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A woman from New Jersey has died less than three months after becoming the second person in history to receive a genetically modified pig kidney transplant. Lisa Pisano underwent the historic procedure in April as an experimental last resort for severe illness, but had to have the porcine organ removed 47 days later.The 54-year-old made history as the first person ever to receive both a heart pump and a kidney transplant after both organs failed. Typically, patients with heart pumps are not considered for new kidneys, although doctors decided to go ahead with the operation using a livestock organ.At present, there are more than 100,000 people in desperate need of organ transplants in the US alone, with the greatest demand being for kidneys. Tragically, 17 people die each day while on the waiting list, which is why researchers are so keen to master the art of xenotransplantation, which refers to the use of animal organs in human patients.The difficulty, however, lies in the fact that our bodies are primed to reject any non-human components. To overcome this hurdle, scientists have been using CRISPR gene-editing technology to tweak livestock organs so that they become more acceptable to our immune system.For instance, pig organs have been modified to prevent them from producing a molecule called alpha-gal, which our bodies recognize as foreign before triggering an antibody response to destroy it.After transplanting the edited kidney into Pisano’s body, doctors reported that the organ had not been rejected, indicating that their modifications had been successful. Sadly, however, the kidney failed due to insufficient blood supply as a result of the patient’s heart pump.As a consequence, surgeons at NYU Langone Health – where the transplant was performed – decided to remove the organ after less than seven weeks, placing Pisano on dialysis. Earlier this week, it was announced that she had passed away.“Lisa’s contributions to medicine, surgery and xenotransplantation cannot be overstated,” Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, told the New York Times. “Her bravery gave hope to thousands of people living with end-stage kidney or heart failure who could soon benefit from an alternative supply of organs.”Sadly, Pisano’s passing comes just two months after the death of the first patient to receive a modified pig kidney. Richard Slayman entered the history books in March of this year when he underwent the transplant at Mass General Brigham in Boston, and while initial signs showed that the procedure had been successful, the patient later experienced complications and died in early May.

Fiberglass has been found in the food chain for the first time. A “disturbing level” of the artificial material was recently detected in oysters and mussels along the south coast of the UK, although the researchers say it’s likely to be a global issue. Scientists at the Universities of Brighton and Portsmouth collected oysters and mussels from an active boatyard in Chichester Harbor, a popular sailing location in South England.Within their edible soft tissues, they detected an abundance of fiberglass, aka glass-reinforced plastic (GRP). The team’s experiments found up to 11,220 fiberglass particles per kilogram in oysters and 2,740 particles per kilogram in mussels."Our findings show a disturbing level of GRP contamination in marine life. This study is the first of its kind to document such extensive contamination in natural bivalve populations. It's a stark reminder of the hidden dangers in our environment,” Dr Corina Ciocan, principal lecturer in marine biology from the University of Brighton, said in a statement.Fiberglass is a reinforced plastic material that’s made of extremely fine fibers of glass embedded into a resinous matrix. Revered for its tough and lightweight properties, it’s been widely used in boat manufacturing since the 1960s.The new study shows that the material can release tiny glass particles into the surrounding environment when boats are crushed, dismantled, or repaired. Levels of GRP contamination were especially high during winter, a season when many sailing enthusiasts take advantage of the poor weather to work on their boats. Once in the water, the particles are then “sucked up” by filter-feeding bivalves, including oysters and mussels. Their method of eating means that filter-feeding bivalves consume all kinds of microparticle contamination, including infectious pathogens and plastics.The researchers believe it’s possible that GRP contamination negatively impacts the health of the shellfish and might even kill them. They’re now keen to investigate whether the fiberglass microparticles can be transferred up the food chain and impact human health."It's a global issue, particularly for island nations with limited landfill space. Efforts are being made to find viable disposal solutions, but more needs to be done to prevent at-sea dumping and onshore burning,” explained Professor Fay Couceiro from the University of Portsmouth."We're just starting to understand the extent of fibreglass contamination,” she noted.The new study is published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials.

