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.
Ancient superpredator got big by front-loading its growth in its youth
Whatcheeria, a six-foot-long salamander-like creature that lived 340 million years ago, was the T. rex of its time: the biggest, baddest predator in its habitat. A new study reveals how they grew to their "giant" size: instead of growing slow and steady throughout their lives like many modern reptiles and amphibians, they did most of their growing when they were young.
The Field Museum in Chicago is home to the best, most-complete fossils of a prehistoric superpredator -- but one that lived hundreds of millions of years before SUE the T. rex. Whatcheeria was a six-foot-long lake-dwelling creature with a salamander-like body and a long, narrow head; its fossils were discovered in a limestone quarry near the town of What Cheer, Iowa. There are around 350 Whatcheeria specimens, ranging from single bones to complete skeletons, that have been unearthed, and every last one of them resides in the Field Museum's collections. In a new study in Communications Biology, these specimens helped reveal how Whatcheeria grew big enough to menace its fishy prey: instead of growing "slow and steady" the way that many modern reptiles and amphibians do, it grew rapidly in its youth.
Two Minerals Never Before Been Seen On Earth Found Inside 17-Ton Meteorite
Two minerals that have never been seen before on Earth have been discovered inside a massive meteorite in Somalia. They could hold important clues to how asteroids form. Live Science reports: The two brand new minerals were found inside a single 2.5 ounce (70 gram) slice taken from the 16.5 ton (15 metric tons) El Ali meteorite, which was found in 2020. Scientists named the minerals elaliite after the meteor and elkinstantonite after Lindy Elkins-Tanton(opens in new tab), the managing director of the Arizona State University Interplanetary Initiative and principal investigator of NASA's upcoming Psyche mission, which will send a probe to investigate the mineral-rich Psyche asteroid for evidence of how our solar system's planets formed.
The researchers classified El Ali as an Iron IAB complex meteorite, a type made of meteoric iron flecked with tiny chunks of silicates. While investigating the meteorite slice, details of the new minerals caught the scientists' attention. By comparing the minerals with versions of them that had been previously synthesized in a lab, they were able to rapidly identify them as newly recorded in nature. The researchers plan to investigate the meteorites further in order to understand the conditions under which their parent asteroid formed. The team is also looking into material science applications of the minerals. However, future scientific insights from the El Ali meteorite could be in peril. The meteorite has now been moved to China in search of a potential buyer, which could limit researchers' access to the space rock for investigation. "Whenever you find a new mineral, it means that the actual geological conditions, the chemistry of the rock, was different than what's been found before," Chris Herd, a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta, said in a statement. "That's what makes this exciting: In this particular meteorite you have two officially described minerals that are new to science."
Chinese Astronauts Board Space Station In Historic Mission
Three Chinese astronauts arrived on Wednesday at China's space station for the first in-orbit crew rotation in Chinese space history, launching operation of the second inhabited outpost in low-Earth orbit after the NASA-led International Space Station. Reuters reports: The spacecraft Shenzhou-15, or "Divine Vessel", and its three passengers lifted off atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre at 11:08 p.m. (1508 GMT) on Tuesday in sub-freezing temperatures in the Gobi Desert in northwest China, according to state television. Shenzhou-15 was the last of 11 missions, including three previous crewed missions, needed to assemble the "Celestial Palace", as the multi-module station is known in Chinese. The first mission was launched in April 2021.
The spacecraft docked with the station more than six hours after the launch, and the three Shenzhou-15 astronauts were greeted with warm hugs from the previous Shenzhou crew from whom they were taking over. The Shenzhou-14 crew, who arrived in early June, will return to Earth after a one-week handover that will establish the station's ability to temporarily sustain six astronauts, another record for China's space program. The Shenzhou-15 mission offered the nation a rare moment to celebrate, at a time of widespread unhappiness over China's zero-COVID policies, while its economy cools amid uncertainties at home and abroad.
Scientists Build 'Baby' Wormhole
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Scientists have long pursued a deeper understanding of wormholes and now appear to be making progress. Researchers announced on Wednesday that they forged two miniscule simulated black holes -- those extraordinarily dense celestial objects with gravity so powerful that not even light can escape -- in a quantum computer and transmitted a message between them through what amounted to a tunnel in space-time. It was a "baby wormhole," according to Caltech physicist Maria Spiropulu, a co-author of the research published in the journal Nature. But scientists are a long way from being able to send people or other living beings through such a portal, she said.
