Cold weather is prime time for humans to stay inside and snuggle up with loved ones. For our primate cousins, cuddling may even keep them healthy, as frosty temps and social bonds seem to go together like hot chocolate and marshmallows. Chilly temperature behavior, as it turns out, may also alter the course of evolution.

A study published June 1 in the journal Science found that a species’ long-term adaptation to life in extremely cold climates led to the evolution of successful social behaviors. Asian colobines living in colder regions saw genetic changes and adaptations to their social behaviors including extended care by mothers, which increased infant survival and the primates’ ability to live in the large complex multilevel societies we see today.

[Related: These primate ancestors were totally chill with a colder climate.]

An international team of researchers from the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and Australia studied how langurs and odd-nosed monkeys adapted over time. These members of the colobine family are leaf-eating monkeys that have been on Earth for about 10 million years. Their ancient ancestors dispersed across the planet’s continents and learned to live in tropical, temperate, and colder climates. 

“Virtually all primates are social and live in social groups,” study co-author and  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign anthropologist Paul A. Garber said in a statement. “But the groups differ in size and cohesiveness. There are those that live in units of two or three individuals and others living in communities of up to 1,000 individuals.”

According to Garber, genomic studies suggest that the harem unit of organization—one male with two or more females and their offspring—was the ancestral norm for Asian colobines. Males are intolerant of other rival males and will fight to protect their turf. In some species, the females will stay with their natal group, while in others, both sexes leave to join or form new harems.

More complex societies formed over time. Some odd-nosed monkeys still form harems, but aren’t territorial. “This means their group territories can overlap and there are times they may come together to forage, rest and travel,” said Garber. 

Snub-nosed monkeys form a multilevel or modular society where multiple harems remain together throughout the year and create a large, cohesive breeding band. The team on this study recorded a society of about 400 individuals and breeding between individuals from different harems was common in golden snub-nosed monkeys. This inter-harem breeding happened roughly 50 percent of the time.

The study used ecological, geological, fossil, behavioral, and genomic analyses, and found that the colobine primates that lived in colder places tended to live in larger and more complex social groups. The glacial periods over the past six million years likely promoted the selection of genes that are involved in cold-related energy metabolism and hormonal regulation in the nervous system.

[Related: Baboons can recover from childhood trauma with a little help from their friends.]

Black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys in some parts of China live in low-oxygen elevations up to about 13,500 feet where night time temperatures can drop below zero on the coldest evenings. The Odd-nosed monkeys living in extremely cold locations developed more efficient pathways for dopamine and oxytocin. Oxytocin particularly is an important neurohormone for social bonding and this hormonal efficiency may lengthen the time a mother monkey takes care of her baby. This led to longer periods of breast-feeding and increase in infant survival.  

These adaptive changes appear to have further strengthened the relationships between individual monkeys, increased tolerance between males, and encouraged the evolution of more complex and larger multi level societies that go a long way. Strong social bonds can even help gut bacteria health in some monkeys.

In future studies, the team is interested in studying how changes in mating and social behavior may be the result of genetic changes from past environments and other social factors from the past. 

“With climate change becoming an hugely important environmental pressure on animals, it is hoped that this study will raise awareness for the need to investigate what course social evolution will take as the prevailing climate changes,” study co-author and University fo Western Australia biological anthropologist Cyril Grueter said in a statement. “Our finding that complex multilevel societies have roots stretching back to climatic events in the distant evolutionary past also has implications for a reconstruction of the human social system which is decidedly multilevel.”

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The fictional and deadly Jurassic Park has nothing on the real-life Dinosaur Cove on the southern tip of Victoria, Australia. Using bones from the fossil-filled hotspot, a team of paleontologists have confirmed that pterosaurs—more commonly known as pterodactyls—flew over Australian skies as far back as 107 million years ago. Their findings are detailed in a study published May 31 in the journal History Biology.

[Related: This pterosaur ancestor was a tiny, flightless dog-like dinosaur.]

The team examined two pieces of prehistoric bone that were extracted from Dinosaur Cove over 30 years ago. The bones belonged to two different pterosaurs, and were examined by experts from Curtin University in Perth and Melbourne’s Museums Victoria. A partial pelvis bone belonged to a pterosaur with a wingspan over 6.5 feet, and the smaller wing bone belonged to a juvenile pterosaur. These bones turned out to be the oldest remains of the giant winged reptiles ever recovered in Australia, which is better known for its larger sauropod fossils. 

Closely related to dinosaurs, pterosaurs soared through the skies during the Mesozoic Era, about 252 million years ago.

“During the Cretaceous Period (145–66 million years ago), Australia was further south than it is today, and the state of Victoria was within the polar circle—covered in darkness for weeks on end during the winter. Despite these seasonally harsh conditions, it is clear that pterosaurs found a way to survive and thrive,” study co-author and Curtin University PhD student Adele Pentland said in a statement. 

According to Pentland, remains of pterosaurs are a rare find worldwide. Even fewer remains have been discovered at regions that were once high paleolatitude locations, including Victoria. She told CNN that less than 25 sets of pterosaur remains from four species have been found in Australia since the 1980s, compared to more than 100 sets in countries like Argentina and Brazil.  

“So these bones give us a better idea as to where pterosaurs lived and how big they were. By analyzing these bones, we have also been able to confirm the existence of the first ever Australian juvenile pterosaur, which resided in the Victorian forests around 107 million years ago,” said Pentland.

[Related: The biggest animal ever to fly was a reptile with a giraffe-like neck.]

The specimens were found in the 1980s in a Dinosaur Cove expedition led by paleontologists Tom Rich and Pat Vickers-Rich. Their discovery of big-eyed dinosaurs along this area of coastline helped spark a major shift in how dinosaurs were more generally perceived. These “dinosaurs of darkness” gave paleontologists a glimpse of survival without sunlight and reframed questions about whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded creatures. 

“These two fossils were the outcome of a labor-intensive effort by more than 100 volunteers over a decade,” Tom Rich said in a statement. “That effort involved excavating more than 60 meters [196 feet] of tunnel where the two fossils were found in a seaside cliff at Dinosaur Cove.”

The biggest pterosaur scientists know of so far is Quetzalcoatlus northropi, which was found in Texas. Since everything is bigger in Texas, this pterosaur had a wingspan of about 32 to 36 feet. Australia’s largest pterosaur is the Thapunngaka shawi. It was discovered in 2021 by a team from the University of Queensland and boasts a wingspan of roughly 22 feet. 

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Atlantic hurricane season officially begins on June 1—and a disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico is already brewing. Tropical wave Invest 91-L only now has a 70 percent chance of becoming the first named system of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season—Arlene—but it will likely bring downpours and gusty thunderstorms to parts of Florida by the end of the work week whether or not it becomes a named storm.

[Related: What hurricane categories mean, and why we use them.]

For the 2023 season, NOAA forecasts a pretty average amount of hurricane activity. In their annual outlook, NOAA predicts a 40 percent chance of a “near-normal season”, a 30 percent chance of an “above-normal season”, and a 30 percent chance of a “below-normal season”. 

The forecast calls for 12 to 17 total named storms—those with winds of 39 MPH or higher. NOAA anticipates that five to nine of these storms could become hurricanes (winds of 74 MPH or higher), including one to four major hurricanes. Major hurricanes are category 3, 4, or 5 storms with 111 MPH winds or higher.

Some of the names for this year’s storms include Cindy, Harold, and Sean among others.

The 2023 season is anticipated to be less active than recent years, partially due to a tug-of-war between some factors that suppress storm development and some that fuel it. This is the first year in three years without a La Niña pattern present, and the latest forecasts say there is a 90 percent likelihood that El Niño will develop by August and then remain strong in the fall. 

El Niño’s influence on storm development may be offset by favorable conditions in the tropical Atlantic Basin. Those conditions include a potentially above-normal West African monsoon that helps create some of the Atlantic’s stronger and longer-lived storms, all while creating  warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the Caribbean Sea and tropical Atlantic Ocean. 

These warm waters are pure hurricane fuel, and those temperatures have been incredibly high this spring. But the temperatures in the North Atlantic basin, where the storms are born and intensify, and the eastern-central tropical Pacific Ocean, where El Niño forms, are the places to watch.

“This year, the two are in conflict—and likely to exert counteracting influences on the crucial conditions that can make or break an Atlantic hurricane season,” Iowa State University atmospheric scientist Christina Patricola writes in The Conversation. “The result could be good news for the Caribbean and Atlantic coasts: a near-average hurricane season. But forecasters are warning that that hurricane forecast hinges on El Niño panning out.”

[Related: El Niño is probably back—here’s what that means.]

Ocean temperatures in the Atlantic’s tropical regions were unusually warm during the most recent active hurricane seasons. In 2020, the Atlantic produced a record 30 named storms and the 2005 season produced 15 hurricanes including Hurricane Katrina.

The tropical Pacific Ocean influences the Atlantic hurricanes by forming teleconnections—a chain of processes that change the ocean or atmosphere in one region which then leads to larger scale changes that can influence the weather in other places.

“During El Niño events, the warm upper-ocean temperatures change the vertical and east-west atmospheric circulation in the tropics,” Patricola writes. “That initiates a teleconnection by affecting the east-west winds in the upper atmosphere throughout the tropics, ultimately resulting in stronger vertical wind shear in the Atlantic basin. That wind shear can tamp down hurricanes.”

Atlantic hurricane season ends on November 30. In the meantime, NOAA encourages those who could be affected by tropical systems to understand watches and warnings for their area and prepare emergency supplies ahead of time. 

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Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are enjoying the longest daylight hours of the year ahead of the summer solstice, and across the world many may even be able to see a unique sunspot on the surface of our favorite star.  Summer stargazing season is quickly approaching, but summer skies can be hazy which makes  some celestial events difficult to see. But there is still plenty to see in the mild night skies this June. Here are some events to look out for and if you happen to get any stellar sky photos, tag us and include #PopSkyGazers.

[Related: The Strawberry Moon, explained.]

June 1 and 2- Mars passes through Beehive star cluster

To kick off the month, Mars will be passing through a star cluster called the Beehive cluster or M44. It’s located in the crabby constellation Cancer, and Mars will appear as a brilliant red ruby surrounded by sparkly diamonds.  

To find Mars, first look for the bright planet Venus in the western sky. The two bright stars that are strung out to one side of Venus are the constellation Gemini’s twin stars Castor and Pollux. Mars should be the reddish light just above Venus, Pollux, and Castor. Binoculars and a dark sky will help you see a smattering of stars just beside Mars. 

The Beehive cluster is about 557 light-years away from Earth and is home to at least two planets. 

June 3 and 4- Full Strawberry Moon

June’s full moon will reach peak illumination at 11:43 PM EDT on June 3. Just after sunset, look in the southeastern sky to watch the moon rise above the horizon. June’s full moon is typically the last full moon of the spring or the first of the summer. 

The name Strawberry Moon is not a description of its color, but instead a reference to the ripening of “June-bearing” strawberries that are ready to be gathered and gobbled. For thousands of years, the  Algonquian, Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota peoples used this term to describe a time of great abundance. Some tribal nations in the northeastern US, including the Wampanoag nation, celebrate Strawberry Thanksgiving to show appreciation for the spring and summer’s first fruits. 

Other names for June’s full moon include the Gardening Moon or Gitige-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the Moon of Birthing or Ignivik in Inupiat, and the River Moon or Iswa Nuti in the Catawba Language of the Catawba Indian Nation in South Carolina.

[Related: See hot plasma bubble on the sun’s surface in powerful closeup images.]

June 21- Summer Solstice

Summer officially begins in the Northern Hemisphere at 10:58 AM EDT on June 21 which marks the summer solstice. This is when the sun travels along its northernmost path in the sky. At the solstice, Earth’s North Pole is at its maximum tilt of roughly 23.5 degrees towards the sun. It is also the longest day of the year, and you can expect roughly 16 hours of daylight on June 21 in some spots in the Northeast.

After June 21, the sun appears to reverse course and head back in the opposite direction, towards the south, until the next solstice in December. 

June 27- Bootid Meteor Shower Maximum

June’s Bootid meteor shower begins on June 22, but it is expected to reach its peak rate of meteors around 7 PM EDT on June 27. The Bootid meteors should be visible when the constellation Bootes is just above the horizon. The moon will be in its first quarter phase at the shower’s peak, and will set at about 1:30 in the morning, making for minimal light interference later in the night. 

June’s Bootid meteor shower was created by the comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke and expected to last until July 2.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. Then, just sit back and let the summer skies dazzle.

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Libraries are full of unique and missing oddities from long lost letters to famous forgeries. A newly discovered record of live comedy performance in medieval England is yet another example of how deep the roots of British theater run. In a study published May 30 in The Review of English Studies, researchers describe a 15th century manuscript with slapstick, lively text mocking everyone from kings and priests down to lower classes. If that’s not enough, the naughty narrative encourages drunkenness and features a killer rabbit.

[Related: Codebreakers have finally deciphered the lost letters of Mary, Queen of Scots.]

These new texts also contain the earliest recorded use of a ‘red herring’ in the English language, which is a misleading statement, question, or argument that is meant to redirect the conversation or text conversation away from its original subject. Additionally, it fills in some knowledge gaps regarding comic culture in England between Geoffrey Chaucer and the Renaissance’s William Shakespeare.

In the Middle Ages, minstrels often traveled from taverns and fairs to entertain people. Fictional minstrels such as Robin Hood’s Allan-a-Dale, are common in literature, but historical references to actual performers are more rare. When the minstrel was performing these newly found works, the Wars of the Roses were still raging. Life was very difficult for the majority of English people. However, study author James Wade, an early English literature specialist from Cambridge University, says this text shows that fun entertainment was still flourishing as social mobility increased.

Wade found the text when researching in the National Library of Scotland. Wade saw that a scribe had written: “By me, Richard Heege, because I was at that feast and did not have a drink.”

“It was an intriguing display of humor and it’s rare for medieval scribes to share that much of their character,” Wade said. This little joke encouraged him to look into why, how, and where Heege had copied these texts.

This new study focuses on the first of nine booklets that make up the larger Heege Manuscript. The booklet contains three texts that Wade concludes were copied down in 1480 from a memory-aid written by an unknown minstrel that likely performed them near the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border in central England. The three texts are a mock sermon written in prose, a tail-rhyme burlesque romance titled “The Hunting of the Hare,” and an alliterative nonsense verse called “The Battle of Brackonwet.” 

“Most medieval poetry, song and storytelling has been lost,” Wade said in a statement. “Manuscripts often preserve relics of high art. This is something else. It’s mad and offensive, but just as valuable. Stand-up comedy has always involved taking risks and these texts are risky! They poke fun at everyone, high and low.”

[Related: Medieval knights rode tiny horses into battle.]

All three texts are comedic and designed for live performance, since the narrator tells the audience to pay attention and even to pass him a drink. The texts also feature regional humor and inside jokes for a local audience.

Wade believes that this minstrel wrote part of his act down since the many nonsensical sequences would have been very difficult to recall solely by memory. 

“He didn’t give himself the kind of repetition or story trajectory which would have made things simpler to remember,” he said “Here we have a self-made entertainer with very little education creating really original, ironic material. To get an insight into someone like that from this period is incredibly rare and exciting.”

Like many present day comedians and actors, medieval minstrels are believed to have had day jobs as peddlers and plowmen, but performed their theatrical gigs at night. Some also may have even gone on tour by traveling the county, while others stuck to local venues. Wade believes the minstrel in these new texts was more of a local performer. 

“You can find echoes of this minstrel’s humor in shows like Mock the Week, situational comedies and slapstick,” said Wade.“The self-irony and making audiences the butt of the joke are still very characteristic of British stand-up comedy.

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Over three million years ago, a 500-plus pound marsupial roamed Australia, winning the prize of the continent’s first long-distance walking champion. In a study published May 31 in the Journal of Royal Society Open Science, a team of scientists described the discovery of this new genus using advanced 3D scans and the partial remains of a 3.5 million year old specimen. 

Most earlier studies on this group have focused on its skull since other skeletal remains are rare in Australia’s fossil record. The skeleton described in this new study, found at Kalamurina Station in southern Australia in 2017, is special since it is the first that was found with associated soft tissue structures. The authors used 3D-scanning to compare the partial skeleton with other diprotodontid material housed in collections all over the world. A hard concretion that formed shortly after the animal died encased its foot, and CT scans revealed the soft tissue impressions on the outline of its footpad.

[Related: Giant wombats the size of small cars once roamed Australia.]

The new genus Ambulator, meaning “walker” or “wanderer,” had four giant legs which would have helped it roam long distances in search of food and water compared to its earlier relatives. It belongs to the Diprotodontidae family, an extinct family of big, four-legged, herbivorous marsupials that lived in New Guinea and Australia. The largest species was Diprotodon optatum, which was about the size of a car and weighed almost 6,000 pounds. Diprotodontids were an integral part of the region’s ecosystem before going extinct about 40,000 years ago. 

“Diprotodontids are distantly related to wombats – the same distance as kangaroos are to possums – so unfortunately there is nothing quite like them today. As a result, paleontologists have had a hard time reconstructing their biology,” study author and Flinders University PhD student Jacob van Zoelen said in a statement. 

Ambulator keanei lived during the Pliocene era when Australia saw an increase in grasslands and open habitats become more dry. To have enough to eat and drink, diprotodontids likely had to travel great distances. 

“We don’t often think of walking as a special skill but when you’re big any movement can be energetically costly so efficiency is key,” said van Zoelen. “Most large herbivores today such as elephants and rhinoceroses are digitigrade, meaning they walk on the tips of their toes with their heel not touching the ground.  “

Diprotodontids are plantigrade animals, which means that their heel-bone makes contact with the ground as they walk. This is similar to the way humans walk and helps distribute the weight while walking, but does use more energy when running. According to van Zoelen, diprotodontids also have extreme plantigrady in their hands. The bone of the wrist is modified into a secondary heel and this “heeled hand” may have made early reconstructions of the animal look a little bit bizarre.

“Development of the wrist and ankle for weight-bearing meant that the digits became essentially functionless and likely did not make contact with the ground while walking.” said van Zoelen. “This may be why no finger or toe impressions are observed in the trackways of diprotodontids.”

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On May 27, an Australian man snorkeling off of the coast of North Queensland survived an attack from a saltwater crocodile—by prying the reptile’s jaws off of its head. Australia’s reptilian saltwater giants have the highest bite force of any animal on Earth at 3,700 pounds.

McGowan was snorkeling with his wife and some friends near the Charles Hardy Islands, about 25 miles off the coast of Cape York on the day of the attack.

[Related: Saltwater crocodiles are eating a lot of feral hogs in Australia.]

“I was attacked from behind by a saltwater crocodile which got its jaws around my head. I thought it was a shark but when I reached up I realized it was a crocodile. I was able to lever its jaws open just far enough to get my head out,” McGowan said in a statement released by the Queensland Government’s hospital service.

According to McGowan, the crocodile attempted to attack a second time, but he managed to push it away with his right hand that had already been bitten by the reptile. McGowan was transported to Haggerstone Island about 45 minutes away, before going to Cairns Hospital. He suffered cuts and puncture wounds to his head and hands and is currently recovering from his injuries.

The area surrounding Haggerstone Island is known as “croc country,” according to the Queensland’s Department of Environment and Science. The department urges visitors to practice “crocwise behavior,” such as staying away from the water’s edge, properly disposing food, and keeping pets on a leash. The department warned that crocodiles could be in all of the waterways in the region and that people  in smaller vessels like kayaks, standing close to the water’s edge, or  wading while fishing are at a greater risk of a croc attack. Queensland’s science department is investigating this most recent incident, stressing the importance of reporting crocodile sightings and incidents in a timely manner.

There have been at least 44 occasions of crocodile attacks on humans in the area since 1985. In February, a non-fatal attack occurred off the Cape York Peninsula, where another man was able to free himself from the jaws of a crocodile. 

[Related: This small crocodile’s giant ancestors likely preyed on early humans.]

Billy Collett, the operations manager at Australia Reptile Park told The Guardian that those who escape crocodile attacks usually frighten the reptiles away. “Crocodiles are the hardest-biting animal on the planet. But when people do fight back, they seem to let go,” he said. “[McGowan] probably scared the croc which realized it grabbed something too big to handle.”

According to the Australia Zoo, the home of famed crocodile advocate Steve Irwin, saltwater crocodiles can grow up to 19 feet long and weigh up to 2,000 pounds. They can swim up over 500 miles per day, which can make them difficult to track. Locals affectionately call the reptiles “salties” and they are more commonly found in Australia’s warmer northern regions. Australia’s federal government estimates that there are about 100,000 saltwater crocodiles in the northern parts of the country.

“I live on the Gold Coast and am a keen surfer and diver, and understand that when you enter the marine environment, you are entering territory that belongs to potentially dangerous animals, such as sharks and crocodiles,” McGowan said in his statement.“I was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time.” 

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The persistent pathogen known as the plague was circulating around Europe and Asia centuries before it wiped out about 25 million people. A team of scientists have just recently found 4,000 year-old DNA belonging to Yersinia pestis, or the bacteria that causes the plague. That’s about 3,000 years before the plague before the Black Death began. The findings were detailed in a study published May 30 in the journal Nature Communications and represent the oldest evidence of the plague in Britain found to date. 

[Related: Scientists tracked the plague’s journey through Denmark using really old teeth.]

The team identified two cases of Yersinia pestis (Y. pestis) from human remains found uncovered in a mass burial site in southwest England near Somerset and another in a ring cairn monument in Cumbria in northwest England. After taking small skeletal samples from 34 individuals at both sites, they screened for plague bacteria in the teeth. Dental pulp can trap the DNA remnants of infectious diseases and has helped scientists find evidence of the plague before. 

After extracting dental pulp, they analyzed the DNA inside and identified three cases of Y. pestis in two children that are estimated to be about 10 to 12 years-old when they died, as well as one case in a woman who was between 35 and 45 years-old. It is likely that these people lived at roughly the same time, according to radiocarbon dating.  

“The ability to detect ancient pathogens from degraded samples, from thousands of years ago, is incredible. These genomes can inform us of the spread and evolutionary changes of pathogens in the past, and hopefully help us understand which genes may be important in the spread of infectious diseases,” study co-author and PhD student from the Francis Crick Institute Pooja Swali said in a statement. “We see that this Yersinia pestis lineage, including genomes from this study, loses genes over time, a pattern that has emerged with later epidemics caused by the same pathogen.”

Plague has been identified in multiple individuals who lived in Eurasia between 5,000 and 2,500 years ago during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age (LNBA). Evidence of the plague, however, hadn’t been seen in Britain at this point in time. This LNBA strain was likely brought into Central and Western Europe about 4,800 years ago as humans expanded into Eurasia, and this study suggests it extended even further west into Britain. The LNBA strain’s wide geographic range suggests that it could have been easily transmitted.

Genome sequencing found that the strain of Y. pestis found in these sites looks very similar to the strain identified further east into Eurasia at the same time and not later strains of the disease. It lacked the yapC and ymt genes, which are both seen in later strains of plague. The ymt gene is also known to play an important role in plague transmission via fleas. It is likely that the LNBA strain was not transmitted on fleas, unlike later strains of the plague, such as the one that caused the Black Death in the Fourteenth Century. 

[Related: You could get the plague (but probably won’t).]

The team is not fully certain that the individuals at these old burial sites were infected with the exact same strain of plague, since pathogenic DNA that causes disease degrades very quickly in samples that could be incomplete or eroded. 

The Somerset site is also rare since it doesn’t match other funeral sites dating back to this time period. The individuals buried there appear to have died from trauma. The team believes that the mass burial here was not due to an outbreak of plague, but the individuals studied may have been infected when they died.  

“We understand the huge impact of many historical plague outbreaks, such as the Black Death, on human societies and health, but ancient DNA can document infectious disease much further into the past,” co-author and geneticist at the Francis Crick Institute Pontus Skoglund said in a statement. “Future research will do more to understand how our genomes responded to such diseases in the past, and the evolutionary arms race with the pathogens themselves, which can help us to understand the impact of diseases in the present or in the future.”

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Efficiently standing up and walking and running on two feet  stands out among the traits that separates Homo sapiens from great apes—and we can owe a lot of that to a raised medial arch. While crucial, the mechanics behind bipedal walking are still a bit of an evolutionary mystery.  A study published May 30 in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology found that helpful and spring-like arches may have evolved for the purpose of helping us walk on two feet.

[Related: Foraging in trees might have pushed human ancestors to walk on two feet.]

The team found that the recoil of a flexible arch repositions in the ankle upright for more efficient walking and is particularly effective for running. 

“We thought originally that the spring-like arch helped to lift the body into the next step,” study co-author and University of Wisconsin-Madison biomechanical engineer Lauren Welte said in a statement. “It turns out that instead, the spring-like arch recoils to help the ankle lift the body.”

The raised arch in the center of the human foot is believed to give hominins more leverage while walking upright. When arch motion is restricted, like it could be in those with more flat feet, running demands more energy from the body. Arch recoil could potentially make our species more efficient by propelling the body’s center of mass forward, essentially making up for the mechanical work that the muscles would have to do otherwise.

In this new study, the team selected seven participants with varying arch mobility and filmed their walking and running patterns with high-speed x-ray motion capture cameras. The team measured the height of each participant’s arch and took CT scans of their right feet. They also created rigid models that were compared to the measured motion of the bones in the foot. Scientists then measured which joints added the most to arch recoil and the contribution of arch recoil to center of mass and ankle propulsion.

Surprisingly, they found that a rigid arch without recoil caused the foot to prematurely leave the ground, likely decreasing the efficiency of the calf muscle. A rigid arch also leaned the ankle bones too far forward. A forward lean looks more like the posture of walking chimpanzees instead of the straight upright stance of a human gait.

A flexible arch helped reposition the ankle upright, allowing the leg to push off the ground more effectively. This effect is greater while running, suggesting that a flexible arch for more efficient running may have been a desired evolutionary trait.

The team also found that a joint between two bones in the medial arch–the navicular and the medial cuneiform–is crucial to flexibility. Investigating the changes in this joint over time could help scientists track the development of bipedalism in our own fossil record. 

[Related: The Monty Python ‘silly walk’ could replace your gym workout.]

“The mobility of our feet seems to allow us to walk and run upright instead of either crouching forward or pushing off into the next step too soon,” study co-author and Queen’s University mechanical and materials engineer Michael Rainbow said in a statement.

These findings and understanding more about arch flexibility could help people who have rigid arches due to illness or injury. Their hypothesis still needs more testing, but could help solve a plethora of modern-day foot dilemmas. 

“Our work suggests that allowing the arch to move during propulsion makes movement more efficient,” said Welte. “If we restrict arch motion, it’s likely that there are corresponding changes in how the other joints function.”

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As they creep through tropical environments appearing not to have a care in the world, sloths give off some of the chillest vibes in the animal kingdom. This relaxed and elusive nature does make studying sloths a bit difficult, but a study published May 29 in the journal PeerJ Life & Environment is shedding some new light on activity patterns and behaviors adaptations of two sloth species.

[Related: Sloths aren’t the picky eaters we thought they were.]

The team looked at Bradypus variegatus and Choloepus hoffmanni, two sloth species that live in the lowland rainforests of Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. Costa Rica is home to six species of sloths, who have the slowest digestive system of any animal on Earth. It can take the mammals two weeks to digest an entire meal, and they sleep about 20 hours a day to conserve energy. 

Using micro data loggers, the team continuously monitored the behavior of both three-toed sloths (Bradypus) and two-toed sloths (Choloepus) for periods ranging from days to weeks. These recordings enabled the team to explore how fluctuating environmental influences sloth activity and how that correlates with their uniquely chill and low-energy lifestyle. 

Choloepus sloths are cathemeral, meaning that they have irregular variable periods of activity throughout a 24-hour cycle. Cathemeral behavior allows them to take advantage of better environmental conditions while minimizing the risk of predation. 

The study also observed a large amount of variability in activity levels between the animals and also within individual sloths. This flexibility suggests that the animals have developed diverse strategies to adapt to their surroundings, which enhances their chances of survival when the environment fluctuates. 

The team initially expected that daily temperatures, which can hit the mid-90s, would influence sloth activity, but their observations did not support that initial hypothesis. However, Bradypus sloths did increase their night time activity on colder nights and the nights that followed colder days. The authors believe that this indicates a potential correlation between sloth behavior and temperature variations.

[Related: Our bravest ancestors may have hunted giant sloths.]

While this study adds more understanding to sloth ecology, it also highlights the importance of preserving and protecting tropical rainforests and their unique inhabitants. According to Global Forest Watch, Costa Rica lost about 2.4 percent of its forest cover between 2000 and 2020, but the country has gained international recognition for its efforts to mitigate climate change and promote animal welfare.

“Understanding the drivers of sloth activity and their ability to withstand environmental fluctuations is of growing importance for the development of effective conservation measures, particularly when we consider the vulnerability of tropical ecosystems to climate change and the escalating impacts of anthropogenic activities in South and Central America,” the team wrote in the paper.

As these tropical ecosystems become more vulnerable due to human-made climate change, understanding wildlife patterns are crucial for conservation methods. While long-term observational research is a challenge, this study could pave the way for more studies on this cryptic and elusive species. 

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When it comes to the critical process of pollination, butterflies and especially bees are typically the most lauded participants. These pollinators fly from flower to flower to feed and fertilize plants by spreading pollen around. But, these fluttery creatures are far from the only species that help flowers reproduce and bloom. It turns out that some of nature’s most unsung and diverse pollinators are a type of long-snouted beetles called weevils.

[Related: Build a garden that’ll have pollinators buzzin’.]

A study published May 25 in the journal Peer Community in Ecology wiggles into the world of weevils, including some who spend their entire lifecycle in tandem with a specific plant they help pollinate. 

“Even people who work on pollination don’t usually consider weevils as one of the main pollinators, and people who work on weevils don’t usually consider pollination as something relevant to the group,” study co-author and assistant curator of insects at the Field Museum in Chicago said in a statement. “There are lots of important things that people are missing because of preconceptions.”

The quarter-of-an-inch long  weevils can be considered pests, especially when found munching on pasta and flour in pantries. Weevils used to find their way into the biscuits on Nineteenth Century ships that even highly ranked officers ate, as depicted in the 2003 seafaring film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. They can be so destructive that from 1829 to 1920, boll weevils completely disrupted the cotton economy in the South as they fed on cotton buds. 

Despite this less than stellar reputation, the insects are still beneficial to many of the world’s plant species. 

Scientists have identified roughly 400,000 species of beetles, making them one of the largest groups of animals in the world. Among this already big bunch of bugs, weevils are the largest group. “There are 60,000 species of weevils that we know about, which is about the same as the number of all vertebrate animals put together,” said de Medeiros.

The authors looked at 600 species of weevil, reviewing hundreds of previously published data on how weevils and plants interact to get a better sense of their role as prime pollinators. It focused on brood-site pollinators—insects that use the same plants that they pollinate as the breeding sites for their larvae. It is similar to the relationship between Monarch butterflies and milkweed, which is the only plant that Monarch caterpillars can eat. 

“It is a special kind of pollination interaction because it is usually associated with high specialization: because the insects spend their whole life cycle in the plant, they often only pollinate that plant,” said de Medeiros.  And because the plants have very reliable pollinators, they mostly use those pollinators.” 

[Related: This lawn-mowing robot can save part of your yard for pollinators.]

Unlike Monarchs, brood-site pollinators take the relationship with the plant a step further. They rely on only one plant partner as a source for both food and egg laying, unlike adult Monarchs who will eat the nectar of many different types of flowers. 

“This kind of pollination interaction is generally thought to be rare or unusual,” said de Medeiros. “In this study, we show that there are hundreds of weevil species and plants for which this has been documented already, and many, many more yet to be discovered.”

The relationship like the one between weevils and their plants means that they both need each other to flourish. Some industries, like palm oil,  have already hurt forests, therefore disturbing the animal species that rely on them. 

“Oil palm, which is used to make peanut butter and Nutella, was not a viable industry until someone figured out that the weevils found with them were their pollinators. And because people had an incorrect preconception that weevils were not pollinators, it took much, much longer than it could have taken,” said de Medeiros.

Misconceptions about weevils were one of this team’s motivations for the study. The team hopes that by summarizing what is known about the pollinators, more scientists and the general public appreciate the role of weevils as pollinators, particularly in the tropics. 

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On May 25, the Supreme Court of the United States cut back the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to regulate wetlands in another setback for the landmark Clean Water Act. In the 5 to 4 ruling, the court said that the law does not allow the EPA to regulate the discharges into the wetlands that are near a body of water, unless the wetland has a unless they have “a continuous surface connection” to those waters. 

[Related: The EPA’s roll back of the Clean Water Act could impact drinking water for millions of Americans.]

The issue before the court was the reach of the 51-year-old Clean Water Act and how courts should determine what counts as “waters of the United States” for the purposes of legal protection. In 2006, the court ruled in two consolidated cases that wetlands are protected by the Clean Water Act if they have a “significant nexus” to regulated waters. Business interests and property rights groups sought to narrow the regulations in wetlands and areas that are directly connected to “navigable waters,” like lakes and rivers.

This case–Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency–concerned Michael and Chantell Sackett, a couple who wanted to build a home on what an appeals court called “a soggy residential lot” near Priest Lake in Idaho’s panhandle. The Sacketts began construction in 2007 by filling in the land, and the EPA ordered them to stop. The agency threatened the couple with fines, saying  they must return their property to its original condition. Backed by successful conservative property rights group Pacific Legal Foundation, the Sacketts sued the EPA. A dispute regarding if the lawsuit was premature reached the Supreme Court in an earlier appeal and the justices ruled that the suit could proceed in 2012. Justice Alito said that the Clean Water Act gave the EPA too much power in a concurring opinion that same year.

Thursday’s 5 to 4 majority opinion is the latest decision in a trend where the conservative-leaning court has narrowed the reach of environmental regulations. In 2022, the court restricted the EPA’s authority to curb emissions from power plants in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. 

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the EPA’s interpretation of its power went too far. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett concurred that the Clean Water Act extends only to those “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the United States in their own rights.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Brett Kavanaugh, dissented, with Kagan writing a concurring opinion. They agreed that the Sacketts should prevail, but wrote that they would have ruled for them on more narrow grounds without changing what defines “waters in the United States.”

[Related: What would America be like without the EPA?]

In his own dissent, Justice Kavanaugh wrote, “By narrowing the [Clean Water] Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”

Wetlands are some of the most diverse and productive ecosystems on the planet and the US has roughly 75.5 million acres of wetlands. They are an important tool against slowing the pace of human-made climate change, particularly in urban areas, while protecting communities from flooding and storms. 

Since 1972, the Clean Water Act has dramatically cut pollution in America’s waterways, leading to major rebounds of fish species. Since the wetlands like those at the center of the Sackett case have a close relationship with the larger water system of streams and rivers, the court’s ruling has major potential to impact the health and quality of all waterways in the United States. 

“This decision will cause incalculable harm. Communities across the country will pay the price,” Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) President & CEO Manish Bapna said in a statement following the ruling. “What’s important now is to repair the damage. The government must enforce the remaining provisions of law that protect the clean water we all rely on for drinking, swimming, fishing, irrigation and more. States should quickly strengthen their own laws. Congress needs to act to restore protections for all our waters.”

Correction (May 30, 2023): Kagan wrote a concurring opinion, not the dissenting opinion as this originally stated. We regret the error.

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In a groundbreaking new study published earlier this month in the journal Nature, a team of neuroscientists and other researchers detail how electrical devices implanted into the brain and spinal cord of a paralyzed man have helped him walk and even climb stars. 

[Related: The slow, but promising progress of electrode therapy for paralysis.]

The implants communicate wirelessly and fuse together two experimental technologies that are being developed to treat paralysis. One of the devices is inserted into the skull and sits above the brain’s surface. It decodes the patterns involved in walking and sends a signal to the second device that is implanted in the spinal cord. The spinal cord is then stimulated by the electrodes in a precise sequence that activates the leg muscles needed to walk.

According to the study’s authors, the devices provide a “digital bridge” between the brain and the spinal cord that bypasses the injured areas of the spinal cord. The brain-spine interface uses an artificial intelligence thought decoder to read the brain’s intentions. These intentions are detectable as electrical signals in the brain and then match them to muscle movements. 

The patient in this new study is Gert-Jan Oskam, a 40-year-old man from The Netherlands who was paralyzed in a cycling accident in 2011. Oskam received an experimental spinal-cord stimulator in 2017 that retired his ability to walk, according to CEO Dave Marver of Onward Medical. The Netherlands-based biotechnology company manufactures the spinal cord device used in the study.

“We’ve captured the thoughts of Gert-Jan, and translated these thoughts into a stimulation of the spinal cord to re-establish voluntary movement,” study co-author and spinal cord specialist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne Grégoire Courtine, said in a press briefing according to The New York Times.

Brain-computer interfaces like these allow for more natural movement than just using spinal cord stimulation alone. Oskam now can even pause mid-gait, adjust his stride, and navigate on irregular terrain like stairs.

Previously, the Onward Medical device was used in a study that restored the ability to walk to nine patients by mapping out the neurons that are associated with the body’s complex commands for walking. Marver told The Washington Post that the company is likely five years away from being able to commercialize a system like the one used in this study and that his aspirations are even broader. “Ultimately, our vision is that a person with paralysis will be able to visit the doctor and select what function they want to restore,” he said.

[Related: I became a cyborg to manage my chronic pain.]

