Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Doctor RJ, Magnifico, Besame, and annetteboardman. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, planter, JML9999, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke, Man Oh Man, 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 (or sometimes slightly later).
I’m Chitown Kev and welcome to the Saturday Science Edition of the Overnight News Digest.
The Conversation- Giant mosquitoes flourish in floodwaters that hurricanes leave behind by Michael Reiskind
After Hurricane Florence, reports started rolling in of “giant mosquito” sightings – and bitings – throughout North Carolina. What’s going on with these mega mosquitoes that can be as big as a quarter?
As a mosquito biologist, I often get asked to identify a mosquito based upon someone’s verbal report of the little buggers. I usually do OK with an educated guess based on descriptions like “It had striped legs, and was brown” or “It looked kind of purple.”
What I have always struggled with is when someone says “It was little” or “It was pretty big.” For the most part, size is not a good identifying feature of the common mosquitoes Americans encounter close to home.
This is because you can grow relatively large mosquitoes or small ones just depending on the conditions where they grow up – what entomologists call their larval environment. If the larval environment has few other competing mosquitoes, or is rich in nutrients, or has a cool temperature, the result is larger adult mosquitoes.
Science- An alternative urban green carpet by Maria Ignatieva and Marcus Hedblom
Lawns are a global phenomenon. They green the urban environment and provide amenable public and private open spaces. In Sweden, 52% of the urban green areas are lawns (1). In the United States, lawns cover 1.9% of the country's terrestrial area (2) and lawn grass is the largest irrigated nonfood crop (3). Assuming lawn would cover 23% of cities globally [on the basis of data from the United States and Sweden (1)], it would occupy 0.15 million to 0.80 million km2 (depending on urban definitions)—that is, an area bigger than England and Spain combined or about 1.4% of the global grassland area. Yet, lawns exact environmental and economic costs, and given the environmental and economic impacts of climate change, it is time to consider new alternative “lawnscapes” in urban planning as beneficial and sustainable alternatives.
Although lawns are widespread, their properties have received less attention from the scientific community compared to urban trees or any other types of green areas. Designers, urban planners, and politicians tend to highlight the positive ecosystem services provided by lawns. For example, lawns produce oxygen, sequestrate carbon, remove air pollution (although this has not been supported by good quantitative studies), reduce water runoff, increase water infiltration, mitigate soil erosion, and increase groundwater recharging (4). But perhaps the most important positive ecosystem service is the aesthetic and recreational benefits they provide. Aesthetics are a primary factor in modern urban planning and landscaping practice. For example, in developing countries located in arid zones, designers argue that lawns and irrigated turfs considerably enhance the quality of urban life (5).
Quanta- Forests Emerge as a Major Overlooked Climate Factor by Gabriel Popkin
When Abigail Swann started her career in the mid-2000s, she was one of just a handful of scientists exploring a potentially radical notion: that the green plants living on Earth’s surface could have a major influence on the planet’s climate. For decades, most atmospheric scientists had focused their weather and climate models on wind, rain and other physical phenomena.
But with powerful computer models that can simulate how plants move water, carbon dioxide and other chemicals between ground and air, Swann has found that vegetation can control weather patterns across huge distances. The destruction or expansion of forests on one continent might boost rainfall or cause a drought halfway around the world.
Swann is now a professor at the University of Washington, where she runs the Ecoclimate lab. She is in the vanguard of a small but growing group of scientists studying how plants shape Earth’s weather and climate. Their results could shake up climate science. “None of the atmospheric scientists are thinking about” how plants could influence rainfall, Swann said, though hints had appeared in the scientific literature for decades. And, she added, “it blows the ecology community’s mind … that the plants over here could actually influence the plants over there.”
Chemical and Engineering News- Hormones reveal the secret life of fat cells by Jyoti Madhusoodanan
The first evidence that fat cells have a role beyond storing energy from excess food came from a strain of massively obese mutant mice. Before these mice, some researchers had suspected the cells were more than just a calorie cache. After all, obesity increases a person’s risk of type 2 diabetes, liver disease, high blood pressure, arthritis, and more. If an increase in fat mass is one of the greatest risk factors for these conditions, surely the cells that store that fat aren’t just innocent bystanders.
But it wasn’t until 1994, after years of sleuthing, that Jeffrey M. Friedman of Rockefeller University found definitive proof of fat cells’ secret lives: Those rotund mice were missing a peptide hormone named leptin (Nature 1994, DOI: 10.1038/372425a0). And that hormone was secreted by fat cells, also known as adipose cells. Without leptin to regulate their appetite, the animals were ravenous—and consequently grew nearly twice as large as control animals. “Leptin was the first hormone known to be secreted by fat that had a clear function, even in humans, and its absence caused a clear metabolic disorder,” endocrinologist Mitchell A. Lazar of the University of Pennsylvania says. “It really changed the world view to thinking of adipose tissue as an endocrine organ,” like a thyroid or an adrenal gland, which produces hormones.
Since then, researchers have uncovered dozens of previously unknown hormones churned out by fat cells, many with key metabolic roles in maintaining health or causing disease.
Phys.org- World's fastest camera freezes time at 10 trillion frames per second
What happens when a new technology is so precise that it operates on a scale beyond our characterization capabilities? For example, the lasers used at INRS produce ultrashort pulses in the femtosecond range (10-15 s), which is far too short to visualize. Although some measurements are possible, nothing beats a clear image, says INRS professor and ultrafast imaging specialist Jinyang Liang. He and his colleagues, led by Caltech's Lihong Wang, have developed what they call T-CUP: the world's fastest camera, capable of capturing 10 trillion (1013) frames per second (Fig. 1). This new camera literally makes it possible to freeze time to see phenomena—and even light—in extremely slow motion.
