not doing it. Such a practice could ideologically justify all kinds of abuses like sacrificing one person for the sake of saving a few others by distributing that persons organs, she adds.

Her argument is sound, but its the simplest detail that struck me most: the mans body. According to the Catholic church, a man doesnt have to give a kidney to his child, yet a woman (in the grip of a life-threatening pregnancy) must surrender her body to the foetus.

This role reversal and subtle push against double standards add a refreshing jolt of feminism to the abortion debate one that the original Roe v Wade decision never quite delivered. The 1973 Supreme Court ruling hinged on a pregnant persons constitutional right to privacy, which protects this individuals right to choose.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant said a human being should never be an instrument for somebody else, as that runs against our dignity. Turning a man into a machine for organ-making, for example. Likewise, Forcades says, banning abortion turns a pregnant woman into an instrument of human reproduction, violating the very thing that makes us human.

When I met her, Forcades told me: The dignity of the person is something the church has been defending for centuries; sometimes alone in very difficult contexts.

What happens when a pregnant womans dignity, or very survival, is in direct conflict with the dignity of the life she carries? Is a mothers life more or less valuable than the child who relies on her for survival? And just as importantly, is the church or state ethically equipped to make this decision?

Clearly, entering such a conversation, free of guardrails, isnt about finding answers. Its about provoking more questions. We mustnt dupe ourselves into thinking that dialogue will lead to larger shared truths or even common ground. Nor should we feel compelled to just brush things to their neat corners with the liberal catchphrase: Everyone has a right to their own opinion.

A break from the binary should, instead, be seen as an invitation to be uncomfortable the permission to say: its complicated.

Linda Freund is an independent journalist based in Spain. This article was produced with the support of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California, the John Templeton Foundation and Templeton Religion Trust. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of these organisations

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What I learned after meeting a Catholic nun who supports abortion rights - The Independent

FRIDAY, July 29, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Smoking is associated with a higher risk for severe COVID-19, including death, independent of sociodemographic characteristics and medical history, according to a study published online July 15 in PLOS ONE.

Ram Poudel, from the American Heart Association Tobacco Regulation Center in Dallas, and colleagues assessed how smoking affects COVID-19 severity using data from 122 hospitals participating in the Get-With-The-Guidelines COVID-19 Registry (January 2020 to March 2021). The analysis included 6,717 patients who were classified as current smokers or nonsmokers according to admission data and were propensity-matched (1:2) for age, sex, race, medical history, medications, and time frame of hospital admission.

The researchers found that patients who self-identified as current smokers had higher adjusted odds of death (adjusted odds ratio, 1.41), use of mechanical ventilation (adjusted odds ratio, 1.15), and major adverse cardiovascular events (adjusted odds ratio, 1.27). Smoking was an even stronger risk factor for death among patients who were younger (18 to 59 years), were White, or had obesity.

"The robust and significant increase in the risk of severe COVID-19 seen in our study, independent of medical history and medication use and particularly among young individuals, underscores the urgent need for extensive public health interventions such as antismoking campaigns and increased access to cessation therapy, especially in the age of COVID," a coauthor said in a statement.

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Smoking Tied to Higher Risk for Severe COVID-19 - HealthDay News

By Gina Christian Posted August 2, 2022

Human life is an incredible gift from God, and its sacredness and dignity, from natural conception to natural death, must be honored, said Archbishop Nelson Prez.

The archbishop shared his reflections in a homily during a July 31 Mass he celebrated at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul. Sponsored by the archdiocesan Office for Life and Family (OLF), the liturgy which drew some 350 faithful was offered in thanksgiving for the gift of human life, particularly in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.

Concelebrating the Mass with Archbishop Prez were Philadelphia Auxiliary Bishop John McIntyre; Military Archdiocese Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Coffey; Msgr. David Benz, pastor emeritus of the former St. Therese of the Child Jesus Parish in Philadelphia; and Father Dennis Gill, cathedral rector and director of the archdiocesan Office for Divine Worship; with permanent Deacon Pat Kennedy, a board member of the Pro-Life Union of Greater Philadelphia, assisting.

Quoting St. John Paul II, the archbishop said all human life must be seen in its eternal context, since man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God (Evangelium Vitae, 2).

Archbishop Prez said Gods creative designs contrasted with human efforts to (play) around with life and go places we should never have gone to in the process.

We took into our hands as a society the actual defining of when life begins, and what life should look like and what life is, he said. How arrogant.

The archbishop commended faithful Christian people who had prayed for decades, in front of abortion centers and in their own parishes, that the millions and millions of abortions performed since the 1973 U.S. legalization of abortion would be halted.

The Supreme Courts June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, which overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent on abortion, represented a partial answer to those prayers, said the archbishop, who reminded faithful of his personal maxim to never underestimate the power of the Spirit of God working through you, in you and despite you.

With the issue of abortion returned to the state level, the task at hand is to connect women facing challenging pregnancies with an array of supports, said OLF director Steven Bozza.

His office provided Mass attendees with a 94-page booklet listing more than five dozen pregnancy outreaches including archdiocesan Catholic Social Services (CSS) in the Greater Philadelphia, Lehigh Valley and Lancaster areas, as well as southern New Jersey and Delaware.

This is the message we want to get out to everybody: were there for you, said Bozza. If youre in a problem pregnancy, you dont have to (go) through this alone.

Along with such resources, pro-life advocates must continue to tell the truth about pre-born children, said Bishop Coffey.

Lots of times, people say they want to follow the science for other things, and the science here is clear, he said. A ninth grader could understand this in biology class, how 23 chromosomes from the man and 23 from the woman come together. At that moment, its a human life. The day before his birth, is a baby any less a baby?

Language surrounding the abortion debate has confused that reality, said Mass attendee Deb Mirenda, a member of the Philadelphia-area Life Runners chapter and of St. Joseph Parish in Downingtown.

When people say reproductive rights once reproduction happens, that ends the conversation, because now we need a new conversation, one on the dignity of life and of another human being, said Mirenda, who has five children.

A commitment to honesty is central to evangelization and discipleship, said Father Gill, citing a quote by Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan on Servant of God Dorothy Day: She lived the Gospel as if it were the truth.

Christine and Daniel Grimm, on hand at the Mass with their two-month-old son Peter, said the reality of a newborn child deepens the awareness of the profound and joyful gift of life.

Do not be afraid, said Daniel Grimm.

Dr. Monique Ruberu, an obstetrician and gynecologist who has been a longtime prolife advocate, urged Mass attendees to invest both spiritually and practically in the lives of those facing crisis pregnancies.

In her post-Communion remarks, Ruberu said prayer intercessors, ultrasonographers, trade and business professionals along with post-abortive women willing to share their stories of loss and healing were all vital to the task of helping to make abortion unthinkable.

Now that the Dobbs decision has been issued, Mirenda believes that a greater respect for life will gradually take hold throughout the nation.

It changes one heart at a time, one mind at a time, one person at a time, she said.

Two-month-old Peter Grimm and his parents Daniel and Christine joined faithful for a July 31 Mass of Thanksgiving for the Gift of Human Life celebrated by Archbishop Nelson Prez at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul. (Gina Christian)

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Human life 'an incredible gift from God' that must be honored, says archbishop - CatholicPhilly.com

A research essay published in PLoS Biology suggests that selfish chromosomes identified in mammals could explain why so many human embryos are lost early in pregnancy.

Getting pregnant and maintaining a pregnancy can be incredibly challenging for the human species. Approximately 4060% of embryos are lost between fertilization and birth, in many cases without a mother knowing that she is pregnant. Unfortunately, one in eight recognized pregnancies will also end in miscarriage.

A common cause for embryo death in utero is aneuploidy an excess or deficit of chromosomes. Gametes, or sex cells (the sperm and egg, in the case of human reproduction), possess half the number of chromosomes (23) as the other cells in the human body (46). When a sperm fertilizes an egg, the fertilized egg should possess a total of 46 chromosomes. However, this is often not the case, as Professor Laurence Hurst, director of the Milner Centre for Evolution, describes: Very many embryos have the wrong number of chromosomes, often 45 or 47, and nearly all of these die in the womb. Even in cases like Down syndrome with three copies of chromosome 21, about 80% sadly will not make it to term.

Considering that the human species has been evolving for thousands of years, the high prevalence of aneuploidy which is so lethal to reproduction has puzzled scientists. In a new essay, Hurst outlines several clues, collected through his study of reproduction across different organisms, which may help to explain why it can be so challenging for humans to have a baby.

