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Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday, 1/4/25 [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-04

Everybody ready for the new dark age?

Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, and JeremyBloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man (RIP), wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) 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. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.

Astronomers Discover an Ultra-Massive Grand-Design Spiral Galaxy

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered Zhulong, the most distant grand-design spiral galaxy identified so far, located at a redshift of approximately 5.2. Phys.Org reports: The galaxy was named Zhulong, after a giant red solar dragon and god in Chinese mythology. [...] Its mass was found to be comparable to that of the Milky Way, which is relatively high for a galaxy that formed within one billion years after the Big Bang, as the redshift indicates. The study found that Zhulong has a classical bulge and a large face-on stellar disk with spiral arms extending across 62,000 light years. The spectral energy distribution (SED) analysis points to a quiescent-like core and a star-forming stellar disk. Furthermore, it turned out that compared to the stellar disk, the center core of Zhulong is red and has the highest stellar mass surface densities measured among quiescent galaxies. The core is quiescent, which is consistent with the expectations of inside-out galaxy growth and quenching. The study also found that although the disk is still forming stars, Zhulong has a relatively low overall star-formation rate -- at a level of 66 solar masses per year. The baryons-to-stars conversion efficiency was calculated to be approximately 0.3, which is about 1.5 times higher than even the most efficient galaxies at later epochs. These results suggest that Zhulong must have been forming stars very efficiently and is in the transformation phase from star-forming to quiescence. In concluding remarks, the authors of the paper note that Zhulong appears to be the most distant spiral galaxy discovered to date. The properties of this galaxy seem to suggest that mature galaxies emerged much earlier than expected in the first billion years after the Big Bang. The findings have been published on the pre-print server arXiv.

Evolution Journal Editors Resign En Masse

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Jennifer Ouellette: Over the holiday weekend, all but one member of the editorial board of Elsevier's Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) resigned "with heartfelt sadness and great regret," according to Retraction Watch, which helpfully provided an online PDF of the editors' full statement. It's the 20th mass resignation from a science journal since 2023 over various points of contention, per Retraction Watch, many in response to controversial changes in the business models used by the scientific publishing industry. "This has been an exceptionally painful decision for each of us," the board members wrote in their statement. "The editors who have stewarded the journal over the past 38 years have invested immense time and energy in making JHE the leading journal in paleoanthropological research and have remained loyal and committed to the journal and our authors long after their terms ended. The [associate editors] have been equally loyal and committed. We all care deeply about the journal, our discipline, and our academic community; however, we find we can no longer work with Elsevier in good conscience."

Researchers Develop VR Goggles For Mice

Researchers at Cornell University have developed a set of low-cost VR goggles for lab mice. Called MouseGoggles, the VR headsets will allows scientists to provide immersive virtual environments for the mice while capturing fluorescent images of the rodents' brain activity. Phys.Org reports: The goggles -- which dwarf the tiny mice in size -- were built using low-cost, off-the-shelf components like smartwatch displays and tiny lenses, researchers said. [...] About a decade ago, researchers began rigging up clunky projector screens for mice as a means of creating virtual reality environments, but these devices frequently created so much light and noise that they spoiled experiments, researchers said. "The more immersive we can make that behavioral task, the more naturalistic of a brain function we're going to be studying," senior researcher Chris Schaffer, a professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell, said in a news release. The new VR setup, called MouseGoggles, requires a mouse to stand on a ball-shaped treadmill with its head fixed in place. The headset is attached to its head and held in place with a rod while the mouse skitters about on the treadmill. To see if the headset worked, researchers projected the image of an expanding dark blotch that appeared to be approaching the mice. "When we tried this kind of a test in the typical VR setup with big screens, the mice did not react at all," Isaacson said. "But almost every single mouse, the first time they see it with the goggles, they jump. They have a huge startle reaction. They really did seem to think they were getting attacked by a looming predator." The researchers also examined two key brain regions to make sure the VR images were working properly. Results from the primary visual cortex confirmed that the goggles form sharp, high-contrast images that mice can see, and readings from the hippocampus confirmed that mice are successfully mapping the virtual environment provided them. These VR goggles could be used to help study brain activity that occurs as mammals -- be they mice or men -- move around their environment, potentially giving researchers new insights into disorders like Alzheimer's disease, the study's authors said. The research has been published in the journal Nature Methods.

