On November 25, a healthy male Sumatran rhinoceros was born at a western Indonesian sanctuary. This birth is welcome news for the critically endangered species. There are less than 50 Sumatran rhinos left, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

[Related: Rhino horns are shrinking, and humans are to blame.]

A seven-year-old female rhino named Delilah gave birth to the 55 pound calf at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park (SRS TNWK) on the island of Sumatra. According to officials from the sanctuary, a conservation guard found her laying next to her calf early on Saturday morning. The birth was about 10 days before the baby’s expected due date. The baby’s father is a rhino named Harapan who was born at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden in Ohio before coming to Sumatra. 

“You never know if a first-time mom will know what to do, but Delilah brought that calf into the world and started nursing it with no fuss or fanfare. It’s an incredible event that gives hope to the future of this critically endangered species,” International Rhino Foundation executive director Nina Fascione said in a press release. 

Sumatran rhinos are the smallest of all rhino species at about 1,000 to 2,100 pounds and three to four feet tall. They have two horns that are dark gray to black. The horns are usually very smooth and form a slender cone that is curved backwards in the wild. Poaching, illegal trading of rhino horns, and climate change have pushed these mammals to the brink of extinction. According to the IUCN Red List, they are currently extinct in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, India, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, according to the Red List. It is uncertain if they are still present in Myanmar. 

Successful births like this one are also rare. In 2012, a male rhino named Andatu born at Way Kambas became the first Sumatran rhino born in an Indonesian sanctuary in over 120 years.

“Two years ago there was only one captive Sumatran rhino pair in the world able to successfully produce offspring. Now there are three pairs–six rhinos–who are proven breeders. Those are much better odds for the long-term survival of this species,” said Fascione.

According to Indonesian Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar, this still-to-be-named calf is the fifth born under a semi-wild breeding program at the park. The new addition brings the rhino herd at Way Kambas up to 10 animals and follows the birth of another calf in September. 

[Related: Rhinos pay a painful price for oxpecker protection.]

The sanctuary is part of a special zone in the national park where all of the rhinos are protected and looked after by local experts.

“The main objective is to produce Sumatran rhino calves to maintain the survival of the Sumatran rhino species which is now threatened with extinction,” sanctuary Director General of Natural Resources and Ecosystem Conservation Satyawan Pudyatmoko said in a statement. “The Sumatran rhino calves are the result of a breeding program. In the future, at SRS TNWK they can be released back into their natural habitat.”

Veterinarians from the Rhino Foundation of Indonesia (Yayasan Badak Indonesia) and animal care staff will continue to closely monitor Delialah and her new calf as they bond.

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The assortment of black dots that decorate African penguins’ mostly all-white fronts might help the birds tell each other apart. This is the first documented time that animal behaviorists and psychologists have pinpointed a physical feature that a bird species uses for visual recognition. The findings are described in a study published in the January 2024 issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.

[Related: How African penguins continue to survive changes in climate.]

In birds, distinguishing individual flock members is primarily based on auditory cues and not visual cues. For example, some parrots distinguish their offspring with squawking equivalent of individual names. This new research is one of the first studies to show that birds could use visual cues more than scientists previously believed. 

According to study co-author and animal psychologist Luigi Baciadonna, the dots on African penguins appear when they are about three to five months old. These birds molt annually and reemerge in the same position when the new plumage comes in. 

In the new study, a team from Italy’s University of Turin, the University of Oulu in Finland, and Zoomarine Italia marine park near Rome conducted a simple experiment with 12 penguins. The team built a small enclosure with plywood walls that was just tall enough to prevent a penguin from seeing over it. They placed cameras on either end of the pen and life-size pictures of two penguins on one of the far walls. One penguin entered the enclosure, where one of the pictures featured its specific mate. 

African penguins form lifelong bonds with their partners and the team tracked their responses to images of other penguins from their species. They found that the penguins spent more time looking at the picture of their partner than they did a picture of a different familiar penguin. This occurred even when the heads of the penguins were blurred. 

When the test penguins were shown two images of their partner, including one that had the spots removed, they preferred the images where the dots remained intact. However, this preference for their partner did not occur when the birds saw unspeckled versions of their mate and a different bird. According to the team, this suggests that the penguins use these spots to tell one another apart.

[Related: Jackass penguins talk like people.]

African penguins live along the coasts of Namibia and South Africa. They are about 24 to 27 inches tall and eat squid, anchovies, and other small fish. African penguins are known to be particularly communicative with one another, so scientists have studied their behavior to better understand some of the more advanced social behaviors seen in primates. A 2021 study found that African penguins are capable of vocal accommodation. Different group members have a different dialect and vocal accommodation allows group members to learn to speak more like the others. 

“Given how goofy penguins can seem–almost stumbling over their feet as they walk, for example–the birds may not seem like they are all that bright,” Baciadonna told New Scientist. “But we showed in these two or three experiments that actually they are quite complicated and complex. They’re also clever.”

Animal physiologist and director of the Institute of Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen Andreas Nieder told Science, “It is an original study with a remarkable finding.” Nieder was not involved in the new research.

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The itchiness that comes with some annoying dermatological conditions might be caused by certain microbes on skin. In a study published November 22 in the journal Cell, a team of scientists found that a common skin bacterium called Staphylococcus aureus can result in itchiness by acting directly on the nerve cells. 

[Related: Lab-made ‘super melanin’ speeds up healing and boosts sun protection.]

This is the first time that scientists have observed how this microbe works to create itching sensations. The finding adds an important piece to the puzzle of why some common skin conditions like eczema often have a persistent itch. Eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, affects about 20 percent of children and 10 percent of adults in the United States. It usually causes the equilibrium of microorganisms that keep our skin healthy to be thrown out of balance. These conditions allow S. aureus to flourish, according to the study’s authors from Harvard Medical School.

Previously, dermatologists believed that the itchiness that accompanies eczema happened because of skin inflammation. The new paper shows that S. aureus causes itch by beginning a molecular chain reaction that ends in the urge to scratch the skin.

“We’ve identified an entirely novel mechanism behind itch—the bacterium Staph aureus, which is found on almost every patient with the chronic condition atopic dermatitis. We show that itch can be caused by the microbe itself,” study co-author and dermatologist Isaac Chiu said in a statement.

In the study, researchers exposed the skin of mice to S. aureus. Over several days, the animals developed an intensifying itch. The repeated scratching caused worsening skin damage that eventually spread beyond the original site of exposure.

The mice exposed to S. aureus also became hypersensitive to unharmful stimuli that would usually not cause the skin to itch. They were also more likely to develop abnormal itching in response to a light touch than the mice that were not exposed to the bacterium. This hyperactive response called alloknesis and it is common in patients struggling with chronic skin conditions that have persistent itch. 

Researchers then identified several enzymes that were released by the bacteria once it began to grow on the skin. They tested each enzyme to see if it triggered any itching. It turned out that S. aureus releases the bacterial enzyme protease V8, which then activates the protein PAR1. This protein is located on the nerve fibers that send signals from the skin to the brain, prompting the sensation of itchiness. 

PAR1 proteins are also present on certain blood cells and are involved in clotting. Anti-clotting medications that are already available can block the protein activation on the skin neurons, which gave the team a place to start to look for a treatment. 

[Related: A new artificial skin could be more sensitive than the real thing.]

When the mice were given an anti-clotting medicine, the medication successfully blocked the activation of PAR1 on the skin’s nerve fibers. A critical step in the itch-scratch cycle was interrupted and the rodent’s symptoms appeared to be relieved. Scratching decreased. 

These findings could help lead to better oral medications or skin creams to treat persistent itching that comes with conditions linked to an imbalance in the skin microbiome, including eczema, prurigo nodularis, and psoriasis.

“Itch can be quite debilitating in patients who suffer from chronic skin conditions. Many of these patients carry on their skin the very microbe we’ve now shown for the first time can induce itch,” study co-author and immunologist Liwen Deng said in a statement. 

A question that the team plans to explore in future work is whether other microbes besides S. aureus can trigger itch.

“We know that many microbes, including fungi, viruses, and bacteria, are accompanied by itch but how they cause itch is not clear,” Chiu said.

Researchers are also exploring why microbes cause an itch and what evolutionary benefits the bacterium can gain from causing an itch. It could be that pathogens may hijack itch and other neural physical reflexes to their advantage. Earlier studies have shown that the tuberculosis bacterium directly activates the vagal neurons to cause cough, which might enable the bacteria to spread from one host to another. 

“It’s a speculation at this point, but the itch-scratch cycle could benefit the microbes and enable their spread to distant body sites and to uninfected hosts,” Deng said. “Why do we itch and scratch? Does it help us, or does it help the microbe? That’s something that we could follow up on in the future.”

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Geologists have discovered 10 new species of trilobite in a relatively unstudied area of Thailand. These extinct sea creatures were hidden for 490 million years and are helping scientists create a new map of the animal life during the late Cambrian period. They are described in a monograph that was published in October in the journal Papers in Palaeontology.

[Related: These ancient trilobites are forever frozen in a conga line.]

Trilobites were marine arthropods similar to today’s spiders and crustaceans and are known for a wide variety of body designs. A species called Walliserops may have jousted with ‘tridents’ on their heads to win mates and recent trilobite specimens have been found with full stomachs. More than 20,000 species lived in Earth’s seas before they went extinct about 250 million years ago.

The trilobite fossils described in the new paper were trapped between layers of petrified ash in sandstone and were the product of old volcanic eruptions. The sediment from the eruptions settled on the bottom of the sea and formed a green layer called a tuff. This important layer contains crystals of a critical mineral that formed during the eruption called zircon. Aside from being as tough as steel, zircon is chemically stable and heat and weather resistant. Zircon also persists while the minerals in other kinds of rocks erode over time. Individual atoms of uranium that transform into lead live inside these resilient zircon crystals and give paleontologists a benchmark for dating the fossils. 

“We can use radio isotope techniques to date when the zircon formed and thus find the age of the eruption, as well as the fossil,” study co-author and University of California, Riverside geologist Nigel Hughes said in a statement.

Finding tuffs from the late Cambrian period (between 497 and 485 million years ago) is also rather rare. According to the team, it is one of the “worst dated” intervals of time in Earth’s history.

“The tuffs will allow us to not only determine the age of the fossils we found in Thailand, but to better understand parts of the world like China, Australia, and even North America where similar fossils have been found in rocks that cannot be dated,” study co-author and Texas State University geologist Shelly Wernette said in a statement. Wernette previously worked in the Hughes Lab.

The trilobite fossils were found on the coast of an island called Ko Tarutao. This island is part of a UNESCO geopark site that has encouraged international teams of scientists to work in this area. 

One of the most interesting discoveries was 12 types of trilobites that scientists have seen in other parts of the world, but not in Thailand. 

“We can now connect Thailand to parts of Australia, a really exciting discovery,” said Wernette.

During trilobites’ lifetime, this area was located on the margins of an ancient supercontinent called Gondwanaland. The giant land mass included present day India, Africa, South America, Australia, and Antarctica. 

[Related: Ancient ‘weird shrimp from Canada’ used bizarre appendages to scarf up soft prey.]

“Because continents shift over time, part of our job has been to work out where this region of Thailand was in relation to the rest of Gondwanaland,” Hughes said. “It’s a moving, shape shifting, 3D jigsaw puzzle we’re trying to put together. This discovery will help us do that.”

They named one of the newly discovered species Tsinania sirindhornae in honor of Thai Royal Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, for her dedication to developing the sciences in Thailand.

“I also thought this species had a regal quality. It has a broad headdress and clean sweeping lines,” Wernette said.

If the team can get an accurate date from the tuffs that the remains of T. sirindhornae had been sitting in for millions of years, they could be able to determine if closely related species found in northern and southern China are roughly the same age. 

The team believes that the portrait of the ancient world hidden in these trilobite fossils contain invaluable information about our planet’s history.

“What we have here is a chronicle of evolutionary change accompanied by extinctions. The Earth has written this record for us, and we’re fortunate to have it,” Hughes said. “The more we learn from it the better prepared we are for the challenges we’re engineering on the planet for ourselves today.”

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A glass of red wine may pair well with a turkey dinner, but drinking even a small amount can cause headaches in some people. The dreaded “red wine headache” can occur between 30 minutes to three hours after consuming as little as a small glass’ worth. In a study published November 20 in the journal Scientific Reports, a team from the University of California, Davis and the University of California, San Francisco reports that they may have found the culprit.

[Related: Red wine is a trifecta of chemicals that can make some people feel terrible.]

Questioning the quercetin

The team believes that a flavanol found naturally in red wines can interfere with the body’s usual metabolism of alcohol, which may lead to a headache. This flavanol is called quercetin and it is found in multiple types of fruits and vegetables, including grapes. Quercetin is considered a healthy antioxidant and can even be taken as a supplement, but it can become a problem when metabolized alongside alcohol.