Aneuploidy is an issue that can often be traced back to the manufacturing of eggs, rather than sperm, with over 70% of eggs estimated to carry the incorrect number of chromosomes. The molecular processes that result in aneuploidy appear to occur in the first two stages of egg manufacturing. Research in mice suggests that the first step is susceptible to genetic mutations capable of sneaking into over 50% of eggs that, upon fertilization, selfishly force the partner chromosome to be destroyed. It has long been suspected that this mechanism, known as centromeric drive, also occurs in humans.

Selfish mutations that endeavor to force out the partner chromosome, but ultimately fail, result in fertilized eggs with the wrong number of chromosomes aneuploidy. Interestingly, Hurst observed that, from an evolutionary standpoint, these mutations may possess an advantage. In mammals, he suggests that it is evolutionarily beneficial for embryos developing from eggs with the incorrect number of chromosomes to be lost, due to the energy expenditure required for a mother to continuously support the developing fetus in the womb.

Aneuploidy has been detected in every mammal that has been studied. However, when studying fish and amphibians which do not carry their offspring this problem has not been identified. In over 2000 fish embryos, not one was found with chromosomal errors from mum, Hurst describes. Chromosomal gain or loss is therefore a downside of feeding offspring in the womb, Hurst suggests.

Hurst believes that the human species as mammals could be vulnerable to the effect of selfish mutations. In mammals such as mice, which typically birth several pups in one litter, the death of an embryo offers resources to the survivors within the same litter. In humans, where a mother most commonly carries one baby at a time, the early death of an embryo with aneuploidy provides the opportunity for a mother to reproduce again, hopefully with a healthy pregnancy as the outcome.

Hursts research also identified that a protein, known as Bub1, could be implicated in aneuploidy. The levels of Bub1 go down as mothers get older and as the rate of embryonic chromosomal problems goes up. Identifying these suppressor proteins and increasing their level in older mothers could restore fertility, he says.

I would hope too that these insights will be one step to helping those women who experience difficulties getting pregnant, or suffer recurrent miscarriage, Hurst concludes.

Reference: Hurst LD. Selfish centromeres and the wastefulness of human reproduction. PLOS Bio. 2022;20(7):e3001671. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001671.

This article is a rework of a press release issued by the University of Bath. Material has been edited for length and content.

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Why Is It So Challenging for Humans To Have a Baby? - Technology Networks

Twenty years ago, when I was thirteen, I wrote an entry in my journal about abortion, which began, I have this huge thing weighing on me. That morning, in Bible class, which Id attended every day since the first grade at an evangelical school, in Houston, my teacher had led us in an exercise called Agree/Disagree. He presented us with moral propositions, and we stood up and physically chose sides. Abortion is always wrong, he offered, and there was no disagreement. We all walked to the wall that meant agree.

Then I raised my hand and, according to my journal, said, I think it is always morally wrong and absolutely murder, but if a woman is raped, I respect her right to get an abortion. Also, I said, if a woman knew the child would face a terrible life, the child might be better off. Dead? the teacher asked. My classmates said I needed to go to the other side, and I did. I felt guilty and guilty and guilty, I wrote in my journal. I didnt feel like a Christian when I was on that side of the room. I felt terrible, actually.... But I still have that thought that if a woman was raped, she has her right. But thats so strangeshe has a right to kill what would one day be her child? That issue is irresolved in my mind and it will eat at me until I sort it out.

I had always thought of abortion as it had been taught to me in school: it was a sin that irresponsible women committed to cover up another sin, having sex in a non-Christian manner. The moral universe was a stark battle of virtue and depravity, in which the only meaningful question about any possible action was whether or not it would be sanctioned in the eyes of God. Men were sinful, and the goodness of women was the essential bulwark against the corruption of the world. There was suffering built into this framework, but suffering was noble; justice would prevail, in the end, because God always provided for the faithful. It was these last tenets, prosperity-gospel principles that neatly erase the material causes of suffering in our history and our social policiesnot only regarding abortion but so much elsewhich toppled for me first. By the time I went to college, I understood that I was pro-choice.

America is, in many ways, a deeply religious countrythe only wealthy Western democracy in which more than half of the population claims to pray every day. (In Europe, the figure is twenty-two per cent.) Although seven out of ten American women who get abortions identify as Christian, the fight to make the procedure illegal is an almost entirely Christian phenomenon. Two-thirds of the national population and nearly ninety per cent of Congress affirm a tradition in which a teen-age girl continuing an unplanned pregnancy allowed for the salvation of the world, in which a corrupt government leader who demanded a Massacre of the Innocents almost killed the baby Jesus and damned us all in the process, and in which the Son of God entered the world as what the godless dare to call a clump of cells.

For centuries, most Christians believed that human personhood began months into the long course of pregnancy. It was only in the twentieth century that a dogmatic narrative, in which every pregnancy is an iteration of the same static story of creation, began both to shape American public policy and to occlude the reality of pregnancy as volatile and ambiguousas a process in which creation and destruction run in tandem. This newer narrative helped to erase an instinctive, long-held understanding that pregnancy does not begin with the presence of a child, and only sometimes ends with one. Even within the course of the same pregnancy, a person and the fetus she carries can shift between the roles of lover and beloved, host and parasite, vessel and divinity, victim and murderer; each body is capable of extinguishing the other, although one cannot survive alone. There is no human relationship more complex, more morally unstable than this.

The idea that a fetus is not just a full human but a superior and kinglike onea being whose survival is so paramount that another person can be legally compelled to accept harm, ruin, or death to insure itis a recent invention. For most of history, women ended unwanted pregnancies as they needed to, taking herbal or plant-derived preparations on their own or with the help of female healers and midwives, who presided over all forms of treatment and care connected with pregnancy. They were likely enough to think that they were simply restoring their menstruation, treating a blockage of blood. Pregnancy was not confirmed until quickening, the point at which the pregnant person could feel fetal movement, a measurement that relied on her testimony. Then as now, there was often nothing that distinguished the result of an abortionthe body expelling fetal tissuefrom a miscarriage.

Ancient records of abortifacient medicine are plentiful; ancient attempts to regulate abortion are rare. What regulations existed reflect concern with womens behavior and marital propriety, not with fetal life. The Code of the Assura, from the eleventh century B.C.E., mandated death for married women who got abortions without consulting their husbands; when husbands beat their wives hard enough to make them miscarry, the punishment was a fine. The first known Roman prohibition on abortion dates to the second century and prescribes exile for a woman who ends her pregnancy, because it might appear scandalous that she should be able to deny her husband of children without being punished. Likewise, the early Christian Church opposed abortion not as an act of murder but because of its association with sexual sin. (The Bible offers ambiguous guidance on the question of when life begins: Genesis 2:7 arguably implies that it begins at first breath; Exodus 21:22-24 suggests that, in Old Testament law, a fetus was not considered a person; Jeremiah 1:5 describes Gods hand in creation even before I formed you in the womb. Nowhere does the Bible clearly and directly address abortion.) Augustine, in the fourth century, favored the idea that God endowed a fetus with a soul only after its body was formeda point that Augustine placed, in line with Aristotelian tradition, somewhere between forty and eighty days into its development. There cannot yet be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation when it is not formed in flesh, and so not yet endowed with sense, he wrote. This was more or less the Churchs official position; it was affirmed eight centuries later by Thomas Aquinas.

In the early modern era, European attitudes began to change. The Black Death had dramatically lowered the continents population, and dealt a blow to most forms of economic activity; the Reformation had weakened the Churchs position as the essential intermediary between the layman and God. The social scientist Silvia Federici has argued, in her book Caliban and the Witch, that church and state waged deliberate campaigns to force women to give birth, in service of the emerging capitalist economy. Starting in the mid-16th century, while Portuguese ships were returning from Africa with their first human cargoes, all the European governments began to impose the severest penalties against contraception, abortion, and infanticide, Federici notes. Midwives and wise women were prosecuted for witchcraft, a catchall crime for deviancy from procreative sex. For the first time, male doctors began to control labor and delivery, and, Federici writes, in the case of a medical emergency they prioritized the life of the fetus over that of the mother. She goes on: While in the Middle Ages women had been able to use various forms of contraceptives, and had exercised an undisputed control over the birthing process, from now on their wombs became public territory, controlled by men and the state.

