Scientists figured out why males of certain mammal species have undescended testicles and why some human males have low testosterone — the two issues are not related. For me, an untesticled human, the biggest question answered this week is why do grocery store bananas taste like gasoline smells. Other science news this week includes
- hiding hot bods using a design inspired by cuttlefish,
- uncovering lost images from old daguerreotypes,
- where our current homes would have been millions of years ago under old landmass designs,
- which starfish are recovering from the mysterious wasting disease (but not why),
- NASA finds large, carbon-rich organic molecules on Saturn’s moon,
- validation of Einsteins’s idea about how heat moves through solids,
- citation rates for retracted scientific studies,
- formation of the Adirondack Mountains, and
- how fast Mars crusted up.
Also, someone in the wrong place at the right time video’d a wedge failure.
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Besame.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
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Mental Floss — Interactive Map Shows Where Your House Would Have Been 750 Million Years Ago
Use the map to see Pangaea break apart and become something recognizable as the earth today. Enter your address in the search box to see how your home looked at various points millions of years ago.
Your neighborhood traveled a long way over several hundred million years to reach the spot it occupies today. To trace that journey over the ages, check out Ancient Earth, an interactive digital map spotted by Co.Design.
SF Chronicle — Nearly wiped out by mystery illness, California starfish make stunning recovery
A comparison of DNA samples taken before and after the outbreak show that their genetic code has changed since the epidemic.
Starfish are again brightening up tide pools along the California coast after being ravaged by a mysterious wasting disease, and the colorful invertebrates have undergone a remarkable genetic adaptation that is protecting them from the deadly pathogen, a new study has found.
The genealogical transformation, observed throughout the species’ range, is a rare example of microevolution in the wild and an encouraging example of resilience in the face of environmental peril, says the UC Merced study, published this week in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [...]
The Guardian — Scientists develop thermal camouflage that can fool infrared cameras
Scientists have developed a thin, lightweight and flexible film that can outfox infrared cameras, allowing hot bodies to appear cool and cold items to appear warm. The invention can also help camouflage an object by making it appear the same temperature as its background.
The design was inspired by the colour-shifting capabilities of cuttlefish, says Coskun Kocabas, a co-author of the research from the University of Manchester.
The approach involves using electricity to alter the properties of the film, so that it changes from acting more like a “black body” – which absorbs and emits electromagnetic radiation but does not reflect it – to becoming more like a metal, which reflects radiation but is not good at absorbing or emitting it. [...]
Writing in the journal Nano Letters, Kocabas and colleagues in the US and Turkey reveal how they created the material using a stack made of nylon, gold, polyethylene soaked in a liquid composed of charged molecules, and multiple layers of graphene
Genome Web — Harder Access for Fewer Citations
Articles with falsified data and findings are free but Elsevier makes you pay for the more validated studies, those that haven’t been retracted for scientific distortion. (Bold added below.)
In Scientometrics last week, Bar-Ilan and Halevi reported that researchers continue to read and cite retracted articles, influencing scientific thought. They searched Elsevier's ScienceDirect database for articles marked as retracted, determined why the paper had been pulled — ethical misconduct, scientific distortion, or administration error — and collected citation, read counts, and other data at multiple time points from Scopus, Mendeley, and altmetric.com. They found, for instance, that articles retracted for scientific distortion were cited an average 24 times in October 2014, 27 in January 2016, 29 in April 2017, and 30 in January 2018, a 4.5 percent growth.
Part of the problem . . . could be that Elsevier provides free access to the retracted papers, a move they call "strange" as most Elsevier articles are not open access. "These articles often represent erroneous research in forms of falsified data and findings," the pair tells Retraction Watch. "Elsevier should make them harder rather than easier to access.
Phys.org — New insights bolster Einstein's idea about how heat moves through solids
A discovery by scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory supports a century-old theory by Albert Einstein that explains how heat moves through everything from travel mugs to engine parts.
The transfer of heat is fundamental to all materials. This new research, published in the journal Science, explored thermal insulators, which are materials that block transmission of heat.
"We saw evidence for what Einstein first proposed in 1911—that heat energy hops randomly from atom to atom in thermal insulators," said Lucas Lindsay, materials theorist at ORNL. "The hopping is in addition to the normal heat flow through the collective vibration of atoms."
Science news — Why some mammal species don’t have descended testicles, but most do
Scientists have long wondered what the earliest mammals’ balls were like. After all, a few species today live with theirs swaddled safely up by the kidneys, like elephants do. Most other mammals drop their testes to the lower abdomen to a spot under the skin — like seals — or into an extra-abdominal sack called the scrotum — like humans. What style came first has been a topic of debate.
Now, new research on the genetic underpinnings of testes locations suggests that the male ancestor of placental mammals sported one of the descended modes….
The evidence comes from comparing the . . . genomes, of 71 mammalian species . . . the team wasn’t looking for DNA evidence of ancient testicles, but kept seeing broken versions of two genes, INSL3 and RXFP2, popping up just in the lineage that includes golden moles and manatees. These genetic fossils, vestiges of once active code, suggested that certain Afrotherians, a grouping of mammals that includes elephant shrews, aardvarks and elephants, had lost something.
