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Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday, 7/1/23 [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-07-01
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame, jck and jeremybloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
You can't see or feel it, but everything around you -- including your own body -- is slowly shrinking and expanding. It's the weird, spacetime-warping effect of gravitational waves passing through our galaxy, according to a new study by a team of researchers with the U.S. National Science Foundation's NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center. The findings published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters are from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), a collaborative team of researchers from more than 50 institutions in the U.S. and abroad. The team conducted an analysis of burned-out stars known as millisecond pulsars, which rotate hundreds of times per second and emit radio pulses like ticks from highly accurate cosmic clocks. The team discovered what appeared to be variations in the "ticking rate" of such pulsars by comparing observations of more than 60 pulsars within radio telescope data spanning 15 years. Their analysis provides evidence that the variations are caused by low-frequency gravitational waves which are distorting the fabric of physical reality known as spacetime. According to the NANOGrav team's findings, the spatial distortion from the gravitational waves creates the appearance that the pulsars' radio-signal ticking rates are changing. But really, it's the stretching and squeezing of space between Earth and the pulsars which causes their radio pulses to arrive at Earth billionths of seconds earlier or later than expected. The results are the first evidence of the gravitational wave background -- a sort of soup of spacetime distortions pervading the entire universe and long predicted to exist by scientists. x Here's my very quick Q&A thread about the new @NANOGrav gravitational wave background result! Thanks especially to @Dr_CMingarelli and @ebpetroff for helping me understand this stuff! And congrats to @NANOGrav and to the rest of the pulsar timing array community -- amazing work!
https://t.co/Kn8NTKzOQm — Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) June 29, 2023
First 'ghost particle' image of Milky Way
From visible starlight to radio waves, the Milky Way galaxy has long been observed through the various frequencies of electromagnetic radiation it emits. Scientists have now revealed a uniquely different image of our galaxy by determining the galactic origin of thousands of neutrinos -- invisible "ghost particles" which exist in great quantities but normally pass straight through Earth undetected. The neutrino-based image of the Milky Way is the first of its kind: a galactic portrait made with particles of matter rather than electromagnetic energy. The breakthrough was achieved by a collaboration of researchers using the U.S. National Science Foundation-supported IceCube Neutrino Observatory at NSF's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. The immense observatory detects the subtle signs of high-energy neutrinos from space by using thousands of networked sensors buried deep within a cubic kilometer of clear, pristine ice. The results were revealed at an event today at Drexel University and will be published tomorrow in the journal Science. "I remember saying, 'At this point in human history, we're the first ones to see our galaxy in anything other than light,'" says Drexel University physicist Naoko Kurahashi Neilson of the moment she and two doctoral students, Steve Sclafani with Drexel and Mirco Hünnefeld with TU Dortmund University in Germany, first examined the image. Kurahashi Neilson proposed the innovative computational analysis used to generate the image and received funding to pursue her idea through a grant from NSF's Faculty Early Career Development program.
Earliest strands of the cosmic web
Galaxies are not scattered randomly across the universe. They gather together not only into clusters, but into vast interconnected filamentary structures with gigantic barren voids in between. This "cosmic web" started out tenuous and became more distinct over time as gravity drew matter together. Astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a thread-like arrangement of 10 galaxies that existed just 830 million years after the big bang. The 3 million light-year-long structure is anchored by a luminous quasar -- a galaxy with an active, supermassive black hole at its core. The team believes the filament will eventually evolve into a massive cluster of galaxies, much like the well-known Coma Cluster in the nearby universe. "I was surprised by how long and how narrow this filament is," said team member Xiaohui Fan of the University of Arizona in Tucson. "I expected to find something, but I didn't expect such a long, distinctly thin structure."
Life after death: Astronomers find a planet that shouldn't exist
When our Sun reaches the end of its life, it will expand to 100 times its current size, enveloping the Earth. Many planets in other solar systems face a similar doom as their host stars grow old. But not all hope is lost, as astronomers from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (UH IfA) have made the remarkable discovery of a planet's survival after what should have been certain demise at the hands of its sun. The Jupiter-like planet 8 UMi b, officially named Halla, orbits the red giant star Baekdu (8 UMi) at only half the distance separating the Earth and the Sun. Using two Maunakea Observatories on Hawaiii Island -- W. M. Keck Observatory and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) -- a team of astronomers led by Marc Hon, a NASA Hubble Fellow at UH IfA, has discovered that Halla persists despite the normally perilous evolution of Baekdu. Using observations of Baekdu's stellar oscillations from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), they found that the star is burning helium in its core, signaling that it had already expanded enormously into a red giant star once before. The star would have inflated up to 1.5 times the planet's orbital distance -- engulfing the planet in the process -- before shrinking to its current size at only one-tenth of that distance.