Martin Luther and John Calvin, the most influential figures of the Reformation, did not address abortion at any length. But Catholic doctrine started to shift, albeit slowly. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V labelled both abortion and contraception as homicide. This pronouncement was reversed three years later, by Pope Gregory XIV, who declared that abortion was only homicide if it took place after ensoulment, which he identified as occurring around twenty-four weeks into a pregnancy. Still, theologians continued to push the idea of embryonic humanity; in 1621, the physician Paolo Zacchia, an adviser to the Vatican, proclaimed that the soul was present from the moment of conception. Still, it was not until 1869 that Pope Pius IX affirmed this doctrine, proclaiming abortion at any point in pregnancy to be a sin punishable by excommunication.

When I found out I was pregnant, at the beginning of 2020, I wondered how the experience would change my understanding of life, of fetal personhood, of the morality of reproduction. Its been years since I traded the echo chamber of evangelical Texas for the echo chamber of progressive Brooklyn, but I can still sometimes feel the old world view flickering, a photographic negative underneath my vision. I have come to believe that abortion should be universally accessible, regulated only by medical codes and ethics, and not by the criminal-justice system. Still, in passing moments, I can imagine upholding the idea that our sole task when it comes to protecting life is to end the practice of abortion; I can imagine that seeming profoundly moral and unbelievably urgent. I would only need to think of the fetus in total isolationto imagine that it were not formed and contained by another body, and that body not formed and contained by a family, or a society, or a world.

As happens to many women, though, I became, if possible, more militant about the right to an abortion in the process of pregnancy, childbirth, and caregiving. It wasnt just the difficult things that had this effectthe paralyzing back spasms, the ragged desperation of sleeplessness, the thundering doom that pervaded every cell in my body when I weaned my child. And it wasnt just my newly visceral understanding of the anguish embedded in the facts of American family life. (A third of parents in one of the richest countries in the world struggle to afford diapers; in the first few months of the pandemic, as Jeff Bezoss net worth rose by forty-eight billion dollars, sixteen per cent of households with children did not have enough to eat.) What multiplied my commitment to abortion were the beautiful things about motherhood: in particular, the way I felt able to love my baby fully and singularly because I had chosen to give my body and life over to her. I had not been forced by law to make another person with my flesh, or to tear that flesh open to bring her into the world; I hadnt been driven by need to give that new person away to a stranger in the hope that she would never go to bed hungry. I had been able to choose this permanent rearrangement of my existence. That volition felt sacred.

Abortion is often talked about as a grave act that requires justification, but bringing a new life into the world felt, to me, like the decision that more clearly risked being a moral mistake. The debate about abortion in America is rooted in the largely unacknowledged premise that continuing a pregnancy is a prima facie moral good, the pro-choice Presbyterian minister Rebecca Todd Peters writes. But childbearing, Peters notes, is a morally weighted act, one that takes place in a world of limited and unequally distributed resources. Many people who get abortionsthe majority of whom are poor women who already have childrenunderstand this perfectly well. We ought to take the decision to continue a pregnancy far more seriously than we do, Peters writes.

I gave birth in the middle of a pandemic that previewed a future of cross-species viral transmission exacerbated by global warming, and during a summer when ten million acres on the West Coast burned. I knew that my child would not only live in this degrading world but contribute to that degradation. (Every year, the average American emits enough carbon to melt ten thousand tons of ice in the Antarctic ice sheets, David Wallace-Wells writes in his book The Uninhabitable Earth.) Just before COVID arrived, the science writer Meehan Crist published an essay in the London Review of Books titled Is it OK to have a child? (The title alludes to a question that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once asked in a live stream, on Instagram.) Crist details the environmental damage that we are doing, and the costs for the planet and for us and for those who will come after. Then she turns the question on its head. The idea of choosing whether or not to have a child, she writes, is predicated on a fantasy of control that quickly begins to dissipate when we acknowledge that the conditions for human flourishing are distributed so unevenly, and that, in an age of ecological catastrophe, we face a range of possible futures in which these conditions no longer reliably exist.

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Is Abortion Sacred? - The New Yorker

BUDAPEST -- "If it weren't for a private clinic, I wouldn't have him," Krisztina Kazinczy says, pointing at her little boy collecting branches at a playground in a Budapest suburb. Her son, now almost 2 years old, was born after his parents received in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment at a private clinic.

Such stories could be increasingly rare in Hungary, as from June 30, the government has outlawed all private institutions from offering IVF treatment. Hungary's longtime, right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban has justified the move, saying it is designed to make the procedure more accessible and help stop the shrinking of Hungary's population.

The country's population has been in an almost constant decline since 1980 and has been under 10 million since 2010. While the number of births has been rising since 2019, there have also been agrowing number of deaths, severely worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.

The government's ban on private IVF treatment has drastically reduced the options for many women and couples who are having problems conceiving. With private clinics now a no-go in Hungary, they are left with two options: try their luck at state hospitals with long waiting lists or pursue expensive treatment abroad.

Kazinczy, 38, a freelance consultant, had multiple rounds of IVF at a state-run hospital before electing to go private.

"I will never forget, one time they called in five of usand told us to get naked. When the doctor was done with the first person, the second went right in. And in the meantime, we stood next to each other naked, because they didn't have enough time to wait for us to undress and dress," she says.

Her experience in the private sector was completely different. She didn't, she says, have to explain her medical history from scratch at every appointment and always felt that her doctors were well-informed and knew her case. After two rounds of treatment at the private clinic, she became pregnant.

The first Hungarian IVF baby was born in May 1989 in the southwestern Hungarian city of Pecs. A year later, Steven Kaali, a Hungarian-born, U.S.-based doctor, decided to open a fertility clinic in Budapest. The center, which opened in 1992 in one of Budapest's more affluent neighborhoods, soon became popular in Hungary and well-known abroad.

By 2017, the Kaali Institute (named after Kaali's father, himself a gynecologist) had assisted in the births of over 25,000 children, according to a letter Kaali wrote to Orban. The letter was published in a biography of Kaali, which also includes a signed photograph of the doctor and Hungary's veteran leader, whose Fidesz party won reelection again in April elections.

All eight Kaali Institute centers around Hungary were bought by the government in 2019 for an undisclosed amount. The reason for the sale has never been publicly announced. In December 2019, the Human Resources Minister Miklos Kasler announced that over 10 billion forints ($24.5 million) was to be spent on IVF clinics, treatments, and medications supporting fertility.

In May 2021, the government went further, announcing a ban on private clinics performing fertility treatments starting June 30, 2022. The state bought one more private clinic based in Budapest, the Robert Karoly Infertility Center, and the two remaining private fertility centers in the capital -- the Versys Clinics and the Reprosys Fertility Center -- both closed down, unable to provide services under the new law.

RFE/RL reached out to all three institutions for comment but did not receive any responses.

For people pursuing fertility treatment in Hungary, the shuttering of private services has been a huge blow.

Anita, 41, who for reasons of privacy prefers to only use her first name, lives in Szentendre, a town near Budapest. She has two teenage sons and would like to have a baby with her new husband. She became pregnant twice in the last year but miscarried both times.

"We didn't hear a heartbeat," she says over the phone.

Now, Anita has no other option but to go to a state-run hospital. While the treatment is mostly free, Anita's husband still had to undergo some privately funded examinations.

"When I called the assistant of the doctor in September, they told me the first available slot was in January. But if we pay, we can go as soon as October," she says about her husband's private examinations.

Anita is preparing for her second and last round of IVF within the state system but has doubts about whether she has received the correct diagnostic examinations in advance of the procedures.

"I asked the doctor to at least whisper the name of the [extra] examinations we could do, and we would do them in a private [clinic], but he wouldn't," Anita says. "If I could afford it, I would go to the Czech Republic."

Some Hungarians can afford to go abroad. According to Gabriela Nemethova, an IVF coordinator at the Gyncare clinic in Nitra, a city in western Slovakia, the number of Hungarian patients has "multiplied" in recent years. At the Slovak clinic, a basic consultation is 50 euros ($50) and one full round of IVF costs 1,200 euros.

Nemethova speaks Hungarian and was hired so the clinic could make their services available for Hungarian clients. Both of Gyncare's Slovak clinics have Hungarian-speaking coordinators, and they have nurses, receptionists, and doctors who can speak Hungarian, or at least English.

"We have some patients who didn't want to wait their turn in Hungary," Nemethova says. "But there are others who can't get treatment in these institutions because of their age, for example. And there are some who can afford it, but can't get the treatment they want."

For LGBT people, the challenges are even greater.

Laura, a soft-spoken German woman with a Hungarian wife, splits her time between Budapest and the Austrian capital, Vienna. Now eight months pregnant in the middle of a heatwave, she says that for her and her wife, Zsuzsanna, Hungary was never an option, as IVF is only available for heteronormative couples or single women nearing the end of their fertile years.