“When it gets in your bloodstream, your body converts it to a different form called quercetin glucuronide,” study co-author and UC Davis wine chemist Andrew Waterhouse said in a statement. “In that form, it blocks the metabolism of alcohol.”

The end result is an accumulation of a toxin called acetaldehyde.

“Acetaldehyde is a well-known toxin, irritant and inflammatory substance,” study co-author and UC Davis microbiologist Apramita Devi said in a statement. “Researchers know that high levels of acetaldehyde can cause facial flushing, headache and nausea.”

A medication called disulfiram that is prescribed to patients to help treat alcohol dependence to discourage drinking is known to cause these same symptoms if alcohol is consumed. Disulfiram also makes acetaldehyde from drinking alcohol build up when an enzyme in the body would usually break it down. Roughly 40 percent of the East Asian population also has alcohol metabolizing enzymes that allows for acetaldehyde to build up in their system.

“We postulate that when susceptible people consume wine with even modest amounts of quercetin, they develop headaches, particularly if they have a preexisting migraine or another primary headache condition,” study co-author and University of California, San Francisco neurologist Morris Levin said in a statement. “We think we are finally on the right track toward explaining this millennia-old mystery. The next step is to test it scientifically on people who develop these headaches, so stay tuned.”

Turn the lights down

According to the team, sunlight increases the headache-causing flavanol in the grapes grown to make wine. 

[Related: Can I be allergic to alcohol?]

“If you grow grapes with the clusters exposed, such as they do in the Napa Valley for their cabernets, you get much higher levels of quercetin. In some cases, it can be four to five times higher,” said Waterhouse.

Levels of quercetin can differ depending on how the wine is made, including skin contact during fermentation, the fining processes, and even aging.

The study cautions that there are still many unknowns about the causes of red wine headaches. While we have a better understanding of the biological processes behind red wine headaches, it is still a mystery why some people remain more susceptible to them than others. The team is working on comparing red wines that have a lot of quercetin like shiraz with those that do not have as much to test their theory that quercetin is truly behind red wine headaches on people. They are also curious if the enzymes of people who get red wine headaches often are more easily inhibited by the flavanol or if this group is more easily affected by the buildup of the toxin acetaldehyde.

“If our hypothesis pans out, then we will have the tools to start addressing these important questions,” Waterhouse said.

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Archaeologists have uncovered rare evidence of ritualized animal sacrifice at the Casas del Turuñuelo archaeological site in southwestern Spain. The site dates back to the 5th century BCE and offers a glimpse into the Tartessian culture of the Iberian Peninsula. The discovery is described in a study published November 22 in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

[Related: Early humans carved old skeletal remains from burial caves into tools.]

The Tartessos were a historical civilization settled in the southern Iberian Peninsula from the 9th to 5th centuries BCE during the Iron Age. Archaeologists believed that their culture had a mixture of traits from local Iberian populations and Phoenicians arriving from countries in the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. It had a writing system called Tartessian, that had roughly 97 inscriptions in a Tartessian language. 

In the western Mediterranean region where the Tartessos lived, archaeological evidence of animal sacrifice is difficult to come by. However, written sources including Homer’s The Odyssey chronicle animal sacrifice in the Mediterranean at this time. The gap between the written record and archaeological evidence has made it difficult for archaeologists to establish a clear understanding of what protocols and patterns were behind the practice here. 

Mª Pilar Iborra Eres, a study co-author and archaeologist Spain’s Instituto Valenciano de Conservación, Restauración e Investigación, tells PopSci that the Casas del Turuñuelo site is special due to the “excellent conservation of the building and its contents. In this case, the accumulation of bone remains that testify to ritual activities.”

In this new study, Eres and her team studied an example of animal sacrifice from an Iron Age building that dates back towards the end of the 5th Century BCE. The excavation began in 2015 and they examined and dated 6,770 bones that belonged to 52 animals. The animals were predominantly adult horses, but also included cattle, pigs, and one dog. The remains show signs of intentional burial, which is one clue that they were sacrificed. 

They found that the animals had been buried in three sequential phases. In the first two phases, the skeletons were found to be mostly complete and unaltered. In the third phase, all of the skeletons except the horses show signs of having been processed for food. This suggests that a meal likely accompanied this ritual. 

A case study like this one allowed the team to establish some key details about ritual protocols at Casas del Turuñuelo in order to determine what was behind them. The bones indicate that adult animals were selected for sacrifice rather than young. The presence of burned plant and animal remains also shows that fires played a role in these rituals. 

[Related: Pompeii’s archaeological puzzles can be solved with a little help from chemistry.]

Casas del Turuñuelo also shows some unique features compared to other Mediterranean sites, including the large number of sacrificed horses. 

“The equine remains were discovered as a result of a methodical excavation of one of the areas of this building, the courtyard,” says Eres. “This is where animal sacrifices were made during the use of the building by Iron Age societies. 

The space was also likely used repeatedly over several years for a variety of sacrificial rituals.

The team was surprised that they were able to verify that the deposit here was so perfectly preserved and portrayed what they believe to be an accurate picture of the rituals that took place there. They hope to complete this study by applying new methods to study the samples. 

“Archaeology allows us to learn about many aspects of the life of past societies,” says Eres. “By applying innovative methodologies such as computed tomography, paleoparasitology, isotope analysis for the study of diet and mobility or ancient DNA, the aim is to carry out a complete study of this group of equids.”

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It’s been a wormy, sexual head-scratcher for years. The Japanese green syllid worm Megasyllis nipponica detaches its butt in order to reproduce. But how do these algae-eating invertebrates do this? The process could come down to some developmental genes, according to a study published November 22 in the journal Scientific Reports.

[Related: The jumping worm invasion may be less worrisome than it sounds.]

Bye bye, butt

Some segmented sea worms like the syllid worm go through a reproductive process called  stolonization. The stolon is the worm’s posterior organ and it is full of eggs or sperm depending on the worm’s sex. During stolonization, the stolon completely detaches from the rest of the worm’s body for reproduction. 

This detached butt swims around by itself and spawns when it meets another stolon of the opposite sex. This autonomous swimming is believed to protect the original body of the worm from dangers in the environment and help the eggs and sperm travel longer distances. 

In order to swim by themselves, the stolon have to develop their own eyes, antennae, and swimming bristles while still attached to their original body. How this happens has been a mystery. The formation of the stolon itself begins when the gonads near the worm’s butt mature. A head is then formed in the front of the developing stolon, with the eyes, antennae, and swimming bristles following close behind. It develops its nerves and the ability to sense and behave independently before the stolon detaches from the rest of the body.

Hot hox genes

In the new study, a team from the University of Tokyo looked into how the stolon’s head is formed in the first place. The researchers investigated the developmental gene expression patterns in worms as they were sexually maturing. A well-known group of genes that determine body part formation called hox genes help define the head regions of various animals. The team found that hox genes are expressed more in the head region of the stolon. The genes are not typically expressed as much in the middle of the body, except for when the gonads are developing. During this time, the hox genes are highly expressed in the worm’s middle and butt. 

“This shows how normal developmental processes are modified to fit the life history of animals with unique reproductive styles,” study co-author and University of Tokyo marine biologist Toru Miura said in a statement.

[Related: These newly discovered bioluminescent sea worms are named after Japanese folklore.]

Hox genes also determine the segmentation along the worm’s body. The team thought that the hox genes would be expressed differently along the invisible line that runs from the head of the worm to the back end.

“Interestingly, the expressions of Hox genes that determine body-part identity were constant during the process,” said Miura. 

Because of this consistency, the stolon does not have a separatedigestive tract. It also has repeated uniform body segments, except for in its head and tail. 

“This indicates that only the head part is induced at the posterior body part to control spawning behavior for reproduction,” said Miura.

The study showed the developmental mechanism of stolons for the first time and sparked more investigation into this reproductive method. Miura and the team hope to clarify the sex determination mechanism and the endocrine regulations during the worm’s reproductive cycles in future studies.

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If nematodes have nightmares, they might be dreaming about the terror of being eaten alive by a carnivorous fungus called Arthrobotrys oligospora. The very real fungus can sometimes set gooey traps for these worms. It is one of over 700 known species of carnivorous fungi. New findings on the basic processes behind its unique eating habits are described in a study published November 21st in the open access journal PLoS Biology.

[Related: Parasitic Fungi Can Fuse A Nematode’s Gut Into One Cell.]

Nematodes are not usually the first thing on A. oligospora’s menu. The fungus typically gets nutrients from decaying organic matter. Starvation and the presence of nearby worms can prompt this and other fungi to create traps to capture and eat the worms. Another meat eating fungi named Pleurotus ostreatus or the oyster mushroom even uses a nerve gas as its method of trapping down nematodes. 

A. oligospora has a different approach. It generally uses sticky secretions to keep the worms pinned down before they become a meal. Earlier studies have shown some of the biological processes and genetics behind A. oligospora’s predator-prey relationship, but the molecular details of the process have remained generally unclear.

“I think it’s fascinating to consider that right under our feet in the soil, there are micro-predators like A. oligospora are continually evolving new ways to hunt, capture and consume the nematode prey and there is [a] constant evolutionary arms races between these carnivorous fungi and nematodes,” study co-author and molecular biologist Yen-Ping Hsueh tells PopSci. 

To investigate, Hsueh and a team from Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan designed a series of lab experiments to pinpoint the genes and processes involved when A. oligospora preys on a nematode worm species called Caenorhabditis elegans. They used a technique called RNAseq to see the level of activity occurring in various fungus genes at different points in time. When A. oligospora first senses a worm, two separate functions increase–DNA replication and the production of ribosomes. These are the structures that build proteins in a cell. Next, activity increases on many of the genes that encode the proteins that likely help the fungus build and use its traps. These traps include secreted worm-adhesive proteins and a family of proteins the team has identified for the first time.

“The most surprising finding was the dramatic expansion and diversification of the DUF3129 gene family in A. oligospora compared to other fungi,” says Hsueh. “We named members of this family ‘Trap Enriched Proteins’ or TEPs, since they localize to the fungal traps and contribute to trap adhesion and nematode capture.”

After A. oligospora has extended filamentous structures called hyphae into the worm to digest it, the activity in the genes that code for a variety of enzymes called proteases also increases. A group called metalloproteases that break down other proteins is increased even more. The team believes this suggests that A. oligospora uses these proteases to aid in digestion of worms like nematodes.

[Related: Nightmare-fuel fungi exist in real life.]

This research could serve as the foundation for more research into other fungal predator-prey relationships and how A. oligospora feeds on these worms. 

“Our next steps are to further investigate the molecular function of how traps adhere to nematodes,” says Hsueh. “It’s surprising how the traps catch nematodes in such a short time, and the binding of the traps are strong enough that the nematodes almost never get a chance to escape after being trapped.”

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A new image from NASA’s almost two-year-old James Webb Space Telescope features new details of a portion of our galaxy’s dense center for the first time. The image includes some parts of the star-forming hotspot that astronomers are still trying to fully understand. The region is named Sagittarius C and is about 300 light-years away from Sagittarius A*, or the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

[Related: Gaze upon the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.]

“There’s never been any infrared data on this region with the level of resolution and sensitivity we get with Webb, so we are seeing lots of features here for the first time,” observation team principal investigator Samuel Crowe said in a statement. “Webb reveals an incredible amount of detail, allowing us to study star formation in this sort of environment in a way that wasn’t possible previously.” Crowe is an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

The image features roughly 500,000 stars and a cluster of young stars called protostars. These are stars that are still forming and gaining mass, while generating outflows that glow in the midst of an infrared-dark cloud. A massive previously-discovered protostar that is over 30 times the mass of our sun is located at the heart of this young cluster. 

The protostars are emerging from a cloud that is so dense that the light from stars behind it cannot reach the JWST. This light trick makes the region look deceptively less crowded. According to the team, this is actually one of the most tightly packed areas of the image. Smaller infrared-dark clouds dot the image where future stars are forming. 

“The galactic center is the most extreme environment in our Milky Way galaxy, where current theories of star formation can be put to their most rigorous test,” University of Virginia astronomer Jonathan Tan said in a statement. 

JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) also captured large-scale emission from ionized hydrogen that is surrounding the lower side of the dark cloud. According to Crowe, this is the result of energetic photons that are being emitted by young massive stars. The expanse of the region spotted by JWST came as a surprise to the team and needs more investigation. They also plan to further examine the needle-like structures in the ionized hydrogen, which are scattered in multiple directions.

“The galactic center is a crowded, tumultuous place. There are turbulent, magnetized gas clouds that are forming stars, which then impact the surrounding gas with their outflowing winds, jets, and radiation,” Rubén Fedriani, a co-investigator of the project at the Instituto Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain, said in a statement. “Webb has provided us with a ton of data on this extreme environment, and we are just starting to dig into it.”

