...why are we still allowing debate about human impacts that drive massive catastrophic events like climate change? That was a rhetorical question. The reality is that climate change now and always is deeply embedded in every earthly thing and process. Separating out one event or another as a consequence of climate change plays into the absurdity that parts of the world exist independently of each other. Tonight’s science stories are messily divided into neat categories that spotlight this absurdity: Terrestrial, Aquatic, Ho-Sap, COVID-19, and Space (Outer and Inner). I added bold to pertinent info so you can scroll through faster and not miss the points.
TERRESTRIAL
A 14,000-year paleoecological reconstruction of the sub-Antarctic islands led by University of Maine researchers has found that seabird establishment occurred during a period of regional cooling 5,000 years ago. Their populations, in turn, shifted the Falkland Islands ecosystems through the deposit of high concentrations of guano that helped nourish tussac, produce peat and increase the incidence of fire.
This terrestrial-marine link is critical to the islands' grasslands conservation efforts going forward … The connection of nutrients originating in the marine ecosystem that are transferred to the terrestrial ecosystem enrich the islands' nutrient-poor soil, thereby making the Falkland Islands sensitive to changes in climate and land use. [...]
"Our 14,000-year record shows that seabirds established at Surf Bay during cooler climates. Seabird conservation efforts in the South Atlantic should be prepared for these species to move to new breeding grounds in a warmer world, and those locations may not be protected," says Groff, who is now a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Wyoming.
* Remember this story as you move through this science news. Later on, in the Ho-Sap section, this thesis repeats.
In a world struggling to feed more people without consuming additional land or resources, any boost to crop growth is worth celebrating. By grafting epigenetically modified rootstock to unmodified shoots, scientists have produced seeds that dramatically outperform either parent, creating what may be the biggest advance in crop productivity for a long time.
Just as people are changed by stressful situations, plants pushed to the limit of survival grow differently thereafter. Crops denied water at a crucial development stage become more thrifty, an exceptionally important attribute where irrigation water is scarce. [...]
In Nature Communications, the team report seeds from the grafted plants were 35 percent more productive than their off-the-shelf counterparts, while also apparently being more resilient. Tomatoes grown from these seeds survived a flood that killed most neighbors, invaluable in an increasingly volatile climate. "When a plant experiences a stress such as drought or prolonged extreme heat, it has the ability to adjust quickly to its environment to become phenotypically 'plastic' – or flexible," senior author Professor Sally Mackenzie said in a statement. "And, it turns out, it 'remembers.'"
The Guardian story with a link embedded in the tweet has an interactive “tree” you can use to discover the relatedness of different dog breeds.
It wasn’t until a landmark genetic study was published in 2017 that we gained a clearer picture of how all these [dog] breeds relate to each other.
Researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute in the US analysed DNA from 161 breeds to create a dog-breed family tree. The tree groups breeds into categories according to their shared history. These groups, known as clades, reflect the fact that for much of their domestication history dogs were known only by the kind of service they offered humankind. The hunting dogs are a family including retrievers and setters, the herding dogs contain the shepherds and sheepdogs.
China’s growing army of amateur birdwatchers is a dedicated bunch—and that dedication could eventually pay off in better protection for their feathered friends. A new study uses more than 2 decades of bird sightings by China’s citizen scientists to map the ranges of nearly 1400 species, from the endangered red-crowned crane to the pied falconet. Spinning those maps forward to 2070, researchers have determined what their future ranges might be—and pinpointed 14 priority areas for new nature preserves. [...]
The model, which includes variables such as daily and monthly temperatures, seasonal rainfall, and elevation, found that warming temperatures will drive many birds northward and to higher ground, the researchers report this month in PLOS ONE. Although nearly 800 species will enjoy expanded ranges, most of those ranges are in heavily populated and industrialized areas unsuitable for birds. Roughly 240 species will see their ranges shrink.
Migratory birds and birds found only in China will be particularly hard hit. In particular, the iconic red-crowned crane will lose half of its territory nationwide, the authors say. “The existing national nature reserves are not sufficient for protecting important bird habitats, especially after range shifts,” the authors write. To counter such losses, they have identified 14 priority areas for new conservation preserves scattered across the county.
Bumblebees exposed to levels of radiation found within the Chernobyl exclusion zone suffered a "significant" drop in reproduction, in new research published Wednesday that scientists say should prompt a rethink of international calculations of nuclear environmental risk.
The study … set out to discover how ionizing radiation affects insects, which are often thought to be more resilient than other species.
They found that colony reproduction reduced by 30 to 45 percent at doses previously considered too low to impact insects.
"We found that at radiation levels detectable in Chernobyl, the number of new queen bees produced from the colony was significantly reduced and colony growth was delayed—meaning colonies reached their peak weight at a week later" ….
