56 Threatened Turtles Born at Iowa Zoo Released Into the Wild
Dozens of Blanding's turtles were released back into their natural wetland habitat on June 4
Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the Blank Park Zoo, and Iowa State University joined forces to raise the turtles that are considered a threatened species
The year-old turtles were released with tiny transmitters allowing their movements to be tracked for the next two monthsA group of year-old Blanding's turtles were released from the Blank Park Zoo and placed in their natural habitat.
Blanding's turtles are a threatened species, and as part of a partnering project between the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the Blank Park Zoo, and Iowa State University, the agencies worked together to help the population.
"Blanding's turtles are so cool, they've got this bright yellow chin, and they kind of look like an army helmet with this dome shape of their shell," Dr. Karen Kinkead, wildlife diversity program coordinator for the Iowa DNR, told WHO Des Moines.
The turtles' parents are native to the Iowa wetlands. Now that their babies are one year old, they were released into a marsh in Guthrie County with tiny transmitters to track their movements and gather data.
'You definitely want to be putting them into a good Blanding's turtle habitat where they're gonna be able to thrive, so that's pretty much made up of wetlands,' Elizabeth Lang, a research associate at Iowa State University, told Iowa Local 5 News.
WHO Des Moines reports that Lang will spend her summer in the marsh tracking the turtles and monitoring their whereabouts.
Over the winter, the baby turtles made the Blank Park Zoo their home.
"The zoo's kept them over the winter for us, and they've kept them awake instead of allowing them to go to sleep for the winter," Kinkead told KCCI News. "So they've grown bigger than they would in the wild. Because they're bigger, it will be harder for some of their natural predators to swallow them whole."
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Kinead said she has concerns about the Blanding's turtle release: "I'm definitely a bit nervous. I hope that they do really well out there."
"To my knowledge, this is the first opportunity we've had to track the juveniles," Kinkead told WHO Des Moines. "And we suspect that the juveniles are not using the habitat the same way as the adults do because we just don't find them the way we do adults."
Kinkead said she believes the young turtles spend more time in the water than the adults.
The turtle's transmitters will last two months, allowing Lang and partnering technicians to track how the turtles spend their summer.
WHO Des Moines reports that the Blanding's turtle was placed on a threatened species list due to complications in successful nesting and habitat loss.
DNR is working to rebuild the Blanding's turtle population following a late winter storm that devastated the species 10 years ago.
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Yahoo
2 days ago
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56 Threatened Turtles Born at Iowa Zoo Released Into the Wild
Dozens of Blanding's turtles were released back into their natural wetland habitat on June 4 Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the Blank Park Zoo, and Iowa State University joined forces to raise the turtles that are considered a threatened species The year-old turtles were released with tiny transmitters allowing their movements to be tracked for the next two monthsA group of year-old Blanding's turtles were released from the Blank Park Zoo and placed in their natural habitat. Blanding's turtles are a threatened species, and as part of a partnering project between the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the Blank Park Zoo, and Iowa State University, the agencies worked together to help the population. "Blanding's turtles are so cool, they've got this bright yellow chin, and they kind of look like an army helmet with this dome shape of their shell," Dr. Karen Kinkead, wildlife diversity program coordinator for the Iowa DNR, told WHO Des Moines. The turtles' parents are native to the Iowa wetlands. Now that their babies are one year old, they were released into a marsh in Guthrie County with tiny transmitters to track their movements and gather data. 'You definitely want to be putting them into a good Blanding's turtle habitat where they're gonna be able to thrive, so that's pretty much made up of wetlands,' Elizabeth Lang, a research associate at Iowa State University, told Iowa Local 5 News. WHO Des Moines reports that Lang will spend her summer in the marsh tracking the turtles and monitoring their whereabouts. Over the winter, the baby turtles made the Blank Park Zoo their home. "The zoo's kept them over the winter for us, and they've kept them awake instead of allowing them to go to sleep for the winter," Kinkead told KCCI News. "So they've grown bigger than they would in the wild. Because they're bigger, it will be harder for some of their natural predators to swallow them whole." Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories. Kinead said she has concerns about the Blanding's turtle release: "I'm definitely a bit nervous. I hope that they do really well out there." "To my knowledge, this is the first opportunity we've had to track the juveniles," Kinkead told WHO Des Moines. "And we suspect that the juveniles are not using the habitat the same way as the adults do because we just don't find them the way we do adults." Kinkead said she believes the young turtles spend more time in the water than the adults. The turtle's transmitters will last two months, allowing Lang and partnering technicians to track how the turtles spend their summer. WHO Des Moines reports that the Blanding's turtle was placed on a threatened species list due to complications in successful nesting and habitat loss. DNR is working to rebuild the Blanding's turtle population following a late winter storm that devastated the species 10 years ago. Read the original article on People
