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 and jck. 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.
The climate crisis in action:
Oceans' Worth of Water Hidden Deep in Earth, Ultra Rare Diamond Suggests
A beautiful blue flaw in a gem-quality diamond from Botswana is actually a tiny fragment of Earth's deep interior -- and it suggests our planet's mantle contains oceans' worth of water. Scientific American: The flaw, technically called an inclusion, looks like a fish eye: a deep blue center surrounded by a white haze. But it's really a pocket of the mineral ringwoodite from 660 kilometers down, at the boundary between the upper and lower mantle. This is just the second time scientists have found this mineral in a chunk of crystal from this zone, and the sample is the only one of its kind currently known to science. The last example was destroyed during an attempt to analyze its chemistry.
[...] The discovery indicates that this very deep zone of Earth is soggy, with vast amounts of water locked up tight within the minerals there. Though this water is chemically bound to the minerals' structure and doesn't flow around like an actual ocean, it does likely play an important role in how the mantle melts. This in turn affects big-picture geology, such as plate tectonics and volcanic activity. For example, water could contribute to the development of areas of mantle upwelling known as plumes, which are hotspots for volcanoes.
An All-Electric Passenger Plane Completed Its First Test Flight
A prototype all-electric passenger plane took off for the first time yesterday in a test flight that marks a significant milestone for carbon pollution-free aviation. The Verge reports: The nine-passenger commuter aircraft called Alice took off at 7:10AM yesterday from Washington state's Grant County International Airport. Alice is ahead of much of the pack when it comes to all-electric aircraft under development. It could become the "first all-new, all-electric commercial airplane" if the Federal Aviation Administration certifies it to carry passengers, The Seattle Times reports.
Alice's maker, Washington state-based company Eviation, is targeting commuter and cargo flights between 150 and 250 miles. That's like flying from New York City to Boston or from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Yesterday's test flight lasted just eight minutes, though, with the aircraft reaching an altitude of 3,500 feet. The purpose of the flight was to gather data to improve the design of the plane, which still has a long way to go before it can take off with passengers on board. Alice will eventually come in three configurations: a nine-passenger commuter plane, a six-passenger luxury plane, and an e-cargo version. The limited size has to do with battery capacity.
Scientists Create AI-Powered Laser Turret That Kills Cockroaches
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Everyone wants to be able to just zap a bug and have it go away. But now, thanks to a recent development from Ildar Rakhmatulin, a research associate at Heriot-Watt University interested in machine learning and engineering, this dream is now a reality. In the study -- which was conducted last year but published in Oriental Insects last week -- Rakhmatulin and his co-authors used a laser insect control device automated with machine vision to perform a series of experiments on domiciliary cockroaches. They were able to not only detect cockroaches at high accuracy but also neutralize and deter individual insects at a distance up to 1.2 meters. This is a follow-up of sorts to earlier projects, in which he used a Raspberry Pi and lasers to zap mosquitoes. However, for this project, Rakhmatulin used a different kind of computer which allowed for more precision in detecting the bug.
Ending a 50-year mystery, scientists reveal how bacteria can move
University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers and their collaborators have solved a decades-old mystery about how E. coli and other bacteria are able to move.
Bacteria push themselves forward by coiling long, threadlike appendages into corkscrew shapes that act as makeshift propellers. But how exactly they do this has baffled scientists, because the "propellers" are made of a single protein.
An international team led by UVA's Edward H. Egelman, PhD, a leader in the field of high-tech cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), has cracked the case. The researchers used cryo-EM and advanced computer modeling to reveal what no traditional light microscope could see: the strange structure of these propellers at the level of individual atoms.
Milky Way's graveyard of dead stars found
The first map of the 'galactic underworld' -- a chart of the corpses of once massive suns that have since collapsed into black holes and neutron stars -- has revealed a graveyard that stretches three times the height of the Milky Way, and that almost a third of the objects have been flung out from the galaxy altogether.
"These compact remnants of dead stars show a fundamentally different distribution and structure to the visible galaxy," said David Sweeney, a PhD student at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney, and lead author of the paper in the latest issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"The 'height' of the galactic underworld is over three times larger in the Milky Way itself," he added. "And an amazing 30 percent of objects have been completely ejected from the galaxy."
Scientists find link between fast-melting Arctic ice and ocean acidification
An international team of researchers have sounded new alarm bells about the changing chemistry of the western region of the Arctic Ocean after discovering acidity levels increasing three to four times faster than ocean waters elsewhere.
