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Newswise Addressing the mystery of how reproduction is shaped by childhood events and environment, Professor Philippa Melamed, together with PhD student Ben Bar-Sadeh, Postdoctorate Dr. Sergei Rudnizky, and colleagues Dr. Lilach Pnueli and Professor Ariel Kaplan, all from the Technion Faculty of Biology, and collaborators from the UK, Professor Gillian R. Bentley from Durham University and Professor Reinhard Stger from the University of Nottingham, have just published a paper in Nature Reviews Endocrinology on the role of epigenetics in human reproduction.

Epigenetics refers to the packaging of DNA, which can be altered in response to external signals (environment) through the addition of chemical tags to the DNA or the histone proteins that organize and compact the DNA inside the cell. This packaging affects the ability of a gene to be accessed and thus also its expression levels. So environmentally induced changes in this epigenetic packaging can lead to major variations in the phenotype (observable characteristics or traits) without changing the genetic code. This re-programming of gene expression patterns underlies some of our ability to adapt.

Reproductive characteristics are highly variable and responsive particularly to early life environment, during which they appear to be programmed to optimize an individuals reproductive success in accordance with the surroundings. Although some of these adaptations can be beneficial, they also carry negative health consequences that may be far-reaching. These include the age of pubertal onset and duration of the reproductive lifespan for women, and also the levels of circulating reproductive hormones; not only is fertility affected, but also predisposition to hormone-dependent cancers and other age-related diseases.

While epigenetic modifications are believed to play a role in the plasticity of reproductive traits, the actual mechanisms are mostly still not clear. Moreover, reproductive hormones also modify the epigenome and epigenetic aging, which complicates distinguishing cause from effect, particularly when trying to understand human reproductive phenotypes in which the relevant tissues are inaccessible for analysis. Integrated studies are needed, including observations and whatever measurements are possible in human populations, incorporation of animal models, cell culture, and even single-molecule studies, in order to determine the mechanisms responsible for the human reproductive phenotype.

The review emphasizes that there is a clinical need to understand the characteristics of epigenetic regulation of reproductive function and the underlying mechanisms of adaptive responses for properly informed decisions on treating patients from diverse backgrounds. In addition, this knowledge should form the basis for formulating lifestyle recommendations and novel treatments that utilize the epigenetic pathway to alter a reproductive phenotype.

Prof. Melamed emphasizes that a multifaceted cross-disciplinary approach is essential for elucidating the involvement of epigenetics in human reproductive function, spanning the grand scale of human cohort big data and anthropological studies in unique human populations, through animal models and cell culture experiments, to the exquisitely high resolution of single-molecule biophysical approaches. This will continue to require collaboration and cooperation.

For more than a century, the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology has pioneered in science and technology education and delivered world-changing impact. Proudly a global university, the Technion has long leveraged boundary-crossing collaborations to advance breakthrough research and technologies. Now with a presence in three countries, the Technion will prepare the next generation of global innovators. Technion people, ideas and inventions make immeasurable contributions to the world, innovating in fields from cancer research and sustainable energy to quantum computing and computer science to do good around the world.

The American Technion Society supports visionary education and world-changing impact through the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Based in New York City, we represent thousands of US donors, alumni and stakeholders who invest in the Technions growth and innovation to advance critical research and technologies that serve the State of Israel and the global good. Over more than 75 years, our nationwide supporter network has funded new Technion scholarships, research, labs, and facilities that have helped deliver world-changing contributions and extend Technion education to campuses in three countries.

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The Power of Epigenetics in Human Reproduction - Newswise

Wikipedias coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic has outdone most media companies in both content output and page views. Josie Adams spoke to Wikipedian Mike Dickison about what makes the organisation so good at covering these events.

There are more than 5,200 articles about Covid-19 on Wikipedia. One defines the disease, and another the virus that causes it. Articles describe the viruss impact on everything from disc golf to human rights. Timelines abound; you can follow Covid-19s progress day by day, or country by country.

In New Zealand, there are pages for the Marist College and Ruby Princess clusters, for the contact tracing app and, of course, for Dr Ashley Bloomfield. The Covid-19 pandemic in New Zealand page, created in March under a different name, has been visited more than a million times. The detail in it is both comprehensive and precise: it contains statistics from clusters and cases, definitions of essential services and alert levels, and more Covid-19-adjacent information about things like the George Floyd protests, church services and the pig surplus.

