Month: July 2022

Enlarge / Yes, those are gills on this Cambrian animal. (credit: Dinghua Yang)

Because we're a member of the group, it's easy to see vertebrates as the pinnacle of evolution, a group capable of producing bats, birds, and giant whales in addition to ourselves. But when they first evolved, vertebrates were anything but a sure thing. They branched off from a group that lived in the mud and didn't need to tell its top from its bottom or its left from its right, and so ended up losing an organized nerve cord. Our closest non-vertebrate relatives re-established a nerve cord (on the wrong side of the body, naturally) but couldn't be bothered with niceties like a skeleton.

How exactly vertebrates came out of this hasn't been clear, and the probable lack of a skeleton in our immediate ancestors has helped ensure that we don't have a lot of fossils to help clarify matters.

But in Thursday's issue of Science, researchers have re-evaluated some enigmatic fossils that date back to the Cambrian period and settled several arguments about exactly what features the yunnanozoans had. The answers include cartilaginous structures that supported gills and a possible ancestor to what became our lower jaw. In the process, they show that yunnanozoans are likely the earliest branch of the vertebrate tree.

Enlarge / Juul used a fashionable, "cool" marketing strategy before backlash. (credit: Mass.gov)

The US Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday paused a decision that would effectively force Juul off the US market. On Wednesday, the two sides agreed to put their court battle on hold as the regulator conducted an additional review of Juul's products.

For people who use Juul products, the new development doesn't change much for now: A panel of federal appeals court judges had already issued an administrative stay on June 24, which meant Juul products could remain on the market while the company fought the FDA's denial of its marketing authorization request in court. But, in the longer term, it represents an embarrassing backpedal by the FDA and signals that Juul may have a good chance of permanently reversing the denial.

On June 23, the FDA announced that it denied US marketing authorization for all Juul products, effectively forcing the company off the e-cigarette market it previously dominated. Though the FDA's decision had been leaked to the press the day before, it still jolted industry watchers, consumers, and Juul, which said in court documents it first got wind of the decision through the press leak.

Enlarge (credit: 5./15 WEST | iStock Unreleased)

After the first child died from self-strangulation while attempting a recommended "Blackout Challenge," there were many steps that TikTok could've taken to shield other kids from the same fate immediately. Instead, a new lawsuit filed in California says TikTok chose to continue profiting from promoting what's now being described as its deadliest challenge, directly causing the deaths of six more children in 2021.

The lawsuit was filed by the parents of two of those children—girls ages 8 and 9. They claim their kids became addicted to TikTok, were fed a constant stream of seemingly harmless challenge videos persuading them to participate, and then died after attempting the Blackout Challenge. (The Blackout Challenge encourages TikTok users to post videos where they choke themselves until they pass out.)

Rather than blame creators of harmful videos or come after TikTok for publishing videos, the lawsuit instead seeks damages from TikTok for its product design that directed kids to videos.