[Related: ‘Christmas tree’ galaxy shines in new image from Hubble and JWST.]

At roughly 25,000 light-years from Earth, the galactic center is close enough for the JWST to study individual stars. This allows astronomers to collect data on both how stars form, but also how this process may depend on the cosmic environment when compared to other regions of the galaxy. One question this could help answer is if there are more massive stars in the center of the Milky Way, as opposed to on the edges of the galaxy’s spiral arms.

“The image from Webb is stunning, and the science we will get from it is even better,” Crowe said. “Massive stars are factories that produce heavy elements in their nuclear cores, so understanding them better is like learning the origin story of much of the universe.”

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EYES MIGHT NOT be able to speak, but they have plenty to say. Many animals use complex visual systems to help them survive in particular habitats. Sight is often a first line of defense against predators—or a crucial sense for catching prey. To dwell in Earth’s darkest locations or travel high through the sky, creatures have evolved special and bizarre ways to perceive their worlds.

Spookfish: Mirrored orbs

It’s gloomy year-round for the spookfish, a spiked carnivore that swims in the dark depths of the ocean. Sunlight rarely penetrates more than a few hundred feet below the surface, so this critter uses mirrors instead as well as lenses to see—the only known vertebrate with this feature. The disks, made of guanine crystals, can focus light emitted by bioluminescent plankton and other glowing marine life. Weirder still, the funky fish’s eyes are split into two connected parts: one section gazes up while the other looks down. That way, it can spy food above and below it, as well as lurking predators.

Golden eagle: Cones galore

In North America, Europe, and Asia, golden eagles soar on 7-foot wingspans while searching for small prey like rabbits, which they can spot more than a mile away. The birds can see from great distances thanks to an extreme density of visual cells known as rods and cones in their retinas. Rods generally register the overall shape of an object, whereas cones detect color and detail. In general, the density of rods and cones in a raptor’s eye is five times greater than in a human’s. 

Giant squid: Titanic eyes

The largest eyes in the animal kingdom, at up to 10 inches in diameter, belong to adult giant squids. And it makes sense: The biggest individuals can exceed 40 feet long, so the peepers on these invertebrates have to be proportionally massive. The species uses its dinner-plate-size eyes to draw in as much light as possible from its dark watery world to hunt fish and shrimp. Its line of sight can also detect a moving sperm whale—one of the squid’s main foes—up to 400 feet away in deep ocean zones that have little or no sunlight.

Mantis shrimp: Extra light

Mantis shrimp, known for their herculean strength and swift clubbed appendages that can break a snail’s shell in a single strike, also boast a unique vision system. Their eyes process 12 channels of color and can detect ultraviolet (UV) and polarized light, which has waves that all vibrate in the same direction. By comparison, humans can process only three channels of color—blue, green, and red—and can’t process polarized or UV light at all. The crustaceans’ 10,000 small photoreceptive units are organized in strips that log objects around them, similar to how a scanner reads a bar code. 

Arctic reindeer: Color play

In the Arctic reindeer, the tapetum lucidum, a part of the eye located behind the retina in many vertebrates, changes color with the seasons. Their eyes go from gold in summer to blue in winter, compensating for the drastic variation in sunlight at the North Pole. Blue eyes enhance the ungulates’ ability to detect shorter wavelengths of light during the dark and dreary winter, when they have only a few short hours per day to detect sunlight. During the extremely bright summer, their eyes no longer need to take in as much light in a short period and switch back to yellow. 

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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With their winding and buff arms made up of billions of stars, spiral galaxies offer some of the beautiful images of the universe. Our own Milky Way galaxy is a spiral galaxy, yet these types of swirling clusters are relatively scarce in a part of the universe called the Supergalactic Plane. A team of astrophysicists believes that the bright elliptical galaxies without a defined center are more common than swirling galaxies because of the difference in density of the environments found inside and outside of the Plane. The findings are described in a study published November 20 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

[Related: Behold six galactic collisions, masterfully captured by Hubble.]

Smoothing out the arms

The Supergalactic Plane is a flattened structure in the universe that extends nearly a billion light years across. Our own Milky Way galaxy is embedded within the Plane and is about 100,000 light years wide. There are dozens of enormous armless galaxy clusters called elliptical galaxies in the Plane, but not nearly as many disk-shaped galaxies with spiral arms. 

According to the new study, the different distributions of elliptical and disk galaxies are a natural occurrence. Galaxies experience frequent interactions and mergers with other galaxies in the Plane because the region is so densely packed. This galactic demolition derby then turns the spiral galaxies into elliptical galaxies. The arms are smoothed out and the lack of internal structure in the elliptical galaxy and presence of dark matter leads to the growth of supermassive black holes. Since the dark matter outweighs everything else, it has the power to shape the newly formed elliptical galaxy and tends to guide the growth of the central black hole.

The stars in an elliptical galaxy also orbit around the core in random directions and are generally older than those in spiral galaxies, according to NASA. 

In parts of the universe away from Plane, galaxies can evolve in relative isolation. This solitude helps them preserve their spiral structure.

“The distribution of galaxies in the Supergalactic Plane is indeed remarkable,” Carlos Frenk, a study co-author and astrophysicist at Durham University in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “It is rare but not a complete anomaly: our simulation reveals the intimate details of the formation of galaxies such as the transformation of spirals into ellipticals through galaxy mergers.”

A galactic time machine

In the study, the team used a supercomputer simulation called Simulations Beyond the Local Universe. It follows the evolution of the universe over a period of 13.8 billion years from around the time of the Big Bang up to the present. 

[Related: Hubble image captures stars forming in a far-off phantom galaxy.]

Most cosmological simulations consider random patches of the universe, which cannot be directly compared to other observations. Instead, SIBELIUS works to precisely reproduce the observed structures in space, including the Supergalactic Plane. According to the team, the final simulation is remarkably consistent with observations of our universe through telescopes.

“The simulation shows that our standard model of the universe, based on the idea that most of its mass is cold dark matter, can reproduce the most remarkable structures in the universe, including the spectacular structure of which the Milky Way is part,” said Frenk.

Scientists have been studying the separation of elliptical and spiral galaxies since the 1960s. This partitioning features prominently in a recent list of cosmic anomalies that was compiled by cosmologist and 2019 Nobel laureate Professor Jim Peebles.

“By chance, I was invited to a symposium in honor of Jim Peebles last December at Durham, where he presented the problem in his lecture,” study co-author and astrophysicist at the University of Helsinki in Finland Till Sawala said in a statement. “And I realized that we had already completed a simulation that might contain the answer. Our research shows that the known mechanisms of galaxy evolution also work in this unique cosmic environment.”

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The male sex organs of the animal kingdom come in all shapes and sizes from some that look like a bottle opener to genital stingers. For mammals, penetrative sex with a penis is needed to successfully mate. However, scientists have documented the first non-penetrative sex ever seen in a mammal. The mating technique was observed in the serotine bat (Eptesicus serotinus) and it is described in a study published November 20 in the journal Current Biology.

The mysteries of bat sex

Serotine bats are quite common in Europe and Asia, but the intricacies of bat sex remain elusive. Most previous observations of bats mating have only offered a glimpse of the backs of mating pairs. But in the new study, a team from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and a bat rehabilitation center in Ukraine got lucky. 

[Related: How echolocation lets bats, dolphins, and even people navigate by sound.]

“By chance, we had observed that these bats have disproportionately long penises, and we were always wondering ‘how does that work?’,” study co-author and University of Lausanne evolutionary biologist Nicolas Fasel said in a statement. “We thought maybe it’s like in the dog where the penis engorges after penetration so that they are locked together, or alternatively maybe they just couldn’t put it inside, but that type of copulation hasn’t been reported in mammals until now.” 

The team placed cameras behind a grid that the bats could climb hoping to get footage of their genitals and mating from one side of the grid. They found that bats’ penises are roughly seven times longer than their partners’ vaginas. Each has a “heart-shaped” head that is also seven times wider than the common bat vaginal opening. This size and shape would make penetration after an erection impossible. The study shows that instead of functioning as a penetrative organ, the penis is more like an extra arm. It pushes the female’s tail sheath out of the way to engage in contact mating, similar to cloacal kissing in birds. Instead of penetration, the birds touch their two rear orifices called the cloaca together for only a few seconds, but long enough for sperm to be released.

The bat sex detectives

Fasel collaborated with bat enthusiast and citizen scientist Jan Jeucker, who filmed hours of footage of the serotine bat in a church attic in the Netherlands. The team analyzed 97 mating events—93 from the Dutch church and four from the Ukrainian bat rehabilitation center. During the recordings, the team did not see a single incidence of penetration. The erectile tissues of the bat penis were completely enlarged before they made any contact with the vulva. The male bats grasped their partner’s nape and moved their pelvis like a probe until it made contact with the vulva. Once contact was made, the pair remained still. These interactions lasted less than 53 minutes on average, but the longest event extended to 12.7 hours. 

After copulation, the researchers saw that the female bats had wet abdomens. They believe this dampness indicates the presence of semen, but more research is needed to confirm if sperm was actually transferred during these assumed mating events.

[Related: What bats and metal vocalists have in common.]

The team also characterized the form of serotine bat genitalia by measuring the erect penises of live bats that were captured as part of other research studies. The necropsies on bats that had died at bat rehabilitation centers revealed how much longer and wider the serotine bat penises were compared to the bat vaginas. The penises are also about a fifth as long as the bats’ head to body length. Female serotine bats also have unusually long cervixes, which potentially helps them select and store sperm.

The team believes that the bats may have evolved their oversized penises as a way to push aside the female tail membranes.  

“Bats use their tail membranes for flying and to capture the insects, and female bats also use them to cover their lower parts and protect themselves from males,” said Fasel. “But the males can then use these big penises to overcome the tail membrane and reach the vulva.”

The team plans to study bat mating behavior in more natural contexts and further investigate penis morphology and mating behavior in other bat species. 

“We are trying to develop a bat porn box, which will be like an aquarium with cameras everywhere,” says Fasel.

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While we may never be able to read a dog’s mind, new research indicates that some “smarter” dogs may be able to better interpret where an object is in space. By studying how this phenomenon called spatial bias may reflect what dogs see, researchers could potentially show that dogs process information similarly to the way humans do. The findings are described in a study published November 18 in the journal Ethology.

[Related: Dogs and wolves remember where you hide their food.]

What is spatial bias?

Spatial bias is how the brain processes information related to space, location, or distance when that same information could easily apply to an object.

When a person points to an object, a human toddler will generally focus directly on the object. However, a dog will usually take the gesture as cue to look in that specific direction. This difference is not necessarily due to the dog’s eyesight, but how they think and interpret gestures. Spatial bias is often demonstrated in the difference in how dogs and children react when a person shows them where a toy or treat may be.

“Very early on, children interpret the gesture as pointing to the object, while dogs take the pointing as a directional cue. In other words, regardless of the intention of the person giving the cue, the meaning for children and dogs is different,” study co-author Ivaylo Iotchev said in a statement. Iotchev is a neuroscientist and ethnologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary.

Spatial bias has been observed in behavioral tests that show how dogs learn and imitate, but hadn’t been studied until now, according to Iotchev. Earlier studies have not clarified if dogs behave this way due to inferior vision compared to primates, or if it is because the parameters of the space around them are more important to dogs than specific, nearby objects.

In this new study, a team of animal behavior experts was able to gain insight into how some dogs can overcome spatial biases on difficult challenges.

Learning location versus shape and color 

The team first tested two behavioral tasks on 82 domestic dogs of varying breeds and sizes. In one task, the dogs had a maximum of 50 trials to learn whether a treat was placed on the right or left side of a plate. This task was designed to teach the dogs about a location when they were directed to find where the treat was.

In the second task, the team used a white round plate and a black square one. Both plates were always placed in the middle and a dog was always given only one type of plate to eat from. However, the dog was exposed to each plate in a semi-random sequence, to teach them about the shape and color of the plate. This helped indicate if location or physical properties were easier for the dogs to remember. 

The team measured learning by how quickly a canine ran to the correct plate. They found that the dogs learned faster when the treat was placed to the right or left of a plate instead of on it. 

The dogs appeared to have more difficulty remembering whether the food was on the white round plate or black square one. The ‘spatial bias’ measure indicated that the dogs were learning about a specific place faster than an object’s features like color or shape. 

Measuring cognition and vision

A more complicated task looked to see if the dogs had retained the knowledge of where the treat had been placed. If the dog had previously received the treat on the right side of the plate, it was then placed on the left side. If the dog had previously been given the treat on a white plate, it was now on the black plate.

[Related: Do domesticated dogs howl back at wolves?]