The brain implant that was used in this study was developed by Clinatec and a French government-backed research institute called CEA. 

Some of the limitations to this work include that the brain’s subtle intentions are difficult to distinguish and the same brain-spine interface used for walking, may not be suitable for restoring movement in the upper body. The treatment is also invasive, requiring multiple surgeries and hours of physical therapy. The system, as it currently stands, does not fix all spinal cord paralysis.

This study is one of a number of spinal cord injury treatment advances in recent years. In 2016, a group of scientists restored paralyzed monkey’s ability to walk. In 2018, scientists figured out a way to use electrical-pulse generators to stimulate the brain and allowed partially paralyzed people to walk and ride bicycles again. 

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Industrial mining of the deep ends of the ocean for valuable minerals is becoming more of a possibility as companies search for new sources of needed minerals, such as cobalt and lithium. The devastating impacts that this noisy and extractive process could have on the ocean’s numerous species is front of mind for scientists around the world, particularly in the mineral-rich Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific Ocean. Now, experts are attaching some numbers to the concerns.

[Related: Deep-sea mining has murky aftereffects.]

A study published May 25 in the journal Current Biology found 5,578 different species in the CCZ, and roughly 88 to 92 percent of these species are entirely new to science. The authors compiled a CCZ checklist of all the species and records to better understand what may be at risk when mining begins. 

“We share this planet with all this amazing biodiversity, and we have a responsibility to understand it and protect it,” co-author and Natural History Museum London deep-sea ecologist Muriel Rabone said in a statement. 

Spanning six million square kilometers from Hawaii to Mexico, the CCZ is one of the most pristine wilderness regions in the world. According to NOAA, it is also home to polymetallic nodules that are a potential source of copper, nickel, cobalt, iron, manganese, and rare earth elements. These materials are becoming increasingly important for modern life, since they are used in making a range of electronics. Polymetallic nodules are also found in deeper regions of the Indian Ocean.

To study the CCZ, researchers travel throughout the Pacific Ocean using techniques such as using remote-controlled vehicles to travel the ocean. They also use simple box core sampling, where a study box is placed on the bottom of the ocean floor to collect samples.  

“It’s a big boat, but it feels tiny in the middle of the ocean. You could see storms rolling in; it’s very dramatic,” said Rabone. “And it was amazing—in every single box core sample, we would see new species.”

In the study, the team sifted through over 100,000 records of the creatures found in the CCZ taken during these expeditions. They found that only six of the new species found in the CCZ—including a carnivorous sponge, a nematode, and a sea cucumber—have been seen in other regions of the world. The most common type of animals in the CCZ are arthropods, worms, sponges, and echinoderms like sea urchins.

[Related: Even mining in shallow waters is bad news for the environment.]

“There’s some just remarkable species down there. Some of the sponges look like classic bath sponges, and some look like vases. They’re just beautiful,” said Rabone. “One of my favorites is the glass sponges. They have these little spines, and under the microscope, they look like tiny chandeliers or little sculptures.”

In the future, the team emphasizes the importance of increasing research efforts in the CCZ that are collaborative, cohesive, and multidisciplinary so that scientists and business alike can gain a deeper grasp of the region’s vast biodiversity. They also stress the importance of learning more about these new species, how they are connected to the greater environment around them, and the biogeography of the area to understand why some species cluster in specific regions more than others.   

“There are so many wonderful species in the CCZ,” said Rabone, “and with the possibility of mining looming, it’s doubly important that we know more about these really understudied habitats.”

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Typhoon Mawar pelted Guam with heavy rain and the strength of a Category 4 hurricane over about two days. The storm was upgraded to a ‘Super Typhoon’ when it reached maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour as it moved north of the island. President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the  US territory of about 150,000 people on Tuesday May 23.

[Related: What hurricane categories mean, and why we use them.]

According to the National Weather Service Guam, the storm had Category 4-level winds of about 140 miles per hour just before midnight local time on Wednesday May 24 as it passed over Guam. Guam International Airport recorded sustained winds of 71 mph and a gust of 105 mph. The storm’s eye passed just north of the island, but the powerful eyewall hit the whole island.

Initial estimates say that close to a foot of rain fell and approached two feet in some parts of the territory. Guam is about the size of the city of Chicago and sits about 1,500 miles east of the Philippines.

Typhoons are the same type of warm-core tropical storm as hurricanes, except that they form west of the Northwest Pacific Ocean. Mawar was one of the strongest typhoons to hit Guam in decades. In 2002, Super Typhoon Pongsona struck the island with the force of a Category 4 hurricane and caused over $700 million in damage. 

In an address on Facebook, Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero urged residents to stay home for their safety, as the island was still seeing 40 to 50 mph winds on Thursday morning. The governor reported that the strongest winds from the storm were felt throughout the island, but particularly in the north.

The Guam Power Authority reported that the island’s energy grid was providing power to only about 1,000 of its roughly 52,000 customers. As of Thursday morning, the government had not reported any deaths due to the storm. 

According to The New York Times, strong building codes minimized damages and deaths from major storms in Guam. In most cases, “we just barbecue, chill, adapt” when a tropical cyclone blows through, says Wayne Chargualaf, who works at the local government’s housing authorities. However, since it has been over 20 years since Super Typhoon Pongsona, he told The Times that “we have an entire generation that has never experienced this. So a little bit of doubt started to creep into my mind. Are we really ready for this?”

[Related: Typhoon Merbok breaks records as it lashes the Alaskan coast.]

Human-caused climate change is contributing to an increasing number of intense tropical storm systems like Mawar. Tropical systems are generating more rainfall and bigger storm surges and are also more likely to intensify faster. Mawar rapidly intensified from Monday into Tuesday, with the storm’s top wind speeds increasing by 50 mph in only 18 hours.

Mawar will continue to track west-northwest away from Guam and towards the northern Philippines and Taiwan. It strengthened to the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane with winds of 165 mph and gusts up to 200 mph, but slow weakening is likely and it is not expected to threaten land in the next several days.  

The Atlantic Hurricane Season begins on June 1 and runs until November 30. The National Hurricane Center is already watching a system off the coast of Florida. An early forecast from Colorado State University released in April calls for slightly below-average hurricane activity, partially due to the current neutral conditions before El Niño likely begins in the Pacific Ocean.

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A phase 3 trial found that a new meningococcal disease vaccine is safe and effective and also induces a strong immune response across five strains of meningococcal bacteria. The results were published May 24 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The vaccine could be a useful tool in eliminating meningitis in African countries including parts of Senegal, Mali, and Ethiopia.

[Related: A once-forgotten antibiotic could be a new weapon against drug-resistant infections.]

Meningococcal disease is a cause of meningitis and blood poisoning. According to the World Health Organization, meningitis caused an estimated 25,000 deaths in 2019. While vaccines are readily available in wealthier countries, vaccinating the more vulnerable regions has been a challenge, largely due to cost. Developing affordable vaccines that provide broad coverage against meningococcal disease strains is a key part of the World Health Organization’s Defeating Meningitis by 2030 Global Roadmap.

The trial compared the immune response generated by a new pentavalent, or 5-in-1, vaccine  called NmCV-5 against that of the licensed quadrivalent, or 4-in-1, MenACWY-D vaccine. The participants included 1,800 healthy two to 29-year-olds in Mali and The Gambia in western Africa. The vaccinations occurred in June 2021, and the trial didn’t find any safety concerns with NmCV-5. 

After 28 days, the immune responses generated by one dose of NmCV-5 were generally higher than those generated by the 4-in-1 vaccine across all age groups. The 5-in-1 vaccine also induced a strong immune response across meningococcal bacteria strains A, C, W, and Y and the emerging X strain. Currently, there is no licensed vaccine against the X strain, which may be the cause of meningitis epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Meningitis is a deadly disease with the ability to spread like wildfire in the event of an outbreak, this affects all ages most especially within the meningitis belt region,” study co-author Ama Umesi said in a statement. Umesi is a clinical trial coordinator and clinician from the Medical Research Council’s Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. 

“Epidemic preparedness is the way forward in providing available, affordable and accessible vaccines relevant to regions prone to meningitis outbreaks. Having meningitis vaccines should be a public health priority to prevent catastrophic outcomes during an outbreak and would be a game changer in the fight against meningitis,” Umensi said.

Issues with supply and affordability have limited the use of 4-in-1 meningococcal vaccines across a portion of sub-Saharan Africa called the meningitis belt. This region is at high-risk of epidemics of both meningococcal and pneumococcal meningitis. The NmCV-5 vaccine was developed by the Serum Institute of India and PATH, the global division of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. It follows the successful Meningitis Vaccine Project that developed an effective meningococcal A vaccine called MenAfriVac.

[Related: Ghana is the first country to approve Oxford’s malaria vaccine.]

According to the study, the new NmCV-5 vaccine can be made available at lower cost than existing 4-in-1 vaccines with more cost-effective production methods. The trial was designed to provide the World Health Organization with the evidence it needs to license the new vaccine for future epidemic control.

“As a researcher in the continent, I am hopeful that relevant vaccines for the common strains within the meningitis belt region will be readily available for timely interventions due to the collaboration and teamwork of multicentre trials like ours,” Umesi said. “Together we can defeat meningitis,” Umesi said. 

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The armadillo is beloved for its ability to scrunch itself up in a ball with their protective flexible shells. They’ve long been considered the only living mammals with these reptilian and fish-like suits of bony or scaly armor instead of hairy mammalian skin. However, a study published May 24 in the journal iScience, shows that African spiny mice actually produce the same spiny structures beneath the skin of their tails, which has gone largely undetected by scientists.

[Related: How science came to rely on the humble lab rat.]

African spiny mice are small to medium sized rodents with spiny hairs on their upper body, large eyes and ears, and scaly tails. Some species are found in Egypt, other parts of eastern Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan and while others are native to South Africa.  

A team of scientists made this spiny discovery while conducting routine CT scanning of museum specimens for the openVertebrate program. 

“I was scanning a mouse specimen from the Yale Peabody Museum, and the tails looked abnormally dark,” co-author and director of Florida Museum of Natural History’s digital imaging laboratory Edward Stanley said in a statement. 

Stanley initially assumed the discoloration was caused by an imperfection that was introduced when the specimen was preserved, but analysis of the X-Rays revealed an unmistakable feature that he was intimately familiar with.

“My entire PhD was focused on osteoderm development in lizards,” he said. “Once the specimen scans had been processed, the tail was very clearly covered in osteoderms.”

Osteoderms are the bony deposits that form scales or plates on the skin. They are also distinct from the scales of pangolins or the quills of hedgehogs and porcupines. These parts are composed of keratin, the same tissue that makes up hair, skin, and nails.

Osteoderms on spiny mice have been observed since the mid-1970s. A 2012 study demonstrated spiny mice can regenerate injured tissue without scarring. This ability is very common among reptiles and invertebrates, but was previously unknown in mammals. While mammalian skin is particularly fragile, spiny mice can heal twice as fast as their rodent relatives.

Spiny mice belong to four genera in the subfamily Deomyinae, but other than similarities in their DNA and possibly the shape of their teeth, scientists have been unable to find a single shared feature among the species of this group that distinguishes them from other rodents.

[Related: This newly discovered gecko can literally squirm right out of its skin.]

The team scanned additional museum specimens from all four genera and found that the spiny mice tails were covered in the same sheather of bone. Gerbils are the closest relatives of Deomyinae and they do not have osteoderms, which means that this trait likely evolved only once in the ancestor of spiny mice. 

“Spiny mice can regenerate skin, muscle, nerves, spinal cord and perhaps even cardiac tissue, so we maintain a colony of these rare creatures for research,” co-author and University of Florida biologist Malcolm Maden said in a statement. 

Maden and his team are mapping the genetic pathways that give spiny mice these healing powers to hopefully find a model for human tissue regeneration. The team further analyzed the development of spiny mice osteoderms and confirmed that they were similar to those of armadillos, but likely evolved independently. 

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Update May 25, 2023: This post has been updated with a comment from Chevron.

The already questionable $2 billion a year voluntary emissions offset market is facing even more scrutiny. An investigation by transnational corporate watchdog Corporate Accountability first reported in The Guardian found that carbon offsets from fossil fuel giant Chevron are mostly worthless—could also cause harm. The investigation found that the company relies on “junk” carbon offsets and “unviable” technologies. These actions do little to offset the company’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

The new research from Corporate Accountability found that between 2020 and 2022, 93 percent of the offsets that Chevron bought and counted towards their climate targets from voluntary carbon markets were actually too environmentally problematic to be considered as anything other than worthless or junk.

[Related: Many popular carbon offsets don’t actually counteract emissions, study says.]

Carbon offsets are tradable “rights” or certificates that allow the buyer to compensate for 1 ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent in greenhouse gasses. These offsets are usually in the form of an investment in emissions-reducing environmental projects in other parts of the world. 

An investigation by The Guardian and Germany’s Die Zeit, and the nonprofit journalism outfit, SourceMaterial earlier this year found that the world’s leading provider of these offsets, Verra, may be making the climate worse. Verra is often used by major corporations like Shell and Disney, but over 90 percent of Verra’s most popular rainforest offset credits were discovered to be  “phantom credits” that do not result in “genuine carbon reductions.”

Carbon offsets are considered worthless or having low environmental integrity if the project is linked to a plantation, forest, or green energy project. This includes hydroelectric dams that don’t lead to any additional reductions in greenhouse gasses, or exaggerates the benefits and minimizes risks of emitting emissions, among some other factors.

Chevron often purchased offsets that focused on large dams, plantations, or forests, according to the report. It found that many of these “worthless” offsets are also linked to some alleged social and environmental harms. These harms are primarily in communities in the global south, which happen to face the most harm by the climate crisis that Big Oil helped create. 

“Chevron’s junk climate action agenda is destructive and reckless, especially in light of climate science underscoring the only viable way forward is an equitable and urgent fossil fuel phase-out,” Rachel Rose Jackson from Corporate Accountability told The Guardian.

Chevron is the second-largest fossil fuel company in the United States and its vast operations stretch north to Canada and the United Kingdom and south towards Brazil, Nigeria, and Australia. It reported over $35 billion in profits in 2022 and its projected emissions between 2022 and 2025 are equal to those from 364 coal-fired power plants per year. This is more than the total emissions of 10 European countries combined for a similar three-year period, according to the report.

[Related: BP made $28 billion last year, and now it’s backtracking on its climate goals.]

Chevron “aspires” to achieve net zero upstream emissions by 2050, largely relying on carbon offset schemes and carbon capture and storage to do this. Carbon offsets rely on environmental projects to cancel out a company’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The new report further argues that the widespread use of these worthless offsets undermines the company’s net zero aspiration. Their net-zero aspirations only apply to less than 10 percent of the company’s carbon footprint–the upstream emissions that are produced from the production and transport of gas and oil. It excludes the downstream or end use emissions that are due to burning fossil fuels.

“Any climate plan that is premised on offsets, CCS, and excludes scope 3 [downstream] emissions is bound to fail,” Steven Feit, fossil economy legal and research manager at the Center for International Environmental Law, told The Guardian. “It’s clear from this report and other research that net zero as a framework opens the door for claims of climate action while continuing with business as usual, and not moving towards a low-carbon Paris [agreement]-aligned 1.5-degree [2.7 degree] future.”

Bill Turenne, an external affairs coordinator from Chevron, added via email that Chevron believes the report is “biased against our industry and paints an incomplete picture of Chevron’s efforts to advance a lower carbon future.” The offsets reviewed in the Corporate Accountability report are “compliance-grade offsets accepted by governments in the regions where we operate,” Turenne said.

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The decades-old international treaty that banned ozone-depleting substances has successfully averted huge amounts of sea ice loss—delaying the first ice-free Arctic summer by as much as 15 years, according to a new study. The study published May 22 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that regulating these harmful substances helped delay further globalc heating.

[Related: Fixing the ozone hole was a bigger deal than anyone realized.]

In 1985, scientists first discovered a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica on the Earth’s south pole. Representatives from countries around the world gathered to craft a treaty to protect the ozone layer, which shields the planet from harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation from the sun. The resulting Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 and went into effect in 1989 with the purpose of reducing atmospheric concentrations of ozone-depleting substances (OSDs) that were commonly used in refrigerators, air conditioners, fire extinguishers, and aerosols. It remains the only United Nations treaty ratified by every country in the world. 

This new study demonstrates that the treaty’s impact depends on future emissions and the impact goes as far north as the Arctic. 

“The first ice-free Arctic summer–with the Arctic Ocean practically free of sea ice–will be a major milestone in the process of climate change, and our findings were a surprise to us,” study co-author and Columbia University geophysicist Lorenzo Polvani said in a statement. “Our results show that the climate benefits from the Montreal Protocol are not in some faraway future: the Protocol is delaying the melting of Arctic sea ice at this very moment. That’s what a successful climate treaty does: it yields measurable results within a few decades of its implementation.”

According to Polvani and other climate scientists, the rapid melting of sea ice in the Arctic is the largest and most clear sign of human-made climate change. The first completely ice-free Arctic summer will likely occur by 2050, largely due to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. Other powerful greenhouse gasses like ODS’ also contributed to this warming, but their concentrations in the atmosphere began to decline in the mid-1990s. 

In this new study, the two authors analyzed new climate model simulations and found that the changes implemented by the Montreal Protocol is delaying the first appearance of an ice-free Arctic summer by up to 15 years, depending on future carbon dioxide emissions. They compared the estimated warming from ODS’ with and without the Montreal Protocol under two scenarios of future carbon dioxide emissions from 1985 to 2050. If the Montreal Protocol had not been enacted, the estimated global mean surface temperature would be about 0.9°F warmer and the Arctic polar cap would be almost 1.8°F warmer in 2050, according to their results.

[Related: Fixing the ozone hole was a bigger deal than anyone realized.]

“This important climate mitigation stems entirely from the reduced greenhouse gas warming from the regulated ODSs, with the avoided stratospheric ozone losses playing no role,” co-author and University of Exeter applied mathematician and atmospheric scientist Mark England said in a statement. “While ODSs aren’t as abundant as other greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide, they can have a real impact on global warming. ODSs have particularly powerful effects in the Arctic, and they were an important driver of Arctic climate change in the second half of the 20th Century. While stopping these effects was not the primary goal of the Montreal Protocol, it has been a fantastic by-product.” 

Both authors stressed the importance of remaining vigilant to atmospheric concentrations as the ozone layer is healing, especially due to a slight rise in ODS concentrations from 2010 to 2020.  In 2016, an amendment to the Montreal Protocol (called the Kigali Amendment) that required the phase out of the production and consumption of some hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) was added. While HFCs do not directly deplete ozone, they are powerful climate change-inducing gasses which can accelerate warming. An uptick in CFC use was detected in 2018 and tracked to China, but that was quickly fixed. Scientists say that the Kigali Amendment is estimated to avoid 0.5–0.9°F of warming by 2100, not including contributions from HFC-23 emissions.

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One large part of managing egg-laying hens is a process called sexing, or determining the sex of a baby chick after it hatches. A study published May 22 in the journal PLOS ONE finds that fertilized chicken eggs can be sexed by “sniffing” the volatile chemicals that are emitted through the chicken’s shell.

About a day after hatching, chicks are sorted by sex. Male chicks are killed almost  immediately, a process that kills an estimated 6.5 billion male chicks per year. Sexing is largely used due to both economics and biology—male chickens are of little use to the egg and meat industry since they do not lay eggs and do not fatten up quickly enough to be sold as meat. The practice costs egg producers about $500 million annually, but some European countries including Germany and France have already banned culling of male chicks or plan to phase it out. 

[Release: 6 things to know before deciding to raise backyard chickens.]

If hatcheries could identify the sex of an egg earlier in incubation, billions of male eggs could be humanely killed before the chick can feel pain, as well as reducing waste and environmental impact. The technology that is already on the market for this process called in-ovo sexing depends on either imaging through the shell or sampling the shell through a tiny hole. 

In this new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis and a startup company at the university called Sensit Ventures Inc., it is possible to sniff out the egg’s volatile organic chemicals and determine the egg’s sex. 

The team first had to find out if the chemicals released by male and female embryos give off reliably detectable differences. At study co-author Cristina Davis’s lab at the UC Davis Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, the team developed sensing chip technology that can collect and analyze organic chemicals in the air.  

They adapted suction cups that are already used for industrial handling of eggs to “sniff” air from the eggs without actually opening them up. Gas chromatography and mass spectrometry analyzed the air samples and the sex of the eggs was confirmed by DNA analysis at the UC Davis Department of Animal Science. 

[Related: Which Came First, The Chicken Or The Egg?]

“We found that there are volatile chemicals from the egg, a scent that you can capture and sort statistically,” study co-author and CEO of Sensit Ventures Tom Turpen said in a statement. 

According to the study, this air-sniffing technique was able to identify male and female embryos at eight days of incubation with 80 percent accuracy, based on two minutes of air sampling. Using this rapid suction-cup sampling method could also be carried out in rows that test multiple eggs at the same time 

“We think that the hardware platform invented at UC Davis could be integrated into hatcheries,” Turpen said.

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On May 22, the Biden Administration and the states along the Colorado River announced that they had reached an agreement to conserve an unprecedented amount of the river’s water supply. The Lower Basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada have agreed to save an additional 3 million acre-feet of Colorado River Water in the Lower Basin by the end of 2026, or about 13 percent of these states’ total allocation of water from the river.

In return, the federal government will compensate the three states for three-quarters of the water savings, or about $1.2 billion. The money will come from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Actf and is intended to pay Native American tribes, farmers, cities, and others who will voluntarily forgo their supplies.

[Related: What California’s weird winter means for its water problems.]

The Colorado River is a critical water supply in the Western United States and 20 years of severe drought, population growth, and climate change have strained its supply. The three states in the river’s Lower Basin all agreed to take less water from the river for now, in an effort to keep the water levels from falling so low that it jeopardizes the water supply to major cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix, as well as some of the most productive farmland in the country.

The agreement follows almost a year of negotiations and numerous missed deadlines. The plan intended to protect both Lake Powell and Lake Mead—two of the largest reservoirs in the US. Recent  droughts have reduced the Colorado River’s natural water flow by roughly 20 percent. In summer 2022, the water levels in both reservoirs fell so low that officials worried that the hydroelectric turbines they powered might stop working. 

In June 2022, the federal government told the seven states that rely on the river—including Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming—that they must find a way to reduce their water use by two to four million acre-feet of water per year. An agreement was not reached among the states, and the federal government considered unilaterally imposing water cuts on those states last summer. 

The states had until May 30 to take a position on future unilateral reductions, but a deal was being negotiated behind closed doors to reach a deal and avoid imposing cuts that would likely  face legal challenges and delaying any serious action, according to The New York Times.

“There are 40 million people, seven states, and 30 Tribal Nations who rely on the Colorado River Basin for basic services such as drinking water and electricity. Today’s announcement is a testament to the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to working with states, Tribes and communities throughout the West to find consensus solutions in the face of climate change and sustained drought,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in a statement. “In particular I want to thank Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau and Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton, who have led the discussions with Basin state commissioners, Tribes, irrigators, local communities, and valued stakeholders to reach this critical moment.”

[Related: What the Colorado River’s record lows mean for western US.]

The agreement runs through the end of 2026 and still needs to be formally adopted by the federal government. By 2026, all seven states that rely on the Colorado River may face a deeper water reckoning and the river’s decline is likely to continue. 

According to The Washington Post, Arizona’s commissioner to the Colorado River Tom Buschatzke emphasized that the deal is not the final outcome, and the parties have also agreed to a new proposal that will be analyzed by the Interior Department. 

“It is important to note that this is not an agreement — this is an agreement to submit a proposal and an agreement to the terms of that proposal to be analyzed by the federal government,” Buschatzke told reporters. “That is a really critical point for everyone to understand.”

The heavy snow and rain that fell in the West during the winter helped ease the crisis and gave the negotiators some breathing room, but this winter was “extraordinary” and was not a solution. 
“This wet winter definitely is great news for the Colorado River because of the snowpack. That snow runoff from the mountains will drain into the Colorado River and increase the stream flow,” Utah State University climate scientist Wei Zhang told PopSci in March. “But that cannot solve the water problem in the Colorado River—that demand is still much larger than the supply.”

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Just in time for the light-filled days before the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) has released some stellar new images of the sun. Observations from the biggest and most powerful solar telescope on Earth show the movement of plasma in the solar atmosphere, intricate details of the sunspot regions, and the sun’s roiling convective cells. One of DKIST’s first-generation instruments, called the Visible-Broadband Imager, obtained these snaps of the sun that were released to the public on May 19.

The sunspots in the images are cool and dark regions on the sun’s “surface,” called the photosphere. Although sunspots are short-lived, strong magnetic fields persist here. The sunspots vary in size, but many are about the size of Earth, if not even bigger. Groups of sunspots can erupt in explosive events such as solar flares or coronal mass ejections (CME), which generate solar storms. Flares and CMEs influence the sun’s outermost atmospheric layer called the heliosphere, and these disturbances have a long reach, even messing with Earth’s infrastructure.

[Related: The sun’s chromosphere is shades of golden in these new images.]

Sunspot activity is also tied to cycles of about 11 years. During a cycle, sunspot and flare activity will rise to a peak solar maximum, when the sun’s poles switch places. Then the activity recedes, falling to almost zero at solar minimum. Our most recent solar cycle, Solar Cycle 25, began in 2019, and is on the upswing: The next solar maximum is expected to take place in 2025.

Astronomers and solar physicists don’t know what creates sunspots or drives these solar cycles, but understanding more can help Earth prepare for CMEs. These ejections can hurl giant clouds of charged particles that slam into our planet’s magnetic field, affecting satellites, radio communications, and even the power grid. 

Not all CMEs wreak havoc, though. Some cause the colorful aurora borealis (or northern lights) in the Northern Hemisphere and aurora australis in the Southern Hemisphere. In April, a CME generated a severe geomagnetic storm. While this geomagnetic storm was not disruptive, the northern lights it made were visible as far south as Arizona. 

[Related: How hundreds of college students are helping solve a centuries-old mystery about the sun.]

The images also show convection cells, which measure up to 994 miles across, in the sun’s quiet regions down to a resolution of about 12 miles. The convection cells give the protosphere, or the visible surface of the sun, a speckled popcorn-like texture, as piping hot plasma rises up from the cells’ center and then travels out to the edges before cooling and falling. 

In the layers of the solar atmosphere, the chromosphere sits above the photosphere. The chromosphere sometimes has dark hair-like threads of plasma called fibrils or spicules. They range from 125 to 280 miles in diameter and erupt up to the chromosphere from the photosphere and last only for a few minutes. 

We can expect to see more stunning images of the cells and other solar features in the coming years, as the solar telescope becomes fully operational. DKIST is named in honor of the late Hawaiian Senator Daniel K. Inouye, is the largest solar telescope in the world at 13 feet-wide. It rests on the peak of the mountain and volcano Haleakalā (or “House of the Sun”) on the island of Maui. It is currently in Operations Commissioning Phase, the observatory’s learning and transitioning period. Scientists will use the solar telescope’s unique ability to capture data in unprecedented detail to better understand the sun’s magnetic field and drivers behind solar storms.

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About 250 million years ago, massive volcanic eruptions triggered catastrophic climate changes that killed 80 to 90 percent of species on Earth. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction, or the “Great Dying,” paved the way for dinosaurs to dominate Earth, but was even worse than the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Now, with a new fossil discovery described May 22 in the journal Current Biology, scientists believe that a tiger-sized, saber-toothed creature called Inostrancevia migrated 7,000 miles across Pangea. When it arrived in the southern part of Pangea, Inostrancevia filled a gap in an ecosystem that was devoid of top predators before Inostrancevia too went extinct, as Earth’s species fought to gain a foothold on a changing planet. 

[Related: UV radiation might be behind the planet’s biggest mass extinction.]

Inostrancevia was a gorgonopsian and a saber-toothed predator. It was about the size of a tiger and likely had tough skin similar to a rhinoceros or elephant and looked more like a reptile than most mammals alive today.

“It is equally closely related to all living mammals. Inostrancevia and other gorgonopsians have no direct living descendants. The group went completely extinct in the Permian-Triassic extinction, but distant proto-mammal relatives of gorgonopsians called cynodonts survived the extinction and evolved into mammals in the Triassic Period,” study co-author Christian Kammerer told PopSci. Kammerer is the research curator in Paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and research associate at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Previously, scientists had only found Inostrancevia fossils in Russia, but the fossils in this study were found almost 7,000 miles away. A team of researchers led by co-author Jennifer Botha of the GENUS Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences and the University of the Witwatersrand were digging in South Africa’s fossil-rich Karoo Basin when they unearthed two giant nine to 13-foot-long saber-toothed predators in rocks that date back between 252 and 255 million years.

After reviewing the geographic ranges and ages of the other top predators called the rubidgeine gorgonopsians that were normally found in the area, the team found that these local carnivores went extinct early in the Great Dying. By the time other animals began to go extinct, these apex predators were already gone.

“We did not have a good understanding of when these large predators appeared and went extinct in the African record,” study co-author and Field Museum research scientist Pia Viglietti told PopSci. “This was an important piece in the puzzle to answer because large-bodied predators tend to be at high levels of extinction risk. So, knowing when they went extinct is important for understanding the Great Dying.”

[Related: With bulging eyes and a killer smile, this sabertooth was an absolute nightmare.]

According to the team, these findings demonstrate that fossil-rich locations in South Africa are crucial to better understanding the most catastrophic event in Earth’s history. The team plans to look for more gorgonopsians from more northern parts of Africa and in Europe and to search for earlier records of Northern Hemisphere gorgonopsians moving into the southern part of Pangea.

This peek into the past also bears a warning for our future, since the team says The Great Dying is the historical event that most closely parallels Earth’s current environmental crisis.

“Both involve global warming related to the release of greenhouse gasses, driven by volcanoes in the Permian and human actions currently,” said Kammerer. “[They] represent a very rare case of rapid shifts between icehouse and hothouse Earth. So, the turmoil we observe in late Permian ecosystems, with whole sections of the food web being lost, represents a preview for our world if we don’t change things fast.”

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The catastrophic flooding from 2012’s Hurricane Sandy inundated parts of the New York City subway system with corrosive salt water and brought with it a warning for the future. Now, scientists have learned that the city is sinking, and it’s not just the underground trains that are in trouble.

[Related: New York City’s subway system isn’t ready for a storm-filled future.]

A study published earlier this month in the Earth’s Future journal found that New York City is sinking at a rate of roughly one to two millimeters per year, but certain parts of northern Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and lower Manhattan are actually sinking faster at 2.75mm per year. 

There is not one cause for this sinking, but the weight from giant skyscrapers is magnifying the problem. In the study, the team calculated that all of the city’s structures weigh 842 million tons (1.68 trillion pounds), about the weight of 140 million elephants.   

Many of the city’s largest buildings sit upon solid bedrock called Manhattan schist, but there is a mixture of sand and other clays holding up some of the other structures. For example, the Manhattan stanchion of the famed Brooklyn Bridge is built on a hard layer of sand, since it was too dangerous for the workers building it to keep drilling down to bedrock. 

“The softer the soil, the more compression there is from the buildings. It wasn’t a mistake to build such large buildings in New York but we’ve just got to keep in mind every time you build something there you push down the ground a little bit more,” study co-author and a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey Tom Parsons told The Guardian. 

The clay and sand is adding to the sinking effect that might be due to the way that the Earth below continues to shift following the Earth’s most recent ice age–about 10,000 years ago. Giant ice sheets covered Earth during the coldest parts of the planet’s last ice age, which caused the ground right underneath them to sink. The landmasses tilted up and after the ice sheets melted, the areas that were propped up like New York and other cities in eastern North America are now sinking back down. Earlier studies suggest the East Coast could see as much as 19 to 59 inches of sinking by 2100. 

Climate change is compounding the issue, as the sea level rise continues to accelerate. The waters surrounding New York City are rising at about twice the global average due the glaciers melting from the effects of climate change and seawater expanding. Since 1950, the sea level around New York City has increased about nine inches. According to the NYC Panel on Climate Change, the sea level could rise between eight inches and 30 inches by the 2050s and as much as 15 inches to 75 inches by the end of this century.

“A deeply concentrated population of 8.4 million people faces varying degrees of hazard from inundation in New York City,” the team wrote in the study.

[Related: At New York City’s biggest power plant, a switch to clean energy will help a neighborhood breathe easier.]

New York is not the only city that will be facing this crisis. A report from the C40 Group, a network of mayors from some of the world’s biggest cities dedicated to confronting the effects of climate change, found that 800 million people are expected to live in coastal cities where sea levels are expected to rise by over a foot by 2050.

The study’s authors also stress the need to adapt to these threats of increased flooding. “Every additional high-rise building constructed at coastal, river, or lakefront settings could contribute to future flood risk,” the authors wrote. 

In the fall of 2020, New York City began construction on the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project which is aimed at reducing the flood risk and sea level rise along Manhattan’s east side. According to the city government, the boundaries of this project correspond with the natural “pinch-points” in the 100-year floodplain. These are areas where the land is higher along the coastline, making it easier to close the system off from water entering from the north and south. The project is expected to be complete in 2026 and will eventually span 2.4 miles and include 18 movable floodgates. 

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In its two years and three months of exploring the Red Planet, NASA’s Perseverance Rover has been one busy moving Martian science lab. It has detected signs of past chemical reactions, begun building  a Martian rock depot, and recorded audio of a dust devil for the first time.

[Related: Mars’s barren Jezero crater had a wet and dramatic past.]

Here are a few of the “six-wheeled scientist’s” most recent highlights this month.

New Belva Crater images

Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument collected 152 images while looking deep into Belva Crater. Belva is a large impact crater that lies within the far larger Jezero Crater, which is where Perseverance landed in 2021. The new images are dramatic to look at, but also provide the science team with new insights into Jezero crater’s interior. 

“Mars rover missions usually end up exploring bedrock in small, flat exposures in the immediate workspace of the rover,” deputy project scientist of Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Katie Stack Morgan said in a statement. “That’s why our science team was so keen to image and study Belva. Impact craters can offer grand views and vertical cuts that provide important clues to the origin of these rocks with a perspective and at a scale that we don’t usually experience.”

According to NASA, it is similar to a geology professor on Earth taking their students to visit highway “roadcuts.” These are places where rock layers and other geological features are visible after construction crews have sliced vertically into the rock. Belva Crater represents a natural Martian roadcut. 

The rover took the images on April 22– the mission’s 772nd Martian day, or “sol”. It was parked just west of Belva Crater’s rim on a light-toned rocky outcrop that Perseverance’s science team calls “Echo Creek.” This 0.6-mile-wide crater was created by a meteorite impact eons ago, and shows multiple locations of exposed bedrock and a region where the sedimentary layers angle downward. 

These steep “dipping beds” potentially indicate the presence of a large Martian sandbar that was deposited by a river channel flowing into the ancient lake that Jezero Crater once held. The science team believes that the large boulders in the crater’s foreground are either chunks of bedrock that the meteorite impact exposed, or the rocks were potentially carried to the crater by a long gone river system.

NASA says the team will continue to search for answers by comparing the features found in the bedrock near the rover with the larger larger-scale rock layers that are visible in the distant crater walls.

Ancient and wild Martian river

Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument also took some new images that possibly show signs of an ancient Martian river. Some evidence shows that this rocky river was possibly very deep and incredibly fast. This now-dry river was part of a network of waterways that flowed into Jezero Crater.

[Related: Name a better duo than NASA’s hard-working Mars rover and helicopter.]

Better understanding of these watery environments could help scientists find signs of ancient microbial life that may have been preserved in the reddish-hued rocks of Mars.

The rover is exploring the top of an 820 feet tall fan-shaped pile of sedimentary rock, with curving layers that suggest water once flowed there. Scientists want to answer whether the water flowed into relatively shallow streams like one that NASA’s Curiosity rover found evidence of in Gale Crater or if Jezero Crater’s was a more powerful river system.

When stitched together, the images come together like a patchwork quilt with evidence of a more raging river because of the coarse sediment grains and cobbles. 

“Those indicate a high-energy river that’s truckin’ and carrying a lot of debris. The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily it’s able to move larger pieces of material,” postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Libby Ives, said in a statement.

Ives has a background in studying Earth’s rivers, and spent the last six months analyzing images of Mars’ surface. “It’s been a delight to look at rocks on another planet and see processes that are so familiar,” Ives said.

Both of these discoveries will help Perseverance’s astrobiology mission that includes the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will continue to characterize and study Mars’ geology and past climate, while paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and will also be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.

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On May 9, a baby California condor hatched at Liberty Wildlife, a wildlife rehabilitation, education, and conservation organization in Phoenix, Arizona. The hatching is a ray of hope and welcome good news for the struggling species that was only recently brought back from the brink of extinction. 

Only 22 condors were believed to be alive during the 1980s after a maelstrom of habitat loss, poaching, lead poisoning accidents with power lines, and the insecticide DDT. Currently, about 275 wild birds are cruising the skies about California, Utah, Arizona, and Baja California, Mexico, more than 160 are in captivity, and more than 400 live worldwide. 

[Related: Inside the Yurok Tribe’s mission to make critically endangered condors thrive.]

The largest bird species in North America and a crucial part of the ecosystem, California condors are considered sacred to many indigenous peoples. The Yurok Tribe of the Pacific Northwest call California condors “prey-go-neesh,” and say the birds have been tied to the Yurok Hlkelonah, or the cultural and ecological landscape, since the beginning of time. The tribe has officially been a driving force on condor reintroduction since 2008. 

