The Guardian
Hums, honks, and boops? That’s just fish chatting about sex and food
The primordial deep, it turns out, is a very chatty place. In a new study published in the journal Ichthyology & Herpetology, Cornell University researchers reveal that fish rely on acoustic communication far more than previously thought.
People have long known that fish make sounds; in his History of Animals, Aristotle describes the “noises and squeaks” fish produce, sometimes by grinding their own bones against each other in a mechanism called stridulation. Yet for decades, a lack of adequate underwater microphones and recording technology has kept scientists in the dark about just how many species of fish make noises, and whether those noises are the incidental rumblings of speechless creatures, or actually constitute communication.
Now, researchers have learned that sounds are “a major mode of communication among fish, rather than just limited to a few oddballs”, says lead author Aaron Rice, a researcher at the K Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Not only is acoustic communication widespread among fish, but Rice and his team’s analysis of sound-producing physical characteristics (like certain swim bladder musculature) across species suggests that ancient sturgeons first started chatting aloud 155m years ago, right around the same time some tetrapods, like birds and mammals, began speaking up, too.
Nature
How light is a neutrino? The answer is closer than ever
Physicists have taken a step towards nailing down the mass of the neutrino, perhaps the most mysterious of all elementary particles.
The team at the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment in Germany reports that neutrinos have a maximum mass of 0.8 electron volts. Researchers have long had indirect evidence that the particles should be lighter than 1 eV, but this is the first time that this has been shown in a direct measurement. The results were reported on 14 February in Nature Physics1.
The previous upper limit of 1.1 eV was reported by KATRIN in 20192. The experiment has so far been able to put only an upper bound on the mass. But researchers say that it might be able to make a definite measurement once it finishes collecting data in 2024, and is the only experiment in the world capable of doing this.
Gizmodo
King Tut's Meteor Blade Has a Mystery Origin Story
A team of researchers recently X-ray scanned an iron dagger found in the tomb of Tutankhamun to figure out how the object, the metal of which came from a meteorite, was made. They suspect the dagger was created through low-temperature forging—but they don’t think it was crafted in Egypt.
When archaeologists entered Tutankhamun’s burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings in the 1920s, they found a foot-long dagger among the splendor entombed with the pharaoh. Its blade was made of iron, a perplexing discovery considering the Iron Age didn’t kick off until a century after Tut’s death. […]
A 2016 study affirmed the likely meteoritic origin of the pharaoh’s iron, but questions remained about the kind of meteorite it came from and how it was forged. That’s where the new study comes in, published this month in Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
CNN
Antarctica will likely set an alarming new record this year, new data shows
As surging global temperatures alter the landscape of the Arctic, scientists are observing what’s shaping up to be a new record at the other end of the globe.
Preliminary data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center suggests Antarctica will likely set a record this year for the lowest sea ice extent – the area of ocean covered by sea ice. On Wednesday, sea ice around the continent dropped lower than the previous record minimum set in March 2017.
“What’s going on in the Antarctic is an extreme event,” Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder and lead scientist at NSIDC, told CNN. “But we’ve been through this a bit.”
Mongabay
Study suggests tropical forests can regenerate naturally — if we let them
Tropical rainforests are more resilient than previously thought, a new study shows, with a high capacity for natural regeneration in areas that are only slightly degraded adjacent to patches of native vegetation.
In the space of less than 20 years, these patches of secondary forest can regain important characteristics and functions of the original forest, such as soil fertility and a significant amount of carbon stock.
But enabling this low-cost regeneration and supporting restoration and conservation projects requires three things: understanding each area’s different characteristics; halting the deforestation; and keeping nearby healthy primary forests standing.
These were the conclusions of the unprecedented study carried out by 2ndFOR, a collaborative research network focusing on secondary forests, which involves more than 100 scientists in 18 countries. The study was published at the end of 2021 in the journal Science.
AP News
Nearly half of US bald eagles suffer lead poisoning
America’s national bird is more beleaguered than previously believed, with nearly half of bald eagles tested across the U.S. showing signs of chronic lead exposure, according to a study published Thursday.
