Green & indigenous News

Microbes across Earth's coldest regions are becoming more active as glaciers, permafrost and sea ice thaw, accelerating carbon release and potentially amplifying climate change, according to a new international review from McGill University.

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Last year, a ten-month-old baby in the US was the first person in the world to have their rare genetic disease effectively cured through the use of CRISPR gene editing technology. But the rollout of CRISPR across a wide range of genetic conditions has been hampered by its inconsistency, and its potential to cause harm to healthy genes. Now a team of Melbourne scientists have used AI to develop a fast and accurate way to keep CRISPR in line.

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The Arctic is experiencing a steady rise in human-generated underwater noise as melting ice and increasing activity open the region to greater vessel traffic, with major implications for wildlife and local communities. New research from the University of Bath, drawing on data collected over more than a decade, sets out a clear and effective approach to monitoring underwater noise in Arctic waters.

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  In parts of Indonesian Borneo, forests endure not because they are fenced off or regulated, but because they are feared. Among the Indigenous Iban people of Sungai Utik, large strangler fig trees are believed to house spirits that can mislead, sicken, or even kill those who disturb them. The belief is not abstract. It is anchored in stories, warnings and remembered loss, Mongabay’s Liz Kimbrough recently reported. One such story recounts a boy who vanished near a rice field, only to be found hours later by a towering fig. He said spirits had called to him and hidden him in plain sight. His family took him to a shaman. His name was changed, to sever the spirits’ hold. The tree remained. For researchers, these accounts might read as folklore. Yet new fieldwork shows that the consequences of such beliefs are visible on the land. When the Iban clear fields for farming, they leave large strangler figs standing. They also leave a buffer of forest around them, creating islands of vegetation scattered through farmland. The practice is called dipulau, a word that translates simply as “island.” These islands occupy only a small fraction of the cultivated landscape, perhaps 1 or 2%. Still, they matter. Different species of strangler figs fruit at different times of the year and draw birds, primates and wild pigs when other food is scarce. Hunters once waited beneath them. Today, wildlife still moves between forest and field along these living stepping stones. Measurements from Sungai Utik…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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The ocean is under increasing pressure. Everyday human activities, from shipping to oil and gas exploration to urban pollution, are affecting the marine environment. Extensive research shows how this combination of stressors represents one of the greatest threats to marine wildlife, potentially affecting biodiversity on a global scale.

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The problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has many health experts worried. As disease-causing bacteria adapt to some of our ways to reduce them, especially with antibiotics, it presents an arms race which we appear to be losing. Researchers seek to improve the situation by looking at how bacteria adapt to antibiotics.

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When spider monkeys want to tell others about the best fruit trees in the forest or ones they've missed, they do so by changing their social groups to share what they know, according to a new study published in the journal npj Complexity. It's a neat system that means the whole group finds the best food much faster than any individual monkey could on its own.

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Bacteria in the human gut can directly deliver proteins into human cells, actively shaping immune responses. A consortium led by researchers at Helmholtz Munich, with participation from Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU), Aix Marseille University, Inserm, and international partners, has discovered this previously unknown mechanism of communication between gut bacteria and human cells. The findings reveal a new way in which the gut microbiome can influence the human body and may help explain how changes in gut bacteria contribute to inflammatory diseases such as Crohn's disease.

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Adaptor protein (AP) complexes play central roles in intracellular vesicular trafficking by coupling cargo selection to vesicle formation. AP-4, an important member of the AP family, plays a key role in this process. AP-4 dysfunction disrupts the transport of essential cargo proteins, such as ATG9A, leading to their abnormal retention within cells. However, the mechanistic details of how AP-4 is recruited to membranes and how its structural features support this process have remained unclear.

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Even as global warming causes sea levels to rise worldwide, sea levels around Greenland will likely drop, according to a new paper published in Nature Communications. "The Greenland coastline is going to experience quite a different outcome," says lead author Lauren Lewright, a Ph.D. student in geophysics working at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School. "Sea level in Greenland is actually projected to fall."

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Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich and Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf have developed a tool that could significantly transform genome research: Helixer identifies genes directly from DNA sequences—without laboratory experiments or prior knowledge about the organism. The work is published in the journal Nature Methods.

