Daily Archives: August 20, 2021

No matter how you feel about the sequels, reboots and spin-offs, theres no denying that the first Ghostbusters captured lightning in a bottle in a way that not even the original team could replicate. Sometimes, the right people pop up at the right place and the right time, and the universe gifts us with an unforgettable classic. Of course, this hasnt stopped studios from trying to rekindle that magic with similar projects, and while were all hyped for Jason Reitmans upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife, this year marks the 20th anniversary of Ivan Reitmans other attempt at a spiritual successor to his most iconic franchise. Naturally, Im talking about the underrated 2001 monster movie, Evolution.

Originally envisioned by screenwriter Don Jakoby as a hyper-serious horror/sci-fi thriller, Evolution gradually shifted into a completely different direction once Reitman came onboard the project. Inspired by the premise of a group of friends banding together to face an otherworldly threat, the director saw the film as a potential Ghostbusters for the new millennium, with an updated cast of charming oddballs fighting extraterrestrial mutations instead of supernatural entities.

After a series of comedic rewrites, the studio began searching for an ensemble cast with franchise potential. Hot off the heels of The X-Files, David Duchovny was chosen as the sardonic lead that would keep the group together, with Orlando Jones becoming his best friend and partner in crime. The ever-lovable Sean William Scott was also cast as the humorous everyman of the team, with Julianne Moore rounding things out as a clumsy scientist with a heart of gold.

The finished film follows college professors Ira Kane (Duchovny) and Harry Block (Jones) as they investigate a mysterious meteorite that crashes in the Arizona desert. Unfortunately for us humans, the meteorite contains microscopic life-forms that rapidly adapt to their new environment, going through millions of years of evolution in just a few hours as they mutate into monstrous creatures hell-bent on taking over the planet. Knowing that an extinction-level event is at hand, Ira and Harry team up with the CDCs Dr. Allison Reed (Moore) and the aspiring firefighter Wayne Grey (Scott) in order to study the alien menace and devise a plan to save the world, all while butting heads with an inept military response.

Im still mad that we didnt get more of this!

The alien invasion setup may sound familiar, but the formula is solid enough for Evolution to work as a light-hearted sci-fi romp with plenty of impressive monster designs and memorable character moments. Despite wearing its intentions on its sleeve as it attempts to become the next Ghostbusters, the movie actually manages to stand on its own as a retro-styled comedy with an early-2000s twist, and I think its a shame that no one really one talks about it anymore.

From silly moments like watching the aliens reach a primate-like level of intelligence to fun set-pieces like when the crew attempts to bring down a mutated dragon in the middle of a crowded shopping mall, Id argue that the movie is at its best when reveling in its own absurdity. Hell, I know Ill never forget that bizarre finale where dandruff shampoo miraculously saves the day in what can only be described as a cellular enema.

Evolution admittedly stumbles during its transparent attempts at recreating Ghostbusters success (even Dan Aykroyd makes an appearance and the posters three-eyed smiley face is obviously meant to emulate that films highly marketable anti-ghost logo), but the insanely charming cast helps to smooth out most of the rough edges. The dated jokes and familiar tropes are no match for Jones and Duchovnys bromance, and even Sean William Scott gets the chance to shine with ridiculous amounts of dudebro energy. Dr. Reed is the only character that really suffers from the unpolished script, with Moore being relegated to lazy gags despite her legendary acting chops.

Unfortunately, theres also the matter of the films heavy use of early-2000s CGI during its action sequences. While there are a handful of practical puppets on display here, and the designs are all pretty clever, the majority of the monsters are brought to life via wonky computer graphics that havent aged all that well. Thankfully, the movies playful tone keeps the effects from detracting from the experience, though I wish they had gone with the original plan of having the aliens final form be a fleshy humanoid kaiju instead of a gigantic cell.

Where Product Placement and Deus Ex Machinas meet!

Personally, I think Evolution was a single draft (and maybe a Ray Parker Jr. song) away from being a classic, but I still appreciate how it lovingly emulates classic monster movies for a new crowd. From setting the story in the Arizona desert to having a bumbling military force be saved by outcast scientists, the film really nails the 50s sci-fi tropes without feeling like a parody. Hell, even the real science on display here is about as accurate as it was in those movies, and I wouldnt be surprised if a possible sequel involved radiation turning lizards and insects into giant monsters.

Despite spawning a short-lived animated series, its a real shame that Evolution never took off as a franchise. This could have been one of those rare cases where a sequel with already-established characters could have surpassed the original, introducing even wackier monster-movie hijinks with each new installment. They may not be everyones favorite team of paranormal exterminators, but I could have watched hours of Jones and Duchovny bickering about space creatures and the periodic table, and I have a sneaking suspicion that Im not the only one.

As it stands, Evolution doesnt quite live up to its aspirations as a proper successor to the original Ghostbusters, but it definitely stands on its own as a highly entertaining throwback created by a team that clearly cared about the project. It may not have aged as gracefully as its inspirations, but Id recommend this one to any fan of the light-hearted monster flicks of yesteryear. At the very least, youll learn that Head & Shoulders can be useful during an alien invasion, and with the way things are right now, its always good to be prepared.

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The Other Ghostbusters - Celebrating 20 Years of 'Evolution' - Bloody Disgusting

Dec. 2019Mar. 2020Jun. 2020Sep. 2020Dec. 2020Mar. 2021Jun. 2021IotaEpsilonEtaKappaThetaLambdaAlphaDeltaGammaBeta

(Graphic) N. Desai/Science; (Data) NextStrain; GISAID

By Kai KupferschmidtAug. 19, 2021 , 2:05 PM

Each dot above represents a virus isolated from a COVID-19 patient in this family tree of SARS-CoV-2, which shows a tiny subset of the more than 2 million viruses sequenced so far. The World Health Organization currently recognizes four variants of concern and four variants of interest.

Wuhan, China, 26 December 2019OtherVariants of concernKappaEtaIotaLambdaVariants of interestEpsilonFormer variants of interestThetaGamma was first detected in Brazil and spread widely in South America.First spotted in India, Delta is rapidly replacing other variants around the globe.Beta, first seen in South Africa, has shown the strongest evidence of immune escape.First detected in the United Kingdom, Alpha became the first variant to spread widely.

Edward Holmes does not like making predictions, but last year he hazarded a few. Again and again, people had asked Holmes, an expert on viral evolution at the University of Sydney, how he expected SARS-CoV-2 to change. In May 2020, 5 months into the pandemic, he started to include a slide with his best guesses in his talks. The virus would probably evolve to avoid at least some human immunity, he suggested. But it would likely make people less sick over time, he said, and there would be little change in its infectivity. In short, it sounded like evolution would not play a major role in the pandemics near future.

A year on Ive been proven pretty much wrong on all of it, Holmes says.

Well, not all: SARS-CoV-2 did evolve to better avoid human antibodies. But it has also become a bit more virulent and a lot more infectious, causing more people to fall ill. That has had an enormous influence on the course of the pandemic.

The Delta strain circulating nowone of four variants of concern identified by the World Health Organization, along with four variants of interestis so radically different from the virus that appeared in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 that many countries have been forced to change their pandemic planning. Governments are scrambling to accelerate vaccination programs while prolonging or even reintroducing mask wearing and other public health measures. As to the goal of reaching herd immunityvaccinating so many people that the virus simply has nowhere to goWith the emergence of Delta, I realized that its just impossible to reach that, says Mge evik, an infectious disease specialist at the University of St. Andrews.

Yet the most tumultuous period in SARS-CoV-2s evolution may still be ahead of us, says Aris Katzourakis, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford. Theres now enough immunity in the human population to ratchet up an evolutionary competition, pressuring the virus to adapt further. At the same time, much of the world is still overwhelmed with infections, giving the virus plenty of chances to replicate and throw up new mutations.

Predicting where those worrisome factors will lead is just as tricky as it was a year and a half ago, however. Were much better at explaining the past than predicting the future, says Andrew Read, an evolutionary biologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Evolution, after all, is driven by random mutations, which are impossible to predict. Its very, very tricky to know whats possible, until it happens, Read says. Its not physics. It doesnt happen on a billiard table.