Now, these sacred and important birds face a grave threat in the form of a tiny pathogen. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1), also called bird flu, is threatening condors at an alarming rate. It was first detected in the California condor in late March, and more than 20 are known to have died since. 

“It is scary particularly for endangered species like the California condors. It has the ability to wipe out an entire species,” Liberty Wildlife’s Animal Care Coordinator Jan Miller tells PopSci. 

One of the birds that succumbed to the disease was the new hatchling’s mother, part of a breeding pair of wild California condors. The mother was found acting suspicious in a cave near the Grand Canyon and was brought to Liberty Wildlife due to suspected bird flu. She died eight days later.  

“Using telemetry, it was assumed that she had laid an egg, probably between March 13 and March 17, and it was predicted to hatch between May 9 and May 17,” Liberty Wildlife’s Executive Director Megan Mosby tells PopSci. “The limited movement of the male led to the assumption that he was trying to incubate an egg.  The biologists at the Arizona Vermilion Cliff site decided that it wasn’t safe for the male, a known breeder, to attempt to raise a chick solo and feed himself, especially in a dank, cool cave … a perfect place for flu contamination.”

[Related: Spy tech and rigged eggs help scientists study the secret lives of animals.]

Biologists brought the egg back to Liberty Wildlife, where it was monitored in a structure called a brooder.  When the egg began to “pip,” the Los Angeles Zoo’s propagation team advised Liberty Wildlife on best practices for monitoring the hatchling’s progress. The team noticed that the chick was in the wrong position in the egg due to where it had pipped, or poked through its membrane, and that it would need assistance in order for the hatch to be successful. 

“Veterinarian Dr. Stephanie Lamb assisted in the freeing of the baby from the egg and the operation was successful.  After a health check, a swab to test for Avian Flu was obtained, and the chick was placed in an incubator with a surrogate (stuffed animal) ‘mother’ condor,” Miller says. 

The hatchling was negative for bird flu and continued to eat solid food and bond with her surrogate plush parent. According to Mosby, the team was excited to find out she was female because 11 of the 21 condors that have died due to bird flu were breeding age females.

On May 17, she was flown to The Peregrine Fund in Boise, Idaho. There she will be raised by foster parents so that she can one day be released back into Arizona’s skies.  

“At this age it is very easy for the chick to imprint on humans so getting her with her own species is critical to her releasability,” says Miller. “The Peregrine Fund has a very advanced propagation department with proven foster parents to help raise chicks for release into the wild. It is a very large operation with proven results.”

According to the team, vultures like the California condor are not only intelligent, but are incredibly necessary to help clean up the environment since they handle dead and decaying animals that can spread disease. 

“Vultures are part of the natural cleanup crew in nature. They deserve every fair chance they can get to continue to survive and be a part of this world,” says Miller. 

In addition to this welcome hatchling’s continued success this week, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service approved the emergency use of bird flu vaccine on May 16. The Yurok Tribe called this move, “a huge step in the effort to combat this virulent threat, but still a long road ahead.”

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A dinosaur specimen unearthed in Castellón, Spain in 2011 is likely a brand new species and genus of spinosaur, a family of dinosaurs whose fossils have been found in Europe, Asia, South America, and Asia. The new findings were published May 18 in the journal Scientific Reports. 

[Related: What was going on inside of this spinosaur’s brain?]

This new species is named Protathlitis cinctorrensis—which comes from the Greek word for “champion” in reference to football club Villarreal C.F. ‘s Europa League win in 2021.

“Three of the authors of this paper live in Villarreal, and with the club’s centenary this year, we wanted to recognise its work both on and off the pitch by naming a dinosaur genus after it,” co-author and Jaume I University paleontologist Andrés Santos‑Cubedo, said in a statement. 

The discovery, alongside another the uncovering of a moderately sized dinosaur named Vallibonavenatrix cani, suggests that the Iberian peninsula  could have been a very diverse area for medium-to-large bodied spinosaurid dinosaurs. 

Spinosaurs were carnivorous theropod dinosaurs that were typically large and stood on two feet. Some of the better known spinosaurids include the crocodile-mouthed 4,000 pound Baryonyx and Spinosaurus, who might be recognizable from its fictional fight with Tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park III. Many of these unusual 13 to 22 ton dinos stalked ancient riverbanks preying on large fish and lived a different lifestyle than more familiar theropods, such as Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus.

“The spinosaurs are quite special theropods. They ate fish and lived in and around water, but there’s a lot of debate about just how aquatic they were,” Cassius Morrison, a co-author of the study and PhD student from the UK’s Natural History Museum, said in a statement. “Some scientists suggest they were like herons, snapping up fish while wading, while others think they were more like a penguin, and could move underwater to hunt fish. Suchomimus seems to be more like a heron, while Baryonyx and Spinosaurus had higher bone density which might mean they could have spent time underwater.”

Spinosaurs are believed to have originated in Europe before moving to Africa and Asia sometime during the Late Cretaceous, but the evidence of their existence in present-day Spain is primarily based on fossilized tooth remains.  

In this study, a team of paleontologists analyzed a right jaw bone, one tooth, and five vertebraediscovered in the Arcillas de Morella Formation in eastern Spain. This formation is known for containing fossils of Iguanodon and its relatives and titanosaur-like dinosaurs.

[Related: Spinosaurus bones hint that the spiny dinosaurs enjoyed water sports.]

The fragments were dated to between 127 and 126 million years ago, during the late Barremian or Early Cretaceous period. The team estimates that the new specimen was around 32 to 36 feet long—about the length of a telephone pole.  

The team compared this newly-named specimen to data on other spinosaurs to figure out its evolutionary relationship to other species within the family of dinosaurs. They believe that this new dinosaur appeared in the Early Cretaceous in a large area of land in the Northern hemisphere called Laurasia. 

“Our research demonstrates that two subfamilies of spinosaur occupied western Europe during the Early Cretaceous (145-100 million years ago) before later migrating to Africa and Asia,” Andrés said. “Baryonyx-like spinosaurs became dominant in Europe, while Spinosaurus-like spinosaurs were most abundant in Africa.”

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An international team of archaeologists digging in Saudi Arabia and Jordan reportedly found the world’s oldest architectural plans. The findings were published in a study May 17 in the journal PLOS ONE and includes precise engravings that date back between 7,000 and 8,000 years ago.

[Related: Details of life in Bronze Age Mycenae could lie at the bottom of a well.]

These ancient blueprints depict large structures used to trap and funnel animals for slaughter into enclosures called kites. First spotted by aviators in the 1920s, the contraptions are called “kites” because of the shape they form. The converging walls range from hundreds of feet up to 3.1 miles long and drive the animals towards a corral surrounded by pits up to 13.1 feet deep. 

According to the authors, plans like these for kites represent a milestone in human development because intelligent behavior is needed to transpose the plans for such a large space onto a small two dimensional surface. A kite would have also helped people hunt a larger group of animals in a shorter period of time. 

“Although human constructions have modified natural spaces for millennia, few plans or maps predate the period of the literate civilizations of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt,” the authors wrote in a statement. “The ability to transpose large space onto a small, two dimensional surface represents a milestone in intelligent behavior. Such structures are visible as a whole only from the air, yet this calls for the representation of space in a way not seen at this time.”

In this new study, the team reports two new engravings first unearthed in 2015 that represent the ruins of kites in present-day Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The Jibal al-Khasabiyeh area in Jordan has eight kite areas. The stone found with a representation of how to build them that was carved with stone tools measures two feet long and one foot wide and is about 7,000 years old. 

In Saudi Arabia, Zebel az-Zilliyat has two pairs of visible kites that are about two miles apart.  A massive to-scale engraving of the plans was excavated nearby. The 10 feet long by seven feet wide blueprint dated to about 8,000 years ago. In this engraving, it was reportedly pecked instead of carved into the stone, possibly with hand picks. It was created at a scale of roughly 1:175, so actual kites were 175 times larger than the engraving itself.

The study also found that the proportions, layout, and shape of the engravings were consistent with the actual remains of the ancient kites. They are also in keeping with the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west).

[Related: Cave drawings from 20,000 years ago may feature an early form of writing.]

Over 6,000 kite structures have been found across central Asia and the Middle East, with the majority in present-day Saudi Arabia, eastern Jordan, and southern Syria. There are other  ancient engravings in Europe that are believed to portray maps, but scientists have yet to discover depictions of hunting kites on the continent.

Little is known about the people who made the kites thousands of years ago and a project like this likely would have been a large group undertaking, according to the authors. 

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If Spiderman and Antman took their DNA and mixed it together in a petri dish, the result might be something like the spider species Siler collingwoodi (S. collingwoodi). This tiny, colorful, jumping spider found in China and Japan uses a combination of camouflage and some award-worthy mimicry to deter some hungry predators. In a stressful scenario, these spiders will imitate the way an ant walks to avoid being eaten.

[Related: Black widows battle their even deadlier cousins in a brutal spider war.]

A study published May 17 in the journal iScience found that the combo of camouflage and ant mimicry works to evade spiders that eat other spiders, but not hungry praying mantises. It’s advantageous to mimic an ant because they are typically not very tasty, and can have spiny defenses, chemical repellents, or venom. Not to mention, species of “exploding” ants like Colobopsis saundersi that are not afraid to fight and bite back. While scientists already knew that S. collingwoodi walked like an ant, the team on this study were curious how accurate the mimicry is, whether it imitates multiple species of ants, and how effective it is at discouraging predators. 

“Unlike typical ant-mimicking spiders that mimic the brown or black body color of ants, S. collingwoodi has brilliant body coloration,” co-author and Peking University in China ecologist Hua Zeng said in a statement. “From a human’s perspective, it seems to blend well with plants in its environment, but we wanted to test whether their body coloration served as camouflage to protect against predators.”

To better understand how these ant-inspired theatrics help the spiders avoid becoming dinner, the team collected wild ant-mimicking spiders from four spots in southern Hainan, China, and brought them back to the lab. They also collected another type of jumping spider that does not mimic ants as a comparison and five co-occurring ant species as potential models.  

The team then compared and characterized how the insects and arachnids moved in terms of how they used their individual limbs, their speed, acceleration, and whether they followed a straight path or took a more roundabout way. 

Inside of jumping like most jumping spiders, S. collingwoodi scuttle around like ants. They raise their front legs to mimic an ant’s antennae, bob their abdomens, and lift their legs to walk more ant-like. Out of the five ant species studied, the spider’s style of walking more closely resembled three of the smaller ant species that are closer in size.

“S. collingwoodi is not necessarily a perfect mimic, because its gait and trajectory showed high similarity with multiple ant species,” said Zeng. “Being a general mimic rather than perfectly mimicking one ant species could benefit the spiders by allowing them to expand their range if the ant models occupy different habitats.”

Then it was time to test these defenses against two likely predators. Portia labiata and the praying mantis. Portia labiata is a similarly sized jumping spider with color vision who specializes in preying upon other spiders. The praying mantis is a more generalist predator that has a monochromatic visual system–meaning it has trouble telling multiple colors apart. 

[Related: Jumping spiders might be able to sleep—perchance to dream.]

To see how the color camouflaging was working, they modeled how the two predators would perceive S. collingwoodi relative to the other prey species. They used a background of two plants that the spiders live on—the red-flowering West Indian jasmine and the Fukien tea tree The ant-mimicking spiders were better camouflaged from both predators on the jasmine plant than on the tea tree plant.

The predators were more likely to attack the non-mimicking spider than the ones that imitate ants. Out of 17 trials, the spider launched five attacks—all of them were launched towards a non-mimicking spider. However, praying mantises attacked both prey species with equal readiness.

“We initially thought that both predators would behave similarly in the anti predation experiments, but in fact the simulated ant locomotion of Siler collingwoodi only worked for the jumping spider predator, while the praying mantis showed indiscriminate attacks on both ants and mimics,” co-author and Peking University evolutionary ecologist Wei Zhang said in a statement. 

It is possible that this difference might be driven by each predator’s likelihood of being injured if they eat an ant. The praying mantises are much larger than their prey, and they have a better chance of eating spiny ants without risking catastrophic injury. Predatory spiders do not have this margin for error. 

“For the spider predator, a random attack on an ant could result in injury,” says Zhang, “so they are very careful predators and will only attack if they can distinguish S. collingwoodi from ants with a high degree of certainty.”

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Forging strong social relationships can help mitigate the effects of traumatic childhood events in human adults, but also in baboons. A study published May 17 in the journal Science Advances drew on 36 years of data from almost 200 baboons in southern Kenya and found that even though early adversity can take years of their lifespans, stronger social bonds in adulthood can help get these years back. 

[Related: Baboon poop shows how chronic stress shortens lives.]

“It’s like the saying from the King James Apocrypha, ‘a faithful friend is the medicine of life,’” co-author and Duke University biologist and evolutionary anthropologist Susan Alberts said in a statement.

Studies have consistently found that people who go through more bad experiences growing up, such as neglect or abuse,  are more likely to die early. However, the mechanisms behind how early adversity leads to a premature death has been harder for researchers to pin down, according to Alberts. Some of the limitations to earlier research is the reliance on self-reported memories which can be imprecise and subjective. 

Enter our primate cousins. Baboons share more than 90 percent of their DNA with humans and researchers have followed individual baboons near Amboseli National Park in Kenya since 1971. 

In this new study, the researchers analyzed how early life experiences and adult social connections affected long-term survival in 199 female baboons between 1983 and 2019.

Baboon childhood is certainly different from human childhood, but young baboons still face hardships. The team in the study tallied up each female’s exposure to six potential sources of early adversity, including whether she had a low-ranking or socially isolated mother or if her mother died before she reached maturity. It was also noted if she was born in a drought year or into a large group, and if she had a sibling close in age, which could contribute to more competition for both maternal attention and resources.

The team found that stressful experiences are very common for the baboons growing up in the semi-arid and unpredictable landscape of Amboseli. Of the 199 baboons in the study, 75 percent suffered through at least one stressor, and 33 percent had two or more.

Their results confirm previous findings that the more hardship a female baboon faces, the shorter her lifespan. Monkeys who experienced more upheaval at a young age were also more socially isolated as adults.

[Related: Monkeys with close friends have friendlier gut bacteria.]

However, the researchers showed that 90 percent of the dip in survival was due to the direct effects of early adversity, not to the weakened social bonds that continued into adulthood.

No matter how strong their bonds were with other baboons, each additional hardship translated to 1.4 years of life lost. Those who went through four bad experiences growing up died close to 5.6 years earlier than those who didn’t face any. Since the average female baboon lives to age 18, this is a large drop in lost years.

But an unfortunate start in life does not mean that a baboon will absolutely live a short life. 

“Females who have bad early lives are not doomed,” co-author and biologist at SUNY Oswego Elizabeth Lange said in a statement. “We found that both early life adversity and adult social interactions affect survival independently. That means that interventions that occur throughout the lifespan could improve survival.”

In baboons, strong social bonds are measured by how often they groom with their closest friends. Those with strong social bonds added 2.2 years to their lives, no matter what adversity they had faced in their earlier years. The baboons whose mothers died before they reached maturity and then forged strong friendships in adulthood showed the best ability to bounce back. 

However, the flip side is also true. Weak social bonds can magnify early life adversity, according to the study. 

It is not clear yet if these results can be translated to adult humans, but it suggests that early intervention is not the only way to overcome childhood trauma and its lingering effects. 

“If you did have early life adversity, whatever you do, try to make friends,” Alberts said.

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Within the next five years, the planet is 66 percent likely to reach 2.7°F (1.5°C ) of warming according to a jarring new update from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 2.7°F is the internationally accepted global temperature threshold for limiting the worst effects of climate change.

[Related: For marine life to survive, we must cut carbon emissions.]

The WMO forecasts that global temperatures are expected to surge to record levels fueled by heat trapping gasses and a naturally occurring El Niño event. The organization also predicts that the annual average near-surface temperature will be over the threshold for at least one year between 2023 and 2027.

The 2015 Paris climate agreement set 2.7°F as a guardrail against increasingly dangerous atmospheric warming, and over 100 countries including the United States, Argentina, China, and Egypt, pledged to prevent long-term warming if possible. A special United Nations report from 2018 said going past this point would be dangerous and lead to significantly more death, destruction, and damage to global ecosystems.

According to the WMO, these new findings do not mean that Earth will permanently exceed the 2.7°F level that was specified in the Paris Agreement. The organization believes that the jump would be a temporary, and is not as worrisome as the agreed-upon climate danger point.

“A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory. This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. We need to be prepared,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

Scientists believe that there is a 62 percent chance that an El Niño will develop by the end of this year. El Niño is a natural part of an oscillating weather system that develops in the Pacific Ocean. Earth has been in a rare “triple dip” of the opposing phase called La Niña for the past three years. La Niña typically has had a dampening effect on temperature increases around the world. With the new El Niño developing, there is a 98 percent chance that at least one of the next five years will be the hottest on record, according to the WMO.

Warming in the arctic is also disproportionately high. This region heats much faster than the rest of the world, largely because as sea ice melts, solar radiation can no longer be reflected back and the heat is absorbed. This rapid warming is affecting global weather patterns and the jet stream. 

[Related: The past 8 years have been the hottest on human record, according to new report.]

Reaching this point, even just for a single year, would represent an acceleration of human impacts on the global climate system and send the world into “uncharted territory,” since average surface temperatures have never breached the threshold in recorded history. The highest average in previous years was 2.5 °F (1.28°C) above pre-industrial levels.

Scientists do not believe that the anomaly will occur this year, but the chance of temporarily exceeding this threshold has risen steadily since 2015, when it was close to zero. Between 2017 and 2021, there was only a 10 percent chance of exceeding this target.

“Global mean temperatures are predicted to continue increasing, moving us away further and further away from the climate we are used to,” Leon Hermanson, a Met Office expert scientist who led the report, said in a statement. 

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The preserved ancient Roman city of Pompeii is best known for the catastrophic volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the city in 79 CE. But the discovery of two skeletons at Italy’s Pompeii Archaeological Park adds to growing evidence that earthquakes  accompanied the fateful eruption. The details of the excavation were published by the Pompeii Archaeological Park on May 16 in the E-Journal of Pompeii Excavations.

[Related: This ancient Roman villa was equipped with wine fountains.]

As the ground shook, massive plumes of volcanic ash and pumice and boiling hot gasses shot out of the volcano which covered and suffocated its residents. The bodies of those caught in the eruption were well preserved by the ash, offering scientists a unique window into the event. Archaeologists have found the remains of over 1,300 victims in the site southeast of Naples over the last 250 years

According to Pompeii Archaeological Park, the skeletons were discovered during a recent excavation of the Casti Amanti, or the House of the Chaste Lovers. 

“In recent years, we have realized there were violent, powerful seismic events that were happening at the time of the eruption,″ Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park told the Associated Press. 

Zuchtriegel added that advances in archaeological techniques and methodology, “allow us to understand better the inferno that in two days completely destroyed the city of Pompeii, killing many inhabitants.” These technological advances are making it possible to figure out the dynamic of the deaths right down to the final seconds. 

The remains were found in a utility room where the pair had possibly sought shelter beneath a collapsed wall. The skeletons are believed to belong to two men that were at least 55 years old at the time of the eruption. 

The team also believes that the house was likely undergoing reconstruction when the eruption and earthquake struck due to a stone kitchen counter covered in powdered lime.

[Related: As Rome digs its first new metro route in decades, an archaeologist safeguards the city’s buried treasures.]

Part of the southern facing wall collapsed and crushed one of the men and the skeleton’s raised arm, “offers a tragic image of his vain attempt to protect himself from the falling masonry.” At the western wall, the entire upper section detached and fell into the room and crushed and buried the other man. 

The team also found some organic matter that they believe is a bundle of fabric, vessels, bowls, jugs, six coins, and a glass paste that possibly used to be the beads of a necklace.

“The discovery of the remains of these two Pompeians in the context of the construction site in the Insula of the Chaste Lovers shows how much there is still to discover about the terrible eruption of AD 79 and confirms the necessity of continuing scientific investigation and excavations. Pompeii is an immense archaeological laboratory that has regained vigor in recent years, astonishing the world with the continuous discoveries brought to light and demonstrating Italian excellence in this sector,” Italy’s Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano said in a statement.

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Doctors may have a new tool to protect patients against multi-drug resistant bacterial infections. But the new defense against increasingly difficult-to-treat bacteria isn’t a brand new development—it is an 80 year-old antibiotic. A study published May 16 in the open access journal PLOS Biology looked at a natural product made in soil called nourseothricin that was discovered in 1942.

[Related: Kids all over the US are getting strep, but antibiotics are hard to come by.]

The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections has encouraged a search for new antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance is a very serious and growing medical problem—according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, antimicrobial resistance killed at least 1.27 million people worldwide and was associated with close to 5 million deaths in 2019. In the United States, more than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur each year, and over 35,000 people die as a result.

Nourseothricin contains multiple forms of a complex molecule called streptothricin. There were high hopes that the streptothricin inside would be a powerful agent against bacteria called gram-negative bacteria. These bacteria, such as E.coli., have a thick outer protective layer and are particularly hard for antibiotics to kill. 

Unfortunately, nourseothricin was toxic to kidneys according to the results of an unpublished limited human trial sometime in the 1940’s and its development was dropped. The team in this study decided to go back and take a second look at nourseothricin.

“We started searching around for drugs that we could use, and it turns out these super resistant bugs were highly susceptible to streptothricin, so we were able to use it as a selection agent to do these experiments,” study co-author and pathologist at Harvard Medical School James Kirby said in a statement. “What scientists were isolating in 1942 was not as pure as what we are working with today. In fact, what was then called streptothricin is actually a mixture of several streptothricin variants. The natural mixture of different types of streptothricins is now referred to as nourseothricin.”

Kirby is also the director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

In the earlier studies on the antibiotic, nourseothricin suffered from incomplete purification of  streptothricin which was likely causing the toxicity. A study published in 2022 showed that multiple forms of streptothricin actually have different toxicities. 

One called streptothricin-F was significantly less toxic while also working against present day pathogens that are resistant to multiple drugs. 

[Related: Raw dog food can harbor antibiotic-resistant bacteria.]

In this study, the team looked closely at streptothricin-F and also streptothricin- D. Streptothricin-D strain was also highly selective for the gram-negative bacteria and was even more powerful than streptothricin-F against drug-resistant Enterobacterales and other bacterial species. However, it caused renal toxicity at a lower dose. 

The team used cryo-electron microscopy to show that streptothricin-F bound extensively to a subunit of the bacterial ribosome. This binding causes translation errors in the bacteria, which helps antibiotics inhibit the spread of a bacterial infection.  

“It works by inhibiting the ability of the organism to produce proteins in a very sneaky way. When a cell makes proteins, they make them off a blueprint or message that tells the cell what amino acids to link together to build the protein. Our studies help explain how this antibiotic confuses the machinery so that the message is read incorrectly, and it starts to put together gibberish. Essentially the cell gets poisoned because it’s producing all this junk,” said Kirby.

The team is still trying to figure out the mechanism behind how nourseothricin works, but found that it acts differently than other antibiotics. Kirby will continue studying nourseothricin with collaborators at Northwestern University and Case Western Reserve University Medical Center to dive deeper and understand how it actually works.

“We have great collaborators that have allowed us to pursue a project that crosses multiple fields. This work is an example of collaborative science really at its best,” said Kirby. 

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According to a small study, pregnant people using any form of cannabis should consider stopping due to potential harm to the fetus, even very early into pregnancy. The study published May 16 in the journal Frontiers in Pediatrics looked very closely at the first trimester of pregnancy and found a “significant” decrease in birth weight of about one-third of a pound.

[Related: Highway and traffic pollution could be connected to low birthweight.]

“We show that even when marijuana use occurred only in the first trimester of pregnancy, birth weight was significantly reduced, by more than 150g on average,” Beth Bailey, a co-author and director of population health research at Central Michigan University, said in a statement. “If that use continued into the second trimester, newborn head circumference was significantly decreased as well.”

While 150 grams, or one third of a pound, may not be a large amount on paper, any decrease in weight has been linked to health problems as a child grows. Low birth weight is a strong predictor of a child’s future development and general health. According to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, low birthweight is defined as a child weighing less than five pounds eight ounces. Infants born with low birthweight can face lower oxygen levels at birth, neurological problems, and difficulty feeding. 

The study used data from the medical records of 109 pregnant people from an obstetrics clinic at Central Michigan University’s College of Medicine. They compared that data with a control group of 171 people who did not use not use marijuana during pregnancy. 

The team observed that some pregnant people use marijuana early in pregnancy for morning sickness in the first trimester. Using cannabis during the first trimester time appears to be critical and may be equivalent to using marijuana throughout pregnancy. They found that the same effect happens if cannabis is used at other early stages, including when someone uses cannabis without knowing they are pregnant. 

Brianna Moore, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health in Aurora who was not involved in the study, told CNN that while the study sample size was small, the research was robust since they verified marijuana use with urine tests instead of  self-reporting. Moore added that studies show self-reported cannabis use during pregnancy is about 7 percent, but a 2019 study that used umbilical cord testing found that that number could be as high as 22.4 percent. 

[Related: Marijuana during pregnancy might be as dangerous as alcohol.]

“Urinary THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) testing is more objective than self-report, since pregnant people may not want to state that they are using cannabis,” Moore said. “However, one study suggests that very few pregnant people (0.5 percent) use cannabis strictly for medical purposes. There’s work that needs to be done to understand the contextual, social, or individual factors that influence cannabis use in pregnancy.”

According to the authors, the study did not have information on how much or how often the participants used cannabis.  These results were based strictly on whether or not people did or did not use the substance at certain times in pregnancy. The study could not establish a connection between heavy cannabis use and some more pronounced outcomes in newborn growth.

“The best recommendation is that women should be advised to quit marijuana use prior to becoming pregnant,” Phoebe Dodge, study co-author and incoming pediatric resident at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, said in a statement. “However, quitting as soon as possible after getting pregnant is the second-best option to avoid long term adverse health and developmental outcomes. There are some benefits of quitting among those who begin pregnancy using marijuana.”

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New guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) says to avoid using sugar substitutes if you are trying to lose weight. Some common non-sugar sweeteners (NSS) include aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, stevia, among others. These substances are found in a wide range of products including diet sodas and most items labeled “sugar free.” They’re often used to replace full sugar drinks and snacks during diets.

[Related: Popular artificial sweetener associated with risk of heart attack and stroke.]

Consuming non-sugar sweeteners, “does not confer any long-term benefit in reducing body fat in adults or children,” according to systematic review of available literature by the WHO. 

Additionally, there may be “potential undesirable effects” from long-term use of sugar substitutes, including an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. 

“Replacing free sugars with NSS does not help with weight control in the long term. People need to consider other ways to reduce free sugars intake, such as consuming food with naturally occurring sugars, like fruit, or unsweetened food and beverages,” WHO Director for Nutrition and Food Safety Francesco Branca said in a statement. “NSS are not essential dietary factors and have no nutritional value. People should reduce the sweetness of the diet altogether, starting early in life, to improve their health.”

The new recommendation applies to all people except those with pre-existing diabetes. It does not apply to products like toothpaste, skin cream, and medications that contain some non-sugar substitutes or to low-calorie sugars called polyols. 

The WHO reviewed 283 studies and two randomized controlled trials that are considered the gold standard of research into the subjects. 

The randomized trials found non-sugar sweeteners had a low impact on reducing both calorie intake and body weight compared to sugar. They also didn’t see any change in glucose and insulin levels which are  intermediate markers of diabetes.

While observational studies show associations, but not cause and effect, the reviewed research found a low impact on fat tissue and body weight and no change in calorie intake. They did find a low increase in the risk of high blood pressure, strokee, type-2 diabetes, heart disease, and death from heart disease, according to the WHO.  A very low risk for bladder cancer and early death was also found. 

[Related: High-fructose corn syrup vs. sugar: Which is actually worse?]

Stevia products are often considered to be a more natural artificial sweetener since they are derived from the stevia plant, but bulking sugars are often added to artificial sweeteners. One sugar agent called erythritol is used to add bulk or sweetened stevia, monk fruit and keto reduced-sugar products. In February, a study published in the journal Nature found that erythritol has been linked to blood clotting, heart attack, stroke, and death.

“Sweeteners like erythritol have rapidly increased in popularity in recent years but there needs to be more in-depth research into their long-term effects,” said senior author Stanley Hazen, chairman for the Department of Cardiovascular & Metabolic Sciences in Lerner Research Institute and co-section head of Preventive Cardiology at Cleveland Clinic, in a statement. “Cardiovascular disease builds over time, and heart disease is the leading cause of death globally. We need to make sure the foods we eat aren’t hidden contributors.”

According to the WHO, this new recommendation was “conditional” since this identified link between sweeteners and disease outcomes might be influenced by more complex patterns of sweetener use and other patterns by the study participants.

In response, an industry group representing makers of non-sugar substitutes called the  International Sweeteners Association told CNN, “it is a disservice to not recognise the public health benefits of low/no calorie sweeteners and is disappointed that the WHO’s conclusions are largely based on low certainty evidence from observational studies, which are at high risk of reverse causality.”

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Up until 100 million years ago, butterflies were night creatures. Only nocturnal moths were living on Earth until some rogue moths began to fly during the day. These enterprising members of the order Lepidoptera took advantage of the nectar-rich flowers that had co-evolved with bees by flying during the day. From there, close to 19,000 butterfly species were born.

[Related: Save caterpillars by turning off your outdoor lights.]

In 2019, a large-scale analysis of DNA helped solve the question of when they evolved. Now,  the mystery of where in the world colorful winged insects evolved plagues lepidopterists and museum curators. A study published May 15 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution found that butterflies likely evolved in North and Central America, and they forged strong botanical bonds with host plants as they settled around the world.

Getting to this conclusion took a four-dimensional puzzle that makes 3D chess look like a game of Candyland. Scientists from multiple countries had to assemble a massive “butterfly tree of life” using 100 million years of natural history on their distribution and favorite plants, as well as the DNA of more than 2,000 species representing 90 percent of butterfly genera and all butterfly families. 

Within the data were 11 rare butterfly fossils that proved to be crucial pieces to the story.  Butterflies are not common in the fossil record due to their thin wings and very threadlike hair. The 11 in this study were used as calibration and comparison points on the genetic trees, so the team could record timing of key evolutionary events.

They found that butterflies first appeared somewhere in central and western North America. 100 million years ago, North America was bisected by an expansive seaway called the Western Interior Seaway. Present day Mexico was joined in an arc with the United States, Canada, and Russia. North and South America were also separated by a strait of water that butterflies had little difficulty crossing.

The study believes that butterflies took a long way around to Africa, first moving into Asia along the Bering Land Bridge. They then radiated into Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and eventually the Horn of Africa. They were even able to reach India, which was an isolated island separated by miles of open sea at this time. 

[Related: The monarch butterfly is scientifically endangered. So why isn’t it legally protected yet?]

Australia was still connected to Antarctica, one of the last remnants of the supercontinent Pangaea. Butterflies possibly lived in Antarctica when global temperatures were warmer, and made their way north towards Australia before the landmasses broke up. 

Butterflies likely lingered along the western edge of Asia for up to 45 million years before making the journey into Europe. The effects of this pause are still apparent today, according to the authors. 

“Europe doesn’t have many butterfly species compared to other parts of the world, and the ones it does have can often be found elsewhere. Many butterflies in Europe are also found in Siberia and Asia, for example,” study co-author and curator of lepidoptera at the Florida Museum of Natural History Akito Kawahara said in a statement. 

Once butterflies were established all over the world, they rapidly diversified alongside their plant hosts. Nearly all modern butterfly families were on Earth by the time dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago. Each butterfly family appears to have had a special affinity for a specific group of plants.

“We looked at this association over an evolutionary timescale, and in pretty much every family of butterflies, bean plants came out to be the ancestral hosts,” Kawahara said. “This was true in the ancestor of all butterflies as well.”

Over time, bean plants have increased their roster of pollinators to include multiple types of bees, flies, hummingbirds, and mammals, while butterflies have similarly expanded their palate. These botanical partnerships helped make butterflies blossom from a minor offshoot of moths to one of the world’s largest groups of insects, according to the study.

“The evolution of butterflies and flowering plants has been inexorably intertwined since the origin of the former, and the close relationship between them has resulted in remarkable diversification events in both lineages,” study co-author and Florida Museum curator Pamela Soltis said in a statement. 

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A dark side effect of the electricity that helps society run around the clock is the pollution caused by our increasing numbers of lights at night. Light pollution can obscure stargazing, confusing sea turtles when they hatch, and also could be harming coral reefs.   

[Related: The switch to LEDs in Europe is visible from space.]

The light pollution from cities along the coast can trick the reefs into spawning outside of their optimal reproductive times, according to a study published May 15 in the journal Nature Communications.

“Corals are critical for the health of the global ocean, but are being increasingly damaged by human activity. This study shows it is not just changes in the ocean that are impacting them, but the continued development of coastal cities as we try and accommodate the growing global population,” Thomas Davies, a study co-author and conservation ecologist at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom,  said in a statement. 

The moon’s cycles trigger coral to spawn. During these spawning events, hundreds of eggs are released on certain nights of the year. These nights are critical to maintain and recover coral reefs after mass bleaching or other adverse events.

By using a combination of spawning observations and data on light pollution, an international team of researchers showed that the corals exposed to artificial light at night (ALAN) are spawning about one to three days closer to the full moon compared to reefs that are not.

If coral spawn on different nights, coral eggs are less likely to be fertilized and survive to produce adult corals. Population growth is needed now more than ever to help the population recover after disturbing events like bleaching.

The study builds on research from 2021 that mapped out the areas of the ocean that are most affected by light pollution. It found that at 3.2 feet deep, over 7 million square miles of coastal ocean are exposed to biologically important ALAN.  

“This study further emphasizes the importance of artificial light pollution as a stressor of coastal and marine ecosystems, with the impacts on various aspects of biodiversity only now being discovered and quantified,” Tim Smyth, a co-author and biogeochemist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, said in a statement. 

The team paired their new data with a global dataset representing 2,135 coral spawning observations taken over the last 23 years. They saw that ALAN is possibly advancing the triggers for spawning by creating a fake illuminance between sunset and sunrise on the nights after the full moon. 

[Related: The best ways to reduce light pollution and improve your quality of life.]

The study looked at coastal regions around the world, but the coral reefs of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf in the Middle East are particularly affected by light pollution. These coastlines have been heavily developed in recent years, putting the reefs near the shore at risk. 

“Despite the challenges posed by ALAN, corals in the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba are known for their thermal tolerance and ability to withstand high temperatures. However, a disturbance in the timing of coral spawning with the moon phases can result in a decline in new coral recruits and a reduction in the coral population,” Oren Levy, co-author and marine ecologist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, said in a statement. 

Some individual methods to reduce light pollution, especially for those along the coast, include removing nighttime lighting that is not necessarily needed for public safety, removing all unnecessary light even if it is just one in a backyard, and switching away from white lights to more muted red lights that are less intense.

“By implementing measures to limit light pollution, we can protect these vital habitats and safeguard the future of the world’s oceans. It’s our responsibility to ensure that we preserve the biodiversity of our planet and maintain a healthy and sustainable environment for generations to come,” said Levy.

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It turns out that Saturn’s signature rings are a relatively new accessory. A study published May 12 in the journal Science Advances found that the planet’s colorful rings are no more than 400 million years old, while Saturn itself is about 4.5 billion years old.

[Related: Hubble telescope spies Saturn’s rings in ‘spoke season.’]

Saturn’s rings have captivated astronomers for over four centuries. In 1610, famed Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei first observed the rings using a telescope, but he did not know what they were. By the 19th century, a Scottish scientist named James Clerk Maxwell concluded that the rings couldn’t be solid, but were actually made up of many individual pieces. 

Throughout the 20th century, it was assumed that the rings came about at the same time as Saturn. This raised some questions, particularly why the rings were sparkling clean. To figure out why, the team on this study looked closely at an object that annoys allergy sufferers and neatniks alike–dust. Tiny grains of rocky material constantly wash through the solar system and this flux of material can leave behind a thin layer of dust on planetary bodies– including Saturn’s icy rings. Like running your finger along the dusty surface of an old house, the team used these dust layers to see how quickly the layer builds on Saturn’s rings.

“Think about the rings like the carpet in your house,” study co-author and physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder Sascha Kempfsaid Kempf said in a statement. “If you have a clean carpet laid out, you just have to wait. Dust will settle on your carpet. The same is true for the rings.”

From 2004 to 2017, the team used an instrument aboard NASA’s late Cassini spacecraft called the Cosmic Dust Analyzer. The bucket-shaped Cosmic Dust Analyzer scooped up small particles as they whizzed by. 

The team collected 163 grains over 13 years that had all originated from beyond Saturn’s close neighborhood. Using the grains, they calculated that Saturn’s rings have likely been gathering dust in space for only a few hundred million years–making them relatively new in space terms. 

[Related: NASA hopes its snake robot can search for alien life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.]

“We know approximately how old the rings are, but it doesn’t solve any of our other problems,” Kempf said. “We still don’t know how these rings formed in the first place.”

The team estimated that this interplanetary grime would add far less than a single gram of dust to each square foot on Saturn’s rings every year. This is not a lot of dust, but would still add up over millions of years. 

Scientists now know that the seven rings are made of countless ice chunks, most of which are about the size of a boulder. The ice of the rings weighs about half as much as Saturn’s moon Mimas and stretches close to 175,000 miles from the planet’s surface. 