To investigate if spatial bias is more sensory, cognitive, or a mixture of both, the team needed to note any differences between the visual and cognitive abilities of different dogs. They measured how short each dog’s head was, since this is correlated with visual acuity. They also observed how efficiently the dogs solved the problems. 

“The visual abilities of dog breeds differ from each other, which indirectly results from their head shape. Dogs with shorter heads–scientifically known as brachycephalic–develop human-like vision,” study co-author and PhD student Zsófia Bognár said in a statement. “The structure of their retina implies sharper and more focused vision than their longer-headed counterparts. “

To gauge their cognitive ability, the dogs took part in a series of tests of their memory, attention skills, and perseverance. They found that spatial bias is smaller in dogs with who could see finer details better. According to the team, as human children develop, spatial bias decreases with increasing intelligence and this could be possible for some canines with the right mindset as well.

Earlier studies have shown that for dogs, being “smart” has more to do with its memory than ability to learn new words. The dogs that exhibit characteristics that humans would label as intelligence demonstrated the ability to stick to a more complex task. Understanding how this works can help biologists better understand dogs’ evolution.

“Spatial bias in dogs is not simply a sensory problem but also a mindset. We also found that ‘smarter’ dogs are resilient in difficult learning situations and can overcome their biases,” said Iotchev.

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Adding liquid soap can boost the potency of some of the pesticides used on malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The discovery is detailed in a study published November 17 in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases and offers a tool in the fight against the disease.

[Related: New four-dose malaria vaccine is up to 80 percent effective.]

Malaria is most prevalent in Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa and is caused by several species of parasites that are transmitted by the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. It causes severe fatigue, fever, headaches, and chills and can be fatal. When it is treated with the right medication, such as artemether-lumefantrine, it can be cured and the malaria parasites can be completely cleared from the body. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there were 241 million cases of malaria worldwide and 627,000 deaths in 2020. 

While the first malaria vaccines were approved and recommended in 2021, the mosquitoes that carry malaria are becoming more resistant to insecticides. 

“Over the past two decades, mosquitoes have become strongly resistant to most insecticides,” study co-author and University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) evolutionary biologist Colince Kamdem said in a statement. “It’s a race now to develop alternative compounds with new modes of action.”

Before coming to UTEP, Kamdem worked at Cameroon’s Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases, where he first saw soap’s potential potency during some routine insecticide testing. A special class of insecticide called neonicotinoids have shown to be a potential alternative that targets the mosquito populations that show resistance to current insecticides. However, they can have negative effects on bees if not used carefully and neonicotinoids do not kill some mosquito species unless their potency is boosted. 

World Health Organization protocols recommend adding a seed-oil based product to insecticides to test a mosquito’s susceptibility. When the compound was added, Kamdem noticed that it was more effective than when the insecticide was used on its own.

“That compound belongs to the same class of substances as kitchen soap,” Kamdem said. “We thought, ‘Why don’t we test products that have same properties?’”

The team selected three inexpensive, linseed-oil based soaps that are readily available in sub-Saharan African countries. They added the soaps to four different neonicotinoids. In every case, the potency was increased. 

[Related: Mosquitoes are becoming resistant to our best defenses.]

“All three brands of soap increase mortality from 30 percent to 100 percent compared to when the insecticides were used on their own,” study co-author Ashu Fred said in a statement. Fred is a PhD student at the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon. 

They also tested a class of insecticides called pyrethroids. This class did not see the added benefits of the boost from soap. They hope to conduct additional testing to see exactly how much soap is needed to enhance insecticides. 

“We would love to make a soap-insecticide formulation that can be used indoors in Africa and be healthy for users,” Kamdem said. “There are unknowns as to whether such a formulation will stick to materials like mosquito nets, but the challenge is both promising and very exciting.”

Malaria was once endemic in the US, but was eradicated by the 1970s. However, the CDC issued a health advisory in June after at least four people in Florida and one in Texas contracted homegrown cases of malaria. The disease is most common in warm climates and some scientists worry that as global temperatures continue to rise, more regions will be affected by malaria. A 2022 study published in Nature found that climate change can exacerbate a full 58 percent of the infectious diseases that humans come in contact with worldwide.

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Today, the United Kingdom became the first country to give regulatory approval to a medical procedure that uses CRISPR gene editing. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approved Casgevy, a therapy that will be used to treat sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia (also called β -thalassaemia). 

[Related: CRISPR breaks ground as a one-shot treatment for a rare disease.]

What are sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia? 

Both diseases are painful, life-long genetic conditions that are caused by errors in the genes for a protein called hemoglobin. Red blood cells use hemoglobin to carry oxygen around the body. Sickle cell disease is particularly common among people with Caribbean or African ancestry. The abnormal hemoglobin makes the blood cells crescent-shaped and hard. The misshapen cells then clump together and block the flow of oxygen to the organs, which causes extreme pain. The cells can then die off early, which leads to anemia. 

Beta thalassemia primarily affects patients with Mediterranean, south Asian, southeast Asian, and Middle Eastern backgrounds. It also causes anemia since the mody cannot make as much hemoglobin.  

Casgevy was developed by Boston’s Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Switzerland’s Crispr Therapeutics and could be used to replace bone marrow transplants. The companies estimate that roughly 2,000 people in the UK are now eligible for the therapy.

“I am pleased to announce that we have authorized an innovative and first-of-its-kind gene-editing treatment called Casgevy, which in trials has been found to restore healthy hemoglobin production in the majority of participants with sickle-cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta thalassaemia, relieving the symptoms of disease,” interim executive director of healthcare quality and access at the MHRA Julian Beach said in a statement. 

How does Casgey use CRISPR gene editing?

The new treatment uses the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique, which enables scientists to make precise alterations to human DNA. French microbiologist, geneticist and biochemist Emmanuelle Charpentier and American biochemist Jennifer A. Doudna, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work. 

Casgevy uses stem cells taken from a patient’s bone marrow. The cells are then brought into a lab and the genes that are meant to switch on a functioning version of hemoglobin are edited with CRISPR. According to the MHRA, patients must then go through a “conditioning treatment.” This can involve taking a drug that suppresses the immune system, radiotherapy, or chemotherapy to get the body ready for an infusion of CRISPR-modified cells back into the body. The new treatment does not come with the risk of graft versus host disease the way that a traditional bone marrow transplant does.

[Related: These organisms have a natural gene-editing system that could be more useful than CRISPR.]

After the infusion, patients may need to remain in a hospital facility for at least a month. During this time, the treated cells will begin to “take up residence” in the bone marrow and make red blood cells that have a stable form of hemoglobin.

While seeking regulatory approval, the researchers performed a clinical trial of 45 patients with sickle-cell disease. Of this group, 29 patients have been in the trial long enough for the researchers to gauge how effective Casgevy is. Of these eligible patients, 28 were free of severe pain crises for at least 12 months after treatment.  

In the clinical trial of 54 patients with transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia, 42 patients have been in the trial long enough to determine efficacy. Of these, 39 did not require a red blood cell transfusion for at least 12 months after the treatment. The remaining three had more than a 70 percent reduction in the need for red cell transfusions. 

“This is a great step in the advancement of medical approaches to tackle genetic diseases we never thought would be possible to cure,” University of Hertfordshire geneticist Alena Pance said a statement released by the Science Media Centre. “Modifying the stem cells from the bone marrow of the patient avoids the problems associated with immune compatibility, i.e. searching for donors that match the patient and following immunosuppression, and constituting a real cure of the disease rather than a treatment.”

The United States Food and Drug Administration is evaluating this same treatment. On October 31, an advisory committee to the FDA said that treatment was safe for patients. It is expected to make a decision by December 8. 

A price for the therapy has not been announced, but it will likely be expensive. 

Previously

Despite its potential for good, CRISPR has been tainted with controversy and ripe for debate over the fear of being able to pick and choose genes for so-called “designer babies.” In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced that he had created the first gene-edited babies in the world. He was found guilty of conducting “illegal medical practices” and sentenced to 3 years in prison. This work furthered the debate of how to best regulate this powerful technique, with many saying that it shouldn’t be used to edit human genes that will be passed down to the next generation. 

Other experiments and trials with using the gene editing technique on rare diseases have continued. In 2021, a clinical trial for a drug called NTLA-2001 began, researchers attempted to treat six people with a rare genetic disease called transthyretin amyloidosis with a technology that delivers CRISPR directly to cells in the liver. The FDA cleared the trial to enter its critical third phase in October.

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Cooperation between different groups of humans lies at the root of our social norms, traditions, and culture. Groups of a great ape species called bonobos may also work collaboratively with other cliques, according to a study published November 16 in the journal Science.

[Related: Bonobo ladies get to choose their mates and boy oh boy are they picky.]

Along with chimpanzees, bonobos are some of our closest living relatives. Studying their relationships can help scientists reconstruct what human traits appear to be more innate and how they evolve. However, both species of primate exhibit different levels of cooperation despite living in similar social groups that have multiple adult members of both sexes. 

Chimpanzees appear to have more hostile relationships between different groups. Even lethal aggression is not uncommon. This hostility has led researchers to assume that group conflict is an innate part of human nature. 

Bonobos might be telling a different story about how social structures and communities have evolved over time. 

“The ability to study how cooperation emerges in a species so closely related to humans challenges existing theory, or at least provides insights into the conditions that promote between-group cooperation over conflict,’ study co-author and German Primate Center evolutionary biologist Liran Samuni said in a statement.

The study looked at two groups of 31 wild adult bonobos in the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo over a period of two years. When the different groups of bonobos met up, they often fed, rested, and traveled together. 

“Tracking and observing multiple groups of bonobos in Kokolopori, we’re struck by the remarkable levels of tolerance between members of different groups,” Samuni said. “This tolerance paves the way for pro-social cooperative behaviors such as forming alliances and sharing food across groups, a stark contrast to what we see in chimpanzees.” 

The authors also did not observe disputes that led to the lethal aggression that has been observed in chimpanzees. The bonobos did not not interact randomly between groups. Cooperation only happened among a select few group members. 

“They preferentially interact with specific members of other groups who are more likely to return the favor, resulting in strong ties between pro-social individuals,” study co-author and Harvard University evolutionary biologist Martin Surbeck said in a statement. “Such connections are also key aspects of the cooperation seen in human societies. Bonobos show us that the ability to maintain peaceful between-group relationships while extending acts of pro-sociality and cooperation to out-group members is not uniquely human.”

[Related: Humans owe our evolutionary success to friendship.]

Cooperation between human groups leads to exchanges of ideas, knowledge, innovation, and resources. The Bonobos in the study also shared food resources across groups without any strong cultural influence. The authors believe that this challenges another existing idea that a shared culture and traits are necessary components for groups to cooperate with one another. 

The study also highlights the importance of collaboration when studying bonobos that live in remote and largely inaccessible parts of the preserve. 

“It is through strong collaborations with and the support of the local Mongandu population in Kokolopori, in whose ancestral forest the bonobos roam, that studies of this fascinating species become possible,” said Subeck, who directs research in the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve. “Research sites like Kokolopori substantially contribute not only to our understanding of the species’ biology and our evolutionary history, but also play a vital role in the conservation of this endangered species.”

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New research from Oxford University and the University of Adelaide found that asbestos exposure has led to a higher incidence of asbestos-related lung cancers in British and Australian naval personnel. The study published November 14 in the journal Scientific Reports estimates that the proportion of lung cancers related to onboard asbestos exposure was 27 percent in Australian naval personnel and 12 percent in British servicemembers.

[Related: The US never banned asbestos. These workers are paying the price.]

Toxic exposure

This study is a reminder of the continuing need for protections against exposure to harmful airborne dusts and other dangerous substances from sources like toxic burn pits. According to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, nearly 300,000 United States veterans have reported exposure to pollution from burn pits since the early 2000s. The chemical pollutants that were released during these burns include volatile organic compounds associated with cancer, kidney disease, and nervous system damage. In August 2022, President Joe Biden signed the PACT Act into law to address the health concerns related to burn pits like these.

Illnesses related to asbestos exposure persist, despite the mineral being a known carcinogen. Asbestos has been used in a wide variety of building materials for their strength, flexibility, and electrical and heat resistant properties. Breathing it in can cause mesothelioma, lung cancer, and a non-cancerous condition called asbestosis. About 1,290 Americans die annually from asbestos-related causes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Australia currently has a ban and strict control on asbestos-containing materials, they still pose a risk to some workers. A 2021-2022 New South Wales Dust Disease Register report found that there were 142 cases of asbestosis and 111 deaths related to the illness. 

In the United States, asbestos use is not completely banned. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed another ban in April of 2022 that has yet to be finalized. 

