Welcome to Overnight News Digest- Saturday Science. Since 2007 the OND has been 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.
Topics in tonight’s digest include:
- Deep-sea mining — right or wrong?
- NASA’s programmed collision with Dimorphos spawned a swarm of smaller boulders
- Using ‘recycled plastic’ in construction materials not such a great idea
- JWST reveals distorted galaxies
- The moment a predator attacked a sloth…and lost!
- In a stone-age community, women moved and men stayed with their relatives
- New drugs could prolong life by 30%
- This Black zoologist’s insights were a century ahead of their time
- Chernobyl’s post-invasion radiation strikes appear to have been manipulated
- The case for “dusking”
The Guardian
by Karen McVeigh
James Cameron supports deep-sea mining. Scientists say it’s a huge risk. Who’s right?
In an exclusive interview with Guardian Seascape last Saturday, James Cameron argued that it is “less wrong” to mine the deep sea than mining on land. “I’ve seen an awful lot of seafloor,” said the Titanic director and accomplished deep-sea explorer. “And while there are some amazing creatures, they tend to be clustered in small habitats. What you mostly have is miles and miles of nothing but clay.”
His view, which he conceded made him “something of an outlier”, is disputed by scientists and environmentalists who claim the opposite: that the ocean floor is a richer and more biodiverse place than previously thought, with new species uncovered each time they look. Deep-sea mining, said one, would result in “extinction on a vast timescale”.
Who is right? That is a key issue at this week’s assembly meeting of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a quasi-UN body of 168 member states tasked with regulating deep-sea mining.
The main target of deep sea-mining firms is a particular area of the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), which is scattered with rocks called polymetallic nodules. They are estimated to contain more cobalt and nickel – key ingredients in electric batteries – than all known land deposits.
Mining firms such as the Metals Company argue that there is a global benefit to making these minerals available more cheaply, to hasten the transition to green energy and mitigate the climate emergency.
In the past three months, however, researchers have discovered the CCZ contains far greater biodiversity than previously thought. One recent paper suggested there were more than 5,000 species new to science. Scientists say not enough is known about them to gauge the effect of mining – or whether it might even wipe them out for ever.
Axios
by Jacob Knutsen
Study: NASA's asteroid deflection test spawned a swarm of space boulders
When NASA slammed a refrigerator-sized spacecraft into an asteroid last year, the impact spawned a swarm of at least 37 boulders that are now coursing through space, according to a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
[…]
Reality check: Dimorphos, the targeted asteroid that's around 6.8 million miles from the planet, and the boulders ejected during the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) have never threatened Earth, and NASA chose the asteroid for that reason.
Yes, but: But if an asteroid on course with Earth was targeted, the ejected debris from the impact could go on to make contact with the Earth, its atmosphere or satellites.
Grist
by Joseph Winters
Using ‘recycled plastic’ in construction materials may not be a great idea after all
Last month, the American Chemistry Council, a petrochemical industry trade group, sent out a newsletter highlighting a major new report on what it presented as a promising solution to the plastic pollution crisis: using “recycled” plastic in construction materials. At first blush, it might seem like a pretty good idea — shred discarded plastic into tiny pieces and you can reprocess it into everything from roads and bridges to railroad ties. Many test projects have been completed in recent years, with proponents touting them as a convenient way to divert plastic waste from landfills while also making infrastructure lighter, more rot-resistant, or, ostensibly, more durable.
“As our nation sets about rebuilding our infrastructure and restoring our resilience, plastic will play an outsized role,” the American Chemistry Council, or ACC, a petrochemical industry trade group, says on one of its websites.
But independent experts tell a much more complicated story, suggesting that most applications involving plastic waste in infrastructure are not ready for prime time. In recent years, several reports and literature reviews have highlighted the unknown health and environmental impacts of repurposing plastic into construction materials. They’ve also warned that post-consumer plastic isn’t desirable for use in many types of infrastructure — and that diverting plastic into construction is unlikely to make much of a dent in the massive tide of plastic waste that the developed world produces. To the contrary, adding used plastic to construction materials could even incentivize more plastic production.
Futurity
by Daniel Stolte
JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE SNAPS PIC OF WEIRD GALAXIES
A new image taken with the James Webb Space Telescope reveals a variety of unusual, distorted galaxies in the distant universe, magnified by a “gravitational lens.”
The gravitational lens is a massive galaxy cluster in the line of sight between the space telescope and the objects behind it.
The new image of this galaxy cluster, known as El Gordo (Spanish for The Big One), shows 62 galaxies behind the cluster that were only hinted at in previous Hubble Space Telescope images.
Science Alert
by David Nield
Rare Footage Captures The Moment a Predator Attacked a Sloth … And Lost
Traditionally known for being slow-moving tree-dwellers, it would be to easy to assume a sloth would come out second best with any predator while on the ground.
A camera trap out in the Amazonian wilderness provided a rare front-row seat at just such a brawl, and the footage is surprising, showing a sloth actually fighting off and escaping an ocelot interrupting its daytime snacking.
