DAILY DOSE: China making moves; Cat’s have been around for a long time.

Beijing has codified efforts to re-open Chinese society after its tortuous Zero-Covid strategy took a heavy social and emotional toll on its citizens. Per Reuters,

As many Chinese embraced new freedoms on Thursday after the country dropped key parts of its tough zero-COVID regime, there was mounting concern that a virus, which had largely been kept in check, could soon run wild.

Three years into the pandemic, many in China had been itching for Beijing to start to align its rigid virus prevention measures with the rest of the world, which has largely opened up in an effort to live with the disease.

Those frustrations boiled over into widespread protests last month, the biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.

Without saying it was a response to those protests, some cities and regions began relaxing COVID controls, in moves that heralded a nationwide loosening of the rules unveiled by the National Health Commission on Wednesday.

Better late than never, as they say. https://bit.ly/3hdpEmI

The opioid crisis has taken many lives in the United States. Lives have been lost. Keeping track of people who have survived is an important way of preventing ODs since people who have overdosed once are more prone to overdosing in the future. Per STAT,

The Biden administration is rolling out a new tool meant to help prevent drug deaths: a nationwide database that tracks nonfatal overdoses.

The dashboard, known as the Non-Fatal Opioid Overdose Surveillance Tracker, will offer fresh insights about overdose rates, the drug supply, and the effectiveness of local emergency response efforts, the White House said.

If effective, the tool could help fill a major information gap. In most of the country, it isn’t known exactly how many people experience drug overdoses but survive — making it difficult to steer resources to specific cities or neighborhoods that need them most.

This can only help. https://bit.ly/3W144k1

Studying ancient DNA continues to reveal more and more about our human past. Per the AP,

Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like 2 million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland. Today, it’s a barren Arctic desert, but back then it was a lush landscape of trees and vegetation with an array of animals, even the now extinct mastodon.

“The study opens the door into a past that has basically been lost,” said lead author Kurt Kjær, a geologist and glacier expert at the University of Copenhagen.

"With animal fossils hard to come by, the researchers extracted environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, from soil samples. This is the genetic material that organisms shed into their surroundings — for example, through hair, waste, spit or decomposing carcasses.”

Studying really old DNA can be a challenge because the genetic material breaks down over time, leaving scientists with only tiny fragments. https://bit.ly/3hd23T1

According to a recent study, cans have been our companions since at least the dawn of the Neolithic Era. Per Futurity,

Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like 2 million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland. Today, it’s a barren Arctic desert, but back then it was a lush landscape of trees and vegetation with an array of animals, even the now extinct mastodon.

“The study opens the door into a past that has basically been lost,” said lead author Kurt Kjær, a geologist and glacier expert at the University of Copenhagen.

With animal fossils hard to come by, the researchers extracted environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, from soil samples. This is the genetic material that organisms shed into their surroundings — for example, through hair, waste, spit or decomposing carcasses.”

Honest question: Did we domesticate them or did they domesticate us? https://bit.ly/3iANLfd

Thanks for reading. Let’s be careful out there.