It can survive being run over by a car, pecked by predators and crushed underfoot. Now researchers have revealed the secrets behind the near-indestructibility of the diabolical ironclad beetle.
Found in wooded areas of the US west coast, the beetle is about 2cm in length. Like some other species of flightless beetle, its wing covers, known as elytra, are not only hardened, but fused together. The upshot is a gnarly black armour that protects it from being crushed.
Researchers have revealed just how tough this armour is, finding the diabolical ironclad can withstand far greater forces than other flightless beetles from similar habitats, surviving loads about 39,000 times its body weight. That is akin to a 90kg human withstanding the weight of about 280 doubledecker buses.
“We were impressed. Especially given that this beetle does not contain any mineral – just organic components….”
An evergreen observation here.
There are places that will always be beyond our reach. The Earth's interior is one of them. But we do have ways of gaining an understanding of this uncharted world. Seismic waves, for instance, allow us to put important constraints about the structure of our planet and the physical properties of the materials hidden deep within it. Then there are the volcanic rocks that emerge in some places on the Earth's surface from deep within and provide important clues about the chemical composition of the mantle. And finally there are lab experiments that can simulate the conditions of the Earth's interior on a small scale.
A new publication by Motohiko Murakami, Professor of Experimental Mineral Physics, and his team was featured recently in the journal PNAS and shows just how illuminating such experiments can be. [...]
"The presumption that the composition of the Earth's mantle is more or less homogeneous is based on a relatively simple hypothesis," Murakami explains. "Namely that the powerful convection currents within the mantle, which also drive the motion of the tectonic plates on the Earth's surface, are constantly mixing it through. But it's possible that this view is too simplistic."
The abstract benefits of biochar for long-term storage of carbon and nitrogen on American farms are clear, and now new research from Rice University shows a short-term, concrete bonus for farmers as well.
That would be money. To be precise, money not spent on irrigation.
In the best-case scenarios for some regions, extensive use of biochar could save farmers a little more than 50% of the water they now use to grow crops. That represents a significant immediate savings to go with the established environmental benefits of biochar.
AQUATIC
Free the rivers so salmon can survive.
Releasing captive-bred Atlantic salmon into the ocean, a long-standing practice to boost stocks for commercial fishing, reduces the rate at which wild populations reproduce and may ultimately do more harm than good, researchers cautioned Wednesday.
On average, salmon born in hatcheries in Ireland's Burrishoole catchment only produced a third as many offspring in the North Atlantic compared to wild fish … "We have also shown that—in years where you have a greater input from captive-bred Atlantic salmon—the ability of the population as a whole to produce more wild-bred fish is reduced in subsequent years," lead author Ronan James O'Sullivan, an evolutionary biologist at University College Cork, told AFP.
It has long been assumed that wild and captive-born fish were "ecologically equivalent," but the new research shows otherwise.
Fish reared for any period of their life in an aquaculture environment, it turns out, somehow change compared to their wild counterparts.
"You are not replacing like with like," O'Sullivan said by phone.
"What is really worrying is that, with an increased proportion of captive-born spawners, a population's productivity"—the rate at which it reproduces—"declines linearly."
"That means that when you have a healthy, self-sustaining population of salmon, there is no level at which it is safe to stock fish," he added.
Another evergreen observation.
What on Earth do sharks have to do with vaccines? Well, some vaccines contain squalene, which is a naturally occurring oil in many plants and animals (including humans). Squalene, mixed with other components, is one of many “adjuvants” that can elicit an immune response and, therefore, increase the effectiveness of a vaccine.
Shark livers happen to harbor the greatest concentration of squalene on Earth. And the deeper in the depths the shark dwells, the more it’s got. Although it’s possible to extract squalene from rice, wheat, olives and other, more sustainable sources, it’s more cost-effective to extract it from a shark’s liver.
It’s estimated that 99% of shark-based squalene is used in cosmetics and supplements and less than 1% is being used for other purposes, like vaccines. And the 3 million or so sharks that are killed for their liver oil each year is just a fraction of the more than 100 million sharks that are killed annually, mostly through finning and bycatch from illegal fishing. So of all the sharks killed unnecessarily each year, the demand for vaccines is responsible for less than one thousandth of 1%.
It’s estimated that if a squalene-based COVID-19 vaccine were adopted throughout the world, and everyone received two doses, then half a million sharks could die as a result. This is unlikely, as only five of the more than 170 COVID-19 vaccines in clinical or preclinical trials contain squalene. But it’s a worst-case possibility that should be avoided.
Exploitation of the natural world created this pandemic. It should not be a part of the fix. Vaccine manufacturers can, and should, begin to move toward squalene-free formulas or commit to sourcing 100% of their squalene from plants.
Things are heating up at the seafloor.
