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A row of colorful drink vending machines in the mist on Mount Hakodate, Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan.

Jonathan the tortoise, the world’s oldest living land animal, is still chugging along at the ripe age of roughly 194. Now, scientists have discovered some of the secrets to Jonathan’s longevity by sequencing his genome for the first time, according to a study published Wednesday in Science Advances.

Jonathan, a Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea), hatched around 1832 in the Seychelles archipelago, and he was already in his twenties when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. In his fifties, Jonathan was brought to the remote island of Saint Helena, along with three other tortoises, as a gift to the British colonial governor in the 1880s. He has lived there ever since. 

Aldabra giant tortoises often become centenarians, but Jonathan is a major outlier even for his species as he approaches nearly 200 years on this planet. To better understand his extreme lifespan, researchers evaluated Jonathan’s genome based on swabs of his cheeks and compared it with the genomes of several other tortoises, including a 36-year-old named Tank.  

The results revealed that Jonathan has “unique gene variants in most aging pathways” including DNA repair, insulin regulation, mitochondrial function, and “low entropy” methylation, reports the study. 

“Aging is very complicated, and there's all these different hallmarks,” said Stephen Clark, an aging researcher at the non-profit Kallel Foundation and an author of the study, in a call with 404 Media. “That's why this Jonathan study is so interesting. We're still just at the very beginning of trying to understand aging.”

The study was not an easy lift. Clark first reached out to Jonathan’s caretakers in 2017, but it took some negotiating to figure out the best way to obtain the tortoise’s genetic information. A blood draw was deemed too risky, so Jonathan was coaxed into opening his mouth for a swab. The results were delayed by incomplete early samples, the Covid pandemic, and new regulations governing access to Jonathan. 

After years of back and forth, the samples were delivered from Saint Helena to Florida by the U.S. Space Force. The results showed that Jonathan had many gene variants the team expected to see, based on studies of other long-lived individuals and populations. These included variants associated with DNA repair, maintenance of aging-related sequences called telomeres, and the process of cellular recycling known as autophagy.

But the researchers found a surprise in Jonathan’s “methylome,” which is a set of methyl-based modifications involved in gene expression. The subset of Jonathan’s methylome related to mitochondrial processes was unusually pristine, or “low entropy.”  

“Jonathan's really the first of his kind to have this analysis, and we were also able to do the methylome for the younger tortoises,” Clark said. “We actually compared him to a five-year-old tortoise, so we had 189 years of difference between the methylomes. No one's ever done that, even in humans, because no humans live that long. That was one of the main things we were excited about: how does this methylome change with age?”

Whereas most of Jonathan’s genome showed signs of entropy commensurate with his age, his mitochondrial methylome seemed on par with that of the five-year-old tortoise, signaling that these pathways may play a special role in his advanced age. However, Clark said it would take more research to follow up on that lead, and to untangle the complicated web of genetic components that influence aging and lifespan. 

“We're interested in long-lived species like Jonathan because we can hopefully find other targets,” Clark said of his team’s work at Kallel Labs. “The ultimate goal of the company is to affect human healthspan and lifespan.”

As for Jonathan, he continues to live out his voluminous days at the governor’s residence, Plantation House, where he and his fellow tortoises have become one of the island’s tourist attractions. Saint Helena is also known for the exile of Napoleon Bonaparte, who died there a mere decade before Jonathan is thought to have been hatched. It’s amazing to think about just how much the world has changed in Jonathan’s lifetime. Long may he graze.  

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Zevende oktobers kenmerken zich na 2023 niet alleen door een hele hoop diep Joods verdriet en trauma, maar ook door een hele hoop walgelijke uitingen van alles en iedereen die liever spuugt op alles wat Joods is. We dachten vandaag het allerwalgelijkste wel te hebben gezien, maar toen lazen we dit. Jigal Krant, schrijver van kookboeken die naast dat ze over koken gaan ook echt leuk zijn om te lezen, bekend van het uitspreken van hummus als "choemoes" én strijder tegen dadeldiscriminatie, is in elkaar geramd door een palliebende op Utrecht Centraal. De politie voerde hem vervolgens af en vroegen hem waarom hij geen ster droeg naar zijn gegevens. Ze lieten de bende gewelddadige demonstranten uiteraard gewoon lekker hun gang gaan. Jigal haat dit land. Geef hem eens ongelijk.

