Welcome to Overnight News Digest- Saturday Science. Since 2007 the OND has been a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of science 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.
Topics in this edition include:
- NASA finally opens the asteroid sample container
- Who watched the Great Lakes form?
- Ancient city found in the Amazon
- Thousands of US cities could become virtual ghost towns by 2100
- Bringing back nature’s best firefighters- beavers
- Life-changing glove helps those with Parkinson’s
- JWST IDs radio bursts from galaxies 8 billion light years away
- Where to be for the April 8th solar eclipse
- Wearable airbags protect from fall injuries
- Ten North American Native facts you need to know
- Scientists outline a bold solution to climate change, biodiversity loss and social injustice
- New - Citizen-science project
Atlas Obscura
by Gemma Tarlach
How the Great Lakes Formed—And the Mystery of Who Watched It Happen
STAND ON THE ROCKY SHORELINE near the foot of the Pointe Aux Barques lighthouse, at the tip of the thumb of Lower Michigan, and look north across the blue expanse of Lake Huron. You will not see any caribou. But they were there, as were the humans that scientists believe hunted them nearly 10,000 years ago.
Now, thanks to innovative technology, determination, and luck, archaeologists are bringing this lost human history to the surface, and piecing together the mystery of a hunter-gatherer society unlike any other in the region.
BBC
by Lucy Sherriff
The US is bringing back nature's best firefighters: beavers
For decades, beavers were considered pests – trapped and shot on sight. Now the attitude towards nature's best engineers is changing, and farmers are working to bring them back.
Jay Wilde stared at the dry creek on the ranch his family had owned for decades for the umpteenth time that week. He was trying to remember what had changed on the land – when he was a child, Birch Creek would run year-round. Now he was lucky if they got six months' worth of water. Wilde had been away from his southern Idaho ranch for 30 years, returning to run cattle in 1995. And the cows needed water.
"Without water, it was becoming really hard for me to manage the ranch," Wilde explains. "I eventually put in a water system for the cows to drink from, but it seemed wrong to me that the stream should be drying up. There's a lot of life that depends on that water."
Scientific American
by Rachel Neuer
Thousands of U.S. Cities Could Become Virtual Ghost Towns by 2100
The Urban U.S. could look very different in the year 2100, in part because thousands of cities might be rendered virtual ghost towns. According to findings published in Nature Cities, the populations of some 15,000 cities around the country could dwindle to mere fractions of what they are now. The losses are projected to affect cities everywhere in the U.S. except Hawaii and Washington, D.C.
“The way we’re planning now is all based on growth, but close to half the cities in the U.S. are depopulating,” says senior author Sybil Derrible, an urban engineer at the University of Illinois Chicago. “The takeaway is that we need to shift away from growth-based planning, which is going to require an enormous cultural shift in the planning and engineering of cities.”
BBC
by Georgina Rannard
Huge ancient lost city found in the Amazon
A huge ancient city has been found in the Amazon, hidden for thousands of years by lush vegetation.
The discovery changes what we know about the history of people living in the Amazon.
The houses and plazas in the Upano area in eastern Ecuador were connected by an astounding network of roads and canals.
The area lies in the shadow of a volcano that created rich local soils but also may have led to the destruction of the society.
While we knew about cities in the highlands of South America, like Machu Picchu in Peru, it was believed that people only lived nomadically or in tiny settlements in the Amazon.
"This is older than any other site we know in the Amazon. We have a Eurocentric view of civilisation, but this shows we have to change our idea about what is culture and civilisation," says Prof Stephen Rostain, director of investigation at the National Centre for Scientific Research in France, who led the research.
Gizmodo
by Passant Rabie
NASA Finally Cracks Open the Asteroid Sample Container
After months of fidgeting with a canister that contained rocky samples from an ancient asteroid, NASA engineers have finally removed two stubborn fasteners that appeared to be preventing the space agency from collecting the full amount of Bennu’s debris.
The OSIRIS-REx curation team managed to remove the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head, where the bulk of the asteroid sample is stored, NASA
announced in a blog post on Thursday. The team was forced to develop new tools to help remove the two fasteners that held the sampler head shut since it landed on Earth in September 2023. Engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston freed the fasteners on January 10.
Science Alert
by Glenn Chapman
Amazing Glove Is Life Changing For Those With Parkinson's
Roberta Wilson-Garrett looked at the glove keeping her right hand steady and smiled.
At bay for the moment were tremors caused by Parkinson's disease affecting her muscle control.
She could do things others take for granted, like write crisply with a pen or hold a cup of coffee without spilling.
The reprieve shared by the Canadian woman at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas came thanks to a GyroGlove.
"It's a life changer for me," said Wilson-Garrett, describing how GyroGlove stopped tremors that make seemingly simple tasks like getting dressed a challenge.