An increased risk to sailors

For this study, researchers collected data from 30,085 United Kingdom and Australian personnel who served during the 1950s and 1960s. During this time period, asbestos-containing materials were still present in British and Australian naval vessels. Earlier studies of one Australian and two British cohorts also involved in this new research found that increased rates of lung cancer could not be attributed to radiation exposure from nuclear testing. The team used a separate study of Australian Korean War veterans as a comparison in this new research.

The team found that all four cohorts had an elevated incidence of mesothelioma among naval veterans. This same rate was not not statistically significant among sailors from the Korean War. British and Australian personnel involved in nuclear testing also saw higher rates of lung cancers.

Additionally, the rates of pulmonary disease and heart disease were similar between naval and army personnel. This suggests that smoking was not driving higher lung cancer rates among sailors.

[Related: The PACT Act will take the burden of proof off US veterans exposed to burn pits.]

“We found the lung cancer rate was higher overall in naval personnel than in the other armed services, and, while smoking remains the dominant cause of lung cancer, it is unlikely the excess could be explained by a higher smoking rate in the navy,” study co-author and University of Adelaide medical doctor Richard Gun said in a statement.  “Although actual measurements of airborne asbestos levels were not available, and estimates are difficult, we have concluded that the higher lung cancer rate in sailors was most probably caused by onboard asbestos exposure.”

The high occurrence of deaths in sailors from asbestosis also strengthened the team’s conclusion. The team believes that the effects of asbestos exposure are likely underestimated, unless lung cancer is considered alongside mesothelioma and asbestosis.

“Although it remains true that smoking causes most lung cancers, other agents such as asbestos can contribute to the incidence of cancer in an exposed population,” Gun said. “Moreover, we know from other studies that the combination of smoking and asbestos exposure has an enhanced influence on lung cancer risk; this interactive effect would have contributed to the observed lung cancer excess.”

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Like jellyfish, fungi, sea worms, and fireflies, some species of sea cucumbers glow in the dark. A team of researchers from Nagoya University in Japan have found that 10 known deep-sea species are bioluminescent in their natural habitats. The findings are part of a new textbook called The World of Sea Cucumber published on November 10.

[Related: The deepest known ocean virus lives under 29,000 feet of water.]

There are roughly 1,200 species of sea cucumbers. These marine invertebrates are found in every ocean on Earth, but they are best represented in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean. They generally live in shallow waters, but some species live at depths of thousands of feet deep. Most closely related to sea urchins, sea stars (aka starfish), sea lilies, and sand dollars, these bottom-dwellers range from as small as one inch long up to six feet. Some sea cucumbers are also known to shoot out a tangle of sticky, noodle-like goo from their butts when provoked. 

The new textbook takes readers deep underwater and discusses the bioluminescent properties of some of these sea cucumbers. According to NOAA, the light emitted by bioluminescent animals is produced by energy released from interior chemical reactions that are sometimes ejected from the organism. Its function is still a mystery, but it is generally used to ward off or evade predators, find food, or as a form of communication. 

The authors drew on previous sea cucumber research to highlight the differences between the shallow-dwelling and a bit more drab species and their brilliantly glowing deep-sea relatives. The book also shows the evolution of sea cucumbers from the Jurassic era roughly 180 million years ago up to the present day. 

To uncover the 10 bioluminescent sea cucumber species, the team deployed a remotely operated vehicle about 3,280 feet below the surface of Monterey Bay, California. The vehicle was equipped with a very sensitive and an arm that was robotically controlled from the ship. Unlike the more uniform bioluminescence seen in specimens taken onto ships, the light was shining from the sea cucumber’s head to tail and then back up similar to a wave.  

According to the authors, the previously unknown luminosity in these 10 deep-sea species suggests that sea cucumbers are more diverse than scientists once believed. A member of the order Molpadia is included in this discovery, which was previously believed to be a non-luminescent order of animals. 

While these sea cucumbers dwell in some of Earth’s deepest parts, they are still not immune to the effects of overfishing and particularly the drilling and mining activities that threaten their ecosystem. 

[Related: This headless chicken is the deep-sea ‘monster’ of our dreams.]

“As deep-sea exploration and development continue, information on their biodiversity and ecology, such as this book, becomes important as it allows us to assess the impact of human activities on deep-sea ecosystems,” textbook co-author and Nagoya University biochemist Manabu Bessho-Uehara said in a statement. “Heavy metal pollution from the mud discarded during drilling operations and motor-derived noise disrupting sound communication are important problems, but the effects on organisms when bioluminescence signals are disturbed, such as when light is obscured by drilling mud, have not been examined. It is necessary to clarify the importance of bioluminescence on the deep-sea floor and find measures that will lead to sustainable development.”

Studying the flora and fauna living in these extreme locations can also provide valuable knowledge of all life on Earth. It can help us discover new viruses that thrive in hydrothermal vents and the factors at play in Earth’s climate and carbon cycle. 

“I believe that understanding deep-sea ecosystems and interactions among organisms will lead to a better understanding of life on Earth itself,” said Bessho-Uehara.

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Piping plovers are showing signs of recovery from major population losses in the state of Massachusetts. They’re listed as threatened in Massachusetts, due to habitat loss from increasing human impacts. According to Mass Audubon, they’ve identified roughly 1,145 breeding pairs nesting in the state this year. When the organization first started to monitor and protect the species in 1986, there were less than 200 breeding pairs in the Bay State. That’s a 500 percent increase in three decades.

[Related: Remembering Monty and Rose, the Chicago shorebirds that became the face of a movement.]

“While Piping Plovers remain a federally threatened species, this season’s data shows that these iconic birds are making real progress toward recovery in Massachusetts,” Mass Audubon officials wrote in a statement. “Massachusetts Piping Plover populations have recovered at a faster rate than those of most other states along the Atlantic Seaboard. As a result, approximately 50% of Piping Plovers worldwide now nest in Massachusetts. That makes coastal conservation even more important in our state—we’re responsible for safeguarding a huge portion of this threatened species’ worldwide population.”

Piping plovers are small migratory shorebirds that nest in sand and gravel beaches and mudflats across North America. There are three main populations of the endangered birds. One lives along the shores of the Great Lakes, one in the lakes and rivers of the Northern Great Plains, and another along the Atlantic coast. These roughly six to seven inch tall birds eat marine mollusks, beetles, worms, fly larvae, crustaceans, and other small marine animals. Piping plovers have a tendency to run for a short distance, stop, and then tilt forward to pull an insect or worm up from the sand. Raccoons, skunks, and foxes are their primary natural predators. 

Their main threat is habitat loss. According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, human development on beaches has reduced the amount of suitable areas for the birds to spend the winter months. Disturbance by humans and domestic animals like cats and dogs can also force migrating and wintering birds to expend unnecessary energy, which can lead breeding plovers to abandon their nests and young.

They have been listed as endangered or threatened since 1985 and piping plovers living in other states are also seeing some success and cautious optimism.  

In Maine, breeding pairs increased for the sixth consecutive year. Maine Audubon saw 157 breeding pairs in 2023, with some new nesting areas. However, the chick survival rate was the lowest since 2007.

[Related: Endangered sea turtles build hundreds of nests on the Outer Banks.]

“When monitoring an endangered species population, it is always good to proceed with caution. Despite an increase in our breeding pairs, the low fledge rate we saw this summer could be a cause for concern,” Maine Audubon wrote in a press release. “Piping Plovers migrate as far south as Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean for the winter, then have to make the trek all the way back up to Maine for the breeding season. A lot of variables are at play that are in nature’s hands during these long migrations.”

In the Midwest, 80 unique breeding pairs were counted across all five Great Lakes with a total of 85 nests. There are eight more pairs than 2022 and and the most since the species was first added to the federal Endangered Species List. Scientists with the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa in High Island, Michigan have been monitoring the island’s plovers as they nest and fledge for two decades. 

“This is the best year that we’ve had for monitoring as far as the total number of adults observed and the number of nests and chicks produced,” Bill Parsons, a scientist in the tribe’s natural resources department, told MLive in August. “We’ve definitely, over that 20 years, seen that the population is slowly, incrementally successful, but we’re nowhere near the target for rehabilitation of the population.”

Some general ways to help protect piping plovers include reporting nest locations to state or federal wildlife officials, keeping dogs on a leash during walks to protect nests, and leaving any driftwood or algae found on beaches for the birds. 

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A team using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has observed two of the most distant galaxies astronomers have ever seen. At close to 33 billion light years away from Earth, these distant regions can offer insight into how the universe’s earliest galaxies may have formed. The findings are detailed in a study published November 13 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[Related: ‘Christmas tree’ galaxy shines in new image from Hubble and JWST.]

The galaxies UNCOVER z-13 and UNCOVER z-12 are the second and fourth most distant galaxies ever observed and are located in a region called Pandora’s Cluster (Abell 2744). The two galaxies are among the 60,000 sources of light in Pandora’s Cluster that were captured in some of the first deep field images the JWST took in 2022. This region of space was selected for this kind of imaging due to its location behind several galaxy clusters. The light creates a natural magnification effect called gravitational lensing. This happens when the gravitational pull of the clusters’ combined mass warps the space-time around it. It then magnifies any light that passes nearby and offers a larger view behind the clusters.

Other galaxies confirmed at this distance generally appear in images as red dots. However, these new galaxies are larger and look more like a peanut and a fluffy ball, according to the team.

“Very little is known about the early universe, and the only way to learn about that time and to test our theories of early galaxy formation and growth is with these very distant galaxies,” study co-author and astronomer Bingjie Wang from Penn State University said in a statement. “Prior to our analysis, we knew of only three galaxies confirmed at around this extreme distance. Studying these new galaxies and their properties has revealed the diversity of galaxies in the early universe and how much there is to be learned from them.” 

Wang is also a member of the JWST UNCOVER (Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam ObserVations before the Epoch of Reionization) team that conducted this research. UNCOVER’s early goal is to obtain highly detailed images of the region around Pandora’s Cluster using JWST.

Since the light that is emitted from these galaxies had to travel for so long to reach Earth, it offers a window into the universe’s past. The team estimates that the light JWST detected was emitted by the two galaxies when the universe was about 330 million years old and that it traveled for about 13.4 billion light years to reach the space telescopes. 

However, the galaxies are currently closer to 33 billion light years away from Earth because of the expansion of the universe over this period of time. 

“The light from these galaxies is ancient, about three times older than the Earth,” study co-author, Penn State astronomer, and UNCOVER member Joel Leja said in a statement.  “These early galaxies are like beacons, with light bursting through the very thin hydrogen gas that made up the early universe. It is only by their light that we can begin to understand the exotic physics that governed the galaxy near the cosmic dawn.”

[Related: JWST takes a jab at the mystery of the universe’s expansion rate.]

The two galaxies are also considerably bigger than the three galaxies previously located at these extreme distances. While our Milky Way galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years across, galaxies in the early universe are believed to have been very compressed. A galaxy of 2,000 light years across like one of ones the team imaged came as a surprise.

“Previously discovered galaxies at these distances are point sources—they appear as a dot in our images,” Wang said. “But one of ours appears elongated, almost like a peanut, and the other looks like a fluffy ball. It is unclear if the difference in size is due to how the stars formed or what happened to them after they formed, but the diversity in the galaxy properties is really interesting. These early galaxies are expected to have formed out of similar materials, but already they are showing signs of being very different than one another.”

To make inferences about these early galaxies, the team used detailed models. They believed that in addition to being young (by space standards), the two galaxies also had few metals in their composition, and were growing rapidly and actively forming stars. 

“The first elements were forged in the cores of early stars through the process of fusion,” Leja said. “It makes sense that these early galaxies don’t have heavy elements like metals because they were some of the first factories to build those heavy elements. And, of course, they would have to be young and star-forming to be the first galaxies, but confirming these properties is an important basic test of our models and helps confirm the whole paradigm of the Big Bang theory.”

Astronomers will continue to use lensing clusters and the instruments aboard the JWST to continue to peel back the timeline of some of the universe’s first galaxies.  

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For the first time in over 60 years, a rare egg-laying mammal has been spotted by scientists. Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi) was caught on camera during a major expedition in the Cyclops Mountains in Indonesia’s Papua Province.

[Related: Dams are hurting this enigmatic Australian species.]

A sacred animal

The long-beaked echidna is named for wildlife documentarian and conservationist Sir David Attenborough and has only been recorded by scientists once in 1961. It is considered a monotreme, or an evolutionary distinct group of mammals who can lay eggs. The platypus is also a monotreme and there are only five remaining species of these strange types of mammal on Earth. 

They live in burrows and mainly eat insects, earthworms, and termites. They are listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and are only known to live in the Cyclops Mountains.

“Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna has the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater, and the feet of a mole. Because of its hybrid appearance, it shares its name with a creature of Greek mythology that is half human, half serpent,” University of Oxford biologist James Kempton said in a statement. “The reason it appears so unlike other mammals is because it is a member of the monotremes–an egg-laying group that separated from the rest of the mammal tree-of-life about 200 million years ago.”