While the bald eagle population has rebounded from the brink of extinction since the U.S. banned the pesticide DDT in 1972, harmful levels of toxic lead were found in the bones of 46% of bald eagles sampled in 38 states from California to Florida, researchers reported in the journal Science.
Similar rates of lead exposure were found in golden eagles, which scientists say means the raptors likely consumed carrion or prey contaminated by lead from ammunition or fishing tackle.
Reuters
U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds
Corn-based ethanol, which for years has been mixed in huge quantities into gasoline sold at U.S. pumps, is likely a much bigger contributor to global warming than straight gasoline, according to a study published Monday.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradicts previous research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) showing ethanol and other biofuels to be relatively green.
President Joe Biden's administration is reviewing policies on biofuels as part of a broader effort to decarbonize the U.S. economy by 2050 to fight climate change.
“Corn ethanol is not a climate-friendly fuel,” said Dr. Tyler Lark, assistant scientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and lead author of the study.
Science
‘Staggering’ study reveals 46% of unemployed U.S. men have criminal convictions
One in three adults in the United States has been arrested at least once, a strikingly high number compared with many other countries. Now, a new study reveals one of the implications of that figure: Nearly half of unemployed U.S. men have criminal convictions, which makes it harder to get a job, according to an analysis of survey data of men ages 30 to 38.
The findings suggest having a criminal justice history is pushing many men to the sidelines of the job market, says sociologist Sarah Esther Lageson of Rutgers University, Newark, who was not involved in the study. […]
The work began when Amy Solomon, then head of the Federal Interagency Reentry Council, was leading U.S. efforts to help former prisoners re-enter society. She knew previous research had shown having a criminal record—from arrest to conviction to incarceration—makes it harder to get a job. Employers may hesitate to hire applicants with a criminal record for fear they will reoffend, or for potential negligent hire lawsuits. But Solomon couldn’t figure out just how many of the unemployed had criminal records. She turned to Shawn Bushway, an economist and criminologist at RAND Corporation with a track record of finding answers to hard questions about statistics in criminal justice. “No one in criminology [had ever] asked … that question,” he says.
Phys.org
US sea levels to rise at a faster pace than in past 100 years
Oceans along the U.S. coastline will rise faster within the next three decades than they did in the past 100 years, bringing more flooding to coastal cities such as New York and Miami, according to the latest projections.
Sea levels are expected to rise as much as 12 inches (30 centimeters) by 2050, according to a report led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. While the amounts vary according to region, the inundation will lead to more coastal flooding and make tidal and storm surge more severe, the multi-agency report said.
"Sea levels are continuing to rise at a very alarming rate," Bill Nelson, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. "And it's endangering communities around the world."
The New York Times
The Paradox of the Lizard Tail, Solved
When choosing between life and limb, many animals willingly sacrifice the limb. The ability to drop appendages is known as autotomy, or self-amputation. When backed into a corner, spiders let go of legs, crabs drop claws and some small rodents shed clumps of skin. Some sea slugs will even decapitate themselves to rid themselves of their parasite-infested bodies.
But lizards may be the best-known users of autotomy. To evade predators, many lizards ditch their still-wiggling tails. This behavior confounds the predator, buying the rest of the lizard time to scurry away. While there are drawbacks to losing a tail — they come in handy for maneuvering, impressing mates and storing fat — it beats being eaten. Many lizards are even capable of regenerating lost tails.
Scientists have studied this anti-predator behavior meticulously, but the structures that make it work remain puzzling. If a lizard can shed its tail in an instant, what keeps it attached in non-life-threatening situations?
The Atlantic
We’re Entering the Control Phase of the Pandemic
And just like that, the national attitude on COVID is flipping like a light switch… Two years into the pandemic, many Americans are ready to declare the crisis chapter of COVID-19 over, and move on to the next.