New Scientist
by Jonathan O’Callaghan
Mysterious radio burst came from group of galaxies in distant universe
An unexplained flash of radio waves that hit Earth in 2022 came from a small group of galaxies some 8 billion light years away. The discovery expands our understanding of the way in which the mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs) can form.
To date, astronomers have discovered more than 1000 FRBs, strange blasts of radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation that streak across the sky in just milliseconds. Some of the events repeat and have been detected flashing multiple times. A leading explanation is that the FRBs are generated by powerful rotating stars known as magnetars – highly magnetised, spinning cores left behind after massive stars explode as supernovae.
Space.com
by Jamie Carter
Why you don't need to get to the centerline for April's total solar eclipse — and what will happen at the edge
North America's total solar eclipse is coming on April 8, 2024, and plans are being made.
Almost everyone in the continent will see a partial solar eclipse, with the moon taking a chunk out of the sun over a few hours, with only those who live or travel into the path of totality having a view of the sun's corona during darkness in the day.
It also matters where you are within that path. On average, it will be 115 miles wide (185 kilometers) as it crosses northern Mexico, parts of 15 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces, but those at the center and those at the edge will have a different experience.
My Modern Met
by Regina Sienra
Wearable Airbags Deploy in Milliseconds To Protect the Elderly From Falls
A fall can be dangerous at any age, but the peril of a tumble increases with age. Hoping to reduce the harm they can do, Suzhou Yidaibao Intelligent Technology Co., a Chinese startup, has developed a uniquely helpful gadget. Drawing from the same principles of car airbags, their inflatable vests and belts are designed to protect seniors when they fall.
[…]
“After looking at the data, we discovered that in our country about 400 million people over the age of 65 experience injuries from falling,” they write. “Of that number, 32,000 people die from their fall injuries every year. And since fall injuries often cause bone fractures, pulmonary embolisms, infections, and other problems, it severely impacts the quality of life for elderly people, affecting the lives of the whole family.”
The company then spent five years working to make their idea come to life. They finally designed a vest that can protect the head, shoulders, back, and hips. On top of getting the right kind of materials, they worked on an algorithm that predicts whether a sudden movement will result in a fall, promising to deploy the airbags within milliseconds for active protection of the wearer before the ground is reached.
World History
by Joshua J Mark
Ten North American Native Facts You Need To Know
The history and culture of the Native Peoples of North America are often overlooked as they have been largely eclipsed by the history of the European settlers who colonized the region beginning in the 17th century. The original inhabitants of the land have a long past, however, which deserves wider recognition and respect.
According to modern-day non-Native scholars, those now known as Indigenous Americans migrated into North America between 40,000-14,000 years ago, but in the belief systems of the people themselves, they came from the land – known to many Native nations as Turtle Island – and have always been a part of it. Native Americannations developed highly sophisticated and diverse cultures, which were maintained for thousands of years prior to the European colonization of the Americas, which significantly decreased the indigenous population through diseases and warfare and deprived survivors of their ancestral lands through legislation, forced relocation, and treaties which were then not honored by the United States government.
PHYS.org
by Oregon State University
Scientists outline a bold solution to climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice
An international team of scientists led by Oregon State University researchers has used a novel 500-year dataset to frame a "restorative" pathway through which humanity can avoid the worst ecological and social outcomes of climate change.
In addition to charting a possible new course for society, the researchers say their "paradigm shifting" plan can support climate modeling and discussion by providing a set of actions that strongly emphasize social and economic justice as well as environmental sustainability.
Oregon State's William Ripple, former OSU postdoctoral researcher Christopher Wolf and collaborators argue their scenario should be included in climate models along with the five "shared socioeconomic pathways," or SSPs, that are used by the U.N."s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"We understand that our proposed scenario may be a major challenge to implement given current trends in emissions, a lack of political will and widespread social denial, but its merits can't even be honestly debated if it's not included in the suite of options," said Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology in the OSU College of Forestry.
"We're arguing for radical incrementalism: achieving massive change through small, short-term steps. And we're offering a much-needed contrast to many other climate scenarios, which may be more aligned with the status quo, which isn't working."
Zooniverse
Here’s a new citizen-science project.
Unveiling the mysterious origin of gamma-ray bursts
In this project, we need your help on classifying light curves of Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), one of the most energetic explosions in the universe!
The shape of the pulses encodes the information of whether they originate from explosions of massive stars, or merging of neutron stars and black holes. We need your help to flag GRBs with specific pulse shapes that will help astronomers to solve the mystery of their physical origins. Your eyes can quickly classify pulse shapes and other patterns in the data that we haven’t yet been able to teach a computer to spot.
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the science news of the day. Please share your articles and stories in the comments.