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A new app, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), could help scientists and the public identify dinosaur footprints made millions of years ago, a study reveals.

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A new study shows that interactions between wolves and cougars in Yellowstone National Park are driven by wolves stealing prey killed by cougars and that shifts in cougar diets to smaller prey help them avoid wolf encounters. The study, published at a time of growing overlap between cougar and wolf habitats in the western United States, found wolves occasionally killed cougars, but cougars did not kill wolves.

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Beginning in the early 2000s, some of the most common and well-studied PFAS were phased out through a combination of industry shifts and international regulations. A new study from Harvard has found that since that phaseout, North Atlantic pilot whales have 60% lower concentrations of these chemicals in their bodies. PFAS, or per- or polyfluoroalkyl substances, are ubiquitous in modern life. First produced at the end of World War II, these chemicals are in everything from furniture and cosmetics to food packaging, nonstick pans and clothing. They have also infiltrated our water, soil, and food, making PFAS a major concern for human and ecological health.

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In late 2025, scientists reported that for the first time, they were able to detect concentrations of plastic pollution on land using NASA's Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) sensor aboard the International Space Station. The technology has inspired marine researchers to see whether it could also help track debris in our waters.

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The Seward Peninsula Subsistence Regional Advisory Council opened a meeting with tributes to longtime council member.

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The first year of the second Trump administration saw a bewildering array of federal actions in the 49th state. Here’s your guide to where things now stand.

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A study of wild African herbivores offers new insight into how environmental conditions—not just diet and anatomy—can influence the evolution of gut microbes that play a critical role in animal health and well-being.

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Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have a unique resource in the form of the Center for Biomolecular Condensates at the McKelvey School of Engineering, which draws scientists from around the world to study the biochemical reactions of condensates, constantly shifting, membrane-less organelles that govern how a cell functions. Center Director Rohit Pappu, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor, has spent his career defining and outlining the rules governing these "intrinsically disordered proteins" to develop medical treatments for cancers or dementias. But new medicine is not the only treasure to uncover in condensate research.

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Acid resistance is a crucial property that enterobacteria must possess to withstand host acidic environments during infection, including the gastrointestinal tract and macrophage phagosomes. The facultative intracellular pathogen Salmonella expresses the arginine decarboxylase AdiA, which confers acid resistance by catalyzing an H+-consuming reaction.

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Work begins to recover an oil rig that toppled on the North Slope, and Yup’ik values and culture were front and center this weekend.

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Snow has fallen in the Italian Alps just in time for the start of the Winter Olympics, dispelling fears of artificially-covered tracks winding through lush green mountainsides.

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Global leaders have committed to halting and reversing the ongoing degradation of nature within the next few decades. But with tight public budgets, governments around the world are looking toward nature markets as one way to attract more private investment into nature.

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Keila Szpaller*Daily Montanan*

The Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Office helped stop a fraudulent multimillion dollar billing scheme by agents preying on Native Americans on reservations, Commissioner James Brown announced this month.

In cooperation with health insurers, tribal communities and law enforcement, the investigation secured more than $23.3 million of fraudulently incurred claims through the Affordable Care Act, Brown said. An additional $27 million is pending.

Commissioner James Brown. (Provided by the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Office) Credit: Provided by the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Office

The most reprehensible aspect of this scheme is how the people who were allegedly provided ‘care’ were vulnerable populations that were, in some cases, exploited, coerced, moved across state lines, and not even so much as given a way to get back home to Montana,” Brown said in a statement.

In an interview, Brown said some Montana victims who were taken out of state for treatment that never took place have yet to be found.

Brown said his office met with tribes in Montana throughout 2025 to alert them to the scheme. It also made referrals to federal law enforcement authorities in Montana and the FBI office in Los Angeles where the alleged crimes took place.

In an interview, Brown described the way bad actors used a provision in the Affordable Care Act to victimize Native Americans to try to defraud an insurance company, how the scheme led to as much as $54.7 million in unjustified claims, and discussed the work that remains in the aftermath.

