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.
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The universe had a secret life before the Big Bang, new study hints
The Big Bang may not have been the beginning of the universe, according to a theory of cosmology that suggests the universe can “bounce” between phases of contraction and expansion. If that theory is true, then it could have profound implications about the nature of the cosmos, including two of its most mysterious components: black holes and dark matter.
With this in mind, a recent study suggests that dark matter could be composed of black holes formed during a transition from the universe's last contraction to the current expansion phase, which occurred before the Big Bang. If this hypothesis holds, the gravitational waves generated during the black hole formation process might be detectable by future gravitational wave observatories, providing a way to confirm this dark matter generation scenario.
Observations of stellar movements in galaxies and the cosmic microwave background — an afterglow of the Big Bang — indicate that about 80% of all matter in the universe is dark matter, a substance that doesn't reflect, absorb or emit light. Despite its abundance, scientists have not yet identified what dark matter is made of.
How Do Gold Nuggets Form? Earthquakes May Be the Key
Scientists have finally solved a long-standing mystery about the geologic process behind these large pieces of gold found in quartz rock. From a report: Gold has always been a hot commodity. But these days, finding a nugget isn't too tricky: Much of the world's gold is mined from natural veins of quartz, a glassy mineral that streaks through large chunks of Earth's squashed-up crust. But the geologic process that put gold nuggets there in the first place was a mystery. Now, a new study published today in Nature Geoscience has come up with a convincing, and surprising, answer: electricity, and earthquakes -- lots of them.
Those nuggets owe their existence to the strange electrical properties of common quartz. When squished or jiggled, the mineral generates electricity. That drags gold particles out of fluid in Earth's crust. The particles crystallize out as grains of gold -- and, over time, with enough electrical stimulation, those grains bloom into nuggets. "If you shake quartz, it makes electricity. If you make electricity, gold comes out," says Christopher Voisey, a geologist at Monash University in Australia and the lead author of the new paper. Earthquakes are the most likely natural source of that shaking, and the team's lab experiments show that earthquakes can make gold nuggets.
The idea that gold nuggets appear because of electricity instead of a more conventional geologic process is, at first, a peculiar thought. But "it makes complete sense," says Thomas Gernon, a geoscientist at the University of Southampton in England and who was not involved with the new work. Quartz veins host a disproportionate number of gold nuggets and their environments experience plenty of earthquakes.
Engineers Gave a Mushroom a Robot Body and Let It Run Wild
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: Nobody knows what sleeping mushrooms dream of when their vast mycelial networks flicker and pulse with electrochemical responses akin to those of our own brain cells. But given a chance, what might this web of impulses do if granted a moment of freedom? An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Cornell University in the US and the University of Florence in Italy took steps to find out, putting a culture of the edible mushroom species Pleurotus eryngii (also known as the king oyster mushroom) in control of a pair of vehicles, which can twitch and roll across a flat surface. Through a series of experiments, the researchers showed it was possible to use the mushroom's electrophysiological activity as a means of translating environmental cues into directives, which could, in turn, be used to drive a mechanical device's movements. "By growing mycelium into the electronics of a robot, we were able to allow the biohybrid machine to sense and respond to the environment," says senior researcher Rob Shepherd, a materials scientist at Cornell.
By applying algorithms based on the extracellular electrophysiology of P. eryngii mycelia and feeding the output into a microcontroller unit, the researchers used spikes of activity triggered by a stimulus -- in this case, UV light -- to toggle mechanical responses in two different kinds of mobile device. In controlled experiments, the team used the signals from a fungal culture to govern the movements of a five-limbed soft robot and a four-wheeled untethered vehicle. They were able to influence and override the 'natural' impulses produced by the fungi, demonstrating an ability to harness the system's sensory abilities to meet an end goal. "This kind of project is not just about controlling a robot," says Cornell bioroboticist Anand Mishra. "It is also about creating a true connection with the living system. Because once you hear the signal, you also understand what's going on. Maybe that signal is coming from some kind of stresses. So you're seeing the physical response, because those signals we can't visualize, but the robot is making a visualization." The research has been published in the journal Science Robotics.