Still, experience with other viruses gives evolutionary biologists some clues about where SARS-CoV-2 may be headed. The courses of past outbreaks show the coronavirus could well become even more infectious than Delta is now, Read says: I think theres every expectation that this virus will continue to adapt to humans and will get better and better at us. Far from making people less sick, it could also evolve to become even deadlier, as some previous viruses including the 1918 flu have. And although COVID-19 vaccines have held up well so far, history shows the virus could evolve further to elude their protective effectalthough a recent study in another coronavirus suggests that could take many years, which would leave more time to adapt vaccines to the changing threat.

Holmes himself uploaded one of the first SARS-CoV-2 genomes to the internet on 10 January 2020. Since then, more than 2 million genomes have been sequenced and published, painting an exquisitely detailed picture of a changing virus. I dont think weve ever seen that level of precision in watching an evolutionary process, Holmes says.

Making sense of the endless stream of mutations is complicated. Each is just a tiny tweak in the instructions for how to make proteins. Which mutations end up spreading depends on how the viruses carrying those tweaked proteins fare in the real world.

The vast majority of mutations give the virus no advantage at all, and identifying the ones that do is difficult. There are obvious candidates, such as mutations that change the part of the spike proteinwhich sits on the surface of the virusthat binds to human cells. But changes elsewhere in the genome may be just as crucialyet are harder to interpret. Some genes functions arent even clear, let alone what a change in their sequence could mean. The impact of any one change on the virus fitness also depends on other changes it has already accumulated. That means scientists need real-world data to see which variants appear to be taking off. Only then can they investigate, in cell cultures and animal experiments, what might explain that viral success.

The most eye-popping change in SARS-CoV-2 so far has been its improved ability to spread between humans. At some point early in the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 acquired a mutation called D614G that made it a bit more infectious. That version spread around the world; almost all current viruses are descended from it. Then in late 2020, scientists identified a new variant, now called Alpha, in patients in Kent, U.K., that was about 50% more transmissible. Delta, first seen in India and now conquering the world, is another 40% to 60% more transmissible than Alpha.

SARS-CoV-2 variants began to emerge in 2020. Alpha surged in many countries in early 2021, then was largely replaced by Delta. Two other variants of concern, Beta and Gamma, account for a smaller number of cases.

(Graphic) N. Desai/Science; (Data) NextStrain; GISAID

Read says the pattern is no surprise. The only way you could not get infectiousness rising would be if the virus popped into humans as perfect at infecting humans as it could be, and the chance of that happening is incredibly small, he says. But Holmes was startled. This virus has gone up three notches in effectively a year and that, I think, was the biggest surprise to me, Holmes says. I didnt quite appreciate how much further the virus could get.

Bette Korber at Los Alamos National Laboratory and her colleagues first suggested that D614G, the early mutation, was taking over because it made the virus better at spreading. She says skepticism about the virus ability to evolve was common in the early days of the pandemic, with some researchers saying D614Gs apparent advantage might be sheer luck. There was extraordinary resistance in the scientific community to the idea this virus could evolve as the pandemic grew in seriousness in spring of 2020, Korber says.

Researchers had never watched a completely novel virus spread so widely and evolve in humans, after all. Were used to dealing with pathogens that have been in humanity for centuries, and their evolutionary course is set in the context of having been a human pathogen for many, many years, says Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust. Katzourakis agrees. This may have affected our priors and conditioned many to think in a particular way, he says.

Another, more practical problem is that real-world advantages for the virus dont always show up in cell culture or animal models. There is no way anyone would have noticed anything special about Alpha from laboratory data alone, says Christian Drosten, a virologist at the Charit University Hospital in Berlin. He and others are still figuring out what, at the molecular level, gives Alpha and Delta an edge.

Alpha seems to bind more strongly to the human ACE2 receptor, the virus target on the cell surface, partly because of a mutation in the spike protein called N501Y. It may also be better at countering interferons, molecules that are part of the bodys viral immune defenses. Together those changes may lower the amount of virus needed to infect someonethe infectious dose. In Delta, one of the most important changes may be near the furin cleavage site on spike, where a human enzyme cuts the protein, a key step enabling the virus to invade human cells. A mutation called P681R in that region makes cleavage more efficient, which may allow the virus to enter more cells faster and lead to greater numbers of virus particles in an infected person. In July, Chinese researchers posted a preprint showing Delta could lead to virus levels in patient samples 1000 times higher than for previous variants. Evidence is accumulating that infected people not only spread the virus more efficiently, but also faster, allowing the variant to spread even more rapidly.

The new variants of SARS-CoV-2 may also cause more severe disease. For example, a study in Scotland found that an infection with Delta was about twice as likely to lead to hospital admission than with Alpha.

It wouldnt be the first time a newly emerging disease quickly became more serious. The 191819 influenza pandemic also appears to have caused more serious illness as time went on, says Lone Simonsen, an epidemiologist at Roskilde University who studies past pandemics. Our data from Denmark suggests it was six times deadlier in the second wave.

A popular notion holds that viruses tend to evolve over time to become less dangerous, allowing the host to live longer and spread the virus more widely. But that idea is too simplistic, Holmes says. The evolution of virulence has proven to be quicksand for evolutionary biologists, he says. Its not a simple thing.

Two of the best studied examples of viral evolution are myxoma virus and rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus, which were released in Australia in 1960 and 1996, respectively, to decimate populations of European rabbits that were destroying croplands and wreaking ecological havoc. Myxoma virus initially killed more than 99% of infected rabbits, but then less pathogenic strains evolved, likely because the virus was killing many animals before they had a chance to pass it on. (Rabbits also evolved to be less susceptible.) Rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus, by contrast, got more deadly over time, probably because the virus is spread by blow flies feeding on rabbit carcasses, and quicker death accelerated its spread.

The myxoma virus was released in Australia in 1950 to control rabbits after trials at this test site on Wardang Island. It has evolved to become less virulent over time, but not all viruses do.

Other factors loosen the constraints on deadliness. For example, a virus variant that can outgrow other variants within a host can end up dominating even if it makes the host sicker and reduces the likelihood of transmission. And an assumption about human respiratory diseases may not always hold: that a milder virusone that doesnt make you crawl into bed, saymight allow an infected person to spread the virus further. In SARS-CoV-2, most transmission happens early on, when the virus is replicating in the upper airways, whereas serious disease, if it develops, comes later, when the virus infects the lower airways. As a result, a variant that makes the host sicker might spread just as fast as before.

From the start of the pandemic, researchers have worried about a third type of viral change, perhaps the most unsettling of all: that SARS-CoV-2 might evolve to evade immunity triggered by natural infections or vaccines. Already, several variants have emerged sporting changes in the surface of the spike protein that make it less easily recognized by antibodies. But although news of these variants has caused widespread fear, their impact has so far been limited.

On this antigenic map, produced by Derek Smith, David Montefiori, and colleagues, the distance between two variants indicates how well antibodies against one neutralize the other.

(Graphic) N. Desai/Science; (Data) Derek Smith/University of Cambridge; David Montefiori/Duke University

Derek Smith, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge, has worked for decades on visualizing immune evasion in the influenza virus in so-called antigenic maps. The farther apart two variants are on Smiths maps, the less well antibodies against one virus protect against the other. In a recently published preprint, Smiths group, together with David Montefioris group at Duke University, has applied the approach to mapping the most important variants of SARS-CoV-2 (see graphic, right).

The new maps place the Alpha variant very close to the original Wuhan virus, which means antibodies against one still neutralize the other. The Delta variant, however, has drifted farther away, even though it doesnt completely evade immunity. Its not an immune escape in the way people think of an escape in slightly cartoonish terms, Katzourakis says. But Delta is slightly more likely to infect fully vaccinated people than previous variants. It shows the possible beginning of a trajectory and thats what worries me, Katzourakis says.