Mike Dickison is one of thousands of volunteers working on these pages. He said that while New Zealands Covid-19 numbers are important, the colour surrounding our experience of the pandemic is also worth preserving.

When lockdown first happened, I put out a call to encourage people to try and record the temperature of the time, he said. Signs, teddy bears in the windows, empty streets, that sort of thing. I was trying really hard to capture some of that ephemeral stuff that was happening publicly, because I knew that as soon as we got out of lockdown wed just throw that all away and try to return to normal.

Dickison, who has his own Wikipedia page, was New Zealands first Wikipedian-at-large. Funding from the Wikimedia foundation allowed him to take up residency in scientific institutions and universities spreading the word of the good e-book. Hes a museum curator and zoologist; an academic by (and about) nature.

Mike Dickison at Wellingtons BioBlitz in 2019. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Although not all volunteers working on the Covid-19 Wikipedia edits are medical experts, Dickison said they do have an understanding of what makes good information.

Anyone can edit an article, but its important to note that articles on medical topics have especially stringent conditions on their edits, he said. Its very hard to sneak any kind of vandalism or false information in there, because there are edits happening every minute or two.

Edits made by someone whos a first-timer or anonymous will automatically generate a red flag in the software, alerting what Wikipedians call vandalism patrols to come and double-check the edit as soon as possible. The Covid-19 pandemic in New Zealand page is one referred to as semi-protected, meaning users must meet a threshold of edits before being allowed to edit it.

Dickison said what makes for a good source is defined in crushing detail. What youre looking for in a reliable source is ideally a peer-reviewed publication thats been through an editorial process, and preferably a proofreading and fact-checking process as well, he said. Newspapers, scientific journals, and sometimes radio are the main sources youll see at the end of an article. Even then, some newspapers are flagged as unreliable, including papers like The Sun. Some of the British tabloids, those references are routinely deleted, he said. That doesnt meet our standards.

The Covid-19 pages are checked for error more than most Wikipedia articles due to the massive number of views they get; there are more than 424 million page views between them so far.

Dickison feels the free encyclopedia is well-placed to handle news coverage of events like the Covid-19 pandemic because of its large army of responsive volunteers. In many ways, Wikipedia handles this kind of breaking news coverage better than the media, because its a synthesis of different media outlets, he said. The Wikipedians will be ruthless in trying to find corroborating sources and suppress anything that looks like it might not be well-founded.

Its got an immune system against falsehood, so its actually quite resilient to hoaxing and fake news and bad information.

Toby Morris and Siouxsie Wiles collaborations have been translated (here into Turkish) and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons for anyone to use. (Image: Wikipedia)

The problem with information in the time of a pandemic is that normally reliable sources begin to show cracks. A study published in The Lancet that claimed the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine could actually be harmful to Covid-19 patients was retracted due to several anomalies in the data, but not before its publication put a halt to drug trials around the world.

There are lots of studies coming out very fast, and not all of them seem to be reputable, said Dickison. So [volunteers] tend to use review papers or any kind of publication that does meta-analysis of a whole bunch of other studies. Those are considered better than hot-off-the-press brand new studies.

Governments, too, can have their data questioned. On the Wikipedia page for Covid-19 in the United States, the statistics section comes with a caveat that multiple sources note that statistics on confirmed coronavirus cases are misleading, since the shortage of tests means the actual number of cases is much higher than the number of cases confirmed. The sources, of course, are provided. There are over 550 sources listed on this one page, many of them corroborating others.

The speed and the size of some of those articles is just amazing, said Dickison. Its really a pretty incredible piece of work.

According to the Wikimedia foundation, 67,554 editors have worked on the Covid-19 pages in 175 different languages. The Covid-19 pandemic in New Zealand page has more than 1,800 edits made to it by 219 editors. This information is all free and easy to access.

Considering the manpower and rigour behind Wikipedias coverage of Covid-19, it can be frustrating for editors like Dickison to hear people repeat decade-old warnings about the website: anyone can edit it, so its not a reliable source.

They might be a little bit out of date, said Dickison. But if you do a comparison between Wikipedia and most other published, referenced sources, youll find that it stacks up pretty well, particularly in the areas of science, medicine, computer technology and history.

Most people use Wikipedia almost every day, and I would say youd want to know where that information is coming from and how much you can trust it, wouldnt you?

The Spinoff Daily gets you all the day's best reading in one handy package, fresh to your inbox Monday-Friday at 5pm.

