Welcome to the Saturday Science Edition of Overnight News Digest
Overnight News Digest is a regular daily feature which provides noteworthy news items and commentary from around the world. The editorial staff includes side pocket, maggiejean, wader, Doctor RJ, rfall, and JML9999.
Neon Vincent is our editor-in-chief.
Special thanks go to Magnifico for starting this venerable series.
Astronomy
Magnetar Near Supermassive Black Hole Delivers Surprises
[...] In 2013, astronomers announced they had discovered a magnetar exceptionally close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way using a suite of space-borne telescopes, including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Magnetars are dense collapsed stars — neutron stars — that possess enormously powerful magnetic fields. At a distance that could be as small as 0.3 light-year from the 4-million-solar-mass black hole in the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, the magnetar is by far the closest neutron star to a supermassive black hole ever discovered and is likely in its gravitational grip. [...] The team first considered whether "starquakes" are able to explain this unusual behavior. When neutron stars, including magnetars, form, they can develop a tough crust on the outside of the condensed star. Occasionally, this outer crust will crack, similar to how Earth's surface can fracture during an earthquake. Although starquakes can explain the change in brightness and cooling seen in many magnetars, the authors found that this mechanism by itself was unable to explain the slow drop in X-ray brightness and the hot crustal temperature. Fading in X-ray brightness and surface cooling occur too quickly in the starquake model. The researchers suggest that bombardment of the surface of the magnetar by charged particles trapped in twisted bundles of magnetic fields above the surface may provide the additional heating of the magnetar's surface and account for the slow decline in X-rays. These twisted bundles of magnetic fields can be generated when the neutron star forms. astronomy.com
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Strange Signal From Space May Solve One Of Science's Greatest Mysteries
A clue to one of the biggest questions in cosmology — why regular matter, rather than antimatter, survived to fill the universe — may have been found in data from a NASA space telescope. A new study suggests that gamma-rays (high-energy light) detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope show signs of the existence of a magnetic field that originated mere nanoseconds after the Big Bang. In addition, the researchers on the new study speculate that the magnetic field carries evidence of the fact that there is far more matter than antimatter in our universe. The detection of the signal in the Fermi data is currently too weak to be claimed as a "discovery," and no other solid evidence of an early-universe magnetic field exists. But if the signal bears out and the researchers' speculations withstand scrutiny, the work could help scientists understand why the observable universe is made primarily of matter and not antimatter. [...] The team claims to have identified a sort of "twisting" of the gamma rays that the Fermi telescope detects, and the researchers say the detection of this twisted gamma-ray signal is verified in their paper. Vachaspati and his colleagues' interpretation of what that signal means boils down to this: The twisted gamma-rays are evidence of a magnetic field that has been present in the universe since less than a second after the Big Bang. This magnetic field has a left-hand orientation, and that is evidence of the overwhelming production of matter in the early universe, as antimatter would have produced a right-hand orientation, they said. space.com
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Andromeda And Milky Way Might Collide Sooner Than We Think
The merger of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxy won’t happen for another 4 billion years, but the recent discovery of a massive halo of hot gas around Andromeda may mean our galaxies are already touching. University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Nicholas Lehner led a team of scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope to identify an enormous halo of hot, ionized gas at least 2 million light years in diameter surrounding the galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy is the largest member of a ragtag collection of some 54 galaxies, including the Milky Way, called the Local Group. With a trillion stars — twice as many as the Milky Way — it shines 25% brighter and can easily be seen with the naked eye from suburban and rural skies. Think about this for a moment. If the halo extends at least a million light years in our direction, our two galaxies are MUCH closer to touching that previously thought. Granted, we’re only talking halo interactions at first, but the two may be mingling molecules even now if our galaxy is similarly cocooned. universetoday.com
Biology
Amber-Encased Plant Could Be Oldest Known Grass: Specimen May Also Preserve A Cretaceous-Aged Hallucinogen
Delicate grasses don’t preserve well in the fossil record, and evidence for grasses coexisting with dinosaurs is scant. But according to a new study, a chunk of 100-million-year-old amber recently discovered in Myanmar appears to contain the world’s oldest grass fossil — far more ancient than any fossil grasses previously found. What’s more, the specimen seems to be topped with the world’s oldest known ergot — a fungus containing ingredients used to make lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD. But while the image of a 100-metric-ton sauropod grazing on hallucinogen-laced grass is intriguing, not everybody is convinced that the specimen is the real deal. Until recently, the earliest, reliably identified grass fossils dated to about 55 million years ago, after the dinosaur mass extinction. However, studies of dinosaur coprolites — that is, fossilized feces — hint that at least some dinosaurs may have grazed on grass in the Late Cretaceous before they disappeared. If confirmed, the single strand of grass found in the amber block from Myanmar would push the evolutionary timeline of grasses back by almost 50 million years. [...] Poinar says he first thought the Myanmar specimen was a flower, but upon closer inspection, he identified it as a spikelet — the flowering stage of grass. Sitting atop the spikelet was a dark cluster of fungus that Poinar’s colleague, plant pathologist and mycologist Stephen Alderman of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Corvallis, identified as fossilized ergot. earthmagazine.org