Other variants have evolved more antigenic distance from the original virus than Delta. Beta, which first appeared in South Africa, has traveled the farthest on the map, although natural or vaccine-induced immunity still largely protects against it. And Betas attempts to get away may come at a price, as Delta has outstripped it worldwide. Its probably the case that when a virus changes to escape immunity, it loses other aspects of its fitness, Smith says.

The map shows that for now, the virus is not moving in any particular direction. If the original Wuhan virus is like a town on Smiths map, the virus has been taking local trains to explore the surrounding area, but it has not traveled to the next citynot yet.

Although its impossible to predict exactly how infectiousness, virulence, and immune evasion will develop in the coming months, some of the factors that will influence the virus trajectory are clear.

One is the immunity that is now rapidly building in the human population. On one hand, immunity reduces the likelihood of people getting infected, and may hamper viral replication even when they are. That means there will be fewer mutations emerging if we vaccinate more people, evik says. On the other hand, any immune escape variant now has a huge advantage over other variants.

In fact, the world is probably at a tipping point, Holmes says: With more than 2 billion people having received at least one vaccine dose and hundreds of millions more having recovered from COVID-19, variants that evade immunity may now have a bigger leg up than those that are more infectious. Something similar appears to have happened when a new H1N1 influenza strain emerged in 2009 and caused a pandemic, says Katia Klle, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University. A 2015 paper found that changes in the virus in the first 2 years appeared to make the virus more adept at human-to-human transmission, whereas changes after 2011 were mostly to avoid human immunity.

It may already be getting harder for SARS-CoV-2 to make big gains in infectiousness. There are some fundamental limits to exactly how good a virus can get at transmitting and at some point SARS-CoV-2 will hit that plateau, says Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. I think its very hard to say if this is already where we are, or is it still going to happen. Evolutionary virologist Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research guesses the virus still has space to evolve greater transmissibility. The known limit in the viral universe is measles, which is about three times more transmissible than what we have now with Delta, he says.

Researchers trying to understand which genetic changes make SARS-CoV-2 variants more successful have focused on the spike protein, which studs the viral surface and binds to human cells. Alpha, Beta, and Delta have mutations in three key areas of the protein that may affect the virus infectiousness and its ability to elude the immune system.

(Graphic) N. Desai/Science; (Data) E. Wall et al., The Lancet, 397:10292, 2331 (2021)

The limits of immune escape are equally uncertain. Smiths antigenic maps show the space the virus has explored so far. But can it go much farther? If the variants on the map are like towns, then where are the countrys natural boundarieswhere does the ocean start? A crucial clue will be where the next few variants appear on the map, Smith says. Beta evolved in one direction away from the original virus and Delta in another. Its too soon to say this now, but we might be heading for a world where there are two serotypes of this virus that would also both have to be considered in any vaccines, Drosten says.

Immune escape is so worrying because it could force humanity to update its vaccines continually, as happens for flu. Yet the vaccines against many other diseasesmeasles, polio, and yellow fever, for examplehave remained effective for decades without updates, even in the rare cases where immune-evading variants appeared. There was big alarm around 2000 that maybe wed need to replace the hepatitis B vaccines, because an escape variant had popped up, Read says. But the variant has not spread around the world: It is able to infect close contacts of an infected person, but then peters out. The virus apparently faces a trade-off between transmissibility and immune escape. Such trade-offs likely exist for SARS-CoV-2 as well.

Residents line up outside a vaccination center in Sydney, where a rapidly growing outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 led officials to order a new lockdown in June.

Some clues about SARS-CoV-2s future path may come from coronaviruses with a much longer history in humans: those that cause common colds. Some are known to reinfect people, but until recently it was unclear whether thats because immunity in recovered people wanes, or because the virus changes its surface to evade immunity. In a study published in April inPLOS Pathogens, Bloom and other researchers compared the ability of human sera taken at different times in the past decades to block virus isolated at the same time or later. They showed that the samples could neutralize strains of a coronavirus named 229E isolated around the same time, but werent always effective against virus from 10 years or more later. The virus had evidently evolved to evade human immunity, but it had taken 10 years or more.

Immune escape conjures this catastrophic failure of immunity when it is really immune erosion, Bloom says. Right now it seems like SARS-CoV-2, at least in terms of antibody escape, is actually behaving a lot like coronavirus 229E.

Others are probing SARS-CoV-2 itself. In a preprint published this month, researchers tinkered with the virus to learn how much it has to change to evade the antibodies generated in vaccine recipients and recovered patients. They found that it took 20 changes to the spike protein to escape current antibody responses almost completely. That means the bar for complete escape is high, says one of the authors, virologist Paul Bieniasz of Rockefeller University. But its very difficult to look into a crystal ball and say whether that is going to be easy for the virus to acquire or not, he says.

It seems plausible that true immune escape is hard, concludes William Hanage of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. However, the counterargument is that natural selection is a hell of a problem solver and the virus is only beginning to experience real pressure to evade immunity.

And the virus has tricks up its sleeve. Coronaviruses are good at recombining, for instance, which could allow new variants to emerge suddenly by combining the genomesand the propertiesof two different variants. In pigs, recombination of a coronavirus named porcine epidemic diarrhea virus with attenuated vaccine strains of another coronavirus has led to more virulent variants of PEDV. Given the biology of these viruses, recombination may well factor into the continuing evolution of SARS-CoV-2, Korber says.

Given all that uncertainty, its worrisome that humanity hasnt done a great job of limiting the spread of SARS-CoV-2, says Eugene Koonin, a researcher at the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information. Some dangerous variants may only be possible if the virus hits on a very rare, winning combination of mutations, he says. It might have to replicate an astronomical number of times to get there. But with all these millions of infected people, it may very well find that combination.

Indeed, Katzourakis adds, the past 20 months are a warning to never underestimate viral evolution. Many still see Alpha and Delta as being as bad as things are ever going to get, he says. It would be wise to consider them as steps on a possible trajectory that may challenge our public health response further.

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New SARS-CoV-2 variants have changed the pandemic. What will the virus do next? - Science Magazine

Editors Note: This is the first article in a two-part series on airpower and Operation Inherent Resolve. The second article explores lessons learned for great-power competition.

On June 27, U.S. fighter jets struck weapons storage facilities used by Iranian proxy groups Kataib Hizballah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada in retaliation for launching drone attacks on U.S. military facilities in the region. This was the second set of airstrikes ordered by the Biden administration in order to deter Iran and its proxies from attacking U.S. equities in the Middle East.

Just several weeks later, U.S. airpower was used once again, but this time in Afghanistan. Over-the-horizon airstrikes sought to bolster Afghan defenses, blunt the Talibans momentum, protect key urban areas, and stave off the collapse of the Afghan state.

President Joe Bidens decision to use fighter jets to strike Iranian infrastructure in Syria and Iraq, and to defend key Afghan cities, follows a familiar pattern. Since the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. presidents have chosen time and time again to use airpower to protect U.S. interests abroad. Since the six-week air campaign that immobilized and demoralized Saddam Husseins forces defending Kuwait, airpower has become the centerpiece of U.S. military interventions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya, and, once again, Iraq.

The U.S. airstrikes against Iranian-backed militia groups located along the Iraqi-Syrian border, and the uptick in American air support to Afghan forces, demonstrate how the model of airpower perfected against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria has evolved. But the limited strikes on Iranian proxies and Taliban forces stand in stark contrast to the continued strikes on Islamic State leaders and targets in Iraq and Syria also authorized by the Biden administration. Previous military successes are just as likely to distort policymakers thinking as prior failures. The Biden administration should not harbor unrealistic expectations about what airpower can achieve, nor should it succumb to the tempation to employ airpower because it is a low-risk form of taking action.

The Evolving Use of Airpower

The five-year fight against the Islamic State may appear like one of the forever wars the Biden administration seeks to end. Instead, it should be viewed as an evolution in how U.S. leaders have leveraged airpower to achieve military and political goals. Yet, it should also be a cautionary tale regarding the limits of airpower, as operational success has not translated into a strategic victory with enduring gains against a now-resurgent ISIL and the ideology it espouses.