We can debate ad nauseam whether these rollbacks are premature. What’s far clearer is this: We’ve been at similar junctures before—at the end of the very first surge, again in the pre-Delta downslope. Each time, the virus has come roaring back. It is not done with us. Which means that we cannot be done with it.
What’s up ahead is not COVID’s end, but the start of our control phase, in which we invest in measures to shrink the virus’s burden to a more manageable size. “This is the larger, longer game we’re having to think about,” Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told me.
The Washington Post
Underground carbon-dioxide storage idea is cracked. And that’s actually good.
[…] In new experiments with carbon mineralization — the process of removing carbon dioxide from the air and storing it in rocks — researchers at Columbia University are learning more about the technique’s viability. And fissures are part of that process.
The technique holds promise for a warming world. Since carbon dioxide can be turned into minerals, scientists say humans could use that process to sequester greenhouse gases underground and prevent them from hanging out in the atmosphere, where they fuel global warming and climate change.
It involves dissolving carbon dioxide in water and placing it in contact with rocks, where it transforms into a mineral. Although the technique shows promise, the rocks present a dilemma of their own. The process of mineralization can make rocks less permeable and limit the amount of carbon they store.
Deutsche Welle
Lingering colonial legacies: The study of skin is too white
The historical lack of racial representation in dermatology textbooks isn't just a problem in countries with majority white populations, but across the globe.
When Seye Abimbola was training to become a doctor in Nigeria in the early 2000s, all the images in his textbooks featured white skin. Most of his textbooks came from the US or the UK, where Caucasian medical illustrations are the norm.
When it came to dermatology, Abimbola couldn't translate what he saw on the page to his reality. Nearly the entire population of Nigeria is Black, he and his classmates were Black, and his teachers were Black.
"I went and bought an Indian textbook, because I just couldn't transfer in my head what a lesion looked like in white skin [to] what it looked like in black skin…there was just no reference point," Abimbola told DW.
"But it was easier with the Indian textbook. I didn't think much of it at the time," he added.
NPR News
Koalas are now officially an endangered species in parts of eastern Australia
Government officials have declared koalas endangered across much of eastern Australia, citing the impacts of drought, bush fires and habitat loss on the country's dwindling marsupial population. But some conservation groups said the action is too little, too late.
Environment Minister Sussan Ley announced on Friday that she is increasing protection for koalas in New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory by changing their status from vulnerable to endangered. The government is also providing millions of dollars in conservation funding and seeking states' approval for a national recovery plan, she said. […]
Without urgent government intervention, New South Wales' koalas would become extinct by 2050, a parliamentary inquiry released in June 2020 found.
Outdoor Life
DNA From Elephant Tusks is Exposing Ivory Poachers
Forensic experts are now using DNA from elephant tusks to learn more about the criminal networks that are poaching and smuggling ivory. A research team—made up of scientists with the Center for Environmental Forensic Science and agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—analyzed DNA from 4,320 elephant tusks that were seized between 2002 and 2019. One of the team’s findings, which were published in Nature Human Behavior on Feb. 14, revealed that three major criminal groups are responsible for most of Africa’s illegal ivory trade.
Samuel Wasser, the director of the Center for Environmental Forensic Science and one of the co-authors of the recently published paper, has spent the last two decades pioneering forensic techniques that analyze DNA from elephant tusks. By 2004, Wasser and his colleagues had developed a technique that compares DNA from trafficked elephant tusks with scat samples in order to pinpoint where the tusks were illegally harvested. And in 2018, Wasser’s team analyzed tusks that were seized from different shipments and found that many of these individual tusks came from the same elephants. This was an important discovery, as it helped reveal that three main trafficking groups based in Kenya, Uganda, and Togo were behind most of the country’s largest ivory shipments.
The Conversation
What drives sea level rise? US report warns of 1-foot rise within three decades and more frequent flooding
Sea levels are rising, and that will bring profound flood risks to large parts of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts over the next three decades.