Gullies on Mars could have been formed by recent periods of liquid meltwater, study suggests
A study led by Brown University researchers offers new insights into how water from melting ice could have played a recent role in the formation of ravine-like channels that cut down the sides of impact craters on Mars. The study, published in Science, focuses on Martian gullies, which look eerily similar to gullies that form on Earth in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and are caused by water erosion from melting glaciers. The researchers, including Brown planetary scientist Jim Head, built a model that simulates a sweet spot for when conditions on Mars allow the planet to warm above freezing temperatures, leading to periods of liquid water on Mars when ice on and beneath the surface melts. The scientists found that when Mars tilts on its axis to 35 degrees, the atmosphere becomes dense enough for brief episodes of melting to occur at gully locations. They then matched the data from their model to periods in Mars history when the gullies in the planet's Terra Sirenum region are believed to have expanded rapidly downhill from high elevation points -- a phenomenon that could not be explained without the occasional presence of water.
ALMA digs deeper into the mystery of planet formation
An international research team used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe disks around 19 protostars with a very high resolution to search for the earliest signs of planet formation. This survey was motivated by the recent findings that planet formation may be well-underway in the more-evolved proto-planetary disks, but until now there had been no systematic study to search for signs of planet formation in younger protostellar systems. Planets form in a disk around a newborn star. These 'proto-planetary' disks only last a few million years, meaning that a forming planetary system only has this amount of time to finish its formation. However, it is still not clear just how rapidly planet formation begins within these disks. Recent ALMA observations have revealed that many proto-planetary disks have substructures such as gaps and rings, indicating that planets are already forming from the disk. "These previous results motivated us to examine even younger disks around protostars to answer the question, at what stage of star formation do planet forms," says Nagayoshi Ohashi at Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA, Taiwan), who led the team.
New study sheds light on the evolution of animals
A study led by the University of Oxford has brought us one step closer to solving a mystery that has puzzled naturalists since Charles Darwin: when did animals first appear in the history of Earth? The results have been published today in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution. Animals* first occur in the fossil record around 574 million years ago. Their arrival appears as a sudden 'explosion' in rocks from the Cambrian period (539 million years ago to 485 million years ago) and seems to counter the typically gradual pace of evolutionary change. Many scientists (including Darwin himself) believe that the first animals actually evolved long before the Cambrian period, but they cannot explain why they are missing from the fossil record. The 'molecular clock' method, for instance, suggests that animals first evolved 800 million years ago, during the early part of the Neoproterozoic era (1,000 million years ago to 539 million years ago). This approach uses the rates at which genes accumulate mutations to determine the point in time when two or more living species last shared a common ancestor. But although rocks from the early Neoproterozoic contain fossil microorganisms, such as bacteria and protists, no animal fossils have been found.
How urea may have been the gateway to life
Researchers from ETH Zurich and the University of Geneva have developed a new method that allows them to observe chemical reactions taking place in liquids at extremely high temporal resolution. This means they can examine how molecules change within just a few femtoseconds -- in other words, within a few quadrillionths of a second. The method is based on earlier work done by the same group of researchers led by Hans Jakob Wörner, Professor of Physical Chemistry at ETH Zurich. That work yielded similar results for reactions that take place in gas environments. To expand their X-ray spectroscopy observations to liquids, the researchers had to design an apparatus capable of producing a liquid jet with a diameter of less than one micrometre in a vacuum. This was essential because if the jet were any wider, it would absorb some of the X-rays used to measure it. Using the new method, the researchers were able to gain insights into the processes that led to the emergence of life on Earth. Many scientists assume that urea played a pivotal role here. It is one of the simplest molecules containing both carbon and nitrogen. What's more, it's highly likely that urea was present even when the Earth was very young, something that was also suggested by a famous experiment done in the 1950s: American scientist Stanley Miller concocted a mixture of those gases believed to have made up the planet's primordial atmosphere and exposed it to the conditions of a thunderstorm. This produced a series of molecules, one of which was urea.
A jaw-dropping conundrum: Why do mammals have a stiff lower jaw?