The Obama administration leveraged the speed, agility, and precision of airpower when it intervened in Iraq in 2014 to stop the Islamic States expansion in Iraq and Syria. While the U.S.-led coalition mainly fought from the air, Iraqi state and Syrian non-state forces trained and equipped by the coalition led the fight on the ground.

Technological and tactical innovations since the Gulf War enabled a light American footprint more removed from the ground battle in contrast to the heavy boots-on-the-ground approach associated with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Only 10,000 U.S. troops were engaged in Operation Inherent Resolve not primarily to fight, but to support partner ground forces away from the frontlines. This stands in stark contrast to the large conventional force required to liberate Kuwait in 1991, which consisted of a massive ground attack involving hundreds of thousands of U.S. forces.

Inherent Resolve demonstrated a growing sophistication in using airpower. Even without American troops on the battlefield directing the airstrikes, U.S. aircraft could find, fix, and track ISIL targets, and accurately deliver weapons. This feat was enabled by drones, which filled the skies over Iraq and Syria, piping real-time full-motion video to U.S. command posts directing the airstrikes.

Leveraging exquisite intelligence that detailed ISILs operations and expert planning and execution, U.S. aircraft dropped smart bombs that not only usually hit their intended targets, but also limited civilian casualties and unnecessary damage. One coalition airstrike, for example, blew the roof off a building in Mosul, destroying one floor and incinerating an ISIL cash stash inside, while leaving nearby buildings undamaged.

The capabilities of contemporary U.S. airpower have allowed American leaders to intervene in international conflicts while limiting risk to U.S. ground troops, thereby reducing opposition from those wary of putting U.S. boots on the ground. At times, American leaders have employed airstrikes because they wanted to do something and appear strong during a crisis, whether the attacks succeeded or not. But airpower is not without risks. Even with increased precision, modern technology, and stringent measures, airpower cannot avoid civilian casualties. It also is not a sure means for a swift and decisive victory, as the recent resurgence of ISIL fighters has shown.

The Siren Song of Airpower

There are important differences between full-blown air campaigns and bounded strikes, such as those on Iranian targets in Iraq and Syria or recently against the Taliban, in terms of the theory for how airpower will achieve the desired effect. Moreover, they differ in the longevity and intensity of air operations. In the Gulf War and during Inherent Resolve, U.S. leaders correctly applied airpower to achieve the operational aims of liberating illegally seized territory. In both cases, the United States sought to produce a durable outcome the liberation of Kuwait, and the liberation of Iraqi and Syrian territory from ISIL rule.

In contrast, the goal of the recent strikes in Iraq and Syria is less clear. They were a proportional response to Iranian proxy attacks on U.S. facilities and forces in the Middle East, but the linkages of very discrete attacks on these particular targets to broader outcomes is tenuous. Instead, these strikes appear to be another half-hearted attempt at punitive or coercive diplomacy through airstrikes, which have historically failed to have the intended effect due to the limited nature of the attacks and the unclear links to goals.

Already, the Biden administration may be finding this out the hard way. Despite the strikes being intended as a deterrent measure, they have failed to halt attacks on U.S. equities in the region. The recent airstrikes were promptly met by the very type of drone attacks on a U.S. facility in Baghdad the administration sought to halt.

During the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, the Biden administration employed airstrikes to do something as Taliban forces have captured city after city. Initially, these strikes may have been to encourage the Afghans to fight for themselves as Biden has exhorted. This halfhearted support has failed to turn the tide in Afghanistan. Although a much more aggressive air campaign launched earlier could have blunted the Talibans offensive, alone it would not have defeated the Taliban. As the war against ISIL demonstrated, American airpower can halt an offensive, but it alone cannot liberate captured territory. A capable ground force is also needed. Yet, after 20 years of trying and billions of dollars invested, the Afghan military did not emerge as this partner and airpower alone will not liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban.

Airpower is an unusually seductive form of military power because of its immediate effects, distance from the battlefield, and relatively low-risk application. But there are right and wrong ways to apply airpower. Using advanced airpower capabilities in an operation with clear tactical goals as evidenced by the Gulf War and Inherent Resolve may achieve battlefield victories and support foreign policy aims with limited risk to U.S. forces. Employing airpower as a form of coercion in one-off strikes without a precise operational objective, or merely as a way of demonstrating action, is less impressive.

Presidents and their advisers should be mindful that, although innovations in warfighting may achieve tactical and operational aims, they do not guarantee strategic success. Today, although the Islamic States so-called caliphate has been destroyed, groups of well-financed fighters remain active, and the airstrikes against these targets continue. The combined effects of air and landpower can curb threats to regional stability, but they cannot defeat ideology.

At present, it appears as though the Biden administration has seized on airpower as the preferred tool to do something even if it fails to achieve its purported goal as opposed to doing nothing. But this approach has failed to deter further Iranian proxy attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq or to keep the Taliban from taking Kabul. Such actions appear mainly intended to appease domestic critics who accuse Biden of being weak on Iran or abandoning Afghanistan. Moreover, airpower not tied to broader objectives that align with national interests risks unintended consequences, which may undermine the administrations longstanding plans to reduce the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and distract from the Pentagons efforts to focus on China.

The Biden administration should be careful to not fall under the siren song of airpower as its preferred method of response. There are times in which military power is the best tool as was the case of Inherent Resolve, where only the combination of ground and airpower could roll back ISILs territorial advance. But there are times in which other instruments of power, particularly diplomacy, may do a better job of protecting U.S. interests, or it is simply best to do nothing. As such, the Biden administration should think twice before calling for airstrikes and should preserve military power for when it is truly needed.

Becca Wasser is a fellow in the defense program at the Center for a New American Security. Stacie L. Pettyjohn is a senior fellow and director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security. Together, they are the co-authors ofThe Air War Against the Islamic State.

Image: U.S. Air Force (Photo by Senior Airman Duncan C. Bevan)

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From Desert Storm to Inherent Resolve: The Evolution of Airpower - War on the Rocks

Mamama, dadada, bababa parents usually welcome with enthusiasm the sounds of a babys babble. Babbling is the first milestone when learning to speak. All typically developing infants babble, no matter which language theyre learning.

Speech, the oral output of language, requires precise control over the lips, tongue and jaw to produce one of the basic speech subunits: the syllable, like ba, da, ma. Babbling is characterized by universal features for example, repetition of syllables and use of rhythm. It lets an infant practice and playfully learn how to control their vocal apparatus to correctly produce the desired syllables.

More than anything else, language defines human nature. But its evolutionary origins have puzzled scientists for decades. Investigating the biological foundations of language across species as I do in bats is a promising way to gain insights into key features of human language.

Im a behavioral biologist who has spent many months of 10-hour days sitting in front of bat colonies in Panama and Costa Rica recording the animals vocalizations. My colleagues and I have found striking parallels between the babbling produced by these bat pups and that by human infants. Identifying a mammal that shares similar brain structure with human beings and is also capable of vocal imitation may help us understand the cognitive and neuromolecular foundations of vocal learning.

Scientists learned a great deal about vocal imitation and vocal development by studying songbirds. They are among the best-known vocal learners, and the learning process of young male songbirds shows interesting parallels to human speech development. Young male songbirds also practice their notes in a practice phase reminiscent of human infant babbling.

However, songbirds and people possess different vocal apparatus birds vocalize by using a syrinx, humans use a larynx and their brain architecture differs. So drawing direct conclusions from songbird research for humans is limited.

Luckily, in Central Americas tropical jungle, theres a mammal that engages in a very conspicuous vocal practice behavior that is strongly reminiscent of human infant babbling: the neotropical greater sac-winged bat, Saccopteryx bilineata. The pups of this small bat, dark-furred with two prominent white wavy stripes on the back, engage in daily babbling behavior during large parts of their development.