The echidna also has cultural significance for the people in the village of Yongsu Sapari. They have lived on the northern slopes of the Cyclops Mountains for eighteen generations. Rather than fighting during conflicts, the tradition is for one party to go up into the Cyclops to find echidna while the other party goes to the ocean to search for a marlin. Both of these creatures were difficult to find and it would take decades to even whole generations to locate them. However, once they were found, the marlin and echidna would symbolize the end of the conflict.

Finding echidnas, whip scorpions, and forest shrimp

During an expedition that began in 2019, a group of scientists from institutions in multiple countries set up over 80 trail cameras. They did not see any signs of the echidna for four weeks of trekking through a “beautiful but dangerous land.” A sudden earthquake forced the team to evacuate, one team member broke his arm in two places, another contracted malaria, and another had a leech attached to his eye for a day and a half.

[Related: Meet the first electric blue tarantula known to science.]

On the last day of the expedition, they finally spotted Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna. The identification of the species was later confirmed by mammalogist Kristofer Helgen from the Australian Museum Research Institute.

In addition to this elusive egg-laying mammal, this expedition marked the first comprehensive assessment of mammal, reptile, amphibian, and invertebrate life in the Cyclops Mountains. They combined Western scientific techniques with the extensive local knowledge of Papuan team members. Among the new discoveries are several insect species that are completely new to science and an entirely new genus of ground and tree-dwelling shrimp.

“We were quite shocked to discover this shrimp in the heart of the forest, because it is a remarkable departure from the typical seaside habitat for these animals,” entomologist  Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History said in a statement. “We believe that the high level of rainfall in the Cyclops Mountains means the humidity is great enough for these creatures to live entirely on land.”

Some other funky underground species including blind spiders, blind harvestman, and a whip scorpion were also found living in a previously unexplored cave system. The team hope that its rediscovery of Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna and all of these new species will help bring attention to the conservation needs of the Cyclops Mountains and Indonesian New Guinea.

CORRECTION November 19, 2023 3:55 PM EST: An earlier version of the article summary said the animal was named after Richard Attenborough. Zaglossus attenboroughi is named for Sir David Attenborough. We regret the error.

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Two of the most powerful space telescopes in the universe have joined forces to showcase a panorama of colorful galaxy clusters about 4.3 billion light-years away from Earth. The image of  galaxy cluster MACS0416 is from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Hubble Space Telescope and combines both visible and infrared light. 

[Related: Euclid telescope spies shimmering stars and galaxies in its first look at the ‘dark’ universe.]

According to NASA, MACS0416 is a pair of colliding galaxy clusters that will eventually combine to form an even bigger cluster. It includes numerous galaxies outside of the cluster and some other light sources that vary over time. The variation is likely due to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, where light is distorted and amplified from distant background sources.

Color coding

In the image, different colors represent the varying wavelengths of light. The shortest are blue, the intermediate are green, and the longest are red. The wavelengths range from 0.4 to 5 microns and the variation creates a particularly vivid landscape of galaxies.

The colors also give clues to how far away the galaxies are. The bluest galaxies are relatively close, tend to show intense star formation, and are best detected by Hubble. The more red galaxies tend to be further away and are best spotted by JWST. Some of the galaxies also appear very red because they have a large amount of cosmic dust that tends to absorb bluer colors of starlight.

“The whole picture doesn’t become clear until you combine Webb data with Hubble data,” Rogier Windhorst said in a statement. Windhorst is an astronomer at Arizona State University and principal investigator of the PEARLS program (Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science), which took the JWST observations.

Oh Christmas tree

While the images are pleasant to look like, they were also taken for a specific scientific purpose. The team was using their data to search for objects varying in observed brightness over time, known as transients. All of these colors twinkling together in the galaxy look like shining colorful lights on a Christmas tree. 

“We’re calling MACS0416 the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster, both because it’s so colorful and because of these flickering lights we find within it. We can see transients everywhere,” said astronomer Haojing Yan of the University of Missouri in Columbia said in a statement. Yan is a co-author of one paper describing the scientific results published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The team identified 14 transients across the field of view. Twelve of the transients were located in three galaxies that are highly magnified by gravitational lensing. This means that they are likely to be individual stars or multiple-star systems that are very highly magnified for a short period of time. The other two transients are located within more moderately magnified background galaxies, so they are likely to be supernovae.

More observations with JWST could lead to finding numerous additional transients and in other similar galaxy clusters. 

Godzilla and Mothra 

One of the transients stood out in particular. The star system is located in a galaxy that existed roughly three billion years after the big bang and is magnified by a factor of at least 4,000. They nicknamed the star system Mothra in a nod to its “monster nature” of being both very bright and magnified. Mothra joins another lensed star the researchers previously identified that they nicknamed “Godzilla.” In Japanese cinema, Godzilla and Mothra are giant monsters known as kaiju.

In addition to the new JWST images, Mothra is also visible in the Hubble observations that were taken nine years ago. According to the team, this is unusual, because a very specific alignment between the foreground galaxy cluster and the background star is needed to magnify a star this much. The alignment should have been eliminated by the mutual motions of the star and the cluster.

An additional object within the foreground cluster could be adding more magnification. 

“The most likely explanation is a globular star cluster that’s too faint for Webb to see directly,” astronomer Jose Diego of the Instituto de Física de Cantabria in Spain said in a statement. “But we don’t know the true nature of this additional lens yet.” Diego is also a co-author of a paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics that details this finding. 

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Researchers in Denmark have discovered six new species of beetle, including one with some eye-opening genitalia. Loncovilius carlsbergi has a penis shaped like a bottle opener. The top looks like the protruding longer part of a bottle opener that latches onto the bottle cap, and the bottom resembles the pincer that holds the bottle in place. The specimen is described in a study published October 28 in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

[Related: Acrobatic beetle bots could inspire the latest ‘leap’ in agriculture.]

While the team from the Natural History Museum of Denmark still not sure why Loncovilius carlsbergi evolved this uniquely shaped penis, studying them can reveal the role that the genitals play in the bugs’ daily lives. 

“Genitalia are the organs in insects that evolve to be different in every species. As such, they are often the best way to identify a species,” study co-author and biologist Aslak Kappel Hansen said in a statement. “That’s why entomologists like us are always quick to examine insect genitalia when describing a species. The unique shape of each species’ genitals ensures that it can only reproduce with the same species.”

Aslak and his colleagues found and named six new species in the rove beetle genus Loncovilius that had been hidden within the insect collections at the museum. Loncovilius carlsbergi was named for the Carlsberg Foundation, which has funded research at the museum for years. Carlsberg is a popular 176-year-old Danish beer company.

Loncovilius beetles are only found in Chile and Argentina and entomologists don’t know too much about them. They are less than an inch long and all of their legs have sticky bristles on them, while other predatory rove beetles only have sticky front legs. 

Where Loncovilius beetles live make them special among this family of beetles. Most predatory rove beetles live on the ground, among dead leaves, fungi, and bark. Loncovilius beetles live on flowers. The authors believe that their sticky legs helped them adapt the ability to climb flowers and vegetation.

“We suspect that they play an important role in the ecosystem. So, it’s worrying that nearly nothing is known about this type of beetles, especially when they’re so easy to spot–and some of them are even quite beautiful,” study co-author and systematic entomologist Josh Jenkins Shaw said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we can easily lose species like these before they’re ever discovered.”

The forces of climate change, pollution, and habitat loss is exacerbating the Earth’s biodiversity crisis. These combined forces have threatened over one million plant and animal species with extinction, a rate of loss that is 1,000 times greater than previously expected. The team believes that this crisis will likely affect these newly discovered beetles as well.

[Related: A pocketful of bacteria helps these beetles through their most dramatic life changes.]

“Loncovilius populations are likely to change in coming decades. Our simulations demonstrate that at least three of the Loncovilius species are at risk because the rapidly changing climate strongly alters more than half of their habitat area by 2060,” study co-author and PhD student José L. Reyes-Hernández said in a statement. “It is important to stress that many more species will be affected by this change, but we don’t know how because only for four species we had enough data for our analysis.” 

The planet’s species are also going extinct faster than scientists can fully name and describe them. Some estimates place the number of species lost from the Earth every day at upwards of 150. According to Jenkins Shaw, as many as 85 percent of all species on the planet are still not formally named or described. 

“A taxonomic name is important because nature conservation relies on knowledge about species in particular areas. Without such a description, species are often left out of conservation efforts,” said Jenkins Shaw.

The authors hope that Loncovilius carlsbergi’s attention-grabbing genitals could spark broader interest in insects. They are also working on producing an actual bottle opener shaped like this beetle’s penis into production. 

“It’s important that we recognize the vast wealth of yet to be researched species around us before it’s too late. We would like for people around the world to talk about the crisis facing our planet’s species. A move towards serious learning and awareness may be sparkled by a light chat that takes place over a beer,” said Kappel Hansen.

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Hummingbirds are some of the world’s fastest birds and must frequently squeeze through tiny spaces in plants to get to the nectar that they need to keep up their energy. However, over time, they have lost their ability to fold their wings close to their bodies at the wrist and elbow like other birds. How hummingbirds squeeze into such tight spaces has remained a mystery to ornithologists until now. A study published November 9 in the Journal of Experimental Biology found that they deploy two very specific strategies: the sideways and the bullet.

[Related: This hybrid hummingbird’s colorful feathers are a genetic puzzle.]

Into the flight arena

The study focused on Anna’s hummingbirds (Calypte anna). These are among the most common hummingbirds living along the West Coast of the United States. They are about the size of a ping-pong ball and have iridescent emerald feathers and sparkling pink throat plumage. 

A team from the University of California, Berkeley designed a two-sided flight arena for the experiment. They used alternating rewards to train the hummingbird to fly through a 2.48 square inch gap in the partition that separated the two sides of the arena. To do so, they only refilled a feeder shaped like a flower with a sip of sugar water if the bird returned to the feeder that was on the other side through one of the gaps. This encouraged the birds with an only 4.7 inch-wide wingspan to flit around the arena. 

The team then replaced the gap between the two sides of the flight arena with a series of smaller oval and circular openings that ranged from 4.7 inches to only 2.3 inches in height, width, and diameter. The birds’ movements were recorded using high-speed cameras, to get a sense of how they negotiated the various openings. 

Next, the team wrote a computer program to methodically track the position of each bird’s bill as it approached and passed through each hole. The program also pinpointed where the hummingbird’s wing tips were, to calculate their wing positions as they transited through.

[Related: These female hummingbirds don flashy male feathers to avoid unwanted harassment.]

The experiment revealed that the hummingbirds used two unique strategies to negotiate the gaps. 

The sideways

In the first strategy, the hummingbirds approached the circular opening and usually hovered in front of it to assess its size. They then traveled through it sideways, reaching forward with one wing and sweeping the second wing back, similar to the shape of a cross. Their wings were still fluttering to fly through the door and then swiveled forward to continue on their way. 

The bullet

For the second strategy, the birds swept their wings backwards, pinning them to their bodies. They then quickly shot through the opening beak first like a bullet, before sweeping their wings forward. They resumed flapping their wings once they were safely through the circle. All of the hummingbirds in the study generally deployed this technique as they grew bolder and more familiar with the arena.

Changing tactics

The team observed that the hummingbirds who used the first strategy of sideways traveling tended to fly more cautiously than those that shot through the circles beak first. As the birds became more familiar with the openings after multiple approaches, they appeared to become more confident. They started to approach them quicker and dropped the more sideways way of getting through in favor of shooting through beak first. 

For the smallest opening–only half a wingspan wide–every bird zipped through facing forward with their wings back. Even the more cautious birds did this on their first attempt to avoid collisions. 

According to the team, about eight percent of the birds in the experiment clipped their wings as they passed through the partition and only one experienced a major collision. The bird who did experience the collision was able to successfully reattempting the move and continue flying.  

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On November 8, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a Type 2 diabetes drug called tirzepatide for use in chronic weight management. It has been sold under the brand name Mounjaro for treating diabetes, but it will be called Zepbound when prescribed for weight loss. The drug is made by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and doses should be available after Thanksgiving.

[Related: 6 Ozempic facts that make sense of social media hype.]

How Zepbound works

The medicine is a weekly injectable medication and the main ingredient is called tirzepatide. It mimics two hormones called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP). Both are naturally produced in the body and the drug targets receptors in the brain for these hormones.

Both GIP and GLP-1 bind to receptors in the brain that tell the body it is full. GLP-1 also slows digestion to make people feel fuller longer and with smaller portions. American Board of Obesity Medicine medical director Kimberly Gudzune told The Washington Post that GLP-1 targets the receptors in the brain that decrease appetite and it slows digestion to make people feel fuller longer and with smaller portions. Additionally, GLP-1 increases the amount of insulin that the pancreas releases after eating, which slows down the rise in blood sugar.