Those genes program the development of the gubernaculum, a ligament that holds dropped testes. “[It’s] necessary for testicular descent to happen,” Hiller says . . . “You only see remnants of the genes required for testicular descent in species with no descent. The only way to explain that is that this is an ancestral trait that was later lost” in these species, Hiller says. Otherwise, the genetic fossils shouldn’t exist
Science Daily — Men's testosterone levels largely determined by where they grow up
Men's testosterone levels are largely determined by their environment during childhood, according to new research.
The Durham University-led study suggests that men who grow up in more challenging conditions where there are lots of infectious diseases, for example, are likely to have lower testosterone levels in later life than those who spend their childhood in healthier environments. [...]
The researchers say the differences are linked to energy investment as it may only be possible to have high testosterone levels if there are not many other demands placed on the body such as fighting off infections.?In environments where people are more exposed to disease or poor nutrition, developing males direct energy towards survival at the cost of testosterone.
Science Daily — Scientists find evidence of complex organic molecules from Enceladus
Using mass spectrometry data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, scientists found that large, carbon-rich organic molecules are ejected from cracks in the icy surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Scientists think chemical reactions between the moon's rocky core and warm water from its subsurface ocean are linked to these complex molecules.
Science News — Mars got its crust quickly
Mars was a fully formed planet — crust and all — within just 20 million years of the solar system’s birth. That rapid formation means the Red Planet probably got a 100-million-year jump on Earth in terms of habitability, new research suggests.
Geochemical analyses of crystals of the mineral zircon extracted from Martian meteorites reveal that Mars had formed its earliest crust by 4.547 billion years ago, scientists report June 27 in Nature. That’s just 20 million years after the disk of gas around the sun gave birth to the solar system’s planets.
Science Daily — Uncovering lost images from the 19th century
Art curators will be able to recover images on daguerreotypes, the earliest form of photography that used silver plates, after a team of scientists learned how to use light to see through degradation that has occurred over time.
Research published today in Scientific Reports -- Nature includes two images from the National Gallery of Canada's photography research unit that show photographs that were taken, perhaps as early as 1850, but were no longer visible because of tarnish and other damage. The retrieved images, one of a woman and the other of a man, were beyond recognition.
"It's somewhat haunting because they are anonymous and yet it is striking at the same time," said Madalena Kozachuk, a PhD student in Western's Department of Chemistry and lead author of the scientific paper.
"The image is totally unexpected because you don't see it on the plate at all. It's hidden behind time," continues Kozachuk. "But then we see it and we can see such fine details: the eyes, the folds of the clothing, the detailed embroidered patterns of the table cloth."
GeoSpace — New study offers new evidence for how the Adirondack Mountains formed
The formation mechanism of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York has long posed a geologic mystery. A few mechanisms have been proposed, but until recently tools for evaluating them were not in place….
Now, using an advanced seismic imaging method and data available only in the past five years, the researchers have constructed a detailed model of the tectonic plate – the crust and the uppermost rigid mantle of the lithosphere under the northeast United States – down to about 62 miles (100 kilometers), in which they discovered a “pillow” of low-density, relatively light rock material. They say a column of this lighter material appears to have squeezed up under the Adirondacks, possibly expanded by heat, to form the dome-shaped mountains.
The Landslide Blog — Waioeka Gorge: a new landslide video from New Zealand
On Sunday, a landslide occurred at Waioeka Gorge on State Highway 2, the main road between Gisborne and Rotorua in New Zealand. The landslide was captured on video by a motorist, Michael Tabudravu, who stopped when he saw debris on the road ahead of the main event. Stuff has a nice article about the event, in which they provide his description of the landslide….
The landslide appears to be a wedge failure (note the very clear rock mass discontinuity that defines the detachment zone on the opposite wall), with the rock mass showing rapid disintegration to flow down the gully….
Eureka Alert — Appealing finding suggests why refrigeration dampens banana aromas
Anyone who eats bananas grown locally and allowed to naturally ripen knows Real Bananas are not the same as bananas sold in temperate zone grocery stores that taste like gasoline smells. Genes that create the complex aroma are suppressed by the chilling used to delay ripening of bananas shipped to markets.
Bananas are one of the world's most popular fruits. But how they're stored prior to reaching grocery shelves can adversely affect their flavor and smell. Now in a study appearing in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, scientists report that cold temperatures suppress the activity of proteins that play a key role in the formation of the banana's distinct aromas. They say this discovery could lead to enhancements of the fruit's fragrance and flavor. [...]
Previously, researchers found that proteins called transcription factors (TFs), which help regulate the activity of certain genes, are involved in fruit ripening. Building on this work, Jian-fei Kuang and colleagues wanted to find out if a particular set of TFs play a role in the dampening of aromas in chilled or refrigerated bananas.
The scientists stored freshly harvested green bananas either in the cold or at room temperature. Once removed from storage, the chilled bananas ripened more slowly than those that had been stored at room temperature, and they had an off-flavor. In a series of experiments, the research team found that refrigeration decreased the activity of aroma-forming genes during ripening. Digging deeper, they detected a pair of TFs called MabZIP4 and MabZIP5 that appear to play an important role in activating these genes.