Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame, jck and jeremybloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
NASA To Create Time Standard For the Moon
The White House has directed NASA and other federal agencies to get to work on a plan to implement precision timekeeping and dissemination on the moon and elsewhere in space. Reuters cited a memo from the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) that "instructed the space agency to work with other parts of the U.S. government to devise a plan by the end of 2026 for setting what it called a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC). The name of the proposed time standard is similar to the terrestrial time standard known as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
"OSTP chief Arati Prabhakar's memo said that for a person on the moon, an Earth-based clock would appear to lose on average 58.7 microseconds per Earth-day and come with other periodic variations that would further drift moon time from Earth time," Reuters reported. An unidentified OSTP official said the lunar time standard is needed for secure and synchronized communication between astronauts, satellites orbiting the moon, and Earth.
Mars May Not Have Had Liquid Water Long Enough For Life To Form
Led by planetary researcher Lonneke Roelofs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, a team of scientists has found that the sublimation of CO2 ice could have shaped Martian gullies, which might mean the most recent occurrence of liquid water on Mars may have been further back in time than previously thought. That could also mean the window during which life could have emerged and thrived on Mars was possibly smaller. "Sublimation of CO2 ice, under Martian atmospheric conditions, can fluidize sediment and creates morphologies similar to those observed on Mars," Roelofs and her colleagues said in a study recently published in Communications Earth & Environment. [...]
To recreate a part of the red planet's landscape in a lab, Roelofs built a flume in a special environmental chamber that simulated the atmospheric pressure of Mars. It was steep enough for material to move downward and cold enough for CO2 ice to remain stable. But the team also added warmer adjacent slopes to provide heat for sublimation, which would drive movement of debris. They experimented with both scenarios that might happen on Mars: heat coming from beneath the CO2 ice and warm material being poured on top of it. Both produced the kinds of flows that had been hypothesized. For further evidence that flows driven by sublimation would happen under certain conditions, two further experiments were conducted, one under Earth-like pressures and one without CO2 ice. No flows were produced by either. "For the first time, these experiments provide direct evidence that CO2 sublimation can fluidize, and sustain, granular flows under Martian atmospheric conditions," the researchers said in the study.
Because this experiment showed that gullies and systems like them can be shaped by sublimation and not just liquid water, it raises questions about how long Mars had a sufficient supply of liquid water on the surface for any organisms (if they existed at all) to survive. Its period of habitability might have been shorter than it was once thought to be. Does this mean nothing ever lived on Mars? Not necessarily, but Roelofs' findings could influence how we see planetary habitability in the future.
New 3D Cosmic Map Raises Questions Over Future of Universe, Scientists Say
The biggest ever 3D map of the universe, featuring more than 6m galaxies, has been revealed by scientists who said it raised questions about the nature of dark energy and the future of the universe. From a report: The map is based on data collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (Desi) in Arizona and contains three times as many galaxies as previous efforts, with many having their distances measured for the first time. Researchers said that by using this map, they have been able measure how fast the universe has been expanding at different times in the past with unprecedented accuracy.
The results confirm that the expansion of the universe is speeding up, they added. However, the findings have also raised the tantalising possibility that dark energy -- a mysterious, repulsive force that drives the process -- is not constant throughout time as has previously been suggested. Dr Seshadri Nadathur, a co-author of the work and senior research fellow at the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, said: "What we are seeing are some hints that it has actually been changing over time, which is quite exciting because it is not what the standard model of a cosmological constant dark energy would look like."
Prof Carlos Frenk, from Durham University and a co-author of the research, said that if dark energy was indeed constant in time, the future of the universe was simple: it would expand on and on, for ever. But if the hints found in the map stood up, that would be called into question. The research, which has been published in a series of preprints â" meaning it has yet to be peer-reviewed â" reveals how the team first created the 3D map, then measured patterns in the distribution of galaxies that relate to sound waves that occurred in the early universe, known as baryon acoustic oscillations.