Electrocuted Birds Are Bursting Into Flames and Starting Wildfires
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Electrocuted, flaming bird carcasses are falling off of power lines and causing wildfires across the U.S. This surprisingly common phenomenon has been responsible for at least three Colorado wildfires so far this summer. These events are not isolated. A 2022 study found that electrocuted birds caused 44 wildfires in the contiguous United States between 2014 and 2018. That study was led by Taylor Barnes, a biologist who now works for electric utility company EDM International. In the paper, Barnes wrote that "avian-caused ignitions" happen when a bird sits on an overhead power line. For reasons that can vary from case to case, sometimes the bird receives a powerful electrical shock, setting its feathers on fire. The dead or dying bird then falls, and, on occasion, lands in some brush or other flammable material.
"Sometimes they burst into flames," Barnes told 9News, an NBC affiliate in Colorado. "Sometimes they just fall dead. Not every bird that is electrocuted will fall to the ground and start a fire." Odds are, you've seen birds perched on electrical wires countless times without witnessing spontaneous sparrow combustion. Barnes said birds just going for a sit pose no threat. Because the birds are not touching the ground, the electricity in the power line has no way to the ground and is not dangerous to them. It's only when the birds get into a part of the power infrastructure where a circuit can be completed that they end up crispy. [...]
It's not clear what happened to the birds involved in Colorado's other two recent fires, which occurred on July 31 and August 27. No people were injured or killed in the incidents. According to Barnes' 2022 study, the area of California coast known as the state's Mediterranean ecoregion has the highest density of wildfires set off by avian ignitions. In the paper, he advised authorities in the area and other fire-prone regions to look into modifying power poles to prevent these electrocutions. Given the devastating effects fires can have and how common they've become, it's surely worth the investment to keep our feathered friends in flight and not on fire.
Massive merger: Study reveals evidence for origin of supermassive black hole at galaxy's center
The origins of aptly named supermassive black holes -- which can weigh in at more than a million times the mass of the sun and reside in the center of most galaxies -- remain one of the great mysteries of the cosmos.
Now, researchers from the Nevada Center for Astrophysics at UNLV (NCfA) have discovered compelling evidence suggesting that the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is likely the result of a past cosmic merger.
'Ice bucket challenge' reveals that bacteria can anticipate the seasons
Bacteria use their internal 24-hour clocks to anticipate the arrival of new seasons, according to research carried out with the assistance of an ‘ice bucket challenge.’
This discovery may have profound implications for understanding the role that circadian rhythms – a molecular version of a clock – play in adapting species to climate change, from migrating animals to flowering plants.
The team behind the findings gave populations of blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) different artificial day lengths at a constant warm temperature. Samples on plates received either short days, equinox days (equal light and dark), or long days, for eight days.
Scientists make tissue of living animals see-through
In a pioneering new study, researchers made the skin on the skulls and abdomens of live mice transparent by applying to the areas a mixture of water and a common yellow food coloring called tartrazine.
Dr. Zihao Ou, assistant professor of physics at The University of Texas at Dallas, is lead author of the study, published in the Sept. 6 print issue of the journal Science.
Living skin is a scattering medium. Like fog, it scatters light, which is why it cannot be seen through.
100x improvement in sight seen after gene therapy trial
The vision of people with a rare inherited condition that causes them to lose much of their sight early in childhood was 100 times better after they received gene therapy to address the genetic mutation causing it. Some patients even experienced a 10,000-fold improvement in their vision after receiving the highest dose of the therapy, according to researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who co-led the clinical trial published in The Lancet.
"That 10,000-fold improvement is the same as a patient being able to see their surroundings on a moonlit night outdoors as opposed to requiring bright indoor lighting before treatment," said the study's lead author, Artur Cideciyan, PhD, a research professor of Ophthalmology and co-director of the Center for Hereditary Retinal Degenerations. "One patient reported for the first time being able to navigate at midnight outdoors only with the light of a bonfire."
How cells control gene expression by cleaning up their mistakes
Alternative splicing is a genetic process where different segments of genes are removed, and the remaining pieces are joined together during transcription to messenger RNA (mRNA). This mechanism increases the diversity of proteins that can be generated from genes, by assembling sections of genetic code into different combinations. This is believed to enhance biological complexity by allowing genes to produce different versions of proteins, or protein isoforms, for many different uses.
New research from the University of Chicago suggests that alternative splicing may have an even greater influence on biology than just by creating new protein isoforms. The study, published this week in Nature Genetics, shows that the biggest impact of alternative splicing may come via its role in regulating gene expression levels.
