Chinese scientists have injected a person with CRISPR/Cas9-edited cells, marking the first time cells altered with the technique have been used in humans. Researchers used the powerful gene editor to alter immune cells to fight lung cancer, Nature reports November 15.

Immune cells called CAR-T cells have already been engineered using other gene-editing technologies. A baby’s leukemia was successfully treated in 2015 with CAR-T cells engineered with gene editors known as TALENs.

Chinese researchers led by oncologist Lu You of Sichuan University in Chengdu got approval to conduct the new trial this summer. U.S. researchers have gotten clearance to begin similar clinical trials.

You’s team removed immune cells from a patient with lung cancer. They then used CRISPR/Cas9 as molecular scissors to cut and inactivate the PD-1 gene in T cells. That gene’s protein usually holds immune cells back from attacking tumors. The hope is that the edited cells will now go on the offensive and help the patient fight cancer. Researchers plan to give the patient a second dose of engineered cells, Nature reports.

The researchers’ progress with the technique could spark a space race–style biomedical competition between the United States and China, Carl June, an immunotherapist at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, told Nature. “I think this is going to trigger ‘Sputnik 2.0,’” he said, hopefully improving the end product.

In the early 1880s, Harvard Observatory director Edward Pickering put out a call for volunteers to help observe flickering stars. He welcomed women, in particular — and not just because he couldn’t afford to pay anything.

At the time, women’s colleges were producing graduates with “abundant training to make excellent observers,” Pickering wrote. His belief in women’s abilities carried over when he hired staff, even though critics of women’s higher education argued that women “originate almost nothing, so that human knowledge is not advanced by their work.”
Pickering and his “harem” sure proved the critics wrong.

In The Glass Universe, science writer Dava Sobel shines a light on the often-unheralded scientific contributions of the observatory’s beskirted “computers” who helped chart the heavens. By 1893, women made up nearly half of the observatory’s assistants, and dozens followed in their footsteps.

These women toiled tirelessly, marking times, coordinates and other notations for photographic images of the sky taken nightly and preserved on glass plates — the glass universe. These women’s routine mapping of the stars gave birth to novel ideas that advanced astronomy in ways still instrumental today — from how stars are classified to how galactic distances are measured.

Using diaries, letters, memoirs and scientific papers, Sobel recounts the accomplishments of these extraordinary women, going into enough scientific detail (glossary included) to satisfy curious readers and enough personal detail to bring these women’s stories to life.

Sobel traces the origin of the glass universe back to heiress Anna Palmer Draper. The book opens in 1882 with her exulting in hosting a party for the scientific glitterati under the glowing and novel Edison incandescent lights. Her husband, Henry Draper, a doctor and amateur astronomer, had pioneered a way to “fix” the stars on glass photographic plates. The resulting durable black-and-white images revealed spectral lines that could provide hints to a star’s elements — and eventually so much more. Henry’s premature death five days after the party launched Anna’s philanthropic support of the Harvard Observatory and the creation of the glass universe.
Other women featured in the book had a more hands-on impact on astronomy. For instance, Williamina Fleming came to the United States as a maid. But Pickering soon recognized her knack for mathematics. At the observatory, she read “the rune-like lines of the spectra,” Sobel writes, noticing patterns that led to the first iteration in 1890 of the Draper stellar classification system. That system, still used today, was later refined by the observations of other women.

Henrietta Leavitt, a promising Radcliffe College astronomy student slowly going deaf, joined the staff in 1895. While meticulously tracking the changing brightness of variable stars, she noticed a pattern: The brighter a star’s magnitude, the longer it took to cycle through all its variations. This period-luminosity law, published in 1912, became crucial in measuring the distance to stars. It underpinned Edwin Hubble’s law on cosmic expansion and led to discoveries about the shape of the Milky Way, our solar system’s place far from the galactic center and the existence of other galaxies.