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28-05-2025
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Iowa State University president signs statement calling for national investment in R&D
Iowa State University President Wendy Wintersteen joined other university and business leaders in calling for national investment in research and development. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch) Iowa State University leadership has joined universities, companies and other organizations across the U.S. in calling for the Trump administration to further invest in national research and development and ensure the country's future as a talent pipeline and innovation powerhouse. ISU President Wendy Wintersteen last week signed a written statement penned by the Council on Competitiveness, a nonprofit organization with the mission of enhancing U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace, asking President Donald Trump and Congress to support a 'renewed call to action' to strengthen domestic innovation and production capabilities. The statement includes recommendations for transforming American innovation by investing in research and new technologies, strengthening partnerships and attracting global talent. ISU spokesperson Angie Hunt said Wintersteen decided to sign the statement to support investment in research and development. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'Investing in innovation is vital for developing new cutting-edge technologies that fuel our economy and keep our state and country competitive,' Hunt said. 'Iowa State is a trusted partner for innovative and proactive solutions, and President Wintersteen understands the value of working collaboratively with industry and government to meet societal needs.' Other universities whose leaders signed onto the statement include the University of South Carolina, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California Davis and San Diego, the University of Arizona, the University at Buffalo, Boston University, Boise State University, the University of Nebraska and Illinois systems, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Idaho State University, Ohio State University, the University of Maryland, the University of Memphis, the University of Colorado Boulder, Vanderbilt University and the University of Wyoming. Gallup and PepsiCo were also featured on the list of 50 Council on Competitiveness members who signed the statement, as well as the American Federation of Teachers. The statement named China as the U.S.'s biggest competitor in its nearly 250-year history, and said the country 'aims to rewrite the rules of the global economy, control emerging 'dual-use' technologies, and dominate the strategic industries of the future.' One of the recommendations included in the statement is for the U.S. to 'invest at scale' in dual-use technologies like advanced materials, AI, biotechnology, precision agriculture, semiconductors and more. It also recommends enhancing statecraft for critical technologies and implementing a new National Defense Education Act to grow the number of Americans with some level of STEM degree. 'To achieve President Trump's vision of a Golden Age of American Innovation, we must strengthen our innovation system by reinvesting in the research partnerships and innovation infrastructure that have made the United States the global leader in turning knowledge and ideas into commercial value and societal impact,' the statement said. Increased and expanded partnerships are also recommended in the statement, from those between research universities, the business sector and the government to international allies, as well as bringing research and development investment up to 2% of the U.S. GDP and maintaining efforts to recruit and retain global talent while following research security protocols. R&D funding at the federal level as a part of the total GDP used to sit at more than 2% in the 1960s, according to the statement, but has dropped to the current .7%. Actions taken by Trump and his administration have gone against what the organization is recommending, including revoking international student SEVIS statuses and visas and, most recently, halting the scheduling of new visa interviews for international students until new guidelines relating to social media are available, the Associated Press reported. Cutting funding to science agency budgets and research funding, as well as reducing staff in federal offices, were mentioned in the statement as moves that 'threaten the research infrastructure that underpins America's innovation capacity and capability.' The U.S. has been a global leader of science and technology advancements since World War II, the statement said, driven by a model of partnerships and collaboration between academia, industries and the government. A renewed investment in R&D on a national scale, driven by commitments on both sides of the aisle, to continue this trend and keep the U.S. innovating. 'We must accelerate the policy drivers and investments required to increase national productivity and improve the living standards for all Americans,' the statement said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Medscape