From the 20-foot-long jawbones of the filter-feeding blue whale to the short, but bone-crushing, jaws of the hyena and the delicate chin bones of a human, the pair of lower jawbones characteristic of mammals have evolved with amazing variation. But at first glance, having a single bone on each side of the head -- which creates a stiff lower jaw, or mandible -- doesn't appear to give mammals an advantage over other vertebrates, which have at least two and as many as 11 bones comprising each side of the lower jaw. Crocodiles, for example, have an edge over hyenas when it comes to their bite strength relative to size, despite having around five bones on each side of the jaw. Snakes, which have an articulated lower jaw with around four bones, are able to open their mouths larger for their size than baleen whales and actually dislocate their jaws to ingest prey larger than their heads. Even extinct hadrosaurs, or duckbill dinosaurs, with six bones in their jaw, could masticate plants using oral movements that were more complex than those of today's cows.
x Attn: VAMPIRE SNAILS
There are snails that specialise in coming out at night to suck on the blood of sleeping fishes.
Like other blood-suckers, they have special chemicals in their saliva that act as anti-coagulants and anaesthetics
https://t.co/xdU0KI44hy pic.twitter.com/ZzpsOWHqEi — 「VεεLoΧΧγ・BITΞƧ」 (@The_Episiarch) June 29, 2023
How the cat nose knows what it's smelling
Scientists have found the secret to felines' finesse at sniffing out food, friends and foes. A complex collection of tightly coiled bony airway structures gets the credit, according to the first detailed analysis of the domestic cat's nasal airway. The researchers created a 3D computer model of the cat nose and simulated how an inhalation of air containing common cat food odors would flow through the coiled structures. They found that the air separates into two flow streams, one that is cleansed and humidified and another delivering the odorant quickly and efficiently to the system responsible for smelling - the olfactory region. In essence, the researchers suggest, the cat nose functions as a highly efficient and dual-purposed gas chromatograph - a tool that, in the laboratory, detects and separates chemicals in vaporized form. In fact, the cat nose is so efficient at this that its structure could inspire improvements to the gas chromatographs in use today.
Squash bugs are attracted to and eat each other's poop to stock their microbiome
Squash bugs, a common and difficult-to-control agricultural pest, need healthy bacteria in their gut to grow and stay alive. However, they do not acquire any bacteria from their parents when they are first born, leaving them vulnerable until their microbiome can be stocked. Researchers report in the journal Current Biology on June 28 that, to acquire these healthy bacteria, young bugs innately seek out and eat the poop from older squash bugs. "This is a directed behavior. They're not just feeding on something that has feces on it because they live in a gross environment. They're deliberately seeking out the feces and slurping it up," says Jason Chen, a graduate student in biology at Emory University and co-first author of the paper. "We show that the squash bug nymphs only feed on feces from adults of their own species." To test this, the researchers set up "arenas" to see what squash bug nymphs would gravitate toward if they were given a choice. When presented with the option of poop or saline, nymphs repeatedly moved toward the poop from the adults of their species, even in the dark or from a long distance away. After investigating further, the team found that the bugs might be attracted to the poop's smell.
Birds and honey badgers could be cooperating to steal from bees in parts of Africa
The honeyguide bird loves beeswax, but needs help breaking open bees' nests to get it. So it shows a honey badger the way to the nest, who rips it open and together they share the rewards. Or so the story goes. This Disneyesque tale of two species cooperating for mutual benefit has captivated naturalists for centuries -- but is it true? "While researching honeyguides, we have been guided to bees' nests by honeyguide birds thousands of times, but none of us have ever seen a bird and a badger interact to find honey," said Dr Jessica van der Wal at the University of Cape Town, lead author of the study.
Scientists discover clues to aging and healing from a squishy sea creature
Insights into healing and aging were discovered by National Institutes of Health researchers and their collaborators, who studied how a tiny sea creature regenerates an entire new body from only its mouth. The researchers sequenced RNA from Hydractinia symbiolongicarpus, a small, tube-shaped animal that lives on the shells of hermit crabs. Just as the Hydractinia were beginning to regenerate new bodies, the researchers detected a molecular signature associated with the biological process of aging, also known as senescence. According to the study published in Cell Reports, Hydractinia demonstrates that the fundamental biological processes of healing and aging are intertwined, providing new perspective on how aging evolved. "Studies like this that explore the biology of unusual organisms reveal both how universal many biological processes are and how much we have yet to understand about their functions, relationships and evolution," said Charles Rotimi, Ph.D., director of the Intramural Research Program at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of NIH. "Such findings have great potential for providing novel insights into human biology."
x CRYSTAL CLEAR WORMS! These amazing open-ocean worms (called Alciopidae) have shockingly clear bodies and BIG complex eyes. It's still a mystery what they eat, but those big eyes suggest they're powerful hunters.