GIP meanwhile works in the brain to decrease appetite and may also improve how the body breaks down fats and sugars.

Who is eligible for Zepbound?

The FDA cleared Zepbound for adults 18 and older considered obese (a body mass index of at least) or overweight (a body mass index of 27 or more) with at least one weight-related health condition. The FDA also said that it should be taken with exercise and a reduced-calorie diet.

What is a ‘weight-related condition’?

Weight-related conditions are medical complications that can arise from being overweight or obese. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), they include high blood pressure (hypertension), high LDL cholesterol, high levels of triglycerides, and Type 2 diabetes. 

Roughly 70 percent of American adults are considered overweight or obese by body mass index, according to the FDA. However, body mass index (BMI) is an imperfect metric for measuring health that has been questioned by the American Medical Association. Losing five to 10 percent of body weight with diet and exercise has been associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease in adults who are overweight or obese

“Obesity and overweight are serious conditions that can be associated with some of the leading causes of death such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes,” director of the FDA’s Division of Diabetes, Lipid Disorders, and Obesity John Sharretts, said in a statement. “In light of increasing rates of both obesity and overweight in the United States, today’s approval addresses an unmet medical need.”

[Related: TikTokers are taking a diabetes drug to lose weight. Now it’s in short supply.]

How effective is Zepbound?

The FDA’s approval comes on the heels of a phase 3 clinical trial. All of the participants in the study had obesity or were overweight and had at least one weight-related condition.

At the highest dosage of tirzepatide (15 milligrams) participants saw an average weight loss 22.5 percent body weight, or about 52 pounds, over a period of 72 weeks. At a 10 mg dose, the average weight loss was about 21.4 percent (48 pounds). At only five milligrams, average weight loss was about 16 percent (35 pounds).

How does it compare to Ozempic or Wegovy?

Ozempic and Wegovy contain an ingredient called semaglutide. It works by suppressing the appetite by mimicking GLP-1, a hormone that signals to the brain that the stomach is full. In similar clinical trials, semaglutide has been shown to reduce body weight by roughly 15 percent (34 pounds) after 68 weeks.

By comparison, the tirzepatide in Mounjaro and Zepbound works on both the GLP-1 and GIP pathways.

While those taking tirzepatide lost more weight than those taking semaglutide in separate trials, the data is not comparable due to potential differences in study length and population. More data is needed that compares both drugs at the higher doses needed for weight-loss, so it is too early to say if one is more effective than the other.

[Related: Fatphobia and medical biases follow people after death.]

What are the potential side-effects?

In studies, the main side effects were gastrointestinal issues like nausea, vomiting, constipation, and diarrhea. The FDA says that Zepbound’s label will contain warnings for inflammation of the pancreas, gallbladder problems, low blood sugar, acute kidney injury, diabetic retinopathy, and suicidal behavior or thinking.

How much will Zepbound cost?

A one month supply of Zepbound is estimated to cost about $1,060. While it is less than Wegovy’s $1,300 price tag, both drugs may be too expensive for many that are eligible. Ozempic costs $936 per month before insurance.

Many insurance companies do not cover weight loss medication that is intended to treat Type 2 diabetes, but that could change with the FDA’s approval. Medicare and Medicaid are currently barred by law from covering weight loss medications. 

According to Eli Lilly, patients can sign up on its website for a copay, or a discount card program. The company also said that those who can get Zepbound through commercial insurance may pay as little as $25 for a one-month or three-month supply. It is unclear what will happen after that period as far as coast and weight staying off. Those who are commercially insured, but don’t have coverage for Zepbound, might be eligible to pay as little as $550 for a one-month prescription.

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For the first time, scientists have observed one virus attaching itself to another virus. An electron microscope captured the interaction in stunning detail and shows how these two different viruses may have co-evolved. The findings were published in the Journal of the International Society of Microbial Ecology on October 31. 

[Related: The deepest known ocean virus lives under 29,000 feet of water.]

The viruses in the study are both categorized as bacteriophages. These are a group of viruses that are known to infect bacteria. Bacteriophages also infect single-celled prokaryotic organisms known as archaea and are commonly called “phages.” 

Some viruses called satellites (shown in purple) depend on both their host organism and another virus known as a helper to complete its life cycle. The satellite virus depends on the helper virus to build the protective shell that covers its genetic material called a capsid or to help it replicate its DNA.  For this relationship to continue, the satellite and the helper must be close to one another for at least a little while, but there were no known cases of a satellite virus attaching to the helper until this discovery. 

“When I saw it, I was like, ‘I can’t believe this,’” study co-author and University of Maryland, Baltimore County biologist Tagide deCarvalho said in a statement. “No one has ever seen a bacteriophage—or any other virus—attach to another virus.”

The students who isolated the satellite nicknamed it the MiniFlayer and dubbed its helper the MindFlayer. The team saw this viral relationship between the satellite MiniFlayer and helper MindFlayer while looking at some samples of a family of bacteriophage satellites that infect Streptomyces bacteria. They initially believed that the samples had been contaminated due to the large sequences of DNA and some smaller sequences of DNA that didn’t match anything they were familiar with. 

They took detailed electron microscopy images that show 80 percent of helper viruses in this sample had a satellite bound at its “neck,” where the helper’s outer shell connects to its tail. The ones that did not still had remnant satellite tendrils at the neck that the team said looked like “bite marks.”

Next, they analyzed the genomes of the bacteriophages and bacterial hosts. The satellite viruses had genes that coded for their outer protein shell, but did not have the genes needed to multiply within bacterial cells. This evidence supported the idea that both types of bacteriophages were actually interacting with each other. 

[Related: Ask Us Anything: Can viruses be good for us?]

They also saw that the satellite viruses did not have a gene that is necessary for them to integrate into the genome of bacterial host cells after they have entered them. Since most of the satellite viruses can hide in the host’s DNA, they can replicate once the right helper comes along. According to the team, the satellite thus attaches to the helper using a unique adaptation at its tail, so that it can survive without this key gene.

 “Attaching now made total sense, because otherwise, how are you going to guarantee that you are going to enter into the cell at the same time? This satellite has been tuning in and optimizing its genome to be associated with the helper for, I would say, at least 100 million years,” co-author and  University of Maryland, Baltimore County computational biologist Ivan Erill said in a statement. 

As of now, this kind of relationship has only been observed in a laboratory setting. Understanding these long-term viral relationships could help scientists discover numerous other examples in nature. 

“It’s possible that a lot of the bacteriophages that people thought were contaminated were actually these satellite-helper systems,” said deCarvalho. “So now, with this paper, people might be able to recognize more of these systems.”

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While the majority of fish are cold-blooded and rely on the temperature outside of their bodies to regulate their internal temperatures, less than one percent of sharks are actually warm-blooded. The extinct but mighty megalodon and the living great white shark generate heat with their muscles the way many mammals do. However, they are not the only sharks with this warm quirk. A study published November 7 in the journal Biology Letters found that there are more warm blooded sharks than scientists initially believed. 

[Related: Megalodons were likely warm-blooded, despite being stone-cold killers.]

Warmer muscles might help these giant carnivores be more powerful and athletic, by using that heat to generate more energy. Regional endothermy in fish has been seen in apex predators like the great white or giant tuna, but there has been debate on when this warm bloodedness evolved in sharks and if the megalodon was warm blooded. A previous study from June 2023 found that the megalodon was warm blooded and that the amount of energy it used to stay warm may have contributed to its extinction about 3.6 million years ago.

The new study looked at the results of autopsies from some unexpected shark strandings in Ireland and southern England earlier in 2023. The sharks belonged to a rarely seen species called the smalltooth sand tiger shark. These sharks are found around the world in temperate and tropical seas and in deep waters (32 to 1,700 feet deep). They have a short and pointed snout, small eyes, protruding teeth, and small dorsal and anal fins and can reach about 15 feet long. Smalltooth sand tiger sharks are considered a “vulnerable” species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. While they are not targeted by commercial fisheries, the sharks may be mistakenly caught in nets and may face threats from pollution. 

Smalltooth sand tiger sharks are believed to have diverged from the megalodon at least 20 million years ago. The autopsies from this year’s stranded sharks unexpectedly served as a timeline that took marine biologists from institutions in Ireland, South Africa, and the United States back millions of years. 

The team found that these rare sharks have physical features that suggest they also have regional endothermy like the megalodon, great white, and some filter-feeding basking sharks. This new addition means that there are likely more warm-blooded sharks than scientists thought and that warm bloodedness evolved quite a long time ago.

“We think this is an important finding, because if sand tiger sharks have regional endothermy then it’s likely there are several other sharks out there that are also warm-bodied,” study co-author and marine biologist Nicholas Payne said in a statement. “We used to think regional endothermy was confined to apex predators like the great white and extinct megalodon, but now we have evidence that deep water ‘bottom dwelling’ sand tigers, and plankton-eating basking sharks also are warm bodied. This raises plenty of new questions as to why regional endothermy evolved, but it might also have important conservation implications.” Payne is affiliated with Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. 

[Related: Were dinosaurs warm-blooded or cold-blooded? Maybe both.]

Scientists believe that the megalodon’s warmer body allowed it to move faster, tolerate colder water, and spread all over the world’ oceans. However, this evolutionary advantage could have contributed to its downfall. The megalodon lived during the Pliocene Epoch (5.33 million years to 2.58 million years ago) when the world cooled and sea levels changed. These ecosystem changes and competition with newcomers in the marine environment like great whites may have led to its extinction. 

Understanding how extinct sharks met their end could help scientists gauge how today’s warm-blooded sharks could fare due to warmer ocean temperatures from human-caused climate change. It has potential conservation implications and could explain some shifting patterns of where sharks are foraging. 

“We believe changing environments in the deep past was a major contributor to the megalodon’s extinction, as we think it could no longer meet the energetic demands of being a large regional endotherm,” study co-author and Trinity College marine biologist Haley Dolton said in a statement. “We know the seas are warming at alarming rates again now and the smalltooth tiger that washed up in Ireland was the first one seen in these waters. That implies its range has shifted, potentially due to warming waters, so a few alarm bells are ringing.”   

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Reviled the world over for making our scalps itch and rapidly spreading in schools, lice have hitched their destiny to our hair follicles. They are the oldest known parasites that feed on the blood of humans, so learning more about lice can tell us quite a bit about our own species and migratory patterns. 

[Related: Ancient ivory comb shows that self-care is as old as time.]

A study published November 8 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE found that lice likely came into North America in two waves of migration. First when some humans potentially crossed a land bridge that connected Asia with present day Alaska roughly 16,000 years ago during the end of the last ice age and then again during European colonization. 

“In some ways, lice are like living fossils we carry around on our own heads,” study co-author Marina Ascunce, an evolutionary biologist with the United States Department of Agriculture, tells PopSci.  

Lice are wingless parasites that live their entire lives on their host and there are three known species that infest humans. Humans and lice have coevolved for thousands of years. The oldest louse specimen known to scientists is 10,000 years old and was found in Brazil in 2000. Since lice and humans have a very intertwined relationship, studying lice can offer clues into human migratory patterns.

“They went on this ride across the world with us. Yet, they are their own organism with some ability to move around on their own (e.g., from one head to another). It provides insight into what happened during our time together,” study co-author and mammal geneticist from the University of Florida David L. Reed tells PopSci. 

In this new study, a team of scientists from the United States, Mexico, and Argentina analyzed the genetic variation in 274 human lice uncovered from 25 geographic sites around the world. The analysis showed distinct clusters of lice that rarely interbreed and were found in different locations. Cluster I was found all over the world, while Cluster II was found in Europe and the Americas. The only lice that had ancestry from both clusters are found in the Americas. This distinct group of lice appears to be the result of a mixture between lice that were descended from populations that arrived with the people who crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America and those descended from European lice. 

Researchers found genetic evidence that head lice mirrored both the movement of people into the Americas from Asia and European colonization after Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the late 1400’s.

“Central American head lice harbored the Asian background associated with the foundation of the Americas, while South American lice had marks of the European arrival,” Ariel Toloza, a study co-author and insect toxicologist at Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnica (CONICET) in Argentina, tells PopSci. “We also detected a recent human migration from Europe to the Americas after WWII.” 

[Related: Rare parasites found in 200 million-year-old reptile poop.]

The evidence in this study supports the theory that the first people living in the Americas came from Asia between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago and moved south into Central and South America. However, other archaeological evidence like the 23,000 to 21,000 year-old White Sands footprints and Native American tradition suggests that humans were already living in the Americas before and during the last ice age. Some potentially 30,000-year-old stone tools were discovered in a cave in Central Mexico in 2020, which also questions the land bridge theory. 

The study also fills in some of lice’s evolutionary gaps and the team sequenced the louse full genome for future research. 

