CBC News
Rare microbes lead scientists to discover new branch on the tree of life
Canadian researchers have discovered a new kind of organism that's so different from other living things that it doesn't fit into the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, or any other kingdom used to classify known organisms.
Two species of the microscopic organisms, called hemimastigotes, were found in dirt collected on a whim during a hike in Nova Scotia by Dalhousie University graduate student Yana Eglit.
A genetic analysis shows they're more different from other organisms than animals and fungi (which are in different kingdoms) are from each other, representing a completely new part of the tree of life, Eglit and her colleagues report this week in the journal Nature.
"They represent a major branch… that we didn't know we were missing," said Dalhousie biology professor Alastair Simpson, Eglit's supervisor and co-author of the new study.
'It blows my mind': How B.C. destroys a key natural wildfire defence every year
Last year, 12,812 hectares of B.C. forest was sprayed with the herbicide glyphosate. It's an annual event — a mass extermination of broadleaf trees mandated by the province.
The eradication of trees like aspen and birch on regenerating forest stands is meant to make room for more commercially valuable conifer species like pine and Douglas fir.
But experts say it also removes one of the best natural defences we have against wildfire, at a time when our warming climate is helping make large, destructive fires more and more common.
Humans are having huge influence on evolution of species, study says
Swallows are evolving smaller, more manoeuvrable wings to help them dodge buildings and vehicles. Some fish are growing mouths that are smaller and harder to hook. Large animals from caribou to tuna are disappearing.
Meanwhile, it's boom time for anything not too fussy about where it lives or what it eats.
"It's a reshaping of the tree of life," said Sarah Otto, a University of British Columbia researcher, whose paper was published Wednesday by the London-based Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The Guardian
The weight is over: kilogram redefined at 'emotional' conference
The weight is finally over. Nearly 130 years after the kilogram was first defined by a lump of metal in a vault in Paris, scientists have voted for change and a new system that redefines the global measure of mass in terms of a fundamental constant of nature.
Following a historic vote on Friday at the General Conference on Weights and Measures, in Versailles, the kilogram will no longer be defined by the international prototype kilogram (IPK), a platinum alloy cylinder fashioned in 1889, but by Planck’s constant, a number that is deeply rooted in the quantum world.
“The vote went through unanimously. It was very emotional,” said Stephan Schlamminger, a physicist from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology who has worked on redefining the kilogram for years. “They did a roll call of each country. One got a sense of how big metrology is.”
Reef scientist Terry Hughes awarded prize for standing up to political ‘smears’
Judges have awarded an Australian scientist a prestigious international prize, saying he has battled political smears and public attempts to discredit his work in order to shine a light on the devastating effects of climate change on coral reefs.
Prof Terry Hughes was jointly awarded the John Maddox prize on Wednesday for bringing public attention to coral bleaching. It comes only weeks after his research centre lost government funding for its work.
Known as the “standing up for science prize”, the award acknowledges scientists who promote their research as a matter of public interest and do so in the face of attempts to criticise their work.
Western lifestyle may cause blood pressure to rise with age
A western lifestyle might be the reason blood pressure tends to rise with age, according to a study of remote tribal communities.
Hypertension is a key risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and in many developed countries, including the UK, the likelihood of developing increases with age. More than a quarter of adults in England have high blood pressure, with recent figures showing the proportion rises to 58% among those aged 65-74.
A study of remote communities in the Venezuelan rainforest has backed the idea that hypertension is not an inherent part of ageing, but a result of longer exposure to risks arising from lifestyle, such as high levels of salt in the diet, lack of exercise and heavy drinking.
Ars Technica
Enigmatic ridges on Pluto may be the remains of vanished nitrogen glaciers
As we've gathered more details about the other planets of the Solar System, we've largely managed to explain the geography we've found by drawing analogies to things we're familiar with from Earth. Glaciers and wind-driven erosion produce similar results both here and on Mars, for instance. But further out in the Solar System, the materials involved in the geology change—water ice becomes as hard as rock, and methane and nitrogen freeze—which raises the prospect of some entirely unfamiliar processes.