Greater sac-winged bats possess a large vocal repertoire that includes 25 distinct syllable types. A syllable is the smallest acoustic unit, defined as a sound surrounded by silence. These adult bats create multisyllabic vocalizations and two song types. The territorial song warns potential rivals that the owner is ready to defend their home turf, while the courtship song lets female bats know about a male bats fitness as a potential mate.

Of particular interest to me and my colleagues, the greater sac-winged bat is capable of vocal imitation the ability to learn a previously unknown sound from scratch by ear. It requires acoustic input, like human parents talking to their infants, or in the case of the greater sac-winged bat, adult males that sing.

The only other non-human mammal that scientists have documented babbling is the pygmy marmoset, a small South American primate species that is not capable of vocal imitation. The greater sac-winged bat offered the first possibility to study pup babbling in detail in a species that can imitate the vocalizations of others. But just how similar is bat babbling to human infant babbling?

To answer that question, I monitored the vocal development of wild pups in eight colonies. During the day, S. bilineata find shelter and protection in tree crevices and outer walls of buildings. Theyre very light-tolerant, and adults like to stay several centimeters apart from one another, making it easier for us to observe and record particular individuals.

To be able to recognize specific bats, I marked their forearms with colored plastic bands. I followed 20 pups from birth until weaning. Starting around 2.5 weeks of age, and continuing until weaning around 10 weeks old, pups babble away between sunrise and sunset in the day roost. Its very loud, audible even to the human ear because some babbled syllables are within our hearing range (others are too high for us to hear). For each pup, I recorded babbling bouts some of which lasted as long as 43 minutes and the accompanying behaviors throughout their entire development. In contrast, adult bats produce vocalizations that last no more than a few minutes.

Scientists have known for a while that pups learn how to sing by vocally imitating adult tutors while babbling. But our new study provides the first formal analysis that their babbling really does share many of the features that characterize babbling in human infants: duplication of syllables, use of rhythm and an early onset of the babbling phase during development.

Just as human infants produce sounds that are recognizable as what are called canonical adult syllables those with mature features that sound like what an adult speaker produces bat pups babbling consists of syllable precursors that are part of the adult vocal repertoire.

And just as human babbling includes what are probably playful sounds produced as the infant explores their voice, bat babbling includes so-called protosyllables that are only produced by pups.

Moreover, pup babbling is universal. Each pup, regardless of sex and regional origin, babbled during its development.

During my first field season, I noticed that during babble sequences, mothers and pups interacted behaviorally and vocally. Mothers produced a distinct call type directed at pups while babbling.

We humans alter our speech depending on whether we are addressing infants or adults. This infant-directed speech also known as motherese is a special form of social feedback for the vocalizing infant. Its characterized by universal features, including higher pitch, slower tempo and exaggerated intonation contours. The timbre the voice color also changes when people speak motherese compared to when talking to other adults. Timbre is what makes a voice sound a bit cold and harsh or warm and cozy. Could it be that female bats also changed their timbre, depending on whom they directed their calls to?

The results were clear: For the first time, wed found a non-human mammal that changes the color of voice depending on the addressee. Bats also use baby talk!

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Our results introduce the greater sac-winged bat as a promising candidate for cross-species comparisons about the evolution of human language. Babbling is like a behavioral readout of the ongoing vocal learning happening in the brain. When pups babble, they imitate the adult song and provide us with insight about when learning is taking place. It offers the unique possibility to study the genes that are involved in vocal imitation.

And since bats share their basic brain architecture with people, we can translate our research findings from bats to humans. Im fascinated that two mammal species that are so different share striking parallels in how they reach the same goal: to acquire a complex adult vocal repertoire namely, language.

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Bat pups babble and bat moms use baby talk, hinting at the evolution of human language - The Conversation US

Jack Wallen harkens back to the early days of the Linux desktop and how it has changed over the years, bringing the cool he so longed for.

It's been 30 years since Linus Torvalds created Linux. It's been almost 25 years since I first experienced Linux on the desktop.

I remember like it was yesterday. The very first time I booted into the Linux desktop. The distribution in question was Caldera Open Linux 1.0, which installed with kernel 2.0 and the desktop was Fvwm95. I cannot confirm what I had assumed the desktop would have looked like, but I can assure you I had no idea it would have taken on a rather Windows 95 clone-ish look about it.

SEE:5 Linux server distributions you should be using(TechRepublic Premium)

It was ugly. Quite ugly. And not in a retro-kitsch way to make it look ironically or whimsically cool. It was just unsightly. The colors were decidedly too Microsoftian, and it was all so ... clinical.

Fortunately, that desktop didn't last very long with me. Nor did Caldera Open Linux last for more than a week on my desktop. Instead of sticking with that particular distribution (before I even knew what a distribution was), I jumped ship for Red Hat 4.2 (prior to Red Hat becoming RHEL). Once again, I found myself with a desktop that looked more at home in a university research lab than my PC.

Something had to give.

I cannot be sure why, at such an early stage in my Linux career, aesthetics was so important to me, but I know I'd read so much about how flexible and cool Linux was. But where was the cool? Certainly not in Fvwm95, CDE or most of the default desktops of the time.

Or so I thought.

Eventually, I connected with a Linux guru who taught me a great deal about Linux in a very short period of time. It was through him that I discovered how to install software from source and that there was a veritable treasure trove of cool desktops to install. That led me to AfterStep. I remember it being a serious challenge to install (completely from source), but once it was up and running, it became my digital canvas for which I would spend the next few years creating desktop art. At one point I had just about everything on the desktop displaying some level of transparency and anyone who happened to check out my computer would gaze in wonder at what I'd created. They were jealous. They wanted what I had.

It was, in a word, impressive.

My run with AfterStep lasted a few good years, until I discovered Enlightenment. It was then that I realized I could have the cool aesthetics with the addition of a bit more functionality. Enlightenment E16 was a more cohesive desktop that seemed to be better aware of itself than anything else I'd used. It was also highly configurable, which made for many a late-night tweaking session.

Enlightenment remained my desktop of choice for a very long time. Sure, I toyed around with the likes of Blackbox and Windowmaker, but they were so minimal and offered even less cohesion than what I'd been using. At that point, I couldn't afford to take a step backward. I knew too much to settle.

And then Compiz came into the mix and changed everything. At this point, Linux was the absolute ruler of eye candy on the desktop. With Compiz, it seemed there was nothing the Linux desktop couldn't do.

It was a magical time.

But then things took a turn for the serious. All of a sudden, I was a technical writer, covering Linux for TechRepublic (helping to build what would be called LinuxRepublic ... RIP). As much as I enjoyed spending hours tweaking the desktop, I had to focus on being more productive. During those early days, we Linux faithful were rather limited on the tools we had at our disposalat least when working within a decidedly Windows environment. I had StarOffice and Wordperfect and, for the most part, they served their purposes fairly well.

SEE: Rust: What developers need to know about this programming language (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

But the Linux desktop started showing its limitations. For example, when I was sent a file to read, I couldn't just save it to my Documents folder and double-click it to open. At that time most of the desktops simply weren't that aware. I had to open my word processor of choice and then open the file manually. Those extra steps were the norm.

Until a new desktop arrived on the market. Said desktop was GNOME. I remember meeting Miguel de Icaza at my first Linux convention at the Research Triangle. He was magnetic and passionate. I loved what he had to say and was anxious to try out this new desktop. It was 1999, and GNOME 1.0 was finally ready for public consumption. And I did consume. It was as though the developers took all the good bits from every window manager I'd used and rolled it into one. But even better, it was aware. Not in a singularity kind of way, but I could click on a file within the file manager and the appropriate application would open.

All of a sudden, I had eye candy and productivity! Life was good.

Of course, this was GNOME 1.0, so there were plenty of issues to deal with. Even so, I was a convert. I used GNOME for years (and still use it to this day).

Suffice it to say, no operating system desktop has evolved like Linux. Yes, you can compare the likes of Windows or macOS and say, "But look at how this changed!" Sure, the Windows and macOS desktops have evolved, but their evolution was a bit more subtle and didn't necessarily take the twists, turns and detours that Linux took to get where it is today. Nor did either of those operating systems offer the vast choice of desktops found with Linux.