Microplastics Found In Multiple Human Organ Tissues Correlated With Lesions

Research from Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University reveals a concerning correlation between micro and nanoplastic (MNP) concentrations in damaged human tissues and various health conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease, thrombosis, and cancer. Phys.Org reports: In the study, "Mapping micro(nano)plastics in various organ systems: Their emerging links to human diseases?" published in TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry, investigators collected 61 available research articles for MNP detection in human tissues, plus 840 articles on MNP toxicological mechanisms. Data came from spectroscopy, microscopy, and pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry investigations to identify polymer types in different tissues. Toxicological studies employed cell models and animal experiments to examine oxidative stress, inflammatory responses, and related signaling pathways. The studies documented particles detected in skin, arteries, veins, thrombi, bone marrow, testes, semen, uterus, and placenta. MNPs were found in the digestive system, from saliva to feces, liver, and gallstones. Within the respiratory system, MNPs were everywhere, including lung tissue, with microscopic fibers common in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and sputum. Positive correlations emerged between particle abundance and specific disorders, such as inflammatory bowel disease, thrombosis, cervical cancer, and uterine fibroids. Toxicological tests showed possible MNP-triggered oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammatory responses, and apoptosis in various cell types, along with organ-level concerns like neurodegenerative disease onset when crossing the blood-brain barrier. A critically important signal in the metadata discovered by the researchers was that measured levels of MNPs tended to be higher in tissues with lesions than in non-lesioned tissues. These included inflamed intestines, fibrotic lungs, or cancerous growths, suggesting a potential link between MNP buildup and local pathology. There is an intriguing "what came first, the chicken or the egg" problem with lesions having higher concentrations of MNPs. [...] In the case of "what came first, the lesion or the microplastic," it is possible that MNPs contribute to inflammation, oxidative stress, and cellular damage, which can cause or worsen tissue lesions. But it is also possible that these lesions accumulate more MNPs in already damaged tissue areas. While the current findings do not provide a direct cause-and-effect relationship, they offer good targets for further study. x #Microplastics detected in #HumanTissues show a correlation with lesions and various health conditions. The findings highlight the need for further research on microplastic impact on human health. https://t.co/ewvxbwGJRD https://t.co/3WARJaQeMc — Phys.org (@physorg_com) December 30, 2024

Scientist's 'Ruthlessly Imaginative' 1925 Predictions For the Future

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: When the scientist and inventor Prof Archibald Montgomery Low predicted "a day in the life of a man of the future" one century ago, his prophecies were sometimes dismissed as "ruthlessly imaginative." They included, reported the London Daily News in 1925, "such horrors" as being woken by radio alarm clock; communications "by personal radio set"; breakfasting "with loudspeaker news and television glimpses of events"; shopping by moving stairways and moving pavements. One hundred years after Low's publication of his book The Future some of his forecasts were spot on. Others, including his prophecy that everyone would be wearing synthetic felt one-piece suits and hats, less so. Researchers from the online genealogy service Findmypast, have excavated accounts of Low's predictions from its extensive digital archive of historical newspapers available to the public and included them in a collection on its website of forecasts made for 2025 by people a century ago. Low, born in 1888, was an engineer, research physicist, inventor and author. A pioneer in many fields, he invented the first powered drone, worked on the development of television, was known as the "father of radio guidance systems" for his work on planes, torpedo boats and guided rockets and reportedly attracted at least two unsuccessful assassination attempts by the Germans. "It's amazing that a century ago, one visionary scientist could predict how emerging technology -- in its infancy at the time -- could have changed the world by 2025," said Jen Baldwin, a research specialist at Findmypast. "It makes you stop to wonder how the advancements we see around us today will be experienced by our own descendants."