This week, scientists proposed that some weird terrain found on Pluto could be the product of large fields of nitrogen ice sublimating off into the atmosphere. While this explanation could account for some properties of Pluto's geography, it doesn't explain why the process resulted in a series of parallel ridges.
“Wolf’s jaw” star cluster may have inspired parts of Ragnarök myth
is a cataclysmic series of events leading to the death of Odin and his fellow Asgardian gods and, ultimately, to the end of the world. Some iconographic details of this mythical apocalypse that emerged around 1000 AD may have been influenced by astronomical events—notably comets and total eclipses.
This is not to say that the myth of Ragnarök originated with such events; rather, they reinforced mythologies that already existed in the popular imagination. That's the central thesis of Johnni Langer, a historian specializing in Old Norse mythology and literature at the Federal University of Paraíba in Brazil. He has outlined his argument in detail in a recent paper (translated from the original Portuguese) in the journal Archeoastronomy and Ancient Technologies.
Langer's analysis is based on the relatively young field of archeoastronomy: the cultural study of myths, oral narratives, iconographic sources, and other forms of ancient beliefs, with the aim of identifying possible connections with historical observations in astronomy.
Whales are stressed out by climate change, and it shows in their earwax
In a whale’s earwax lie clues to its entire life. Some species of whale build up large “earplugs” of fatty, waxy material that can trap hints about the hormones that coursed through the beast and the pollutants it swam through.
In a paper published this month in Nature Communications, researchers used earplugs recovered from 20 whales to explore how their stress levels have responded to changes over the last 200 years. They found that the whales’ stress levels moved in concert with being hunted, rising as whaling levels reached fever pitch and plummeting as whaling levels decreased. But since the 1970s, stress levels have been steadily climbing again, keeping step with warming ocean waters.
Popular Science
How are dinosaurs named?
From Tyrannosaurus rex to Stegosaurus, some dinosaurs are household names. But have you ever heard of Lingwulong shenqi or Caihong juji? If not, it’s probably because these two dinosaurs were discovered in recent years, and their names are in Mandarin.
Dinosaurs are named by the person who discovers the creature, says Mark Norell, a paleontologist who studies fossils at the American Museum of Natural History. The New York museum is home of the world’s largest collection of dinosaur remains.
“The first person to describe a new dinosaur or any animal, plant, fungi species gets to name it anything they want,” Norell says.
Oceans are losing a football field of seagrass every 30 minutes
Seagrasses are flowering marine plants that live in shallow coastal waters almost everywhere in the world. The more than 70 species of seagrass provide an important habitat for thousands of ocean animals, from tiny invertebrates, crabs, and turtles to large fish and birds.
Equally if not more important, seagrasses also are natural carbon sinks — even more effective at soaking up heat-trapping carbon pollution than forests on land. They soak up carbon in their leaves, and when they die, they decompose far more slowly than terrestrial plants, so that carbon remains buried for hundreds of years.
“Seagrasses are the ultimate natural carbon sink,” said Richard K.F. Unsworth, a lecturer in marine biology at Swansea University in the UK. “In healthy seas, seagrasses are so productive you can see oxygen rapidly bubbling through the water column as they photosynthesize on a sunny day.”
A 'male' octopus surprised its keepers with a cloud of 10,000 babies
When the University of Georgia’s Marine Education Center and Aquarium acquired a common octopus recently, they got somewhat more than they bargained for. Thinking the individual was a male, they named it Octavius and stuck “him” in a tank of his own. He was a social butterfly, albeit an aquatic one, who liked to stick out his arms and investigate the weird looking land mammals on the other side of the glass.
But then Octavius retreated, hiding out in a cave for much of the day. And then one day toward the end of October, aquarium curator Devin Dumont went to clean the tank only to find thousands of nearly microscopic particles floating in it. “I noticed this cloud of moving dots and I realized, ‘Oh my God, she had babies. There are babies. There are babies everywhere,’” Dumont told Savannah Now. “And a sort of panic ensued.” He scooped them out of the tank into buckets so aquarium staff could take care of them, knowing all the while that this burst of new life meant the beginning of the end for Octavius.