Thermometers moored at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean recorded an average temperature increase of about 0.02 degrees Celsius over the last decade, researchers report in the Sept. 28 Geophysical Research Letters. That warming may be a consequence of human-driven climate change, which has boosted ocean temperatures near the surface (SN: 9/25/19), but it’s unclear since so little is known about the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean. [...]
Temperature records for the two deepest spots revealed a clear trend of warming over that decade. Waters 4,540 meters below the surface warmed from an average 0.209° C to 0.234° C, while waters 4,757 meters down went from about 0.232°C to 0.248°C. This warming is much weaker than in the upper ocean, Meinen says, but he also notes that since warm water rises, it would take a lot of heat to generate even this little bit of warming so deep.
There’s nothing Winifred Frick likes better than crawling through guano-filled caves and coming face-to-face with bats. As chief scientist of Bat Conservation International, she is on a mission to promote understanding of bats and protect imperiled species from extinction.
For months, though, Frick has avoided research that would put her within spitting distance of bats. Her only projects to persist through the pandemic have been conducted from afar, like using acoustic monitors to eavesdrop on the animals’ squeaks and swooshes. In an era of COVID-19, that “hands-off” approach and other precautions are crucial to protect both bats and people, Frick, a biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and over two dozen other scientists argue online September 3 in PLOS Pathogens. [...]
“We can’t tell bats to socially distance,” Frick says. “We want to reduce the chance that there’s any pathogen transfer across animals, full stop.” The goal is to prevent viral “spillover.”
HO-SAP
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University scanned the brains of more than three dozen politically left- and right-leaning adults as they viewed short videos involving hot-button immigration policies, such as the building of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and the granting of protections for undocumented immigrants under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Their findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that liberals and conservatives respond differently to the same videos, especially when the content being viewed contains vocabulary that frequently pops up in political campaign messaging…
...multiple factors, including personal experiences and the news media, contribute to what the researchers call "neural polarization."
"Even when presented with the same exact content, people can respond very differently, which can contribute to continued division," said study senior author Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. "Critically, these differences do not imply that people are hardwired to disagree. Our experiences, and the media we consume, likely contribute to neural polarization."
* Perhaps we are more like tomato plants than we realize. Is the most important point whether or not we remember as well and as long as tomato plants do and then respond appropriately? (another rhetorical question)
The first analysis of a new sedimentary drill core representing 1 million years of environmental history in the East African Rift Valley shows that at the same time early humans were abandoning old tools in favor of more sophisticated technology and broadening their trade networks, their landscape was experiencing frequent fluctuations in vegetation and water supply that made resources less reliably available. The findings suggest that instability in their surrounding climate, land and ecosystem was a key driver in the development of new traits and behaviors underpinning human adaptability. [...]
The new analysis reveals how a changing climate along with new land faults introduced by tectonic activity and ecological disruptions in the vegetation and fauna all came together to drive disruptions that made technological innovation, trading resources and symbolic communication¬—three key factors in adaptability—beneficial for early humans in this region. [...]
"There was a massive change in the animal fauna during the time period when we see early human behavior changing," Potts said. "The animals also influenced the landscape through the kinds of plants that they ate. Then with humans in the mix, and some of their innovations like projectile weapons, they also may have affected the fauna. It's a whole ecosystem changing, with humans as part of it."
Finally, Potts notes that while adaptability is a hallmark of human evolution, that does not mean the species is necessarily equipped to endure the unprecedented change Earth is now experiencing due to man-made climate change and Anthropogenic biodiversity loss. "We have an astonishing capacity to adapt, biologically in our genes as well as culturally and socially," he said. "The question is, are we now creating through our own activities new sources of environmental disruption that will continue to challenge human adaptability?"
This sounds more boring than it really is. Open access journals crack open insular elite academia thus promoting tremendous advances and innovations in the sciences.
The Nature family of journals announced today it has become the first group of highly selective scientific titles to sign an arrangement that will allow researchers to publish articles that are immediately free to read. The deal will allow authors at Germany’s Max Planck research institutes to publish an estimated 400 open-access (OA) papers annually in Nature journals, which have traditionally earned revenues exclusively from subscription fees.
COVID-19
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine identified a protein, known as factor D, that appears essential to the inflammatory process of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They believe that by inhibiting factor D, it would reduce the inflammatory reactions that make COVID-19 so deadly. They published their research in the journal Blood.
The researchers believe that there may already be drugs in development being tested for other indications that could block factor D.
Don’t just read this article — read the next one here too.
Certain oral antiseptics and mouthwashes may have the ability to inactivate human coronaviruses, according to a Penn State College of Medicine research study. The results indicate that some of these products might be useful for reducing the viral load, or amount of virus, in the mouth after infection and may help to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. [...]