2025 Marks the Start of the Gen Beta Era

Generation Beta, starting in 2025 and lasting until around 2039, will grow up deeply immersed in AI and smart technology, facing pressing societal challenges like climate change and global shifts while potentially being shielded from excessive screen time by tech-savvy Gen Z parents. NBC News reports: Start and end dates of generations can be murky, but Generation Beta will keep being born until around 2039. Before them, Gen Alpha stretched from 2010 to 2024, Gen Z from around 1996 to 2010, and millennials from 1981 to 1996. The upcoming generation "will inherit a world grappling with major societal challenges," wrote demographer and futurist Mark McCrindle in a blog post. "With climate change, global population shifts, and rapid urbanisation at the forefront, sustainability will not just be a preference but an expectation." [...] Just like Gen Z and Gen Alpha, Gen Beta will grow up with social media, though it's still unknown how those mediums will evolve in the next decade-plus. But other experts predict that Gen Z parents might choose to shield their kids from being chronically online, a stereotype that has come to define Gen Alpha. While older millennial parents tend to integrate technology into their Gen Alpha kids' lives, McCrindle wrote that Gen Z parents might take a different approach with their future Gen Beta children. "Generation Z know more about both the positives and challenges that come with social media use from a young age," McCrindle wrote. "As the most technologically savvy generation of parents, Gen Z see the benefits of technology and screen time, but equally they see the downsides of it and are pushing back on technology and the age at which their children access and engage with it."

Scientists pin down the origins of a fast radio burst

Fast radio bursts are brief and brilliant explosions of radio waves emitted by extremely compact objects such as neutron stars and possibly black holes. These fleeting fireworks last for just a thousandth of a second and can carry an enormous amount of energy -- enough to briefly outshine entire galaxies. Since the first fast radio burst (FRB) was discovered in 2007, astronomers have detected thousands of FRBs, whose locations range from within our own galaxy to as far as 8 billion light-years away. Exactly how these cosmic radio flares are launched is a highly contested unknown. Now, astronomers at MIT have pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst using a novel technique that could do the same for other FRBs. In their new study, appearing in the journal Nature, the team focused on FRB 20221022A -- a previously discovered fast radio burst that was detected from a galaxy about 200 million light-years away. x #Astronomers have pinpointed the origin of a fast radio burst, FRB 20221022A, to a magnetosphere near a neutron star. This discovery sheds light on the chaotic magnetic environments of these bursts. @MIT @nature https://t.co/Yk5ihtVcXp https://t.co/9KwNm6Twoa — Phys.org (@physorg_com) January 2, 2025

Ancient DNA unlocks new understanding of migrations in the first millennium AD

Waves of human migration across Europe during the first millennium AD have been revealed using a more precise method of analysing ancestry with ancient DNA, in research led by the Francis Crick Institute. Researchers can bring together a picture of how people moved across the world by looking at changes in their DNA, but this becomes a lot harder when historical groups of people are genetically very similar. In research published today in Nature, researchers report a new data analysis method called Twigstats1, which allows the differences between genetically similar groups to be measured more precisely, revealing previously unknown details of migrations in Europe. x ##AncientDna analysis using a new method uncovers hidden European migrations during the first millennium AD, revealing complex movements and interactions among Germanic-speaking groups and Vikings. @thecrick https://t.co/KlRGablWtM https://t.co/NmrBw9GDEQ — Phys.org (@physorg_com) January 1, 2025

System to auto-detect new variants will inform better response to future infectious disease outbreaks

Researchers have come up with a new way to identify more infectious variants of viruses or bacteria that start spreading in humans -- including those causing flu, COVID, whooping cough and tuberculosis. The new approach uses samples from infected humans to allow real-time monitoring of pathogens circulating in human populations, and enable vaccine-evading bugs to be quickly and automatically identified. This could inform the development of vaccines that are more effective in preventing disease. The approach can also quickly detect emerging variants with resistance to antibiotics. This could inform the choice of treatment for people who become infected -- and try to limit the spread of the disease.

Key players in brain aging: New research identifies age-related damage on a cellular level

Scientists have identified the molecular changes that occur in the brains of aging mice and located a hot spot where much of that damage is centralized. The cells in the area are also connected with metabolism, suggesting a connection between diet and brain health.