Science Daily
Warning: Chemical weapons risk during a period of very rapid scientific change
Alarming examples of the dangers from chemical weapons have been seen recently in the use of industrial chemicals and the nerve agent sarin against civilians in Syria, and in the targeted assassination operations using VX nerve agent in Malaysia and novichok nerve agent in the UK.
The threat of future chemical attacks is exacerbated by the current unstable international system and also by the potential misuse of developments in science and technology. The States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention gathering in the Hague on 21st November for their 4th Review Conference must ensure the prohibition regime is fit to meet these challenges.
This argument is set out by three academics from the University of Bradford in a Policy Forum article titled 'Preventing chemical weapons as sciences converge' in the present issue of the internationally recognised journal Science Volume 362, Issue 6416.
Purple bacteria 'batteries' turn sewage into clean energy
Organic compounds in household sewage and industrial wastewater are a rich potential source of energy, bioplastics and even proteins for animal feed -- but with no efficient extraction method, treatment plants discard them as contaminants. Now researchers have found an environmentally-friendly and cost-effective solution.
Published in Frontiers in Energy Research, their study is the first to show that purple phototrophic bacteria -- which can store energy from light -- when supplied with an electric current can recover near to 100% of carbon from any type of organic waste, while generating hydrogen gas for electricity production.
"One of the most important problems of current wastewater treatment plants is high carbon emissions," says co-author Dr Daniel Puyol of King Juan Carlos University, Spain. "Our light-based biorefinery process could provide a means to harvest green energy from wastewater, with zero carbon footprint."
Different types of physical activity offer varying protection against heart disease
While it is well known that physical activity is important for heart health, neither research nor recommendations consistently differentiate between the benefits of different types of physical activity. New research, presented at the ACC Latin America Conference 2018 in Lima, Peru, found that while all physical activity is beneficial, static activities -- such as strength training -- were more strongly associated with reducing heart disease risks than dynamic activities like walking and cycling.
"Both strength training and aerobic activity appeared to be heart healthy, even in small amounts, at the population level," said Maia P. Smith, PhD, MS, statistical epidemiologist and assistant professor in the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at St. George's University in St. George's, Grenada. "Clinicians should counsel patients to exercise regardless -- both activity types were beneficial. However, static activity appeared more beneficial than dynamic, and patients who did both types of physical activity fared better than patients who simply increased the level of one type of activity."
Phys.org
PNW woodlands will be less vulnerable to drought, fire than Rocky Mountain, Sierra forests
Forests in the Pacific Northwest will be less vulnerable to drought and fire over the next three decades than those in the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, computer modeling by researchers in Oregon State University's College of Forestry shows.
The findings, published today in Global Change Biology, represent an important tool for scientists and land managers because woodlands throughout the western United States are under increasing stress from accelerated rates of drought-related mortality related to global, human-caused climate change.
Also, the Northwest's hemlock, Douglas-fir and redwood forests have tremendous potential to counteract climate change via their carbon-sequestration abilities, meaning policies that promote stewardship of those forests is critical, the scientists say.
Quantum artificial life created on the cloud
A project by the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country has for the first time implemented a model of quantum artificial life on a quantum computer.
The Quantum Technologies for Information Science (QUTIS) research group, led by the Ikerbasque Professor Enrique Solano of the UPV/EHU's Department of Physical Chemistry, has developed a quantum biomimetic protocol that reproduces the characteristic process of Darwinian evolution adapted to the language of quantum algorithms and quantum computing. The researchers anticipate a future in which machine learning, artificial intelligence and artificial life itself will be combined on a quantum scale.
One artificial intelligence scenario could see the emergence of models of simple organisms capable of experiencing the various phases of life in a controlled virtual environment. Quantum computers could enable an artificial life protocol that encodes quantum behaviours belonging to living systems, including self-replication, mutation, interaction between individuals, birth and death. The researchers executed such a model on an IBM ibmqx4 cloud quantum computer.
Infinite-dimensional symmetry opens up possibility of a new physics—and new particles
The symmetries that govern the world of elementary particles at the most elementary level could be radically different from what has so far been thought. This surprising conclusion emerges from new work published by theoreticians from Warsaw and Potsdam. The scheme they posit unifies all the forces of nature in a way that is consistent with existing observations and anticipates the existence of new particles with unusual properties that may even be present in our close environs.