Future studies into the space dust could reveal more about planetary age, thanks to a more sophisticated dust analyzer that will be aboard NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission. This mission is scheduled to launch in October 2024 and will explore Jupiter’s moon Europa and if this icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life.

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After an asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs struck the Earth, the prehistoric giants lost their dominion over the planet. The mammals that rose up about 66 million years ago during the Eocene Epoch had some big shoes to fill—and they certainly grew into the challenge over time.

[Related: We’re one step closer to identifying the first-ever mammals.]

In a study published May 11 in the journal Science, found that a family of extinct rhinoceros-like herbivores called brontotheres began their time on Earth about the size of a dog, but evolved to reach elephant size over a relatively short amount of time. Brontotheres also may have not reached its full size potential before it went extinct roughly 34 million years ago due to changes in their environment.

With the dinosaurs gone at the end of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago), the mammals of the world had significantly less competition for resources, and scientists believe this led to their success as a family. Brontotheres was one of the biggest winners among mammals, and grew from about coyote-sized, 40 pound creatures into 2,000 pound goliaths. According to the study, they did this over a period of only 16 million years, which is very quick in evolutionary terms.

Brontothere means “thunder beasts,” and their powerful name was inspired by Lakota oral histories of violent thunderstorms accompanied by giants, according to the National Park Service.The animals lived in Asia, Europe, and North America. Most species weighed over a ton, but the biggest roamed what is now the South Dakota Badlands. These giants clocked in at about 8 feet tall and 16 feet long. They are the relatives of modern tapirs, horses, and rhinos, and were equipped with Y-shaped horns on their noses. 

The team of researchers on this brontothere size evolution study peered back at the evidence from the family’s fossil record and a family tree of 276 known brontothere individuals. They were fortunate that the fossil record shows most of their evolutionary record, and the team generated computer models to track how the genetic traits of different brontothere species changed. 

They also conducted phylogenetic analysis, or an evaluation of the evolutionary avenues that causes a new species to take shape. This helped them determine how such evolutionary changes may be linked or connected to their increase in body size. 

The data showed that body size actually evolved in both directions across brontothere species. Some would evolve bigger, while other times a species would evolve smaller. They found that the smaller species were more prone to extinction compared to their bigger cousins, and a trend of bulkier brontotheres persisted longer than the smaller species emerged.  

[Related from PopSci+: An ancient era of global warming could hint at our scorching future.]

Towards the end of the Eocene, the remaining brontotheres were true thunder beasts. Their status as megaherbivores likely benefited the beasts, with the smaller animals being more vulnerable to become a carnivore’s dinner. Competition from other big and small herbivores could hardly stand up to the beasts, according to the study.

Unfortunately, at this same time, the climate drastically changed from a more humid herbivore’s paradise to something much more dry. The brontotheres thus lost their evolutionary advantages when the previously lush and green ecosystem dried up. They eventually went extinct about 34 million years ago.

Further research into this family could model the ecological factors like ancient climate shifts that affected how much edible vegetation covered the planet and how it led to the demise of these megaherbivores.

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It’s been just about 20 years since Finding Nemo was released in theaters and the lost “little clownfish from the reef” swam his way into our hearts. However, there is way more to coral reef fish than their beautiful scales and fictional tales. 

[Related: This rainbow reef fish is just as magical as it looks.]

A study published May 11 in the open access journal PLOS Biology found that some of the fish that live in anemones and reefs go through intense physiological changes when they switch from speedy swimming in the open ocean as larvae to settling down to life on the reef.  

Nemo and his young sea turtle pal named Squirt may have had a bit more in common than their age. Like sea turtles, many coral reef fish spawn away from where the animals will eventually settle and live. Adult coral reef fish spawn their larvae in the open ocean and the larvae swim against strong currents to get back to the reef where they will live as adults. Other bottom dwelling marine organisms like sea stars, corals, and urchins also follow this pattern. 

“These first weeks of life can be the most vulnerable for coral reef fishes, and if they don’t make it, that means they cannot grow up to be healthy adults and contribute to coral reef ecosystems,” co-author and James Cook University marine biologist Jodie L. Rummer told PopSci.

All of this swimming demands a lot of energy from the tiny fish, but then once they are settled on the reef floor, they must drastically switch gears and survive in a low-oxygen, or hypoxic, environment at night. 

To learn more about how this adjustment  works, the team collected daily measurements of the cinnamon anemonefish (Amphiprion melanopus) larvae’s swimming speed, oxygen update, and hypoxia tolerance. They observed them in a laboratory setting from the time that they hatched until when they settled down, usually around day nine of life.

“Coral reef fishes, including anemonefishes, as larvae are swimming among the fastest relative to their body size,” study co-author Adam Downie told PopSci. Downie is currently an animal physiologist at the University of Queensland in Australia and conducted the research as part of his PhD at James Cook University. “In our study, maximum speeds were over 12 centimeters [4.7 inches] per second, but for a fish that is the size of your pinky finger nail, that is 10-12 body lengths per second. Comparatively, relative to their size, larval coral reef fishes, including clownfish, outcompete most other marine life in a swimming test and all humans!”

Additionally, they saw that their hypoxia tolerance in the fish increased around day five while their oxygen intake decreased. To investigate how their bodies cope with these lack of oxygen, they sequenced mRNA from larvae of different ages to look for changes in gene activity that occurs during development. These physiological changes were correlated to areas of the gene where hemoglobin are produced and the activity of 2,470 genes changed during development.

[Related: Invasive rats are making some reef fish more peaceful, and that’s bad, actually.]

“These baby fish can change the expression patterns of certain genes that code for oxygen transporting and storage proteins just in time to cope with such low oxygen conditions on the reef,” said Rummer. “These proteins, like hemoglobin and myoglobin, are found in our bodies too and are important in getting oxygen from the environment and delivering it to the muscles, heart, and other organs. Indeed, timing is everything!”

The study found that relative to their body size, cinnamon anemonefish (also called cinnamon clownfish) larvae have the highest oxygen uptake rate of any bony fish currently measured. The genetic changes they can make to take in more oxygen underpin how reef fish can swim at speeds that would make even the most decorated Olympians envious. According to Downie, some studies have clocked clownfish at up to 50 body lengths per second, compared with Michael Phelps’ just under two body lengths per second. 

Since the effects of climate change threatens all marine life, the team believes that warmer ocean temperatures could impair clownfish swimming since the energy demands are so high. The warming waters put reef ecosystems at even more risk, in addition to coral bleaching, ocean acidification, disease, and more. 

“Next steps would be to see how different climate change stressors, such as temperature and pollutants may impact swimming performance of larval clownfishes and their ability to successfully transition from the open ocean to coral reefs,” said Downie. 

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On May 11, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced new regulations on blood donation that pave the way for more bisexual and gay men to donate blood. The regulatory agency finalized a new set of risk-based rules for blood donation. Prospective donors will be asked the same set of questions during donor screening regardless of their sexual orientation or sex going forward. 

[Related: The FDA’s gay and bi blood-donor ban isn’t just stigmatizing—it’s also likely outdated.]

The new rules move the US away from a restrictive and outdated policy that only applied to men who have sex with men (MSM) and women who have sex with MSM. According to the FDA, the updated policy is “based on the best available scientific evidence” and is more in line with policies already in place in the United Kingdom and Canada. It will also potentially expand the number of eligible blood donors, while maintaining safeguards put in place to protect the blood supply.  

“The FDA has worked diligently to evaluate our policies and ensure we had the scientific evidence to support individual risk assessment for donor eligibility while maintaining appropriate safeguards to protect recipients of blood products. The implementation of these recommendations will represent a significant milestone for the agency and the LGBTQI+ community,” said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, in a statement. “The FDA is committed to working closely with the blood collection industry to help ensure timely implementation of the new recommendations and we will continue to monitor the safety of the blood supply once this individual risk-based approach is in place.”

Over the last several years, the FDA has begun to consider easing the blood donation rules for gay and bisexual men, who in past years faced a lifetime ban on blood donation. Many scientists and LGBTQIA+ organizations say this policy was discriminatory and based on outdated stigmas. 

The FDA dropped the lifetime ban on donations from MSM in 2015 and replaced it with a one-year abstinence requirement. In 2020, the regulatory agency shortened that abstinence period to three months, after blood donations plummeted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The FDA’s most recent proposed draft recommendations were published in January 2023 and first proposed in late 2022. It required MSM and women who have sex with MSM to wait three months after sexual contact with other men before donating blood. Ahead of these draft-recommendations, Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD called the FDA’s proposal an, “important step, our community and leading medical experts will not stop advocating for the FDA to lift all restrictions against qualified LGBTQ blood donor candidates.”

The changes announced today eliminate screening questions and time deferrals specific to MSM and women who have sex with MSM.

[Related: The best time to donate blood for a disaster is before it happens.]

Additionally, the new questions are designed to reduce the risk of transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) through blood donation. The FDA says that it reviewed data available from other countries with similar rates of HIV. The agency has already implemented risk-based eligibility for blood donations, HIV surveillance, and accurate virus testing for safety. 

According to the FDA, those taking medications to treat or prevent HIV like antiretroviral therapy and PrEP will be deferred from donation. The agency says that while HIV is not transmitted during sex in people whose viral levels are undetectable, this does not apply to blood donation. This is because blood is transfused directly into a vein during a transfusion which involves a larger volume of fluid, so it is inherently riskier than sexual contact. They did not advise stopping either PrEP or other HIV medications in order to donate blood. 

To reduce the likelihood that someone with a new or undetected HIV infection, anyone who reports a new sexual partner, more than one sexual partner, or recent anal sex will be told to wait at least three months before donating blood with these new rules. 

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On May 11, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will propose new limits on the greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants. Second only to the nation’s transportation sector, the electricity sector generates about 25 percent of all greenhouse gas pollution in the US. 

[Related: Renewable energy is climbing in the US, but so are our emissions—here’s why.]

According to the EPA, the proposal for coal and new natural gas power plants would keep up to 617 million metric tons of total carbon dioxide from spilling into the air through 2042. This is the equivalent to reducing the annual emissions of about half the cars in the United States. The EPA estimates that the net climate and health benefits of these new standards on new gas and existing coal-fired power plants are up to $85 billion through 2042.

“By proposing new standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants, EPA is delivering on its mission to reduce harmful pollution that threatens people’s health and wellbeing,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement. “EPA’s proposal relies on proven, readily available technologies to limit carbon pollution and seizes the momentum already underway in the power sector to move toward a cleaner future. Alongside historic investment taking place across America in clean energy manufacturing and deployment, these proposals will help deliver tremendous benefits to the American people—cutting climate pollution and other harmful pollutants, protecting people’s health, and driving American innovation.”

The new rules will likely not mandate the use of technologies that capture carbon emissions before they leave a smokestack, such as direct air capture. It will instead set caps on pollution rates that planet operators will have to meet by either using a different technology or switching to a fuel source like green hydrogen. 

The new limits represent the Biden administration’s most ambitious effort to date to roll back the pollution from the US’ second-largest contributor to climate change. It also follows the current administration’s plans to cut car tailpipe emissions by speeding up the transition to mostly elective vehicles and curb methane leaks from gas and oil wells.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is adding over $370 billion into clean energy programs and the administration hopes that these new actions push the US further in the fight to constrain further human-made global warming.  

[Related: At New York City’s biggest power plant, a switch to clean energy will help a neighborhood breathe easier.]

These investments and regulations could put the US on track to meet President Biden’s pledge that the US will cut greenhouse gasses in half by 2030 and stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2050. While more policies are needed to reach the 2050 target, scientists say these goals must be met by all major industrialized nations to keep average global temperatures from increasing by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit compared with pre industrial levels. Beyond that temperature tipping point, catastrophic flooding, drought, heat waves, flooding, species extinction, and crop failure will become significantly harder for humanity to handle. Earth has already warmed by two degrees Fahrenheit.

If these regulations are finalized, they would mark the first time that the federal government has restricted carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. It extends to all current and future electric plants as well. 

The plan will face steep opposition from the fossil fuel industry and Republicans and some Democrats in Congress.

Despite these proposed new regulations, Biden has also faced criticism from many environmentalists for the decision to approve the Willow oil project in Alaska this March. Environmental groups call this massive oil drilling plan by ConocoPhillips a “carbon bomb” that could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil per day. 

Many younger voters and young climate activists say Biden broke a major 2020 campaign promise by approving Willow. With this in mind, EPA officials will announce these new regulations at the University of Maryland.

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An experimental “peanut patch” is showing some promise for toddlers who are highly allergic to peanuts. The patch, called Viaskin, was tested on children ages one to three for a late-stage trial, and the results show that the patch helped children whose bodies could not tolerate even a small piece of peanuts safely eat a few. The findings were published May 10 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

[Related: Feeding Peanuts To High-Risk Infants Could Prevent Allergy Development.]

Peanut allergies are a common and dangerous food allergy that affects about 2.5 percent of children in the United States. In children with allergies, their immune system overreacts to peanut-containing foods, which triggers everything from hives, to wheezing, to airway obstruction that can lead children hospitalized or worse. About 20 percent of these children will outgrow the allergy over time, but the majority must avoid peanuts for the rest of their lives. Additionally, they must carry rescue medication in the form of an injectable epinephrine divide like an EpiPen to prevent a severe allergic reaction if peanuts are accidentally eaten.

Peanut products and traces of peanuts can be found in a surprising number of foods: from candies to dipping sauces to ice cream. There is currently no cure for such an allergy. The only treatment is a peanut powder that protects against a severe reaction in children over 4 years-old. First approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2020, the “oral immunotherapy” called Palforzia is consumed daily by children ages four to 17 to keep up their protection. It is now being tested in children under age four. 

France’s DBV Technologies, makers of the new patch, is pursuing this skin-based immunotherapy treatment as an alternative way to desensitize the body and on younger children. 

The trial of this new patch included 362 toddlers from eight countries. 244 of them were randomly assigned to receive the Viaskin patch. The patch contains 250 micrograms of peanut protein which is the equivalent of roughly 1/1000th of one peanut. 118 children received a placebo patch. They wore the patches every day for a year before undergoing screening.

After one year, two-thirds of the children who used the patch and one-third of the placebo group met the trial’s primary endpoint. The participants with a less sensitive peanut allergy could safely tolerate the peanut protein equivalent of eating three or four peanuts. Children who were more sensitive to peanut proteins could tolerate the equivalent of consuming one peanut.

If more patch testing works out, “this would fill a huge unmet need,” Matthew Greenhawt, an allergist at Children’s Hospital Colorado who helped lead the study told the Associated Press. 

[Related: I hardly ever use my Nima allergen sensor. I’m still glad I bought it.]

Almost all of the participants did have some adverse events, most commonly reactions at the application site like swelling, itching, and redness. Serious events were reported in 21 children who had the Viaskin patch and three that were in the placebo group. Anaphylaxis–a very dangerous allergic reaction–was reported in 7.8 percent of the patch recipients and 3.4 percent of the placebo group. The parents of eight participants pulled their children from the study due to the adverse events. 

The study does have several limitations including that young children with a history of severe allergic reactions were excluded due to safety concerns. Additionally, there was a lack of racial diversity among the study’s participants.

“Peanut allergy can be very substantially reduced if peanut is introduced into the diet as early as 4 to 6 months of age,” Alkis Togias of the Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases wrote in an editorial published alongside the study. “Toddlers are of particular interest since their immune systems have plasticity that can theoretically allow for higher efficacy and longer-lasting benefits from allergen immunotherapy after therapy is discontinued.”

Togias also cited that skin patches may be less protective, but have a better safety profile compared to an oral medication, but still said that the findings, “are very good news for toddlers and their families as the next step toward a future with more treatments for food allergies.”

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Sadly, vitamins and supplements will not really keep the mosquitoes from biting you this summer, but scientists are still trying to figure out why the insects seem to love sucking some blood more than others.

[Related: How can we control mosquitos? Deactivate their sperm.]

In a small study published May 10 in the journal iScience, a team of researchers looked at the possible effects that soap has on mosquitoes. While some soaps did appear to repel the bugs and others attracted them, the effects varied greatly based on how the soap interacts with an individual’s unique odor profile.

“It’s remarkable that the same individual that is extremely attractive to mosquitoes when they are unwashed can be turned even more attractive to mosquitoes with one soap, and then become repellent or repulsive to mosquitoes with another soap,” co-author and Virginia Tech neuroethologist Clément Vinauger said in a statement.

Soaps and other stink-reducing products have been used for millennia, and while we know that they change our perception of another person’s natural body odor, it is less clear if soap also acts this way for mosquitoes. Since mosquitoes mainly feed on plant nectar and not animal blood alone, using plant-mimicking or plant-derived scents may confuse their decision making on what to feast on next.  

In the study, the team began by characterizing the chemical odors emitted by four human volunteers when unwashed and then after they had washed with four common brands of soap (Dial, Dove, Native, and Simple Truth). The odor profiles of the soaps themselves were also characterized. 

They found that each of the volunteers emitted their own unique odor profile and some of those odor profiles were more attractive to mosquitoes than others. The soap significantly changed the odor profiles, not just by adding some floral fragrances. 

“Everybody smells different, even after the application of soap; your physiological status, the way you live, what you eat, and the places you go all affect the way you smell,” co author and Virginia Tech biologist Chloé Lahondère said in a statement. “And soaps drastically change the way we smell, not only by adding chemicals, but also by causing variations in the emission of compounds that we are already naturally producing.”

The researchers then compared the relative attractiveness of each human volunteer–unwashed and an hour after using the four soaps–to Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. These mosquitoes are known to spread yellow fever, malaria, and Zika among other diseases. After mating, male mosquitoes feed mostly on nectar and females feed exclusively on blood, so the team exclusively tested the attractiveness using adult female mosquitoes who had recently mated. They also took out the effects of exhaled carbon dioxide by using fabrics that had absorbed the human’s odors instead of on the breathing humans themselves.   

[Related from PopSci+: Can a bold new plan to stop mosquitoes catch on?]

They found that soap-washing did impact the mosquitoes’ preferences, but the size and direction of this impact varied between the types of soap and humans. Washing with Dove and Simple Truth increased the attractiveness of some, but not all of the volunteers, and washing with Native soap tended to repel mosquitoes.

“What really matters to the mosquito is not the most abundant chemical, but rather the specific associations and combinations of chemicals, not only from the soap, but also from our personal body odors,” said Vinauger. “All of the soaps contained a chemical called limonene which is a known mosquito repellent, but in spite of that being the main chemical in all four soaps, three out of the four soaps we tested increased mosquitoes’ attraction.”

To look closer at the specific soap ingredients that could be attracting or repelling the insects, they analyzed the chemical compositions of the soaps. They identified four chemicals associated with mosquito attraction and three chemicals associated with repulsion. Two of the mosquito-repellers are a coconut-scented chemical that is a key component in American Bourbon and a floral compound that is used to treat scabies and lice. They combined these chemicals to test attractive and repellent odor blends and this concoction had strong impacts on mosquito preference.

“With these mixtures, we eliminated all the noise in the signal by only including those chemicals that the statistics were telling us are important for attraction or repulsion,” said Vinauger. “I would choose a coconut-scented soap if I wanted to reduce mosquito attraction.”

The team hopes to test these results using more varieties of soap and more people and explore how soap impacts mosquito preference over a longer period of time. 

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Satellite data reveals that methane leaks from two main fossil fuel fields in Turkmenistan caused more global heating last year than all of the carbon emissions in the United Kingdom. The satellite data was produced by French energy and environmental geo-analytics company Kayrros for the Guardian.

[Related: Methane is the greenhouse gas we can no longer afford to ignore.]

The data, as reported by the Guardian, shows that the western western fossil fuel field on the coast of the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan leaked over 2.9 million tons (2.6 million metric tonnes) of methane in 2022. The eastern field emitted almost 2 million tons (1.8 million metric tonnes) during that timeline. Because methane is so much more potent than carbon dioxide, the two fields emit the equivalent of more than 403 million tons (366 million metric tonnes) of carbon dioxide, or more than the annual emissions by the United Kingdom. China and the United States are the largest emitters of CO₂ in the world and the UK ranks at 17.

Methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas that is emitted during the production and transport of oil, natural gas, and coal. Emissions can also result from agriculture and livestock practices, land use, and the decay of organic waste in landfills, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. In 2021, methane accounted for 12 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the US, which is especially concerning since  it is 25 percent more effective at trapping heat than CO_2.

Methane was officially added to the list of climate change priorities to address this decade by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2021. The amount of methane emitted by human activity has been underestimated in the past and emissions have surged in the past 15 years. A 2020 study by the University of Rochester found that levels of “naturally released” methane reported in the atmosphere were 10 times too high, and fossil fuel-based methane is actually about 25 to 40 percent higher than scientists previously predicted. 

“The big take-home nugget for me is they said if you look at all the warming activity done by humans over the last century … carbon dioxide has contributed 0.75 degrees Celsius, while methane has contributed to 0.5 degrees Celsius,” Bob Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, told PopSci in 2021. 

Previous reporting from the Guardian found that Turkmenistan is a top country for methane “super emitting” leaks and it is possible that switching from a process called flaring to venting methane might be behind the explosion in emissions. Flaring burns unwanted gas and adds CO₂ into the atmosphere, but it is an easy process to detect and has been increasingly frowned upon. Venting releases the invisible methane into the air completely unburned and has been harder to track until more recent developments in satellite technology. Since methane traps 80 times more heat than CO₂  over two decades, venting is far worse for the climate.

[Related: Everything you should know about methane as regulations loosen.]

“Methane is responsible for almost half of short-term [climate] warming and has absolutely not been managed up to now – it was completely out of control,” Kayrros president Antoine Rostand, told the Guardian.  “We know where the super emitters are and who is doing it,” he said. “We just need the policymakers and investors to do their job, which is to crack down on methane emissions. There is no comparable action in terms of [reducing] short-term climate impacts.”

Turkmenistan is currently China’s second biggest supplier of gas and the country is planning to double its exports to China. Until 2018, Turkmen citizens received free gas and electricity, but the country is also incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. The likelihood of severe drought is projected to increase “very significantly” over the course of this century, and crop yields are expected to fail.

The upcoming 2023 COP28 climate change conference in the United Arab Emirates is seen by some to be an opportunity for change in the region. One source told the Guardian that diplomatic efforts are being made to urge Turkmenistan to cut its methane emissions. “We are really hoping Cop28 is a forcing mechanism,” the source said.

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Behold the microscopic power of cheese. The dairy product has been a dietary staple for generations, but it is also helping microbiologists better understand nature’s microbiomes. In a study published May 10 in the journal mBio, a team of researchers used cheese rinds to demonstrate how fungal antibiotics can influence how microbiomes develop. 

[Related: Beehives are the honeypot for a city’s microbial secrets.]

Metabolites produced by fungi can improve human health. Some secrete penicillin, which is then purified and used as an antibiotic. For this study, scientists set out to better understand how fungi interact with the microbes living alongside them in microbial communities, with a particular focus on how fungi and bacteria’s relationship.

“My lab is interested in how fungi shape the diversity of microbial communities where they live. Fungi are widespread in many microbial ecosystems, from soils to our own bodies, but we know much less about their diversity and roles in microbiomes compared to more widely studied bacteria,” co-author and Tufts University microbiologist Benjamin Wolfe said in a statement. “To study the ecology of fungi and their interactions with bacteria, we use cheese rinds as a model microbial ecosystem to understand these basic biology questions.

Cheese rinds themselves are microbial communities that form on the surfaces of naturally aged cheeses like brie, taleggio, and some types of cheddar. As the cheeses age, fuzzy and sometimes sticky layers of microbes form on the surfaces of the cheese. The microbes slowly decompose as the cheeses curd and they grow on the surface to create the aromas and colors that give the cheese in the fancy part of the grocery store their more unique properties. 

Wolfe and his team began by investigating a cheesemaker’s problem with mold spreading on the surface of the cheeses and disrupting the normal development of the rind. This causes the cheese to look like the rinds were disappearing as the mold invaded their cheese cave. They collaborated with microbiologist Nancy Keller’s lab at the University of Wisconsin to find out what this mold was doing to the rind microbes and what chemicals the mold may be producing that disrupted the rind. 

They researchers first deleted a gene (laeA) in the Penicillium mold that can control the expression of chemicals that fungi can secrete into their environment. These compounds are called specialized or secondary metabolites. 

“We know that many fungi can produce metabolites that are antibiotics because we have used these as drugs for humans, but we know surprisingly little about how fungal antibiotics work in nature,” said Wolfe. “Do fungi actually use these compounds to kill other microbes? How do these antibiotics produced by fungi affect the development of bacterial communities? We added our normal and our laeA-deleted Penicillium to a community of cheese rind bacteria to see whether deleting laeA caused changes in how the community of bacteria developed.” 

[Related: You might be overusing hand sanitizer.]

When laeA was deleted, most of the antibacterial activity of the Penicillium mold was lost. This discovery helped the team narrow down specific regions of the fungal genome that could produce antibacterial compounds. They narrowed it down to one class of compounds called pseurotins. The metabolites are produced by multiple types of fungi and that can modulate the immune system, kill insects, and inhibit bacteria. 

The study showed that pseurotins can also control how bacterial communities living with that fungi grow and develop. The pseurotins are strongly antibacterial, which means they inhibit some of the bacteria found in artisanal cheeses including Staphylococcus, Brevibacterium, Brachybacterium, and Psychrobacter. This process caused a shift in the cheese rind microbiome’s composition.

It also shows that the antibiotics secreted by fungi can control how microbiomes develop, since the metabolites are in other ecosystems, including the human human microbiome and soil ecosystems. The team expects that these mechanisms of fungal-bacterial interactions are likely very widespread. 

“Our results suggest that some pesky mold species in artisan cheeses may disrupt normal cheese development by deploying antibiotics,” said Wolfe. “These findings allow us to work with cheesemakers to identify which molds are the bad ones and how to manage them in their cheese caves. It also helps us appreciate that every time we eat artisan cheese, we are consuming the metabolites that microbes use to compete and cooperate in communities.”

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The piercing and malevolent gaze of Sauron, the powerful villain The Lord of the Rings, is being honored in a way that may even make Gandalf’s heroic eagles envious. A new genus of butterflies has been named Saurona in honor of one of fiction’s greatest villains.

[Related: Scientists Calculate Calories Needed To Walk To Mordor.]

With their fiery orange hindwings and piercingly dark eyespots, Saurona triangula and Saurona aurigera are the first two species described in this new genus, described in a study published April 10 in the journal Systematic Entomology. Scientists believe that there are more species within this genus waiting to be described.  

“Giving these butterflies an unusual name helps to draw attention to this underappreciated group,” study co-author and Senior Curator of Butterflies at London’s Natural History Museum Blanca Huertas said in a statement. “It shows that, even among a group of very similar-looking species, you can find beauty among the dullness. Naming a genus is not something that happens very often, and it’s even more rare to be able to name two at once. It was a great privilege to do so, and now means that we can start describing new species that we have uncovered as a result of this research.”

Saurona triangula and Saurona aurigera are the first butterflies to be named after the epic villain, but they are not the only animals named after Sauron and other characters from JRR Tolkien’s epic trilogy. A dinosaur (Sauroniops pachytholus) and an insect (Macropsis sauroni), and has also been named after the antagonist and his eye that constantly surveys the lands of Middle Earth. Sauron’s foil and heroic wizard Gandalf also has some animals named for him, including a species of crab, moth, and beetle and a group of fossil mammals. The tragic and troubled creature Gollum has fish, wasps, and fish named after him. 

Naming animals after fictional characters can help draw attention to them in the real world. A recent example comes from the devastating 2019-202 wildfires that struck Australia. The fires burned over 42 million acres and harmed 3 billion animals. Three Australian beetles that were devastated by the fires were named after Pokémon in an effort to attract conservation funding.

The Saurona butterflies are found in the southwestern Amazon rainforest and belong to a butterfly group Euptychiina. This group is difficult to tell apart by their physical characteristics alone, and the scientists on this study used genetic sequencing to help differentiate the new species.

“These butterflies are widely distributed in the tropical lowlands of the Americas, but despite their abundance they weren’t well-studied,” Blanca said. “Historically, the Euptychiina have been overlooked because they tend to be small, brown, and share a similar appearance. This has made them one of the most complex groups of butterflies in the tropics of the Americas.”

[Related: How are dinosaurs named?]

Even with major advances in DNA sequencing like target enrichment and Sanger sequencing that can produce vast amounts of DNA from samples, it took the team over 10 years to assess more than 400 different butterfly species. 

They deciphered the relations between groups and described nine new genera including one called Argenteria. In English, Argenteria translates to “silver mine,” and was named by Blanca and her team due to the silver scales on their wings. Argenteria currently has six species within the genus, but there are likely more out there waiting to be discovered.

The researchers on this study estimate they uncovered up to 20 percent more uncovered species than there were before the project began, and they hope to describe even more. More description will help scientists to better understand the relationships between the different species and the issues they face. 

“It’s important to study groups like the Euptychiina because it reveals that there are many species we didn’t know about, including rare and endemic ones,” said Blanca. “Some of these species are threatened with extinction, and so there’s a lot to do now we can put a name to them. There are also many other butterfly and insect groups that need attention so that they can be better understood and protected.”

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Scientists in Australia have just begun vaccinating wild koalas against chlamydia. This field trial in the state of New South Wales is an effort to protect one of Australia’s most beloved animals against the disease that can cause blindness, infertility, and death. The chlamydia epidemic in koalas has been ravaging populations of the marsupial since the 1990s. 

[Related: A new vaccine may curb the koala chlamydia epidemic.]

Koalas along the east and southeast Australian coasts have been particularly affected, with some populations having infection rates of up to 100 percent. In 2021, Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital veterinarian and research coordinator Amber Gillett called chlamydia one of the most significant threats to koalas and treatment after infection is not enough to save them. “Although many koalas with chlamydia can be treated using traditional antibiotics, some animals cannot be saved due to the severity of their infection. Having a vaccine that can help prevent both infection and the severity of the disease is a critical element in the species’ conservation management.”

While origins of the disease is koalas aren’t fully confirmed, but scientists believe that marsupials possibly caught the disease from exposure to the feces from infected cattle and sheep. Chlamydia then spread via sexual contact or was passed from mother to offspring.  

This single-shot vaccine has been designed just for koalas and was tested in a few hundred fluffy specimens in wildlife rescue centers. For this new field trial, the team hopes to catch, vaccinate, and subsequently monitor about half of the koala population living in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales–about 50 koalas. 

“It’s killing koalas because they become so sick they can’t climb trees to get food, or escape predators, and females can become infertile,” Samuel Phillips, a microbiologist at the University of the Sunshine Coast who helped to develop the new vaccine, told the Associated Press.

The first koalas were caught and vaccinated in March, and the effort is expected to last for three months. To find them, the team spots koalas in eucalyptus trees to then build circular enclosures around the base of the trees with doors that lead into cages. Eventually, the koalas climb down from one tree to get more eucalyptus leaves from another tree and wander into the traps.

They are then given a check-up to assess their health and given anesthesia before getting the vaccine. They are kept under observation for 24 hours after waking up to check for unexpected side effects, according to Jodie Wakeman, the veterinary care and clinical director at Friends of the Koala. The nonprofit organization runs a wildlife hospital where the koalas are getting vaccinated.

[Related: How to handle a koala-chlamydia epidemic.]

The koalas are marked with a pink dye on their backs so that the same animals are not caught twice before being released back into the wild. 

Australia’s federal government declared that the koalas in the eastern regions of New South Wales, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory were endangered. A 2020 report from the New South Wales government found that the unique creatures could become extinct by 2050 due to disease, road collisions, and habitat loss. Climate change is only exacerbating the problem.

The trial was approved by multiple Australian governing bodies balancing the risk of disturbing the marsupials against the danger of allowing chlamydia to continue to spread unchecked. It is one of only a few worldwide examples of scientists attempting to inoculate endangered wildlife for the purposes of conservation. In 2016, a team began to vaccinate Hawaiian monk seals morbillivirus and in 2020, biologists in Brazil started vaccinating golden lion tamarins against yellow fever.

“Vaccination for wildlife is certainly not routine yet,” Jacob Negrey, a biologist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine told the AP. “But whether it should be used more often is a fundamental question that conservation biologists are really wrangling with right now.”

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The humble sea star is an ancient marine creature that possibly goes back about 480 million years. They are beloved in touch tanks in aquariums for their celestial shape, spongy skin, and arm suckers. These beautiful five-limbed echinoderms are also helping scientists figure out a crucial life process called tubulogenesis. 

[Related: What’s killing sea stars?]

A study published May 9 in the journal Nature Communications, examined this process of hollow tube formation in sea stars that provides a blueprint for how the organs of other creatures develop.

Tubulogenesis is the formation of various kinds of hollow, tube-like structures. in the body. These tubes eventually form blood vessels, digestive tracts, and even complex organs like the heart, kidneys and mammary glands. It is a basic and crucial process that occurs in the embryo stage, and abnormalities during these processes can cause dysfunctional, displaced, or non-symmetrical organs and even regeneration defects in structures like blood vessel. 

Little is known about the general mechanisms of the hollow tube formation during embryogenesis since animals all use very different strategies to form these tubular structures.

That’s where the sea star comes in. Their process of tubulogenesis is relatively easy to observe since their embryos are very transparent and can be observed without disturbing them. Not to mention, they breed in large numbers year round. This new study reveals the initiation and early stages of tube formation in the sea star Patiria miniata or bat star.

“Most of our organs are tubular, because they need to transport fluids or gasses or food or blood. And more complex organs like the heart start as a tube and then develop different structures. So, tubulogenesis is a very basic step to form all our organs,” study co-author and cell biologist Margherita Perillo of the University of Chicago-affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory said in a statement. 

Not only is the sea star an ideal because of its translucence, the researchers needed an animal that was along the base of the tree of life and evolved before the phylum Chordata– vertebrates including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, Perillo adds.

Perillo and her colleagues used CRISPR gene editing and other techniques to analyze the gene functions in the sea stars and long time-lapse videos of developing larvae. The team worked out how the sea star generates the tubes that branch out from its gut. From these observations, they could define the basic tools needed for more advanced chordate tubular organs that may have developed. Now, they are getting closer to answering how organisms developed up from one cell into the more complex 3D tubular structures that make up various organisms. 

According to Perillo, in some organisms such as flies, “there is a big round of cell proliferation before all the cells start to make very complex migration patterns to elongate, change their shapes, and become a tube.”

[Related: These urchin-eating sea stars might be helping us reduce carbon levels.]

In other animals, including mammals, cell proliferation and migration occur together. The team found that in sea stars, cells can also proliferate and migrate at the same time in order for the tubes to form the way they do in vertebrate formation. The mechanism behind making organs must have already been established at the base or root of chordate evolution, according to the team. 

Beyond providing evolutionary insights into organ formation, sea stars can also aid in biomedical research. Perillo found that a gene called Six1/2 is a key regulator of the branching process in tube formation. If Six1/2 is taken out of mice, their kidneys form abnormally, but the mice that lack the gene also resist tumor formation, even if they are injected with tumor cells. Understanding this gene, that is overexpressed in cancer cells, may lead to new ways to study disease progression.  

“I can now use this gene to understand not only how our organs develop, but what happens to organs when we have a disease, especially cancer,” said Perillo. “My hope is that, in five to 10 years maximum, we will be able to use this gene to test how organs develop cancer and how cancer becomes metastatic.”

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Before being outbred by Homo sapiens, Neanderthals could have been many things: including the world’s first weavers, artists, and even crab chefs. Their contributions may even go deeper—even to modern day faces. Genetic material from this now extinct crew  influences the shape of human noses today, according to new research. 

In a study published May 8 in the journal Communications Biology, an international team of researchers found a particular gene that leads to a taller nose (top to bottom) might be the product of natural selection when sentient humans adapted to colder climates after leaving the African continent.

[Related: Humans and Neanderthals could have lived together even earlier than we thought.]

“In the last 15 years, since the Neanderthal genome has been sequenced, we have been able to learn that our own ancestors apparently interbred with Neanderthals, leaving us with little bits of their DNA,” Kaustubh Adhikari, a co-author and statistical geneticist at University College London, said in a statement. “Here, we find that some DNA inherited from Neanderthals influences the shape of our faces. This could have been helpful to our ancestors, as it has been passed down for thousands of generations.”

The research team used data from over 6,000 volunteers from Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and Peru with mixed European, Native American, and African ancestry. They compared their genetic information to photographs of their faces, and examined the distances between points on the face, like the edge of the lips to the tips of the nose to see how different facial traits might be associated with different genetic markers.

“Most genetic studies of human diversity have investigated the genes of Europeans; our study’s diverse sample of Latin American participants broadens the reach of genetic study findings, helping us to better understand the genetics of all humans,” Andres Ruiz-Linares, co-author and geneticist at University College London, said in a statement.

They found 33 new genome regions that are associated with face shape, and they could replicate 26 of them in comparisons with data from other ethnicities using participants in east Asia, Europe, or Africa.

[Related: Europeans looked down on Neanderthals—until they realized they shared their DNA.]

They looked at a genome region called ATF3, and found that many of those in the study with Native American ancestry had genetic material inherited from Neanderthals that contributes to nasal height. They compared that same genome region with those of east Asian ancestry from a different cohort and saw the same genetic material.  This gene region also has signs of natural selection, suggesting that it has an advantage for those carrying the genetic material.