15-05-2025
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Case Closed? Study Rules Out Mystery Neurologic Syndrome
What has been described as a mysterious neurologic syndrome of unknown cause (NSUC) in the Canadian province of New Brunswick is a 'perfect storm' of 'misdiagnosis, misdocumentation, and misinformation,' according to the senior author Anthony Lang, MD, professor and past director of neurology at the University of Toronto, Toronto, of a cross-sectional study of 25 of the cases. The study, which was published on May 7 in JAMA Neurology, found 'no support for the existence of an undiagnosed mystery disease' in a cross-section of 222 cases reported to Public Health New Brunswick (PHNB). Instead, the authors suggested that all patients had 'other diagnosable neurological conditions that could benefit from multidisciplinary treatment and other resources.' 'When you start to see the evidence, as we did, you realize that it's a house of cards,' Lang told Medscape Medical News. 'The consequences of this are immense,' he continued. 'Being told you have a mystery disease that could be fatal…a progressive, fatal disease with rapidly progressive dementia, is very harmful…and we really feel that patients who have received this diagnosis need to avail themselves of a proper second opinion by experts and then have the appropriate treatment when it's possible.' Low Uptake To be eligible for the study, New Brunswick patients had to have a provisional diagnosis of NSUC, atypical prion disease, neurotoxic syndrome, or rapidly progressive dementia (RPD). Eligible patients were invited to undergo additional testing and clinical evaluation by an independent expert. But because of the controversy around the issue, which has created political heat and public mistrust since the first cases were reported in 2019, many patients either refused (n = 52) or did not respond (n = 42) to the invitation. Among 105 patients originally assessed by Alier Marrero, MD, at the Moncton Interdisciplinary Neurodegenerative Diseases (MIND) clinic, Moncton, New Brunswick, which was set up to handle the problem, consent (or waiver of consent) was obtained for only 25 cases: 14 living and 11 deceased. The median age at symptom onset in the cohort was 55 years, ranging from 16 to 81 years. Data from patients' initial consultations and follow-ups were analyzed along with the results of a second, independent clinical evaluation by a movement disorders specialist or a behavioral neurologist. Additional testing included electrophysiology evaluation for movement disorders, complete neurocognitive assessment, EEG, Dopamine Transporter Scan, and [18F]fludeoxyglucose–positron emission tomography. For the deceased patients, autopsies included pathology evaluation as part of the Canadian Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance System with extensive tissue sampling and immunohistochemical analysis for prion diseases and other dementias. Other Diagnoses All 25 patients had 'definable and diagnosable neurological disorders that really refuted the concept of a mysterious brain disease of unknown cause or an NSIC,' said Lang. Diagnoses included Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, other neurodegenerative conditions, functional neurologic disorder, traumatic brain injury, and persisting postconcussion symptoms, he said. 'Diagnostic inaccuracies stemmed from incorrect interpretation of histories (eg, overdiagnosis of RPD), inaccurate physical examination interpretation (eg, myoclonus, ataxia), and overreliance on or misinterpretation of ancillary testing such as EEG and SPECT [single-photon emission computed tomography],' wrote the study authors. 'The records were not accurate,' said Lang. 'They said the patient had hallucinations, or the patient had such and such. When we asked the patient who came back for a second opinion, they said, 'No, I never had that.' Or there was documentation of myoclonus, of ataxia, of dementia, and then we found no myoclonus, no ataxia, no dementia on clinical examination.' The researchers also used statistical modeling to calculate the probability of NSUC in the other cases not included in the study. 'We said, well, what about the other 200-some patients that had been documented in public health? What are the chances of any of them having a mysterious, undiagnosed neurological disease? And the statistics said that it was less than a one-in-a-million chance of any of those remaining patients having a mystery disease,' he said. 'So, we feel very confident that even though we have the small numbers, they are very, very convincing.' But Marrero disputed the JAMA findings. He first raised concerns with provincial health authorities in 2020 about a growing number of atypical RPD cases in the province, including several cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Marrero was initially hired as one of the clinicians who followed the patients at MIND but was fired in 2022 for performance reasons and moved to the Dr Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre in Moncton. His patients were given the option to follow him or be assigned a new MIND clinician. An initial public health review and separate epidemiologic investigation of the first 48 cases concluded that the patients shared no common symptoms or syndrome. 