The dramatic footage was filmed at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The Linnaeus's two-toed sloth (Choloepus didactylus) was visiting a boggy area known as a mineral lick, or saladero, when it was attacked.
Those visits can be dangerous, as these video clips prove. In the clips below, the feeding sloth repels the ocelot's (Leopardus pardalis) attack with some quick smart jabs, buying distance so it can make a relatively rapid escape along a log crossing the mineral lick.
Scientific American
by Karen Schlott
In a Stone Age Community, Women Moved While Men Stayed with Family
In the sixth millennium B.C.E. the first farmers reached Western Europe. Who were these people, how did they live, and what was their family structure like? Some of these questions may now be answerable, thanks to gene and isotope analyses in combination with archaeological observations. By studying the remains of more than 100 dead individuals buried between 4850 and 4500 B.C.E. at the Gurgy “Les Noisats” cemetery in central France, a team of researchers has reconstructed two family trees spanning several generations.
“This was quite a journey for all of us,” says senior author Wolfgang Haak, a molecular anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “We were actually quite surprised by a lot of things that we discovered.”
The researchers who investigated remains at Gurgy, led by Maïté Rivollat, then at the University of Bordeaux in France, published their findings in the journal Nature. Among the insights they made was the discovery that men in these Neolithic families lived and married near their home, while women came from communities elsewhere. Although archaeologists have observed that pattern at other sites, the findings at Gurgy present a highly detailed picture of multiple generations in a Stone Age community.
The Brighter Side
by Staff
Breakthrough new drugs could prolong life by 30%, study finds
Though the quest for an eternal life elixir may remain elusive, scientists continue to uncover methods to prolong human lifespans. In the future, guarding our cells against aging could be as simple as ingesting a tablet. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have discovered that senolytic drugs can enhance the production of a crucial protein, potentially shielding the elderly from the effects of aging and various illnesses. Their findings, featured in eBioMedicine, demonstrate this through experiments on mice and humans.
The senolytics developed at the Mayo Clinic, when administered, effectively purge the bloodstream of senescent or "zombie" cells. These cells are implicated in numerous diseases and detrimental aging aspects. The study reveals that the elimination of senescent cells leads to a significant increase in the production of a protective protein known as a-klotho.
Smithsonian Magazine
by Alla Katsnelson
This Pioneering Black Zoologist’s Insights Were a Century Ahead of Their Time
Our understanding of animal minds is undergoing a remarkable transformation. Just three decades ago, the idea that a broad array of creatures have individual personalities was highly suspect in the eyes of serious animal scientists—as were such seemingly fanciful notions as fish feeling pain, bees appreciating playtime and cockatoos having culture.
Today, though, scientists are rethinking the very definition of what it means to be sentient and seeing capacity for complex cognition and subjective experience in a great variety of creatures—even if their inner worlds differ greatly from our own.
Such discoveries are thrilling, but they probably wouldn’t have surprised Charles Henry Turner, who died a century ago, in 1923. An American zoologist and comparative psychologist, he was one of the first scientists to systematically probe complex cognition in animals considered least likely to possess it. Turner primarily studied arthropods such as spiders and bees, closely observing them and setting up trailblazing experiments that hinted at cognitive abilities more complex than most scientists at the time suspected. Turner also explored differences in how individuals within a species behaved—a precursor of research today on what some scientists refer to as personality.
Wired, UK
by Kim Zetter
The Mystery of Chernobyl’s Post-Invasion Radiation Spikes
Soon after Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, sensors in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone reported radiation spikes. A researcher now believes he’s found evidence the data was manipulated.
When Russian troops seized control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant last year, following the invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky called it “a declaration of war” against Europe. Others warned that Russia’s reckless seizure of the plant could trigger a nuclear disaster to rival Chernobyl’s 1986 radiological accident.
Their fears seemed well-founded when, on the night of the invasion, sensors began reporting sudden spikes in radiation levels in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ)—a 1,000-square-mile forested zone around the plant where radioactive soil from the 1986 disaster had settled.
Forty-two sensors recorded spikes that night and the next morning—some at levels hundreds of times higher than normal. The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU) eased concerns that nuclear material had leaked from the plant, however, when it said the spikes were likely due to “resuspension” of radioactive soil stirred up by Russian military vehicles—an explanation widely accepted by many nuclear experts and the media.
But a group of environmental radiation experts disputes this conclusion. In a paper published in June by the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, they detail why there’s no way soil resuspension could have caused the spikes and speculate that interference from an electronic warfare weapon was behind the surge instead.
Big Think
by Marjolijn van Heemstra
The case for “dusking”: In a world of light and noise, embracing the dark can be healing
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The practice of "dusking" entails mindful observation of the transition from day to night, serving as a respite from today's hyper-productive society.
- It is an exercise in mindfulness, offering a break from consumption and encouraging contemplation.
- Dusking can help us reconnect with nature, appreciate the subtleties of twilight, and understand the cyclical processes of our existence.
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the science news of the day. Please share your articles and stories in the comments.