Researchers create a one-dimensional gas out of light
Physicists at the University of Bonn and the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) have created a one-dimensional gas out of light. This has enabled them to test theoretical predictions about the transition into this exotic state of matter for the first time. The method used in the experiment by the researchers could be used for examining quantum effects. The results have been published in the journal "Nature Physics."
Imagine you are standing at a swimming pool and come up with the idea of filling it with even more water. You grab a garden hose and use it to generate a jet of water that curves in a high arc to fall onto the surface of the pool. The water level increases briefly at the point where the jet of water hits the pool but this change in water level is only minimal because the falling water is quickly distributed across the entire expanse of water.
The effect is different, however, if you fill up a gutter with your jet of water. The jet creates a wave of water at the point where you aim the hose. This is because the walls of the gutter ensure that the water cannot flow out across a surface but can only be distributed in the direction of the gutter. The narrower the gutter, the higher the amplitude of the wave and thus the "more one-dimensional" it becomes.
Children's behavioral problems are linked to higher hair cortisol levels
Cortisol is the hormone secreted by the body to respond to stressful situations, so measuring the concentration of cortisol in the hair is very useful in analysing chronic stress. "Cortisol is usually present in the blood, saliva and urine, among other places, and indicates a momentary level of cortisol; however, cortisol accumulates in the hair, and that points to a degree of stress in the longer term, in other words, chronic stress," explained Ane Arregi-Otxotorena, a researcher in the UPV/EHU's Faculty of Psychology. To distinguish between momentary stress and chronic stress, Arregi uses a clear example: "The stress that occurs when you're going to buy bread one day and you realize you haven't got any money on you, is not the same as when you know you can't afford to buy bread on a daily basis."
The researcher in the Basque Environmental Health Research Group (B-EHRG) used hair samples of 11-year-old children to assess chronic stress. To conduct the research she extracted data from the INMA project; the INMA (Environment and Childhood) project gathers all kinds of data on children and families, starting with the mother's pregnancy, for long-term research purposes.
Study suggests US droughts, rainy extremes becoming more severe
Severe drought in the American Southwest and Mexico and more severe wet years in the Northeast are the modern norm in North America, according to new research -- and the analysis suggests these seasonal patterns will be more extreme in the future.
The middle of the United States, meanwhile, can expect bigger swings between wetter wet periods -- high-rainfall years known as pluvials -- and drier summers through the rest of this century, the study predicts.
Researchers at The Ohio State University say the findings, based on modern precipitation data, historical tree rings and climate models spanning the years 850 to 2100, suggest climate change has shifted precipitation patterns across North America to extremes that were not experienced before industrialization began around the mid-1800s.
Newly discovered gene may influence longevity
Sleep, fasting, exercise, green porridge, black coffee, a healthy social life …
There is an abundance of advice out there on how to live a good, long life. Researchers are working hard to determine why some people live longer than others, and how we get the most out of our increasingly long lives.
Now researchers from the Center for Healthy Aging, Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen have made a breakthrough. They have discovered that a particular protein known as OSER1 has a great influence on longevity.
"We identified this protein that can extend longevity (long duration of life, red.). It is a novel pro-longevity factor, and it is a protein that exists in various animals, such as fruit flies, nematodes, silkworms, and in humans," says Professor Lene Juel Rasmussen, senior author behind the new study.
Falling for financial scams? It may signal early Alzheimer's disease
Older adults who are more vulnerable to financial scams may have brain changes linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease, according to a first-of-its-kind study led by researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Nearly 7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease, the fifth leading cause of death among those 65 and older. The disease will carry an estimated $360 billion in health care costs this year alone, according to the Alzheimer's Association.
Researchers led by Duke Han, professor of psychology and family medicine at USC Dornsife, aimed to better understand the link between early Alzheimer's disease and financial vulnerability by using high-powered MRI to examine the brains of 97 study participants over age 50.
Providing blooms all season long may be the key to attracting pollinators, no matter what landscape your garden is near
A diverse and abundant flower planting that provides flowers in bloom all season may be more important to bees and other pollinators than whatever is surrounding the flower garden, according to a study published September 4, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Devon Eldridge from the University of Tennessee, US, and colleagues.
