February 6, 2025: Today we're covering whale songs, a new strain of bird flu and advances in the search for Mars microbes. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | • To find life on Mars, scientists are making microbes wiggle, thereby testing for the organisms' self-guided movement, or motility. | 4 min read | | | A highly pathogenic new strain of H5N9 has been detected in ducks at a farm in California. junce/Getty Images | | | International officials have reported detecting a new type of bird flu, called highly pathogenic H5N9, among poultry at a U.S. farm for the first time. The newly identified strain differs from the H5N1 avian influenza that in April popped up in humans for the first time in two years. The first person to die of H5N1 influenza in the U.S. was announced in early January. And the H5N1 avian flu virus continues to affect poultry, dairy cows and people in the U.S., as well as the price and availability of eggs. Recent tests identified the second bird-flu virus, H5N9, in poultry at the same California farm where an H5N1 outbreak was reported last year, according to the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH), an intergovernmental organization. How it works: New influenza strains and subtypes can develop when an animal is infected with more than one flu virus at once. The multiple viruses can swap genetic information, a process called genetic reassortment, or "pick up random genetic mutations as they multiply," writes health news writer Emily Cooke.
What the experts say: Scientists don't yet know if the H5N9 flu virus can infect humans. The combination of the two surface proteins represented by H and N in H5N9 is not new. "Other versions, like H5N5 also exist. Just because this was now detected, doesn't mean trouble necessarily," Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology, told CBS News. | | | Climate Health Office Shuttered | A federal climate office established in 2021 to help health-care nonprofit groups reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been closed and its staff of "about eight people" has been placed on administrative leave, reports public health reporter Ariel Wittenberg. The shuttering of the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is linked to President Donald Trump's various executive orders. Nearly all of the office's web pages also were taken offline, the story states.
Why this matters: As of November 2024, dozens of hospitals, health systems and pharmaceutical companies committed to the "HHS Health Sector Pledge" on the climate office's website. They pledged to cut their carbon emissions in half by 2030 and to net zero by 2050. Those pages disappeared.
What the experts say: Health Care Without Harm says it has "stepped in to preserve [the pledge] and the momentum it has generated in the healthcare sector," according to a statement released by the advocacy group. | | | • The theme of a large Tesla-campus sculpture, called A Fork in the Road, reveals an obsession with existential anxiety and a survivalist mindset that justifies "technological escalation at any cost," writes American Institute of Physics historian Rebecca Charbonneau. The sculpture's title is reportedly repeated in the subject lines of emails sent by Elon Musk and President Trump. The related mindset derives from "fascinating ideas" that evolved during the Cold War, Charbonneau writes. But it is misguided to reduce the world's challenges to engineering problems that purportedly only can be solved by costly technological escalation and its architects, she concludes. | 5 min read | | | Down a divergent road that came into view prior to and during the Cold War, one can find profound peace and otherworldly beauty in the space-themed artwork of U.S. painter and illustrator Chesley Bonestell, Jr. His work influenced the nascent U.S. space program and its brilliant community of thinkers and creators. For a writing assignment years ago at the short-lived magazine Space Illustrated, I bought a copy of Ron Miller and Frederick C. Durant III's The Art of Chesley Bonestell. Poking around online, it appears that one can still find copies of books featuring Bonestell's art. I appreciate online art, but sometimes seeing Bonestell's and others' work in person or print has made all the difference.
| —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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