The story belongs, too, to Pickering and his successor, Harlow Shapley. Perhaps partly motivated by economics at a time of shoestring budgets — in 1888, women computers earned just 25cents per hour — these men not only recognized, but also encouraged and heralded the women’s talent.

Sobel takes readers through World War II and a myriad of other moments starring women: first woman observatory head; first woman professor at Harvard (of astronomy, of course); discoveries of binary stars, the prevalence of hydrogen and helium in stars, and the existence of interstellar dust. In some cases, it took male astronomers to make those findings stick — the glass universe had a glass ceiling.

After World War II, radio astronomy emerged, and “the days of the human computer were numbered — by zeros and ones,” Sobel writes. Using film to photograph the stars ended in the 1970s. But the glass universe is far from obsolete. The roughly half-million plates hold the ghosts of pulsars, quasars and other stellar phenomena not even imagined when the plates were made. They also offer the promise of more discoveries to come, perhaps by the next generation of women astronomers.

SAN FRANCISCO — Earth may have been a water world for much of its history, a new proposal contends. Just like in the Kevin Costner movie, the continents would have been mostly submerged below sea level. Previous proposals have suggested that Earth’s land area has remained comparatively unchanged throughout much of geologic time.

But geoscientist Cin-Ty Lee of Rice University in Houston proposes that Earth’s continents didn’t rise above the waves until around 700 million years ago, when the underlying mantle sufficiently cooled. Though many scientists are unconvinced, that continental rise may have contributed to the rapid diversification of life known as the Cambrian explosion. “The Earth is cooling and that actually has manifestations that dictate how life goes,” Lee said December 15 at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting.
Earth’s first continental crust formed billions of years ago. Slabs of this crust “float” above the underlying mantle like icebergs, with relatively cold roots than can extend tens of kilometers into the mantle. A continent’s elevation depends, in part, on the size of its root and the density of the mantle.

Earlier in Earth’s history when the mantle was hotter and less dense, the continents sat largely below sea level with only mountains peeking above the water’s surface, Lee proposed. The cooling of the mantle over time increased the relative buoyancy of the continents and lifted the landmasses above sea level. Considering mantle cooling rates and Earth’s topography, Lee proposes that this expansion of Earth’s dry land took place around 1 billion to 500 million years ago and lasted about 100 million years.

The new land would have altered carbon and nutrient cycles, Lee suggested. These effects could help explain large shifts in Earth’s climate around this time and might have nourished the Cambrian explosion. During that time, around 540 million to 500 million years ago, forerunners of the major groups of animals — from insects to mammals — first emerged.

This tale of rising continents may be overly simplistic, said Laurent Montési, a geodynamicist at the University of Maryland in College Park. Other factors such as the mass of the continents, the amount of water in the oceans and the rate of new crust formation on the seafloor could affect sea levels relative to the continents. The idea is worth considering, he said, “but the evidence is not completely there yet.”

Warning: Furry Logic is not, as the title might suggest, a detailed exploration of mammals’ reasoning skills. Instead, it’s a fun, informative chronicle of how myriad animals take advantage of the laws of physics.

Science writers Matin Durrani and Liz Kalaugher cite a trove of recent (and often surprising) research findings. They draw on their backgrounds — Durrani is a physicist, Kalaugher a materials scientist — to explain how animals exploit sound, light, electricity and magnetism, among other things, in pursuit of food, sex and survival. These creatures don’t consciously use physics the way that humans design and use tools, of course, but they are evolutionary marvels nonetheless.
Peacocks, for example, produce low-frequency sounds while shimmying their tail feathers (SN Online: 04/27/16). The birds use these sounds — and not just the sight of those colorful plumes — to impress females and fend off competing males. At the other end of the sonic spectrum, some bats use stealth echolocation to track down their preferred prey. Moths targeted by these bats have sensors that can pick up these ultrasonic calls, but the bats squeak so softly that a moth can’t hear its stalker until it is less than a half-second’s flight away.

