Astronomy
*
Detection of Mineral On Mars Bolsters Argument
That Mars Was Once Habitable
[...]
Boron, an element which is created by cosmic rays and is relatively rare in the Solar System, is necessary for the creation of ribonucleic acid – which is present in all forms of modern life. Essentially, RNA requires a key ingredient to form, which is a sugar called ribose. Like all sugars, ribose is highly unstable and decomposes quickly in water. As such, it needs another element to stabilize it, which is where boron comes into play.
As Patrick Gasda, a postdoctoral researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author on the paper, explained in a LANL press statement:
“Because borates may play an important role in making RNA – one of the building blocks of life – finding boron on Mars further opens the possibility that life could have once arisen on the planet. Borates are one possible bridge from simple organic molecules to RNA. Without RNA, you have no life. The presence of boron tells us that, if organics were present on Mars, these chemical reactions could have occurred.”
When boron is dissolved in water (which, as noted, Mars once had in abundance) it becomes borate. This compound (when combined with ribose) would act as a stabilizing agent, keeping the sugar together long enough so that RNA can form. As Gasda explained, “We detected borates in a crater on Mars that’s 3.8 billion years old, younger than the likely formation of life on Earth.”
Editors Note:
I learn such perplexing and wonderful things every time I look for articles to post here. I thought that the claim of boron being created by cosmic rays seemed odd and warranted further scrutiny.
Sure enough…
Wiki:
Boron is a chemical element with symbol B and atomic number 5. Produced entirely by cosmic ray spallation and supernovae and not by stellar nucleosynthesis, it is a low-abundance element in the Solar system and in the Earth's crust.[12] Boron is concentrated on Earth by the water-solubility of its more common naturally occurring compounds, the borate minerals. These are mined industrially as evaporites, such as borax and kernite.
The Single Strange Repeating Fast Radio Burst Is At It Again
Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are one of the hottest topics in astronomy right now. These intense blasts of radio energy reach us from outside the galaxy, lasting only milliseconds before they disappear once more. Astronomers aren’t sure what causes them, and none of these bursts have ever repeated — except one, FRB 121102, which made headlines with the identification of its host galaxy, sitting nearly 3 billion light-years away. The Breakthrough Listen project has just announced the detection of 15 additional bursts from FRB 121102, which has now been seen to repeat more than 150 times.
[...]
FRBs, including FRB 121102, are still mysterious events. Astronomers don’t know where they come from, but the repeating nature of FRB 121102 does help by indicating that at least some FRBs, such as 121102, cannot be cataclysmic events. Such an event, which would destroy its progenitor, wouldn’t allow for repetition over time.
Currently, one of the leading theories outlines the source of FRBs as highly magnetized neutron stars, called magnetars, which may experience outbursts related to starquakes or magnetic field events. On the other end of the spectrum, FRBs could potentially be directed energy signals used by extraterrestrial civilizations to power spacecraft — a technique similar to that planned for Breakthrough Starshot, as well as the type of signal that projects such as Laser SETI will search for.
Biology
*
Study Finds Pallid Bat Is Unfazed By Venom Of Arizona Bark Scorpion
[...]
The pallid bat eats a variety of prey items: crickets, scorpions, centipedes, ground beetles, grasshoppers, cicadas, praying mantises, and long-horned beetles. They are also known to eat lizards and rodents. The species is a gleaning bat (meaning it plucks prey from leaves or the ground) and uses passive listening of prey-generated noise to localize and hunt terrestrial prey. This bat uses echolocation only for general orientation and obstacle avoidance.
[...]
The researchers used high-speed video in the lab to determine that the Arizona bark scorpion does indeed sting the pallid bat. Next, they injected a known concentration of the scorpion’s venom directly into the pallid bat. They found the bat was resistant to the venom. Razak and his team then performed an analysis of the dorsal root ganglia – clusters of nerve cell bodies in the dorsal root of spinal nerves – of the pallid bat and focused on “voltage gated sodium ion channels” which are present in pain receptors (or nociceptors). Pain signals are transduced into action potentials by pain receptors using these ion channels. Scorpion venom typically targets these ion channels.
The researchers identified amino acid substitutions in the voltage gated sodium ion channels in the dorsal root ganglia that may confer resistance to the venom. Specifically, they identified a few mutations in the channels that transduce pain signals.
“These mutations are novel in the pallid bat, suggesting an unknown mechanism of pain modulation in the pallid bat that involves altered ion channel function,” said Bradley H. Hopp, a graduate student in Razak’s lab and the first author of the research paper. He got interested in this research after identifying scorpion pieces in known pallid bat roosts. “Our work sets the stage to not only identify potentially novel mechanisms of pain modulation with application to human pain management but also increase our understanding of adaptive modifications of ion channel function that modulate the excitability of neurons.”
Giant Bacterium Contains Genomes For An Entire Population
[...]
Although Achromatium oxaliferum has been known for over a century, its physiology and genetic features remain largely unknown. A team of researchers from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) and the Carl von Ossietzky University in Germany as well as Oxford University found that single cells of Achromatium contain up to 300 DNA spots, each with an undefined number of chromosomes. Single-cell genomes and metagenomic analysis showed that the many chromosomes are not identical copies of one another.
A new dawn for bacteria researchers
Usually environmental samples -- such as water or soil samples -- are analysed using DNA/RNA sequences. In this process, the different sequences shed light on the types of bacteria contained in a sample. If it is assumed that a polyploid bacterium of a certain type has multiple identical genomes, then the number of different types of bacteria in a water sample will be that of the different genomes. If, however, the sample also contains Achromatium or similar polyploid bacteria, the method used to date may lead to an overestimation of the true diversity. Where 1000 different bacterial types were once assumed, perhaps there are only 100 or less.