"Experimentally, for me, I will tell you that it's very, very far away. People come to me and they ask me, 'Can you put your dog in the wormhole?' So, no," Spiropulu told reporters during a video briefing. "...That's a huge leap." [...] Spiropulu said the researchers found a quantum system that exhibits key properties of a gravitational wormhole but was small enough to implement on existing quantum hardware. The researchers said no rupture of space and time was created in physical space in the experiment, though a traversable wormhole appeared to have emerged based on quantum information teleported using quantum codes on the quantum processor. "There's a difference between something being possible in principle and possible in reality," added physicist and study co-author Joseph Lykken of Fermilab, America's particle physics and accelerator laboratory. "So don't hold your breath about sending your dog through the wormhole. But you have to start somewhere. And I think to me it's just exciting that we're able to get our hands on this at all."
"It looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck. So that's what we can say at this point -- that we have something that in terms of the properties we look at, it looks like a wormhole," Lykken said.
Cocaine Synthesized In a Tobacco Plant
Longtime Slashdot reader Amiga Trombone shares a report from Phys.Org: A team of researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, working with a colleague from Syngenta Jealott's Hill International Research Centre in the U.K., has developed a way to synthesize cocaine using a tobacco plant. The group describes how they synthesized the notorious drug and possible uses for their process in their paper published in Journal of the American Chemical Society.
In studying the coca plant, the researchers discovered that the cocaine that winds up in its leaves is not produced by elements in the plant converting 4-(1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinyl)-3-oxobutanoic acid to hyoscyamine, as has been thought. They found that it is instead produced by the two enzymes, EnMT4 and EnCYP81AN15. To prove their discovery, the group genetically engineered a tobacco plant to produce the two enzymes in its leaves, which resulted in the production of small amounts of cocaine (with assistance from a substance also produced in the plant called ornithine, which is similar to the precursor in the coca plant). [...] Not mentioned in the paper is the possibility of synthesizing the two enzymes produced by both the coca and engineered tobacco plant as a more direct way to synthesize cocaine.
What ancient underwater food webs can tell us about the future of climate change
What a tangled web we weave. Well, when it comes to the climate crisis' impact on marine food webs, we apparently didn't know the half of it. That's according to a new UNLV study which compared ancient and modern ocean ecosystems in a bid to understand how to make them healthier and more resilient.
Some scientists claim that food webs in the oceans have seen very little change over the last 540 million or so years. However, a team of UNLV researchers has revealed that some ancient food webs were actually very different from today.
The study, published in the latest edition of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, used fossils to rebuild four different marine food webs from the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth over 65 million years ago. The food webs were also compared to a reconstructed food web from a modern Jamaican reef. The result? The four ancient food webs varied greatly from one another, and the youngest one was not the most similar to today's Jamaican coral reefs.
Silent synapses are abundant in the adult brain
MIT neuroscientists have discovered that the adult brain contains millions of "silent synapses" -- immature connections between neurons that remain inactive until they're recruited to help form new memories.
Until now, it was believed that silent synapses were present only during early development, when they help the brain learn the new information that it's exposed to early in life. However, the new MIT study revealed that in adult mice, about 30 percent of all synapses in the brain's cortex are silent.
The existence of these silent synapses may help to explain how the adult brain is able to continually form new memories and learn new things without having to modify existing conventional synapses, the researchers say.
Team recycles previously unrecyclable plastic
PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, is one of the most produced plastics in the United States and the third highest by volume in the world.
PVC makes up a vast amount of plastics we use on a daily basis. Much of the plastic used in hospital equipment -- tubing, blood bags, masks and more -- is PVC, as is most of the piping used in modern plumbing. Window frames, housing trim, siding and flooring are made of, or include, PVC. It coats electrical wiring and comprises materials such as shower curtains, tents, tarps and clothing.
It also has a zero percent recycling rate in the United States.
Now, University of Michigan researchers, led by study first author Danielle Fagnani and principal investigator Anne McNeil, have discovered a way to chemically recycle PVC into usable material. The most fortuitous part of the study? The researchers found a way to use the phthalates in the plasticizers -- one of PVC's most noxious components -- as the mediator for the chemical reaction. Their results are published in the journal Nature Chemistry.
Landslide risk remains years after even a weak earthquake
Satellite observations have revealed that weak seismic ground shaking can trigger powerful landslide acceleration -- even several years after a significant earthquake.
These observations help paint a comprehensive picture of landslide behaviour triggered by seismic activity and provide the tools for real-time monitoring to support rapid rescue operations.
Landslides, a natural geological hazard worldwide, cause serious human and economic losses every year. Between 1998-2017, landslides affected an estimated 4.8 million people worldwide and cause more than 18,000 deaths (estimates from WHO). Landslides can be triggered by earthquakes, volcanoes, rainfall or human activity and the recent landslide that tore across the Italian island of Ischia is an example of a landslide triggered by rainfall.
Fungi in sink drains act as 'reservoirs for mold'
Sinks and P-traps are home to a surprising number of fungal organisms, according research from the University of Reading.
