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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Entirely New Class of Life Has Been Found In the Human Digestive System
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: Peering into the jungle of microbes that live within us, researchers have stumbled across what seem to be an entire new class of virus-like objects. "It's insane," says University of North Carolina cell biologist Mark Peifer, who was not involved in the study, told Elizabeth Pennisi at Science Magazine. "The more we look, the more crazy things we see." These mysterious bits of genetic material have no detectable sequences or even structural similarities known to any other biological agents.
So Stanford University biologist Ivan Zheludev and colleagues argue their strange discovery may not be viruses at all, but instead an entirely new group of entities that may help bridge the ancient gap between the simplest genetic molecules and more complex viruses. "Obelisks comprise a class of diverse RNAs that have colonized, and gone unnoticed in, human, and global microbiomes," the researchers write in a preprint paper. Named after the highly-symmetrical, rod-like structures formed by its twisted lengths of RNA, the Obelisks' genetic sequences are only around 1,000 characters (nucleotides) in size. In fact, this brevity is likely one of the reasons we've failed to notice them previously.
In a study that has yet to be peer reviewed, Zheludev and team searched 5.4 million datasets of published genetic sequences and identified almost 30,000 different Obelisks. They appeared in about 10 percent of the human microbiomes the team examined. In one set of data, Obelisks turned up in 50 percent of the patients' oral samples. What's more, different types of Obelisks appear to be present in different areas of our bodies. "[This] supports the notion that Obelisks might include colonists of said human microbiomes," the researchers explain. They managed to isolate one type of host cell from our microbiome, the bacterium Streptococcus sanguinis -- a common human mouth microbe. The Obelisk in these microbes had a loop 1,137 nucleotides long. "While we don't know the 'hosts' of other Obelisks," write Zheludev and colleagues. "it is reasonable to assume that at least a fraction may be present in bacteria." The question of the Obelisks' source aside, all seem to include codes for a new class of protein the researchers have named Oblins. Zheludev and team couldn't identify any impact of the Obelisks on their bacterial hosts, or a means by which they could spread between cells. "These elements might not even be 'viral' in nature and might more closely resemble 'RNA plasmids,'" they conclude.
This research appears in the preprint server bioRxiv.
Scientists Document First-Ever Transmitted Alzheimer's Cases, Tied To No-Longer-Used Medical Procedure
Andrew Joseph, writing for STAT News: There was something odd about these Alzheimer's cases. Part of it was the patients' presentations: Some didn't have the classic symptoms of the condition. But it was also that the patients were in their 40s and 50s, even their 30s, far younger than people who normally develop the disease. They didn't even have the known genetic mutations that can set people on the course for such early-onset Alzheimer's. But this small handful of patients did share a particular history. As children, they had received growth hormone taken from the brains of human cadavers, which used to be a treatment for a number of conditions that caused short stature.
Now, decades later, they were showing signs of Alzheimer's. In the interim, scientists had discovered that that type of hormone treatment they got could unwittingly transfer bits of protein into recipients' brains. In some cases, it had induced a fatal brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD -- a finding that led to the banning of the procedure 40 years ago. It seemed that it wasn't just the proteins behind CJD that could get transferred. As the scientific team treating the patients reported Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, the hormone transplant seeded the beta-amyloid protein that's a hallmark of Alzheimer's in some recipients' brains, which, decades later, propagated into disease-causing plaques. They are the first known cases of transmitted Alzheimer's disease, likely a scientific anomaly yet a finding that adds another wrinkle to ongoing arguments about what truly causes Alzheimer's. "It looks real that some of these people developed early-onset Alzheimer's because of that [hormone treatment]," said Ben Wolozin, an expert on neurodegenerative diseases at Boston University's medical school, who was not involved in the study.
Should You Flush With Toilet Lid Up Or Down? Study Says It Doesn't Matter
Scientists at the University of Arizona decided to investigate whether closing the toilet lid before flushing reduces cross-contamination of bathroom surfaces by airborne bacterial and viral particles via "toilet plumes." The bad news is that putting a lid on it doesn't result in any substantial reduction in contamination, according to their recent paper published in the American Journal of Infection Control. The good news: Adding a disinfectant to the toilet bowl before flushing and using disinfectant dispensers in the tank significantly reduce cross-contamination. [...]