“It has long been speculated that the shape of our noses is determined by natural selection; as our noses can help us to regulate the temperature and humidity of the air we breathe in, different shaped noses may be better suited to different climates that our ancestors lived in,” Qing Li, a co-author and scientist at China’s Fudan University, said in a statement. “The gene we have identified here may have been inherited from Neanderthals to help humans adapt to colder climates as our ancestors moved out of Africa.”

In 2021, this same team also found that genes influencing facial shapes were inherited from another extinct human species called the Denisovans. In that study, they found 32 gene regions that influence facial features like nose, lip, jaw, and brow shape.

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Uranus’ four largest moons could very likely be home to an ocean layer dozens of miles deep between their icy crusts and deep cores. A new analysis from NASA published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, could help determine how a future mission to Uranus might investigate the seventh planet from the sun’s moons, but also has implications that go beyond Uranus.

[Related: Expect NASA to probe Uranus within the next 10 years.]

At least 27 moons circle Uranus. The four largest are about two to three times smaller than  Earth’s moon, with Ariel at about 720 miles across and the largest, Titania, at 980 miles across. Titania’s size has long led scientists to believe that it is the most likely satellite to retain internal heat that is caused by radioactive decay. Uranus’ other moons were believed to be too small to retain the head that is necessary to keep an internal ocean from freezing since the heating created by Uranus’ gravitational pull is only a minor source of heat.  

This new analysis uses data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft and some new computer modeling looked at all of the planet’s five large moons: Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, and Miranda. Of these large moons, Titania and Oberon orbit the farthest from Uranus, and these possible oceans could be dwelling 30 miles below the surface. Ariel and Umbriel may have oceans 19 miles deep. 

“When it comes to small bodies – dwarf planets and moons – planetary scientists previously have found evidence of oceans in several unlikely places, including the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto, and Saturn’s moon Mimas,” co-author and planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Julie Castillo-Rogez said in a statement.  “So there are mechanisms at play that we don’t fully understand. This paper investigates what those could be and how they are relevant to the many bodies in the solar system that could be rich in water but have limited internal heat.”

The new study revisited the data from Voyager 2 flybys of Uranus during the 1980s and from more recent ground-based observations. The authors then built computer models using additional findings from NASA’s Galileo, Cassini, Dawn, and New Horizons missions (which all discovered ocean worlds), and insights into the chemistry and the geology of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, Pluto and its moon Charon, and Ceres. These Plutonian and Saturnian moons are all icy bodies about the same size as the Uranian moons.

The team used the modeling to gauge how porous the surface of the Uranian moons are, and found that they are likely insulated enough to retain that internal heat needed to host an ocean. Additionally, the models found a potential heat source in the moons’ rocky mantles. These sources release hot liquid that would help an ocean maintain a warm environment. This warming scenario is especially likely in the moons Titania and Oberon, where the oceans could  even be warm enough to support some sort of lifeforms. 

[Related: Ice giant Uranus shows off its many rings in new JWST image.]

Investigating the composition of these oceans can help scientists learn about the materials that may be found on the icy surfaces of the moons as well, depending on whether or not the substances underneath were pushed up from below by internal geological activity. Evidence from telescopes shows that at least one of the moons (Ariel) has material on it that flowed onto its surface relatively recently, possibly from icy volcanoes. 

Miranda, the innermost and fifth largest Uranian moon, also hosts surface features that may be of recent origin, which suggests it may have held enough heat to maintain an ocean at some points. However, recent thermal modeling found that Miranda likely didn’t host that water for very long, since the moon loses heat too quickly and the ocean is probably frozen now.

Another key finding in the new study suggests that chlorides and ammonia are likely abundant in the oceans. Ammonia can act as an antifreeze, and the author’s modeling suggests that the salts that are likely present in the water would be another source of temperature regulation  that maintains the bodies’ internal oceans.

Digging down into the inner workings of a moon’s surface could help scientists and engineers choose the best instruments to survey them in future missions, but there are still many questions about Uranus’ large moons and work to be done.

“We need to develop new models for different assumptions on the origin of the moons in order to guide planning for future observations,” Castillo-Rogez said.

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If humans want to learn more about our higher brain functions and behaviors, some scientists think we should look towards insects—including everything from busy bees to social butterflies  to flies on the wall. A study published May 5 in the journal Science Advances found three diverse, specialized Kenyon cell subtypes in honey bee brains that likely evolved from one single, multi-functional Kenyon cell subtype ancestor.

[Related: Older bees teach younger bees the ‘waggle dance.’]

Kenyon cells (KCs) are a type of neural cell that are found within a part of the insect brain. These cells are  involved in learning and memory, particularly with the sense of smell called the mushroom body. They are found in insects in the large Hymenoptera order from more “primitive” sawflies up to the more sophisticated honey bee. 

“In 2017, we reported that the complexity of Kenyon cell subtypes in mushroom bodies in insect brains increases with the behavioral diversification in Hymenoptera,” co-author and University of Tokyo graduate student said in a statement. “In other words, the more KC subtypes an insect has, the more complex its brain and the behaviors it may exhibit. But we didn’t know how these different subtypes evolved. That was the stimulus for this new study.”

In this study, the team from University of Tokyo and Japan’s National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) looked at two Hymenoptera species as representatives for different behaviors. The more solitary turnip sawfly has a single KC subtype, compared to the more complex and more social honey bee that has three KC subtypes.

It is believed that the sawfly’s more “primitive” brain may contain some of the ancestral properties of the honey bee brain. To find these potential evolutionary paths, the team used  transcriptome analysis to identify the genetic activity happening in the various KC subtypes and speculate their functions.

[Related: Like the first flying humans, honeybees use linear landmarks to navigate.]

“I was surprised that each of the three KC subtypes in the honey bee showed comparable similarity to the single KC type in the sawfly,” co-author and University of Tokyo biologist Hiroki Kohno said in a statement.  “Based on our initial comparative analysis of several genes, we had previously supposed that additional KC subtypes had been added one by one. However, they appear to have been separated from a multifunctional ancestral type, through functional segregation and specialization.” 

As the number of KC subtypes increased, each one almost equally inherited some distinct properties from a single ancestral KC. The subtypes were then modified in different ways, and the results are the more varied functions seen in the present-day insects.

To see a specific behavioral example of how the ancestral KC functions are present in both the honey bee and the sawfly, they trained the sawflies to partake in a behavior test commonly used in honey bees. The bees, and eventually sawflies, learned to associate an odor stimulus with a reward. Despite initial challenges, the team got the sawflies to engage in this task. 

Then, the team manipulated a gene called CaMKII in sawfly larvae. In honey bees, this gene is associated with forming long-term memory, which is a KC function. After the gene manipulation, the long-term memory was impaired in the larvae when they became adults, a sign that this gene also plays a similar role in sawflies. CaMKII was expressed across the entire single KC subtype in sawflies, but it was preferentially expressed in one KC subtype in honey bees. According to the authors, this suggests that the role of CaMKII in long-term memory was passed down to the specific KC subtype in the honey bee.

Even though insect and mammalian brains are very different in terms of size and complexity, we share some common functions and architecture in our nervous systems. By looking at how insect cells and behavior has evolved, it might provide insights into how our own brains evolved. Next, the team is interested in studying KC types acquired in parallel with social behaviors, such as the honey bee’s infamous “waggle dance.”

“We would like to clarify whether the model presented here is applicable to the evolution of other behaviors,” co-author and University of Tokyo doctoral student Takayoshi Kuwabara said in a statement. “There are many mysteries about the neural basis that controls social behavior, whether in insects, animals or humans. How it has evolved still remains largely unknown. I believe that this study is a pioneering work in this field.”

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On May 5, the The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that we are no longer in a global COVID-19 emergency. The emergency was first declared over three years ago in the early days of the pandemic. During the 15th meeting of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee regarding COVID-19, the members highlighted a decreasing trend in deaths, decline of COVID-19 related hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions, and higher levels of population immunity to the virus as the basis of their decision. 

“With great hope, I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced during a media briefing. 

[Related: Biden will end COVID-19 national emergencies in May. Here’s what that means.]

However, Tedros stressed that just because the global emergency declaration is ending, it does not mean that COVID-19 is not still a threat to public health. “As we speak, thousands of people around the world are fighting for their lives in intensive care units. And millions more continue to live with the debilitating effects of post-COVID19 condition,” Tedros said. 

The WHO first made the emergency declaration on January 30, 2020, when only 213 people were known to have died from the novel virus. The declaration was a signal to the international community that COVID-19 posed a threat to the whole world and that they should begin to prepare. 

The WHO will continue to list COVID-19 as a pandemic, similar to how they designate HIV. While it acts as a symbolic milestone, this decision does not change much, but it is a significant moment in the evolving human relationship with the novel virus that brought life to a screeching halt in 2020 after it first emerged in China in December 2019.

Many countries, including the European Union, have already ended their COVID-19 states of emergency and have moved away from mitigation efforts. The United States is scheduled to lift its COVID-10 emergency on May 11.

The WHO decision was not welcomed by all public health experts. Respiratory physician and member of Brazil’s National Academy of Medicine Margareth Dalcolmo told The New York Times that it was too soon to lift the emergency, due to the urgent tasks such as research into COVID variants and development of better vaccines. She added that the designation of a global public health emergency also creates leverage for lower-income nations to access needed treatments and support.

Around the world, 765,222,932 confirmed COVID cases, including 6,921,614 deaths, have been reported to the WHO as of May 3. However, these figures are likely a vast undercount of the pandemic’s true toll on human life. In 2022, the WHO said 15 million more people had died in the first two years of the pandemic than they would have in normal times, with developing and indigenous nations experiencing the worst of the devastation. Close to eight million more people than expected died in lower-middle-income nations by the end of 2021.

[Related: White House invests $5 billion in new COVID vaccines and treatments as national emergency ends.]

“One of the greatest tragedies of COVID-19 is that it didn’t have to be this way. We have the tools and the technologies to prepare for pandemics better, to detect them earlier, to respond to them faster, and to mitigate their impact But globally, a lack of coordination, a lack of equity, and lack of solidarity meant that those tools were not used as effectively as they could have been,” Tedros said.

Additionally, on May 4, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released provisional data that COVID-19 dropped to the fourth leading cause of death in the US in 2022, falling behind heart disease, cancer, and unintended injuries like shootings, car accidents, and drug overdoses. In 2020 and 2021, only heart disease and cancer were ahead of COVID-19 as leading causes of death.

Death rates due to COVID-19 fell for nearly all Americans and the virus was the underlying cause of roughly 187,000 deaths in the US in 2022.  According to the CDC, the highest COVID-19 death rates were in the South and in the adjacent region that stretches west to Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.

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A team of doctors and surgeons from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital successfully performed a successful new fetal surgery. This time, they were able to treat a rare brain condition known as vein of Galen malformation. 

[Related: Scheduled childbirth might reduce preeclampsia risk by half.]

While in utero surgeries performed before birth are used for other conditions, this was among the first for this contusion. The ultrasound-guided procedure took place on March 15 and the details were published in the journal Stroke on May 4.  

Vein of Galen malformation occurs when the blood vessel that carries blood from the brain to the heart (known as the vein of Galen) does not develop correctly. The malformation or VOGM causes an enormous amount of blood stressing the vein and the heart. It can lead to multiple health problems—including heart failure or brain damage that lead to death.

During Derek and Kenyatta Coleman’s 30-week ultrasound, doctors noticed something unusual, despite what had been a normal pregnancy. The fetus’s brain and heart were enlarged and more investigation led to a VBOM diagnosis.  

The couple from Baton Rouge, Louisiana enrolled in an FDA approved clinical trial run by Brigham and Women’s and Boston Children’s despite the risks of preterm labor or brain hemorrhaging for the fetus. The team performed the surgery at 34 weeks of pregnancy to repair the malformation while the baby was still in-utero. They used ultrasound guidance, a long needle that is similar to those used for amniocentesis, and small coils that were placed directly into the abnormal blood vessels to stop blood flow.

The technique is borrowed from previously performed in utero cardiac surgeries. Once the fetus is in the optimal position, it “gets a small injection of medication so that it’s not moving and it is also getting a small injection of medication for pain relief,” Louise Wilkins-Haug, the division director of Maternal Fetal Medicine and Reproductive Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital told CNN.

The doctors then inserted a needle through the abdominal wall and carefully threaded a catheter through the long needle. This enabled the metal coils to fill up the vein, slow down the blood flow, and reduce the pressure. Scans showed decreased blood pressure in key areas and the fetus showed instant signs of improvement.

Kenyatta was slowly leaking amniotic fluid and went into labor two days after the surgery. On March 17, Denver Coleman was born, weighing 4 pounds and 1 ounce. According to her doctors, Denver was very stable in the immediate newborn period and did not need any immediate treatments like placing more coils or medication to support her heart function.  

[Related: Placentas are full of secrets. These researchers want to unlock them.]

“The best part was when she was born, just seeing her in the NICU be fine and, you know, we would all sort of look at each other and pinch ourselves,” Darren Orbach, a Boston Children’s Hospital physician, told Boston CBS affiliate WBZ-TV.  “We were not sure when it was OK to celebrate because you just don’t see that with these babies. So that was really the moment that we knew that all was going to be great.”

Baby Denver continues to do well almost two months after the surgery and is not taking any heart failure, her neurological exam is normal, and there are no indications that she needs any additional medical interventions. “She’s shown us from the very beginning that she was a fighter,” Kenyatta told CNN.

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Nicknamed the “Earth’s lungs” for its dense oxygen producing forests, the Amazon can absorb 132 billion tons of the planet’s carbon. However, more than 30,000 square miles of the Amazon have been lost since the 1970s. Deforestation, clearing land for agriculture, and climate change fueled wildfires have severely taken its toll on the region, where about 10,000 acres of forest (almost the size of California) has been destroyed every day since 1988. 

However, there is still time to save it—and now scientists may have a “secret weapon” that could not only help reforest the Amazon, but other depleted forests around the world. And it comes from soil deep in the region’s past.

[Related: Brazil’s presidential election is a win for the Amazon—and the planet.]

From roughly 450 BCE and 950 CE, the people living along today’s Amazonia transformed the originally poor soil over many human generations. The soils were enriched with charcoal from low-intensity fires for cooking and burning refuse, animal bones, broken pottery, compost, and manure. The fertile result of these processes is Amazonian dark earth (ADE), or terra preta. The exceptionally fertile black soil is rich in nutrients and stable organic matter derived from charcoal. According to a study published May 5 in the journal Frontiers in Soil Science, it now may help reforest the same area where it was created. 

“Here we show that the use of ADEs can enhance the growth of pasture and trees due  to their high levels of nutrients, as well as to the presence of beneficial bacteria and archaea in the soil microbial community,” co-author Luís Felipe Zagatto, a graduate student at the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture at São Paulo University in Brazil said in a statement. “This means that knowledge of the ‘ingredients’ that make ADEs so very fertile could be applied to help speed up ecological restoration projects.”

The team’s primary aim was to study how ADEs, or ultimately soils with a microbiome that has been artificially composed to imitate them, could boost reforestation. To do this, they conducted controlled experiments in a lab to mimic the ecological succession that happens in the soil when pasture in deforested areas is actively restored to its forest state. 

They sampled ADE from the Caldeirão Experimental Research Station in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. The control soil in the experiments was from the Luiz de Queiróz Superior School of Agriculture in the state of São Paulo. They filled 36 pots with about 6.6 pounds of soil inside a greenhouse with an average temperature of 94ºF to anticipate global warming beyond current average temperatures in Amazonia (between 71 and 82ºF).

One third of the pots only received the control soil, while another third received a 4 to 1 mixture of the control soil and ADE, and the final third has 100 percent ADE. They planted seeds of palisade grass, a common forage for Brazilian livestock, to imitate pasture. The seedlings were allowed to grow for 60 days before the grass was cut so that only the roots remained in the soil. 

Each of the three soils were then replanted with tree seeds of either a colonizing species called Ambay pumpwood, Peltophorum dubium, or with cedro blanco.

[Related: The Amazon is on the brink of a climate change tipping point.]

The seeds were allowed to germinate and then grow for 90 days and then the team measured their height, dry mass, and extension of the roots. They also quantified the changes in the soil’s pH, microbial diversity, texture, and concentration of organic matter–potassium, calcium, magnesium, aluminum, sulfur, boron, copper, iron, and zinc–over the course of the experiment. 

At the beginning, ADEs showed greater amounts of nutrients than control soil, roughly 30 times more phosphorus and three to five times more of each of the other measured nutrients, except manganese. The ADE also had a higher pH and had more sand and silt in it, but less clay. 

Following the experiment, the control soils contained less nutrients than they had at the start, which reflects take-up by the plants. However, the 100 percent ADE soils remained richer than control soils, while nutrient levels were intermediate in the 20 percent ADE soils.

The 20 percent and 100 percent ADE soils also supported a greater biodiversity of both  bacteria and archaea than control soils.

“Microbes transform chemical soil particles into nutrients that can be taken up by plants. Our data showed that ADE contains microorganisms that are better at this transformation of soils, thus providing more resources for plant development,” co-author and University of São Paulo molecular biologist Anderson Santos de Freitas said in a statement.  “For example, ADE soils contained more beneficial taxa of the bacterial families Paenibacillaceae, Planococcaceae, Micromonosporaceae, and Hyphomicroblaceae.”

Additionally, adding ADE to soil improved the growth and development of plants. The dry mass of palisade grass was increased 3.4 times in the 20 percent ADE soil and 8.1 times in 100 percent ADE compared to in control soil. 

These results were enough to convince the team that ADE can boost plant growth, but it does come with some caution. 

“ADE has taken thousands of years to accumulate and would take an equal time to regenerate in nature if used,” co-author and  University of São Paulo molecular biologist Siu Mui Tsai said in a statement. “Our recommendations aren’t to utilize ADE itself, but rather to copy its characteristics, particularly its microorganisms, for use in future ecological restoration projects.”

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Alongside our planet’s oxygen rich atmosphere and plentiful water, the Earth’s continents are part of what makes the planet uniquely habitable for sustaining life. Despite this, little is known about what gave rise to these massive pieces of the Earth’s crust and the properties that make them special. One prevailing hypothesis is that since continental crust is lower in iron compared to oceanic crust, the iron-poor composition in continental crust is part of why large parts of Earth’s surface stand above sea level as dryland for terrestrial life. 

[Related: Seismologists might have identified the deepest layer of Earth’s core.]

However, scientists found that the iron-depleted, oxidized chemistry in Earth’s continental crust likely didn’t come from crystallization of the mineral garnet, as proposed in 2018. Instead, the team believes that oxidized sulfur may be behind it.  They published their findings on May 4 in the journal Science

New continental crust comes from continental arc volcanoes found at subduction zones like the Cascadia subduction zone off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. These zones are where an oceanic plate dives beneath a continental plate. 

In 2018, the explanation of why the continental crust is iron-poor and oxidized came down to the crystallization of garnet, a group of silicate minerals. According to this theory, the garnet found in the magmas beneath continental arc volcanoes is removing non-oxidized iron from the Earth’s terrestrial plates. At the same time, the molten magma is depleted of iron and is more oxidized. 

This garnet explanation for iron depletion and oxidation in continental arc magmas was pretty compelling to study co-author Elizabeth Cottrell, a research geologist and curator of rocks at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. However, one aspect of it did not sit right with her.

“You need high pressures to make garnet stable, and you find this low-iron magma at places where crust isn’t that thick and so the pressure isn’t super high,” Cottrell said in a statement.

Five years ago, Cottrell and Megan Holycross from Cornell University, along with their colleagues began to search for ways to test whether crystallization of garnet beneath arc volcanoes is actually essential for creating continental crust.

To test this, the team used piston-cylinder presses to recreate the massive pressure and heat that is found beneath continental arc volcanoes. In 13 different experiments, the team grew samples of garnet from molten rock inside the piston-cylinder press under pressures and temperatures similar to conditions inside of the Earth’s crust deep magma chambers– roughly 8,000 times more pressure than what’s inside a can of soda. The temperature in the experiment ranged from 1,742 degrees to 2,246 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt rock.

[Related: How old is Earth? It’s a surprisingly tough question to answer.]

The team then used garnets from the Smithsonian’s National Rock Collection and other collections from around the world where the concentrations of oxidized and unoxidized iron were already known.

The materials were then taken to the Advanced Photon Source at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Using high-energy X-ray beams, the team conducted X-ray absorption spectroscopy. This technique can tell scientists about the structure and composition of materials based on how they absorb X-rays. The team looked at the concentrations of oxidized and unoxidized iron to check and calibrate X-ray absorption spectroscopy measurements and compare it with the materials from earlier experiments.

They found that the garnets had not incorporated enough unoxidized iron from the rock samples to account for the levels of iron-depletion and oxidation in the magmas that build up the Earth’s continental crust.

“These results make the garnet crystallization model an extremely unlikely explanation for why magmas from continental arc volcanoes are oxidized and iron depleted,” Cottrell said. “It’s more likely that conditions in Earth’s mantle below continental crust are setting these oxidized conditions.”

The findings led to more questions, such as what oxidizing and depleting the iron actually does  in the crust, as well as what is modifying the compositions. 

The leading theory is that oxidized sulfur could be oxidizing the iron and it is currently being investigated at the Smithsonian. This research was supported by funding from the Smithsonian (part of the Our Unique Planet initiative), the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the Lyda Hill Foundation.

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A broken molar and some sophisticated stone pointed tools suggest that Europe’s first known humans may have been living on the continent 54,000 years ago. The findings are detailed in a study published May 3 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE and suggests that the first modern humans spread across the European continent during three waves in the Paleolithic Era. 

[Related: Sex, not violence, could’ve sealed the fate of the Neanderthals.]

Homo sapiens arose in Africa over 300,000 years ago and anatomically modern humans are thought to have emerged about 195,000 years ago. Previously, it was believed that modern humans moved into Europe from Africa roughly 42,000 years ago, leaving the archaeological record of Paleolithic Europe withs many open questions about how modern humans arrived in the region and how they interacted with the resident Neanderthal populations. The 2022 discovery of a tooth in France’s Grotte Mandrin cave in the Rhône Valley suggested that modern humans were there about 54,000 years ago, about 10,000 years earlier than scientists previously believed. 

“Until 2022, it was believed that Homo sapiens had reached Europe between the 42nd and 45th millennium. The study shows that this first Sapiens migration would actually be the last of three major migratory waves to the continent, profoundly rewriting what was thought to be known about the origin of Sapiens in Europe,” study co-author Ludovic Slimak, an archeologist at and University of Toulouse in France, said in a statement. 

The newly analyzed stone tools from this study have further upended that timeline. They suggest that the three waves of migration occurred between 54,000 and 42,000 years ago. The team of researchers compared records of stone tool technology across western Eurasia to document the order of early human activity across the continents. It focused on tens of thousands of stone tools from Ksar Akil in Lebanon and France’s Grotte Mandrin (where the tooth was found) and analyzed their precise technical connections with the earliest modern technologies in the continent. 

The technology of the tools went through three similar phases in each region, Slimak said, so they may have spread from the Near East to Europe during these three distinct waves of migration. The study suggests Neanderthals only began to fade into extinction in the third wave–about 45,000 to 42,000 years ago. 

[Related: Archery may have helped humans gain leverage over Neanderthals.]

The team also looked at a group of stone artifacts that were previously found in the eastern Mediterranean region called the Levant, or what includes today’s Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Slimak compared the tools from Grotte Mandrin to the ones from Ksar Akil in Lebanon, noting similarities between them. The artifacts from a group of stone tools known as the Châtelperronian resemble the modern human artifacts seen in the Early Upper Paleolithic of the Levant. The Châtelperronian items date to about 45,000 years ago and scientists had often thought Châtelperronians were Neanderthals.

“Châtelperronian culture, one of the first modern traditions in western Europe and since then attributed to Neanderthals, should in fact signal the second wave of Homo sapiens migration in Europe, impacting deeply our understanding of the cultural organization of the last Neanderthals,” said Slimak.

The moving of these technologies allow for a provocative new reinterpretation of human arrival into Europe and how it is related to the Levant region. Future studies of these phases of human migration will help paint a clearer picture of the sequence of events when Homo sapiens spread,   and gradually replaced Neanderthals.

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After 60 years of trial and error, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first vaccine to prevent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) on May 3. More preventative shots for the respiratory virus are on the way.

[Related: How our pandemic toolkit fought the many viruses of 2022.]

The FDA approved Arexvy from pharmaceutical company GSK. The vaccine is designed to protect those over 60 in a single dose. A vaccine from Pfizer is currently under consideration for older adults and pregnant people as a maternal vaccination to protect newborn babies. Sanofi and AstraZeneca’s monoclonal antibody treatment for babies that offers vaccine-like protection during RSV season is also under consideration by the FDA. Additionally, a late-stage trial of an RSV vaccine that uses mRNA technology from Moderna showed promise in late-stage trials. 

The vaccine could be available as soon as this fall, pending a recommendation for its use from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which will meet in June. GSK says it has “millions of doses ready to be shipped,” according to a recent earnings presentation.

“Older adults, in particular those with underlying health conditions, such as heart or lung disease or weakened immune systems, are at high risk for severe disease caused by RSV,” said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, in a statement. “Today’s approval of the first RSV vaccine is an important public health achievement to prevent a disease which can be life-threatening and reflects the FDA’s continued commitment to facilitating the development of safe and effective vaccines for use in the United States.”

RSV can affect all age groups, but it is particularly worrisome in babies and older adults. It is a highly contagious virus that causes infections of the lungs and breathing passages. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), RSV leads to approximately 60,000 to 120,000 hospitalizations and 6,000 to 10,000 deaths among adults 65 years of age and older every year. It is also a common cause of lower respiratory tract disease in older adults. This disease affects the lungs and can cause life-threatening pneumonia and bronchiolitis.

The virus circulates seasonally, usually beginning in the fall and peaking in the winter. The 2022-2023 RSV season started particularly early and flooded hospitals and pediatric wards across the United States, leading pharmacies to limit the sales of children’s medicines.

According to the results of a clinical trial of close to 25,000 older adults, the GSK vaccine was 83 percent effective at preventing lower respiratory tract disease by the virus. It was 94 percent effective at preventing severe disease in seniors. In the trial, severe disease was defined as the need for supplemental oxygen or a mechanical help to breathe. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February. 

[Related: Fighting RSV in babies starts with a mother’s antibodies.]

The vaccine works by using a small piece of the virus called a fusion protein, or F-protein. The F-protein sticks out on the virus’ surface and helps it latch onto cells in the upper airway and infect them. The F-proteins were made in a lab with specially programmed cells. 

In 2013, researchers at the National Institutes of Health discovered how to freeze the normally wiggly and shape-shifting F-protein in the shape that it takes before it fuses onto a cell. When it’s in this shape, the body can produce antibodies against it. The GSK vaccine uses this pre-fusion form of the F-protein and an ingredient called an adjuvant that can boost immune activity.

The search for a vaccine to RSV began in the 1960s, but has been mired by tragedy. Two toddlers died after receiving an experimental shot in the 60’s after it unexpectedly caused them to contract a very serious version of the virus. Many of the safety measures currently in place during vaccine trials were put in place after the failures of the RSV vaccine.

Barney Graham, a vaccine scientist at Morehouse School of Medicine worked alongside Jason McLellan, a structural biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, and Peter Kwong, a vaccine scientist at the National Institutes of Health, to jump-start the RSV vaccine field after decades of failure.

“This is my life’s work, so it’s kind of amazing to see it come to this point,” Graham told The Washington Post.  “It’s exciting for me to see this happening because of all the other people who’ve come before me working on RSV, some of whom are no longer with us. I wish they could see this is happening. It’s been a long struggle.”

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The pop of the cork, the fizz of the pour, and the clink of champagne flutes toasting are the ingredients for a celebration in many parts of the world. champagne itself dates back to Ancient Rome, but the biggest advances in the modern form of the beverage came from a savvy trio of women from the Champagne region of northeastern France in the 19th century. 

Now, scientists are adding another chapter to champagne’s bubbly history by discovering why the little effervescent bubbles of joy fizz upwards in a straight line.

[Related: Popping a champagne cork creates supersonic shockwaves.]

In a study published May 3 in the journal Physical Review Fluids, a team found that the stable bubble chains in champagne and other sparkling wines occur because of ingredients in it that act similar to soap-like compounds called surfactants. The surfactant-like molecules help reduce the tensions between the liquid and the gas bubbles, creating the smooth rise to the top. 

In this new study, a team conducted both numerical and physical experiments on four carbonated drinks to investigate the stability of the bubble chains. Depending on the drink, the fluid mechanics are quite different. For example, champagne and sparkling wine have gas bubbles that continuously appear to rise rapidly to the top of the glass in a single-file line like little ants—and they keep doing so for some time. In beer and soda, the bubbles veer off to the side and the bubble chains are not as stable. 

To observe the bubble chains, the team poured glasses of carbonated beverages including Pellegrino sparkling water, Tecate beer, Charles de Cazanove champagne, and a Spanish-style sparkling wine called brut.

They then filled small rectangular plexiglass containers with liquid and pumped in gas to create different kinds of bubble chains. They gradually added surfactants or increased the bubble size. They found that the larger bubbles could become stable even without the surfactants. When they kept a fixed bubble size with only added surfactants, the chains could go from unstable to stable. 

The authors found that the stability of the bubbles is actually impacted by the size of the bubbles themselves. The chains with large bubbles have a wake similar to that of bubbles with contaminants, which leads to a smooth rise and stable chains.

“The theory is that in Champagne these contaminants that act as surfactants are the good stuff,” co-author and Brown University engineer Roberto Zenit said in a statement. “These protein molecules that give flavor and uniqueness to the liquid are what makes the bubbles chains they produce stable.”

Since bubbles are always pretty small in drinks, surfactants are the key ingredient to producing the straight and stable chains we see in champagne. While beer also contains surfactant-like molecules, the bubbles can rise in straight chains or not depending on the type of beer. The bubbles in carbonated water like seltzer are always unstable because there are no contaminants helping the bubbles move smoothly through the wake of the flows.

[Related: This pretty blue fog only happens in warm champagne.]

“This wake, this velocity disturbance, causes the bubbles to be knocked out,” said Zenit. “Instead of having one line, the bubbles end up going up in more of a cone.”

The findings could add a better understanding of how fluid mechanics work, particularly the formation of clusters in bubbly flow, which has economic and societal value. The global carbonated drink market was valued at a whopping $221.6 billion in 2020. 

The technologies that use bubble-induced mixing, like aeration tanks at water treatment facilities and in wine making, could benefit greatly from better knowledge of how bubbles cluster, their origins, and how to predict their appearance. Understanding these flows may also help better explain ocean seeps, when methane and carbon dioxide emerge from the bottom of the ocean.

“This is the type of research that I’ve been working out for years,” said Zenit. “Most people have never seen an ocean seep or an aeration tank but most of them have had a soda, a beer or a glass of Champagne. By talking about Champagne and beer, our master plan is to make people understand that fluid mechanics is important in their daily lives.”

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There is truly no shortage of interesting courting and mating rituals throughout the animal kingdom. From trilobites “jousting” to win mates to the important pee sniffing rituals of giraffes, getting it on is serious business. And so is winning over a mate. 

[Related: Male California sea lions have gotten bigger and better at fighting.]

For the first time, scientists have found direct evidence that adult male woolly mammoths experienced an event called musth. Musth comes from the Hindi and Urdu word for intoxicated, and in the case of giant mammals like adult elephants, this is a testosterone-fueled event where the male sex hormone surges and aggression against rival males is heightened. 

The study, published online May 3 in the journal Nature, found evidence that testosterone levels are recorded within the growth layers of both elephant and mammoth tusks. In living male elephants, blood and urine tests recognized the elevated testosterone, but musth battles from its extinct relatives has only been inferred from to fossilized consequences of testosterone-fueled battle, such as pieces of tusk tips and skeletal injuries. 

In the study, an international team of researchers report the presence of annually recurring testosterone surges (up to 10 times higher than baseline levels) are present within a permafrost-preserved woolly mammoth tusk. 

The team sampled tusks from one adult African bull elephant from Botswana and two adult woolly mammoths: a male who roamed Siberia over 33,000 years ago and a roughly 5,597 year-old female that was discovered on Wrangel Island. This Arctic Ocean island used to be connected to northeast Siberia and is the last place where woolly mammoths survived up until about 4,000 years ago. 

“This study establishes dentin as a useful repository for some hormones and sets the stage for further advances in the developing field of paleoendocrinology,” study co-author and paleontologist at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology Michael Cherney said in a statement. “In addition to broad applications in zoology and paleontology, tooth-hormone records could support medical, forensic and archaeological studies.”

Hormones are signaling molecules that help regulate physiology and behavior. Testosterone in male vertebrates is part of the steroid group of hormones. Testosterone circulates throughout the bloodstream and accumulates in various tissues.   

[Related: How much acid should you give an elephant? These scientists learned the hard way.]

According the authors, their findings demonstrate that steroid records in teeth can provide scientists with meaningful biological information that can even persist for thousands of years.

“Tusks hold particular promise for reconstructing aspects of mammoth life history because they preserve a record of growth in layers of dentin that form throughout an individual’s life,” study co-author and U-M Museum of Paleontology curator Daniel Fisher said in a statement.  “Because musth is associated with dramatically elevated testosterone in modern elephants, it provides a starting point for assessing the feasibility of using hormones preserved in tusk growth records to investigate temporal changes in endocrine physiology.”

They team used CT scans to find the annual growth increments deep within the tusks, like tree rings. Modern elephant and ancient mammoth tusks are elongated upper incisor teeth, and only hold on to traces of testosterone and other steroid hormones. The chemical compounds are all incorporated into dentin, which is the mineralized tissue that makes up the interior portion of teeth. 

The study also required new methods to extract steroids from the tusk dentin with a mass spectrometer. Mass spectrometers identify chemical substances by sorting the ions present by their mass and charge. 

“We had developed steroid mass spectrometry methods for human blood and saliva samples, and we have used them extensively for clinical research studies. But never in a million years did I imagine that we would be using these techniques to explore ‘paleoendocrinology,'” study co-author and U-M endocrinologist Rich Auchus said in a statement. 

The results and the new measuring technique will likely further new approaches to investigating reproductive endocrinology, life history, and even disease patterns in modern and prehistoric context.

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A new sound wave technique can help treat a deadly brain cancer called glioblastoma in only four minutes. The breakthrough report was published May 2 in the journal The Lancet Oncology and demonstrates the results of a phase 1 in-human clinical trial with 17 patients.

In the trial, the patients underwent surgery for resection, or removal, of their tumors and had an ultrasound device implanted. The device inside the skull opens the blood-brain barrier, repeatedly using sound waves to permeate the barrier and reach the brain tumor. IV chemotherapy is then able to reach the neurological tissues where the cancer can grow.

Treating this type of brain tumor, which has a 6.8 percent survival rate within the first five years of diagnosis, with the most potent types of chemotherapy is difficult. The strongest cancer medicines are typically unable to permeate the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier acts as a line of defense, making an extra wall around the brain to keep toxins and pathogens from getting into such a crucial area of the body. However, the repertoire of drugs that can be used to treat brain diseases is very limited. In 2014, scientists first found that sound waves could be used to permeate the blood-brain barrier and this study builds on that discovery.

[Related: Understanding glioblastoma, the most common—and lethal—form of brain cancer.]

“This is potentially a huge advance for glioblastoma patients,” co-author and Northwestern University neurosurgeon Adam Sonabend said in a statement. 

The study reports that using a novel skull-implantable grid of nine ultrasound emitters made by French biotech company Carthera can open the blood-brain barrier in a volume of the brain nine times larger than the small single-ultrasound emitter implants originally used. This importantly helps treat a large region of the brain next to the cavity that remains after glioblastoma tumors are removed.  

This is also the first study that shows how quickly the blood-brain barrier closes after being opened by the ultrasound. It closes in the first 30 to 60 minutes after the communication. and this will help scientists optimize what order to deliver the drugs to allow for better penetration of the brain. The procedure to open the blood-brain barrier only takes four minutes and is performed while the patient is awake. The new results show that the treatment is safe, well-tolerated, and some patients received up to six cycles of treatment. 

[Related: Scientists used Zika to kill aggressive brain cancer cells in mice.]

Opening up the blood-brain barrier led to a roughly four- to six-fold increase in the drug concentrations in the human brain. The team observed this increase with two chemotherapy drugs called paclitaxel and carboplatin. These drugs are typically not used to treat glioblastoma patients, because they typically do not cross the blood brain barrier in normal circumstances. 

According to Sonobend, the current chemotherapy used for glioblastoma (Temozolomide) does cross the blood-brain barrier, but is weak. Sonabend also said that previous studies that injected paclitaxel directly into the brains of patients with these tumors had promising signs of efficacy, but the direct injection was associated with toxicity such as brain irritation and meningitis.

A phase 2 clinical trial is already underway. “While we have focused on brain cancer (for which there are approximately 30,000 gliomas in the U.S.), this opens the door to investigate novel drug-based treatments for millions of patients who suffer from various brain diseases,” said Sonabend.

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The tiny country of Wales on the western coast of Great Britain may now be home to one of the world’s most unexpected fossil sites. Scientists found an “unusually well-preserved”  deposit of over 150 species from 462 million years ago. Interestingly enough, many of them have miniature bodies. The findings by an international team of scientists from the United Kingdom, China, Sweden are detailed in a study published May 1 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

[Related: These weird marine critters paved the way for the ‘Cambrian explosion’ of species.]