Analysis from environmental charity WWF shows that, as of this week, the amount of fish consumed this year in the European Union (EU) has already reached the annual amount that can be obtained from the Mediterranean. To match demand, Italy and other southern European countries have to rely on imports. The WWF and New Economics Foundation call it “Fish Dependence Day”. Every year the EU sets the Total Allowable Catches (TAC) for most commercial fish stocks. They are looking at how many, or how many tonnes, of each species can be caught sustainably. How much fish Europeans want to eat, though, is another question, and demand doesn’t match supply. On average EU citizens eat 24 kilograms (53 pounds) of fish per year, but this number is higher across Mediterranean countries. Here, people eat 33 kilograms (73 pounds) – a high demand that the Mediterranean sea can no longer meet. It’s not only the EU that is limiting the amount of fish caught in the Mediterranean. The size of catches has been decreasing as many populations dwindle due to decades of overfishing, and rising temperatures. Warming waters have brought in invasive species, which can prey on local fish or compete for resources. Native species are moving to find more suitable climates. Overfishing is the poor management of fish resources. It can be caused by catching too many individuals, as well as by catching more young individuals. A loss of young fish doesn’t allow the populations to grow back. In the late 1990s and early 2000s overfishing led to a crisis in the bluefin tuna population in the Mediterranean. Careful management of fishing quotas and protection of juvenile fish has allowed the species to come back. The case of the bluefin tuna shows that there is a way forward. However, today, 58 percent of the Mediterranean fishing stock is still being overfished. By marking Fish Dependence Day, the WWF urges all EU countries to work towards having fish self-sufficiency: you can only eat what you can catch.     So what can we eat? Giulia Prato, WWF Italy’s marine programme manager, encourages consumers to choose seasonal, adult fish, besides reducing overall consumption. Eating unpopular species is also a more sustainable choice. Hake, shrimp, sardines and mullet are the most at-risk species today. It’s time to make mussels and anchovies cool again.

With just one living fluent speaker, N|uu is one of the most endangered languages in the world. Its story is one of pain and tragedy – but also great hope and determination. Together with her family and local linguists, the last remaining speaker of N|uu is striving to keep the dying embers of the language aflame by passing it on to the new generation. N|uu is a click language, traditionally spoken by some factions of the Khomani people from the southern Kalahari, a sandy savannah that sits within the modern-day borders of Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa. They are a branch of the San people who have lived here for over 20,000 years and are some of the earliest known hunter-gatherers in southern Africa. While N|uu has evolved great distances over the centuries – no different to English or any other vernacular – the language has deep, deep roots in a part of the world that’s integral to the story of humankind.Five primary click sounds are used in N|uu, including one unique click that’s only found in a handful of very closely related languages. Linguists call the click a “bilabial plosive”, but the layman's term is “a kiss click” because it sounds like the clack of a lip-smacking smooch.This was the beginning of the demise in a way because it's started to separate people. Their families were split up.Dr Kerry JonesHistorically, the language was spoken and heard, not inscribed. With little written evidence, it hasn’t left behind a “paper trail”, making its history and age very tricky to trace. We do know, however, that it started to fall into trouble during the unwelcome arrival of the British Empire during the 19th century. As part of their brutal attempt to control Africa, the British naively set up political boundaries, many of which cut through people’s homelands.“People used to move through that whole region between South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana all the time. Then all of a sudden, these people came and started putting up fences and saying you had to have identification and passports,” Dr Kerry Jones, a linguist and Director of African Tongue, an organization that looks to preserve and promote endangered languages of southern Africa, told IFLScience.“This was the beginning of the demise in a way because it's started to separate people. Their families were split up,” she added.Along with fracturing communities, the Empire made active attempts to quash native African languages in favor of English and Afrikaans, a language derived from the form of Dutch brought to southern Africa by European Protestant settlers in the 17th century. Some San people still speak of how their ancestors were belittled, beaten, and even killed just for speaking N|uu.To make matters worse, people were stripped of their ethnic and cultural identity. Instead of being recognized by their real ethnic identity, such as San, people were clumsily put into main categories: White, Black, Indian, and “Coloured” (meaning people with a mixed ethnic background).After decades of colonial rule and apartheid, many feared the language had fallen into extinction by the end of the 20th century, never to be uttered again. However, like finding sprouts of a long-lost plant in the savannah, speakers of N|uu were found.Antjie Kassie and Andries Olyn, two fluentspeakers standing in front of a salt pan in the Kalahari.Image credit: Khomani Hugh Brody ArchiveThrough the work of sociolinguist Dr Nigel Crawhall and the United Nations in the mid-1990s, around 25 speakers from the Khomani community revealed they had some competence in the N|uu language. “The 90s was a massive turnaround point and where people were starting to feel safe to come forward,” said Dr Jones. “We had these elderly people who were coming forward saying, ‘look, I'm gonna die soon anyway, so it's okay. I'm gonna let you know: I’m not actually Coloured, I'm San. And I can prove it because I can still speak the language.’ The language became key in proving their identity,” she explained.Unfortunately, many were elderly and have since passed away, taking their knowledge of the language with them. In December 2021, the penultimate speaker of N|uu passed away, leaving behind just one person with true knowledge of the language: Ouma Katrina Esau.Although in the later years of her life, Ouma Katrina has spent the past few years diligently working to preserve the language. Together with Dr Jones and other members of the community, she has helped to create a digital N|uu language dictionary. The project, 20 years in the making, hopes to act as a vital repository of information that will keep the language alive. Despite never having had the opportunity to learn to read herself, Ouma Katrina has worked with her granddaughter, Claudia Snyman, to create a N|uu children’s book called Qhoi n|a Tijho (Tortoise and Ostrich).“Her granddaughter, Claudia can speak the language. Not fluently, but as an additional language. But she's literate and Ouma Katrina isn't literate, so between the two of them, it's a good combination,” said Dr Jones, speaking to IFLScience.                            In May 2024, Ouma Katrina became an integral part of a program that’s teaching local school kids the basics of N|uu. For the first time in decades, knowledge of the language is being passed on to the next generation. They're not going to be fluent speakers [...] but they will be able to greet, they will be able to sing songs, they will be able to understand a basic children's story.Dr Kerry Jones“Children are learning to greet, they are learning to sing songs, they are learning names for animals and plants,” explained Dr Jones.“They're not going to be fluent speakers and be fully monolingual in N|uu. That's not reality, but they will be able to greet, they will be able to sing songs, they will be able to understand a basic children's story,” she added.N|uu is unlikely to be a “mother tongue” ever again. Like many traditional languages, it has been crushed by globalization and cultural homogenization, weighty forces that have leveled many ways of life.Under the strain of these pressures, around nine languages die every single year. Like an animal species falling into extinction, each passing is a loss of the world’s richness and beauty. The squandering of cultural riches seems somewhat inevitable in the 21st century when profits and practicality are favored over intangible wealth. Nevertheless, as the story of N|uu’s attempted revival shows, there’s a deeply human need to keep alive the languages that we use to understand the world and our place within it. Without them, we lose a little part of our story. “There are these codes that we use to communicate and we label these codes ‘languages.’ Your experience with one code or another code is the structure that creates your reality. That is fascinating,” Dr Jones concluded.“Because of globalisation, we are losing access to these codes. That's such a loss. It's the same as saying ‘Well, why give a sh*t about animals and plants that are going extinct?’ It’s because it’s part of a bigger network – it's important.”

Younger generations in the US are way more skeptical about the “American Dream” than older folks, according to a new poll.The American Dream is a phrase used to describe the optimistic idea that anyone in the US can attain their own version of success through hard work and determination. It was popularized by historian James Truslow Adams during the Great Depression in 1931, although the ethos can be linked back to the Declaration of Independence, which states that "all men are created equal" and have an inalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".Today, just over half of Americans (53 percent) say they believe the dream is still possible, according to the new Pew Research Center survey. Another 41 percent say the American dream was once possible for people to achieve – but is not anymore – while the remaining 6 percent say it was never possible.Younger generations seem to be particularly dismayed by the idea. The majority of people over 50 believed the dream was still possible, but just 43 percent of people aged 30 to 49 thought so. The most pessimistic group was young people aged 18 to 29, just 39 percent of whom believed the dream was still alive. Around 36 percent of the youngest age bracket also felt the American Dream was out of reach for them. In a brilliant instance of bias, richer Americans are most likely to buy into the idea. While 64 percent of upper-income Americans say the American dream still exists, only 39 percent of lower-income Americans say the same.Race is another important variable. A total of 11 percent of Black Americans believe the American Dream was never a reality, while 33 percent believe it’s out of reach for them. White people were the most confident in the national ethos, with 55 percent saying it's still possible and just 4 percent saying it was never possible. The trends in the new survey, especially in regard to age, could be taken as a reflection of how the US has changed in the past 50 years.Social mobility in the US shot up between 1950 and 1980, but has drastically declined since then. Another major blow came in 2007 with the worst global economic meltdown since the Great Depression, leading to widespread job losses and increased wealth inequality. Recovery was slow and the financial crash’s impact continued to linger in the 2010s, a period that the New York Times called the “Decade of Disillusionment”. This decade was followed by the COVID-19 pandemic and more economic uncertainty in the early 2020s. The end result of all this has been a growing gulf between the rich and poor. The US has the highest level of wealth inequality of almost every developed country – and the imbalance is rising. In 1971, 61 percent of Americans lived in middle-class households, but that figure had fallen to 51 percent by 2023. Simultaneously, the number of billionaires in the US has skyrocketed from 66 in 1990 to 748 in 2023.Faced with these gloomy trends, it’s perhaps no surprise that younger Americans have become more disillusioned than their parents and grandparents.

