Today in Science: Searching for "cocaine sharks"

Science meets inbox July 26, 2023: The origin story of COVID, social media's impact on eating disorders in teens and searching out "cocaine sharks." Read it all below. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor TOP STORIES Ongoing Mystery The pandemic emergency has been officially declared over, but we still don't know definitively where the virus came from. Genetic evidence puts the COVID-causing virus, SARS-CoV-2, in many of the stalls selling wild animals at a market in Wuhan, China, where the first cases of the disease were identified. But some hypothesize that the virus escaped from a research lab near Wuhan–there's no evidence of an intentional release, but an accidental leak is still plausible. In June, several government agencies released their own assessments on the virus's origin: four thought the virus came from a natural spillover (from contact with animals at the market or otherwise), two thought it was a lab leak, and others were inconclusive. None of these assessments was made with high confidence. What to make of this: Tracing the origin of a new viral disease can take decades. Any evidence gathered so far has been circumstantial and it may stay that way. This is all confounded by a lack of cooperation by the Chinese government and health agencies even in the early days of the pandemic (data were withheld from international fact finding efforts, or released much later). What the experts say: A hard puzzle is not an impossible one, says Alex Crits-Christoph, a senior scientist in computational biology at Cultivarium, a nonprofit microbiology research organization. He thinks scientists will keep getting closer to an answer. "People keep betting that no new information will come out, and new information keeps coming out," he says. In Wuhan, the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was the site of many early COVID cases. Credit: Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images Social Media Savvy Eating disorders existed before social media. But social media has become a powerful influence, especially on teenagers, who orient their social lives around it. The platforms have become a "plausible risk factor" in developing eating disorders, even outside Western cultures, and their use should be viewed as a global public health issue, the authors of a new analysis write. Why this matters: Eating disorders are on the rise: from 2013 to 2018, just as some of the most popular social media platforms were taking off, their prevalence was twice as high as in 2000 to 2006. Social media reached about half of the global population in 2020, making this a global concern. What the experts say: Training in media literacy in teens can help protect against some of the negative effects of social media on self-esteem and body image. "It's important to remember that social media can also provide supportive recovery communities for people with eating disorders," says Catherine Talbot, a cyberpsychology researcher at Bournemouth University in England. "We now need to focus on building resilience to potentially harmful content online and nudging users towards more supportive spaces in recovery." TODAY'S NEWS • Electronics that can bend, stretch and repair themselves could potentially work in applications ranging from tougher robots to smart clothes. | 6 min read • Studies of the psychology of stalking are still in their infancy, leaving researchers with many open questions. | 9 min read • Marine researchers investigate whether "cocaine sharks" are actually ingesting the drug off the coasts of Florida in a new television special. | 9 min read •  The ability of forests to absorb carbon from the atmosphere will start plummeting after 2025 as decaying trees in older forests could emit up to 100 million metric tons of carbon a year. | 3 min read More News EXPERT PERSPECTIVES • Robots have infiltrated fields that once seemed immune to automation, such as journalism and psychotherapy. Are any jobs unsuited to the powers of AI? "Years of studying the psychology of automation have shown that such machines still lack one quality: credibility," write Joshua Conrad Jackson and Kai Chi Yam, at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the National University of Singapore Business School, respectively. Without credibility, some robots will never outperform humans, they say. | 6 min read More Opinion WHAT WE'RE READING • A 71-year-old nature lover and hiker died after hiking in Death Valley, Calif., one of the hottest places on the planet. | Los Angeles Times • A beautiful and sad story about a large family with a genetic mutation for cognitive decline. | The New York Times • Youths housed in the former death row unit at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola have been kept in windowless, non-air-conditioned cells with the heat index outside reaching 130 degrees F. | Louisiana Illuminator First there was "Cocaine Bear," and then "Cocaine Hippos." Now researchers are investigating whether "Cocaine Sharks" are really ingesting washed up bales of drugs in the waters off Florida. This is all very bizarre, but I like the perspective one of the scientists in the article gives: drugs and pharmaceuticals can have a real (and devastating) impact on marine life. Bizarre or not, this is a research area I can get behind for sharks and any other "cocaine animal" that comes along. Email me with suggestions or feedback here: newsletters@sciam.com. See you tomorrow! —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters here. Scientific American One New York Plaza, New York, NY, 10004   Support our mission, subscribe to Scientific American here   Unsubscribe Email Preferences