This weekend on “In Search of …” we’re not after the elusive Bigfoot, diving down to find the Loch Ness Monster, or scanning for the lost site of King Solomon’s Mines. Instead we’re in search of something that can kick off even more keen debate … the appropriate acronym.
As you might have noticed, several of the weekend slots have been playing host to regular installments on science (ahem … You Are Here), green news, and space. Coming up later today, Meteor Blades is kicking off what will be a regular column on the topic of the image above—addressing the challenges of transportation. Many of these subjects fall within the broad categories that are often labeled as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). But neither that, nor the newer, and infinitely clumsier STEAMM+D (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math, Medicine plus Design) really hits the spot.
Barring breaking news from Robert Mueller, or Trump declaring that God-Emperor really does have a nice ring to it, these Saturday slots are reserved to touch on science, on transportation, on health care, and on space, and on how climate change shapes our present and our future. And, if all goes well, they’ll also touch on some other items that are critically endangered in work week news—arts, literature, history, and philosophy. Obviously, not all these things will be addressed in the same way (though the idea of a weekly Abbreviated Philosophy Round-up is genuinely intriguing) but they’re all subjects of critical importance which, like music classes at a cash-strapped school district, all too easily get ignored in the rush of the week.
So help us think of a label, a term, or an acronym that says all that— here’s some science, some art, some health, some thought, and some genuine consideration to how we’re shaping the environment of our world. While you’re at it, don’t forget the ‘C’ in this no-it-doesn’t-really-have-to-be-an-acronym. Community. The whole purpose of this is to nurture, encourage, and hopefully reward the fantastic and diverse community that happens to gather in this space.
Now, come on in. It’s time for ‘S.’
Associated Press says good-bye to the man who sounded the alarm on ‘global warming’
A scientist who raised early alarms about climate change and popularized the term "global warming" has died. Wallace Smith Broecker was 87.
The longtime Columbia University professor and researcher died Monday at a New York City hospital, according to a spokesman for the university's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Kevin Krajick said Broecker had been ailing in recent months.
Broecker brought "global warming" into common use with a 1975 article that correctly predicted rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would lead to pronounced warming. He later became the first person to recognize what he called the Ocean Conveyor Belt, a global network of currents affecting everything from air temperature to rain patterns.
Michael Mann credits Brocker — who testified before Congress about global warming in 1984 — for single-handedly popularizing the idea of climate change, including pointing out that it could lead to abrupt transitions and “unwelcome surprises.”
The New York Times and a new answer to ‘How did the zebra get it’s stripes.’
JoAnna Klein
At least since the days when Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were theorizing about evolution, scientists have debated the function of this sassy animal print. It’s been called camouflage to confuse big predators, an identity signal to other zebras and a kind of wearable air conditioner. Now most scientists agree that the function of a zebra’s stripes is to ward off biting flies that can carry deadly diseases.
But what exactly is it about a zebra’s wardrobe that flies don’t like?
The answer to that question has been hard to find. Zebras in the wild are not easy to get close to. So Dr. Caro and a colleague, Martin How, went to Hill Livery, a horse farm moonlighting as an orphanage and a conservation hub for captive zebras near the University of Bristol in Britain. With their students, they observed and filmed horse flies trying to bite zebras. They also dressed some horses in zebra print to see if it helped them avoid fly bites.
Just so, Mr. Zebra. Just so. And speaking of Alfred Russell Wallace, check out Friday’s story about the “Giant Nightmare Bee” named in his honor.
National Geographic on a tortoise thought to be extinct … but wasn’t.
Jill Langolis
When Washington Tapia found a Fernandina giant tortoise on its namesake island in the Galápagos, it was like winning an Academy Award.
"For me it was the most important achievement of my life because I have been working on tortoise conservation for 30 years," says the director of the nonprofit Galápagos Conservancy's Giant Tortoise Restoration Initiative (GTRI) and leader of the expedition. "This was basically my Oscar."
Tapia and a team of four rangers from the Galápagos National Park—Jeffreys Malaga, Eduardo Vilema, Roberto Ballesteros, and Simon Villamar—were overwhelmed when they found the female Chelonoidis phantasticus on Fernandina, an active shield volcano and the youngest of the Galápagos Islands.
This is not the same species as the iconic “Lonesome George” who perished in captivity after researchers failed to find a mate. He was a Pinta Island tortoise. Each of the Galapagos Islands tends to have its own unique species, or multiple species, adapted to the particular demands of that island—a fact that people visiting the islands recognized well before Darwin stopped by. Note that while the stories of the “rediscovery” of the Giant Bee and the Fernandina Giant Tortoise are good news, neither says anything about the losses that have been occurring or the increasing rate of genuine extinctions.
National Geographic First mammal species officially declared extinct due to climate change.
Brian Howard
A small rodent that lived only on a single island off Australia is likely the world's first mammal to become a casualty of climate change, scientists reported in June 2016. The government of Australia has now officially recognized the Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola) as extinct.