NASA's Webb probes an extreme starburst galaxy
A team of astronomers has used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to survey the starburst galaxy Messier 82 (M82). Located 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, this galaxy is relatively compact in size but hosts a frenzy of star formation activity. For comparison, M82 is sprouting new stars 10 times faster than the Milky Way galaxy.
Led by Alberto Bolatto at the University of Maryland, College Park, the team directed Webb's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument toward the starburst galaxy's center, attaining a closer look at the physical conditions that foster the formation of new stars.
"M82 has garnered a variety of observations over the years because it can be considered as the prototypical starburst galaxy," said Bolatto, lead author of the study. "Both NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have observed this target. With Webb's size and resolution, we can look at this star-forming galaxy and see all of this beautiful, new detail."
Stellar collisions produce strange, zombie-like survivors
Despite their ancient ages, some stars orbiting the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole appear deceptively youthful. But unlike humans, who might appear rejuvenated from a fresh round of collagen injections, these stars look young for a much darker reason.
They ate their neighbors.
This is just one of the more peculiar findings from new Northwestern University research. Using a new model, astrophysicists traced the violent journeys of 1,000 simulated stars orbiting our galaxy's central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).
So densely packed with stars, the region commonly experiences brutal stellar collisions. By simulating the effects of these intense collisions, the new work finds that collision survivors can lose mass to become stripped down, low-mass stars or can merge with other stars to become massive and rejuvenated in appearance.
Early dinosaurs grew up fast, but they weren't the only ones
The earliest dinosaurs had rapid growth rates, but so did many of the other animals living alongside them, according to a study published April 3, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kristina Curry Rogers of Macalester College, Minnesota and colleagues.
Dinosaurs grew up fast, a feature that likely set them apart from many other animals in their Mesozoic (252 to 66 million years ago) ecosystems.
Some researchers have proposed that these elevated growth rates were key to the global success of dinosaurs, but little is known about the growth strategies of the earliest dinosaurs.
We've had bird evolution all wrong
An enormous meteor spelled doom for most dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But not all. In the aftermath of the extinction event, birds -- technically dinosaurs themselves -- flourished.
Scientists have spent centuries trying to organize and sort some 10,000 species of birds into one clear family tree to understand how the last surviving dinosaurs filled the skies. Cheap DNA sequencing should have made this simple, as it has for countless other species.
But birds were prepared to deceive us.
In a pair of new research papers released today, April 1, scientists reveal that another event 65 million years ago misled them about the true family history of birds. They discovered that a section of one chromosome spent millions of years frozen in time, and it refused to mix together with nearby DNA as it should have.
Evolution in action? New study finds possibility of nitrogen-fixing organelles
Nitrogen is a nutrient essential for all life on Earth. Although nitrogen gas (N2) is plentiful, it is largely unavailable to most organisms without a process known as nitrogen fixation, which converts dinitrogen to ammonium -- a major inorganic nitrogen source.
While there are bacteria that are able to reduce dinitrogen to ammonium, researchers at the University of Rhode Island, Institut de Ciències del Mar in Barcelona, University of California at Santa Cruz and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered nitrogen-fixing symbiotic organisms exhibiting behaviors similar to organelles.
In fact, researchers posit these symbiotic organisms -- UCYN-A, a species of cyanobacteria -- may be evolving organelle-like characteristics.
Finds at Schöningen show wood was crucial raw material 300,000 years ago
During archaeological excavations in the Schöningen open-cast coal mine in 1994, the discovery of the oldest, remarkably well-preserved hunting weapons known to humanity caused an international sensation. Spears and a double-pointed throwing stick were found lying between animal bones about ten meters below the surface in deposits at a former lakeshore. In the years that followed, extensive excavations have gradually yielded numerous wooden objects from a layer dating from the end of a warm interglacial period 300,000 years ago. The findings suggested a hunting ground on the lakeshore. An interdisciplinary research team from the Universities of Göttingen and Reading (UK), and the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage (NLD) has now examined all the wood objects for the first time. State-of-the-art imaging techniques such as 3D microscopy and micro-CT scanners have produced surprising results. The research was published in PNAS.