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How volunteers created Wikipedia's world-beating Covid-19 coverage - The Spinoff

Ballia (UP), Jul 21 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh minister Anand Swaroop Shukla on Tuesday said the birth anniversary of freedom fighter Mangal Pandey will be observed on January 30 from next year while pitching for a correction in the date on popular website Wikipedia.

The minister claimed that the website has wrongly mentioned the birth date of Magal Pandey, who played a role in the 1857 rebellion against the British, as July 19,1827.

This creates a lot of problems in observing his birth anniversary, the minister said, adding that the freedom fighters actual date of birth is January 30, 1831.

Documents in this regard have been collected from his family here and the state chief minister will be apprised of it on Wednesday after which a letter on behalf of his relatives and relevant papers will be sent to the Wikipedia, Shukla said.

From the next year onwards, the birth anniversary of Mangal Pandey will be observed on January 30, he added.

The president of Shaheed Mangal Pandey Vichar Manch, Krishnakant Pathak, said Basic Shiksha Parishad books also state January 30, 1831 as the date of birth and Nagwa village as the freedom fighter''s native place. PTI CORR SAB RDKRDK

Disclaimer :- This story has not been edited by Outlook staff and is auto-generated from news agency feeds. Source: PTI

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Will observe Mangal Pandey''s birth anniversary on Jan 30 from next year: UP minister - Outlook India

Sgt. David Blose competes online in "Rainbow Six Siege" as a representative of the Army Esports Team at the USA Skills Conference in Louisville, Ky., on June 25, 2019.

Sgt. David Blose competes online in "Rainbow Six Siege" as a representative of the Army Esports Team at the USA Skills Conference in Louisville, Ky., on June 25, 2019.

Photo: U.S. Army Photo By Devon Suits

Sgt. David Blose competes online in "Rainbow Six Siege" as a representative of the Army Esports Team at the USA Skills Conference in Louisville, Ky., on June 25, 2019.

Sgt. David Blose competes online in "Rainbow Six Siege" as a representative of the Army Esports Team at the USA Skills Conference in Louisville, Ky., on June 25, 2019.

Army ban on war crime comments during Twitch stream may have violated First Amendment, lawyers say

The Army's official video gaming team is battling criticism of its online conduct, traced back to a single emoji-laden tweet.

The military, recognizing the enormous appeal of video game streaming, has a team that plays popular games such as "Call of Duty" and "Valorant" to showcase a slice of Army life and to reach potential recruits.

But trolls and activists have bombarded the Army's esports team's chat channel and Twitch streams with references to wartime atrocities committed by the United States. About 300 of those Twitch users have been barred, the Army said.

Legal experts say the bans are unconstitutional.

"The government can't try to engineer the conversation of the public by saying only people who agree with us can respond," said Katie Fallow, a senior staff attorney at Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute. "The First Amendment means the government can't kick someone out or preclude them based on their viewpoint."

The issue has strained the Army's efforts to rely more on digital recruiting through venues such as Twitch, where their prime targets for candidates - mostly young men and boys - hang out in droves. Twitch can get their streams in front of 80% of U.S. teenage males, the company has said, and users watched 5 billion hours of streaming content in the second quarter of 2020.

By comparison, Netflix users streamed 6.1 billion hours in April. (Twitch is owned by Amazon, whose chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)

The Army can trace the beginning of the controversy to its own public awareness efforts and viral tweets. On June 1, the Army esports team responded to the chat app Discord on Twitter with heart emoji and uWu, an emoticon used to express happiness or defiance.

It was retweeted more than 20,000 times, perhaps by some perplexed that the military was dipping so far into Internet culture and others angry about the recruiting strategy. By that evening, users went on a speedrun to see how fast they could get barred from the Army's channel, with some posting Wikipedia links to U.S. wartime atrocities.

The bans on Twitch, in real time with commentary from soldiers, was spotlighted by activists and the streaming community. Jordan Uhl, a political consultant and activist, jumped on the stream on July 8, when Joshua "Strotnium" David, a Green Beret on the Army esports team, was streaming a round of the battle royale game "Call of Duty: Warzone."

"whats your favorite u.s. war crime?" Uhl asked. The filter blocked the phrase.

"what's your favorite u.s. w4r cr1me?" Uhl wrote, before posting Wikipedia's war crime entry.

"You little Internet keyboard monsters," David said. "I won't stand for that. I'm bigger than you." Uhl was kicked off seconds later.

"Have a nice time getting banned, my dude," David said on the stream.