Achieving bone regeneration and adhesion with harmless visible light

A research team led by Professor Hyung Joon Cha from POSTECH's Department of Chemical Engineering and Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology with a specialization in Medical Science, along with Dr. Jinyoung Yun and Integrated Program student Hyun Taek Woo from the Department of Chemical Engineering, has developed an innovative injectable adhesive hydrogel for bone regeneration. This hydrogel utilizes harmless visible light to simultaneously achieve cross-linking and mineralization without the need for bone grafts. The groundbreaking research was recently published online in Biomaterials. Bone defects, which arise from various causes such as trauma, infection, and congenital abnormalities, are becoming increasingly common in aging societies. Conventional treatments often involve bone grafts combined with serum or bioadhesives to fill the defect. However, existing injectable hydrogels face challenges such as difficulty in maintaining their shape within the body and limited adhesive strength. Moreover, traditional methods using bone grafts with adhesive materials often fail to achieve simultaneous "bone regeneration" and "adhesion." The POSTECH team has introduced a novel system that addresses these limitations. This new hydrogel system employs visible light -- safe for the human body -- to facilitate cross-linking, where the main components of the hydrogel bond and harden, and to simultaneously boost mineralization where bone-building minerals like calcium and phosphate form within the hydrogel. While earlier studies have explored the use of light in similar applications, they encountered issues such as requiring separate preparation and mixing of bone grafts and adhesive materials, as well as weak bonding of the main components, which often degraded over time.

Boring Cities Are Bad for Your Health

Studies using new brain-mapping and wearable devices have shown that unstimulating urban architecture can harm residents' health, leading to increased rates of depression, cancer and diabetes. Research projects across Europe and North America, including the EU-funded eMOTIONAL Cities project and studies at the University of Waterloo's Urban Realities Laboratory, are measuring people's physiological responses to their surroundings. The findings are pushing architects and city planners to prioritize human wellbeing in design, with some cities like London's Newham borough now including happiness metrics in economic planning.

The carbon in our bodies probably left the galaxy and came back on cosmic 'conveyer belt'

Life on Earth could not exist without carbon. But carbon itself could not exist without stars. Nearly all elements except hydrogen and helium -- including carbon, oxygen and iron -- only exist because they were forged in stellar furnaces and later flung into the cosmos when their stars died. In an ultimate act of galactic recycling, planets like ours are formed by incorporating these star-built atoms into their makeup, be it the iron in Earth's core, the oxygen in its atmosphere or the carbon in the bodies of Earthlings. A team of scientists based in the U.S. and Canada recently confirmed that carbon and other star-formed atoms don't just drift idly through space until they are dragooned for new uses. For galaxies like ours, which are still actively forming new stars, these atoms take a circuitous journey. They circle their galaxy of origin on giant currents that extend into intergalactic space. These currents -- known as the circumgalactic medium -- resemble giant conveyer belts that push material out and draw it back into the galactic interior, where gravity and other forces can assemble these raw materials into planets, moons, asteroids, comets and even new stars.

Oldest-known evolutionary 'arms race'

A new study led by researchers at the American Museum of Natural History presents the oldest known example in the fossil record of an evolutionary arms race. These 517-million-year-old predator-prey interactions occurred in the ocean covering what is now South Australia between a small, shelled animal distantly related to brachiopods and an unknown marine animal capable of piercing its shell. Described today in the journal Current Biology, the study provides the first demonstrable record of an evolutionary arms race in the Cambrian. "Predator-prey interactions are often touted as a major driver of the Cambrian explosion, especially with regard to the rapid increase in diversity and abundance of biomineralizing organisms at this time. Yet, there has been a paucity of empirical evidence showing that prey directly responded to predation, and vice versa," said Russell Bicknell, a postdoctoral researcher in the Museum's Division of Paleontology and lead author of the study. x #Fossil evidence from #SouthAustralia shows a 517-million-year-old evolutionary arms race, highlighting predator-prey dynamics as a key driver in early animal ecosystem development during the Cambrian Explosion. @currentbiology https://t.co/edKjUb8TQZ — Phys.org (@physorg_com) January 3, 2025