Durrani and Kalaugher let readers know when the science isn’t settled. Researchers aren’t quite sure how peahens pick up males’ infrasonic signals, for example. Scientists also haven’t figured out how the archerfish spits so precisely (SN: 10/4/14, p. 8), knocking prey off low-hanging branches above the water as often as 94 percent of the time. The submerged fish must somehow gauge the angle at which light bends as it enters the water and then accurately compensate for refraction while spewing a stream of water. Amazingly, this feat may be innate rather than learned via trial and error.

Readers need not understand the intricacies of polarized light, Earth’s magnetic field or surface tension to enjoy Furry Logic. Nor is this book an exhaustive account of the characteristics and behavior of every animal that uses such phenomena in interesting ways. There should be plenty of material for a sequel to this fascinating book.

Earthquake-powered shifts along the seafloor that push water forward, not just up, could help supersize tsunamis.

By combining laboratory experiments, computer simulations and real-world observations, researchers discovered that the horizontal movement of sloped seafloor during an underwater earthquake can give tsunamis a critical boost. Scientists previously assumed that vertical movement alone contributed most of a tsunami’s energy.

More than half of the energy for the unexpectedly large tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011 (SN Online: 6/16/11) originated from the horizontal movement of the seafloor, the researchers estimate. Accounting for this lateral motion could explain why some earthquakes generate large tsunamis while others don’t, the researchers report in a paper to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans.
“For the last 30 years, we’ve been moving in the wrong direction to do a good job predicting tsunamis,” says study coauthor Tony Song, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “This new theory will lead to a better predictive approach than we have now.”

The largest tsunamis form following earthquakes that occur along tectonic boundaries where an oceanic plate sinks below a continental plate. That movement isn’t always smooth; sections of the two plates can stick together. As the bottom oceanic plate sinks, it bends the top continental plate downward like a weighed-down diving board. Eventually, the pent-up stress becomes too much and the plates abruptly unstick, causing the overlying plate to snap upward and triggering an earthquake. That upward movement lifts the seafloor, displacing huge volumes of water that pile up on the sea surface and spread outward as a tsunami.

These deep-sea earthquakes shift the seafloor sideways, too. The earthquake off the coast of Japan in 2011, for instance, not only lifted the ocean floor three to five meters; it also caused up to 58 meters of horizontal movement. Such lateral motion, however big, is mostly ignored in tsunami science, largely because of a 1982 laboratory study that found no connection between horizontal ground motion and wave height. The experiment used in that study, Song argues, wasn’t a properly sized-down model of the dimensions of the seafloor and overlying ocean. If lateral motion takes place on a sloped segment of the seafloor, he thought, then the shift can push large volumes of water sideways and add momentum to the budding tsunami.

Using two wave-making machines at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Song and colleagues revisited the decades-old experiment. Oarlike paddles pushed water upward and outward in some tests and just upward in others. Adding horizontal motion caused higher waves than vertical motion alone, the researchers found.

By combining the experimental results with a new tsunami computer simulation that incorporates lateral movement, the researchers could account for the unusual size of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. That tsunami, one of the worst natural disasters on record, was bigger than uplift alone can explain.
Using GPS sensors to measure the horizontal movement of the seafloor during an earthquake will enable more accurate tsunami forecasts before the wave is spotted by ocean buoys, Song proposes.

The new work makes a convincing case that horizontal motion contributes to tsunami generation, says Eddie Bernard, a tsunami scientist emeritus at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Tsunami Research in Seattle. But just how much that movement contributes to a tsunami’s overall height is unclear. It could be much less than Song and colleagues predict, he says.

Other seafloor events that can follow a large earthquake — such as huge numbers of water-displacing landslides — could also boost a tsunami’s size. Until all of the factors are known, Bernard says, tsunami forecasters will probably be best off doing what they do now: waiting for a tsunami to form after an earthquake before predicting the wave’s size and trajectory.