As we learn more about how critical pollinators (native and non-native bees, butterflies, and other insects) are to our food supply and ecosystem, many people are planting pollinator-attractive flower gardens to help sustain these important and threatened creatures. Eldridge and co-authors investigated if and how the context of these gardens (e.g. the surrounding local context and broader land-use factors) may impact the attractiveness of flower gardens for different bee species.
Natural probiotic discovered in newborns microbiomes
Newborn babies have one of three pioneer bacteria in their gut shortly after birth, one of which could be used to develop new personalised infant therapeutic probiotics, researchers show.
In the largest study of UK baby microbiomes to date, researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University College London (UCL), and the University of Birmingham, used whole genome sequencing to analyse stool samples from 1,288 healthy infants, all under one month old from the UK Baby Biome Study1.
This research, published today (6 September) in Nature Microbiology, found that one of these beneficial bacterial pioneers was genetically adapted to make full use of the nutrients in breast milk, suggesting that it is the most suited to thrive in a baby's microbiome. The team uncovered that this bacterium can also block pathogens from colonising the babies' gut, highlighting its significant potential as a natural probiotic.
Gravitational waves unveil previously unseen properties of neutron stars
A better understanding of the inner workings of neutron stars will lead to a greater knowledge of the dynamics that underpin the workings of the universe and also could help drive future technology, said the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign physics professor Nicolas Yunes. A new study led by Yunes details how new insights into how dissipative tidal forces within double -- or binary -- neutron star systems will inform our understanding of the universe.
"Neutron stars are the collapsed cores of stars and densest stable material objects in the universe, much denser and colder than conditions that particle colliders can even create," said Yunes, who also is the founding director of the Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe. "The mere existence of neutron stars tells us that there are unseen properties related to astrophysics, gravitational physics and nuclear physics that play a critical role in the inner workings of our universe."
Researchers discover a space oddity -- an exoplanet moving in mysterious ways
A research team led by Lund University in Sweden has discovered a small planet that displays peculiar orbital motion. The shimmying planet, located 455 light-years from Earth, shows that planetary systems can be considerably more complex than researchers have previously thought.
The newly discovered planet TOI-1408c has a mass equivalent to eight Earths and circles very close to a larger planet, the hot gas giant TOI-1408b.
After starting to study both planets and their star, TOI-1408, in detail, the researchers felt puzzled.
New population model identifies phases of human dispersal across Europe
An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Cologne's Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology and the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology has developed a new model, the "Our Way Model." They modelled the movements and population densities over time and space during the Aurignacian (approximately 43,000 to 32,000 years ago) to better understand how the first anatomically modern humans populated Europe. The model reveals four phases of the process. The first phase saw a slow expansion of human settlement from the Levant to the Balkans, followed by the second phase of rapid expansion into western Europe. The subsequent third phase was characterized by a decline in human population, and the fourth phase brought regional increases in population density and further advances into previously unsettled areas of Great Britain and the Iberian Peninsula. The results have been published under the title 'Reconstruction of human dispersal during Aurignacian on pan-European scale' in Nature Communications.
The interdisciplinary collaboration between climate scientists and archaeologists enabled the team to examine how climate change influenced human dispersal quantitatively. Early anatomically modern humans survived as hunter-gatherers for extremely long periods. When they started spreading across Europe, global climatic conditions were different from today: The prevailing cooler and drier climate of the late Last Glacial Period was repeatedly interrupted by warmer interglacial periods, with some changes occurring abruptly and others gradually.
Older women more vulnerable to heat than their male peers, researchers find
As global climate change causes extreme heat waves to become more common around the world, epidemiological studies have shown that heat kills more women than men. Now, a new study by researchers at Penn State has found that older women are physiologically more vulnerable to high heat and humidity than older men, and that women between the ages of 40 and 64 are as vulnerable as men 65 years of age or older. This is the first study to determine this disparity exists due to physiological differences rather than because women live longer than men -- leaving a larger population of older women than older men.
Led by Olivia Leach, doctoral candidate in kinesiology at Penn State, and her adviser, W. Larry Kenney, professor of physiology and kinesiology, and the Marie Underhill Noll Chair in Human Performance at Penn State, the researchers demonstrated that middle-aged and older women were affected by heat at lower temperature/humidity combinations than middle-aged and older men. The results, published in American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, were somewhat unexpected, according to Leach, because there are no differences in heat vulnerability based on biological sex in adults younger than 30.