In recent years, the junction between innovations in non-linear optics and imaging has opened the door for new and highly efficient methods for microscopic analysis of dynamic phenomena in biology and physics. But harnessing the potential of these methods requires a way to record images in real time at a very short temporal resolution—in a single exposure.
Using current imaging techniques, measurements taken with ultrashort laser pulses must be repeated many times, which is appropriate for some types of inert samples, but impossible for other more fragile ones. For example, laser-engraved glass can tolerate only a single laser pulse, leaving less than a picosecond to capture the results. In such a case, the imaging technique must be able to capture the entire process in real time.
Astronomy- How did Titan get its haze? by Chelsea Gohd
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is enveloped in a thick, hazy atmosphere. One new research collaboration has identified a chemical mechanism that could help to explain how the moon's haze formed.
Titan’s Haze
“Both space probes and land-based instruments have identified the chemical composition of the major constituents of the haze,” said Musahid Ahmed, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Chemical Sciences Division and co-leader of the study. “However, how some of heavier particles are formed from the lighter gases is still an open question.”
Scientists in the Chemical Sciences Division at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) reached a conclusion that disagrees with existing theories suggesting that super hot chemical reactions are behind the chemical makeup of Titan’s hazy atmosphere. The team at Berkley Lab has found that these theories are “not possible in the low temperature environs of Titan’s atmosphere,” Ahmed said.
Guardian- Stephen Hawking's final scientific paper released by Ian Sample
Stephen Hawking’s final scientific paper has been released by physicists who worked with the late cosmologist on his career-long effort to understand what happens to information when objects fall into black holes.
The work, which tackles what theoretical physicists call “the information paradox”, was completed in the days before Hawking’s death in March. It has now been written up by his colleagues at Cambridge and Harvard universities and posted online.
Malcolm Perry, a professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge and a co-author on the paper, Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair, said the information paradox was “at the centre of Hawking’s life” for more than 40 years.
The origins of the puzzle can be traced back to Albert Einstein. In 1915, Einstein published his theory of general relativity, a tour-de-force that described how gravity arises from the spacetime-bending effects of matter, and so why the planets circle the sun. But Einstein’s theory made important predictions about black holes too, notably that a black hole can be completely defined by only three features: its mass, charge, and spin.
Medical News Today- 5 bizarre medical techniques from history by Tim Newman
Medical science has scurried somewhat eagerly along the corridors of human well-being for millennia.
For as long as we have endured ailments, we've made attempts to rid ourselves of them.
A powerful trio of hard graft, deep thinking, and serendipity has forged the course of medical history.
However, along the way, there have also been horror, errors, strange decisions, and brutality.
The road to modern medicine has not been entirely smooth, but it has not been boring, either. So, without further ado, let us take a painful wander down a blood-soaked memory lane.
Phys.org- Do lizards dream like humans?
Researchers from the Sleep Team at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center (CNRS/INSERM/Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University/Université Jean Monnet), together with a colleague from the MECADEV research laboratory (CNRS/Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle) have confirmed that lizards exhibit two sleep states, just like humans, other mammals and birds. They corroborated the conclusions of a 2016 study on the bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps) and conducted the same sleep investigation on another lizard, the Argentine tegu (Salvator merianae). Their findings, published in PLOS Biology, nevertheless point out differences between species, which raises new questions about the origin of sleep states.
During sleep, the body carries out many vital activities: consolidation of knowledge acquired during the day, elimination of metabolic waste from the brain, hormone production, temperature regulation, and replenishment of energy stores. It would appear that this physiological phenomenon is shared by all members of the animal kingdom, and has been preserved throughout evolution. But scientists long thought that only land mammals and birds experienced two separate sleep states: slow-wave sleep and REM sleep. The latter, associated with dreaming, is a complex phase during which the body exhibits behaviors in limbo between those of sleeping and waking hours.
A study the findings of which were published by Science in 2016 focused on the bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps) and demonstrated that this lizard also entered two distinct sleep states. It further hypothesized that such sleep states originated in a common ancestor of mammals and reptiles 350 million years ago.
ScienceDaily- 'Vampire burial' reveals efforts to prevent child's return from grave
The discovery of a 10-year-old's body at an ancient Roman site in Italy suggests measures were taken to prevent the child, possibly infected with malaria, from rising from the dead and spreading disease to the living.
The skeletal remains, uncovered by archaeologists from the University of Arizona and Stanford University, along with archaeologists from Italy, included a skull with a rock intentionally inserted into the mouth. Researchers believe the stone may have been placed there as part of a funeral ritual designed to contain disease -- and the body itself.
The discovery of this unusual, so-called "vampire burial" was made over the summer in the commune of Lugnano in Teverina in the Italian region of Umbria, where UA archaeologist David Soren has overseen archaeological excavations since 1987.
"I've never seen anything like it. It's extremely eerie and weird," said Soren, a Regents' Professor in the UA School of Anthropology and Department of Religious Studies and Classics. "Locally, they're calling it the 'Vampire of Lugnano.'"
The discovery was made at La Necropoli dei Bambini, or the Cemetery of the Babies, which dates to the mid-fifth century when a deadly malaria outbreak swept the area, killing many vulnerable babies and small children. The bodies of the young victims were buried at the site of an abandoned Roman villa that was originally constructed at the end of the first century B.C.
If you would like to read more science, you can read Mark Sumner’s Abbreviated Science Round-Up here.
And don’t forget that Meteor Blades is hosting an open thread for night owls tonight.
Everyone have a good evening!
Oh...and Meeeeeeeeech-igan laid a shellacking on the Badgers tonight...