Premature babies, who often develop jaundice because of an excess of bile pigment called bilirubin, can be saved from this dangerous condition by the use of fluorescent light.… The light alters the chemistry of bilirubin so it can be excreted with the bile. Exchange transfusion is the usual treatment when jaundice occurs but this drastic procedure carries a … risk of death. —Science News, June 17, 1967

Update
Preemies aren’t the only babies at risk for jaundice. About 60 percent of full-term infants also develop the condition. Severe cases can cause brain damage if untreated. But today, some researchers warn that light therapy, now widely used, may not work for babies whose bilirubin levels are very high. And studies have begun to suggest a link between the therapy and certain childhood cancers (SN Online: 1/30/15). Though the risk of developing cancer is small, doctors should be cautious about prescribing the treatment, researchers wrote in 2016 in Pediatrics.

Brains are like sponges, slurping up new information. But sponges may also be a little bit like brains.

Sponges, which are humans’ very distant evolutionary relatives, don’t have nervous systems. But a detailed analysis of sponge cells turns up what might just be an echo of our own brains: cells called neuroids that crawl around the animal’s digestive chambers and send out messages, researchers report in the Nov. 5 Science.

The finding not only gives clues about the early evolution of more complicated nervous systems, but also raises many questions, says evolutionary biologist Thibaut Brunet of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, who wasn’t involved in the study. “This is just the beginning,” he says. “There’s a lot more to explore.”

The cells were lurking in Spongilla lacustris, a freshwater sponge that grows in lakes in the Northern Hemisphere. “We jokingly call it the Godzilla of sponges” because of the rhyme with Spongilla, say Jacob Musser, an evolutionary biologist in Detlev Arendt’s group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany.

Simple as they are, these sponges have a surprising amount of complexity, says Musser, who helped pry the sponges off a metal ferry dock using paint scrapers. “They’re such fascinating creatures.”
With sponges procured, Arendt, Musser and colleagues looked for genes active in individual sponge cells, ultimately arriving at a list of 18 distinct kinds of cells, some known and some unknown. Some of these cells used genes that are essential to more evolutionarily sophisticated nerve cells in other organisms for sending or receiving messages in the form of small blobs of cellular material called vesicles.

One such cell, called a neuroid, caught the scientists’ attention. After seeing that this cell was using those genes involved in nerve cell signaling, the researchers took a closer look. A view through a confocal microscope turned up an unexpected locale for the cells, Musser says. “We realized, ‘My God, they’re in the digestive chambers.’”

Large, circular digestive structures called choanocyte chambers help move water and nutrients through sponges’ canals, in part by the beating of hairlike cilia appendages (SN: 3/9/15). Neuroids were hovering around some of these cilia, the researchers found, and some of the cilia near neuroids were bent at angles that suggested that they were no longer moving.
The team suspects that these neuroids were sending signals to the cells charged with keeping the sponge fed, perhaps using vesicles to stop the movement of usually undulating cilia. If so, that would be a sophisticated level of control for an animal without a nervous system.

The finding suggests that sponges are using bits and bobs of communications systems that ultimately came together to work as brains of other animals. Understanding the details might provide clues to how nervous systems evolved. “What did animals have, before they had a nervous system?” Musser asks. “There aren’t many organisms that can tell us that. Sponges are one of them.”

Olympic gold-medal winning gymnast Suni Lee said she was the victim of a racist attack in October.

Lee told PopSugar that when she was out with friends in Los Angeles one night, a group speeding by in a car yelled racial slurs and that one passenger in the car sprayed her in the arm with pepper spray as the car drove off.
"I was so mad, but there was nothing I could do or control because they skirted off," she told PopSugar. "I didn't do anything to them, and having the reputation, it's so hard because I didn't want to do anything that could get me into trouble. I just let it happen."

Lee, a Hmong American, was with friends, who were all also of Asian descent. She said the group used the term "ching chong" and told the group to "go back to where they came from."

Back in July, Lee became the first Hmong American to represent the United States in the Olympics. She told PopSugar that she has a hard time understanding the hate crimes against Asian Americans, and that while it is difficult to speak about racial injustice, she knows the importance her voice carries.