The “marine dwarf world,” as dubbed by the research team, is located in Castle Bank near Llandrindod, central Wales. Two of the study’s authors, Joe Botting and Lucy Muir,  found the site in 2020. Castle Bank is a rare site where the soft tissues and complete organisms are preserved. These specimens help scientists observe how life evolved over time. 

Similar fossil sites like the Burgess Shale fossil deposits in Canada date back 542 to 485 million years ago during the Cambrian period, when recognizable animals first appear in the fossil record. This period is known for a huge explosion of life on Earth. During the Cambrian, the origins of major animal groups still around today, such as mollusks, arthropods, and worms, occurred in what scientists call the Cambrian Explosion. 

The fossilized time capsule from Castle Bank is from the middle of the succeeding Ordovician Period, about 462 million years ago. The Ordovician was a critical time in the history of life when extraordinary diversification of animals occurred and more familiar ecosystems like coral reefs began to appear at the end of the period. Until now, a big gap has existed between thes Cambrian and Ordovician eras. Some of the fauna found at Castle Bank dating back to the middle of this time interval will help fill in evolutionary mysteries about animal shifts over time. 

The more than 150 species found at Castle Bank are almost all new. Many are less than an inch long, but contain tiny details in their bodies. They range from arthropods like crustaceans and horseshoe crabs to worms, sponges, starfish, and more. 

In some animals in the study, internal organs like digestive systems, the limbs of tiny arthropods, delicate filter-feeding tentacles, and even nerves have been preserved. According to the authors, exquisite detail like this is known from Cambrian specimens, but not previously from the Ordovician.

The range of fossils also includes several unusual discoveries, including unexpectedly late examples of animals from the Cambrian that look like the strange looking proto-arthropod opabiniids and slug-like wiwaxiids. Some of the early fossils also resemble modern goose barnacles, possible marine relatives of insects and cephalocarid shrimps, which have no fossil record at all.

[Related: This fossilized ‘ancient animal’ might be a bunch of old seaweed.]

“It coincides with the ‘great Ordovician biodiversification event’, when animals with hard skeletons were evolving rapidly,” Muir, a paleontologist and research fellow from the National Museum Wales, told the BBC. “For the first time, we will be able to see what the rest of the ecosystem was doing as well.”

These findings also have important implications for the evolution of sponges, particularly Hexactinellida. Also called a glass sponge, this animal is considered a transitional interval between sponges that the team have been studying for years. 

“Despite the extraordinary range of fossils already discovered, work has barely begun,” Botting, a paleontologist and research fellow at the National Museum Wales and Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the BBC. “Every time we go back, we find something new, and sometimes it’s something truly extraordinary. There are a lot of unanswered questions, and this site is going to keep producing new discoveries for decades.”

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Archaeologists in Rome have unearthed a treasure trove of Renaissance-era medical supplies inside the Forum of Caesar. Among the “golden” finds are 500 year-old medicine bottles and urine flasks. In a study published April 11 in the journal Antiquity, the authors believe that the containers were used to collect pee for medical analysis and diagnosis. 

According to the researchers, the pathogens that could have been present in these bottles helps uncover how urban waste was managed.

[Related: Pee makes for great fertilizer. But is it safe?]

The current excavation initially began in 2021 and is part of an international collaboration called the Caesar’s Forum Excavation Project. The 16th century medical dump was found inside Caesar’s Forum, which was built centuries prior in 46 BCE. About 1,500 years later, a guild of bakers used this space to build the Ospedale dei Fornari or Bakers’ Hospital. According to the authors, the waste dump was then created by the hospital’s workers. 

The archaeologists also found rosary beads, broken glass jars, coins, a ceramic camel, and a Renaissance-era cistern full of ceramic vessels. The team of researchers from institutions in Italy and Denmark believes that the objects were likely related to patient care in the hospital. Each patient at the hospital may have been given a basket with a bowl, drinking glass, jug, and a plate for hygiene purposes. 

The glass urine flasks are called “matula” in medieval Latin medical texts and were likely used for the practice of uroscopy. This was a diagnostic tool for physicians during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Urine was also once believed to be a cure for motion sickness. 

The authors believe that doctors would use the flasks to observe urine’s sedimentation, smell, color, and even taste. This would help the physicians diagnose ailments like kidney disease, jaundice, and diabetes. The excess glucose in diabetic urine gives it a saccharine quality. English physician Thomas Willis was credited with discovering this during the 17th Century and described the pee as “wonderfully sweet as if it were imbued with honey or sugar.”

[Related from PopSci+: What’s in a packrat’s petrified pee? Just a few thousand years of secrets.]

Also included in the cistern were lead clamps that were associated with wood treated with fire. According to the study, this may be evidence of burning objects brought into the hospital from houses with known plague cases. Italian physician Quinto Tiberio Angelerio wrote this in a series of rules for preventing the spread of the contagious disease in 1588, which included burning objects touched by plague patients. Plague killed roughly 25 million people throughout the 14th century alone as it spread across Eurasia, North Africa, and eventually the Americas for 500 years.

Once the cistern was full, it was likely capped with clay While landfills existed at this time outside the city walls of Rome, “the deposition of waste in cellars, courtyards, and cisterns, although prohibited, was a common practice,” study lead author Cristina Boschetti told Live Science. 

The unique find sheds more light on how hygiene practices and controls in European medical settings progressed during the early modern era. 

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General Mills has voluntarily recalled select bags of Gold Medal flour due to possible salmonella contamination. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the recall on April 28 and covers two, five, and 10 pound bags of Gold Medal bleached and unbleached all-purpose flour with a “better if used by” date of March 27, 2024, or March 28, 2024. 

[Related: How do you track a salmonella outbreak? A data journalist followed the DNA trail to slaughterhouses.]

Other types of Gold Medal flour are not affected by the recall. Still, General Mills advised consumers to check their pantries and throw out any flour covered in the recall. The current recall did not link the flour to any reports of illness, but salmonella was detected in a sample from the five pound product.  

“We are continuing to educate consumers that flour is not a ‘ready to eat’ ingredient. Anything made with flour must be cooked or baked before eating,” General Mills spokesperson Mollie Wulff said in a statement to CNN. 

While the recall has not linked General Mills flour to any reports of illness, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been investigating an 11-state salmonella outbreak. The majority of the 13 individuals sickened had reported eating raw batter or dough made with flour before getting sick. While most people infected recover, the most recent outbreak has resulted in three hospitalizations.

Salmonella is a bacterium that is found in the intestinal tracts of animals, and can be transferred to humans if animal feces enters into the food supply. It affects 1.35 million people each year, according to the CDC. Some symptoms of a salmonella infection include fever, stomach cramps, and diarrhea that can start within days of consuming the bacteria. Most people will recover with proper treatment, but consumers should seek medical treatment immediately if severe and persistent symptoms occur or there are signs of dehydration. Children under the age of five, those with weakened immune systems, and the elderly are more likely to have severe infections.

[Related: A salmonella outbreak has hit 37 states, and onions are to blame.]

According to both the FDA and CDC, consumers should not eat any raw products made with flour. Salmonella bacteria is killed by heat through baking, frying, sautéing, or boiling products that are made with flour, and people can get sick when eating food that constrain raw flour. Raw dough used in crafts homemade modeling dough can also pose the same risk. 

To prevent illness, both agencies recommend thoroughly cleaning all surfaces, hands, and utensils with warm soapy water after contact with uncooked flour or dough. People with pets should be particularly mindful of avoiding cross contamination by cleaning out bowls and feeders frequently. 

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It wasn’t snakes on a plane to the Pacific islands of Tahiti and Moorea, but some very special snails. Over 5,000 of partula snails bred and raised at zoos in London, Scotland, and Missouri were flown over 9,000 miles to be reintroduced in the wild. 

[Related from PopSci+: Beavers, snails, and elephants are top grads from nature’s college of engineering.]

These ‘extinct in the wild’ partula snails (also called Polynesian tree snails) eat decaying plant tissue and fungi. They also play an important role in maintaining forest health. When invasive African giant land snails took over some islands in French Polynesia, the rosy wolf snail was introduced to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the rosy snails hunted down the native partula snails instead.

Returning partula snails back to the wild, in coordination with the French Polynesian Government’s Direction de l’environnement, is a step towards restoring some ecological balance in these islands.

“Despite their small size, these snails are of great cultural, ecological and scientific importance— they’re the Darwin’s finches of the snail world, having been researched for more than a century due to their isolated habitat providing the perfect conditions to study evolution,” the London Zoological Society curator of invertebrates Paul Pearce-Kell said in a statement. 

The nocturnal snails that measure less than an inch long were individually marked with a dot of red reflective paint before being released, so that the conservationists can track them better. The team reintroduced eight species and subspecies classified as Extinct-in-the-wild, Critically Endangered, or Vulnerable.

In the early 1990s, the last few surviving individuals of several Partula species were rescued and brought back to the London and Edinburgh Zoos for an international conservation breeding program that brought together 15 zoos. 

“After decades of work caring for these species in conservation zoos—and working with the Direction de l’environnement to prepare the islands for their return—we began releasing Partula snails back into the wild nine years ago,” said Pearce-Kell.

[Release: Large, destructive snails have invaded Florida.]

Eleven snail species have since been saved, including the last known individual of the Partula taeniata sumulans. This lone snail was brought to Edinburgh zoo in 2010 and was bred back to several hundred individuals. Unfortunately, the Partula faba wasn’t as lucky. The nine individuals at Edinburgh could not successfully breed in captivity and the species became extinct in 2016.

The zoos worked with the French Polynesian government to prepare the islands for their return to the wild nine years ago.

“Since then, we’ve reintroduced over 21,000 Partula snails to the islands, including 11 Extinct-in-the-wild species and sub-species: this year’s was the largest reintroduction so far, thanks to the incredible work of our international team efforts with collaborators,” said Pearce-Kell.

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Beer is more than one of humanity’s most beloved beverages—it’s also one of its oldest. Recent archaeological discoveries date it back 13,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean. It was once considered so sacred that only women could brew it–until witchcraft accusations stopped that in its tracks. 

[Related: Ancient poop proves that humans have always loved beer and cheese.]

The origins of our favorite types of beers are also starting to come into focus with a fun combination of history and science. A study published April 27 in the journal FEMS Yeast Research reveals a possible origin story for lager beer, a light type of beer produced by bottom-fermenting yeast. It can be pale, dark, or amber in color and pairs well with shellfish, grilled pork, and spicy foods among others.

The research team used historical records, in tandem with evolution and genomics research, and believe that lager likely originated at the court brewery–or Hofbräuhaus–of Maximilian I, the elector of Bavaria.

Lager surpassed ale as the most common beer produced around the turn of the 20th century and over 150 billion liters of lager beer are sold annually around the world. However, the shift from ale to lager started centuries before when a new yeast species Saccharomyces pastorianus or “lager yeast,” popped up in Germany around the end of the Middle Ages. The new yeast was a hybrid species that was the product of mating of top-fermenting ale yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the cold-tolerant Saccharomyces eubayanus around the beginning of the 17th century. 

“Lager is a beer brewed at low temperatures using yeast that are described as bottom-fermenting,” study author and University of Cork microbiologist John Morrissey wrote in The Conversation. “Yeast are single-celled fungi used in brewing to convert maltose to alcohol and carbon dioxide, giving beer its booziness and fizz. They are either top- or bottom-fermenting.”

S. pastorianus is a bottom-fermenting lager yeast, and its origins have been “shrouded in mystery and controversy,” according to Morrissey. The assumption was that the hybrid yeast arose when traditional ale fermentation became contaminated with wild yeasts. However, the team on this study doubted this historic assumption, and used detailed analysis of Central European historical brewing records to dig in more. They discovered that “lager-style” bottom fermentation was actually happening in Bavaria 200 years before the hybrid S. pastorianus yeast was born.

The team believes that it was actually the top-fermenting ale yeast S. cerevisiae that contaminated a batch of beer brewed with the cold-tolerant S. eubayanus. They believe that the source of the contaminating yeast was a wheat brewery in the small Bavarian town of Schwarzach.

[Related: The key to tastier beer might be mutant yeast—with notes of banana.]

“Bottom fermentation originated in northern Bavaria. Not only was it common practice in this part of Germany, but the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot brewing regulations of 1516 only permitted bottom fermentation. Thus, from at least the 16th century onwards, Bavarian brown beer was produced by mixtures of different bottom-fermenting yeast species known as stellhefen,” wrote Morrissey.

However, in neighboring Bohemia, excellent wheat beer made with S. cerevisiae was made in huge quantities and imported into Bavaria. To limit the blow to the economy from these imports, Bavarian ruler Wilhelm IV gave Baron Hans VI von Degenberg a special privilege to brew and sell wheat beer in the border regions to Bohemia in 1548.

Maximilian I eventually took power in 1602, and he seized the wheat beer privilege himself and took over the von Degenbergs’ Schwarzach breweries. The team believes that it was in October 1602 that the yeast from the wheat brewery was brought to the court brewery in Munich where the hybridization took place and lager yeast S. pastorianus was born.

“This theory is consistent with published genetic evidence showing that the S. cerevisiae parent of S. pastorianus was closer to ones used to brew wheat beer than strains used for barley-based ale,” wrote Morrissey.

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[Related: We finally have a detailed map of water on the moon.]

May 4 and 5- Full Flower Moon

The Full Flower moon reaches peak illumination at 1:36 p.m. EDT on Friday, May 5. The moon will be  below the horizon and in daylight at this time, so the best bet is to take a look on the nights of May 4 and 5. The name Flower Moon is in reference to May’s blooms when flowers are typically most abundant in the Northern Hemisphere. 

May’s full moon is also called the Budding Moon or Zaagibagaa-giizis in Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe, the Summer Moon or Upinagaaq in Inupiat, and the Dancing Moon or Tahch’ahipu in Tunica, the language of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana.

May 5 and 6- Penumbral Lunar Eclipse

Following April’s total solar eclipse, May will see a penumbral lunar eclipse. Here, the moon will pass deep into the counterpart of planet Earth’s shadow, known as a penumbra. It will be the deepest penumbral eclipse until September 2042. This kind of eclipse is very subtle and those in the regions that can see it will most likely notice that the moon appears a little bit darker, as long as the night skies are clear. 

People living in Asia, Australia, Europe, and Africa will have the best chance of seeing this event.  

[Related: Hubble just captured a lunar eclipse for the first time ever.]

May 5 and 6- Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower

We were not kidding when we said that May 5 is a big day for celestial events! The Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower is expected to peak on May 5 and 6, where roughly 10 to 30 meteors per hour can be seen. Eta Aquarid meteors are known to be speed demons, with some traveling at about 148,000 mph into the Earth’s atmosphere. These fast meteors can leave behind little incandescent bits of debris in their wake called trains. 

This meteor shower is usually active between April 19 and May 28 every year, peaking in early May. It’s radiant, or the point in the sky where the meteors appear to come from, is in the direction of the constellation Aquarius and the shower is named for the constellation’s brightest star, Eta Aquarii. It is also one of two meteor showers created by the debris from Comet Halley.

The Eta Aquarids are visible in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres just before dawn, but the Southern Hemisphere has a better chance of seeing more of the Eta Aquarids.

May 27-30- Lāhaina Noon

This twice a year event in the Earth’s tropical region is when the sun is directly overhead around solar noon. At this point, upright objects do not cast shadows. It happens in May and then again in July.

According to the Bishop Museum, in English, the word “lāhainā” can be translated as “cruel sun,” and is a reference to severe droughts experienced in that part of the island of Maui in Hawaii. An older term in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi is “kau ka lā i ka lolo,” which means “the sun rests upon the brain” and references both the physical and cultural significance of the event

May 29- Mercury at Greatest Western Elongation

The planet Mercury will reach its greatest separation from the sun in late May and into June. It may be difficult to see from the United States, but is expected to reach this point in pre-dawn hours beginning on May 29. 

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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In response to climate change, a lot of animals—such as polar bears and birds like sparrows—appear to be getting smaller in size. However, male California sea lions have increased their average body size even as their population has grown and the competition for food and resources has increased. 

In a study published April 27 in the journal Current Biology found that sex selection was a strong driving force for the male sea lions to strengthen the neck and jaw muscles that they use to fight for mate and to grow larger. Additionally, both male and female sea lions responded to food shortages by diversifying their diets and foraging further from the shore in some cases.

[Related: Fish populations thrive near marine protected areas—and so do fishers.]

Numerous marine species have rebounded a bit since the Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed in 1972, but California sea lions are notable for the size and duration of their population increase. The number of breeding females have tripled since the 1970s and the population growth is only beginning to plateau now. 

“Body size reduction is not the universal response to population increase in marine predators,” co-author and University of California Santa Cruz and the Smithsonian Institution paleoecologist  Ana Valenzuela-Toro said in a statement. “California sea lions were very resilient over the decades that we sampled and were able to overcome increasing competition thanks to prey availability. They’re like the raccoons of the sea: they can consume almost everything, and they can compensate if something is lacking.”

In the study, the team analyzed museum specimens of adult male and female California sea lions that were collected between 1962 and 2008. To estimate changes in body size, they then compared the overall size of over 300 sea lion skulls, taking into account other skull features like the size of muscle attachment points, to assess the changes made in both neck flexibility and biting force.

To get an idea of where the sea lions were foraging and what they were eating, the team took tiny bone samples from the skulls and measured their stable carbon and nitrogen isotope composition. “Carbon provides information about habitat use—whether they’re foraging along the coast or offshore—and nitrogen provides insights about the trophic level of their prey, for example if they’re consuming smaller or larger fish,” said Valenzuela-Toro.

The team found that overall the male sea lions have increased in size, while females have remained stable. They believe that the sex difference is likely due to the fact that size matters more for a male in terms of mating success. “One male can breed with many females, and males in the breeding colony fight with each other to establish their territory,” said Valenzuela-Toro. “Bigger males are more competitive during physical fights, and they can go longer without eating, so they can stay and defend their territory for longer.”

[Related: For marine life to survive, we must cut carbon emissions.]

The male sea lions also increased their biting force and neck flexibility over this same time period. This allows them to move their heads more with greater agility and bite harder when fighting other males. 

The isotopic analyses showed that both sexes managed to meet nutritional needs through diet diversification and going further north for food. Female sea lions consistently had a more diverse diet than the male sea lions, and the authors suggest that this flexibility in food choice may be what allowed females to maintain average body size. 

The flexibility can only take sea lions so far, however, and climate change is putting their future in jeopardy. The dynamics that allowed for this growth occurred when their prey of sardines and anchovies were plentiful, and the populations of both fish have collapsed in recent years. The California sea lions have continued to diversify their diets to compensate, but are struggling. 

“As climate change progresses, prey availability of sardines and anchovies will decrease even more, and eventually we will have more permanent El Niño-like warming conditions, reducing the size and causing a poleward shift of these and other pelagic fishes,” said Valenzuela-Toro “It will be a really hostile environment for California sea lions, and eventually we expect that their population size will stop growing and actually decline.”

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For nearly a century, Balto the sled dog has been celebrated with books, movies, and even a statue in New York’s Central Park. When a deadly infection called diphtheria swept through the isolated town of Nome, Alaska in 1925, Balto and a relay team of sled dogs traveled for six days across hundreds of miles in a raging blizzard to bring critical antitoxin to the town. 

[Related: Humans have partnered with sled dogs for 9,500 years.]

Balto is still helping people 90 years after his death, but this time, with his DNA. In a study published April 17 in the journal Science, scientists detail how they sequenced Balto’s genome to learn more about the genetics of the sled dogs of the 1920s and see how they compare to modern dogs.  

Balto was raised in a kennel by breeder Leonhard Seppala and belonged to a population of small, fast sled dogs that had been imported from Siberia in northern Russia. These dogs became known as Siberian huskies, but the modern versions of the breed, as well as modern sled dogs are quite different from Balto. Other living dog lineages that share this common ancestry with Balto include Greenland sled dogs, Vietnamese village dogs, and Tibetan mastiffs.

“It’s really interesting to see the evolution of dogs like Balto, even in just the past 100 years,” study co-author and postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz Katherine Moon said in a statement. “Balto’s population was different from modern Siberian huskies, which have since been bred for a physical standard, but also from modern working Alaskan sled dogs.”

The team extracted DNA from  tissue samples of Balto’s taxidermied remains from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History  to investigate his genetic traits and ancestry. They found that Balto shared only part of his ancestry with Siberian huskies, and that he actually belonged to a population of working sled dogs that were more genetically diverse than modern breeds. 

The researchers also found evidence that his population was genetically healthier than modern breeds. “Balto came from a population of working dogs that were different from modern breeds and were adapted to harsh conditions,” said coauthor Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist from UC Santa Cruz, in a statement.

To analyze Balto’s genome, the team needed to compare it to a dataset of 682 genomes from modern wolves and dogs, as well as an alignment of 240 mammalian genomes developed by the Zoonomia Consortium, an an international collaboration effort to find the genomic basis of shared and specialized traits in mammals.

[Related: Humans probably have big brains because we got lucky.]

According to Shaprio, a key innovation behind this study is the ability to align the genomes of hundreds of species so that corresponding positions in different genomes can be compared. Comparing these genomes can then reveal DNA sequences that are the same across species and haven’t been changed during millions of years of evolution. This stability is an indication that these parts of the genome are important, and these crucial bits are where mutations could be especially harmful. 

“A gene that’s on one chromosome in us is on a completely different chromosome in another species,” Shapiro said. “You need a tool that can line them up so you can see which parts of these genomes are the same and which are different. Without that it’s just a bunch of genomes of species that are very divergent.”

The study on Balto’s DNA used this approach to characterize genetic variation seen in Balto compared to modern dogs. Populations of working sled dogs like Balto were more “genetically healthy” than breed dogs due to lower burdens of rare and potentially damaging variations in their genes. The team also identified protein-altering, evolutionarily constrained variants in Balto’s genes related to tissue development, which could represent beneficial genetic adaptations. 

Variations in genes related to skin thickness, joint formation, coordination, and weight were also found, and Balto had a better ability to digest starch compared to Greenland sled dogs and wolves. However, Balto’s ability to digest starchy foods is still not as strong as modern dogs. 

The team was also able to use this genetic treasure trove from Balto’s genome to reconstruct his physical appearance, including his coat color, in more detail than even historic photos could reveal. “This project gives everyone an idea of what’s starting to be possible as more high-quality genomes become available to compare,” Moon said. “It’s an exciting moment because these are things we haven’t done before. I feel like an explorer, and once again Balto is leading the way.”

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On April 26, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first pill for fecal transplants. The pill is made from healthy bacteria found in human waste which can help fight dangerous infections in the gut.

[Related: The FDA approved a fecal transplant treatment for the first time.]

According to the FDA, the pill from Massachusetts-based Seres Therapeutics provides doctors and patients with a simpler, and rigorously tested version of the procedure that has been used for just over a decade. Previously, when a patient experienced a Clostridium difficile infection or CDI, doctors would perform a fecal transplant using the stool from a healthy donor. Donor bacteria can help restore the balance of bacteria in the gut and prevent reinfections.  

The new treatment will be sold under the brand name Vowst as four daily capsules for three consecutive days. Vowst was cleared for adults 18 and older who face risks from repeat infections from C. diff, and have already received antibiotic treatment. A CDI can cause severe nausea, cramping, and diarrhea, and is dangerous when it reoccurs. CDI’s lead to roughly 15,000 to 30,000 deaths per year. 

While C. diff can be killed with antibiotics, the drugs can also destroy the beneficial bacteria that live inside the gut, leaving  it more susceptible to infections in the future. People over age 65 are at an increased risk for contracting an infection, but other risk factors include hospitalization, a weakened immune system, and a previous history of infection. Some patients may get the infection again following recovery, and the risk of additional recurrences increases with each infection. 

The FDA approved Vowst based on a study of 180 patients wherein nearly 88 percent of the patients taking the capsules did not experience a reinfection after eight weeks. About 60 percent of those who received dummy pills did see a reinfection. Some of the common side effects included abdominal swelling, constipation and diarrhea.

According to Seres, via reporting from the Associated Press, manufacturing the pills relies on the same techniques and equipment that is used to purify both blood products and other biologic therapies. It starts with stool from a screened group of donors that is tested for potential infections, viruses, and parasites. The samples are then processed to remove the waste and isolate the healthy bacteria,killing any lingering organisms. 

In the approval announcement, the FDA warned that the drug “may carry a risk of transmitting infectious agents. It is also possible for Vowst to contain food allergens.”

[Related: What to know about fecal transplants in the wake of the first death.]

In late 2022, the FDA approved Rebyota, the first pharmaceutical-grade version of a fecal transplant treatment from Ferring Pharmaceuticals. This product must be delivered via the rectum. 

The approvals of both Rebyota and Vowst are the product of years of pharmaceutical research into the bustling community of fungi, bacteria, and viruses that lives in the gut called the microbiome.

A network of stool banks from hospitals and medical institutions across the US have provided most fecal transplants. However, that growing number of fecal transplant practitioners and stool banks around the US has created a regulatory mess for the FDA, since the agency doesn’t traditionally regulate medical procedures performed by doctors. As long as stool donors are carefully screened for any potential infectious diseases, the FDA has rarely intervened in using the procedure.

In response to these new FDA-approved options, the largest stool bank in the US called OpenBiome said it will keep serving the patients like children and adults with treatment-resistant cases who are not eligible for the new treatments. Since 2013, OpenBiome has supplied more than 65,000 stool samples for CDI patients.

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Love them or loathe them, selfies aren’t going anywhere. Humans are not even alone in this ability to capture themselves in a moment— bears,  and penguins have from time to time posed for a self portrait. These third-person images are an easy way to satisfy the social pressures of “pics or it didn’t happen” or the dreaded FOMO with one single click, but they may also have a deeper psychological component. 

[Related: Understanding the weird Biden-Carter photo could help you take better selfies.]

New research published April 27 in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests that people use first-person photography—a photo of the scene from their own perspective—when they want to document a physical experience, but opt for third-person photos like selfies where you are in the scene to capture the deeper meaning of an event. 

Earlier research into the psychology of selfies focused on how the photo-taker wants to present themselves, while this new research takes people capturing memories into consideration. 

“Not only do we find that most people take both types of photos in different situations, but that people also differ across situations in whether their goal for taking photo is to capture the physical experience of the moment or the bigger meaning of the moment in their life,” said Zachary Niese, study co-author and psychologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, in a statement.

The research included six studies involving over 2,100 participants. The team found that when the goal of a photo is to capture meaning, they’re more likely to take a selfie and that they find more meaning looking back at their own third-person photos compared with first-person. 

People also tend to like their photos more when the perspective matches their goal for taking the photo.

“Taking and posting pictures is a part of everyday life for many people. While there is sometimes derision about photo-taking practices in popular culture, personal photos have the potential to help people reconnect to their past experiences and build their self-narratives,” said Niese.

The authors warned against the assumption that photos taken from first or third person perspectives are better than the other. Their analysis shows that the most effective perspective depends more on an individual’s goal in the moment—whether that be to capture a physical experience like taking a tour of a museum or the deeper meaning of an event like a wedding or graduation.

[Related: Take better selfies with these lighting and angle tips.]

Going forward, the more understanding an individual has of the goal when taking a picture and the role that perspective plays in the photos and make amateur photographers better at preserving memories for later. 

“People’s photo-taking practices have the potential to serve a more fundamental human motive to develop and understand our sense of self, both in terms of the experiences in our life as well as their bigger meaning,” said Niese.

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Roughly 55,000 adult consumers in the United States  take popular chewy melatonin gummies to promote better sleep. But they may be getting a little more of the hormone than the label indicates. A study published April 25 as a letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that 88 percent of tested supplements were mislabeled.

The study follows a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report from last year about an alarming surge of excessive pediatric infestations of melatonin over the past 10 years.

[Related: Yes, you can overdose on melatonin. Here’s how to use the sleep supplements safely.]

Melatonin is a hormone naturally produced deep within the brain in the pineal gland. It  is released into the bloodstream to regulate the body’s natural sleep cycles. Melatonin is considered a drug in some countries in the European Union, Japan, Canada, and the United Kingdom, making it only available through a prescription. The US Food and Drug Administration considers melatonin a dietary supplement, but manufacturers are not required to receive FDA approval or provide safety data on melatonin products.

For this study, a team of researchers from Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts and the University of Mississippi tested 25 different supplements. According to the authors, the team selected the first 25 gummy melatonin products that displayed on the National Institutes of Health database for this study. The team dissolved the gummies and then measured the quantity of melatonin, cannabidiol (CBD), and other components in the supplements.

Most of the products tested had 20, 30, or 50 percent more melatonin than the quantity listed on the label. Four has less amounts of the hormone than promised, including one without any detectable levels of melatonin. 

Twenty-two were “inaccurately labeled,” meaning they contained 10 percent more or less than the amount of melatonin on the label. 

Five products listed CBD as an ingredient, but they all had slightly higher levels of CBD than indicated on the label. According to the FDA, “it is currently illegal to market CBD by adding it to a food or labeling it as a dietary supplement.”

[Related: The science behind our circadian rhythms, and why time changes mess them up.]

“One product contained 347 percent more melatonin than what was actually listed on the label of the gummies,” study co-author and professor of medicine at the Cambridge Health Alliance Pieter Cohen told CNN.

In response to the JAMA letter, Steve Mister, the president and chief executive of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, told The Washington Post that supplement companies are required to have “at least 100 percent of labeled dosage” in their products. “It’s not uncommon for companies to put in a little extra,” he added. “So, for instance, a melatonin product that’s labeled as 3 milligrams might put in 4 milligrams.” 

Melatonin was the most cited substance in calls about children to US poison control centers in 2020. Drowsiness, headaches, agitation, and increased bed-wetting or urination in the evening hours are all potential side effects of melatonin use in children. 

“It’s important, especially in kids, not to use melatonin until you’ve spoken with your pediatrician or your sleep doctor,” M. Adeel Rishi, a pulmonology, sleep medicine, and critical care specialist in Indiana and vice chair of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Public Safety Committee, told PopSci last July. “The dose recommended in children is significantly lower than what is recommended in adults, and if you take too much of anything you have an overdose. Although it’s come to attention really in the last couple of years, we know that cases of melatonin among children have been on an upswing even before the pandemic.”

Other pediatric sleep experts stress the importance of good sleep hygiene and habits before starting melatonin. The new study’s letter also included a warning to parents that giving the gummies to children could result “in ingestion of unpredictable quantities” of melatonin.

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Looking at poop can tell us a lot. Poop offers a window into all sorts of hidden worlds: bird microbiomes, clam habitats, recovering coral forests, and more. 

Excrement can also tell us about how and when animals went extinct thousands of years ago. A study published April 26 in the journal Quaternary Research looked at the fungal spores in the dung of the large animals, such as 20-foot-tall ground sloths and 1,000 pound armadillo-looking animals called armored glyptodonts, that roamed the Colombian Andes in South America during the Pleistocene. 

[Related: Ancient poop proves that humans have always loved beer and cheese.]

They found that the animals became extinct in not one, but two waves. The megafauna in this study first became locally extinct at Pantano de Monquentiva, a valley in Colombia surrounded by hills and near a bog, about 23,000 years ago and then again in the same area about 11,000 years ago. 

Spores of coprophilous fungi pass through the guts of these megafauna during their life cycle. The presence of these spores in sediment samples provides evidence that these long-extinct animals lived in a certain place and time. 

The team used samples found in a peat bog in Pantano de Monquentiva, about 37 miles from Bogota, Colombia. The findings offer a window back in time to better understand how the disappearance of large animals could transform ecosystems like they did all those millennia ago. 

“We know that large animals such as elephants play a vital role in regulating ecosystems, for example by eating and trampling vegetation,” Dunia H. Urrego, co-author and University of Exeter biologist and geographer, said in a statement. “By analyzing samples of fungal spores, as well as pollen and charcoal, we were able to track the extinction of large animals, and the consequences of this extinction for plant abundance and fire activity.

The team found that the Monquentiva ecosystem changed dramatically when the megafauna disappeared, with different plant species thriving and increased wildfires. The analysis of the fungal spores didn’t tell exactly which large animals were present, but it’s possible that the animals were either the giant sloth and armadillo, or even macrauchenids and toxodonts, two peculiar extinct animals reminiscent of today’s camels and rhinoceroses.

[Related: Our bravest ancestors may have hunted giant sloths.]

The study also found that when all of this plentiful megafauna disappeared, it had major effects on the ecosystem. Roughly 5,000 years after their disappearance, the megafauna began to live again. This reprieve was short lived, and they all went extinct in a second wave of extinction 11,000 years ago. While the team does not know the direct causes of this, a number of factors like plant extinctions, climate changes, increased hunting by humans, and even a meteorite spike are potential causes.

“After the megafauna vanished, plant species at Monquentiva transitioned, with more woody and palatable plants (those favored by grazing animals), and the loss of plants that depend on seed dispersal by animals,” co-author and geographer also at the University of Exeter Felix Pym said in a statement.  “Wildfires became more common after the megafauna extinctions – presumably because flammable plants were no longer being eaten or trampled upon. 

With the planet’s current biodiversity crisis in mind, the study points to the importance of conserving local plants and watching fire activity before the value humans gain from nature completely disappears. 

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Following a very wet winter featuring plenty of other wild weather, regions of the US are bracing for flood risk, as record breaking snow begins to melt and puts millions at risk.

Here’s what you need to know about the most risky locations. 

Flood Risk Closes Yosemite National Park

Most of the valley at the heart of Yosemite National Park in California will close to visitors beginning at 10 PM on Friday April 28 lasting through at least May 3. The rare shutdown could last longer as swiftly melting snow runs into the Merced River and through Yosemite Valley.  

[Related: There are rivers in the sky—and one is causing raging rain over California.]

The extremely popular park, home to towering granite formations like El Capitan and Half Dome as well as numerous waterfalls, saw 3.6 million tourists in 2022.

Central California is bracing for its warmest temperatures of the year as well as a looming heat wave with high temperatures in the 90s Fahrenheit and overnight lows above freezing. According to the National Weather Service, temperatures will be about five to 15 degrees above average, and the heat is expected to speed up the spring thaw after record winter snowfall in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. 

A series of atmospheric rivers brought numerous snowstorms to the region this winter, with some parts of Yosemite seeing up to 15 feet of snow. The park was closed for about three weeks in February due to the snowfall, which was one of Yosemite’s longest and most expansive weather-related closures. 

California State Climatologist Michael Anderson noted that significant flooding was more likely to occur later in May, not in late April. Reservoir operators in the region are releasing water now to make room for more water as the spring thaw continues.

A large basin in the northern San Joaquin Valley along the Tulare River is a major area of flooding concern. A long-dried lake bed was refilled with water from storm runoff and submerged large swaths of farmland and ranches. 

Mississippi River towns brace for flooding

Over 1.4 million people were under flood warnings on Tuesday April 25, with warnings stretching along the Mississippi River from North Dakota to parts of Missouri.

Twenty river gages along the Mississippi River are at major flood stage, partially as the snow begins to melt. Multiple cities in the Upper Midwest saw record snowfall this season, which could lead to some of the worst flooding in two decades. 

[Related: Last year’s historic floods ruined 20 million acres of farmland.]

The Mississippi River at La Crosse, Wisconsin, is forecast to crest near 16.1 feet Wednesday April 26 into Thursday April 27. This would be the area’s third highest crest, measuring  close to the record of 17.89 feet set in April 1965. According to the NWS, “water is within one foot of Rose Street near Interstate 90, and the eastbound I-90 exit may be closed,” if it reaches 16 feet. 

Davenport, Iowa began installing barriers to keep flood waters out, as the city of about 100,000 people braces for warm weather and snowmelt. The city is no stranger to these spring floods, but is preparing for the worst. In 2019, Davenport and other parts of the Midwest saw record flooding, when gages saw a 22.7 feet flood crest.  

The snow will continue to melt across the US as spring temperatures heat up. To stay safe in floods, it is critical to understand flood risks and zones and always have an evacuation plan in case of changing forecasts and water levels. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has multiple flood maps that can help you assess your risk for flood and plan accordingly. 

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Archaeologists in western Scotland have found the foundations of a Roman fortlet dating back to the Second Century CE. According to the government-run historic preservation commission Historic Environment Scotland, this fort was one of 41 defensive structures that was built near the Antonine Wall, one of Scotland’s six UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

[Related from PopSci+: How Scotland forged a rare alliance between amateur treasure hunters and archaeologists.]

This fortified wall made of mostly wood ran for roughly 40 miles across Scotland as part of the Roman Empire’s unsuccessful attempt to extend its control throughout Britain from roughly 410 to 43 CE. The Antonine Wall was defended as the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire. Emperor Antoninus Pius ordered the building of the wall in 142 CE as a one-up to his predecessor Hadrian. The famed Hadrian’s Wall was built in the 120s CE about 100 miles south of the Antonine Wall.

The Romans called the people living in Scotland “Caledonians”, and later named them  the Picts after a Latin word meaning “painted people,” in reference to their body paintings or tattoos. The Romans retreated to the Hadrian Wall in 162 CE after 20 years of trying to hold a new northern line at the Antonine Wall.

In 1707, antiquarian Robbert Sibbald said he saw the fortlet in the area around Carleith Farm in West Dunbartonshire. During the 1970s and 1980s, excavation teams looked for it but were unsuccessful.