Some bacteria evolve like clockwork with the seasons

Like Bill Murray in the movie "Groundhog Day," bacteria species in a Wisconsin lake are in a kind of endless loop that they can't seem to shake. Except in this case, it's more like Groundhog Year. According to a new study in Nature Microbiology, researchers found that through the course of a year, most individual species of bacteria in Lake Mendota rapidly evolved, apparently in response to dramatically changing seasons. Gene variants would rise and fall over generations, yet hundreds of separate species would return, almost fully, to near copies of what they had been genetically prior to a thousand or so generations of evolutionary pressures. (Individual microbes have lifespans of only a few days -- not whole seasons -- so the scientists' work involved comparing bacterial genomes to examine changes in species over time.) This same seasonal change played out year after year, as if evolution was a movie run back to the beginning each time and played over again, seemingly getting nowhere.

Pollinators, pollen and varieties determine fruit quality

Pollination by animals contributes to a third of global food production, but little research has been done into the extent to which the identity of pollinators, pollen and crop varieties influence fruit quality when it comes to the nutritional, sensory and commercial value of crops. Pollinators influence the quality of crops through their movement patterns on the plantations and through the plant variety they visit. In an article published in Trends in Plant Science, researchers from the University of Göttingen argue that the blanket promotion of pollinators has so far been too much of a priority -- at the expense of plant quality, which could be improved by taking into account the species-specific behaviour of pollinators and the distribution patterns of crop varieties in the field. Animal pollination is important for two thirds of the world's most important crops and is estimated to be worth several hundred billion US dollars per year. Crops that depend wholly or partly on animal pollinators (for example many fruits, nuts and pulses) contain more than 90 per cent of the vitamin C in our diet as well as nutritionally important carotenoids and antioxidants.

Bats surf storm fronts during continental migration

Birds are the undisputed champions of epic travel -- but they are not the only long-haul fliers. A handful of bats are known to travel thousands of kilometers in continental migrations across North America, Europe, and Africa. The behavior is rare and difficult to observe, which is why long-distance bat migration has remained an enigma. Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) have studied 71 common noctule bats on their spring migration across the European continent, providing a leap in understanding this mysterious behavior. Ultra-lightweight, intelligent sensors attached to bats uncovered a strategy used by the tiny mammals for travel: they surf the warm fronts of storms to fly further with less energy. The study is published in Science. "The sensor data are amazing!" says first author Edward Hurme, a postdoctoral researcher at MPI-AB and the Cluster of Excellence Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz. "We don't just see the path that bats took, we also see what they experienced in the environment as they migrated. It's this context that gives us insight into the crucial decisions that bats made during their costly and dangerous journeys."

Researchers discover class of anti-malaria antibodies

A novel class of antibodies that binds to a previously untargeted portion of the malaria parasite could lead to new prevention methods, according to a study from researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published in Science. The most potent of the new antibodies was found to provide protection against malaria parasites in an animal model. The researchers say antibodies in this class are particularly promising because they bind to regions of the malaria parasite not included in current malaria vaccines, providing a potential new tool for fighting this dangerous disease. Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by Plasmodium parasites, which are spread through the bites of infected mosquitoes. Although malaria is not common in the United States, its global impact is devastating, with 263 million cases and 597,000 deaths estimated by the World Health Organization in 2023. Of the five species of Plasmodium that cause malaria, Plasmodium falciparum is the most common in African countries where the burden of malaria is largest and where young children account for the majority of malaria deaths. Safe and effective countermeasures are critical for reducing the immense burden of this disease.

Study reveals that sleep prevents unwanted memories from intruding

The link between poor sleep and mental health problems could be related to deficits in brain regions that keep unwanted thoughts out of mind, according to research from the University of East Anglia (UEA). Sleep problems play an important role in the onset and maintenance of many mental health problems, but the reason for this link is elusive. A new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), offers fresh insight into the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying the connection between sleep and mental health. These findings could support the development of novel treatments and prevention strategies for mental health problems such as depression and anxiety.

How does a hula hoop master gravity? Mathematicians prove that shape matters

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