For a half-century, physicists have been trying to construct a theory that unites all four fundamental forces of nature, describes the known elementary particles and predicts the existence of new ones. So far, these attempts have not found experimental confirmation, and the Standard Model—an incomplete, but surprisingly effective theoretical construct—is still the best description of the quantum world. In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, Prof. Krzysztof Meissner from the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, and Prof. Hermann Nicolai from the Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik in Potsdam have presented a new scheme generalizing the Standard Model that incorporates gravitation into the description. The new model applies a kind of symmetry not previously used in the description of elementary particles.
BBC News
South Pole: Rock 'hotspot' causes ice sheet to sag
A "hotspot" is melting the base of the Antarctic Ice Sheet at the South Pole. The area affected is three times that of Greater London.
Scientists suspect a combination of unusually radioactive rocks and geothermal springs may be responsible.
The warm bedrock is removing some 6mm a year from the underside of the 3km-thick ice sheet, producing a mass of meltwater that then flows away through sub-glacial rivers and lakes towards the continent's coastline.
Greenland ice sheet hides huge 'impact crater'
What looks to be a large impact crater has been identified beneath the Greenland ice sheet. The 31km-wide depression came to light when scientists examined radar images of the island's bedrock.
Investigations suggest the feature was probably dug out by a 1.5km-wide iron asteroid sometime between about 12,000 and three million years ago.
But without drilling through nearly 1km of ice to sample the bed directly, scientists can't be more specific.
'Conservation successes' bring hope for mountain gorilla
Conservation efforts appear to be paying off for some of the world's most charismatic animals, according to new assessments for the extinction Red List.
Prospects look better for the mountain gorilla, after years of conservation measures, including anti-poaching and veterinary patrols.
And numbers of two large whales are recovering, following hunting bans.
However, other flora and fauna is declining. Species getting closer to extinction include several types of fish, a globally important timber tree, and one of the world's largest and smelliest flowers.
The fin whale, western gray whale, mountain gorilla and Rothschild's giraffe are among the animals where numbers are rising.
NPR News
Maybe Neanderthals Weren't Quite So Nasty And Brutish
Neanderthals might bring to mind images of cartoonish brutes whacking each other with clubs.
But even though a number of Neanderthal skeletons have been unearthed showing grave head and neck injuries, new research suggests their lives weren't as violent as the stereotype implies.
In fact, the levels of cranial injuries for Neanderthals are very similar to those of early modern humans, according to scientists whose work was published today in the journal Nature.
"There is no statistical difference between the two, which means that they cannot be differentiated," says study co-author Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany.
Houston Got Hammered By Hurricane Harvey — And Its Buildings Are Partly To Blame
Hurricanes are dropping more rain and causing more flooding than in the past, and humans are to blame on multiple fronts.
Climate scientists have warned for decades that global warming will cause extreme weather to get more frequent and severe. A pair of studies published today in the journal Nature find that hurricanes are already causing more rain than they used to, and that cities themselves may be making the rainfall from those storms even worse.
The second finding is particularly novel. Scientists looked at data from the city of Houston during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, and compared the rain that fell to a model of how much rain would have fallen if the city and its surrounding area had never been built.
Astronomy
Rainfall in the Atacama Desert spells death for microbes
The rain fell in the Atacama Desert in Chile for the first time in hundreds of years, and it caused a mass extinction.
It might seem natural to think that such rains would be followed by blooming flowers and new life. But, an international team of planetary astrobiologists found, this precipitation killed most of the microbial life in the region.
“When the rains came to the Atacama, we were hoping for majestic blooms and deserts springing to life. Instead, we learned the contrary, as we found that rain in the hyper-arid core of the Atacama Desert caused a massive extinction of most of the indigenous microbial species there,” co-author Alberto Fairen, an astrobiologist, said in a statement.
Two free-range planets found roaming the Milky Way in solitude
Astronomers think they’ve just discovered two more rogue planets wandering the Milky Way alone. And according to the new study, which is set for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the planets are likely just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to free-floating worlds hiding in our galaxy.
If confirmed, the newfound rogue planets — which were discovered as part of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) — will join an elite group of only about a dozen or so starless worlds discovered so far.