Stop AAPI Hate reported in August that there have been 9,081 hate incidents since March 19, 2020, and that the number spiked from 6,603 to 9,081 during the period between April and June 2021.

The report stated that there were 4,548 hate incidents in 2020 and 4,533 in 2021. It found that 63.7 percent of the cases were verbal harassment, 16.5 percent were shunning, 13.7 percent were physical assault, 11 percent were civil rights violations and 8.3 percent were online harassment.

And then there were three.

Just three races in the 2021 Formula 1 world championship remain, and it looks like Red Bull's Max Verstappen is in the driver's seat to secure his first world driver's championship.
But hot on his tail is still Lewis Hamilton, who took home the victory in the Brazilian Grand Prix to once again tighten the gap at the top between he and Verstappen entering the final three sprints of the season.
To say "hot on his tail" would maybe be a bit of an undersell. Hamilton put together a fantastic trio of drives during the weekend, from qualifying to sprint qualifying to the race, starting in 10th and ending up first, even after taking a five-spot grid penalty for a violation.

It doesn't get much hotter than Qatar — or the 2021 F1 championship.

Here's what you need to know about this weekend's F1 race:

What channel is the F1 race on today?
Race: Qatar Grand Prix
Date: Sunday, Nov. 21
TV channel: ESPN 2
Live stream: fuboTV
The ESPN family of networks will broadcast all 2021 F1 races in the United States using Sky Sports' feed, with select races heading to ABC later in the season.

ESPN Deportes serves as the exclusive Spanish-language home for all 2021 F1 races in the U.S.

What time does the F1 race start today?
Date: Sunday, Nov. 21
Start time: 9 a.m. ET
The 9 a.m. ET start time for Sunday's race means the 2021 Qatar Grand Prix will start at 5 p.m. local time. Lights out will likely take place just after 9 a.m. ET. ESPN's prerace show usually airs in the hour before the start of the race.

Below is the complete TV schedule for the weekend's F1 events at the Qatar Grand Prix. All times are Eastern.

Date Event Time TV channel
Friday, Nov. 19 Practice 1 5:30 a.m. ESPN2
Friday, Nov. 19 Practice 2 9 a.m. ESPN2
Saturday, Nov. 20 Practice 3 6 a.m. ESPN2
Saturday, Nov. 20 Qualifying 9 a.m. ESPN2
Sunday, Nov. 21 Race 9 a.m. ESPN2
Formula 1 live stream for Qatar Grand Prix
For those who don't have a cable or satellite subscription, there are five major OTT TV streaming options that carry ESPN — fuboTV, Sling, Hulu, YouTubeTV and AT&T Now. Of the five, Hulu, fuboTV and YouTubeTV offer free-trial options.

Below are links to each.
For those who do have a cable or satellite subscription but are not in front of a TV, Formula 1 races in 2021 can be streamed live via phones, tablets and other devices on the ESPN app with authentication.

Formula 1 schedule 2021
In all, there are 23 scheduled races in the 2021 F1 season, with the Portuguese Grand Prix sliding onto the docket the first week in March. The originally scheduled Vietnam Grand Prix was removed after the arrest of Nguyen Duc Chung, while the Chinese Grand Prix is up in the air. It was originally scheduled for April 11 but will likely not take place this season.

The Singapore Grand Prix was also removed from the schedule, with the Turkish Grand Prix returning to the schedule in its stead.

All races will be broadcast in the U.S. on the ESPN family of networks, with the United States Grand Prix and Mexico City Grand Prix both airing on ABC.

Please note: The on-the-hour start times do not include the broadcast start time, which is typically five minutes before the start of the race. Times do not include ESPN's customary prerace shows.