The team, which includes University of Delaware marine chemistry expert Wei-Jun Cai, also identified a strong correlation between the accelerated rate of melting ice in the region and the rate of ocean acidification, a perilous combination that threatens the survival of plants, shellfish, coral reefs and other marine life and biological processes throughout the planet's ecosystem.
The new study, published on Thursday, Sept. 30 in Science, the flagship journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is the first analysis of Arctic acidification that includes data from more than two decades, spanning the period from 1994 to 2020.
First-grade girls stick with science after pretending to be Marie Curie
Fake it 'til you make is true for children too, it turns out: Young girls embracing the role of a successful female scientist, like Marie Curie, persist longer at a challenging science game.
A new study, appearing Sept. 28 in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that science role-playing may help tighten the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and careers for women simply by improving their identity as scientists.
Frustrated by the gender gap in STEM, in which some fields employ at least three times more men than women, Cornell graduate student Reut Shachnai wanted to do something about it. Shachnai, who is now continuing her studies at Yale, said the idea to help foster young girls' interest in science came to her during a lecture in a class she was taking on "Psychology of Imagination."
Extreme nonlinear wave group dynamics in directional wave states
Understanding the unpredictable behaviors of ocean waves can be a matter of survival for seafarers. Deep-water wave groups have been known to be unstable and become rogue, causing unsuspecting boats to tip over.
This rogue wave behavior results from modulation instability, which generally occurs only for uni-directional waves. Wave focusing -- the amplification of waves -- is also expected to weaken when interacting with other wave systems.
Now, a team led by Kyoto University has demonstrated that such unstable wave groups propagate independently regardless of interference.
An ocean inside Earth? Water hundreds of kilometers down
The transition zone (TZ) is the name given to the boundary layer that separates the Earth's upper mantle and the lower mantle. It is located at a depth of 410 to 660 kilometres. The immense pressure of up to 23,000 bar in the TZ causes the olive-green mineral olivine, which constitutes around 70 percent of the Earth's upper mantle and is also called peridot, to alter its crystalline structure. At the upper boundary of the transition zone, at a depth of about 410 kilometres, it is converted into denser wadsleyite; at 520 kilometres it then metamorphoses into even denser ringwoodite.
"These mineral transformations greatly hinder the movements of rock in the mantle," explains Prof. Frank Brenker from the Institute for Geosciences at Goethe University in Frankfurt. For example, mantle plumes -- rising columns of hot rock from the deep mantle -- sometimes stop directly below the transition zone. The movement of mass in the opposite direction also comes to standstill. Brenker says, "Subducting plates often have difficulty in breaking through the entire transition zone. So there is a whole graveyard of such plates in this zone underneath Europe."
Detailing a disastrous autumn day in ancient Italy
The Plinian eruption of Mount Vesuvius around 4,000 years ago -- 2,000 years before the one that buried the Roman city of Pompeii -- left a remarkably intact glimpse into Early Bronze Age village life in the Campania region of Southern Italy. The village offers a rare glimpse into the lives of the people who lived there, and the degree of preservation led the researchers to pinpoint the timing of the eruption, based on archaeobotanical record.
The village of Afragola was situated near present-day Naples, about 10 miles from Mount Vesuvius. Following the eruption, the village was encased in meters of ash, mud, and alluvial sediments, which lent a surprising degree of protection to the site, a rarity for archaeological sites from this era in Europe. Owing to the level of preservation and the diversity of preserved plants at the site, researchers were interested to see if they could pinpoint the time of year when the eruption occurred.
The village of Afragola was excavated over an area of 5,000 square meters, making it among the most extensively investigated sites of the Early Bronze Age in Italy, with a large group of archaeologists who meticulously carried out the sampling.
No environmental justice, no positive peace -- and vice versa
Peace and environmental sustainability -- two lofty but vital goals for all countries -- are known to be intrinsically related, according to Dahlia Simangan, associate professor at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University. However, researchers still tend to investigate them separately, and, when they are viewed together, it is often with broad strokes, with little examination into the nuances of either peace or environmental sustainability. Parsing out the specifics of these categories could provide insights into what specific elements of peace influence what specific elements of environmental sustainability, and vice versa, which could then better inform policy and decision making.
A team of researchers from Hiroshima University that includes Simangan has explored the nuances and found that elements of environmental performance are more strongly associated with positive peace, specifically its pillar concerning equitable resource distribution, than with negative peace, especially its indicator on the degree of militarization.
The researchers published their results in Earth System Governance in September 2022.