A new report led by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warns that the U.S. should prepare for 10-12 inches of relative sea level rise on average in the next 30 years. The rise is due to both sinking land and global warming. And given the greenhouse emissions released so far, the country is unlikely to be able to avoid it. […]
The higher ocean will also bring seawater farther inland. By the end of the century, an average of 2 feet of sea level rise or more is likely, depending on how much the world its cuts greenhouse gas emissions.
Popular Science
Rare ‘upside-down stars’ are shrouded in the remains of cannibalized suns
White dwarf stars can collide to create a new type of strange, “upside-down” star, according to two new studies published this week.
A team of astronomers identified two small, bright stars called hot subdwarfs that had an as-of-yet unseen makeup. Another research group found a mechanism to explain how these kinds of stars could have formed.
The two strange stars were “the first of their kind” to be identified and must be extremely rare, says Marcelo Miller Bertolami, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics in La Plata, Argentina, who led the theoretical study on how such stars might form, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomy Society.
BBC News
Natural History Museum confirms stick insect is male and female
A pet stick insect surprised its owner when she noticed it was half male and half female - known as a gynandromorph.
Charlie, a green bean stick insect, showed its true colours after it shed its skin at home in Suffolk to reveal the bright green body of a female and brown wings of a male.
Experts at the Natural History Museum confirmed it was the "first reported gynandromorph" in that species.
Charlie was also a "particularly impressive specimen", they said.
The Seattle Times
Plant fossils found in San Juan Islands like ‘finding a penguin in North America’
Fossilized plants discovered in the San Juan Islands have some paleobotanists scratching their heads.
The mystery centers on two fossilized winged fruits discovered by fossil hunters on Sucia Island. The island is one of the northernmost San Juan Islands and is accessible only by watercraft. Now, scientists are wondering how the fossils ended up there.
Both fossils are from a genus previously believed to be limited to the Southern Hemisphere during the Cretaceous period. New research published in January in the journal New Phytologist is prompting scientists to rethink how plants may have been dispersed over 66 million years ago.
“In some ways this is like finding a penguin in North America,” said Brian Atkinson, a co-author of the research report and an assistant professor at the University of Kansas.
Sky News
Hippos descended from Pablo Escobar's herd to be declared invasive species
Hippos descended from a herd illegally imported by Pablo Escobar are to be declared an invasive species in Colombia.
Within weeks, the Colombian government is planning to sign a declaration that will force officials to come up with a plan for how to control the hippopotamus population.
The animals were brought into the country by the infamous drug lord in the 1980s and kept on his sprawling estate, the Hacienda Napoles. […]
There are now around 130 of them and projections show there could be 400 in the next eight years.
Live Science
Star twinkles 18 times to form hexagonal pattern in new James Webb telescope image
The James Webb Space Telescope finished the first major stage in its long process of aligning the observatory's 18-segmented primary mirror.
A single star that the observatory looked at was deliberately rendered 18 times into a hexagonal shape. Eventually, those 18 images will perfectly align into a single, sharp focus, but the interim result portrays a star repeated perfectly in a hexagonal pattern reminiscent of a stunning celestial snowflake.
"The resulting image shows that the team has moved each of Webb’s 18 primary mirror segments to bring 18 unfocused copies of a single star into a planned hexagonal formation," NASA officials wrote in a blog post Friday (Feb. 18).
USA Today
'Armless' but deadly: Is dinosaur fossil discovered in Argentina an entirely new species?
A group of paleontologists in Argentina uncovered the skull of an "unusual" dinosaur that was essentially "armless" but was a fearsome, ferocious animal. […]
Abelisaurids fossils have been found throughout the world in places like Africa, India and parts of South America, but paleontologists are particularly interested in abelisaurids fossils discovered in in northern Argentina; a region where remains had never been found. This suggests it is a new type of abelisaurids and the group of dinosaurs lived a wide range of ecosystems. The findings were published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology on Thursday.