MORE: Live stream F1 races all season on fuboTV (7-day free trial)

Here's the latest schedule:

Date Race Course Start time (ET) TV channel Winner
March 28 Bahrain Grand Prix Bahrain International Circuit 11 a.m. ESPN2 Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
April 18 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari 9 a.m. ESPN Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
May 2 Portuguese Grand Prix Algarve International Circuit 10 a.m. ESPN Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
May 9 Spanish Grand Prix Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya 9 a.m. ESPN Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
May 23 Monaco Grand Prix Circuit de Monaco 9 a.m. ESPN2 Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
June 6 Azerbaijan Grand Prix Baku City Circuit 8 a.m. ESPN Sergio Perez (Red Bull)
June 20 French Grand Prix Circuit Paul Ricard 9 a.m. ESPN Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
June 27 Styrian Grand Prix Red Bull Ring 9 a.m. ESPN Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
July 4 Austrian Grand Prix Red Bull Ring 9 a.m. ESPN Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
July 18 British Grand Prix Silverstone Circuit 10 a.m. ESPN Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
Aug. 1 Hungarian Grand Prix Hungaroring 9 a.m. ESPN Esteban Ocon (Alpine)
Aug. 29 Belgian Grand Prix Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps 9 a.m. ESPN2 Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
Sept. 5 Dutch Grand Prix Circuit Zandvoort 9 a.m. ESPN2 Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
Sept. 12 Italian Grand Prix Autodromo Nazionale di Monza 9 a.m. ESPN2 Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren)
Sept. 26 Russian Grand Prix Sochi Autodrom 8 a.m. ESPN2 Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
Oct. 10 Turkish Grand Prix Intercity Istanbul Park 8 a.m. ESPN2 Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes)
Oct. 24 United States Grand Prix Circuit of the Americas 3 p.m. ABC Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
Nov. 7 Mexico City Grand Prix Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez 2 p.m. ABC Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
Nov. 14 São Paulo Grand Prix Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace Noon ESPN2 Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
Nov. 21 Qatar Grand Prix Losail International Circuit 9 a.m. ESPNews TBD
Dec. 5 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix Jeddah Street Circuit 11 p.m. ESPN2 TBD
Dec. 12 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Yas Marina Circuit 8 a.m. ESPN2 TBD

The 2021 FBS coaching carousel is moving fast, and we're just starting November.

Virginia Tech coach Justin Fuente was fired on Tuesday after six seasons. Fuente is the 12th coaching change in the 2021 season. That list includes seven Power 5 openings. Washington's Jimmy Lake was fired on Sunday.
There were 18 coaching changes last season, a number that likely will be surpassed given how many we've seen so far.

Sporting News looks at all the changes in 2021:

2021 FBS coaching changes
Randy Edsall, UConn
Resigned (Sept. 6): Edsall resigned after the Huskies' 0-2 start. Edsall had two separate stints at UConn. The first, from 1999 to 2010, saw the program make the rise to the FBS ranks and culminated with a trip to the Fiesta Bowl in 2010. Edsall returned in 2017, and that produced a 6-32 record. UConn did not play in 2020 because of COVID-19 concerns. Lou Spanos is the Huskies' interim coach.

Clay Helton, USC
Fired (Sept. 14): Helton, who had been on the hot seat the past few seasons, was fired after the Trojans' 42-28 loss to Stanford in Week 2. Helton replaced Steve Sarkisian in 2015 and compiled a 46-24 record. That mark included the program's last Pac-12 championship in 2017. USC, however, slipped to a 19-14 record from 2018-21. Donte Williams replaced Helton as interim coach.
Chad Lunsford, Georgia Southern
Fired (Sept. 26): Lunsford was fired after a 1-3 start this season. It was a peculiar decision considering the Eagles reached bowl games the previous three seasons. Lunsford compiled a 28-21 record and had previously been an assistant coach with the program from 2013-17. Kevin Whitley was appointed interim coach.