With the Czech Republic and Slovakia having similar restrictions on same-sex couples, Laura, who prefers to use just her first name, started her IVF in Vienna, which allows non-heteronormative couples to receive treatment. She did have some medical examinations before treatment in Hungary, but these were done in private clinics -- not, she says, because of homophobia from state doctors but because of language barriers.

The shortcomings of the Hungarian state health sector go beyond fertility centers. Due to what critics say is a lack of funding, Hungarian hospitals often have insufficient equipment and a shortage of staff. According to one estimate, Hungary's health-care sector has a shortfall of 25,000 medical workers, which is only expected to worsen in time as fewer young people go into the field.

One hospital in Szolok, a city with 71,000 inhabitants, recently announced that it can only accommodate births on Mondays and Wednesdays, while another rural hospital's maternity ward shut down due to a lack of medics.

I hate the process of the government taking over these institutions with my whole heart. I'm afraid that it will mean them being so overwhelmed and underpaid that it will result in thousands of unsuccessful procedures."

Freelance consultant and mother Kazinczy, who in 2021 organized a protest against the ban on private clinics in front of the Hungarian parliament that attracted some 50 people, says that her dissatisfaction has nothing to do with the qualifications or expertise of doctors in state-run institutions. Rather, she says, it has to do with the large number of patients they receive, the lack of specialists, and the relatively low salaries doctors receive.

"[It's a] production line," says Borbala, 30, a mother of a 5-week-old baby who went through state fertility treatment and who also prefers only to give her first name.

"They are there to make us a baby, even if that doesn't sound so nice. Despite this, everyone was nice and compassionate," she writes in an e-mail.

For Borbala, who suffers from endometriosis and adenomyosis, IVF was successful the first time she tried. She had various surgeries for her health conditions, her IVF treatment, and the birth of her child all at the same state hospital.

"From the beginning, I focused on the expertise and not the surroundings, like the dirty corridors and the old furniture," she says, and her experience, overall, was positive. "I do not doubt that I would come back. I felt safe."

Despite her positive experience in the state sector, she is worried about the government takeover.

"I hate the process of the government taking over these institutions with my whole heart. I'm afraid that it will mean them being so overwhelmed and underpaid that it will result in thousands of unsuccessful procedures. We were lucky, [getting treatment] in the middle of the capital. The real problems are in the rural areas," she says.

Beyond Orban's pronouncements about reversing the Hungarian population decline, many doctors, health workers, and patients are scratching their heads as to why the government has decided to target the private sector. In power for 12 years, Orban's government has long been criticized by the European Union, of which Hungary is a member, for presiding over an allegedly corrupt public procurement system, widespread conflicts of interest, lack of judicial independence, and restrictions on media freedom.

"I simply don't see any logic to this," says Alexandra Toth, a gynecologist and infertility specialist formerly at Budapest's private Reprosys clinic. "I would like to believe that their reason is that they want to make the process available for more people. But I don't really see the truth in that. There are long waiting lists, there isn't any quality control, and there's no competition anymore. I just don't see how this [new system] could be better."

Toth, who is currently working at a private gynecology clinic in downtown Budapest, says she was approached by a state-funded IVF clinic about the possibility of employment. The negotiation "died down," she says, after she communicated her needs from a professional perspective. Having previously studied in the United States, she says she told her prospective employer about the importance of certain practices and protocols, but, she says, she never heard back about whether these things would be available there.

The clinic Toth works at now is bright, full of natural light, with high ceilings and modern, shiny machines. She says many of the women who come to the clinic say they would like to hear a second opinion after consulting a doctor at a state institution. The clinic she works at can undertake certain gynecological examinations and procedures related to fertility treatment but not offer IVF.

It's good that people come for a second opinion, she says, "but there are people who come and ask us to explain what's happening. Because they have only spent two times five-minute [appointments] with a doctor and have plenty of questions before the procedure."

Toth's biggest concern is that there will be even more restrictions in the future. In April, the government announced the need for more oversight of the type of clinic where she now works, where they don't even carry out IVF procedures.

"I have a feeling that they will want to restrict private clinics even more," she says. "And I think they might try to do the same with foreign IVF treatments, too."

In February, the government announced the Directorate of Human Reproduction, which in the future will head the reconstruction of the sector. The president of the directorate is Vesztergom Dora, a doctor and well-known specialist in the fertility field and the sister-in-law of Hungary's president, Katalin Novak. RFE/RL reached out to Dora but didn't receive a response.

For those hoping to become parents, the added layer of insecurity to an already stressful and emotional process is grueling. Many former private patients were upset that their eggs were stored in a clinic that is now state-funded. Others managed to make last-minute transfers to clinics abroad or other state institutions they preferred to the one they were assigned.

For Kazinczy, the issue is pressing, as she plans on having a second child. The private institution that facilitated the birth of her first child is now run by the state, she explains, while chasing her son around the playground.

"This is the most tender part of our lives," she says. Her son stops at the swing and demands his mother join him in the miniature castle. "And we would like to know what's happening in the next few years."

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Despite Population Decline, The Hungarian Government Is Making It Harder To Have (IVF) Babies - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

In last weeks column, There is a feminism without abortion, I began to share the interview given to New York Times columnist Ezra Klein by feminist and legal scholar Dr. Erika Bachiochi. She argues in her 2021 book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, that the sexual revolution coupled with hi-tech forms of contraception and easy abortion have been devastating for womens well-being and the cultivation of virtue.

Reflecting on the evolution of feminism, Dr. Bachiochi observes that in capitalism, the market has grown to value women not because they are biological women but when they perform at the workplace like men. The standard has been maleness, undervaluing (indeed ignoring) the roles and functions of women qua women. This is the ultimate patriarchy.

Weve seen women advance in so many ways, except there isnt this concomitant valuing of the work thats done by women in pregnancy, and then the work thats done by both men and women in the home. The modern day womens movement really capitulates to a market logic, where equality is seen in market terms, where instead of women as caregivers and men as breadwinners, both men and women are valued only as breadwinners.

And that really important work of care that women especially but increasingly men too really value, that work of care they do in the home, has not been valued in the market And that has been especially, I think, difficult for poor women.

In capitalism, the market would prefer women to be just like men never getting pregnant, never needing maternity leave. Biological women may get pregnant, requiring absence from work on full pay; someone may have to be paid to backstop. In capitalism, women becoming pregnant is inconvenient, and expensive; this may partially explain why women are often paid less than men for the same work.

According to Dr. Bachiochi, abortion and contraception really serve the needs of capital and the market at the expense of families.

There should be massive realignment where theres a real renewed attention to but support of caregiving. But just the fact that there is a choice [for abortion] means that employers see it as a cheaper choice.

This is exactly why you have employers, corporations states talking about the corporate case for reproductive health its a far cheaper option than accommodations for pregnancy for caregiving. And so when theyre thinking about the bottom line, this is the way theyre going to go.

Suddenly, theres all this talk about autonomy, and theres a very Lockean approach to the way progressives talk about abortion rights and this idea that the child well, they dont [use the word] child the fetus is like a trespasser on their property of their body, the self-ownership of their body, again, in a very Lockean way and they then have this right to dispel anyone who comes through it in kind of an absolute property right, when it seems to me that in the progressive tradition, theres a better understanding of the duties of care we owe one another, that were all interdependent, that theres more of a responsibility for those who are vulnerable and dependent. And the child, who is a human being and is really utterly dependent on his or her mother at that time for those nine months, is the most vulnerable and the most dependent.

Instead of arguing that because the child growing in the womb is vulnerable and dependent upon the mother for life, that very vulnerability is used to argue that the child has no right to live, no right to be called human, because it is not viable outside the womb. Capitalism and the market has no use for the vulnerable the aged, the handicapped, the idle unskilled because they cannot produce, or because they constrain optimal production.

Dr. Bachiochi suggests that the liberal capitalist way of thinking (exemplified by John Locke commonly known as the father of liberalism) may be at the root of a radical individualism masquerading as personal autonomy that is ultimately anti-family and anti-community. This approach to life must be challenged.

In terms of the poor woman by resetting this question the law does teach. By saying that there are all sorts of people, maybe not everyone in the country obviously, who believe that a childs life is taken in an abortion and that we actually owe duties to that child, that it helps reset thinking about sex itself, that I think it ought to help us take sex more seriously.

When we take the natural facts of human reproduction seriously, that there are asymmetrical burdens on women, therefore women should hold men off more and expect more from them.