SciTechDaily
Brains of Cosmonauts “Rewired” During Space Missions
A new study published in Frontiers in Neural Circuits is the first to analyze the structural connectivity changes that happen in the brain after long-duration spaceflight. The results show significant microstructural changes in several white matter tracts such as the sensorimotor tracts. The study can form a basis for future research into the full scope of brain changes during human space exploration. […]
The researchers found proof of the concept of ‘the learned brain’; in other words, the level of neuroplasticity the brain has to adapt to spaceflight. “We found changes in the neural connections between several motor areas of the brain,” said first author Andrei Doroshin, of Drexel University. “Motor areas are brain centers where commands for movements are initiated. In weightlessness, an astronaut needs to adapt his or her movement strategies drastically, compared to Earth. Our study shows that their brain is rewired, so to speak.”
Space.com
Scientists spot 10,000th medium near-Earth asteroid in planetary defense milestone
Scientists watching the skies for asteroids that may threaten Earth have hit a new milestone, spotting the 10,000th sizable space rock that circles the sun near Earth's orbit.
The detection comes as part of NASA's ongoing planetary defense work, which discovers and monitors space rocks in the inner solar system to assure that no large asteroid is on course to impact Earth. (To date, scientists don't know of any space rocks that pose a serious threat to Earth in the near future.)
Although planetary defense experts identify every asteroid they can, they are particularly concerned about those at least 460 feet (140 meters) wide, which can cause serious regional damage in an impact scenario. And as of Feb. 6, NASA's near-Earth asteroid database noted the discovery of 10,004 such rocks.
Science Alert
The Sun Has Erupted Non-Stop All Month, And There Are More Giant Flares Coming
The past few weeks or so have been a very busy time for the Sun. Our star has undergone a series of giant eruptions that have sent plasma hurtling through space.
Perhaps the most dramatic was a powerful coronal mass ejection and solar flare that erupted from the far side of the Sun on February 15 just before midnight. Based on the size, it's possible that the eruption was in the most powerful category of which our Sun is capable: an X-class flare.
Because the flare and CME were directed away from Earth, we're unlikely to see any of the effects associated with a geomagnetic storm, which occurs when material from the eruption slams into Earth's atmosphere.
New Scientist
Your brain doesn't slow down until your 60s – later than we thought
Our ability to process information during decision-making doesn’t drop off until age 60, according to new findings that challenge the widespread belief that mental speed starts to decline in our 20s.
Mischa von Krause at Heidelberg University in Germany and his colleagues analysed data collected from around 1.2 million people aged 10 to 80 who took part in an experiment that was originally designed to measure implicit racial bias. […]
In support of previous studies, the researchers found that people’s reaction times speed up from their teens to around age 20, then slow down as they get older. This decline has typically been attributed to slower mental speed, but this isn’t the case, says von Krause.
NASA
Parker Solar Probe Captures its First Images of Venus' Surface in Visible Light, Confirmed
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has taken its first visible light images of the surface of Venus from space.
Smothered in thick clouds, Venus’ surface is usually shrouded from sight. But in two recent flybys of the planet, Parker used its Wide-Field Imager, or WISPR, to image the entire nightside in wavelengths of the visible spectrum – the type of light that the human eye can see – and extending into the near-infrared.
The images, combined into a video, reveal a faint glow from the surface that shows distinctive features like continental regions, plains, and plateaus. A luminescent halo of oxygen in the atmosphere can also be seen surrounding the planet.
Ars Technica
Confirmed: Curia of Pompey, where Julius Caesar was killed, was built in three phases
The Curia of Pompey is famous for being the site where Julius Caesar was stabbed to death on the ides of March in 44 BCE. It is of great interest to tourists, historians, and archaeologists alike. After analyzing mortar samples collected from the curia, researchers from Italy and Spain have confirmed an earlier hypothesis that the structure was constructed in three distinct phases, according to a recent paper published in the journal Archaeometry.
In ancient Rome, a curia was a structure where members of the senate would meet. The great Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey) built this particular curia as a memorial to his own military achievements. A large theater section contained a temple, a stage, and seating on one end; a large porticus (housing the general's art and books) surrounded a garden in the middle; and the Curia of Pompey was at the opposite end.