Are we witnessing a cloning race between the US and Russia? ● The European Space Agency risks remaining a spectator in the space race ● Pisces are capable of empathy

Are we witnessing a clone race between the US and Russia?

After Colossal Biosciences, a newly founded American company heavily invested in by the CIA, announced plans to bring mammoths, Tasmanian tigers and other extinct animals back to life, Ammosov Federal University in Yakutsk, Russia, announced that it intends to do just that. precisely with the extinct species of bison.

This is not the first time that Russia has launched such programs. In 2012, Russian authorities announced an investment of $5 million to support the mammoth cloning program. Since then, absolutely nothing has been heard about the cloning of extinct giant pachyderms. But still, the cloning of mammoths is currently the last concern of the Russian authorities, so it is understandable why they remained silent.

However, the discovery in 2022 of a bison perfectly preserved in the Siberian permafrost, more precisely in the Verkhoyansk district of the Far East, changes these problems. The specimen, which was about 1-2 years old at the time of death, is so well preserved that Russian experts believe it can be cloned.

Researchers from the University of Siberia have already dissected the bison and taken samples of muscle tissue, fat, bones, skin and horns, and even the brain, which is in extremely good condition.

However, not everyone is optimistic about the Russians’ chances of success. One of the main obstacles will be DNA degradation. Despite the fact that the animal, which lived about 8,000 years ago, was perfectly preserved, the degradation of DNA was not stopped by the permafrost. Whole chromosomes would be needed to succeed in cloning, and the chances of them being found in that condition in an eight-thousand-year-old sample are slim, says Love Dahlen, a paleogeneticist at Stockholm University in Sweden.

Success is definitely not out of the question, but the chances are slim, say the protesters. Considering that Colossal Biosciences doesn’t even have half the permafrost specimens of mammals that the Russians do, it seems a little surprising that they still got down to business despite all the obstacles.

If some of them actually succeed in cloning, we will see it soon. Maybe it’s just a straw fire after all, and these animals stay where they already are, that is, in the science and history books.

The European Space Agency risks remaining a spectator of the space race

The world is changing dramatically, and the space race, which is already underway, will have a decisive impact on the future, just as the Internet did 20 years ago. These are not my words, these are the words of the ESA (European Space Agency), in their latest press release.

And if the US and China have already built the first permanent lunar base in full swing, ESA claims that a similar European plan is urgently needed. Moreover, they should probably send the first European to the moon in ten years at the most.

The problem is that in terms of investment, ESA lags far behind China and the Americans. Until now, ESA focused more on the scientific side (telescopes, satellites, etc.) and relied on American or Russian rockets to send astronauts into space.

There was once a plan to create a European rocket, but in the 1980s these plans were abandoned. It was expected. With a budget roughly five times that of NASA, ESA can’t do miracles.

But ESA officials say that doubling funding will give Europe a real chance to participate in the space race. Practically at the moment, each member of the European Union pays 1.5 EUR/year to support ESA’s efforts. From 3 euros per year, everything will change dramatically. Obviously, we are talking about statistics. France is currently the largest sponsor of the ESA, followed by Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Pisces are capable of empathy

Traits that until recently we considered purely human, such as caring for others, the ability to feel and respond to the pain, fear or joy of those around us, seem to have much more ancient roots than we imagined. In fact, it would be a departure from the dawn of a complex life.

At least this is confirmed by a study conducted by a group of biologists from the University of Texas and published in the journal Science. Research shows that fish can sense fear of other fish and, in turn, become afraid. To find the mechanism that generates this reaction, called “emotional contagion”, American researchers hypothesized that it is oxytocin, a hormone that plays an important role, among other things, in human empathy.

When they inhibited the production of oxytocin in guinea pigs, they became antisocial, unable to respond to the behavior of others. Instead, when they received injections of oxytocin and their feelings returned to normal, empathic responses reappeared.

Even if it is one of the most primitive forms of empathy that is necessary to stay alive, the roots of this behavior are much older than the human race. In fact, they are more than 450 million years old, when a common ancestor of fish and humans could have existed.

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