Uhl told Vice News that he was frustrated by the ban and the recruiting effort. "Kids have at least a right to know what the military does and has done," he said. His similar efforts on the Navy's Twitch stream earned a ban there, too, he said on Twitter.

The Army defended the bans, saying the comments fell in line with harassment, which is forbidden by Twitch terms of service, said Lisa Ferguson, an Army spokeswoman. Many of the accounts used were newly created, pointing to an effort to throw the channel into turmoil and not discuss relevant topics, Ferguson said.

"The Army eSports Team does not regulate viewpoints of participants on its social media forums," Ferguson said. "The Army may reasonably regulate the time, place and manner of discussions on its recruiting social media sites. Army eSports social media sites are nonpolitical forums for sharing information about joining the Army."

The team has stopped streaming while it reviews "internal policies and procedures, as well as all platform-specific policies," Ferguson said.

Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, focused on speech and technology, said the Army's defense is eroded by the relevance of the topic and the openness of the public forum. A private host would face fewer constraints, she said, but in this case, the host is the government.

"Clearly at issue is that they didn't like the viewpoint and questions," she said. "That is precisely what the Constitution prohibits."

Eidelman and Fallow pointed to relevant court rulings as examples. The Knight First Amendment Institute argued in court that President Donald Trump could not block individual users on Twitter because it was a government-led banishment on a public forum. Appeals courts upheld the ruling.

A main thrust of the government's defense was that social media is an avenue for the president to speak, said Fallow, one of the attorneys who represented blocked users. But the institute said the tweets occur on an inherently active medium where dialogue takes place.

"This is even clearer," Fallow said of the Army ban, because the conversations unfolded in real time in full public view.

The incident teased out another issue that landed the Army in hot water over its merchandise giveaway that appeared to be little more than a fish for recruitment leads.

Uhl had noticed a link put out by the Army that advertised a contest for a free and pricey controller. A link led to a recruiting page with no specifics about the contest, Uhl wrote in The Nation.

"Once we became aware of the issues, we requested immediate removal," a Twitch spokesperson said.

The Army acknowledged that the content was pulled down due to lack of transparency. "The team is exploring options to use platforms for giveaways that will provide more external clarity," the Army said.

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Army ban on war crime comments during Twitch stream may have violated First Amendment, lawyers say - Alton Telegraph

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) The Turkish presidents ruling party is submitting draft legislation to parliament that would enable the government to tighten its grip on social media, an official said Tuesday. The opposition fears the legislation will lead to greater censorship in the country.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has greatly concentrated powers into his own hands during 17 years in office, vowed this month to bring social media platforms under control following a series of tweets that allegedly insulted his daughter and son-in-law after they announced the birth of their fourth child on Twitter. At least 11 people were detained for questioning over the tweets.

The nine-article draft legislation would force social media companies with more than 1 million daily users in Turkey such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to establish a formal presence or assign a representative in Turkey who would be accountable to Turkish authorities legally and for tax purposes.

A social media company or its representative would also be required to respond within 48 hours to complaints about posts that violate personal and privacy rights.

The social media giants would be obliged to assign a representative within 30 days after the legislation comes into force, or face gradually increasing fines and bandwidth reductions of up to 90%, ruling party legislator Ozlem Zengin told reporters.

We aim to put an end to insults, swearing, to harassment made through social media, Zengin said, adding that the measures sought to balance freedoms with rights and laws.

Our priority is not to close down the social media providers. We are aware of the importance in our lives, she said.

Opposition parties, however, have expressed concerns that the governments plans are aimed at further limiting the Turkish publics ability to access social media and reach independent news and information in an environment dominated by pro-government media.

Thousands of websites already remain blocked in Turkey. In January, the government lifted a more than two-year ban on Wikipedia after Turkeys top court declared it unconstitutional. Turkey halted access to the online encyclopedia after it refused to remove content the government deemed offensive. The Turkish government has also banned YouTube and Twitter in the past.

Meanwhile, at least 76 journalists and other media workers remain behind bars, according to The Journalists Union of Turkey. The Committee to Protect Journalists has labeled Turkey one of the worlds top jailers of journalists.

The draft bill is scheduled to be debated in the general assembly next week, Zengin added.

The legislation is expected to pass with the votes of the ruling party and its nationalist allies.

___

This story has been updated to correct the day of the week in the summary and lead to Tuesday instead of Friday.

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Turkeys ruling party moving to tighten grip on social media - Seattle Times