📽️A. Semenov
https://t.co/o475wHeTgh#DailyJelly pic.twitter.com/4yxd6k9Woe — Open Ocean Exploration (@RebeccaRHelm) April 27, 2021
Innovative stem cell research takes aim at origins of human cancers
How do cells become cancerous, multiply uncontrollably, and form into tumors? And what role do aberrant embryonic stem cells play? These are big questions explored by medical researchers since the embryonic theory of cancer was first proposed in the 19th century. Now, in an exciting new study adding to the global pool of knowledge about the roots of human cancers, researchers are establishing a clear link between different types of cancers and their embryonic origins. They also identify new concepts that can be considered in future drug discovery projects and used in standard chemotherapeutics in the clinic.
Reading for pleasure early in childhood linked to better cognitive performance and mental wellbeing in adolescence
Children who begin reading for pleasure early in life tend to perform better at cognitive tests and have better mental health when they enter adolescence, a study of more than 10,000 young adolescents in the US has found. In a study published today in Psychological Medicine, researchers in the UK and China found that 12 hours a week was the optimal amount of reading, and that this was linked to improved brain structure, which may help explain the findings. Reading for pleasure can be an important and enjoyable childhood activity. Unlike listening and spoken language, which develop rapidly and easily in young children, reading is a taught skill and is acquired and developed through explicit learning over time.
Glial control of parallel memory processing
Have you ever studied hard for a test the night before, only to fail miserably the next day? Alternatively, you may have felt ill-prepared after studying the night before when, to your astonishment, you recall effortless the content on test day. This discrepancy may be down to the separate and independent way in which our brain processes short- and long-term memory, researchers have revealed. Researchers at Tohoku University have discovered that there are two parallel processes involved in memory formation when a mouse performs a motor learning task. One process occurs during training and is called online learning, while the other happens during the resting period and is called offline learning. Online learning can be boosted or reduced by manipulating glial activity, but offline learning remains unaffected by these manipulations. Understanding the cellular mechanisms underlying these independent parallel memory formation processes may lead to the development of efficient rehabilitation after strokes, dementia treatment, or realizing extended intelligence.
What math can teach us about standing up to bullies
In a time of income inequality and ruthless politics, people with outsized power or an unrelenting willingness to browbeat others often seem to come out ahead. New research from Dartmouth, however, shows that being uncooperative can help people on the weaker side of the power dynamic achieve a more equal outcome -- and even inflict some loss on their abusive counterpart. The findings provide a tool based in game theory -- the field of mathematics focused on optimizing competitive strategies -- that could be applied to help equalize the balance of power in labor negotiations or international relations and could even be used to integrate cooperation into interconnected artificial intelligence systems such as driverless cars.
People in power who are guilt-prone are less likely to be corrupt
Guilt. It's a horrible feeling that causes us to question our worth as human beings. But while it's something that induces sleepless nights and stress-related physical symptoms in individuals, for society at large, the tendency toward guilt might have some benefits. "People who are prone to feeling guilt in their everyday lives are less likely to take bribes," said UC Santa Barbara psychology professor Hongbo Yu, who specializes in how social emotions give rise to behaviors. He is a senior author of a paper that appears in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. In a study he conducted in collaboration with partners at East China Normal University and Zhejiang Normal University, Yu looked at guilt not as an episodic state -- such as how we feel after specific instances in which we hurt someone -- but rather as a personality trait, in which people tend to worry about the potential harm their actions cause.
Study: Boost from Morning Coffee Can’t Be Replicated with Plain Caffeine
Plain caffeine only partially reproduces the effects of drinking a cup of coffee, activating areas of the brain that make you feel more alert but not the areas of the brain that affect working memory and goal-directed behavior, according to new research. There is a common expectation, namely among habitual coffee drinkers, that coffee increases alertness and psychomotor functioning. For these reasons, many individuals keep drinking coffee to counteract fatigue, stay alert, increase cognitive performance, and increase work efficiency.
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