New technology allowed Historic Environment Scotland’s archaeological survey team to find the buried remains. The team used a geophysical surveying technique called gradiometry to peer under the soil without excavating. Gradiometry measures small changes in Earth’s magnetic field to detect buried archaeological features that can’t be seen from the surface. It identified the base of the fortlet, which remains buried under the ground. Turf would have been laid on top of this base. The team found the fortlet in a field near Carleith Primary School.

The fortlet would have been occupied by 10 to 12 Roman soldiers who were likely stationed at Duntocher, a larger fort nearby. The fortlet would have been made up of two small wooden buildings.

[Related: Slàinte mhath! The oldest piece of Scottish tartan fabric has been identified.]

“It is great to see how our knowledge of history is growing as new methods give us fresh insights in the past,” Riona McMorrow, deputy head of world heritage at Historic Environment Scotland, said in a statement. “Archaeology is often partly detective work, and the discovery at Carleith is a nice example of how an observation made 300 years ago and new technology can come together to add to our understanding.”

While up to 41 fortlets may have once lined the Wall, only nine have been found thus far. This new discovery marks the 10th known forlet, and Historic Environment Scotland is currently reviewing the site’s designation to ensure that it is protected and recognized as part of the Antonine Wall. 

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Even the tallest trees, biggest blue whales, and even giant gleaming stars were once babies. Protostars are the hot core of energy that will one day become stars and galaxies. The formative years of our universe’s history, when billions of stars and galaxies formed and assembled after the Big Bang, have so far been beyond our understanding.

[Related: These 6 galaxies are so huge, they’ve been nicknamed ‘universe breakers’]

Now, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) confirmed the distance of a protocluster of seven galaxies that formed only 650 million years after the Big Bang, or what astronomers call redshift 7.9. The findings were published April 24 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and are the “earliest galaxies yet to be spectroscopically confirmed as part of a developing cluster.”

Based on the data collected, a team of astronomers calculated the nascent cluster’s future development. It will likely grow in size and mass to resemble the Coma Cluster, one of the densest galaxies of the modern universe. 

“This is a very special, unique site of accelerated galaxy evolution, and Webb gave us the unprecedented ability to measure the velocities of these seven galaxies and confidently confirm that they are bound together in a protocluster,” co-author and IPAC-California Institute of Technology astronomer Takahiro Morishita said in a statement.

JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) captured the key measurements to confirm both the galaxies’ collective distance and the high velocities at which they are moving within a halo of dark matter. They’re moving through space at more than two million miles per hour, or over 600 miles per second. 

Having this spectral data in hand allowed the astronomers to model and map the future development of the gathering group all the way up to the modern universe. If it does follow the prediction and eventually resemble the Coma Cluster, it could eventually be among the densest known galaxy collections.

“We can see these distant galaxies like small drops of water in different rivers, and we can see that eventually they will all become part of one big, mighty river,” co-author and National Institute of Astrophysics in Italy astronomer Benedetta Vulcani said in a statement.

According to NASA, galaxy clusters are the greatest concentrations of mass in the known universe. They can dramatically warp the fabric of spacetime itself. This warping is called gravitational lensing and can have a magnifying effect for the objects located beyond the cluster. This allows astronomers to see through the cluster as if it were a giant cosmic magnifying glass.  The team in this study was able to utilize this enlarging effect and look through Pandora’s Cluster to view the protocluster.

[Related: JWST’s latest new galaxy discoveries mirror the Milky Way.]

Exploring how big clusters like Pandora and Coma first came together has historically been difficult because the expansion of the universe stretches light beyond visible wavelengths into the infrared. JWST’s sophisticated infrared instruments were developed to fill in these gaps at the beginning of the universe’s story. 

The team anticipates that future collaboration between JWST and a high-resolution, wide-field survey mission from NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will allow for even  more results on early galaxy clusters. Roman will be able to identify more protocluster galaxy candidates, while JWST can follow up to confirm these findings with its spectroscopic instruments. Currently, the Roman mission is targeted to launch by May 2027.

“It is amazing the science we can now dream of doing, now that we have Webb,” co-author and University of California, Los Angeles astronomer Tommaso Treu said in a statement. “With this small protocluster of seven galaxies, at this great distance, we had a one hundred percent spectroscopic confirmation rate, demonstrating the future potential for mapping dark matter and filling in the timeline of the universe’s early development.”

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Is shyness something you feel, or is it something that defines you? Child psychologists are still not fully convinced one way or the other. A small study published April 25 in the journal Society for Research in Child Development found that timidness, fear and nervousness in social situations or being at the center of attention, is a fairly typical childhood experience, whether it is an emotion or personality. 

[Related from PopSci+: Can dogs be introverts?]

Some long standing theories about shyness believe that there are two types of coy behavior. “Temperamental” shyness remains roughly the same throughout development, whereas “state” shyness is felt during a social situation and manifests more like an emotion. 

In this new study, researchers examined the behavioral, affective, and physiological responses to a speech task in 152 Canadian children (73 girls and 79 boys) ages seven and eight. The children were told that they would be giving a speech that would be filmed and shown to other children. Their parents completed online questionnaires about their child’s temperament, while the children were given an echocardiogram to check for physiological indications of nervous behavior.

The children prepared a two-minute speech about their last birthday and recited the speech in front of a video camera and a mirror. The researchers monitored the children for behaviors coded as avoidance or inhibition, self-reported nervousness, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia.

The team found that temperamental shyness may exist in a distinct group of children over time, and a larger group of children may experience shyness as an emotion during certain situations. 

About 10 percent of the children had a high level of stress giving the speech in addition to relatively high levels of shyness over time, according to the questionnaires filled out by their parents. According to the team, this provides evidence that shyness may be part of these children’s temperament. Being the center of attention may be stressful across time and in various contexts in this group. Future research could examine the consequences on how this shyness affects academic, social, and psychological well-being since shyness could be measured across time. 

Roughly 25 percent of study participants were not reported to be shy, but demonstrated a higher level of stress from giving the speech. The authors believe that it is likely that state shyness in response to a speech task is a relatively common, normative experience for children at this age.

[Related: Little kids drew their grim—and hopeful—reality of COVID.]

“Our findings provide empirical support for the long-theorized idea that there may be a subset of temperamentally shy children who manifest heightened behavioral, affective, and physiological reactivity in response to a social stressor, as well as a subset of children who may experience only the affective component which may reflect state shyness,” co-author and Brock University post-doctoral fellow and psychologist Kristie Poole said in a statement. “This highlights the multiple components and developmental course of temperamental shyness and the features that distinguish temperamental and state shyness in middle to late childhood.”

This study provides some empirical evidence for long-standing ideas about shyness that were first made by the late psychologist Jerome Kagan. In the 1990s, Kagan argued that temperamental shyness may exist as a distinct category for some children and the features that define this category are relatively stable across time and context.

The authors also noted some limitations to the research, namely that the study only measured these behavioral, affective, and physiological components at one point in time and the sample size was relatively small. Future research should also include a more racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse pool and focus.

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The unusual looking mudskipper has a startling face, and a fascinating backstory. The fish is actually amphibious and has evolved traits that ensure its survival in both water and on land. They have eyes on the top of their heads for better aerial vision and also use oxygen from their water stored in their gill chambers to breathe on land. However, the mudflat-dwelling fish’s ability to blink its eyes is shedding light on how our own ancestors evolved from living in the water to walking on land.

A study published April 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that the blinking behavior serves many of the same functions of our blinking, and it may be part of that suite of traits that allowed tetrapods to evolve on land. Tetrapods are the group of animals, including today’s amphibians, birds, reptiles and mammals, that evolved to exist on land in a rapid turn of events roughly 375 million years ago.

[Related: Our four-legged ancestors evolved from sea to land astonishingly quickly.]

Animals blink to keep the eyes wet and clean and protect them from injury. Sometimes, blinking can even be a form of communication. Humans and other tetrapods blink constantly through the day and despite it being a subtle action, it is quite complex. Strangely enough, mudskipper’s blink lasts roughly the same length of time as a human’s. 

“Studying how this behavior first evolved has been challenging because the anatomical changes that allow blinking are mostly in soft tissues, which don’t preserve well in the fossil record,” co-autor and Penn State University biologist Thomas Stewart said in a statement. “The mudskipper, which evolved its blinking behavior independently, gives us the opportunity to test how and why blinking might have evolved in a living fish that regularly leaves the water to spend time on land.”

To better understand how mudskippers evolved the ability to blink, the team analyzed blinking using high-speed videos. They compared the mudskippers’ anatomy with a closely related water-bound fish that doesn’t blink. Mudskippers blink with eyes that bulge out of the top of their heads, similar to a frog’s eyes. They momentarily retract their eyes down into the sockets, when they are covered by a sketchy membrane called a dermal cup. 

“Blinking in mudskippers appears to have evolved through a rearrangement of existing muscles that changed their line of action and also by the evolution of a novel tissue, the dermal cup,” co-author and Seton Hall University biologist Brett Aiello said in a statement. “This is a very interesting result because it shows that a very rudimentary, or basic, system can be used to conduct a complex behavior. You don’t need to evolve a lot of new stuff to evolve this new behavior — mudskippers just started using what they already had in a different way.”

To understand why the mudskippers blink on land, the team looked to the roles that blinking plays in other tetrapods. Tears in humans are critical to keeping the eye’s cells oxygenated and healthy, so the team looked to see if mudskippers blink to keep their eyes wet when exposed to the air.  

[Related: Tiktaalik’s ancient cousin decided life was better in the water.]

“We found that, just like humans, mudskippers blink more frequently when confronted with dry eyes,” said Aiello. “What’s incredible is that they can use their blinks to wet the eyes, even though these fish haven’t evolved any tear glands or ducts. Whereas our tears are made by glands around our eyes and on our eyelids, mudskippers seem to be mixing mucus from the skin with water from their environment to produce a tear film.”

They also found that blinking in mudskippers is triggered to protect the eye from injury as well as  clearing their eyes from possible debris. The finding suggests that mudskipper blinking appears to fulfill blinking’s three major functions—protecting, cleaning, and maintaining moisture.

“Based on the fact that mudskipper blinking, which evolved completely independently from our own fishy ancestors, serves many of the same functions as blinking in our own lineage, said Stewart. “We think that it was likely part of the suite of traits that evolved when tetrapods were adapting to live on land.”

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Is the phase “nice guys finish last” actually true? Unfortunately for all the soft-hearted among us, brutish behavior can be an effective path to power and dominance in both humans and chimpanzees. A study published April 24 in the journal PeerJ Life and Environment found that the male chimpanzees who exhibited greedy, irritable, and bullying personalities reached a higher social status. These rascals were also more successful at producing offspring. 

[Related: Adolescent chimpanzees might be less impulsive than human teens.]

However, the team is still plagued by a puzzling question from these findings: if being mean is the key to success, why isn’t every chimp a bully? 

For the study, the team followed 28 male chimpanzees living in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park. A previous study had found that  these particular chimpanzees had a few members that  are more sociable whereas others are loners. Some of the chimps had overbearing personalities, and some were more easy-going. And, of course, there are a handful that are more quick to pick fights with others. 

Tanzanian field researchers performed personality assessments on the chimpanzees based on years of near-daily observations of how each animal interacted with others and behaved among the group. They found that a personality combination of high dominance and low conscientiousness helped the male chimpanzees fare better in life than the others, but it still doesn’t answer the evolutionary puzzle of why personality differences exist at all. 

A long held theory is that different personality traits matter at different points in an animal’s life or that certain traits that are a liability when an animal is young may pay off in old age. 

“Think of the personality traits that lead some people to peak in high school versus later in life,” Alexander Weiss, co-author and comparative psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement. “It’s a trade-off.” 

The team tested the theory using almost 40 years of data that goes back to famed primatologist Jane Goodall’s early research at Gombe. Across the lifespan, the same personality traits were linked to both high reproductive success and high social rank. 

[Related: Popular chimpanzees set hand-holding trends for the whole group.]

Something else must be behind the diversity of chimpanzee personality. The “best” personality to have could depend on social or environmental conditions. Gender could matter too—a trait that is beneficial to males could cost a female. If this is true, then “genes associated with those traits would be kept in the population,” Weiss said. Further study is needed to confirm this idea. 

The suggestion that animals have distinct personalities was considered taboo not too long ago, with Goodall herself accused of anthropomorphism with her descriptions. Scientists have studied animals ranging from squid to birds, finding evidence of distinct personalities. These quirks, idiosyncrasies, and ways of relating to the world around them remain reasonably stable over time and across situations.

Like with measures of human personality, personality ratings for animals have also been proven to be as consistent from one observer to the next. “The data just doesn’t support the skepticism,” Weiss said.

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Carnivorous plants come in a variety of shapes and colors—and it’s often their looks that help them attract their prey. However, these floral tricksters may use a different scene to attract their dinner: smell. A small study published this month in the journal PLOS One found evidence that different species of Sarracenia, a genus of North American pitcher plant, produces scents that are directed at certain groups of prey.

[Related: Two newly discovered Andes Mountain plant species have an appetite for insects.]

Sarracenia pitcher plants typically make their home in bogs and in poor soil throughout North America. Their signature purple or reddish flowers are actually leaves which form a cup called the “pitcher”  filled with digestive enzymes.  If an insect gets too close to the plant, the pitcher traps it and digests the insect to help supplement their diet in a nutrient-poor home. 

The odor of carnivorous plants hasn’t been well-studied by humans, but has been suspected for over a century. Charles Darwin wrote about the unique plants about 150 years ago, but it’s been more difficult to find concrete evidence of its olfactory mechanisms. 

“Of the signals involved in communication, odor is probably the most cryptic to humans,’ co-author and carnivorous plant expert French National Centre for Scientific Research Laurence Gaume said in a statement. “In plants, it is often correlated with other plant characteristics such as nectar, shape and visual signals, which make it difficult to disentangle its effect from others.”

In this new study, a team identified the odor molecules emanating from four types of pitcher plants. The scents appear to correlate with the types of incense that wound up inside of the pitchers. The chemicals that make up some of the scents are similar to ones known to act as signals to certain insects, which may mean the pitcher plants have evolved to take advantage of their prey’s senses.

“It offers potentially interesting avenues in the field of biological control, and one can imagine drawing inspiration from the olfactory cues of these pitcher plants to control plant pests, for example,” said Gaume.

The team grew Sarracenia purpurea and three of its hybrids with other pitcher plants in a lab.  

They found that all of the pitchers produced a scent that was similar to more generalist plants that are pollinated by many different species. This can allow them to cast a wide net for prey, but they noted that there were subtle differences in the volatile organic compounds that they produced. 

[Related: Dying plants are ‘screaming’ at you.]

The pitchers attracting butterflies and bees were rich in compounds like limonene, a chemical that gives citrus fruits their unique smell. The aroma comes from a class of chemicals found in the scents of around two thirds of flowering plants which attract these pollinators.

Meanwhile, S. purpurea also had an odor that was high in fatty acid chemicals known to attract parasitoid wasps and possibly other insect predators. Wasps and insects made up a large part of the plant’s diet, which suggests that the scent could be targeting them directly. 

The team found that both the odor of a pitcher and its dimensions could help predict the prey caught by a plant about 98 percent of the time. This is not definitive proof, but it suggests a possible link between a pitcher plant’s scent and its prey. 

Since carnivorous plants cannot move to hunt for their prey like a lion or a shark, smells can help them not only find food, but communicate with other plants. Plants being eaten can release scents that tell other plants nearby to get their defenses ready or produce a smell that attracts predators. 

Plants that are pollinated by animals often rely on scents to attract pollinators, like bees. Anything that hides their scent–like air pollution–can cause a drop in the number of pollinators that can find them. 

Further studies could help explain how carnivorous plants that are pollinated by insects can attract some for pollination and other for food. For example, the most important pollinators of Venus fly traps are never found inside its traps, and scent could play a role in this. 

 “However, we remain cautious because our results are currently based on correlations. Even with strong correlations, further tests are necessary to investigate whether the different insect types are indeed attracted to particular scents,” said Gaume.

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On the evening of April 21, the Supreme Court ruled to allow the drug mifepristone to remain on the market, AP reports. The case continues in lower courts, but access to the drug will remain, for the time being. The restrictions on mifepristone were set to take effect at 11:59 PM EST eastern time on Friday.

Mifepristone is the most widely used abortion medication in the United States. It works by blocking the pregnancy hormone progesterone, which makes the uterus unable to support a pregnancy. It is the first pill that can be taken in a medication abortion. As part of a two-pill regimen, it is followed by another medication called misoprostol which can be obtained with a traditional prescription and has been FDA approved since 2000. 

According to the ruling on Friday, people who wish to terminate their pregnancy can still obtain the medication by mail. Mifepristone can be used up to 10 weeks into pregnancy. Mifepristone’s generic version GenBioPro will also remain available. The ruling to block restrictions on mifepristone passed in a vote of 7-2, with Justices Alito and Thomas dissenting. It will continue to be available in states that allow abortion. In the states that have banned abortion, mifepristone will be available on the grey market, Jezebel points out.

[Related: The court ruling banning the abortion pill is based on bogus science.]

In the decision, the justices weighed arguments that the restrictions on the drug from lower-court rulings would disrupt the availability of the drug.

On April 7, US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk from Texas put the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the abortion pill mifepristone on hold. This drug is known to be safe when used properly, and has a fatality rate of only 0.0005 percent, according to the FDA. 

In Kacsmaryk’s 67-page decision on April 7, he ruled that the FDA “improperly” approved the abortion pill mifepristone more than two decades ago. Kacsmaryk wrote that the FDA overstepped its authority in approving the drug partially by using a specialized review process reserved for drugs to treat “serious or life-threatening illnesses.” In reality, the FDA took its time with mfipristone’s approval and did not use an accelerated approval process. It went through three rounds of reviews over a period of four years in the 1990s. Each round issues a letter stating that the safety and efficacy data on the drug was on solid ground.

[Related: The court ruling banning the abortion pill is based on bogus science.]

The FDA was not the first regulatory agency to approve the drug. It was approved for use in France in 1988. Roussel Uclaf, the French company who first manufactured the drug briefly suspended its distribution following threats from anti-abortion groups. According to the Congressional Research Service, that suspension lasted only two days before it was ordered back on the market by the French government. 

Currently, FDA regulations state that pregnancy is a medical condition that can be serious and life threatening, but Kacsymaryk, who is not a scientist, argued it is a “natural process essential to perpetuating human life.” According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US had one of the worst rates of maternal mortality in the country’s history in 2021. The study found 32.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, which is more than 10 times the estimated rate of other high income countries. 

[Related: Competing rulings put access to abortion pill in jeopardy.]

At almost the same time as Kacsmaryk’s decision on April 7, US District Judge Thomas O. Rice, of Washington State essentially ordered the opposite decision. Rice advised US authorities not to make any changes to mifepristone in at least 17 states where Democrats sued in a legal effort to protect the medication’s availability.

Kacsmaryk gave the Biden administration and mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories, one week to appeal and seek to keep his ruling on hold, which was filed almost immediately after the ruling. 

On April 12, a subsequent decision by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals’ did not suspend the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, but kept in place restrictions that would prevent the drug from being sent to patients.

In a statement from the White House, President Joe Biden wrote, “I continue to stand by FDA’s evidence-based approval of mifepristone, and my Administration will continue to defend FDA’s independent, expert authority to review, approve, and regulate a wide range of prescription drugs.”

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The 2016 animated family film Moana brought the long-told story of Polynesian seafarers (along with some incredibly catchy tunes) to a much wider worldwide audience. Now, geochemical analysis is confirming the oral history of ancient Polynesia’s incredible sailors in a new study published April 21 in the journal Science Advances. 

[Related from PopSci+: Voyagers made it to Hawaiʻi thousands of years ago with no compasses. Here’s how.]

Long before Europeans arrived, Polynesian wayfinders sailed to islands across the central Pacific in canoes, and the stories of their adventures have survived largely through oral history. There has been limited material evidence supporting these accounts of Polynesian societies from distant islands interacting with one another. 

“Pacific islanders were able to travel over very long distances and did so in every region of the Pacific. Polynesian peoples settled hundreds of islands from Papua New Guinea to Easter Island (Rapa Nui),” study co-author and French National Centre for Scientific Research archaeologist Aymeric Hermann tells PopSci. “The extent of long distance voyages in an Ocean as vast as the Pacific, and several centuries before any other society could really master seafaring, is pretty amazing.”

Details of the westward expansions to a group of islands west of Polynesia called the Polynesian Outliers have been even more unclear. Indigenous cultures vary across the Pacific’s islands, but oral traditions and shared cultural items indicate that there could have been contact and exchanging of goods across long distances. 

In this new study, an international team of scientists analyzed stone artifacts from the Polynesian Outliers where communities are considered more culturally isolated. In seeking to discover how these communities are connected with their Oceanic neighbors, the team’s analysis suggests that the items were carried there from over 1,000 miles away from their source regions in Samoa.

These findings support prevailing theories that societies in western Polynesian societies were incredibly mobile over the last millennium, possibly colonizing the Outliers as a result of their voyages. 

To do so, Hermann and colleagues grabbed geochemical fingerprints from stone tools found on the Polynesian Outliers. According to Hermann, most geochemical sourcing studies in the Pacific have been conducted on the Oceanic islands which have different geochemical signatures from the Outliers. This presented the team with a huge challenge of many possible sources from southeast Asia to the eastern Pacific that have many overlapping geochemical characteristics.

[Related: On board the canoe that proved ancient Polynesians could cross the Pacific.]

To look closer and try to pick apart these characteristics, they took isotopic and geochemical analyses of 14 artifacts on three Outlier Islands (Emae, Taumako, and Kapingamarangi) that were dated to as early as 1258 CE. The team combined these analyses with earlier studies and used a large database of geological signatures from sites across Oceania. They were able to source the artifacts to distant islands and volcanic arcs over 1,000 miles further east of the Outliers. 

“Among all possible sources in the Pacific, all the artifacts that can be distinctively associated with West Polynesian traditions were sourced to the exact same quarry in Samoa, which is also the source of other artifacts found in the eastern Pacific,” said Hermann.

The evidence from the materials supports earlier studies and oral histories of this travel across vast distances in the Pacific. 

According to Hermann, it’s important to remember that remembered that “global history is always local history first.” The team sought permission from the communities of Makatea, Tongamea, Finongi, and Sangava on Emae Island, as well as from  chiefs Ti Makata mata, Ma Ti Tonga, D. Maribu, Sasamake, Ti Nambua mata, Ti Nambua roto, and Ti Makura mata before undertaking the field research needed for this study. 

“It is necessary to use new lenses to look at human history: people always moved around, and societies always changed in contact with neighbors and sometimes through very long distances, long before Christopher Columbus reached the Americas,” said Hermann. 

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What’s inside a miniature, 2,500-year-old coffin? Well, now researchers at the British Museum know. A team of scientists used a noninvasive technique called neutron tomography to peer inside six Egyptian animal coffins that have been sealed for over two millennia. The contents are described in a study published on April 20 in the journal Scientific Reports.

[Related: A gold-laced mummy could be the ‘oldest and most complete’ specimen found in Egypt.]

Neutron tomography allows researchers to peer inside without disturbing the coffins. It creates images based on the way that the neurons emitted by a source pass through it. Neutron tomography is more effective than x-rays at seeing through metal.  The team developed this technique after other noninvasive methods of looking into the coffins, such as traditional X-rays, didn’t work on the coffins.

The coffins in the study range from approximately two to 12 inches long and date back to sometime between 664 BCE and 250 BCE, during Egypt’s late period . The decorative coffins were built with copper compounds and are covered with images of eels, cobras, and lizards. Three were found in the ancient city of Naukratis and two were in Tell el-Yehudiya in 1885, but the other two have mysterious, currently unknown origins. 

Within three of the coffins, the authors identified bones including an intact skull that has similar dimensions to a group of lizards endemic to northern Africa. Two of the coffins have evidence of more broken down bones. 

“In the first millennium BC, lizards were commonly mummified in ancient Egypt, as were other

reptiles, cats, dogs, falcons, ibises, shrews, fishes… Lizards, like snakes and eels, were particularly associated with ancient Egyptian solar and creator gods such as Atum and perhaps, in the case of Naukratis, with Amun-Ra Shena,” co-author and project curator at the British Museum Aurélia Masson-Berghoff said in a statement. “With the help of neutron imaging, we have the potential to learn more about the ritual and votive practices surrounding these once impenetrable animal coffins, the ways they were made, used and displayed.”

They also found textile fragments that may be made of linen, which was a common fabric used in Ancient Egypt for mummification. The team believes that the linen in these coffins may have been wrapped around the animals before they were laid to rest in the coffins. 

The lead found in three of the coffins also may have been a way to aid in the weight distribution of two coffins, as well as fix up a hole in the other. Lead may have been the metal of choice due to its status as a “magical material.” Earlier studies found that lead was used in both love charms and curses.  They did not identify any additional lead in three of the coffins secured by two suspension loops. 

[Related: This teen mummy was buried with dozens of gold amulets.]

The loops may have been there to suspend these lighter coffins from the walls of a shrine or temple. Additionally, the miniature coffins could hang from boats, or even from statues used in religious processions. 

The study offers more insight into how animal coffins were built and used in ancient Egypt. Animal mummification was widespread, and some mummified animals were believed to be physical incarnations of gods. Others may have represented offerings to these deities or were used in ritual performances.  

“Neutron imaging has many important applications in 21st-century science,” co-author and research fellow at the Science and Technology Facilities Council Anna Fedrigo said in a statement. “This study shows that it can also shed light on the inner structure of complex archaeological objects, including their manufacturing techniques and contents.”

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A herd of African elephants stands above a cliff nearly 600 feet tall in the first episode of the new documentary series Secrets of the Elephants. After a brutal dry season in Zimbabwe, an elephant matriarch must guide her herd down the cliff in search of water. Their enormous three-to-four-ton bodies are not built for this kind of expedition—they use their trunks to test the ground. To complicate the descent, they must be mindful of the younger elephants, and reassure and soothe the babies with their tails along the way. Everyone is tense as they navigate the steep path of the gorge, including  the wildlife experts and filmmakers watching from the sidelines. 

“It was amazing, even for me, to see that,” veteran conservationist and elephant advocate Paula Kahumbu tells PopSci during a recent interview. In the 30-something years she’s studied African elephants, Kahumbu had never seen them inching down a cliff this way. In the documentary, she described how just watching the process made her legs feel weak and her body unsteady, and couldn’t imagine what it must be like for these giants of the savanna.

Broken into four episodes—Savanna, Desert, Rainforest, and Asia—Secrets of the Elephants presents the lives and issues that elephants face as incredibly nuanced and interconnected. Human-caused climate change and decades of ivory poaching have taken its toll, but beneath that lies the more complex and interwoven problems of disappearing elephant range, fences that impede their movements, and culling individuals who encroach on farmland. When people are killed or injured by the powerful mammals, Kahumbu says governments are then forced to take actions due to the loss of property or life. 

“Retaliation and intolerance towards elephants is now by far, the number one threat to elephants across east Africa” says Kahumbu. Most of Africa’s elephants live in the eastern and southern part of the continent in various habitats. Both species of African elephants are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature; their latest assessment found that the number of African forest elephants fell by more than 86 percent over the last 31 years, and the population of African savanna elephants decreased by at least 60 percent over the last 50 years. Their Asian relatives are listed as endangered, with an estimated 48,000 to 50,000 left in the wild.

The series explores this tension between two incredibly smart terrestrial mammals, elephants and humans—but more importantly, the striking similarities between them. Their parallel existence goes back millennia, as both humans and elephants evolved out of Africa at the same time. Elephants are incredible problem solvers and mirror human adaptability so well that they can typically figure out any deterrent or barrier that communities devise to keep them out. The elephants then pass the knowledge down generations. 

Their innate intelligence and ability to pass down survival skills can also benefit conservation efforts. As an example, Kahumbu cites successful elephant underpasses that help link one group of elephants found near Mount Kenya with their relatives in the forests, plains, and the Aberdares Mountains, while keeping them away from the area’s enormous wheat farms. “Once the elephants figured out that that’s the safe way to get from this mountain to the other mountain, they started not only using it, but teaching each other to use it. There are very few animals which will teach each other and elephants are one of them,” she explains.

[Related: Ivory poaching has triggered a surge in elephants born without tusks.]

Despite being one of the most studied animals on the planet, elephants keep surprising experts with their unique features and complex behaviors. They rarely get sick, with less than five percent getting cancer compared to about 25 percent of humans, and are even known to self medicate with the plants around them. Female elephants also do not fade into obscurity or die once they are unable to reproduce. In both African and Asian species, they likely play an integral grandmother role similar to that of humans and possibly orca whales. Kahumbu describes elephant matriarchs as the knowledge keepers: They know where to eat and find water, where to rest, and even keep internal maps of the vast landscapes they traverse.

The series depicts the female elephants’ ability to take generational insights and adapt it to the constant challenges and changes, sometimes with bizarre results. In one rare case, an elephant in Zimbabwe named Nzou who lost her entire family to poachers when she was two years old now finds herself the matriarch to a herd of buffalo at age 50. “It’s very hard to say much because it’s just such a one-off strange thing that happened,” Kahumbu explains. “We’re increasingly seeing unusual wild animal behaviors. Adopting buffaloes is kind of funny, and it’s also quite sad.”

She didn’t fit in with other groups of elephants when rescuers tried to rehome her, but she found her place among a more unique family. Now, she has to figure out how to manage an unusual herd without the benefit of the years of living among older female elephants—but her instinct to lead is still strong.  

“In a way, it teaches us that just like humans, there are certain needs we all have, and we’re going to have to get them somehow,” says Kahumbu.

[Related: Elephants and monkeys are fighting climate change in ways humans can’t.]

Another central theme of the four-part series is the value that local people’s wisdom holds for both conservation and science communication. Experts from Namibia in southern Africa and Borneo in southeast Asia made the documentary possible through their historic observations of elephants and guidance. “A lot of things which we filmed have never been filmed or seen on camera before, but actually, a lot of it has been known by local people on the ground for a very long time,” says Kahumbu. “We are asking people for local knowledge, but we’re involving them in the series and getting them on camera as well.”

Engaging communities on the ground and connecting the rest of the world with their stories through film could be a big step in further protecting elephants. Reaching younger and wider audiences, particularly in Africa, is part of why Kahumbu has seamlessly moved from the research space into more policy, advising, and education in an effort to save elephant lives.

“What’s shifted for me dramatically is this realization that we’re running out of time,” says Kahumbu. “I think that unleashing young people with their own creativity to identify how they can help is what I’d love to see happen as a result of this TV series. That connection is very powerful and very important.”

Secrets of the Elephants premieres on Friday, April 21 on National Geographic. All four episodes will stream on Earth Day (April 22) on Disney+ and Hulu. 

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Aging has been said to be a “privilege denied to many”—and gray hair typically accompanies that privilege. Gray hair can also be caused by stress, but scientists might be closer to figuring out exactly why even the most colorful hair turns gray with age. A study published April 19 in the journal Nature found that certain stem cells have a unique ability to move between the growth compartments in hair follicles, but they get stuck and lose their ability to mature and maintain hair color as people age. 

[Related: We finally know why stress turns your hair white.]

The melanocyte stem cells (McSCs) in hair follicles are responsible for producing and maintaining the pigment in our hair. Every hair follicle stores immature melanocyte stem cells, and when they’re needed, the cells travel from one part of the follicle to another. When they reach other parts of the follicle, proteins turn them into more mature pigment-producing cells, and give hair its hue. Inside these follicle’s compartments, McSCs are exposed to different levels of maturity-influencing protein signals as a person ages. 

According to the study, which McSC cells from mice, as hair ages, sheds, and then repeatedly grows back, more McSCs get stuck in a stem cell compartment called the hair follicle bulge. While there, they stay put, unable to mature or be able to move between follicle compartments. They also do not travel back to their original location where WNT proteins would have prodded them to regenerate into pigment cells.

“Our study adds to our basic understanding of how melanocyte stem cells work to color hair,” study co-author and New York University computer engineer Qi Sun said in a statement. “The newfound mechanisms raise the possibility that the same fixed-positioning of melanocyte stem cells may exist in humans. If so, it presents a potential pathway for reversing or preventing the graying of human hair by helping jammed cells to move again between developing hair follicle compartments.”

To learn more about how stem cells behave during different phases of hair growth, the team tracked and took images of the individual cells in mouse fur. The stem cells actually traveled back and forth within the hair follicle and even transitioned into their mature, pigment-producing state and then out of it again as they moved.

As time continued, the McSCs couldn’t keep up this process, and a hair falling out and growing back takes its toll on the follicle. Eventually, the stem cells stopped making this journey through the follicle and stopped getting protein signals to make pigment. From then on, any new hair growth does not get the melanin needed to produce hair color. 

[Related: Alopecia patients finally have an FDA-approved hair-loss treatment.]

To explore this effect more, the ream plucked hair from mice to stimulate a faster growth cycle. The experiment led to a build up of McSCs stuck in storage that no longer produced melanin, and the fur turned from dark brown to a distinguished salt-and-pepper. 

“It is the loss of chameleon-like function in melanocyte stem cells that may be responsible for graying and loss of hair color,” co-author and NYU pharmacologist and cell biologist Mayumi Ito, said in a statement.  “These findings suggest that melanocyte stem cell motility and reversible differentiation are key to keeping hair healthy and colored.
Some next steps for the team include investigating how to restore motility in these stem cells so that they can move back to the compartments that produce pigment. Until then, consider joining the “gray hair revolution” of people embracing those beautiful gray strands.

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NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect an additional death from the tornadoes.

The 2023 tornado season continues to rage as several tornadoes touched down near the Oklahoma City metropolitan area on Wednesday night, killing at least three people, according to local authorities. Two of the fatalities were reportedly near Cole, Oklahoma, a town of about 600 people roughly 20 miles south of Oklahoma City. The number of injuries due to the storms is still being assessed.

[Related: Tornado outbreak killed dozens of people across the US this weekend.]

The severe weather included winds up to 70 miles per hour and ping-pong ball size hail. At least 13 tornadoes were reported in Oklahoma, Iowa, and Kansas during the evening hours on Wednesday. Of those reported storms, two tornadoes in Iowa and one in Kansas have already been confirmed. Oklahoma appears to be the hardest hit state with at least four confirmed tornadoes and 20,000 homes without power.

A large tornado was confirmed in Shawnee, a town of 30,000 about 60 miles east of Cole. The National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma said that that particular storm was moving “erratically” towards north Shawnee around 10 PM local time on Wednesday. Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee reported “significant” damage to its campus, but said no injuries had been reported. The university canceled classes for Thursday and Friday and said it was relocating students.

The Red Cross Oklahoma is opening up shelters in the central portion of the state for those affected by the storms. 

On Thursday, the threat of severe storms is expected to shift east, with storms possible in eastern Texas, northwestern Louisiana, southeastern Oklahoma, southeastern Missouri, and a large swath of Arkansas.

Tornadoes can occur all over the world, but the United States sees more than any other country at an average of about 1,150 to 1,200 per year. The geography and climate in the US provides the key ingredients for rotating storms: cold and dry air mixing with warm and humid air. 

This year has already been a deadly year for tornadoes. In March, a series of severe storms and a powerful EF-4 tornado in Mississippi’s Lower Delta killed at least 25 people and devastated the town of Rolling Fork, Mississippi. EF-4 tornadoes have top wind gusts of 166 to 200 miles per hour and represent only about two percent of all tornadoes.

[Related: Strong storms and strange weather patterns sweep the US.]

Earlier this month, at least 100 tornadoes were reported in a severe weather outbreak that struck Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey. At least 32 people were killed and towns were completely leveled.

The severe weather could only increase with climate change, but scientists are still not ready to declare that a warming planet means more tornadoes. A study published in January forecasts that by 2100, the average annual number of supercells—the large rotating storms that typically produce the most  severe tornadoes—that hit the eastern part of the United States will increase by 6.6 percent.

To prepare for a tornado, the NWS recommends keeping an emergency kit stocked, following local weather reports, and practicing a tornado plan. During a storm, get to the lowest point in your home or building and stay away from windows until the storm passes.

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For at least 22,000 years, the African penguin has been struggling to survive because of habitat loss.  Scientists are now peering into the past to learn more about why to better help the lovable feathered creatures  today and in the future. A study published April 20 in the African Journal of Marine Science paints a paleo-historical picture of where these climate change survivors lived and moved to as the last Ice Age came to a close—and how that changed over time. 

According to the study, the African penguin,also called the black-footed penguin, the Cape penguin, or the Jackass penguin, lived on 15 large islands off the coast of southern Africa more than 20,000 years ago. During this period called the Last Glacial Maximum, massive ice sheets dominated a huge portion of the Earth, and it ended about 15 to 20,000 years ago. Upon this climate shift sea levels began to rise as ice melted, effectively sinking the islands. The rising water reduced the suitable nesting habitat for the penguin colonies by tenfold over the next 22,000 years. 

[Related: The march of the penguins has a new star: an autonomous robot.]

To help them paint this picture, the team used topographical maps of the ocean floor to find potential former islands that lay 32 to 426 feet below today’s sea levels. Penguins use islands as breeding spots to escape predators on the mainland and also need suitable foraging grounds for sardines and anchovies within about a 12 mile radius. 

With the assumption that sea levels were lower during the last Ice Age, the team identified 15 large islands that possibly stood off the southwest coast of Africa, with the largest being about 115 miles long and laying 426 feet below the surface of the sea. When taking the rate of sea level rise over the past 15,000 to 7,000 years into account, they found 220 islands that would have been suitable nesting spots for penguins. 