In the same way, I think that enabling and, again, empowering the poor to take seriously the really important work of the home, of rearing children is basically what the rich already do. And its kind of not fair that the wealthy, the rich, the well-educated see how important it is to prioritize their childrens development, their childrens moral and intellectual development, and then say, oh, well, we shouldnt expect that of the poor.

To me, that is actually more of a flawed way of thinking about the capacities of the poor. And our human equality is not in how much property we own or wealth we have or how much money we make or anything. But its just in our equal human capacity for moral development.

And I think rich and poor both have that and that should be an expectation that our laws have that we all ought to be striving for moral development. We ought not to shield moral responsibility from the poor or the rich, that our laws and our policies should be enabling people to carry out their obligations to one another, because thats how people develop virtuously. And that tends to lead toward both personal and societal happiness.

Engaging in the natural act of sexual intercourse implies moral obligations many seek to avoid. Readily available abortion and contraception assist in this, and lead to a new antinatalism people deciding ex ante that they never want to become parents. This can lead to immature behaviour, and sexual irresponsibility.

People dont realize what theyre missing out on when they make those sorts of determinations well ahead of time. Parenting is profound. And I think for eons and eons, what human beings have seen is that becoming a mother or father really develops the person, requires a great movement away from the focus on self toward another, toward benevolence and in order to then be able to focus on others outside of your family as well, and that maturation process, I think, is most definitely needed in our culture right now on the part of both men and women.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com

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Peter Espeut | The economics of abortion | Commentary - Jamaica Gleaner

Sisters Shirley and Marlene Rutherford often leave people rubbing their eyes in confusion and wondering if they are seeing double.

For the identical twin sisters, now in their 70s, have dressed identically all their lives and still love to do so right down to their shoes. Shirley and Marlene share everything, including their home in Willerby, and have been affectionately nicknamed "double trouble" by their neighbours.

Shirley and Marlene have now opened up on their life as a double act. Speaking to BBC Look North, they said they were used to the stares and had no intention of giving up on their identical outfits anytime soon.

Read more: 'I fancied Killing Eve's Jodie Comer and realised I was a lesbian' - Hull mum

The twins are difficult to tell apart, even to those who have known them for decades. "I think if we'd have dressed different, we'd have looked at one another and thought, 'I wish I had that on'," Marleen said.

"Our mum made all our clothes," Shirley said, recalling their childhood days. "She made our bows in our hair, and we used to go to bed with rags in our hair to make it curly," Marleen added.

"I have never seen them not dressed the same," said friend and neighbour Janet Slater, who has known the sisters for more than 20 years. "Coats the same, scarves, hats, gloves, fleeces. Always the same, always in the same shoes."

The sisters are well-known in Willerby. Kerry Robinson, who works in the village Post Office, said she found it so different to tell them apart, sometimes she had to resort to just addressing them as 'ladies'.

"I can [tell them apart], one day, and then the next day I'm confused again," she added. "I'll think, 'that's Marlene' and then I'll say, 'oh no, is it Shirley?' And then I'll confuse myself so I just won't dare say anything."

It's estimated that twins occur in one in every 2050 births, although identical twins are more rare than non-identical. A recent report suggested that the birth rate for twins was increasing, with more twins born than ever in 2021.

According to the Human Reproduction medical journal, the number of twins born is now particularly high in Europe and North America. Worldwide, the figure has risen from nine twins for every 1,000 deliveries to 12. You can watch the full interview with Shirley and Marlene on the BBC website.

For Marlene and Shirley, being twins defines them. "They do say 'there goes the twins', and 'here comes double trouble'," they added, with one appropriately finishing the other's sentence.

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The twin sisters from Willerby still dressing identically in their 70s - Hull Live

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday announced the creation of a new reproductive rights task force aimed at protecting abortion access and enforcing federal laws on reproduction rights in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

In a press release, the DOJ said the new task force will bring together representatives from several offices in the department, including the civil rights division, the Office of the Solicitor General and U.S. attorneys offices.

DOJ Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who will chair the new task force, said the DOJ is committed to protecting access to reproductive services after the high courts decision last month that cleared the way for states to restrict or ban abortion access.

The Court abandoned 50 years of precedent and took away the constitutional right to abortion, preventing women all over the country from being able to make critical decisions about our bodies, our health, and our futures, Gupta said in a statement.

The DOJ said the reproductive rights task force will monitor state and local laws that infringe on federal protections for reproductive care, impair a womans ability to seek abortion care in states where it is legal, ban federally approved abortion medication or prevent federal employees from accessing abortion care.

The task force is not entirely new but simply formalizes an existing working group and efforts by the Department over the last several months to enforce federal laws and protect abortion access, according to the DOJ.

The news comes after President Biden signed an executive order last week that instructs the Department of Health and Human Services to protect and expand access to abortion through medication shipped by mail.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has already said he will enforce the protection of abortion medication, which is approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

The Biden administration has so far resisted calls to allow abortion access on federal lands and to declare a public health emergency after several states have taken steps to severely restricted access to abortion.

The presidents resistance has angered progressives who are urging Biden to do more after the Supreme Court ruling. For his part, Biden has pushed for Congress to codify the right to abortion.

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DOJ creates new reproductive rights task force - The Hill

According to some estimates, theoceans, which contain 97% of the world's water, keep Earth alive. Over a billion people rely on it as their primary source of protein, and we depend on it to control our climate and absorb CO2. It is believed that a large portion ofplasticgarbage that does not go to a landfill or other means of waste disposal ends up in the ocean. A major issue harming the maritime ecosystem is plastic pollution. It endangers the health of the ocean, marine wildlife, human health, food safety and quality, and coastal tourism, and it causesclimate change.

Although it can be difficult to estimate the exact amount of plastic in the ocean, the largest study to date estimates that there are 5 trillion particles of plastic floating in the water. Massive amounts of plastic have collected across the ocean, even in deep-sea regions that were once believed to be undisturbed by people.

North Pacific

2 trillion

Indian

1.3 trillion

North Atlantic

930 billion

South Pacific

491 billion

South Atlantic

297 billion

The amount of plastic pollution in our oceans weighs as much as 268,000 tons, or 38,000African elephants. The plastic was divided into three sizes by ocean researcher Marcus Eriksen and his team:microplastics(4.75 millimeters and less), meso plastics (4.75 to 200mm), and macro plastics (over 200mm). By 2040, 29 million metric tons of plastic rubbish are anticipated to enter the oceans each year, nearly tripling today's level.

The plastic you discard can end up in the ocean, even if you live hundreds of miles from the shore. Once in the ocean, plastic breaks down very slowly, forming microscopic fragments known as microplastics that can enter the marine food chain and do a great deal of harm tomarine species. Around 80% of the plastic pollution in the world is estimated to come from land use, and 20% from marine-going vessels. The plastic is largely scarcely discernible. The minuscule beads used in cosmetic products like toothpaste and face washes are among the most popular ones. Additionally, the plastic you throw away ends up in a landfill. Plastic is frequently blown away when the trash is being delivered to landfills because it is so light. From there, it may eventually clog drains and infiltrate rivers and the sea this way.

At least 800 species are reportedly impacted by marine waste worldwide, and up to 80% of that trash is plastic, according to theUnited Nations. In addition to piling up in the oceans, plastic is the material that does the most harm to marine life.Fish,seabirds, and marine animals are injured or killed by plastic trash in the ocean. Globally, marine plastic pollution has had an impact on at least 267 species, including 86% of allsea turtlespecies, 44% of all seabird species, and 43% of allmammalian species.

Due to the pervasive plastic pollution on many beaches, there is a decrease inturtlereproduction rates due to the altered sand temperature where incubation occurs. Additionally, plastic garbage kills up to a million seabirds yearly. Like sea turtles, seabirds consume plastic, it occupies space in their stomachs and can occasionally result inmalnutrition. Numerous seabirds are discovered deceased with this material still in their stomachs. Scientists predict that by 2050, 99% of all seabird species will have consumed plastic, up from the current estimate of 60%.

In the end, it's about us. Whether we intend to litter or not, there is always a danger that the plastic we discard will end up in the sea. By 2050, scientists project that the weight of ocean plastics will be more than the total weight of all fish in the seas unless immediate action is made to address this important issue. Small steps lead to big changes, and each of us can change the world.

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How Much Plastic Is In The Ocean? - Worldatlas.com

We have long been baffled as to why men live around five years less than women, on average. But now a new study suggests that, beyond the age of 60, the main culprit is a genetic defect: the loss of the Y chromosome, which determines sex at birth.

Its clear that men are more fragile, the question is why, explains Lars Forsberg, a researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden.