The scientists conducted their experiment with E. coli (as a host bacteria) and coliphage MS2; the latter is not a human or animal pathogen but serves as a useful model. The public toilet used in the experiment was located in a stall in the restroom of an office building. That toilet was tankless, relying on water-line pressure for flushing, with no lid and a U-shaped seat with a gap in the front. The home toilet was a standard siphonic toilet with a tank and lid in a private residence; there was no gap on the center of the seat. Toilet bowls were seeded with MS2 and flushed. After one minute, samples were taken from various restroom surfaces: the top and bottom of toilet seats, the bowl rim, three locations on the floor, and the right and left walls. The team also conducted a similar experiment involving cleaning the bowls with toilet brushes, both with and without Lysol toilet bowl cleaner. All those samples were then tested for MS2 contamination.
The results: both the tops and bottoms of the lidless public toilet seats had more contamination compared to household seats, but otherwise, there was no statistical significance in the degree of contamination between lidless public toilets and household toilets with lids. And the surface contamination did indeed persist even after repeated flushes. The toilet seat was the worst offender with the greatest degree of contamination, which the authors suggest "reflects the airflow that occurs during toilet flushing, i.e., largely around the top and bottom of the toilet seat." That same airflow is likely a factor in spreading the contamination to restroom floors and walls. Perhaps the least surprising finding is that rigorous cleaning with a toilet bowl brush and Lysol reduced the contamination by 99.99 percent compared to cleaning with just a brush. Therefore, "The most effective strategy for reducing restroom cross-contamination associated with toilet flushing include the addition of a disinfectant to the toilet bowl before flushing and the use of disinfectant/detergent dispensers in the toilet tank," the authors concluded. They also recommend regularly disinfecting all restroom surfaces after flushing or cleaning with a toilet brush in health care facilities -- which often have a lot of immunocompromised people -- and if someone in your house has an active infection like norovirus. The findings have been published in the journal American Journal of Infection Control.
Firms Churning Out Fake Papers Are Now Bribing Journal Editors
Nicholas Wise is a fluid dynamics researcher who moonlights as a scientific fraud buster, reports Science magazine. And last June he "was digging around on shady Facebook groups when he came across something he had never seen before."Wise was all too familiar with offers to sell or buy author slots and reviews on scientific papers — the signs of a busy paper mill. Exploiting the growing pressure on scientists worldwide to amass publications even if they lack resources to undertake quality research, these furtive intermediaries by some accounts pump out tens or even hundreds of thousands of articles every year. Many contain made-up data; others are plagiarized or of low quality. Regardless, authors pay to have their names on them, and the mills can make tidy profits.
But what Wise was seeing this time was new. Rather than targeting potential authors and reviewers, someone who called himself Jack Ben, of a firm whose Chinese name translates to Olive Academic, was going for journal editors — offering large sums of cash to these gatekeepers in return for accepting papers for publication. "Sure you will make money from us," Ben promised prospective collaborators in a document linked from the Facebook posts, along with screenshots showing transfers of up to $20,000 or more. In several cases, the recipient's name could be made out through sloppy blurring, as could the titles of two papers. More than 50 journal editors had already signed on, he wrote. There was even an online form for interested editors to fill out…
Publishers and journals, recognizing the threat, have beefed up their research integrity teams and retracted papers, sometimes by the hundreds. They are investing in ways to better spot third-party involvement, such as screening tools meant to flag bogus papers. So cash-rich paper mills have evidently adopted a new tactic: bribing editors and planting their own agents on editorial boards to ensure publication of their manuscripts. An investigation by Science and Retraction Watch, in partnership with Wise and other industry experts, identified several paper mills and more than 30 editors of reputable journals who appear to be involved in this type of activity. Many were guest editors of special issues, which have been flagged in the past as particularly vulnerable to abuse because they are edited separately from the regular journal. But several were regular editors or members of journal editorial boards. And this is likely just the tip of the iceberg.
The spokesperson for one journal publisher tells Science that its editors are receiving bribe offers every week.
Bright galaxies put dark matter to the test
The earliest galaxies are thought to have formed as the gravitational pull of dark matter, which has been impossible to study directly, slowly drew in enough hydrogen and helium to ignite stars. But astrophysicists now show that after the Big Bang, hydrogen and helium gas bounced at supersonic speeds off dense, slowly moving clumps of cold dark matter. When the gas fell back in millennia later, stars formed all at once, creating small, exceptionally bright galaxies. If models of cold dark matter are correct, the James Webb Space Telescope should be able to find patches of bright galaxies in the early universe, potentially offering the first effective test for theories about dark matter. If it doesn't, scientists have to go back to the drawing board with dark matter.