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Genome-Wide DNA Study Shows Lasting Impact Of Malnutrition In Early Pregnancy
Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Leiden University in the Netherlands found that children whose mothers were malnourished at famine levels during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy had changes in DNA methylation known to suppress genes involved in growth, development, and metabolism documented at age 59. This is the first study to look at prenatal nutrition and genome-wide DNA patterns in adults exposed to severe under-nutrition at different periods of gestation. Findings are published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. The study evaluated how famine exposure -- defined as 900 calories daily or less -- during the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-1945 affected genome-wide DNA methylation levels. The researchers also studied the impact of short-term exposure, pre-conception and post-conception. The study used blood samples of 422 individuals exposed to the famine at any time during gestation and 463 controls without prenatal famine exposure. The authors examined individuals born between February 1945 and March 1946 whose mothers were exposed to the famine during or immediately preceding pregnancy, individuals conceived between March and May 1945 at the time of extreme famine, and controls born in the same institutions whose mothers did not experience famine while pregnant as well as sibling controls who were also not exposed to famine in pregnancy. The findings show associations between famine exposure during weeks 1-10 of gestation and DNA changes, but not later in pregnancy. DNA methylation changes were also seen among individuals conceived at the height of the famine between March and May 1945 who were not exposed to all 10 weeks of early gestation. "The first ten weeks of gestation is a uniquely sensitive period when the blood methylome -- or whole-genome DNA methylation -- is especially sensitive to the prenatal environment," said L.H. Lumey, MD, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, and last author. "This is the period when a woman may not even be aware that she is pregnant." biologynews.net
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Bacterial Communities Can Act As Precise Biosensors Of Environmental Damage
A multidisciplinary group of US-based researchers has shown that the mixture of species found within natural bacterial communities in the environment can accurately predict the presence of contaminants such as uranium, nitrate, and oil. The findings, published this week in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, show that the rapid sequencing of microbiomes in place at environmental sites can be used to monitor damage caused by human activity. "This approach might be a general way for us to see anthropogenic effects on the environment," says Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at University of Tennessee in Knoxville and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "It's a way of finding out who's on first? Who is there in the bacterial community that can act as a biosensor and also as potential bioremediators?" [...] To find out if bacterial community structure was predictive of contamination, the team employed a method called supervised machine learning, using the Random forest algorithm that relies on an ensemble of thousands of decision trees. For their training set, the team sampled 93 different monitoring wells near Oak Ridge, some of which are known to be contaminated with uranium and nitrate from the early development of nuclear weapons at the site. Teams led by postdoctoral researcher Andrea Rocha took pains to collect the groundwater samples in the same way from each well over a period of three months. From each sample, the microbial 16S rRNA gene was extracted and sequenced, yielding a total of 26,943 unique species of bacteria. After weeding out the species in very low abundance or narrowly distributed across the well sites, the team was left with 2,972 species to use as 'features' in the machine-learning model. Then they asked if those features could be used to predict contamination. Using the DNA data, the model could accurately predict uranium contamination of the groundwater 88% of the time and nitrate contamination 73% of the time. Next, the team wanted to know if their model could work for an altogether different environmental site and contaminant--oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Using about 60 samples that Hazen's team had previously collected both before and during the 2010 oil spill, the model accurately predicted oil contamination 98% of the time. biologynews.net
Chemistry
NanoBio Interfaces
The Nanobio Interfaces Group develops and utilizes hybrid nanomaterials that are not found in nature but that are inspired by nature’s principles. Natural systems adopt a large degree of inhomogeneity and disorder to evolve and achieve resilience by harnessing environmental fluctuations. Our goal is to create artificial materials that adapt and evolve as they are exposed to the environment. With advances in nanoscale materials synthesis, we can introduce structural, compositional and interfacial inhomogeneity that evolve and develop desired functionality that cannot be achieved in perfect isotropic materials. By controlling the order and interactions in engineered nanomaterials we can create better solutions for catalysis, solar energy conversion, energy storage, and even medical therapies. Research activities include: •Hybrid systems — to build new forms of matter with tailored functionalities. •Visualization of nanoparticle interactions — to understand, predict, and design physical and chemical interactions. •Evolution of nanostructures under external stimuli — in situ and in operando studies to understand dynamic mechanisms. argonnenationallab.gov