In January 2025, PacificSource reported suspected fraudulent ACA enrollment to the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance, and the office launched an investigation a couple of weeks later, according to a timeline provided by CSI.

Under the Affordable Care Act, Native Americans are able to enroll in the federal marketplace at any time, Brown said; they don’t have to wait for open enrollment.

Fraudsters operating out of Arizona and, for the purposes of the Montana scheme, California, used that provision to entice Native Americans to disenroll from Medicaid and sign up for health insurance through the ACA instead, Brown said.

In particular, he said, the agents would set up information booths on reservations — he believes nearly every reservation in Montana has been a target — and tell people about free drug and alcohol treatment at a beautiful facility in southern California.

The schemers would then transport victims across state lines by buying them a plane ticket to California or driving them in a van; keep them for 90 days while providing “fake services”; and then bill the insurance company $9,000 a day for 90 days, Brown said.

The billing was for services that didn’t take place, were unnecessary, or were provided at “greatly inflated prices,” according to the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance.

Brown said the bad actors abused “Obamacare” and trafficked “vulnerable Native Americans.” He said at least 183 people were victimized.

“We’re still trying to find some of these people, honestly,” Brown said.

The Office of Indian Affairs could not be reached Monday about any efforts to find people. The FBI in Montana also could not be reached in time for this story.

Brown said insurance abuse leads to higher premiums for everyone, but the investigation from his office and work with the Trump administration has meant $23.3 million in payments don’t have to be made to date.

Brown said an additional $27 million is pending a decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He said so far, 80 policy recissions have been granted, and dozens remain under review.

Brown said PacificSource first suspected a problem when it came across half a million dollars in alcohol and substance abuse being billed out of southern California and the southwest part of the country.

“That is what set their alarm bells off, and they approached us for help,” Brown said.

He said his office conducted an investigation that supported the ability of CMS to approve the non-payment of fraudulent claims and rescind the policies. CSI has a team of four investigators, and he said his office spent seven months on the investigation.

The team uncovered falsified records, unlicensed and out-of-state actors, fabricated addresses, and unsupported earnings information used to obtain coverage, according to CSI. It also found “immediate, high-dollar billing patterns designed to extract maximum payouts.”

In a statement provided by CSI, PacificSource spokesperson Erik Wood thanked Brown and his team for helping stop suspected fraudulent activity in the marketplace.

“As a nonprofit health plan, PacificSource exists to keep health care accessible and affordable for our members, and preventing fraud is an important part of that work,” Wood said. “We appreciate the state’s commitment to protecting Montanans and the integrity of our health insurance system.”

PacificSource is a not-for-profit health insurance provider and one of three insurers that offer plans under the Affordable Care Act.

Brown said his office is helping to re-enroll victims into Medicaid so they have coverage. He encouraged Montanans to be wary of any alleged agents advising disenrollment in Medicaid and recommending treatment programs in California through the Affordable Care Act.

Brown said Arizona and Alaska also have dealt with a variation of the scheme. He said any state with a significant Native American population is a target, and he has talked with his counterparts and insurance providers in Washington and Wyoming to alert them to the scheme.

Brown said his office has “zero tolerance for fraud” and it is focused on consumer protection that “works for the people of Montana as opposed to scammers.” He said his office is pursuing additional investigations and will ask for an additional investigator in the future.

“We don’t tolerate corruption, and we don’t apologize for enforcing the law,” Brown said in a statement. “If you exploit vulnerable people or try to game our system, we will come after you.”

Credit: Daily Montanan

The post Fraudulent health care scheme stopped in Montana appeared first on ICT.

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The power of artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing has made it possible to design genetic sequences encoding for diverse biological applications, such as proteins that form the building blocks of materials stronger than steel, or personalized cancer treatments. But the act of constructing DNA sequences to realize those designs has been a significant bottleneck. Due to technological limitations, chemical DNA synthesis has been limited only to creating short pieces of DNA. However, DNA molecules on the scale of genes or genomes can be tens to thousands of times longer than current capabilities allow. Without DNA construction, AI-powered biological designs cannot be verified or improved—meaning that the blueprints for futuristic new technologies cannot be realized.

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