Astronomers spot 18 black holes gobbling up nearby stars
Scientists have identified 18 new tidal disruption events (TDEs) -- extreme instances when a nearby star is tidally drawn into a black hole and ripped to shreds. The detections more than double the number of known TDEs in the nearby universe.
Star-shredding black holes are everywhere in the sky if you just know how to look for them. That's one message from a new study by MIT scientists, appearing today in the Astrophysical Journal.
Researchers spying for signs of life among exoplanet atmospheres
The next generation of advanced telescopes could sharpen the hunt for potential extraterrestrial life by closely scrutinizing the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets, new research suggests.
The next generation of advanced telescopes could sharpen the hunt for potential extraterrestrial life by closely scrutinizing the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets, new research suggests.
Published recently in The Astronomical Journal, a new paper details how a team of astronomers from The Ohio State University examined upcoming telescopes' ability to detect chemical traces of oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane and water on 10 rocky exoplanets. These elements are biosignatures also found in Earth's atmosphere that can provide key scientific evidence of life.
Neptune-like exoplanets can be cloudy or clear
The study of "exoplanets," the sci-fi-sounding name for all planets in the cosmos beyond our own solar system, is a pretty new field. Mainly, exoplanet researchers like those in the ExoLab at the University of Kansas use data from space-borne telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope and Webb Space Telescope. Whenever news headlines offer findings of "Earth-like" planets or planets with the potential to support humanity, they're talking about exoplanets within our own Milky Way.
Jonathan Brande, a doctoral candidate in the ExoLab at the University of Kansas, has just published findings in the open-access scientific journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters showing new atmospheric detail in a set of 15 exoplanets similar to Neptune. While none could support humanity, a better understanding of their behavior might help us to understand why we don't have a small Neptune, while most solar systems seem to feature a planet of this class.
Source rocks of the first real continents
Geoscientists have uncovered a missing link in the enigmatic story of how the continents developed -- a revised origin story that doesn't require the start of plate tectonics or any external factor to explain their formation. Instead, the findings published last week in Nature Communications, rely solely on internal geological forces that occurred within oceanic plateaus that formed during the first few hundred million years of Earth's history.
A major hurdle in understanding how the continents formed during the Archean Eon (four to 2.5 billion years ago) has been identifying the building blocks of Earth's early crust.
Much of the "new" Archean crust formed during this period comprised a very distinct association of three types of granitoid rocks -- tonalite, trondhjemite and granodiorite (TTG).
Rare 3D fossils show that some early trees had forms unlike any you've ever seen
In the fossil record, trees typically are preserved with only their trunks. They don't usually include any leaves to show what their canopies and overall forms may have looked like. But now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on February 2 describe fossilized trees from New Brunswick, Canada with a surprising and unique three-dimensional crown shape.
"The way in which this tree produced hugely long leaves around its spindly trunk, and the sheer number over a short length of trunk, is startling," says Robert Gastaldo of Colby College in Waterville, Maine.
The forms taken by these 350-million-year-old trees look something like a fern or palm, even though palms didn't arise until 300 million years later, he explains.
Neanderthals and humans lived side by side in Northern Europe 45,000 years ago
A genetic analysis of bone fragments unearthed at an archaeological site in central Germany shows conclusively that modern humans -- Homo sapiens -- had already reached Northern Europe 45,000 years ago, overlapping with Neanderthals for several thousand years before the latter went extinct.
The findings establish that the site near Ranis, Germany, which is known for its finely flaked, leaf-shaped stone tool blades, is among the oldest confirmed sites of modern human Stone Age culture in north central and northwestern Europe.
The evidence that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis lived side by side is consistent with genomic evidence that the two species occasionally interbred. It also feeds the suspicion that the invasion of Europe and Asia by modern humans some 50,000 years ago helped drive Neanderthals, which had occupied the area for more than 500,000 years, to extinction.
Clown anemonefish seem to be counting bars and laying down the law
We often think of fish as carefree swimmers in the ocean, reacting to the world around them without much forethought. However, new research from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) suggests that our marine cousins may be more cognizant than we credit them for.
By observing how a colony of clown anemonefish (Amphiprion ocellaris) -- the species of the titular character in Finding Nemo -- reacts to intruders in their sea anemone home, OIST researchers have found that the fish recognize different anemonefish species based on the number of white bars on their bodies.
'Tiny tornadoes' around leaves spread deadly plant pathogens
A new study led by Cornell University is the first to analyze plant spore dispersion at its source, where rain droplets shake flexible leaves to initially disperse pathogens.