By comparison, some of the largest modern-day islands with penguins off the southwest coast of Africa are Robben Island less than two miles long, Dassen Island less than one mile, and Possession Island also less than a mile long, which all clock in at less than two miles long.

The study estimates that between 6.4 million and 18.8 million individual penguins could have lived among these islands during the Last Glacial Maximum, before the numbers began to plummet. 

These changes in habitat availability over the past 22,000 years “could have had a massive effect on penguin populations,” co-author and Stellenbosch University ecologist Heath Beckett said in a statement. “These populations are now experiencing additional human pressures on top of this in the form of climate change, habitat destruction, and competition for food.” 

According to Beckett, this new paleo-historical image of penguins all over the islands of southern Africa stands in contrast to the current reality of a post-1900 collapse of the African penguin population. Dassen Island was once teeming with about 1.45 million penguins, but South Africa’s entire African penguin population collapsed to 21,000 breeding pairs by 2011. As of 2019, they dropped even further to 13,600, and roughly 97 percent of the current population in South Africa is supported by seven breeding colonies.

[Related: Ceramic ‘igloos’ could keep African penguins cool and cozy.]

“Changing sea levels would have necessitated the need for multiple relocations of breeding colonies of African penguins on time-scales of centuries, if not even shorter time-scales, and intense competition for breeding space as island habitat became greatly reduced in size,” said Beckett. “This historical flexibility of response provides some leeway for conservation managers to make available suitable breeding space, even in mainland sites, as long as appropriate nesting sites are made available.”

Some further questions brought on by this research surround relocation for the penguins, and analyzing just how much more the species can handle as human pressures continue to rise and food competition heats up. 

However, despite the alarming drops in population and their continued struggle, the team points out that these findings highlight the African penguin’s resilience as a species and that this could be leveraged for its conservation and management in an uncertain climate.

“It’s a total survivor and given half a chance, they will hang on,” co-author and Stellenbosch University biologist Guy Midgley concluded in a statement.  “Island hopping saved it in the past, they know how to do this.” 

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Snails are notoriously slow, excellent ecosystem engineers, and invasive and destructive pests in many gardens and on farms. Their eating methods are also pretty gnarly if you can get up close and personal. A German photographer named Jens Braun from YouTube channel Another Perspective released a video of a snail munching on a strawberry, with close-up details offering a fresh perspective on an unusual mollusk.

Brown garden snails are about one inch in diameter at maturity and have a brown and gray color pattern. They are most active when the air and ground are damp, mostly sliding around during the nighttime and early morning hours. They are native to Great Britain, Western Europe, and along the borders of the Black and Mediterranean seas, but can now be found across most of the southeastern US and both coasts. 

[Related from PopSci: Sea snail venom could lead to better insulin for diabetics]

Snails typically are omnivores, but the main staples of their diet are ornamental plants, flowers, weeds, veggies, and of course fruits.  Snails and their close relatives, the slugs, eat with their jaw and a flexible band of microscopic teeth called a radula. During a process called rasping, thousands of radula scrape up food particles, then they use their jaw to cut off larger pieces of food like leaves to be rasped.

Part of why snails are considered such a pest is that they can severely damage orchards by feeding on ripening and ripe fruit, as well as the leaves and bark growing on young trees. The telltale signs of fruit damage are circular chewed areas of the fruit’s rind, and leaves typically appear chewed along their margins. 

Citrus orchards are particularly vulnerable to becoming snail buffets since their watering methods and weed control creates a moist environment where snails can thrive. Last summer was a particularly rough snail year in South Florida, after snails that can be the size of a fist bounced back after a decade-long battle to eradicate them.  

[Related: It’s still a mystery how snails ended up scattered around the globe.]

Snails are also hermaphroditic—meaning all snails that reach reproductive age can lay eggs. This happens up to six times during a mating season, typically in the late spring and early summer. They lay up to 80 eggs per month in shallow depressions in the topsoil after mating. The eggs hatch after being in the soil for 14 to 40 days, and they will eat their eggs and even the eggs of their siblings to get enough calcium to harden their shells. 

While many snails are harmless to humans aside from being a garden pest, cone snails contain a paralyzing venom that can even be fatal in humans. When injected, the venom puts the victim into excitotoxic shock, which makes them unable to move within only a few seconds. Then, the snail opens its mouth wide to engulf all of the prey in a slow and painful death. Understanding how this venom works could help scientists produce better pain medication.

If you are keen to keep snails from eating your produce, raking over soil, using study plants in pots instead of seedlings, and searching for the pests during damp and mild evenings and transporting them to a compost heap can help.

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Of all the celestial events lighting up the sky this month, the Lyrid meteor shower has the potential to be one of the most spectacular. The annual event began on April 16 and will peak this weekend before wrapping up on April 25. You won’t need any special equipment to catch a glimpse—just your eyes and a clear night sky—but it helps to know when and where to look.

When to watch the meteor shower

In the northern hemisphere, you can look skyward beginning around 10 p.m. local time on Friday, April 21 and Saturday, April 22 into the early morning hours of the 23rd. The predicted peak is for Sunday, April 23 at 9 p.m. Eastern Time (1:06 Universal Time). This year, the Lyrids’ peak is quite narrow, but moonlight will not interfere with the meteor shower like it did in 2021 and 2022.

[Related: How to photograph a meteor shower]

“Serious observers should watch for at least an hour, as numerous peaks and valleys of activity will occur,” the American Meteor Society recommends.  “If you only view for a short time it may coincide with a lull of activity. Watching for at least an hour guarantees you will get to see the best this display has to offer.”

Where to look for the Lyrids

The Lyrids are named after the constellation Lyra, which is the constellation closest to their radiant—where the meteors appear to originate. Look toward a blue-white star named Vega, the brightest glimmer in the constellation. In the northern hemisphere this time of year, Lyra appears almost directly overhead around midnight. In southern latitudes, Lyra appears lower in the northern part of the sky. 

Once you’ve spotted Vega or Lyra, start to look for streaks of light in the night sky. It is best to watch from a location away from city lights and to let your eyes adjust to the darkness for at least 30 minutes beforehand. The International Dark Sky Association has an online tool to help locate designated dark sky parks that protect nocturnal environments.

What you may see… including fireballs

In a dark sky with no moon, you may be able to glimpse 10 to 20 meteors per hour. The Lyrids can have uncommon surges in activity that bring rates up to 100 meteors per hour. The Lyrid meteor shower appears to outburst, or produce an unexpectedly large number of meteors, about every 60 years, with the next outburst expected in 2042. 

During the last half of April in recent years, irregular numbers of very bright meteors have been observed coming from the southern part of the sky during the Lyrids. Sometimes, these fireballs drop as meteorites, and could be the remnants of a broken-up asteroid instead of a comet. An asteroid is a small, rocky object that appears as a point of light in a telescope. Comets are also planetary objects that orbit the sun, but they’re composed of ice and dust that vaporize when they get closer to the sun. This makes comets appear more fuzzy or with a tail in a telescope.

[Related: Scientists finally solve the mystery of why comets glow green.]

This year, a “window of opportunity” for a possible fireball sighting may be between 5 p.m. ET on April 23 and 7 p.m. ET on April 25, according to Space.com.

Most meteor showers are the result of debris from a passing comet, and the Lyrids are no different. The source of these space rocks is Comet Thatcher, which astronomers first noticed in 1861. At that time, the comet was at its most recent perihelion—its closest point to the sun. It will reach its farthest point from the sun close to 2070 and will hit perihelion again around 2283.

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For animals spread all across the realms–air, land, and water–traveling speed is affected by how well they can cool off. The findings of a study published on April 18 in the open access journal PLOS Biology found that an animal’s traveling speed is limited by how effectively they can shed the excess heat generated by its muscles, particularly for animals that weigh over one ton. 

Travel is crucial to the survival of many animals, and certain physical features can dictate how far animals can migrate and where they find food. This is becoming even more challenging in a human-dominated world with more fragmented habitats and climate changing limiting food and water resources. 

[Related: We are eating large animals into extinction.]

In this study, the team used data on 532 species to develop a computerized model to look at the relationship between an animal’s size and traveling speed. The data only included freely moving animals in the wild based on radar tracking devices or video recordings, excluding studies on animals in captivity. 

As animals became larger, the traveling speeds increased, until they reached one ton, or about 2,000 pounds. At that point, the traveling speeds leveled off and began to decrease. When looking for possible reasons why the animals were slowing down, they concluded that the larger animals needed to slow down to avoid overheating changed the shape of the curve in the results. 

The results were the same for aquatic animals even though they live in water, which can cool the body down. Medium-sized animals, such as wolves, typically showed the fastest sustained speeds. 

“The new study provides a way to understand animal movement capacities across species and can be used to estimate any animal’s traveling speed based on its size,” co-author and biologist Alexander Dyer from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research said in a statement. “For example, this approach can be applied to predict whether an animal might be able to move between habitats fragmented by human development, even when the details of its biology are unknown.”

[Related: Ceramic ‘igloos’ could keep African penguins cool and cozy.]

In theory, increased temperatures due to climate change will affect all animals and not just the larger ones. Some animals are already evolving smaller bodies in response to the heat. According to the World Meteorological Organization, an eight year period from 2014 to 2022 were the eight warmest years on Earth’s record. 

“We anticipate that large animals are potentially more susceptible to the effects of habitat fragmentation in a warming climate than previously thought and therefore more prone to extinction. But this needs further investigation,” co-author and biologist also at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Myriam Hirt said in a statement.

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For spiders, spinning their silky webs is a matter of survival. Those that don’t weave good enough silk to spin an insect-trapping web will have a much tougher, or even impossible, time getting enough food to eat. Since spiders are found throughout world, the more fine-tuned their webs are to their environment, the better they will work. 

In a study published April 18 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, biologists found that the glue that makes orb weaver spiders’ webs so sticky actually evolves faster than the spiders’ genes. 

[Related: Black widows battle their even deadlier cousins in a brutal spider war.]

“Discovering the sticky protein components of biological glues opens the doors to determining how material properties evolve,” study co-author and Washington and Lee University biologist Nadia Ayoub said in a statement. “Spider silk fibers and glues represent a fantastic model for answering such questions since they are primarily made of proteins and proteins are encoded by genes.”

Like the individual threads of a tapestry, each strand in an orb weaver spider’s web works to capture food. The web’s stiff frame absorbs the impact of the prey before it is trapped by the sticky lines so that the spider can tackle its food. A special glue that is synthesized in the spider’s aggregate glands makes the lines of the web sticky by absorbing water from the atmosphere. The glue should be altered to achieve the best stickiness for the amount of humidity in the air in the region where the spider lives. Since there are numerous species of orb weaver spiders living in many environments, the team on this study believed their glue must adapt to humidity levels. 

To investigate this glue adaptation strategy, the team focused on two species– Argiope argentata (A. argentata) and Argiope trifasciata (A. trifasciata). A. argentata lives in dry environments and is native to Southern California. The team had them build webs in a lab, but were fed a diet comparable to their prey and compared the glue droplet volume found in nature to make sure they were equivalent to what they weave in nature. A. trifasciata lives in humid environments all over the world and the team collected webs from them in the wild. 

They analyzed the proteins in the glue and the droplets’ material properties and found that the droplets from the dry-living A. argentata spiders are smaller than those from the more humidity prone A. trifasciata, and also absorb less water as local humidity increases. A. argentata’s glue also had smaller protein cores that occupied a smaller proportion of the droplet’s volume and absorbed less water from the atmosphere. 

[Related: How researchers leveled up worm silk to be tougher than a spider’s.]

The stiffness of these protein cores in the droplets affected the toughness of the glue droplets and the toughness of A. argentata’s protein core decreased as the humidity went up. A. argentata thread glue droplets were generally sticker and  more closely spaced.

When the team analyzed the proteins in the glue to understand how these differences in their material properties arise from these proteins, they found that the proteins appeared in different proportions, even though they were similar. A. argentata glue had the protein products of four genes which didn’t appear in A. trifasciata glue. The extra proteins and a more balanced ratio of the glue’s key AgSp1 and AgSp2 proteins may explain the greater toughness of this glue and its lower capacity for water absorption.

“Despite the dramatic differences in material properties, the two species share most of their protein components,” co-author and Virginia Tech biologist Brent Opell of Virginia Tech said in a statement. “The sequences of these proteins are also similar between species, but the relative abundance of individual proteins differs. Modifying the ratios of proteins is likely a rapid mechanism to adjust material properties of biological glues.”

According to the team, one of the limitations to this study includes that it only looked at two species, and the relationship between proteins and web material properties are not quite to scale yet. To address this, the team is documenting protein components and the material properties of a diverse set of species.

More study on spider silk and their properties could also have some wider scientific and technological applications. “Spider silks and glues have huge biomimetic potential. Spiders make glues with impressive properties that would have applications in industry, medicine, and beyond,” said Opell.

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Scientists have found dozens of species of coastal invertebrates organisms thriving Oscar the Grouch style in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Roughly 620,000 square miles long, or twice the size of Texas, the floating garbage heap is located between Hawaii and California. Five large spinning circular currents constantly pull trash towards the center of the patch, and it is considered the largest accumulation of ocean plastic on Earth.

These creatures found thriving in trash like crabs and anemones are normally found along the coasts, but the study published April 17 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution says that dozens of species have been able to survive and reproduce on the plastic garbage.  

[Related: A close look at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch reveals a common culprit.]

“This discovery suggests that past biogeographical boundaries among marine ecosystems—established for millions of years—are rapidly changing due to floating plastic pollution  accumulating in the subtropical gyres,” co-author and marine ecologist Linsey Haram said in a statement. Haram conducted this research while working at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

The team only recently discovered these “neopelagic communities,” or floating communities of organisms living in deep ocean waters. Organic matter in the ocean decomposes within a few years at most. But plastic debris lasts significantly longer, thus giving the animals a place to live and procreate.  

The team analyzed 105 plastic samples that were collected by The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization that is working on scalable solutions to get rid of ocean plastic, during their 2018 and 2019 expeditions. The samples were found in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a large zone that makes up most of that northern Pacific Ocean and is the largest ecosystem on Earth. Incredibly, 80 percent of the plastic trash that the team looked at showed signs of being colonized by coastal species. Some of the coastal species were even reproducing in their plastic homes, such as the Japanese anemone.

“We were extremely surprised to find 37 different invertebrate species that normally live in coastal waters, over triple the number of species we found that live in open waters, not only surviving on the plastic but also reproducing,” said Haram. “We were also impressed by how easily coastal species colonized new floating items, including our own instruments—an observation we’re looking into further.”

[Related: Ocean plastic ‘vacuums’ are sucking up marine life along with trash.]

While biologists already knew that coastal species can travel towards the open ocean on floating debris or on ships, it was long believed that these species couldn’t thrive or establish new communities at sea. Differences in temperature, water salinity, and the available nutrients between these two environments seemed too vast, but human-caused changes to the ocean ecosystems have forced marine biologists to rethink these ideas. 

“Debris that breaks off from this [garbage] patch constitutes the majority of debris arriving on Hawaiian beaches and reefs. In the past, the fragile marine ecosystems of the islands were protected by the very long distances from coastal communities of Asia and North America,” co-author and UH Mānoa oceanographer Nikolai Maximenko said in a statement. “The presence of coastal species persisting in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre near Hawai‘i is a game changer that indicates that the islands are at an increased risk of colonization by invasive species.”

According to data from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the world produces roughly 460 million tons of plastic annually and this figure could triple by 2060 if government action is not taken soon. Some individual actions to reduce plastic use is shopping more sustainably, limiting use of single-use plastic like water bottles and plastic utensils, and participating in beach and river clean-ups.

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A recent discovery sounds like the beginning of another Jurassic Park reboot—but this time beetles are taking center stage instead of mosquitoes. These new fossils preserved in amber show evidence that beetles fed on dinosaurs about 105 million years ago, according to a study published April 17 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

[Related: Entombed in amber, this tiny crab hails from the age of dinosaurs.]

The most impressive and complete specimen was found in the amber deposit of Rábago/El Soplao in northern Spain. The amber contains shedded fragments–or molts–of small beetle larvae tightly surrounded by some pieces of downy feathers. The feathers once belonged to an unknown theropod dinosaur that was either avian or non-avian. Theropods that flew and those that were more Earth-bound typically shared indistinguishable feather types during the Early Cretaceous period. According to the team, the feathers do not belong to modern birds, since that group of animals appeared roughly 30 million years later during the Late Cretaceous. 

On Earth today, vertebrates and arthropods, like today’s ticks and lice, have a complex ecological relationship that has likely coexisted for more than 500 million years. The interactions between the two are believed to have shaped both vertebrate and arthropod evolutionary history, but evidence of arthropod-vertebrate relationships is still extremely rare in the fossil record, according to the team on this study. 

They found that the larval molts preserved in this study were related to modern skin beetles, or dermestids. These beetles feed on organic materials that decay over time, sometimes bothering dried museum specimens tucked away in closets. However, dermestids do play a key role in recycling organic matter, commonly living in birds nests and in places on mammals where hair, skin, or feathers accumulate.

The authors found that some of the feather portions and other remains were in intimate contact with the molts of the dermestid beetles and have some evidence of damage or decay. 

“This is hard evidence that the fossil beetles almost certainly fed on the feathers and that these were detached from its host,” study co-author and Geological and Mining Institute of Spain of the Spanish National Research Council geologist Enrique Peñalver said in a statement. “The beetle larvae lived—feeding, defecating, molting—in accumulated feathers on or close to a resin-producing tree, probably in a nest setting. A flow of resin serendipitously captured that association and preserved it for millions of years.” 

[Related: These beetles sniff out fungus-infected trees to find their next target.]

It is still unclear if the feathered theropod host benefited from the beetle larvae feeding on detached feathers and that it could have occurred in a nest setting, where the host was sitting on eggs.  

“However, the theropod was most likely unharmed by the activity of the larvae since our data show these did not feed on living plumage and lacked defensive structures which among modern dermestids can irritate the skin of nest hosts, even killing them,” co-author and paleobiologist from Oxford University Museum of Natural History Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente said in a statement.

Three other pieces of amber that had isolated beetle molt that were in a different stage of the beetle life cycle were also studied, which allowed better understanding of the role that their feathery diet played.

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A team of archaeologists have uncovered a unique ancient Roman winery within the luxurious Villa of the Quintilii. The remains of this opulent villa are just to the south of Rome, Italy. The findings, published on April 17 in the journal Antiquity, detail the winery in the mid-third-century CE building that lies along the ancient Appian Way–a critical supply line for the Roman military. 

The large villa was owned by the wealthy Quintilii brothers who served as consuls, one of the most powerful elected positions in the Roman Republic  in 151 CE. Around 182 or 183 CE, Roman emperor Commodus had them killed and took possession of their properties, including this particular villa.

[Related: As Rome digs its first new metro route in decades, an archaeologist safeguards the city’s buried treasures.]

Archaeologists had previously documented the villa’s luxuries, including a giant bathing complex, statues, and colored marble tiling. One of the lesser known parts of the villa was a circus for chariot racing that was added during Commodus’ reign. During a 2017 and 2018 expedition to find the circus’ starting gates, the first hints of the hidden winery were discovered. 

According to the study, the name Gordian is stamped into a wine-collection vat, which means that emperor Gordian III may have either built the winery or renovated it roughly around CE 238 to 244. The winery is located just beyond Rome’s city limits during antiquity, amidst orchards, farms, monumental tombs, and the villas of the super rich like the Quintilii brothers. It has standard winery features for this time, including two wine presses, a grape trading area, two presses, and a cellar sunk into the ground to store and ferment the wine in large clay jars. 

“However, the decoration and arrangement of these features is almost completely unparalleled in the ancient world,” Emlyn Dodd, study co-author and archaeologist and assistant director at the British School at Rome, wrote in The Conversation. “Nearly all the production areas are clad in marble veneer tiling. Even the treading area, normally coated in waterproof cocciopesto plaster, is covered in red breccia marble. This luxurious material, combined with its impracticalities (it is very slippery when wet, unlike plaster), conveys the extreme sense of luxury.”

The facility also included multiple luxurious dining rooms with a view of wine-filled fountains. Within the marble-lined trading areas, enslaved workers would stamp down the harvested grapes. The crushed grapes were then taken to the two mechanical presses, and the resulting grape must was then sent into the three wine fountains. The wine must have gushed out of semicircular niches built into a courtyard wall.

[Related: Ancient poop proves that humans have always loved beer and cheese.]

It is likely that this and other villas were built with both wine making and spectacle in mind. Letters from earlier emperor Marcus Aurelius describe him having eaten rich meals while watching wine being made, likely at a luxury winemaking facility at the Villa Magna. This villa, about 30 miles from Villa of the Quintilii, is currently the only known parallel.

With only one dining room currently excavated, Dodd and the team are looking for funding to uncover all of the villa’s lavish rooms. 

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Following an usually wet winter in the West, California is beginning to emerge from a serious drought. The state, however, is now beautifully awash in wildflowers. The state is seeing a “super bloom,” similar to the Instagram famous super bloom of 2019. 

A unique combination of sun, rain, temperature, and wind set the stage for the arrival of desert wildflowers in the late winter and early spring, according to the California Department of Parks and Recreation. 

[Related: Powerful atmospheric river pummels California with even more rain and flooding.]

“California’s desert state parks are cautiously optimistic in expecting a ‘good’ to ‘better than average’ wildflower bloom this late winter and spring seasons depending on the continued weather conditions,” the department said on their website. 

This super bloom only happens after particularly wet seasons, which typically follow years of drought. Many parts of California saw more rain in the first few months of this year than in all of 2022, according to local CBS affiliate KFMB.

During the dry years, many annual wildflower seeds lay dormant in fragile layers of soil. If enough rain arrives, they germinate and the flowers can burst through. The areas with blooms typically see large and dense qualities of wildfires covering the landscape and some of the most beautiful blooms are in desert landscapes. Depending on the region, California poppies, sand verbena, desert sunflowers, evening primrose, popcorn flowers or desert lilies could be growing. 

In the Antelope Valley north of Los Angeles, California poppies gleam bright orange. During the 2019 super bloom, thousands of tourists and influencers came out to view the poppies, which led to the unfortunate trampling of some of the flowers. New rules for both safety and conservation have been put in place in Lake Elsinore to protect the poppy bloom in nearby Walker Canyon. In an advisory on how to see the flowers safely and responsibly, California State Parks Director Armando Quintero asked visitors not to “doom the bloom.” Visitors are urged to stay on trails and not pick any of the flowers. 

The poppies aren’t the only stars of the season. In California’s Central Valley, Purple phacelia and yellow goldfields abound at Carrizo Plain National Monument, a grassland roughly 70 miles west of Bakersfield. 

[Related: Don’t go to Death Valley looking for a ‘Super Bloom.’]

This year’s bloom is an opportunity for scientists who study rare plants to study ecosystems that have been lost to development or agriculture over the years. Heather Schneider, a rare plant biologist with the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden told The New York Times that the sustained colder temperatures and precipitation would likely give researchers more time to study wildflowers than in past wet years.  “This is how we feed our souls,” said Schineder.

Since different flower species thrive in subtly different conditions and times of year, botanists have predicted that this year’s wildflower season may extend through the spring and into the summer, especially in higher elevations. 

To safely and respectfully view the superbloom, visitors can consult the state’s safety tips and consult the bloom calendar for updates on what is blooming where. 

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A dinosaur skull found in Queensland, Australia has the exciting honor of being dubbed Australia’s first nearly complete sauropod skull. 

Research published April 12 in the journal  Royal Society Open Science describes the 19.6 inch long skull, and details that the find was from a species Diamantinasaurus matildae (D. matildae). Diamantinasaurus is a member of the group Sauropoda, which also includes the more famous Brachiosaurus and Brontosaurus and are known for small heads, long necks and tails, and barrel-like bodies.  

[Related: Cushy feet supported sauropods’ gigantic bodies.]

The dinosaur, nicknamed ‘Ann,’ was discovered by the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in 2018 near Winston in central Queensland. Ann is the third fossil specimen of D. matildae to have been discovered by this museum, and the fourth specimen overall. It lived in Australia over 100 million years ago and fell under the titanosaur group– a category of sauropods that included the largest animals to live on land in Earth’s history. D. matildae was a middle size sauropod, with the largest members reaching close to 131 feet long and over 170,000 pounds. Sauropods were also herbivores, subsisting entirely on a diet of plants. 

The team on this study said that it is rare to find a sauropod skull at all, especially one so well-preserved. It is only the fourth specimen of D. matildae ever found and the analysis of this first nearly complete skull is helping scientists learn more about the animal’s feeding habits, relationship to other sauropod dinosaurs, and physical anatomy. According to the team, Ann is not only the first sauropod dinosaur found in Australia that includes most of the skull, it also is the first Diamantinasaurus specimen to preserve a back foot.

“In analyzing the remains, we found similarities between the ‘Ann’ skull and the skull of a titanosaur called Sarmientosaurus musacchioi, which lived in South America at about the same time as Diamantinasaurus lived in Queensland. These include details of the braincase, the bones forming the back end of the skull near the jaw joint, and in the shape of the teeth (which are conical and curved),” co-author and Curtin University paleontologist Stephen Poropat said in a statement. 

[Related: This dinosaur’s record-breaking neck defies the laws of nature.]

According to Poropat, the findings support earlier theories that suggests sauropods used Antarctica as a pathway between Australia and South America during the mid-Cretaceous period–between 100 and 95 million years ago.

“Warmer conditions that far south might have been favorable for them. The window between 100 and 95 million years ago was one of the warmest in Earth’s geologically recent history, meaning that Antarctica, which was more or less where it is now, had no ice,” Poropat said. “Similarly, Australia, which was much further south than today, was warmer with less seasonality. In that climate, Antarctica was forested, and might have been an attractive habitat or pathway for wandering sauropods.”

The study suggests that Diamantinasaurus was one of the most ‘primitive’ or not as evolved titanosaurs. Learning more about this species of giant dino might explain why they were so successful until the dinosaurs’ mass extinction.  

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South Florida is bracing for more showers and storms today after the Fort Lauderdale region saw 25.91 inches of precipitation in a 24-hour period this week. On Wednesday afternoon, a supercell thunderstorm being fed by warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico stalled over the region, producing rainfall rates of more than three inches per hour at times, according to preliminary reports.

“You had this extreme warmth and moisture that was just feeding into the cell and because it had a bit of a spin to it, it was essentially acting like a vacuum and sucking all that moisture back up into the main core of the system,” meteorologist Steve Bowen told the Associated Press. “It just kept reigniting itself, essentially.”

[Related: Rain storms have gotten more intense across most of the US.]

During the peak of the rain, one month’s worth of rain fell in only one hour. Average rainfall for April 3 in Fort Lauderdale is three inches, and it’s been close to 25 years since the city saw 20 inches of rain in a month.

Homes and businesses in the city of around 200,000 residents were flooded, the streets were littered with abandoned cars, and the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport completely closed on April 12. The airport plans to reopen today.

Nearby communities of Hollywood, Dania Beach, and Lauderdale Lakes saw between 12 and 18 inches of rain in the same period, according to preliminary reports. Roughly 12 homes were damaged by an EF0 tornado in the city of Dania Beach, about five and a half miles south of Fort Lauderdale. While no injuries were reported, roofs were ripped off of several mobile homes.

A state of emergency was declared for Broward County on Thursday. The deepest standing water surveyed on Thursday was measured in the Edgewood neighborhood just north of the airport. The National Weather Service in Miami said that a still water mark of just over three feet was measured near Floyd Hull Stadium.

Emergency officials in Fort Lauderdale said about 600 people were taken to emergency shelters, some who had to climb through windows to escape flooded homes. Some of the roads that were passable on Wednesday became impassable on Thursday, as storms dropped another more rain on the waterlogged region.

[Related :What is a flash flood?]

“This amount of rain in a 24-hour period is incredibly rare for South Florida,” National Weather Service meteorologist Ana Torres-Vazquez told CNN. She added that a powerful hurricane would typically dump 20 to 25 inches of rain over more than a day and said that this week’s rainfall was a “1-in-1,000 year event, or greater.” This is a weather event so intense and rare that the chance of it happening in any given year is only 0.1 percent.

Climate change is making rain events like these worse. A 2022 study found that when it rains in the United States, the precipitation falls more fiercely than in decades past and that the intensity of rainfall has shifted from lighter periods of rain to more moderate and heavy deluges. 

To be prepared for flooding, especially as the US prepares for hurricane season, the American Red Cross recommends always having an evacuation plan ready and knowing your flood risk, and to prepare a “go-bag” with supplies and important documents.

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Two new studies are shedding light on not only early hominid evolution, but are turning back the evolutionary clock on how early grassy woodlands appeared on the African continent.

The first new study, published April 13 in the journal Science, suggests that life in the open woodlands of Africa and a leafy diet may have influenced the upright stature of humans’ ape ancestors. 

[Related: Ancient DNA confirms Swahilis’ blended African and Asian ancestry.]

Anthropologists had long believed that our ancestors evolved an upright torso to pick fruit in forests, since some of our favorite produce grows on the spindly peripheries of trees. Large apes would have needed to distribute their weight on the branches stemming up from the trunk and then reach up with their hands to grab the fruit. Performing this task is easier if an ape is upright, since it can grab the branches better with their hands and feet. If an ape’s back is horizontal, the hands and feet are typically underneath the body, which makes it harder to move outward to the smaller branches of the tree. 

However, new research using a 21-million-year-old fossilized ape called Morotopithecus suggests that early apes actually ate the leaves in a seasonal woodland with a broken tree canopy and open grassy areas. The team believes that this landscape, and not fruit in closed canopy forests, possibly drove the ape’s upright structure.   

“The expectation was: We have this ape with an upright back. It must be living in forests and it must be eating fruit. But as more and more bits of information became available, the first surprising thing we found was that the ape was eating leaves. The second surprise was that it was living in woodlands,” co-author and University of Michigan paleoanthropologist Laura MacLatchy said in a statement.

Both papers grew out of a collaboration of international paleontologists called the Research on Eastern African Catarrhine and Hominoid Evolution project (REACHE). MacLatchy’s study focused on the a 21-million-year-old site in eastern Uganda called the Moroto site. Here, the team found fossils in a single rock layer. Fossils of other mammals and evidence of plant life were found in this layer and these lines were used to recreate Morotopithecus’ environment.

In a companion paper, also published April 13 in Science, another team used environmental proxies to reconstruct nine fossil ape sites across Africa, including the Moroto site during the early Miocene. The proxies revealed that grasses were actually all over the area 21 million years ago, instead of the previously determined 7 to 10 million. 

The team then found that the plants in this landscape were “water stressed,” which means that they lived in seasonal periods of rain and of aridity. These shifts mean that apes would have had to rely on something other than fruit to survive. These findings indicate that Morotopithecus likely lived in an open woodland that was punctuated by broken canopy forests made up of shrubs and trees. 

[Related: The ‘granddaddy’ of all early hominins walked on Earth a lot longer than we thought.]

“For the first time, we’re showing that these grasses are widespread, and it’s this general context of open seasonal woodland ecosystems that were integral in shaping the evolution of different mammalian lineages, including and especially in our case, how different ape lineages evolved,” study co-author and University of Michigan biological anthropologist John Kingston said in a statement.

The nine sites in both studies are scattered across eastern equatorial Africa, which is an area large enough for the team to develop a better regional picture of what these landscapes looked like 23 million to 16 million years ago during the early Miocene. At this time, the East African Rift forming the region saw huge change in topography. This upheaval as the Earth was pulling apart resulted in regional climate and its vegetation.  

“These open environments have been invoked to explain human origins, and it was thought that you started to get these more open, seasonal environments between 10 and 7 million years ago,” MacLatchy said. “Such an environmental shift is thought to have been selected for terrestrial bipedalism—our ancestors started striding around on the ground because the trees were further apart. Now that we’ve shown that such environments were present at least 10 million years before bipedalism evolved, we need to really rethink human origins, too.” 

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E-cigarette maker Juul Labs is paying $462 million in the company’s largest multi-state settlement to date. This payment will go to the six states, New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Colorado, as well as the District of Columbia.

The lawsuit accuses Juul of directly promoting its products to high school age students, including an instance where a Juul representative “falsely told high school freshmen that its products were safer than cigarettes.” The suit also says that Juul’s advertising campaign reached teenagers who subsequently told their friends about Juul in “rapid numbers.”

[Related: Juul to pay states $435M and stop marketing e-cigarettes to kids.]

Documents from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office state that Juul reportedly bought advertising space for their products on media targeted to young audiences—including Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Cartoon Network, and Seventeen. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, roughly 2.55 million middle and high school students in the US used e-cigarettes in 2022.

The settlement was co-led by New York Attorney General Letitia James and California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Retailers will now have to keep Juul products secure behind counters, verify the age of purchasers, and stop using people under 35 years old in marketing materials. Juul is also restricted from advertising on social media channels used by youths, on billboards, or on public transportation.

“JUUL lit a nationwide public health crisis by putting addictive products in the hands of minors and convincing them that it’s harmless—today they are paying the price for the harm they caused,” New York Attorney General James said in a statement. “Too many young New Yorkers are struggling to quit vaping and there is no doubt that JUUL played a central role in the nationwide vaping epidemic. Today’s agreement will help young New Yorkers put their vapes down for good and ensure that future generations understand the harms of vaping. I thank my fellow attorneys general for their collaboration on this effort to protect the health and well-being of our communities.”

This latest agreement brings many of Juuls legal woes to a close for now, with settlements now reached with 47 states and territories, and 5,000 individuals and local governments. In September 2022, the company reached a settlement brought forth by Connecticut, Texas, and Oregon for $438.5 million that will be doled out to 33 states and Puerto Rico over the next six to 10 years.

[Related: Juul is pulling teens’ favorite flavor off shelves.]

In response to the latest settlement, Juul wrote “the terms of the agreement, like prior settlements, provide financial resources to further combat underage use and develop cessation programs and reflect our current business practices, which were implemented as part of our company-wide reset in the fall of 2019. Since then, underage use of JUUL products has declined by 95% based on the National Youth Tobacco Survey.”

Currently, Juul is in the middle of a trial in Minnesota, the first time that any of the thousands of cases against the e-cigarette maker has gone to court. The trial is expected to wrap up next week. 
According to The New York Times, the troubled company’s efforts to broker deals in these lawsuits have cost it close to $3 billion, which is a large sum as the company still seeking official regulatory approval to keep selling its products.

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A team of scientists from the United States and the Netherlands have discovered a new species of bat based on the oldest bat skeletons ever discovered. The findings are described in a study published April 12 in the journal PLOS One. 

The new species is named Icaronycteris gunnelli (I. gunnelli) in honor of the late Gregg Gunnell, a Duke University paleontologist who died in 2017 and is remembered for his contributions to understanding fossil bats and evolution. 

[Related: How killing vampire bats to slow rabies can go wrong.]

The now extinct I. gunnelli lived in Wyoming roughly 52 million years ago and the current scientific consensus is that bats rapidly diversified on multiple continents during this time in history. There are currently over 1,460 living bat species  found almost all over the world, except for the Earth’s polar regions and a few remote islands. 

The bat skeletons are about 1.5 inches long and were found near Kemmerer, Wyoming in the Green River Formation. The formation spans parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah and is home to an extensive fossil deposit from the early Eocene—about 56 million to 47.8 million years ago.  Scientists have found more than 30 bat fossils in the last 60 years within the formation. Until finding this new species, however, they believed all of them were from the same two extinct species, Icaronycteris index and Onychonycteris finneyi.

“Eocene bats have been known from the Green River Formation since the 1960s. But interestingly, most specimens that have come out of that formation were identified as representing a single species, Icaronycteris index, up until about 20 years ago, when a second bat species belonging to another genus was discovered,” study co-author Nancy Simmons, curator-in-charge of the American Museum of Natural History’s (AMNH) Department of Mammalogy said in statement. Simmons helped describe the second species named Onychonycteris finneyi in 2008, but always thought that there might be even more Eocene bats out there. 

Recently, scientists from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands began to look closely at Icaronycteris index by collecting measurements and other data from museum specimens to put together a dataset.

“Paleontologists have collected so many bats that have been identified as Icaronycteris index, and we wondered if there were actually multiple species among these specimens,”  co-author and evolutionary biologist Tim Rietbergen said in a statement. “Then we learned about a new skeleton that diverted our attention.”

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The well-preserved I. gunnelli skeleton in this study was purchased by a private collector in 2017 and was subsequently purchased by AMNH. The team compared the skeleton with Rietbergen’s extensive bat dataset and saw that it clearly stood out as a new species.

A second fossilized Icaronycteris gunnelli skeleton that was discovered at this same quarry in 1994. It eventually made its way to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and was also identified as this new species. 

While there are fossilized bat teeth from Asia that are slightly older than these skeletons, the two I. gunnelli fossils represent the oldest bat skeletons ever found, according to the team. The I. gunnelli skeletons are also the oldest bat fossils that have been recovered from the Green River Formation, but they are not the most primitive, meaning not the earliest on the bat evolutionary tree. According to the team, this supports the idea that the bats in the region evolved separately from other Eocene era bats.

“This is a step forward in understanding what happened in terms of evolution and diversity back in the early days of bats,” said Simmons.

The post Oldest bat skeleton ever found by paleontologists finally has a name appeared first on Popular Science.

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