Science
STEM candidates elected to U.S. House prepare for their new jobs
They’ve won their elections and are headed to Washington, D.C. Their next challenge is using their expertise to make Congress work better.
Among the more than 100 newly elected members of the U.S. House of Representatives are six who touted their backgrounds in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields and medicine on the campaign trail. All Democrats, they helped their party seize control of the 435-seat House for the first time since 2010. At the same time, they promised constituents they would reach across the aisle to get things done—something they will have many chances to do with Republicans maintaining their grip on the Senate and… Donald Trump in the White House.
Fresh off their electoral victories, the new STEM members talked with Sciencelast week about national issues that also affect the scientific community. Topics included whether scientific facilities should be part of any upgrading of the country’s infrastructure, how to provide accessible and affordable health care, and how the billions spent on political campaigns limit who can run for office. They also described their preferences for committee assignments, which are determined by party leaders, and their thoughts on being part of the largest Democratic gain in the House since the 1974 post-Watergate class.
Orangutans are the only great apes—besides humans—to ‘talk’ about the past
When wild orangutans spot a predator, they let out a loud “kiss-squeak,” a call that sounds like a human smooching. That noise tells tigers and other enemies, “I’ve seen you,” scientists believe, and it also lets other orangutans know danger is near. Now, researchers report having heard orangutans making this call long after predators have passed—the first evidence that primates other than humans can “talk” about the past.
“The results are quite surprising,” says Carel van Schaik, a primatologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland who was not involved in the work. The ability to talk about the past or the future “is one of the things that makes language so effective,” he says. That suggests, he adds, that the new findings could provide clues to the evolution of language itself.
Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’
Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536." Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, "It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.
A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.
Nature
The Doctor Who theme and beyond: female pioneers of electronic music
[…] The BBC Radiophonic Workshop produced effects and theme tunes for the British broadcaster, including iconic sounds for the sci-fi television and radio programmes Doctor Who and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, using electronic oscillators and tape loops decades before synthesizers were common. That many of its engineers were women was, and still is, a rarity. Last week, two of them, Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire, were celebrated anew in Synth Remix, a concert series of live performances and DJ sets touring Britain.
Oram (1925–2003) co-founded the Radiophonic Workshop. She gained experience in mixing electronics and music during the Second World War while working for the BBC on sound balance for radio broadcasts. During Germany’s bombings of London in the Blitz, she switched pre-recorded tracks of orchestral music into broadcasts of live music. That allowed the musicians to flee the city’s grand concert venue, the Albert Hall, without the radio audience knowing.
‘Reprogrammed’ stem cells implanted into patient with Parkinson’s disease
Japanese neurosurgeons have implanted ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells into the brain of a patient with Parkinson’s disease for the first time.
The condition is only the second for which a therapy has been trialled using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are developed by reprogramming the cells of body tissues such as skin so that they revert to an embryonic-like state, from which they can morph into other cell types.
Scientists at Kyoto University use the technique to transform iPS cells into precursors to the neurons that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine. A shortage of neurons producing dopamine in people with Parkinson’s disease can lead to tremors and difficulty walking.
Water takes a deep dive into an oceanic tectonic plate
The subduction zones at which the tectonic plates beneath the sea thrust into the deep Earth act as gigantic conveyer belts, carrying water, fluids and volatile compounds into our planet. Water in Earth’s interior is released back into the oceans and atmosphere by volcanoes. These inputs and outputs constitute a global deep-Earth water cycle, but quantifying the total water input from oceanic plates has proved difficult. Writing in Nature, Cai et al.1 report that the Pacific plate, which subducts in the Mariana Trench, contains much more water than was previously supposed — a finding that has major ramifications for Earth’s water budgets.
Water is as crucial to the workings of Earth’s interior as it is to Earth’s surface processes: among other things, it triggers magma generation beneath volcanoes, lubricates deep fault zones, and fundamentally alters the strength and behaviour of Earth’s mantle. Sea water seeps into the oceanic lithosphere through fractures and pores, and reacts with minerals in the crust and mantle to form hydrous minerals (such as serpentine) that store water in their crystal structures.