Five University of Reading undergraduate students, and a PhD student, tested more than 250 restroom sinks for fungi, such as black moulds, and relatives of baker's yeast. Each of the sinks had a very similar community of yeasts and moulds, showing that sinks in use in public environments share a role as reservoirs of fungal organisms.
Dr Soon Gweon led the project. He said: "We spend 90% of our time indoors so we are exposed to fungi in our homes and workplaces. For most people, this isn't a problem, but for those who are immunocompromised, certain fungal species can cause serious infections.
Crowding makes time seem to pass more slowly
Testing time perception in an unusually lifelike setting -- a virtual reality ride on a New York City subway train -- an interdisciplinary Cornell research team found that crowding makes time seem to pass more slowly.
As a result, rush-hour commutes on public transit may feel significantly longer than other rides that objectively take the same amount of time.
The research adds to evidence that social context and subjective feelings distort our sense of the passage of time, and may have practical implications for people's willingness to use public transit, particularly after the pandemic.
"It's a new way of thinking about social crowding, showing that it changes how we perceive time," said Saeedeh Sadeghi, M.S. '19, a doctoral student in the field of psychology. "Crowding creates stressful feelings, and that makes a trip feel longer."
Small asteroids are probably young
The impact experiment conducted on the asteroid Ryugu by the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission which took place two years ago resulted in an unexpectedly large crater. With the use of simulations, a team has recently succeeded in gaining new insights from the experiment regarding the formation and development of asteroids.
World’s First Swimming Dinosaur Discovered in Mongolia
For more than 150 million years, amazing dinosaur species in every shape and size filled Earth’s habitats. Long-necked giants, living tanks, razor-toothed carnivores and brightly colored birds proliferated through the Mesozoic world. But for all their diversity and success, it seemed dinosaurs were reluctant to take the plunge. Through two centuries of discovery, no non-avian dinosaur was ever found with adaptations best suited to swimming and diving, even as other forms of reptiles made the transition from land to water. But now, at long last, paleontologists have found a swimming dinosaur.
The newly named species, described Thursday in Communications Biology, was not a saurian giant. The small swimmer was only about a foot long and lived in prehistoric Mongolia about 71 million years ago. Despite being a cousin of sharp-toothed predators such as Velociraptor, the new dinosaur had a very different, streamlined look and long jaws fully of tiny teeth. Seoul National University paleontologist Sungjin Lee and colleagues have named the dinosaur Natovenator polydontus, the “many-toothed swimming hunter.”
An Ancient Asteroid Impact May Have Caused a Megatsunami on Mars
The Viking 1 lander arrived on the Martian surface 46 years ago to investigate the planet. It dropped down into what was thought to be an ancient outflow channel. Now, a team of researchers believes they've found evidence of an ancient megatsunami that swept across the planet billions of years ago, less than 600 miles from where Viking landed. Gizmodo reports: In a new paper published today in Scientific Reports, a team identified a 68-mile-wide impact crater in Mars' northern lowlands that they suspect is leftover from an asteroid strike in the planet's ancient past. "The simulation clearly shows that the megatsunami was enormous, with an initial height of approximately 250 meters, and highly turbulent," said Alexis Rodriguez, a researcher at the Planetary Science Institute and lead author of the paper, in an email to Gizmodo. "Furthermore, our modeling shows some radically different behavior of the megatsunami to what we are accustomed to imagining."
Rodriguez's team studied maps of the Martian surface and found the large crater, now named Pohl. Based on Pohl's position on previously dated rocks, the team believes the crater is about 3.4 billion years old -- an extraordinarily long time ago, shortly after the first signs of life we know of appeared on Earth. According to the research team's models, the asteroid impact could have been so intense that material from the seafloor may have dislodged and been carried in the water's debris flows. Based on the size of the crater, the team believes the impacting asteroid could have been 1.86 miles wide or 6 miles wide, depending on the amount of ground resistance the asteroid encountered. The impact could have released between 500,000 megatons and 13 million megatons of TNT energy (for comparison, the Tsar Bomba nuclear test was about 57 megatons of TNT energy.) "A clear next step is to propose a landing site to investigate these deposits in detail to understand the ocean's evolution and potential habitability," Rodriguez said. "First, we would need a detailed geologic mapping of the area to reconstruct the stratigraphy. Then, we need to connect the surface modification history to specific processes through numerical modeling and analog studies, including identifying possible mud volcanoes and glacier landforms."