Ondertussen in de hoofdstad

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Beelden van de Utrechtse palliedemo vanaf 14:00

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• Head coach pleased ‘everyone bought in’ to new ideas

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Thomas Tuchel believes England have unlocked a new level after moving forward with his tactical tweaks in the opening Nations League fixtures. The head coach wanted the players to retain their aggression, especially in the high press, to step on to the front foot and to harness the chaos often seen in the Premier League. But he has also tried to get them to play with greater freedom, to trust and follow their instincts more – while being alive to the need to cover for their teammates.

The results have been positive. After losing to Spain at Wembley, England recorded three wins: two against Czechia either side of the 7-0 victory against Croatia in Rijeka. They have in essence guaranteed their progress into the quarter-finals of a competition regarded as a tune-up for Euro 2028, while putting a bit of distance between themselves and the heartbreaking World Cup semi-final defeat by Argentina in July.

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DNA analysis of oldest living land animal reveal patterns on genes that appear to protect functioning of mitochondria

The ancient quest to extend human lifespan has received a boost after scientists analysed the genetic code of the world’s oldest living land animal, a giant tortoise called Jonathan.

The tortoise, which lives in the grounds of Plantation House, the official residence of the governor of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, is believed to be 194 years old, making him a contemporary of Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin.

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While it’s full steam ahead for Alex Scott, Lewis Hall and Myles Lewis-Skelly, others look likely to be left behind

Thomas Tuchel’s original idea had been for continuity. The England manager wanted to build on the positives from the World Cup and he was minded to stand by the vast majority of the players who had been a part of the journey to the semi-finals in North America over the summer. His squad for the four-match Nations League window and the beginning of a new international cycle would not be defined by radical change. What was it about the best-laid plans?

As Tuchel prepared to name his group in mid-September, he knew that he would be without a clutch of World Cup players because of injury. He then lost another handful after the announcement. Fast forward to the Czechia game at Wembley on Tuesday night – the final one of the quartet – and, after further withdrawals, Tuchel could count only 12 players who were available to him during the World Cup. He knows the train moves quickly in football, stopping for nobody. That flexibility is a prerequisite in his line of work. This felt like something else.

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Donald Trump’s unpopularity and the economic struggles of voters have boosted Democrats. But with less than a month to go, there is no complacency

For once, Democrats and Donald Trump might be in agreement: “Pretend I’m on the ticket,” the historically unpopular president has instructed supporters. Midterms are in large part a referendum on the incumbent, and Trump’s war on Iran and its impact on the cost of living have boosted support for Democrats. With less than a month to go, they have reason to be upbeat. The party has a mountain to climb after the devastating defeats of 2024, and the gerrymandering of Republicans, but surveys give it a lead of about nine points on the generic ballot, which measures preference for parties rather than specific candidates.

Attention has turned from the prospects of seizing the House, where Democrats are forecast a clear majority, to what once seemed like the highly optimistic possibility of taking the Senate too. That would require flipping four seats, with 35 in play. Remarkably, Democrats are prospering in red states from Texas to Alaska. In Kansas – which Mr Trump carried by 16 points, and which has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932 – the race is neck and neck.

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Jon Rahm is to quit LIV Golf due to the “unacceptable” terms offered for the proposed relaunch of the breakaway series.

LIV is going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the US after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund withdrew support at the end of the season having spent $5bn (£3.7bn) in four years.

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Burgemeester Cemil Tugay trad in 2024 aan namens de grootste oppositiepartij CHP, maar stapte woensdag over naar de AKP. CHP won in maart 2024 in een aantal grote steden de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen. Sindsdien wordt de partij in toenemende mate onderdrukt.

