By Tom Polansek | CHICAGO

CHICAGO The strain of bird flu that infected a chicken farm in Tennessee in recent days shares the same name as a form of the virus that has killed humans in China, but is genetically distinct from it, U.S. authorities said on Tuesday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture identified the strain in Tennessee as H7N9, following a full genome sequencing of samples from the farm. It said all eight gene segments of the virus had North American wild bird lineage.

On Sunday, the USDA confirmed the farm in Tennessee was infected with highly pathogenic bird flu, making it the first case in a commercial U.S. operation in more than a year.

In China, at least 112 people have died from H7N9 bird flu this winter, Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

However, that virus has Eurasian lineage, U.S. flu experts said.

"Even though the numbers and the letters are the same, if you look at the genetic fingerprint of that virus, it is different," said Dan Jernigan, director of the influenza division at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Jernigan said the risk to humans from the virus found in Tennessee is low. Genome sequencing shows the H7N9 virus did not have genetic features present in the virus in China that make it easier for humans to become infected, he said.

The virus found in Tennessee likely mutated to become highly pathogenic from a less dangerous, low pathogenic form, he said.

Disease experts fear a deadly strain of bird flu could mutate into a form that could be passed easily between people and become a pandemic.

Multiple outbreaks of the virus have been reported in poultry farms and wild flocks across Europe, Africa and Asia in the past six months. Most involved strains that were low risks for human health, but the sheer number of different types, and their simultaneous presence in so many parts of the world, has increased the risk of viruses mixing and mutating - and possibly jumping to people, according to disease experts.

China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention has said the majority of people infected by H7N9 in China reported exposure to poultry, especially at live markets.

Identifying the viruses in Tennessee and China both as H7N9 is similar to having two cars from different states with the same license plate number, said Carol Cardona, avian flu expert at the University of Minnesota.

The strain in Tennessee "is NOT the same as the China H7N9 virus that has impacted poultry and infected humans in Asia," the USDA emphasized in a statement.

"While the subtype is the same as the China H7N9 lineage that emerged in 2013, this is a different virus and is genetically distinct from the China H7N9 lineage," the USDA added.

U.S. officials are working to determine how the Tennessee farm, which was a supplier to Tyson Foods Inc, became infected. All 73,500 birds there were killed by the disease or suffocated with foam to prevent its spread.

Tyson, the world's biggest chicken company, is "hopeful this is an isolated incident," spokesman Worth Sparkman said.

Authorities have not identified the name of the farm or the town in Lincoln County, Tennessee, where it is located.

(Editing by Matthew Lewis and Bernard Orr)

SARAJEVO Nejra Isaretovic, a 25-year old physiotherapist from Sarajevo, is busy these days studying German and taking driving lessons -- key skills required for her new job in Germany.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said on Wednesday that it intends to expand mental health care to former service members with other-than-honorable (OTH) administrative discharges.

(Reuters Health) - Improvement or worsening of chest pain symptoms and quality of life after a CT scan of the heart may depend on what the scan finds, a large study suggests.

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Tennessee bird flu shares name, not genetics, of feared China strain ... - Reuters

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Cattle Genetics | BEEF Magazine

It wasnt until a few weeks after the albino ball python hatched that Justin Kobylka noticed it was distinctly marked with three smiley faces. He saw one a yellow blob that looks like a smiling emoji and thought it was cool. Then, when reviewing a photograph of the snake, he noticed they comprised a trio a pattern that he, a professional snake breeder, had never heard of. He was in the presence of a rare masterwork of genetic engineering.

I knew theoretically that you could get smiley faces one smiley face is not that uncommon, said Kobylka, who hatched his first batch of snakes in an incubator underneath his dorm room bed in college, in an interview with Inverse. I would likely be able to breed more in the future that have just one, but I dont know if I could get three ever again no matter how long I try. Its really a lucky thing.

This snakes existence is a mixture of luck and years worth of careful science. While the snakes unique pattern is what makes it viral worthy, what is less obvious is how difficult it is for a highly patterned albino that is, white-skinned ball python to even exist.

There are two recessive mutations, fairly common in the natural world, manifested this snake: albinism and pybalism, the characteristic of having high-color, high-contrast patterns like the smiley face. The first albino ball python that ever hatched was bred from double heterozygous parent snakes that both contained mutant alleles at both genes encoding these two traits. Because the odds are one in 16 that a snake carrying both mutations could hatch and each female only has six eggs a year, it could take two to three years for this breeding to even occur, Kobylka says.