The Linux desktop has morphed from an ugly, awkward, and less-than-productive state, to an almost avant-garde work of art, into an elegant, productive and professional environment. All the while, it offered more choices than most users had time to consider. Even today, I could go back to Enlightenment, or opt for the likes of Pantheon, Budgie, KDE, Openbox, Fluxbox, i3, Gala, Windowmaker or numerous other takes on the desktop.

So while the Linux desktop evolved into something efficient and elegant, it also retained a tight grasp on its roots. At this very moment, should I so choose, I could install one of the window managers that helped me learn about Linux back in the early days (although AfterStep hasn't been in development since 2013).

However, I'm quite content working with System76's COSMIC on top of GNOME. It offers everything I want and need from a desktop. And if I were to go back in time and look over the shoulder at a younger me, I would probably see someone who loved the desktop he was using, but wished it could be a bit more productive. I would then whisper into his ear and say, "Give it time."

To read more about Linux's 30th anniversary, see parts one and two of this series.

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The evolution of Linux on the desktop: Distributions are so much better today - TechRepublic

Some breeds of dogs are prized for their unique coat colors, such as the golden retriever's shimmery, amber coat or a blue merle Australian shepherd's speckled fur. Researchers previously thought that the variations in coat color occurred after humans began breeding and domesticating canines. However, in a new study published this month in Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers found one gene that predates domestication actually produces five common coat color patterns that are still seen in hundreds of breeds today.

The mutations originated in a canid ancestor that diverged from grey wolves about two million years ago, reports Vishwam Sankaran for the Independent. The study may also reveal the origin and evolution of various dog lineages.

Dogs obtain their unique coat colors from a gene called Agouti-signaling protein (ASIP). The gene is responsible for controlling the amount and variation of yellow and black pigments seen in many mammals, reports Newsweek's Samantha Berlin. The yellow tint is called pheomelanin, and the black coloration is called eumelanin. Coat color patterns result from a regulated production of these two pigments, the Independent reports.

Geneticist Danika Bannasch of the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), and her team identified structural variants that control how the ASIP protein is expressed in two different locations on the gene. Mutations along the locations produce five different coat colors in dogs, according to a UC Davis press release.

The five coat color variations, or phenotypes, controlled by the ASIP gene are dominant yellow, shaded yellow, agouti, black saddle, and black back.

The dominant yellow coat pattern is shared with arctic white wolves and ended up in modern-day dogs when the lineage diverged two million years ago before modern wolves evolved, Gizmodo's Issac Schultz reports. The shaded yellow phenotype produced by mutations on the ASIP gene are seen in a collies coat color. Agouti occurs when more than one pigment is present on each hair; this pattern is seen on German sheperds, for example. A black saddle phenotype is characterized by a large black patch covering most of a dog's back, which is commonly seen in beagles. Black backs are characterized by a black coat covering most of their body. Sometimes a black-backed dog will have different colored belly or paws. This pattern is seen in breeds like Dachshunds or Bernese mountain dogs.

Lighter coat colors, like dominant yellow and shaded yellow, may have been favorable for the extinct canid ancestor while hunting in the snowy environments during glaciation periods between 1.5 and 2 million years agolong before canine domestication occurred 30,000 years ago, according to the press release.

"We were initially surprised to discover that white wolves and yellow dogs have an almost identical ASIP DNA configuration," says co-author Chris Kaelin of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in a statement. "But we were even more surprised when it turned out that a specific DNA configuration is more than 2 million years old, prior to the emergence of modern wolves as a species."

Per Newsweek, the lighter fur may have helped ancient wolves approach their prey without being seen. A golden coat color persisted in ancient canids, and the coloring is still observed in modern dogs and wolves. Examples of dominant yellow coat patterns are seen today in Shiba Inu, chow chows, bullmastiffs, and Irish terriers, Gizmodo reports.

Overall, the study gives scientists a better idea of what ancient canines may have looked like, per Gizmodo.

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Golden Fur in Dogs Evolved Two Million Years Ago, Long Before Domestication - Smithsonian Magazine

R

ush Street Interactive has partnered with Evolution to debut its Red Tiger online casino games at BetRivers.com, announced the company on August 19. The Chicago-based gaming company will be among the first online casino operators in Michigan to offer the companys game studio.

The newly launched games include fan favorites Bounty Raid, 777 Strike and Reel Keeper, which will be joined by Red Tigers Cash Vault, Piggy Riches Megaways and Gonzos Quest Megaways, already player favorites on BetRivers.com in Pennsylvania, describes the company in a press statement.

We are excited to partner with Evolution to bring these top quality and much-loved Red Tiger casino games to our players in Michigan, said Richard Schwartz, CEO of RSI, which operates BetRivers.

RSI was the first to debut the Red Tiger games in the U.S. where they are already some of the top performing games in Pennsylvania, further added Schwartz. The company expects the games to perform as successfully in Michigan.

On the importance of the deal, Jeff Millar, Commercial Director, North America for Evolution, said: Were very proud to be partnering with RSI. By having secured this collaboration, Evolution expects strengthen its position as a top provider in the online casino category.

Rush Street received authorization from the Michigan Gaming Control Board to launch online live dealer games back in July, including Blackjack, Roulette and Baccarat, available on its BetRivers.com website. A partnership with Little River Casino Resort in Manistee was announced back in June.

In a press release, Richard Schwartz said back in July: "A live dealer game is as close as you can get online to playing in a land-based casino and we're thrilled to be among the first to offer Michigan residents the opportunity to sit and play on Evolution's world-renowned virtual live dealer casino tables."

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Rush Street partners with Evolution to debut its Red Tiger games in Michigan - Yogonet International

George, you mentioned elsewhere that a big part of... I don't know if it was the genesis of the album, but there was sort of an extended bout of insomnia that went into this, right?

Clarke: Yeah. That was happening at the same time. It's funny looking back now because the pandemic is so much more understood at this point, but at the time, yeah, I was like wiping off grocery bags and not leaving my apartment at all. And I had so much wound up energy, not being able to go to the gym, not being able to go outside for a run, all of these things, at least in the first couple of months when the information was very thin.

Out of that developed a ton of insomnia. Just nowhere to place that energy, that anxiety, because we were working on the songs at the same time, I would just stay up and listen to demos and do writing and re-writing and try and write melodies and things like that. So a lot of my kind of homework happened between say two and six [AM]. And I think because of that, I was writing a lot in the blue hour, and I think that there's references to blue, and essentially every single song informed the artwork. The whole thing was kind of informed by this period of restlessness.

Yeah. You talked about just even breaking these songs down into syllables, because obviously the shift in your voice, the way that that's evolved quite quickly, and essentially having to find yourself a new voice on this record, or a different voice. What was that process like, of discovering that new voice and just breaking songs down into syllables that made more sense for that voice, as opposed to the howl of earlier records?

Clarke: It was a long process. When we were first talking with Justin, it was, of course, the kind of major thing, the major shift, that we were discussing. And he immediately made me feel very comfortable. He was like, "Look, we have a year, and we're going to do everything in that year to make this happen. You don't need to worry. Just do the steps. And we're going to work out a rough schedule and so on."

So as far as personal work goes, yeah, it was listening to a lot of different singers. I wanted to find a way to sing with some strength. A problem that I had with performing shoegaze live was I didn't want to be competing with roaring guitars and having this softer voice. And I found with a lot of bands that I love, the dynamic doesn't always work live. They can't always nail it. The mix is very difficult to balance those things out.

So initially my thought was, I need to have a voice that is strong enough to compete with the guitars. And so that was kind of going back to the classics and listening to Nina Simone and listening to Chet Baker, people that have a lot of character and strength in their voice. And the same thing with Tears For Fears or Depeche Mode or these stronger singers. Because I knew eventually if we were performing them live, I didn't want that to be a massive hurdle for us, where we were needing to really dial in this delicate vocal over all the loud live music. So that was a motivation.