The animal seems to have disappeared from its home in the eastern Torres Strait of the Great Barrier Reef, scientists say. The animal was last seen by a fisherman in 2009, but failed attempts to trap any in late 2014 prompted scientists to say it is likely extinct.
It’s not a coincidence that all three of the animals in this gain 2, lose 1 set of stories live on small islands. Those habitats are exceedingly fragile — and also home to many of the world’s rarest and most unique creatures.
PNAS On what it takes to have a “meaningful life” in old age
Andrew Steptoe and Daisy Fancourt
Ratings of the meaningfulness of life have been adopted in UK national surveys and are advocated internationally. This study demonstrates the value of a simple rating of the extent to which people feel that the things they do in life are worthwhile, by documenting positive associations with social relationships and broader social engagement, economic prosperity, mental and physical health, biomarkers, health-related behaviors, and time use. These associations were observed both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, suggesting that feeling life is worthwhile contributes to subsequent well-being and human flourishing at older ages. Given the widely recognized policy importance of promoting subjective well-being at older ages, a wider adoption of worthwhile ratings in large-scale surveys would provide valuable policy-relevant evidence internationally.
Note that the study here isn’t whether other people feel that older people are living a “meaningful life” but whether the older people themselves feel that their lives are worthwhile and important. But if you’re looking for The One Thing … the answer is more like The Several Things.
We show that independently of age, sex, educational attainment, and socioeconomic status, higher worthwhile ratings are associated with stronger personal relationships (marriage/partnership, contact with friends), broader social engagement (involvement in civic society, cultural activity, volunteering), less loneliness, greater prosperity (wealth, income), better mental and physical health (self-rated health, depressive symptoms, chronic disease), less chronic pain, less disability, greater upper body strength, faster walking, less obesity and central adiposity, more favorable biomarker profiles (C-reactive protein, plasma fibrinogen, white blood cell count, vitamin D, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol), healthier lifestyles (physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, sleep quality, not smoking), more time spent in social activities and exercising, and less time spent alone or watching television.
So … have friends, stay engaged, and don’t smoke. Those all seem doable. But a lot of this seems like health issues not necessarily within an individual’s control.
Nature On something very unnatural — synthetic DNA with new “letters” in the mix.
Matthew Warren
The DNA of life on Earth naturally stores its information in just four key chemicals — guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine, commonly referred to as G, C, A and T, respectively.
Now scientists have doubled this number of life’s building blocks, creating for the first time a synthetic, eight-letter genetic language that seems to store and transcribe information just like natural DNA.
I believe the discovery of DNA that included additional base-pairs was the plot of several episodes of The X-Files. Not that I’m saying it’s aliens. Because it’s not aliens. It’s scientists.
“It’s a real landmark,” says Floyd Romesberg, a chemical biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. The study implies that there is nothing particularly “magic” or special about those four chemicals that evolved on Earth, says Romesberg. “That’s a conceptual breakthrough,” he adds.
This could have implications about life both on and off Earth.
Science Determining the keys to the five existing mass extinctions could help stop the sixth.
Seth Burgess
Five mass extinction events have punctuated the evolution of life on Earth, each reshaping the biosphere by ending the success of an overwhelming proportion of species and creating ecological space for organisms that later inhabited the planet. Knowledge of the cause or causes of these events can inform understanding of how the biosphere responds to dramatic environmental change and can help to validate hypotheses about probable outcomes of anthropogenic changes. The nuanced interplay between the climate and ocean systems and the organisms that depend on them is preserved in the rock record for past mass extinctions.
What studies tend to find is that while there may be One Big Thing that is easy to detect—asteroid impact, massive volcanic activity, etc — that event usually falls into a world that was already teetering.
Nature Japanese scientists get the go-ahead to test stem cells on spinal cord injuries.
David Cyranoski
Scientists in Japan now have permission to inject 'reprogrammed' stem cells into people with spinal-cord injuries.
An upcoming trial will mark the first time that induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells have been used to treat spinal-cord injuries, after a committee at Japan’s health ministry approved the study on 18 February. IPS cells are created by inducing cells from body tissue to revert to an embryonic-like state, from which they can develop into other cell types.
Hideyuki Okano, a stem-cell scientist at Keio University in Tokyo, will coax donor iPS cells into becoming neural precursor cells, which can develop into neurons and glial cells. His team will then inject two million of the precursor cells per patient into the site of spinal injury around 2–4 weeks after the injury occurs. .
Some issues, like halting cancer, seem to be complex and actually attempting to address hundreds, or thousands of factors, some of them fundamental to the nature of living systems. But this issue—restoring function in severed nerves—seems much more fundamental and solvable.
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This week’s image comes from David Brunning at Compound Interest. Visit his site for a larger, easier to read version.