Breeding gets easier once the first albino pyball is born: Using it in a second pairing with another double heterozygous parent, the odds drop to one in four. Still, theres no guarantee that the albino pyballs characteristic splotch pattern will form the shape of a smiley, let alone three times in a row; it occurs in only one in ten snakes. This is where Kobylkas luck factors in.

The special smilies are fun, but were just happy to be able to make an albino ball python, says Kobylka. Two years ago, making an albino ball python was a holy grail.

When these special snakes hatched, they were worth a pretty penny for collectors; they are valued between $30,000 to $40,000. Today, Kobylka can use an albino python in the actual pairing as a double homozygous animal as the parent, which drops the odds to another albino ball python hatching to one in four. While this easier breeding system has increased the quantity available, and has dropped the price to about $4,500 each.

Is it possible for you to get an emoji snake exactly like this? Probably not science isnt on your side and Kobylka is keeping this one.

Photos via Giphy

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This Very Rare Emoji Snake Is a Genetics Marvel - Inverse

By Joel Couture . March 8, 2017 . 2:00pm

Predators, harsh elements, and bad breeding will make quick work of careless players inNiche, a turn-based strategy game about helping animals survive in the wild.

In Niche, players will have to manage animals with a random set of genetic traits, playing to their strengths and dealing with their weaknesses as they try to survive in various environments. To do so, players will need to decide what actions to give each member of their pack on each turn, sending them out for food, digging shelters, having them mate and give birth to offspring, or attack predators.

Each turn counts as a day in the life of each animal, and after a set amount of time, each of these animals will quickly die. Death can be sped up significantly by hunger, sickness, and attacks, so players will have to deal with these issues quickly before they cut through their packs lifespan.

Players can boost their chances of survival through smart breeding. Each genetic trait can be passed on through the use of dominant-recessive genes, letting players put scientific knowledge to use, or learn more about the science of genetics through the game. In doing so, they can get rid of negative traits and boost positive ones using real science.

Niche is available now on Steam Early Access.

Video game stories from other sites on the web. These links leave Siliconera.

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Goods Genetics Are Key To Surviving Niche's Harsh Worlds - Siliconera

Performance Genetics LLC, a leading Thoroughbred analytics and performance evaluation company is pleased to announce the launch of its two-year-old in training sale site BreezeUpIQ.com BreezeUpIQ.com uses the latest in machine learning algorithms, specifically XGBoost, to develop a predictive algorithm to select elite horses from two-year-olds in training sales. More than half of the winning solutions in machine learning challenges hosted at data science platform Kaggle adopt XGBoost as their winning algorithm. "This project is the culmination of years of work, gathering data at major two-year-olds in training sales across North America and Europe and using racetrack outcomes to develop a predictive algorithm for two-year-olds in training sales. In all, I have data on just over 6,000 horses that subsequently had 3 or more starts so are valid records to create a prediction algorithm on," said Byron Rogers of Performance Genetics. "The algorithm normalizes a breeze and gallop out for the sex and distance breezed and using other variables such as velocity, decay, stride length and strides per second it is able to capture both linear and non-linear relationships in the data to elite performance making it a unique player in the two-year-olds sales market", Rogers added. In a randomized holdout set of 1,000 two-year-olds with racing outcomes that the algorithm had not seen before, the BreezeUpIQ XGBoost model selected just 6.8% of all horses, with 23.1% of these being subsequent stakes winners. "The model doesn't find every stakes winner, as some stakes winners will for one reason or another generate breeze data that is not different to a lot of average horses, but it delivers an outstanding strike rate for selecting elite runners at two-year-olds in training sales for the relatively small number horses that it does identify as being unique. Importantly it is learning off new data every month to become more and more precise," said Rogers. Current plans will see the algorithm used at the upcoming OBS March 2YO sale and major two-year-olds sales in North America with plans to roll out the service at European two-year-olds sales this year. For further information please contact, Byron Rogers Performance Genetics LLC e: byron@performancegenetics.com m: +1 859 285 0431

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Performance Genetics Offering Breeze-Ups Analytics - BloodHorse.com (press release) (registration) (blog)