Sperm Counts Worldwide Are Plummeting Faster Than We Thought
Five years ago, a study describing a precipitous decline in sperm counts sparked extreme concerns that humanity was on the path to extinction. Now a new study shows that sperm counts have fallen further and the rate of decline is speeding up, raising fears of a looming global fertility crisis. From a report: The initial study, published in July 2017, revealed that sperm counts -- the number of sperm in a single ejaculate -- plummeted by more than 50 percent among men in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand between 1973 and 2011. Since then, a team led by the same researchers has explored what has happened in the last 10 years. In a new meta-analysis, which appeared in the journal Human Reproduction Update, researchers analyzed studies of semen samples published between 2014 and 2019 and added this to their previous data. The newer studies have a more global perspective and involved semen samples from 14,233 men, including some from South and Central America, Africa, and Asia. The upshot: Not only has the decline in total sperm counts continued -- reaching a drop of 62 percent -- but the decline per year has doubled since 2000. The 2017 report also revealed that sperm concentration (the number of sperm per milliliter of semen) dropped by an average of 1.6 percent per year, totaling more than a 52 percent among men in these regions over the previous four decades.
Japanese Scientists Create ‘Smallest Mobile Lifeform’
Researchers from the Osaka City University, the Osaka Metropolitan University and the Bioproduction Research Institute have created a swimming synthetic bacterium from the actively swimming crustacean pathogen Spiroplasma eriocheiris and a non-motile synthetic bacterium.
“Studying the world’s smallest bacterium with the smallest functional motor apparatus could be used to develop movement for cell-mimicking microrobots or protein-based motors,” said lead author Professor Makoto Miyata, a researcher at the Osaka Metropolitan University.
Using genetic engineering, Professor Miyata and colleagues introduced seven proteins — believed to be directly involved in allowing Spiroplasma eriocheiris to swim — into a synthetic bacterium named JCVI-syn3B.
Newly-Discovered Bacterium Species Has Unique Multicellular Characteristics
Biologists have isolated a new type of multicellular bacterium, named Jeongeupia sacculi HS-3, from an underground stream in northern Kyushu Island, Japan. Jeongeupia sacculi HS-3 represents an unusual form of bacterial multicellularity — an organism that can exist in dense, filamentous multicellular structures and clusters of coccobacillus (short rod-shaped) daughter cells. The experiments that mimic the periodic immersion that the new species experiences in its natural cave environment suggest that water immersion plays a role in these life-cycle dynamics.
“The emergence of multicellularity is one of the greatest mysteries of life on Earth,” said Professor Kouhei Mizuno, a researcher at the National Institute of Technology (KOSEN).
“The point is that we already know the superior function and adaptability of multicellularity, but we know almost nothing about its origins.”
Metal Detector Enthusiast Finds Viking-Age Hoard of Silver Objects
A metal detectorist in Norway has unearthed a 1,100-year-old trove of small silver objects: pieces of Arab coins, jewelry and wire.
The Viking-age hoard was found by the metal detectorist Pawel Bednarski at the Kongshaug plateau in the Stjørdal municipality, Norway.
“The first item I found was a small ring that didn’t look particularly interesting at first glance. Then another ring appeared — and then a piece of a bangle,” Bednarski said.
“The objects were covered in clay, so it wasn’t easy to see what they looked like. It was only when I got home and rinsed off one of the bangle pieces that I realized this was an exciting find.”
Miocene-Period Beavers Lived in Large Family Groups, Study Suggests
Paleontologists have examined 142 new specimens, including 160 teeth, of the extinct medium-sized beaver species Steneofiber depereti from the Late Miocene Hammerschmiede locality in the Northern Alpine Foreland Basin, Germany.
Today, beavers are solely represented by the genus Castor, which includes two species: the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) and the Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber).
A much higher diversity of several dozen species in seven genera (Anchitheriomys, Chalicomys, Dipoides, Eucastor? (Schreuderia), Euroxenomys, Steneofiber, and Trogontherium) is known from the European Miocene epoch.
Peanuts and herbs and spices may positively impact gut microbiome
Adding a daily ounce of peanuts or about a teaspoon of herbs and spices to your diet may affect the composition of gut bacteria, an indicator of overall health, according to new research from Penn State. In two separate studies, nutritional scientists studied the effects of small changes to the average American diet and found improvements to the gut microbiome.
The human gut microbiome is a collection of trillions of microorganisms that live inside the intestinal tract. The bacteria there can affect nearly all systems of the body, including metabolism and the building and maintaining of the immune system.
"Research has shown that people who have a lot of different microbes have better health, and a better diet, than those who don't have much bacterial diversity," said Penny M. Kris-Etherton, Evan Pugh University Professor of Nutritional Sciences, Penn State.
Bonus shopping guide: If you’re looking for science-related gifts for kids/grandkids or anybody, here’s some suggestions.
She also makes astronomy-inspired jewelry.
Darren Naish writes about Paleontology.
Riley Black also writes about paleontology in a highly personal way.