This is the first time that researchers have been able to demonstrate new ways of handling and working the wood, such as the "splitting technique." Small pieces of split wood were sharpened, for example to use them in processing hunted animals.
Plastic-free vegan leather that dyes itself grown from bacteria
Researchers at Imperial College London have genetically engineered bacteria to grow animal- and plastic-free leather that dyes itself.
In recent years, scientists and companies have started using microbes to grow sustainable textiles or to make dyes for industry -- but this is the first time bacteria have been engineered to produce a material and its own pigment simultaneously.
Synthetic chemical dyeing is one of the most environmentally toxic processes in fashion, and black dyes -- especially those used in colouring leather -- are particularly harmful. The researchers at Imperial set out to use biology to solve this.
Researchers map how the brain regulates emotions
Ever want to scream during a particularly bad day, but then manage not to? Thank the human brain and how it regulates emotions, which can be critical for navigating everyday life. As we perceive events unfolding around us, the ability to be flexible and reframe a situation impacts not only how we feel, but also our behavior and decision-making.
In fact, some of the problems associated with mental health relate to individuals' inability to be flexible, such as when persistent negative thoughts make it hard to perceive a situation differently.
To help address such issues, a new Dartmouth-led study is among the first of its kind to separate activity relating to emotion generation from emotion regulation in the human brain. The findings are published in Nature Neuroscience.
Discovery of how limiting damage from an asthma attack could stop disease
Scientists at King's College London have discovered a new cause for asthma that sparks hope for treatment that could prevent the life-threatening disease.
Most current asthma treatments stem from the idea that it is an inflammatory disease. Yet, the life-threatening feature of asthma is the attack or the constriction of airways, making breathing difficult. The new study, published today in Science, shows for the first time that many features of an asthma attack -- inflammation, mucus secretion, and damage to the airway barrier that prevents infections -- result from this mechanical constriction in a mouse model.
The findings suggest that blocking a process that normally causes epithelial cell death could prevent the damage, inflammation, and mucus that result from an asthma attack.
Did you know that physical activity can protect you from chronic pain?
Reserachers found that people who were more active in their free time had a lower chance of having various types of chronic pain 7-8 years later. For example, being just a little more active, such as going from light to moderate activity, was associated with a 5% lower risk of reporting some form of chronic pain later. For severe chronic pain in several places in the body, higher activity was associated with a 16% reduced risk. The researchers found that the ability to tolerate pain played a role in this apparent protective effect. That explains why being active could lower the risk of having severe chronic pain, whether or not it was widespread throughout the body.
Body mapping links our responses to music with their degree of uncertainty and surprise
Music holds an important place in human culture, and we've all felt the swell of emotion that music can inspire unlike almost anything else. But what is it exactly about music that can bring on such intense sensations in our minds and bodies? A new study reported in the journal iScience on April 4 has insight from studies that systematically examine the way perception of unique musical chords elicits specific bodily sensations and emotions.
"This study reveals the intricate interplay between musical uncertainty, prediction error, and temporal dynamics in eliciting distinct bodily sensations and emotions," says Tatsuya Daikoku of The University of Tokyo.
Researchers uncover a potential method for interrupting the misfolding of tau protein that underlies neurodegenerative disease
A spectrum of neurodegenerative diseases, including frontotemporal dementia (FTD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and corticobasal degeneration (CBD) are due to the accumulation of abnormal, misfolded tau proteins in the brain. A team of researchers led by UC Santa Barbara scientists has found potential ways to interrupt this process by targeting "sticky" sites along the long form of mutated tau, preventing the misfolding and spreading of the neurofibrillary tangles.