Spiny chondrichthyan from the lower Silurian of South China
Modern representatives of chondrichthyans (cartilaginous fishes) and osteichthyans (bony fishes and tetrapods) have contrasting skeletal anatomies and developmental trajectories1,2,3,4 that underscore the distant evolutionary split5,6,7 of the two clades. Recent work on upper Silurian and Devonian jawed vertebrates7,8,9,10 has revealed similar skeletal conditions that blur the conventional distinctions between osteichthyans, chondrichthyans and their jawed gnathostome ancestors. Here we describe the remains (dermal plates, scales and fin spines) of a chondrichthyan, Fanjingshania renovata gen. et sp. nov., from the lower Silurian of China that pre-date the earliest articulated fossils of jawed vertebrates10,11,12. Fanjingshania possesses dermal shoulder girdle plates and a complement of fin spines that have a striking anatomical similarity to those recorded in a subset of stem chondrichthyans5,7,13 (climatiid ‘acanthodians’14). Uniquely among chondrichthyans, however, it demonstrates osteichthyan-like resorptive shedding of scale odontodes (dermal teeth) and an absence of odontogenic tissues in its spines. Our results identify independent acquisition of these conditions in the chondrichthyan stem group, adding Fanjingshania to an increasing number of taxa7,15 nested within conventionally defined acanthodians16. The discovery of Fanjingshania provides the strongest support yet for a proposed7 early Silurian radiation of jawed vertebrates before their widespread appearance5 in the fossil record in the Lower Devonian series.
Fossils reveal the deep roots of jawed vertebrates
Nearly 200 years ago, geologist Roderick Murchison designated a set of rocks along the border of Wales and England as the Silurian System1. Among them, he found fragments of fossil fish jaws, spines and scales that he noted were “the most ancient beings of their class” and “wholly unlike” the remains found in overlying rock strata. Murchison’s Silurian scraps contrasted with the abundant, well-preserved fossils of jawed fishes known from younger deposits. Nearly two centuries of palaeontological efforts worldwide have reinforced this pattern. The diversity of jawed-fish remains from the Devonian period (419 million to 358 million years ago) — the Age of Fishes — suggests an evolutionary history that extends deep into or even before the sparsely fossiliferous Silurian period.
Galeaspid anatomy and the origin of vertebrate paired appendages
Paired fins are a major innovation1,2 that evolved in the jawed vertebrate lineage after divergence from living jawless vertebrates3. Extinct jawless armoured stem gnathostomes show a diversity of paired body-wall extensions, ranging from skeletal processes to simple flaps4. By contrast, osteostracans (a sister group to jawed vertebrates) are interpreted to have the first true paired appendages in a pectoral position, with pelvic appendages evolving later in association with jaws5. Here we show, on the basis of articulated remains of Tujiaaspis vividus from the Silurian period of China, that galeaspids (a sister group to both osteostracans and jawed vertebrates) possessed three unpaired dorsal fins, an approximately symmetrical hypochordal tail and a pair of continuous, branchial-to-caudal ventrolateral fins. The ventrolateral fins are similar to paired fin flaps in other stem gnathostomes, and specifically to the ventrolateral ridges of cephalaspid osteostracans that also possess differentiated pectoral fins. The ventrolateral fins are compatible with aspects of the fin-fold hypothesis for the origin of vertebrate paired appendages6,7,8,9,10. Galeaspids have a precursor condition to osteostracans and jawed vertebrates in which paired fins arose initially as continuous pectoral–pelvic lateral fins that our computed fluid-dynamics experiments show passively generated lift. Only later in the stem lineage to osteostracans and jawed vertebrates did pectoral fins differentiate anteriorly. This later differentiation was followed by restriction of the remaining field of fin competence to a pelvic position, facilitating active propulsion and steering.
Giraffes vs. Blue Whales vs. Dinosaurs: Contest Reveals Which One Builds Its Nervous System Fastest to Evade Predators
Over the course of evolution, immense megafauna have roamed the lands or swum in the seas. The growth of these creatures early in their life is typically quite rapid. It has to be. They need to grow fast or be eaten. Extensive studies on megafauna have addressed the unique challenges of supporting and moving such massive bodies. But the greatest and largely ignored obstacle to extreme growth for both terrestrial and aquatic megafauna may involve the rapid development of their nervous system.
Unlike all other cell types, neurons do not increase tissue volume by cell division but rather by expanding the volume of the cells themselves. Early in development, neurons sprout nerve fibers, or axons, that extend from their cell body—which houses the nucleus and other structures—by using chemical and physical cues to navigate and slowly grow toward target cells, typically no more than a few millimeters away. Once the target is reached, this well-studied first phase of axon growth culminates with formation of a junction with another neuron, known as a synapse.