For decades it was thought that the male Y chromosomes only function was to generate sperm that determine the sex of a newborn. A boy carries one X chromosome from the mother and one Y from the father, while a girl carries two Xs, one from each parent.

In 1963, a team of scientists discovered that as men age, their blood cells lose the Y chromosome due to a copying error that happens when the mother cell divides to produce a daughter cell. In 2014, Forsberg analyzed the life expectancy of older men based on whether their blood cells had lost the Y chromosome, a mutation called mLOY. The effect recorded was mindblowing, the researcher recalls.

Men with fewer Y chromosomes had a higher risk of cancer and lived five and a half years less than those who retained this part of the genome. Three years later, Forsberg discovered that this mutation makes getting Alzheimers three times as likely. What is most worrying is the enormous prevalence of this defect. Twenty percent of men over the age of 60 have the mutation. The rate rises to 40% in those over 70 and 57% in those over 90, according to Forsbergs previous studies. It is undoubtedly the most common mutation in humans, he says.

Until now, nobody knew whether the gradual disappearance of the Y chromosome in the blood played a pivotal role in diseases associated with aging. In a study just published in the journal Science, Forsberg and scientists from Japan and the US demonstrate for the first time that this mutation increases the risk of heart problems, immune system failure and premature death.

The researchers have created the first animal model without a Y chromosome in their blood stem cells: namely, mice modified with the gene-editing tool CRISPR. The study showed that these rodents develop scarring of the heart in the form of fibrosis, one of the most common cardiovascular ailments in humans, and die earlier than normal mice. The authors then analyzed the life expectancy recorded in nearly 15,700 patients with cardiovascular disease whose data are stored in the UK public biobank. The analysis shows that loss of the Y chromosome in the blood is associated with a 30% increased risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.

This genetic factor can explain more than 75% of the difference in life expectancy between men and women over the age of 60, explains biochemist Kenneth Walsh, a researcher at the University of Virginia in the US and co-author of the study. In other words, this mutation would explain four of the five years lower life expectancy in men. Walshs estimate links to a previous study in which men with a high mLOY load live about four years less than those without it.

It is well known that men die earlier than women because they smoke and drink more and are more prone to recklessness. But, beyond the age of 60, genetics becomes the main culprit in the deterioration of their health: It seems as if men age earlier than women, Walsh points out.

The study reveals the molecular keys to the damage associated with the mLOY mutation. Within the large group of blood cells can be found the immune systems white blood cells responsible for defending the body against viruses and other pathogens. The loss of the Y chromosome triggers aberrant behavior in macrophages, a type of white blood cell, causing them to scar heart tissue, which in turn increases the risk of heart failure. Researchers have shown that the damage can be reversed if they give mice pirfenidone, a drug approved to treat humans with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a condition in which the lungs become scarred and breathing becomes increasingly difficult.

There are three factors that increase the risk of Y chromosome loss. The first is the inevitable ageing process. The longer one lives, the more cell divisions occur in the body and the greater the likelihood of mutations occurring in the genome copying process. The second is smoking. Smoking causes you to lose the Y chromosome in your blood at an accelerated rate; if you stop smoking, healthy cells once again become the majority, says Walsh. But the third is also inevitable: other inherited genetic mutations can increase the gradual loss of the Y chromosome in the blood by a factor of five, explains Forsberg.

Both Forsberg and Walsh believe that this study opens up an enormous field of research. Still to be studied is whether men with this mutation also have cardiac fibrosis and whether this is behind their heart attacks and other cardiac ailments. We also need to better understand why losing the Y chromosome damages health. For now, we have shown that the Y chromosome is not just there for reproduction, but is is also important for our health, says Forsberg. The next step is to identify which genes are responsible for the phenomenon.

The loss of this chromosome has been detected in all organs and tissues of the body and at all ages, although it is more evident after 60. It is abundant in the blood because this is a tissue that produces millions of new cells every day from blood stem cells. Healthy stem cells produce healthy daughter cells and mutated ones produce daughter cells with mLOY.

A previous study showed that this mutation of the Y chromosome disrupts the function of up to 500 genes located elsewhere in the genome. It has also been shown to damage lymphocytes and natural killer cells, evident in men with prostate cancer and Alzheimers disease, respectively.

There are hardly any tests for mLOY at present. But Forsberg and his colleagues have designed a PCR test that measures the level of this mutation in the blood and could serve to determine which levels of this mutation are harmful to health. Right now, we see people in their 80s with 80% of their blood cells mutated, but we dont know what impact this has on their health, says Walsh.

Another unanswered question is why men lose the genetic mark of the male with age. The evolutionary logic, argue the authors of the paper, is that men are biologically designed to have offspring as soon as possible and to live 40 to 50 years at most. The spectacular increase in life expectancy in the last century has meant that men and women live to an advanced age 80 and 86 years in Spain, respectively which makes the effect of these mutations more evident. Another fact which possibly has some bearing on the issue: the vast majority of people who reach 100 are women.

To transform all these discoveries into treatments, we first need to better understand this phenomenon, says Forsberg. We men are not designed to live forever, but perhaps we can increase our life expectancy by a few more years.

Biochemist Jos Javier Fuster, who studies pathological mutations in blood cells at the National Center for Cardiovascular Research, stresses the importance of the work. Until now it was not clear whether the loss of Y was the cause of cancer, Alzheimers disease and heart failure, he explains. This is the first demonstration in animals that it has a causal role. The human Y chromosome is different from the mouse chromosome, so the priority now is to accumulate more data in humans. This is a great first step in understanding this new mechanism behind aging-linked diseases, he adds.

The cells of the human body group their DNA into 23 pairs of chromosomes that pair up one by one when a cell copies its genome to generate a daughter cell. The Y is the only one that does not have a symmetrical partner to pair up with: instead, it does so with an X chromosome; and the entire Y chromosome is often lost, explains Luis Alberto Prez Jurado from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. For now, six genes have been identified within the Y chromosome that would be responsible for an impact on health, he says. All of them are related to the proper functioning of the immune system. In part, this would also explain the greater vulnerability of males to viral infections, including Covid-19.

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mLOY: The genetic defect that explains why men have shorter lives than woman - EL PAS USA

Nature, red in tooth and claw. According to Alfred Tennysons poem, In Memoriam A.H.H., that line describes Creations final law. Scholars say it captures the sometimes ruthless nature of well, nature. Tennysons assessment of existence is that survival is driven by competition, where the scrappy and the clever and the strong are the winners. The species that cant muster the ability to grab what they need, using tooth and claw if necessary, fall by the wayside.

Indeed, economists like Thomas Malthus saw the value of human struggle in driving progress. One can draw a line from that thinking to Charles Darwin and his On the Origin of Species, in which the power of that struggle instigates the development and differentiation of life on Earth.

Darwins theory of evolution is an example of how science can reflect the ideas of the time, says author Kristin Ohlson.

Ohlson turns that idea on its head, seeking out instead the collaborative elements of existence in her new book, Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World, published Sept. 6 by Patagonia. In the present time, science has begun to illuminate the myriad connections and bonds that different forms of life have with each other and how critical they are to survival. Its cooperation thats responsible for the interlinkages of species firing off signals to each other in an otherwise quiet forest. Such mutually beneficial relationships are also responsible for the emergence of complex, eukaryotic cells, without which multicellular organisms wouldnt exist, she writes.

Through her visits with scientists, government officials and ranchers, Ohlson finds a metaphor in these partnerships for how we humans view our relationship with other lifeforms and each other. Perhaps following the example of the species around us and the way they work together could help us tackle vexing problems such as biodiversity loss and the changing climate, she muses.

Mongabays John Cannon spoke with Ohlson in August about the origins of the book and what she learned from writing it. This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.

Mongabay: What prompted you to write this book? How did it get started?

Kristin Ohlson: I had written this other book called The Soil Will Save Us, and I got to meet all these scientists and farmers and ranchers who were trying to come up with an agriculture that actually heals landscapes. That was, of course, really exciting. One of the things that was so exciting for me about that book was understanding that plants have this relationship with the microorganisms in the soil. I didnt know that before. The official line that gets pumped out from industrial agriculture [companies] is that plants are just takers. Theyre just sucking up all the goodness out of the soil, all the nutrients and minerals, and thats why you need to keep buying their products to replenish those nutrients and minerals. But as it turns out, plants are givers as well as takers. That mutualistic relationship that plants have with the bacteria and the fungi and the protozoa and the little animals, that whole soil community, was one of the most exciting realizations from that book. So I wanted to build upon that.