Microsoft has reportedly secured exclusive cloud-streaming rights for Grand Theft Auto VI, meaning Xbox Cloud Gaming will be the only service able to stream the game at launch. "Rockstar Games still hasn't announced a PC version of Grand Theft Auto VI, so this deal will allow Xbox to market its Xbox Cloud Gaming service to PC players who would otherwise need an Xbox Series X / S or PS5 console," reports The Verge. From the report: News of the streaming rights comes around a month after Microsoft announced some major changes to Xbox Cloud Gaming. From November, the same month Grand Theft Auto VI releases, Microsoft is limiting streaming hours to just 15 hours for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers, 10 hours for Premium subscribers, and just five hours for Game Pass Essential.
Microsoft is also opening up access to Xbox Cloud Gaming with a pay-as-you-go option next month, rather than being limited to Game Pass subscriptions. The pay-as-you-go option is perfectly timed for Grand Theft Auto VI, allowing those who don't own an Xbox, or who primarily play from a phone, to stream the game by paying for a bundle of hours.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Kodak Ektar 100 with Mamiya RB67 and Sekor 50 mm

AWS has offered multiple open-source strategies for holding AI agents accountable, and now it’s adding a full-on sandbox to this stack. Dubbed Strands Box, the new solution uses OS-level isolation and some of AWS’ other recent open-source AI control tools to, ostensibly, retain greater control over autonomous AI agents’ behavior. “Agents increasingly run in ‘YOLO mode,’ approving every action without human review,” the AWS team explained in its announcement. “The usual solution to this problem is a sandbox … but access is only part of what we want to control.” The problem with containers and microVMs typically used to isolate AI agents, as AWS explains it, is that their strong isolation doesn’t come with contextual rule enforcement. In other words, when a containerized or virtualized agent gets hold of a tool, there may be no stopping it from doing whatever it wants - like deleting a production database, or gaining access to the internet and doing dog knows what. That’s where the other open-source tools inside Strands Box come in: It uses the Dogwood Local Engine to give the policy engine in Box temporal awareness, so tool calls can be checked against not only what the agent wants to do, but what it’s already done. As one example, AWS noted that an agent could be allowed to post status updates to Slack, but no more than three times every ten minutes to prevent it from spamming its human operators. An AWS spokesperson further explained that Box could be used to control when an agent can perform a Git push, or it could be used to put a cap on API calls that could end up costing a small fortune. Additionally, Strands Box includes Strands Shell and Monty for Python, which expose shell and Python operations to the same Dogwood policy engine and event history, making agentic actions clearer to developers and allowing policies to account for what an agent is trying to do. AWS VP and distinguished engineer Marc Brooker, one of the folks behind Dogwood and Strands Box, explained to The Register that the interpreters are a key part of making agentic behavior more intelligible, which allows for devs to write more precise policies to prevent agents from taking bad actions. “Box’s Shell and Python interpreters expose operations such as file deletions, while its gateways expose API requests and tool calls,” Brooker told us in an email. “Policies can then account for the action being attempted and earlier activity.” Box, Brooker added, enforces those rules without trusting or relying on agents to actually follow instructions, which should ideally prevent them from running roughshod over their operators’ wishes. As for the reason behind AWS’ push to develop open-source tools like Dogwood, the Dogwood Local Engine, and Strands Box, Brooker said that AWS wants to find the right balance between boundaries and policies that prevent agentic AI disasters of the kind we regularly report. “Box enforces the policies developers configure, deterministically, and the agent can't talk its way around these rules,” Brooker explained, though he added that, even with properly configured permissions, an agentic action can still produce an unwanted result. “Developers remain responsible for deciding what access to grant and where human review is needed,” Brooker added - in other words, don’t let your YOLO mode go too YOLO. A bit of human oversight is still necessary. “Agent safety is an area where the industry still has significant work to do, and we're committed to continuing to invest in it, both inside the AWS cloud and in open source,” Brooker said. Strands Box supports any agent or harness one wants to confine within its walls and is available on GitHub now, though only for macOS for the time being. Linux support is in development, and AWS told us a Windows client is “on our radar,” but neither has a planned release date. Deployment to platforms like AgentCore, ECS, and Kubernetes is also planned. ®