2021 Coaching changes by school
SCHOOL FIRED/RESIGNED REPLACEMENT
UConn Randy Edsall Jim Mora
USC Clay Helton
Georgia Southern Chad Lunsford Clay Helton
LSU Ed Orgeron
Washington State Nick Rolovich
Texas Tech Matt Wells Joey McGuire
TCU Gary Patterson
Akron Tom Arth
UMass Walt Bell
Washington Jimmy Lake
FIU Butch Davis
Virginia Tech Justin Fuente
Ed Orgeron, LSU
Resigned (Oct. 19): Orgeron and LSU reached a separation agreement that will take effect after the conclusion of the 2021 season. This came one day after the Tigers beat Florida 49-42. Orgeron replaced Les Miles in 2016 and became the third consecutive LSU coach to win a national championship (2019). The Tigers finished 15-0 with Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow that year, but the program has been a disaster on and off the field since. The problems include a Title IX lawsuit and self-imposed penalties.

Nick Rolovich, Washington State
Fired (Oct. 20): Rolovich was fired in his second season with the Cougars for failing to comply with the state's COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Rolovich cited religious beliefs for his reason to not get the vaccine, and he plans to sue the university over his firing . Rolovich, who previously coached at Hawaii, had a 5-6 record at Washington State. Jake Dickert replaced Rolovich on an interim basis.
Matt Wells, Texas Tech
Fired (Oct. 25): Wells was fired after a 25-24 loss to Kansas State on Oct. 23, which capped an unremarkable three-year stint with the Red Raiders. Wells replaced Kliff Kingsbury, who took a head coaching job in the NFL with the Cardinals. Wells compiled a 13-17 record but appeared to have Texas Tech headed in the right direction this year with a 5-2 start. Sonny Cumbie, a former Red Raiders quarterback, is the interim coach.

Gary Patterson, TCU
Resigned (Oct. 31): Patterson and TCU agreed to part ways after a 3-5 record through the first two months of the season. It's still a somewhat shocking move considering he was the second-longest tenured coach in the FBS behind Iowa's Kirk Ferentz. Patterson took over the Horned Frogs in 2000, and he led the program to six conference championships and 11 seasons with 10 wins or more. The highlight was 2010, when TCU finished 13-0 and won the Rose Bowl. The Horned Frogs moved up to the Big 12 and enjoyed success in the Power 5.

Tom Arth, Akron
Fired (Nov. 4): Arth was fired two days after a 31-25 loss to Ball State dropped the Zips to 2-7 in 2021. Arth, a nearby John Carroll alum, simply could not get Akron going in three seasons. The Zips had a 3-24 record in that stretch, including a 3-17 record in Mid-American Conference play.

Walt Bell, UMass
Fired (Nov. 8): Bell was fired after a 35-22 loss to Rhode Island on Nov. 6. Bell, who took the UMass job after a stint as an offensive coordinator at Florida State, had a 2-23 record since taking over in 2019.

Jimmy Lake, Washington
Fired (Nov. 14): Lake was already under a university suspension for hitting Huskies linebacker Ruperake Fuavai in the helmet druing a game. He did not coach the Huskies' loss to Arizona State on Nov. 13. Earlier that day, The Seattle Times published an article that contained allegations Lake shoved former wide receiver Quinten Pounds into a locker at halftime of a 2019 game at Arizona. Lake denied the allegations. Washington was 7-6 under Lake. Assistant coach Bob Gregory was named interim head coach.

Butch Davis, FIU
Fired (Nov. 15): Davis will not return to FIU when his contract expires at the end of this season. The decision comes a week after longtime FIU athletic director Pete Garcia resigned. Davis said the school administration is "sabotaging the program." Davis, who previously coached at Miami and North Carolina, had success in his first two seasons at FIU. The program slipped the last two years, however, and is 1-9 in 2021.

Justin Fuente, Virginia Tech
Fired (Nov. 16): Fuente is out after six seasons with the Hokies. Fuente, who was hired in 2016 after a three-year stint in Memphis, enjoyed a 10-4 season and an appearance in the ACC championship game in his first season. The Hokies are 24-23 the last four years, however, and they have been a middle-of-the-road program in the ACC Coastal Division. Fuente finshed with a record of 43-31.