Then, I went to a conference where Suzanne Simard was speaking. She was talking about her incredible research into how trees are connected by this underground network of fungi that ferry water and nutrients and chemical messages all through the forest, helping the forest at large be a resilient ecosystem. I sort of levitated in my seat and thought, oh, cooperation in nature. Thats what I want to write about.

Mongabay: Do you think science is moving in the direction of greater recognition of the importance of cooperation, as opposed to competition, in nature?

Kristin Ohlson: Its hard for me to be the one to say that were moving in that direction. [Ecologist] Judith Bronstein [edited] the standard text now on the standard, authoritative text on mutualism. I think she would probably say that research and perspective are growing. Unfortunately, one of the things that we all struggle with is that science has to be funded. Whos funding science? Its not the scientist. The funding is not [aimed] at understanding nature and helping humans adapt and work with nature. Its usually science that ultimately will fund products to have us hack nature. So who funds science is a big roadblock.

I do think that probably more of this science is growing. I mean, people around the world are talking about [Simards] work. Its almost like magic, in a way, right? We look at a forest, and theres all this stuff going on there. And we have no clue because we cant see with just our eyes. There are these powerful connections going on among living things.

Mongabay: Why do you think theres been so much emphasis on competition, the tooth and claw, in nature?

Kristin Ohlson: I think competition and conflict are naturally more interesting to us. We couldnt have thrived as living things for as long as we have without having an instinct to be on the lookout for danger. I think thats a big part of it. We naturally give our attention to things that seem threatening. We tend not to understand that cooperation is kind of the default. We have massive cities [that] couldnt function without massive amounts of cooperation at every level. But were only drawn to where that cooperation breaks down, where theres a gunfight or a robbery, or a building falling down.

Its the same way with our bodies [that are] built from special cells that were created by a mutualistic bond between ancient microorganisms. We are built from the floor up by these elements of cooperation. All these cells cooperate within our body, and the cells cooperate to form organs, and those organs cooperate with each other. We dont notice that because thats just the backdrop. We [only] notice when that cooperation breaks down. One of the scientists I interviewed talks about cancer as being a failure of cooperation.

Mongabay: In the book, you cover the discussion around competition and cooperation in nature and how it stretches back in history.

Kristin Ohlson: What really stands out for me is how much culture affects science and how much science affects culture. The ideas that we live with now mostly stem from Darwin and his colleagues. I was interested to find out that Darwin, as he developed the theory of evolution, was a product of the ideas of his time. Maybe just in the Western world, we have the idea of the lone genius, the person who just figures it all out all by himself or herself. But no, he was very much influenced by the ideas of Thomas Malthus, who was a wealthy pastor who argued that human reproduction would always outstrip resources and that the struggle over those resources and even death were good for society. When Darwin was casting around for a theory to make sense of all these observations he had made about the great diversity of life around us and the fossil records showing that there were life forms that no longer exist, he read Malthus and his ideas about progress through struggle. The thing that really stood out for me was how science can reflect the ideas of the time.

When I was researching, it took me a while to understand that what I was looking for was scientists studying mutually beneficial relationships between species. I found [ecologist Douglas] Bouchers book about mutualism back in the mid-80s. At the very beginning of his book, he said that, for a long time, mutualism had been sort of dismissed and wasnt an active area of study, but that was really changing, and there was a big return to that. I thought, wait a minute. What happened to that big return?

Mongabay: Did Bouchers book help lay the foundation for grappling with these concepts? You also mention biologist Lynn Margulis and her work on the origins of life and how it has diversified.

Kristin Ohlson: It laid some foundation. [Margulis] was castigated for years for her ideas that we are formed from this union between two microorganisms, and thats how our eukaryotic cells developed, and that those cells were able to form relationships with other cells, and then all the diversity of life that followed. [Margulis] was tough. She really persisted in pushing those ideas even though the culture of science was pushing back pretty hard.

Mongabay: How might our understanding of cooperation in the natural world inform our responses to these crises like climate change and the extinction of species?

Kristin Ohlson: One of the things thats important to realize is that we are part of the natural world. We have separated ourselves philosophically from the rest of nature, but that is a fools errand. We are part of the rest of nature, and we are, in fact, healthier, and our capabilities are enhanced when we have a connection with the natural world. What I hope people come away [from the book] with is realizing that we have to cooperate with the rest of nature instead of just saying were humans, and its a shame that other species cant make it while we thrive.

I wrote in the book about that stream in Oregon, where, back in 1957, somebody put a random stream through a culvert because they wanted to put a road over the top of it. And it turned out that the culvert completely disrupted salmon migration up that stream. The culvert was too high, and also, the water coming through the culvert came down at such an angle that it scoured the bottom of the creek and ruined the salmon spawning habitat on that side of the culvert. For 62 years, this culvert had prevented salmon and also Pacific lamprey from migrating up [the stream].

People could have said, what a shame, but we need that road, so were not going to change anything. But no. People studied exactly why this culvert was preventing that migration, and they changed it a couple of years ago. Theres a culvert now that the salmon and lamprey can move up. I think its 16 or 17 miles [26-27 kilometers] of the stream above that old culvert where there are now salmon and lamprey. In that case, people were saying, OK, we can have both. We can have the road, and we can have the salmon migration if we just figure out what the particulars are. Its not only a boon for the salmon and the lamprey theyre getting more and really nice habitat but [also for] all the creatures that feast upon the salmon and the lamprey. Then, as I found when I was doing the chapter about Suzanne Simards work, those salmon carcasses that those creatures take out of the river and eat part of and drop in the forests deliver a very specific form of nitrogen essential to forests flourishing.

Mongabay: Can you talk about the cooperative efforts of farmers and ranchers in Nevada working with scientists to restore wetlands in the U.S. state of Nevada?

Kristin Ohlson: That didnt start as an effort to rebuild wetlands in Nevada. It started with scientists and government agencies wanting to improve streams so that this one local trout could survive. To improve those local streams, they had to get some ranchers to change the way their cattle were managed. That part of the United States is an area where theres been huge friction between ranchers and government agencies and scientists for years. I think ranchers in that area generally felt under attack by a range of people who say that cattle ranching ruins landscapes, that [beef] is bad to eat.

Yet they are people who love the landscape, love the land [and] want to live in a thriving ecosystem. But it was hard for them to change their ways when these scientists and government agencies first got in touch with them. But they did start to make some changes in the way that they managed their cattle, mostly in terms of how much time the cattle could spend by these creeks. It was a not-insignificant change for the ranchers because it meant more work for them.

[But with] this small change of how they were managing their cattle, nature started to fill in those degraded sides of the creeks. Thats one of the things that I just loved about that story was that nature was ready with seeds that were already in the soil or that drifted in on the wind or that came from the animals that came to drink there. Vegetation started growing around the streams, and the ranchers were cheered somewhat by that.

Then, the beaver came in and just completely changed this landscape. The before-and-after pictures are just stunning. In the past, you see these same creeks that are just narrow and dry on all sides. [Today, there is] a completely different ecosystem coming up with all this riparian vegetation and big ponds that the beavers had built, which is bringing in wildlife, the actual water table around the creek started to change. It was just such an inspiring story, not only [of] the land changing, but of the relationship among the ranchers and the scientists and the government agency people changing. They all felt like it was such a triumph, even though they all had to change a little bit.

Mongabay: It is a really fascinating case. What other stories from the book stand out to you?

Kristin Ohlson: I just loved all the stories, and I loved doing the research. One of the stories that I just loved [and that] really became a kind of a guiding metaphor for me is at the end of the first chapter. I was talking to Katie McMahen, who was a colleague of Suzanne Simard and who is starting some new research to try to regenerate a landscape in Canada that had been ruined by a mine tailings [dam] flood. One of the things [McMahen] was doing was taking soil from the forest nearby that hadnt been ruined and putting handfuls [in the holes where] she was planting these new little trees out in this ruined landscape. She said, its ecosystem memories and legacies. Its little bits of DNA, its seeds, its little bits of fungi, fungal spores, bacterial spores, all these things that were part of that vibrant forest ecosystem, and were borrowing it to start new life there. I just love that idea that, even in really degraded landscapes, there are probably still some ecosystem memories and legacies. I really do like to extend that idea to the landscape of human relationships, and I believe that even now, especially in the United States, where things are so conflicted and [there is] so much political disagreement, that there are those legacies and memories that will help us evolve a more cooperative culture.

Banner image: Flowers and bees share one of the most well-known mutualistic relationships in nature. Image by Ralphs_Fotos via Pixabay (Public domain).