When the 2024 BET Awards featured an “In Memoriam” segment that included the late O.J. Simpson, Stephen A. Smith called it out — and rightfully so. Simpson’s past accusations include murdering ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1994 and committing other petty crimes after being acquitted by an all-black jury. He was later found liable for their deaths a few years later in a civil trial. Smith took issue with the network paying tribute to a man accused of double murder while they were supposed to be showcasing “black excellence.” While Jason Whitlock agrees with Smith’s take — he can’t help taking issue with Smith’s response to the criticism he faced from Geto Boys rapper Willie D, because it was loaded with hypocrisy. “They have these stooges like half hat, Stephen from Django Smith, perched up to do their work. They put them on national TV; they put them on these big stages where they can have a big audience, where the words can have some influence, and they use these little monkeys like Stephen A. Smith to say the things that they can’t say publicly,” Wille D ranted on his YouTube channel after Smith denounced BET's Memoriam of O.J. Smith did not take kindly to Willie D’s insult. “Stephen A. is very sensitive to criticism from rappers. He’s trying to protect his black card in the culture, and he doesn’t know how to deal with these idiots that have been installed themselves in the rap world,” Whitlock explains. In Smith’s response, he made this clear. “What am I wrong about? And if I’m wrong, and you have the capability to articulate what I’m wrong about, why couldn’t you just say that? Why do I have to be called out of my name like that?” Smith said. Whitlock, who’s had a long-standing feud with Smith himself, can’t help but laugh at the hypocrisy. “The hypocrisy and the stupidity is just amazing. ‘If I’m wrong, why couldn’t you just argue that? How come you couldn’t articulate where I was wrong and make an argument? Why did you just resort to calling names?’” Whitlock mocks. “Who else has that happened to? Wasn’t there somebody on a show called ‘Fearless’ that just pointed out all the lies and exaggerations in someone’s book, and instead of someone answering those criticisms instead of just arguing the other side, didn’t they just post a 45-minute video just calling that person ‘fat bastard’?” he continues. “And now that same person is upset that Willie D called him a monkey. I find that very hypocritical,” he adds. Want more from Jason Whitlock?To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

The official page for the hit show "The Sopranos" mocked President Biden for not dropping out of the 2024 presidential race.The page, which only posts comments using scenes and quotes from the series, was responding to the president's public statement that he would not be giving up his nomination in the federal election despite calls for him to do so following a poor debate performance."Let me say this as clearly as I can: I'm the sitting President of the United States. I'm the nominee of the Democratic party. I'm staying in the race," the president's account wrote.The crime drama show responded to Biden's comments by posting a picture of lead character Tony Soprano, who was played by James Gandolfini, saying, "If you gotta keep saying you're the boss, you're not the boss." — (@) The post garnered over 10 million views, causing "The Sopranos" page to throw out another jab at the POTUS. "We have ratio'd the president," the account added, referring to when a post on the platform receives more replies than it does likes.We have ratio'd the president.— The Sopranos (@TheSopranosX) July 8, 2024 There were near limitless replies from readers who were on board with the mockery:"The person who came up with the idea behind this post deserves a raise," wrote an attorney."Tweet of the year stuff here," said a novelist.The person who came up with the idea behind this post deserves a raise. ?— Aleks Djuricic (@AleksDjuricic) July 7, 2024 The sentiment lined up with recent commentary from Drea de Matteo, who played character Adriana on "The Sopranos." She explained that her political views were not exactly welcomed in Hollywood."There are a lot of quiet Trump supporters [in Hollywood], there are a lot of [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] supporters," she said. "I wonder how much these actors got paid to endorse Biden at this point. I am curious. I wonder if De Niro got paid a location fee because he traveled to the courtroom to do that.""Even though we were critically acclaimed, we still were outcasts," the actress said of the show. "So I'm still an outcast; here I am. They're going to take me out into the woods and shoot me for not endorsing Biden," she added.Other notable left-wing Hollywood personalities have called for President Biden to drop out. This included author Stephen King, an adamant Democrat and vocal anti-Trumper, who said it was time for Biden to step out of the race:"Joe Biden has been a fine president, but it's time for him—in the interests of the America he so clearly loves—to announce he will not run for re-election."Agency mogul and WME chief Ari Emanuel also said the president is too old."I had a father who died at 92, but at 81 I took away his car, and it was a very simple test for me," Emanuel said, per the Hollywood Reporter. "If you were driving from downtown Beverly Hills to Malibu, would you want Biden to do it at night? Would you want Trump to do it at night? If the answer is neither, you cannot have them running a $27 trillion company called the United States."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!