Only a few years ago, it was still believed that single-celled organisms with several genome copies were the exception. In the meantime, however, such organisms are increasingly being "discovered." The new insights into Achromatium oxaliferum could, therefore, also give an impetus to taking a closer look at cells with few to hundreds genome copies to ascertain whether they are in fact identical copies.
Chemistry
*
Alizarin
The 19th century Englishman William Morris had an oft quoted golden rule: ‘have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.’
Morris was a man of many talents. He was a craftsman, writer, philosopher and political activist. He is well known as a creator of many popular textile designs and as a major influence on the Arts and Craft movement that blossomed in Europe and other parts of the world in the second half of the 19th century. The movement advocated the use of traditional hand crafts in preference to machines for the manufacture of furnishings and decorative items for the home.
[...]
Morris liked to use traditional medieval dyes to colour his textiles. For red, he used natural alizarin dye. The dye was extracted from the red roots of plants in the madder family using the Turkey red process. The process originated in ancient China and was later introduced to Egypt, India and Persia. Cultivation and use of madder plants subsequently spread to Turkey, Greece and other European countries.
‘The art of producing a fiery and permanent red on cotton with the aid of madder roots, fatty oils, and aluminium salts was known in the East Indies centuries ago,’ noted the authors of a manual on dyeing published in 1910. The fatty oils, they noted, were buffalo’s milk or sheep’s milk. The Turkey red process was unpleasant, expensive, complex and lengthy. Another source indicates that urine, dung and blood or egg albumen were also used in the process.
The French began cultivating madder in the 13th century. By the 18th century several Turkey red dye works had been established in France. The first Turkey red dye works in Britain was founded in Glasgow in 1790. The dye was used to colour the fabrics required for the red coats worn by soldiers of various regiments of the British Army during the 18th and 19th centuries.
In the early 19th century chemists started to investigate the chemical composition of alizarin but its structure remained a mystery for many years. Initially, it was thought that its molecular structure was related to naphthalene. It was not until 1868 that two German chemists elucidated its structure. They showed that the compound could be synthesized from anthracene, a chemical extracted from coal tar and cheap to produce.
Ecology
*
Your Tap Water Probably Contains Plastic Fibers
[...]
These high durable fibers are most commonly found in synthetic clothing, and they do not biodegrade. Unfortunately, the very property that makes them a good fit for long-lasting clothes also means they pose a major hazard to the environment. Our water filtration systems simply cannot prevent microfibers from getting into the wider water supply.
[...]
The U.S. Fares Poorly
The U.S. had the highest level of microfibers at a 94 percent contamination rate. The Guardian notes that the water samples highlighting this problem came from some significant sources too: “tap water sampled at sites including Congress buildings, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters, and Trump Tower in New York” had some of the highest rates.
[...]
European law requires that water be clear of contaminants, and this would seem to include microfibers and microplastics. While specific measures may have to be created to address this problem, there does seem to be an existing framework to begin that process.
In the U.S., there is no specific safety standard when it comes to plastics in the water supply. As this is a relatively new problem to be identified, that’s not surprising. However, microbead bans at both the state and federal level offer some legislative context to take action.
Children Exposed To Chemicals In 9/11 ‘Dust’
Show Early Signs Of Risk Of Heart Disease
Sixteen years after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers sent a “cloud” of toxic debris across Lower Manhattan, children living nearby who likely breathed in the ash and fumes are showing early signs of risk for future heart disease.
[...]
Study children who were more likely to be exposed to the dust, mostly young adults now, were enrollees in the World Trade Center Health Registry (WTCHR), which is helping to track the physical and mental health, through annual check-ups, of nearly 2,900 children who either lived or attended school in Lower Manhattan on 9/11.
According to Dr. Trasande, his study is the first to suggest long-term cardiovascular health risks in children from toxic chemical exposure on 9/11.
He says the long-term danger may stem from exposure to certain perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs—chemicals released into the air as electronics and furniture burned in the disaster. These include perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), widely used to make plastics more flexible until its health effects, including lower-than-normal birthweights and brain damage, led U.S. manufacturers to stop using it in 2014.
Physics
*
Focus: Superpropulsion of Liquid Drops
A solid surface, oscillating up and down, can launch a soft, wobbly ball into the air at higher speed than it would launch a hard ball of the same mass. That’s the surprising conclusion of a study by researchers in France, who demonstrate that a kind of synchronization between the internal vibration of a projectile and the frequency of the rising and falling surface can more than double the projectile’s kinetic energy. The phenomenon could have applications in ballistics or in microfluidic technology.
[...]
A liquid droplet becomes flattened initially at the [surface made of fluorinated polymers (similar to Teflon). A finely textured microstructure rendered the surface superhydrophobic] just as a tennis ball deforms when hit by a racket. But then the droplet springs back, becoming elongated in the vertical direction. It continues to vibrate in this way as it rises.
This oscillating deformation, the researchers found, can increase the upward motion of the droplet’s center of mass, a phenomenon they dubbed “superpropulsion.” The biggest boost came when the droplet’s vibration frequency (which depends on its size) was about 3 times the oscillation frequency of the surface. In that case, its kinetic energy at launch was a full 2.5 times greater than that of a rigid ball, whose maximum speed could not exceed the upward speed of the surface. “We called it ‘one-shot resonance,’ since everything happens during the first period” of the surface vibration, says Raufaste.