But the growth and elongation of axons does not stop there. It continues by relying solely on mechanical forces that can extend the fibers at seemingly impossible rates. This poorly studied second phase, called “stretch growth,” continues as the distance between the neuronal cell bodies and their targets increases.
Revealing the Genome of the Common Ancestor of All Mammals
Every modern mammal, from a platypus to a blue whale, is descended from a common ancestor that lived about 180 million years ago. We don’t know a great deal about this animal, but the organization of its genome has now been computationally reconstructed by an international team of researchers. The work is published Sept. 30 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Our results have important implications for understanding the evolution of mammals and for conservation efforts,” said Harris Lewin, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, and senior author on the paper.
The researchers drew on high-quality genome sequences from 32 living species representing 23 of the 26 known orders of mammals. They included humans and chimps, wombats and rabbits, manatees, domestic cattle, rhinos, bats and pangolins. The analysis also included the chicken and Chinese alligator genomes as comparison groups. Some of these genomes are being produced as part of the Earth BioGenome Project and other large-scale biodiversity genome sequencing efforts. Lewin chairs the Working Group for the Earth BioGenome Project.
Armored worm reveals the ancestry of three major animal groups
An international team of scientists, including from the Universities of Bristol and Oxford, and the Natural History Museum, have discovered that a well-preserved, fossilized worm dating from 518 million years ago resembles the ancestor of three major groups of living animals.
Measuring half-an-inch long, the fossil worm—named Wufengella and unearthed in China—was a stubby creature covered in a dense, regularly overlapping array of plates on its back, belonging to an extinct group of shelly organisms called tommotiids.
Surrounding the asymmetrical armor was a fleshy body with a series of flattened lobes projecting from the sides. Bundles of bristles emerged from the body in between the lobes and the armor. The many lobes, bundles of bristles and array of shells on the back are evidence that the worm was originally serialized or segmented, like an earthworm.
Hurricane Ian pushes Artemis 1 moon launch to mid-November
NASA's historic Artemis 1 moon mission will now lift off in mid-November, if all goes according to plan.
The space agency had aimed to launch the uncrewed
Artemis 1 on Tuesday (Sept. 27), but Hurricane Ian nixed that plan. The powerful storm forced NASA to
roll Artemis 1 off Pad 39B at Florida's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and back into the safety of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) early this week.
Ian hit KSC on Thursday (Sept. 29) as a tropical storm, and the sprawling center seems to have weathered the maelstrom well. The facility experienced just minor water intrusion in a few areas, and the Artemis 1 stack — a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket topped with an Orion capsule — suffered no damage, NASA officials said in an update on Friday afternoon (Sept. 30).
New evidence for liquid water on Mars suggests the planet is geothermally active
Scientists have uncovered further evidence that liquid water exists beneath the ice cap at the southern pole of Mars and it may mean that the planet is geothermally active.
In 2018, the European
Mars Express orbiter found that the surface of the ice cap covering the south pole of
Mars dips and rises, suggesting liquid water may be lurking underneath. But not all scientists were convinced at that time. Mars is extremely cold, and for subglacial water to exist on the planet in the liquid form, there would have to be a source of heat, such as geothermal energy. At the time of
the Mars Express discovery, some scientists therefore thought the strange radar signal measured by the spacecraft might be explained by something else, for example some sort of dry material below the ice caps.
But recently, an international team of scientists led by researchers from the University of Cambridge investigated the ice-sheet-covered region, known as Ultimis Scopili, using a different technique and concluded that the presence of liquid water is, indeed, the likeliest explanation.
As Pacific Ocean Shrinks, Earth Will Once Again Host a Supercontinent in the Next 200-300 Million Years: Study
Ever since the Mesopotamian era — the cradle of human civilisation — man has been fighting wars to win over territories. These wars have constantly created boundaries on the world map, splitting the land into smaller sections. But guess what, our planet is using all its might to compel humans to redraw the map, not just in terms of political boundaries, but also in terms of physiography.
But in a few million years, there will come a time when the current world map will start losing its meaning, all thanks to the Earth’s attempt to reunite all its land into one supercontinent — something like Pangea.
A new study led by researchers from Curtin University has hypothesised that since the Earth has been cooling for over a billion years, the oceanic crust beneath the oceans is becoming thinner and weaker. As a result, the Pacific Ocean, has already started shrinking from its maximum size since the dinosaurs’ time.