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Graphene-Wrapped Diamond Ball Bearings Cut Friction To Virtually Nothing
A method that reduces friction between two surfaces to almost zero on macroscopic scales has been demonstrated by US researchers. The phenomenon, which was discovered accidentally, works by combining nanodiamonds with sheets of graphene, which curl around the nanodiamonds to form ‘nanoscrolls’ that lubricate the two surfaces. As friction wastes so much energy in all sorts of mechanical devices this discovery has huge potential to save both energy and money. On the macroscale, friction is the result of microscopic imperfections in surfaces, but atomic-scale friction concerns the attractive forces between individual atoms. This opens up the phenomenon of structural lubricity, where the difference in atomic spacing between two surfaces makes it impossible for multiple atoms in one surface to get close to atoms in the other, leading to extraordinarily low friction. However, scaling this up has proven difficult, as macroscopic surfaces are not perfect single crystals with constant lattice separations, but instead are dotted with deformations and grain boundaries that can stick. rsc.org
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Used Cigarette Butts Offer Energy Storage Solution
Reporting their findings in the IOP Publishing journal Nanotechnology, the research team successfully converted used cigarette butts into a high performing material that could be integrated into computers, handheld devices, electric vehicles and wind turbines to store energy. According to the study, this material outperforms commercially available carbon, graphene and carbon nanotubes. It may someday be used to coat the electrodes of supercapacitors: electrochemical components that can store extremely large amounts of electrical energy. "Our study has shown that used cigarette filters can be transformed into a high performing carbon-based material using a simple one step process, which simultaneously offers a green solution for meeting the energy demands of society," says co-author Professor Jongheop Yi of Seoul National University. "Numerous countries are developing strict regulations to avoid the trillions of toxic and non-biodegradable used cigarette filters that are disposed of into the environment each year. Our method is just one way of achieving this," adds Professor Yi. Carbon is the most common material found in supercapacitors due to its low cost, high surface area, high electrical conductivity and long term stability. Scientists around the world are working to improve the characteristics of supercapacitors -- such as their energy density, power density and cycle stability -- while trying to reduce production costs. sciencedaily.com
Earth Science
Bird Populations Responding To Climate Change
With puzzling variability, vast numbers of birds from Canada’s boreal forests migrate hundreds or thousands of miles south from their usual winter range. These so-called irruptions were first noticed by birdwatchers decades ago, but the driving factors have never been fully explained. Now scientists have pinpointed the climate pattern that likely sets the stage for irruptions – a discovery that could make it possible to predict the events more than a year in advance. The researchers found that persistent shifts in rainfall and temperature drive boom-and-bust cycles in forest seed production, which in turn drive the mass migrations of pine siskins, the most widespread and visible of the irruptive migrants. “It’s a chain reaction from climate to seeds to birds,” says atmospheric scientist Court Strong, an assistant professor at the University of Utah and lead author of the study. [...] Previous studies have found evidence that irruptions are triggered by food shortages caused by the large-scale collapse of seed production in northern pine, spruce and fir forests. “We’ve known for a long time that weather was probably important, but prior analyses by ecologists have been unable to identify exactly what role weather was playing in this phenomenon,” says ecologist Walt Koenig, a senior scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and co-author of the new study incorporating climate science. “It’s a good example of the value of interdisciplinary work,” Koenig says. To resolve the question, the scientists turned to a remarkable trove of data gathered by backyard birders as part of Project FeederWatch, a citizen science initiative run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. FeederWatcher volunteers systematically record bird sightings from November through early April and they gave the scientists more than two million observations of pine siskins since 1989. The crowd-sourced data makes it possible to track the movement of bird populations at a continent-wide scale. enn.com
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Do Sunscreens' Tiny Particles Harm Ocean Life In Big Ways?
Tiny particles used in sunscreens and other consumer products may harm marine creatures by disabling the defense mechanisms that protect their embryos, according to a new study. Small amounts of microscopic metals in some sunscreens, toothpastes, cosmetics, and boat paints can alter the cells of sea life in ways that make the animals more vulnerable to damage inflicted by other toxic pollutants, according to the study published in the journal Environmental Science and Toxicology. The findings add to growing evidence that nanomaterials—which are 100,000 times smaller than a human hair—sometimes affect plants and animals in unexpected ways. Previous research has shown that nano-zinc, nano-copper, and other metal nanoparticles widely used in consumer products can harm tiny marine worms, crustaceans, algae, fish, mussels, and other sea creatures. While the new study was conducted on sea urchin embryos, the researchers say the effects could be similar for other forms of sea life. "When they were exposed to these nanomaterials, even in extremely low concentrations that you wouldn't expect to have an effect, we saw all sorts of unusual patterns of development," says study co-author Gary Cherr, interim director of the University of California, Davis, Bodega Marine Laboratory. nationalgeographic.com
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