John Cannon is a staff features writer with Mongabay. Find himon Twitter: @johnccannon

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Examining cooperation in nature: Q&A with author Kristin Ohlson - Mongabay.com

Washington

On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, rights activists and several Western diplomats attended a meeting to urge the U.N. to take action over Chinas reported mistreatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

Discrimination of this kind and in such dimensions is not acceptable in todays world, said Bob Rae, Canadas permanent representative to the U.N., in his opening remarks at a panel discussion hosted by the Atlantic Council research group and Human Rights Watch.

The discussion was a response to the release of a long-awaited U.N. human rights report which found that the Chinese government committed serious human rights violations.

UN assessment on Xinjiang

Last month Michelle Bachelet, on the last day of her tenure as U.N. high commissioner for human rights, published her offices assessment of the rights situation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or XUAR. The report said China may have committed crimes against humanity" against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups under the pretext of counterterrorism and counter-extremism measures.

The assessment of U.N. human rights officials called on the Chinese government to account for its practices and to release all individuals arbitrarily detained in Xinjiang. The report described other rights violations in Xinjiang in areas including religious, cultural and linguistic identity and expression; rights to reproduction, privacy and freedom of movement; forced labor; family separation; and reprisals for speaking out.

How these atrocities are addressed goes ultimately to the credibility of the U.N. system, to the credibility of our international system itself, said Jeffrey Prescott, deputy to the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., during the forum.

He continued, Its deeply disheartening to see a country that has been so central to the creation of the modern U.N. system, and enjoys the status of a permanent member of the Security Council, so profoundly violating its commitments.

Zeid Raad Al Hussein, the immediate predecessor to Bachelet as U.N. human rights commissioner, told the attendees at the event that while he credited the high commissioners office for publishing the report on human rights in Xinjiang, he said more needs to be done.

There are two shortcomings in the way that I read this report, he said, adding that one was not to refer to the abuses as genocide and the other was not calling for the establishment of a formal U.N. commission of inquiry into the findings of the report.

A commission of inquiry is a U.N. investigative tool which would look further into allegations of human rights violations and push for accountability.

Inaction is no longer possible, Fernand de Varennes, the United Nations special rapporteur on minority rights, said at the forum. If we allow this to go unpunished, what kind of message is being propagated?

Chinas response

On September 13, during the 51st session of the Human Rights Council, Chen Xu, Chinas ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, spoke on behalf of China and 28 countries. He delivered a joint statement saying, We are deeply concerned that the OHCHR, without the authorization of the Human Rights Council and the consent of the country concerned, released the so-called assessment on Xinjiang, China, which is based on disinformation and draws erroneous conclusions.

Also this month, Chen said his government could not cooperate with the U.N. human rights office following the release of the report.

Chinas foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, described the U.N. report as completely illegal, during a September 1 press conference.It is a patchwork of disinformation that serves as a political tool for the U.S. and some Western forces to strategically use Xinjiang to contain China, said Wang.

In recent years, Xinjiang has enjoyed sustained economic growth, social harmony and stability, better living standards, cultures thriving like never before, andfreedom of religious beliefs and religious harmony, Wang told reporters.

Xinjiang-related actions from abroad

The United States and Canada describe Chinas actions in Xinjiang as genocide. The European Parliament said Chinas treatment of Muslim, Turkic ethnic groups in Xinjiang holds a serious risk of genocide.

The U.S. imposed sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for the mistreatment of Uyghurs and implemented a law called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act to stop goods made by Uyghur forced labor from entering the U.S. markets.

We need to deal with the question of what further sanctions will be required, Canadas Rae said. We need to deal with the question of what further steps could be taken to respond to the extent of this crisis.

U.N. response and suggestions

The U.N. human rights office said it is up to member states to determine the next steps, but the assessment states that the human rights situation in XUAR requires urgent attention by the Government, the United Nations intergovernmental bodies and human rights system, as well as the international community more broadly. We stand ready to continue engagement, including on outcomes of the visit and implementation of the recommendations, of the report, media officer Jeremy Laurence told VOA in an email.

He said there is no planned discussion on Xinjiang or the human rights assessment during the 51st session of the Human Rights Council.Nury Turkel, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is asking member states to urge the incoming high commissioner to further investigate the situation in Xinjiang and suggested opening a U.N. commission of inquiry.

We do hope the OHCHR report will galvanize further support from those nations who have so far abstained from taking the kind of necessary action that crimes against humanity should invoke, Turkel said.

Turning a blind eye to the perpetration of crimes against humanity and persecution of a religious minority would be an unconscionable failure, Carolyn Nash, Amnesty International USAs Asia advocacy director, told VOA.

Nash said the U.N. human rights offices report corroborated extensive evidence of serious human rights violations previously documented by Amnesty and other rights groups.

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UN Urged to Act on Chinas Reported Rights Violations in Xinjiang - Voice of America - VOA News

The arms race between the human immune system and gonorrhea might have had the useful side effect of promoting healthy brain tissue later in life.

This tiny boost to cognitive health in our twilight years might have played a small role in ensuring grandmas were sharp-minded enough for evolution to keep them around.

While its fiendishly difficult and may be impossible to figure out what evolutionary factors are responsible for living beyond ages where we no longer reproduce, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, are closing in on some possible explanations.

In2015, a team of researchers led by molecular medicine professor Ajit Varki discovered that humans have a unique type of immune receptor that protects againstAlzheimersdisease and sets us apart from other primates.

In apaperpublished this month, the team found that the spreading of this variant immune receptor in our species wasnt entirely random, but rather the result of intense selection pressure over a relatively brief period.

The research showed that some of our closest relatives NeanderthalsandDenisovans did not have this version of immune receptors coded into their genomes. Something drove humans to develop this special immune receptor early in our history as a species, the researchers said.

The likely culprits are infectious human-specific pathogens likeNeisseria gonorrhoeae that try to disguise themselves by dressing in the same sugar coating as human cells, which fools patrolling immune cells into thinking the bacteria are harmless.

The researchers showed that the newly evolved immune receptor could see through the disguise and kill the invading bacteria, while the older variation of the immune receptor could not.

Getting rid of gonorrhea is useful for the survival of the species because this disease can mess with human reproduction.

The new version of the immune receptor is called huCD33. Thanks to the way this version is tweaked into two subtly different structures within our body, its been the subject of investigations by evolutionary scientists for some time.

Once evolved, this immune receptor was probably co-oped by brain immune cells, called microglia, for a different purpose: protection against aging, the researchers suggest.

The human immune system usually doesnt attack itself on purpose, but it needs to when cells start to decay.

The huCD33 receptor, which seems to have evolved as a response to sneaky bacteria, had the added benefit of being able to recognize decaying brain tissue and thereby protect cognitive function in old age.

Microglia use the huCD33 receptor to clear away damaged brain cells and amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimers disease.Whether this might have played a role in clearing the way for evolution to add a few more precious years to our lives for the sake of helping out with raising families is a topic open to debate.

Grandparents provide benefits to the human species as they help to look after kids and pass on important cultural knowledge. And gonorrhea may be to thank for that.

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Did the prevalence of gonorrhea in early humans lead to long-living and protective grandmothers? - Genetic Literacy Project

According to recent research published in journal of Human Reproduction Update, the sperm count among men is dropping and the decline is not slowing any way. Male identity is diluting in more than one way.

We find that the deep voices of men are drowning and their valor vanishing. Men are choosing to be fair, feeble and feminine. They are getting soft spoken and slimmer every day.

On the other hand, women are getting rough and robust, struggling hard to be strong not serene, to be bold not shy, to be he not she. The result is a mere exchange of identities which is neither wholesome nor original.

The girls tend to look like tom-boys and the boys are so chocolaty. Everyone is cherishing to live by choices which are beyond the scope of natural laws.

While transgender is about a natural calamity, being Lesbian or Gay or bisexual is about the personal choice of individuals. We have been transgressing the natural disposition every day. So all of us are trans in one way or the other. Much like our mobile phones, we are badly in need of a reset and restore.

When we are in search of best quality, we always mean the original taste, the original flavour, the original color, the original fruit, the original cloth of wool, cotton and leather.

A wise man was so fond of originality that he said, It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. For the transgenders, I want to end with this wise quote of Shannon L. Alder, Your dignity can be mocked, abused, compromised, toyed with, lowered and even badmouthed, but it can never be taken from you.

You have the power today to reset your boundaries, restore your image, start fresh with renewed values and rebuild what has happened to you in the past.

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IS THIRD REALLY WEIRD? - Greater Kashmir