"This is a true collaboration of biology and chemistry," said UCSB neuroscientist Kenneth S. Kosik, who with chemistry professors Songi Han, Joan-Emma Shea and chemical engineering professor Scott Shell, presents findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study presents molecular-level insights on the way pathological tau spreads, and according to the researchers, this understanding could lead toward "a therapeutic intervention potentially capable of disaggregating tau or preventing its aggregation" in the long form of tau accumulates.
Researchers discover 'neutronic molecules'
Neutrons are subatomic particles that have no electric charge, unlike protons and electrons. That means that while the electromagnetic force is responsible for most of the interactions between radiation and materials, neutrons are essentially immune to that force.
Instead, neutrons are held together inside an atom's nucleus solely by something called the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. As its name implies, the force is indeed very strong, but only at very close range -- it drops off so rapidly as to be negligible beyond 1/10,000 the size of an atom. But now, researchers at MIT have found that neutrons can actually be made to cling to particles called quantum dots, which are made up of tens of thousands of atomic nuclei, held there just by the strong force.
The new finding may lead to useful new tools for probing the basic properties of materials at the quantum level, including those arising from the strong force, as well as exploring new kinds of quantum information processing devices. The work is reported this week in the journal ACS Nano, in a paper by MIT graduate students Hao Tang and Guoqing Wang and MIT professors Ju Li and Paola Cappellaro of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering.
New sunflower family tree reveals multiple origins of flower symmetry
The sunflower family tree revealed that flower symmetry evolved multiple times independently, a process called convergent evolution, among the members of this large plant family, according to a new analysis. The research team, led by a Penn State biologist, resolved more of the finer branches of the family tree, providing insight into how the sunflower family -- which includes asters, daisies and food crops like lettuce and artichoke -- evolved.
A paper describing the analysis and findings, which researchers said may help identify useful traits to selectively breed plants with more desirable characteristics, appeared online in the journal Plant Communication.
"Convergent evolution describes the independent evolution of what appears to be the same trait in different species, like wings in birds and bats," said Hong Ma, Huck Chair in Plant Reproductive Development and Evolution, professor of biology in the Eberly College of Science at Penn State and the leader of the research team. "This can make it difficult to determine how closely related two species are by comparing their traits, so having a detailed family tree based on DNA sequence is crucial to understanding how and when these traits evolved."
Ocean floor a 'reservoir' of plastic pollution
New research from CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, and the University of Toronto in Canada, estimates up to 11 million tonnes of plastic pollution is sitting on the ocean floor.
Every minute, a garbage truck's worth of plastic enters the ocean.
With plastic use expected to double by 2040, understanding how and where it travels is crucial to protecting marine ecosystems and wildlife.
New step in tectonic squeeze that turns seafloor into mountains
Scientists use tiny minerals called zircons as geologic timekeepers. Often no bigger than a grain of sand, these crystals record chemical signatures of the geological environment where they formed. In a new study led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin, researchers used them to describe what could be an overlooked step in a fundamental tectonic process that raises seafloors into mountains.
In a study published in the journal Geology, the researchers describe zircons from the Andes mountains of Patagonia. Although the zircons formed when tectonic plates were colliding, they have a chemical signature associated with when the plates were moving apart.
The researchers think that the unexpected signature could be explained by the mechanics of underlying tectonic plates that hasn't yet been described in other models. This missing step involves a sort of geologic juicing in a magma chamber where zircons form before they reach the surface, with oceanic crust entering the chamber ahead of continental crust.
Gloom and doom warnings about climate change do not work
If you want to spread a message about climate change and global warming, you need to adapt the message according to your intended audience and what you want to achieve.
Researchers have now developed an app to help people who want to spread their message on climate issues to ensure they generate the most support possible -- be they researchers, politicians, various decision makers or legislators.
Huge survey involving 63 countries
59,000 people participated in surveys as part of the work on creating the app, and Norway was among the 63 countries involved. (You can read about what works best in Norway later in the article)