And then from there, Justin has a studio at his house that we did the record. He has an isolation booth and while he was just working on other projects, he would let me come over and I would just stay in the iso booth just for hours. And I would yell and I could be loud in ways that I'm unable to in my apartment. I could test ideas out. Say like the end of "Great Mass of Color" or the end of "Villain," these things that have these more roaring kind of half yells, I was able to develop that in his studio, which was very helpful. And then working with Shiv and Chris and Kerry, I, at one point went up to the Bay Area. Shiv and Dan and I worked together. I remember for "In Blur," a ton of that was worked the three of us.

Kerry and I worked together a ton, especially on, like you were saying, like the syllable stuff. There's kind of an antidote that I keep using. In the chorus of "Other Language," there was a lyric that wasn't working and I was being very combative about it. And we all kind of worked together to make that more musical, make that make more sense. Or "Lament for Wasps," Kerry and I worked in Justin's iso booth on that course together. So there was a lot of communal group writing in a way that really wasn't available to us on the older records. Because frankly, it's more difficult for the guys to have input on a scream, and that kind of thing I can do alone.

That in itself made the experience a lot richer and helped me get across the finish line with what I was trying to accomplish, which was not only singing in this new voice, but owning it, and trying to create a record that sounded like a band that had always been doing this. I guess what I'm ultimately trying to say was that it was very thought out. It didn't feel haphazard at all. It was a lot of work. Yeah.

You said at one point that you couldn't be afraid. Was there a point where you were a little bit afraid of putting yourself out there with something that nobody had ever heard before?

Clarke: Absolutely. It's funny. You have these feelings in you for so long. You say you have this voice in you for so long. We'd been talking about expanding the vocal for a while and in certain ways I had kind of already done it on my own and we had done it together, like on "Near" from Ordinary Corrupt Human Love or "Night People" from Ordinary. It was like, it's always there, but when you start to really put it into practice, there is an imposter feeling for sure. And there is a out of body feeling where you're like this isn't my identity at all. Even though you've been harboring this internally for a while, once you start stepping into it. Yeah, for me anyway, if it felt at times a bit strange. It was like using totally new muscles and using a totally different part of my brain.

And the whole thing was so new that there were steps along the way where I just felt apprehension. Even less vocally, but more like on the musical side, there were times in the writing process I remember where we could have easily put in like a double kick or something and maybe did, and then we would stop and discuss. And it was always my opinion that we should stay the course and not falter into our old habits. And that went more for me than anything. Like don't scream here, do what it is that you want to do. And now that you're doing it, keep going. It was so important just to keep going and to exercise that honesty. I think that's the best way I could put it.

Kerry, did you feel the same during the writing process? Was there a sort of apprehension? I mean, it's fascinating to hear you talk about like reverting to a double kick and then being like, 'no, no, wait, this isn't what we're trying to do here.' I mean, are those moments scary for you as well?

McCoy: Well, every record that we put out is scary at some point. When we're working on music, we kind of have this rule where we don't allow ourselves or anyone to really ask the question like, 'geez, what are people going to think about this?' And we had it with New Bermuda when we started adding, like, kind of more heavier elements or we had it with Ordinary when we opened the record with a song that starts with piano. Like every record we have the same rule and then the same result ends where we write this thing and we're in our bubble, not even the manager hears it. No one hears it until it's done. And we're fully locked in.

What inevitably happens after that is that we turn the thing in, we show it to the label, we show it to our management, we show it to everybody, and they love it. Every time so far, at least people are like all excited about it. And then you've got six months for final turnaround. And so, you've got about four months until you can announce at some point. And so that's four months for your brain to start thinking, 'oh my God, what the hell have we done here?' And so this is just the same thing, but it's just the stakes went up a little bit higher. So it was a little bit more of that feeling of we were in the studio writing this stuff and then we're in the studio recording it. And the whole time we were just like, man, this fucking rules. I really like this. This is really what we want to be doing right now at this time in our existence of a band.

And then you hear the whole thing and then, like, we would all just listen to it and we showed Kathy and then we showed... We showed people and everyone was just like, 'oh my God, this is the best thing you guys have ever done, etc etc.' And then we turned it in and we're waiting since January up until like June 9th. And we're all just like, 'wait, is it good? It's good, right?' I listened to it again in the car this way. And I think it's good, but maybe I'm too old now. And I don't know, you have these kind of thoughts.

I think we can all deal with that in healthier ways these days. And so it's at the end of the day, we all just kind of sat there and be like, I mean, 'it is what it is.' Like we're locked in now. It's like being at the top of a rollercoaster and being like, 'oh, should I go in this?' The point is moot at this point. We're going on this ride whether you like it or not. So yeah, it was kind of that feeling, but there were moments of like, 'wow, this is kind of a crazy thing for us to write as a band,' but for better, for worse, this is the band we are now. So people are going to have to take it or leave it.

I was quite surprised going back and reading old interviews with you a while ago. You were talking about sort of being a little bit apprehensive about a new album coming out and trying to shy away from reading reviews, and it surprised me because I've always conceived of Deafheaven as a band who, whoever they're pissing off, they're pissing off somebody. And I sort of expected you to be just like inured to it, just like completely defiant and just like, yeah, well, you know what? Some people are going to hate it. Is there still this kind of thrill about upending expectations?

McCoy: Yeah. I mean, that's a great question. A couple things. One is I stopped reading reviews. Well, I'll read the reviews, I'll read the big reviews, the ones that whatever... I stopped reading comments, I stopped reading any of that kind of stuff, when Sunbather first happened, or even before Sunbather when we did Roads to Judah, and it was our first little glimpse into, like, the wider world as a whole as aware of our existence. It's an exciting thing, especially like we were 22, 23 and you just want to, 'oh, wow, cool. Like people like this stuff we make, that's cool. I'll read it, you know? Wow.' And you kind of get into it. And then around Sunbather, I kind of realized that it doesn't really matter either way, even with reviews because as much as I am grateful for the critical love we've been shown, it doesn't mean that it'll happen all the time or not. Or people are human beings, etc. And they have different opinions on things and that's their job or whatever.

But the one thing that I came across as, especially back in the day in the Sunbather days, there seemed to be two camps of people who thought that we were God's gift to music as a whole, and this is this brand new thing that's whatever. And then, there's these people that just think like the world would be a better place if everyone in the band was aborted or something. Just these despicable, evil things being said about us. I realized kind of that both of these camps are wrong. We're not the worst thing that ever happened to music. And we're not The Beatles or whatever. We're just guys who write music and people feel a way about it.

And if you connect with them, I'm grateful for that. And it's just the music we want to make. I guess what I'm getting to is that after that experience, and then going into New Bermuda and all these kinds of things, I kind of realized, like, that's none of my business anyway, in a weird way. We do have this kind of bravado of, like, when we were in the studio, I remember people being like, wow, like this is going to be crazy, that this is a Deafheaven record, you know? And I remember us kind of being around, "Yeah. It's a Deafheavan record, because we say it is, and we're Deafheaven and that's what we get to do. But at a certain time, you're also like you got to live in the world. And like I'm aware of our previous content and what it sounds like and I'm aware of what people expect when they hear it. And none of us are millionaires. We've got to go hit the road and play this thing and pay our bills and stuff. So you can have a little bit of that bravado but you also, you're lying to yourself if you don't at some level kind of be like, oh God, like I hope they like it. I don't know. I like it. What does it say about me if this is this thing that I've poured two years of my life about into. People can think what they want. I like this. We all are very happy with it. And if this is the last thing we ever make and we can never play another show again, then at least we were honest with ourselves.

Clarke: I will second all of that. And another misconception has kind of often been that there's an intention to make our audience, to kind of to trick them, or to lead them astray, or to kind of trick the metal audience at large, and that's never been the case. That we ended up kind of subverting expectation, I think is a exciting side effect of the music that we make. But it's always just been about making things that we are feeling passionate about in the moment, and music that is simply just kind of a reflection of who we are.