'Although some of the cases have presentations with unusual symptomology, they do not appear to have a common illness with an unknown etiology, and there is no evidence of a cluster of a neurological syndrome of unknown cause,' it concluded, according to a provincial government website established to update the public. The investigation was closed, but after a provincial election in October 2024, the newly elected government reopened the investigation. Although public health authorities have officially recorded 222 cases, Marrero, who was disciplined for improper paperwork and reporting, told Medscape Medical News that he has now evaluated more than 500 patients in this cluster. 'I am appalled that a parallel investigation with a small number of patients has apparently been conducted for a long time without our knowledge or our patients' and families' knowledge,' he said. 'I am in profound disagreement with the study conclusions and have many questions regarding the methods and the content.' Not Convinced New Brunswick's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Yves Leger, MD, emphasized in a statement that the JAMA findings 'do not change my office's intention to complete its own investigation into cases of undiagnosed neurological illness in New Brunswick. Work has been underway on this matter since early 2023 with support from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).' 'There are too many unanswered questions for us to stop the work that Public Health is doing to be able to provide patients — and potentially future patients — with the information they need about what's causing these illnesses,' New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt told reporters in reaction to the JAMA findings. 'On request from PHNB, PHAC has also agreed to conduct a scientific review of the investigation findings once PHNB has completed its analysis and interpretation,' said a spokesperson for PHAC. 'I trust that the current process of independent multidisciplinary scientific investigation and extensive file analysis that is underway by our public health authorities could provide appropriate answers to our communities,' said Marrero. 'We are hopeful that this process would include not only comprehensive additional patient testing but also testing for water, food, soil, and air samples in the affected areas, as well as additional patient support and effective prevention and treatment measures.' But Connie Marras, MD, PhD, a University of Toronto neurologist and movement disorder specialist with an expertise in epidemiology, questioned the need for further investigation. 'It is premature to start looking at any environmental agents that might be responsible for this before we have evidence that there is indeed a cluster, and both the investigations that have been done so far don't support that,' Marras, who was not involved in any of the investigations, told Medscape Medical News. 'The evidence that has been pulled together to date strongly suggests that there is not a unifying, underlying diagnosis for these individuals.' If the current evidence is insufficient to convince public health and the public, then an ideal next step, from an epidemiologic point of view, would be to test a larger, random sample of patients, she said. The limitations of the JAMA study included small numbers and the potential for selection bias. 'If the purportedly affected people are willing to submit to further evaluation, their engagement in this is critical, for the sake of everybody.' The study 'underscores the critical importance of systematic data collection and objective evaluation (seeing) in cases of neurological syndromes with unknown causes,' wrote Michael Okun, MD, professor of neurology and director of the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at the University of Florida Health in Gainesville, Florida, in a post on X. 'I completely agree with the authors that these types of unknown 'neuro' cases are 'complex neurological disorders [that will] benefit from a second, independent and/or subspecialist evaluation and require multidisciplinary support throughout the diagnostic journey.' Always ask yourself, 'Do you see what you want to see? Are you being rigorous and as unbiased as possible? Are you open to revising your initial impressions? Can a second look enhance diagnostic accuracy and outcomes?'…These authors are sharing hard data to help us to understand a phenomenon. We must always seek clarity.' No funding source for the study was reported. Lang reported receiving personal fees from AbbVie, AFFiRis, Alector, Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, APRINOIA Therapeutics, Biogen, BioAdvance, Biohaven, BioVie, BlueRock, Bristol Myers Squibb, Cavion, CoA Therapeutics, Denali, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Lilly, Novartis, Paladin, Pharma Two B Ltd., PsychoGenics, Roche, Sun Pharma, and UCB outside the submitted work and litigation related to paraquat and Parkinson's disease (for the plaintiffs). Marrero and Marras reported having no relevant financial relationships.