When raindrops hit a leaf of a wheat plant infected with rust -- a pathogenic spore that has decimated crops globally -- the leaf flutters, creating tiny swirling vortices of air that disperse the spores, where they could end up infecting healthy plants.
First-ever sighting of a live newborn great white
Great whites, the largest predatory sharks in the world with the most fatal attacks on humans, are tough to imagine as newborn babies. That is partially because no one has seen one in the wild, it seems, until now.
Wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and UC Riverside biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes were scanning the waters for sharks on July 9, 2023, near Santa Barbara on California's central coast.
That day, something exciting appeared on the viewfinder of Gauna's drone camera.
Did dementia exist in ancient Greek and Rome?
You might think age-related dementia has been with us all along, stretching back to the ancient world.
But a new analysis of classical Greek and Roman medical texts suggests that severe memory loss -- occurring at epidemic levels today -- was extremely rare 2,000 to 2,500 years ago, in the time of Aristotle, Galen and Pliny the Elder.
The USC-led research, published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, bolsters the idea that Alzheimer's disease and related dementias are diseases of modern environments and lifestyles, with sedentary behavior and exposure to air pollution largely to blame.
Gene-editing offers hope for people with hereditary disorder
A group of patients with a hereditary disorder have had their lives transformed by a single treatment of a breakthrough gene-editing therapy, according to the lead researcher.
The patients from New Zealand, the Netherlands and the UK have hereditary angioedema, a genetic disorder characterised by severe, painful and unpredictable swelling attacks.
These interfere with daily life and can affect airways and prove fatal.
Navigating the 'big little leap' to kindergarten
No matter how well children are prepared for kindergarten, their transition to the classroom during the first few months plays a key role in their success, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that kids who made a more successful transition in the first 10-14 weeks of kindergarten scored higher than others on tests of academic and social-behavioral skills at the end of the school year.
Important parts of the transition -- what the researchers called a "big little leap" -- included making new friends, learning to work with others and adapting to new academic demands.
Increased temperature difference between day and night can affect all life on earth
Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, in Sweden, have discovered a change in what scientists already knew about global warming dynamics. It had been widely accepted since the 1950s that global temperature rises were not consistent throughout the day and night, with greater nighttime warming being observed. However, the recent study reveals a shift in dynamics: with greater daytime warming taking place since the 1990s. This shift means that the temperature difference between day and night is widening, potentially affecting all life on Earth.
The rise in the global average surface temperature is one of the key characteristics of human-induced climate change.
However, the temperature increase is not uniform throughout the day and night, and nighttime temperatures have increased at a faster pace than daytime temperatures in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Why are people climate change deniers?
Do climate change deniers bend the facts to avoid having to modify their environmentally harmful behavior? Researchers from the University of Bonn and the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) ran an online experiment involving 4,000 US adults, and found no evidence to support this idea. The authors of the study were themselves surprised by the results. Whether they are good or bad news for the fight against global heating remains to be seen. The study is being published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
A surprisingly large number of people still downplay the impact of climate change or deny that it is primarily a product of human activity.
But why? One hypothesis is that these misconceptions are rooted in a specific form of self-deception, namely that people simply find it easier to live with their own climate failings if they do not believe that things will actually get all that bad.
Education and information can increase the acceptance of climate policies
An important question for policymakers worldwide is how to make climate and environmental policies acceptable among the populations. A new study sheds light on the preferences in five East African countries. The study shows, among others, that education and information about how revenues from carbon taxes are used are important factors.
Making climate policies acceptable to the public is crucial to make them effective and to avoid resistance and protests.
Research has, until now, focused on high-income countries. This new study, however, is based on a survey with 4,766 respondents in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.
How a walk in nature restores attention
New research from University of Utah psychology researchers is helping prove what American authors John Muir and Henry David Thoreau tried to teach more than 150 years ago: Time spent in nature is good for the heart and soul.
Amy McDonnell and David Strayer are showing it is good for your brain, too. Their latest research, conducted at the university's Red Butte Garden, uses electroencephalography (EEG), which records electrical activity in the brain with small discs attached to the scalp, to measure participants' attentional capacity.
"A walk in nature enhances certain executive control processes in the brain above and beyond the benefits associated with exercise," concludes the study that appeared Tuesday in Scientific Reports, among the world's most cited scientific journals. The paper contributes to growing body of scientific literature on the how natural settings contribute to a person's physical and mental health. The university itself has recently established a new research group, Nature and Human Health Utah, that explores these issues and propose solutions for bridging the human-nature divide.