And yet, after Sunbather, and I remember this, especially around Ordinary, I remember saying it out loud that all we wanted to do was just put our head down and work. And I think that we've really, despite if some people might think that we're kind of these trolls or something, I think that the only thing that we've ever really wanted to do and have done is just put our head down and work and tour and try and make things that are interesting to us and thankful for the people that connect with it.

I was thinking about the sort of semantics of your roots in what would be called extreme music, extreme metal. And yeah, bringing in Justin to work on this record, some of the influences that you were talking about here, Justin produced the Paramore record, 2017, After Laughter, which is one of the more, even by Paramore standards that was sonically diverse for them. I sort of wonder if there's something about Deafheaven that is constantly working in extremes, that yes, there's extreme metal on the one side of it, but there's a maximalism to this record that there's absolutely no sense of, 'okay, well, we should pull it back here a little bit.' If you're going to do melodies, you're really going to do melodies.

Clarke: It feels so good to hear you say that because I completely agree, and that has been with us since bringing in the Justin question. Will this guy work with us, and do we want to work with him, and why do we want to work with him? And that maximalism was a huge factor. And I've said this a couple of times, but I'll say it again. For me anyway, there was a real intention to replace the speed and metallic heft of our older records with density and hooks and real interlocking melody for this record and because we didn't want anything to feel lacking. We wanted it to feel grandiose. We knew that he was capable of making that sound.

The record that I was listening to mostly from his catalog while we were working was M83's Junk. It has so much variety. There's so much on that record that's bombastic and unafraid, and I wanted to take that and apply it to our sound. And I think we definitely did that. Not only working with him, but Shiv and Kerry really stepped it up with creative guitar playing. I think that this is such a guitar-centric album. I think that there's so many great textures and elements that they bring to it. And yeah, it was definitely thought about. And I was hoping that that was something that we would achieve.

The way that it seems like this band has worked for the past decade has been that you've gained confidence with each album. With each album, you work a little bit more cohesively as a unit. You understand each other better as musicians, yeah, also as people. And therefore, you sort of feel free to channel every possible influence into your work that as a unit, you don't need to push anything away. Are there things that you listen to now that you still haven't quite managed to fold into the Deafheaven sound? Are there things that right now beyond even Deafheaven?

McCoy: Yeah. It's not on the record, but at one point we were tossing around the idea of throwing an early DJ Shadow or the first Unkle record, kind of Boards of Canada-y kind of vibe in it. It's something that I listened to kind of that kind of stuff a lot. I'm sure it's not hard to see maybe a little bit of a Portishead or Massive Attack influence in the band, but there's a lot of stuff that I'm interested in, and Shiv was interested, George is interested, etc, like the Mo' Wax label stuff. And yeah, kind of just like early Warp records where we were going to kind of try and kind of throw, again, sort of like "Airbag" from OK Computer kind of like a DJ Shadow kind of thing. And it didn't quite fit. It didn't quite get in there. And it kind of wound up being for the best.

There's a few lanes still left to explore I think for us, and I hope that we have that for the remainder of the band, that there's always something, another flavor we can try. I think that's what's best about being a creative person.

Clarke: Yeah, that was definitely that more like laidback, breakbeat kind of trip hop influence that we did toy with quite a bit, but didn't necessarily land on this album. I would say that and Mary Lattimore, something that's quite a bit orchestral and kind of bringing in more of those auxiliary instruments into the fold, that's something that we've yet to do. Even strings or what have you, we've we've never really gone that way for no particular reason. Like Kerry said, I think there's always something that is, that is really keeping us interested, and there's always something to bring into the fold, and there's always something to try out. And I think we have kind of positioned ourselves in a way that we're able to. Hopefully we'll just continue experimenting and continue growing and doing the thing.

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Deafheaven on evolution, reinvention, and Infinite Granite - The FADER

Significance

The Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota is a terrestrial lagersttte that produces exquisitely preserved fossils that have furnished enormous evidence on the origins and early evolution of diverse vertebrate groups. On the basis of the latest paleontological and geochronologic evidence, we discuss the three stages of the biota, and suggest that the spatiotemporal evolution of the Jehol Biota coincides with the initial and peak stages of the North China craton destruction in the Early Cretaceous. Such linkage presents an example of how regional tectonics influence the terrestrial biota that points to a new path for future studies involving multidisciplinary methods to explore the biosphere in deep time.

The Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota is a terrestrial lagersttte that contains exceptionally well-preserved fossils indicating the origin and early evolution of Mesozoic life, such as birds, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, mammals, insects, and flowering plants. New geochronologic studies have further constrained the ages of the fossil-bearing beds, and recent investigations on Early Cretaceous tectonic settings have provided much new information for understanding the spatiotemporal distribution of the biota and dispersal pattern of its members. Notably, the occurrence of the Jehol Biota coincides with the initial and peak stages of the North China craton destruction in the Early Cretaceous, and thus the biotic evolution is related to the North China craton destruction. However, it remains largely unknown how the tectonic activities impacted the development of the Jehol Biota in northeast China and other contemporaneous biotas in neighboring areas in East and Central Asia. It is proposed that the Early Cretaceous rift basins migrated eastward in the northern margin of the North China craton and the Great Xingan Range, and the migration is regarded to have resulted from eastward retreat of the subducting paleo-Pacific plate. The diachronous development of the rift basins led to the lateral variations of stratigraphic sequences and depositional environments, which in turn influenced the spatiotemporal evolution of the Jehol Biota. This study represents an effort to explore the linkage between terrestrial biota evolution and regional tectonics and how plate tectonics constrained the evolution of a terrestrial biota through various surface geological processes.

Author contributions: Z.Z. designed research; Z.Z., Q.M., R.Z., and M.W. performed research; Z.Z., Q.M., R.Z., and M.W. analyzed data; and Z.Z., Q.M., R.Z., and M.W. wrote the paper.

Reviewers: A.D.B., Universidad Autonoma de Madrid; E.M.F., University of Aarhus; J.M., American Museum of Natural History; and J.Z., Peking University.

The authors declare no competing interest.

All study data are included in the article.

Excerpt from:

Spatiotemporal evolution of the Jehol Biota: Responses to the North China craton destruction in the Early Cretaceous - pnas.org

You'd be hard pressed to name a fashion trend of the beloved early aughts era that hasn't yet bounced back in 2021. Colorful Y2K-inspired rings are the accessory of the summer, halters and tube tops are again the key to a proper going-out ensemble, and celebrities such as Emily Ratajkowski just may be able to make low-rise jeans stick. Now, the return of the butterfly print is the latest trend to hit the roster and lets just say, Mariah Carey would be proud.

As unpredictable as fashion trends may be in this digital age (no one saw the undoing of skinny jeans coming), the return of the poppy, fun-loving print actually makes total sense. From pastel checkered prints to the reign of the psychedelic motif, slowly coming out on the other side of lockdown means the fashion enthusiast is looking for outfits that feel anything opposite of last year's lineup. Easily translated, it's the attention-grabbing, unserious attributes of clothes hooking fashion girls right now, and is there anything more joy sparking and lighthearted in fashion than a garment colorfully plastered with one of nature's most delicate creatures? Likely sensing the current zeitgeist, recent collections from runway designers haven't failed to meet the moment, either: Blumarine's fall 2021 collection was a Y2K dream, chock-full of nostalgic references, including crystal-embellished butterfly details on belts, necklaces, and bodysuits, all the way through to a butterfly-shaped knit sweater. Meanwhile at Lanvin, the brand's resort 2022 collection merged a butterfly print with a lace-lined, cami-strapped slip dress another archetypal 2000s aesthetic.

The biggest trendsetters wasted no time hopping on board Olivia Rodrigo and Dua Lipa both wore butterfly-shaped bodices referential of Mariah Carey's iconic 2000s Divas Awards top, and Bella Hadid was recently spotted in Paris wearing *that* Blumarine collection, down to the butterfly-stamped belt. Now, if you've been wondering how you, too, can get in on the fun (let's be honest, we all have), consider starting with the 12 pieces ahead.

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Butterfly Prints Are the Latest Evolution of the Y2K Fashion Revival - Yahoo Lifestyle