The products evaluated include a 1% solution of baby shampoo, a neti pot, peroxide sore-mouth cleansers, and mouthwashes.
The researchers found that several of the nasal and oral rinses had a strong ability to neutralize human coronavirus, which suggests that these products may have the potential to reduce the amount of virus spread by people who are COVID-19-positive. [...]
The 1% baby shampoo solution, which is often used by head and neck doctors to rinse the sinuses, inactivated greater than 99.9% of human coronavirus after a two-minute contact time. Several of the mouthwash and gargle products also were effective at inactivating the infectious virus. Many inactivated greater than 99.9% of virus after only 30 seconds of contact time and some inactivated 99.99% of the virus after 30 seconds.
I added bold in the quoted text just in case the headline wasn’t informative enough.
A rash of provocative headlines this week offered a tantalizing idea: that mouthwash can “inactivate” coronaviruses and help curb their spread.
The stories sprang from a new study that found that a coronavirus that causes common colds — not the one that causes Covid-19 — could be incapacitated in a laboratory when doused with mouthwash. The study’s authors concluded that the products they tested “may provide an additional level of protection against” the new coronavirus.
But outside experts warned against overinterpreting the study’s results, which might not have practical relevance to the new coronavirus that has killed more than 220,000 Americans. Not only did the study not investigate this deadly new virus, but it also did not test whether mouthwash affects how viruses spread from person to person. [...]
The study, which was published last month in the Journal of Medical Virology, looked only at a coronavirus called 229E that causes common colds — not the new coronavirus, which goes by the formal name of SARS-CoV-2, and causes far more serious disease. Researchers can study SARS-CoV-2 only in high-security labs after undergoing rigorous training.
...whether over-the-counter supplements can actually prevent, or even treat, COVID-19, is not clear. Since the disease is so new, researchers haven’t had much time for the kind of large experiments that provide the best answers. Instead, scientists have mostly relied on fresh takes on old data. Some studies have looked at outcomes of patients who routinely take certain supplements — and found some promising hints. But so far there’s little data from the kinds of scientifically rigorous experiments that give doctors confidence when recommending supplements.
What we know about Vitamin D and COVID-19: Few studies have looked directly at whether vitamin D makes a difference in COVID.
Zinc: Overall, though, the jury is still out, says Suma Thomas, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, who in June led a team that reviewed the evidence for popular supplements in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine. Given what’s already known, zinc could possibly decrease the duration of infection but not the severity of symptoms, she said, particularly among people who are deficient.
Vitamin C: There’s still not enough evidence to know whether they are helpful, the pair concluded in July in Drugs in Context. “It’s not really clear if it’s going to benefit patients,” Badowski says.
Several coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines are currently in human trials. In June 2020, we surveyed 13,426 people in 19 countries to determine potential acceptance rates and factors influencing acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine. Of these, 71.5% of participants reported that they would be very or somewhat likely to take a COVID-19 vaccine, and 61.4% reported that they would accept their employer’s recommendation to do so. Differences in acceptance rates ranged from almost 90% (in China) to less than 55% (in Russia). Respondents reporting higher levels of trust in information from government sources were more likely to accept a vaccine and take their employer’s advice to do so.
OUTER SPACE
Three decades after Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan suggested that Voyager 1 snap Earth's picture from billions of miles away - resulting in the iconic Pale Blue Dot photograph - two astronomers now offer another unique cosmic perspective: Some exoplanets - planets from beyond our own solar system - have a direct line of sight to observe Earth's biological qualities from far, far away. [...]
The paper, "Which Stars Can See Earth as a Transiting Exoplanet?" was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"Let's reverse the viewpoint to that of other stars and ask from which vantage point other observers could find Earth as a transiting planet," Kaltenegger said. A transiting planet is one that passes through the observer's line of sight to another star, such as the sun, revealing clues as to the makeup of the planet's atmosphere.
"If observers were out there searching, they would be able to see signs of a biosphere in the atmosphere of our Pale Blue Dot," she said, "And we can even see some of the brightest of these stars in our night sky without binoculars or telescopes."
old news
An update on the OSIRISREx big gulp says the size of that sample may be a problem.
The spacecraft that reached out and grabbed a sample from an asteroid earlier this week may have collected so much material it prevented the lid of the sample holder from closing properly, allowing some of the precious dust and rocks to leak out, NASA officials said Friday evening.
Now the space agency is faced with the daunting task of stowing away the materials it does have without spilling a significant amount, a delicate procedure made all the more difficult by the weightless environment of space and the spacecraft being about 200 million miles away.
teaser new news
INNER SPACE
Nikon’s Small World microscopic photography contest winners
In response to a comment I made in Night Owls yesterday along with a sample of the winning photos, yowsta asked what are some of the images. The answer is in the link embedded in this first tweet.