“The same louse DNA used for this first study was used to analyze their whole genomes and also more lice were collected, so in the next year or so, there will be new studies trying to answer our ongoing questions,” says Ascunce. 

Technological improvements can also now help scientists study include ancient DNA from lice that has been found in mummies or even from louse DNA recovered from ancient combs. The study also offers some lessons in studying animals that we may generally experience as a nuisance.

“The world is full of a lot of plants and animals that are reviled or despised,” says Reed. “You never fully [know] what role they play in the environment or what their true value might be. So, be curious and see what stories the lowliest of animals might have to tell.”

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On November 7, the European Space Agency (ESA) released the first five images taken with its premier Euclid space telescope. The images show spiral galaxies, star nurseries, and incredible celestial objects in incredibly sharp detail. 

[Related: Euclid space telescope begins its search through billions of galaxies for dark matter and energy.]

Perseus cluster of galaxies

IC 342 aka the ‘Hidden Galaxy’

Irregular galaxy NGC 6822

[Related: Your guide to the types of stars, from their dusty births to violent deaths.]

Globular cluster NGC 6397

The Horsehead Nebula

Dark matter and dark energy

In July, Euclid launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It’s on a mission of studying the mysterious influence of dark matter and dark energy on the universe and mapping one third of the extragalactic sky. According to the ESA, 95 percent of our cosmos appears to be made of these mysterious ‘dark’ entities. But we don’t understand what they are because their presence causes only very subtle changes in the appearance and motions of the things we can see.

“Dark matter pulls galaxies together and causes them to spin more rapidly than visible matter alone can account for; dark energy is driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Euclid will for the first-time allow cosmologists to study these competing dark mysteries together,” Carole Mundell, ESA Director of Science, said in a statement. “Euclid will make a leap in our understanding of the cosmos as a whole, and these exquisite Euclid images show that the mission is ready to help answer one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics.”

Euclid will observe the shapes, distances, and motions of billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years over the course of the next six years.

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Astronomers have discovered the most distant supermassive black hole ever observed. They had the help of a “cosmic magnifying glass,” or gravitational lensing. This happens when a massive celestial body creates a large curvature of spacetime so that the path of light around it can be bent as if by a lens.

The black hole is located in the galaxy UHZ1 in the direction of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744. The galaxy cluster is about 13.2 billion-years-old. The team used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to find the telltale signature of a growing black hole. It started to form only 470 million years after the big bang when the universe was only 3 percent of its current age of about 13.7 billion years-old. The galaxy is much more distant than the cluster itself, at 13.2 billion light-years from Earth. 

[Related: Gravitational wave detector now squeezes light to find more black holes.]

Astronomers can tell that this black hole is so young because it is so giant. Black holes evaporate over time. Most black holes in galactic centers have a mass that is equal to roughly a tenth of the stars in their host galaxy, according to NASA. This early black hole is growing and as a mass that is on par with our entire galaxy. Astronomers have never witnessed a black hole at this stage before and studying it could help explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed. The findings are detailed in a study published November 6 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“We needed Webb to find this remarkably distant galaxy and Chandra to find its supermassive black hole,” study co-author and astronomer Akos Bogdan said in a statement. Bogdan is affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“We also took advantage of a cosmic magnifying glass that boosted the amount of light we detected,” Bogman added. This magnifying effect is known as gravitational lensing. The team took X-ray observations with Chandra for two weeks. They saw intense, superheated X-ray emitting gas—a supermassive black hole’s trademark—from the galaxy. The light coming from the galaxy and the X-ray from the gas around the supermassive black hole were magnified by the hot gas and dark matter coming from the galaxy cluster. This effect was like a “cosmic magnifying glass” and it enhanced the infrared light signals that the JWST could detect and allowed Chandra to see the faint X-ray source.

“There are physical limits on how quickly black holes can grow once they’ve formed, but ones that are born more massive have a head start. It’s like planting a sapling, which takes less time to grow into a full-size tree than if you started with only a seed,” study co-author and Princeton University astronomer Andy Goulding said in a statement. 

[Related: ‘Rogue black holes’ might be neither ‘rogue’ nor ‘black holes.’]

Observing this phenomenon could help astronomers answer how some supermassive black holes can hit enormous masses so soon after the explosion of energy from the big bang. There are two opposed theories for the origin of these supermassive black holes–light seed versus heavy seed. The light seed theory says that a star will collapse into a stellar mass black hole and then grow into a supermassive black hole over time. In the heavy seed theory, a large cloud of gas–not an individual star–collapses and condenses to form the supermassive black hole. This newly discovered black hole could confirm the heavy seed theory. 

“We think that this is the first detection of an ‘Outsize Black Hole’ and the best evidence yet obtained that some black holes form from massive clouds of gas,” study co-author and Yale University theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan said in a statement. “For the first time we are seeing a brief stage where a supermassive black hole weighs about as much as the stars in its galaxy, before it falls behind.”

The team plans to use this and more data coming in from the JWST and other space telescopes to create a better picture of the early universe. 

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On November 3, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History debuted a piece of the asteroid Bennu to the public for the first time. The sample was deposited on Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on September 24. The spacecraft did not land, but instead dropped a capsule containing about nine ounces of asteroid samples down to Earth. The spacecraft continued on to a new mission called OSIRIS-APEX. It is set to explore the asteroid Apophis when it comes within 20,000 miles of Earth in 2029. 

On display is a 0.3-inch in diameter stone that weighs only 0.005-ounces. The stone was retrieved amidst rocks and dust collected by the spacecraft in 2020 after two years of exploring Bennu. 

[Related: NASA’s first asteroid-return sample is a goldmine of life-sustaining materials.]

OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer and is the first US mission to collect samples from an asteroid. The spacecraft traveled 1.4-billion-miles from Earth, to the asteroid Bennu, and then back again. Bennu is roughly 4.5 billion years old and dates back to the crucial first 10 million years of the solar system’s development. Its age offers scientists a window into what this time period looked like. The space rock is shaped like a spinning top and is about one-third of a mile across at its widest part–slightly wider than the Empire State Building is tall. It revolves around the sun between the orbits of Earth and Mars.

“The OSIRIS-REx mission is an incredible scientific achievement that promises to shed light on what makes our planet unique,” Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the National Museum of Natural History, said in a statement. “With the help of our partners at NASA, we are proud to put one of these momentous samples on display to the public for the first time.”

The sample was labeled OREX-800027-0 by NASA scientists at Houston’s Johnson Space Center and is being stored in a nitrogen environment to keep it safe from contamination. CT scans of the displayed stone revealed that it is composed of dozens of smaller rocks. The fragments were fused back together at some point and the entire stone was changed by the presence of water. The alterations to the stone produced clays, iron oxides, iron sulfides, and carbonates as its major minerals and even carbon. 

The samples from this mission hold chemical clues to our solar system’s formation. Evidence of essential elements like carbon in the rocks outside of the main sample container have already been uncovered by NASA scientists. These early samples also contain some water-rich minerals. Scientists believe that similar water-containing asteroids bombarded Earth billions of years ago, which provided the water that eventually formed our planet’s first oceans.

[Related: NASA’s OSIRIS mission delivered asteroid samples to Earth.]

“Having now returned to Earth without being exposed to our water-rich atmosphere or the life that fills every corner of our planet, the samples of Bennu hold the promise to tell us about the water and organics before life came to form our unique planet,” museum meteorite curator Tim McCoy said in a statement. McCoy has worked on the OSIRIS-REx mission for nearly two decades as part of an international team of scientists.

According to Space.com, a sizable crowd turned out to see the space rock and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and other space agency and Smithsonian officials were present at the unveiling ceremony. Additional Bennu samples will be on display at a later date and at the Alfie Norville Gem & Mineral Museum at the University of Arizona in Tucson and Space Center Houston, next to to NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

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North Carolina’s Outer Banks saw a busy sea turtle nesting season this year. The barrier islands stretching from Ocracoke Island north to the Virginia state saw 459 total nests between May and October, according to reporting from The Virginian-Pilot and three conservation groups in the state dedicated to sea turtle nesting.

[Related: This waddling robot could guide baby turtles to the sea.]

There are six species of sea turtles native to the United States—green, hawksbill, Kemp’s ridley, leatherback, loggerhead, and olive ridley. All six species are protected by the Endangered Species Act and four of them are known to nest in North Carolina. Human activities are the biggest threats to sea turtle species around the world. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that their biggest threats are being caught in fishing gear, nesting and habitat loss, pollution and marine debris, boat strikes, climate change, and the direct harvest of sea turtles and eggs.

During the early to middle of the summer in the Outer Banks, female turtles return to the same beaches where they hatched to dig nests into the sand. They use their back flippers to dig a hole in the ground to deposit the eggs, and then cover it back up with sand. According to the National Park Service, the nesting process takes about one to three hours to complete. 

The tiny turtles hatch a few months later and follow the light of the moon to the ocean. However, their journey from their nests is quite hazardous, as they can be misdirected by artificial lights from homes and streets, crushed by human activity, or eaten by predators on their way to the ocean. 

[Related: Endangered green turtles are bouncing back in the Seychelles.]

At Cape Hatteras National Seashore, this year tied with 2022 as the second-busiest nesting season on record with 379 reported nests. The area covers more than 70 miles and stretches from Ocracoke Island north to Nags Head. The National Park Service says that the first nest was found on May 12 and the most recent was seen on October 29. The nests comprised 324 loggerhead turtles, 51 green turtles, three Kemp’s ridleys, and one leatherback. The leatherback nest was the first one seen on Hatteras National Seashore in 11 years.

Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge on the northern end of Hatteras island reported its third-busiest nesting season since 2009. The refuge covers about 13 miles and saw 43 sea turtle nests this year. By species, 37 nests belonged to loggerhead turtles and six were green turtle nests, according to data from the Sea Turtle Nest Monitoring System.

The nonprofit Network for Endangered Sea Turtles (NEST) also reported its third-busiest nesting season since 2015. Vice President Susan Silbernagel said 30 nests belong to loggerhead turtles and seven were green turtle nests. The all-volunteer organization covers about 50 miles from Nags Head up to Virginia. 

[Related: Safely share the beach with endangered sea turtles this summer.]

To better protect the endangered turtles, volunteers and scientists have been regularly monitoring the region’s beaches since 1997. Staff members and volunteers at Cape Hatteras will establish a buffer zone around the nests for added protection. 

“We could not manage and monitor sea turtle nesting without the help of over 50 dedicated volunteers that assist with monitoring of our nests and reporting and responding to sea turtle strandings,” Michelle Tongue told The Virginian-Pilot. Tongue is the deputy chief of resource management and science for the National Park Service’s Outer Banks Group. 

Sea turtles spend the vast majority of their lives in the ocean and are among the largest reptiles in the world. Kemp’s ridley and green sea turtles weigh about 75 to 100 pounds, while leatherbacks can weigh about 2,000 pounds. Sea turtles are set apart from their pond or land-dwelling relatives by their flippers. Instead of these appendages, land and pond turtles have feet with claws. 

Continued monitoring and vigilance during the 2024 nesting season will hopefully increase survival rates for these endangered reptiles.

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Humans are the only primates currently living in the wild in North America, but that was not always the case. The continent was once home to non-human primates, including big-eyed tarsier-like animals called omomyiforms and long-tailed critters called adapiforms. About 30 million years ago, a lemur-like creature named Ekgmowechashala was the last primate to inhabit the continent before Homo sapiens arrived. In a study published November 6 in the Journal of Human Evolution, fossil teeth and jaws shed some new light on this mysterious creature. 

[Related: 12-million-year-old ape skull bares its fangs in virtual reconstruction.]

From China to Nebraska

Understanding the origins of North America’s primates has been a paleontological puzzle. It’s been unclear whether they evolved on the continent or arrived from somewhere else via land bridges. The first first primates in North America date back about 56 million years at the beginning of the Eocene Epoch. Scientists believe that the primates like Ekgmowechashala generally flourished on the continent for over 20 million years. 

Ekgmowechashala was about five pounds and only one foot tall. They lived in what is now the American Plains just after the Eocene-Oligocene transition. At this time, a huge cooling and dying event made the continent much less hospitable for primates. Ekgmowechashala went extinct about 34 million years ago. 

For the study, paleontologists first had to reconstruct Ekgmowechashala’s family tree with the help of  an older “sister taxon,” or a closely related group of animals. Both groups generally share a branch on their family trees, but diverged at some point and have different lineages. This sister animal originates in and the team named it Palaeohodites, which means “ancient wanderer.” The fossils were collected by paleontologists from the United States in the 1990s from the Nadu Formation in Guangxi, an autonomous region in China. The fossils closely resembled the Ekgmowechashala material that had been found in North America in the 1960s, when the primate was still quite mysterious to North American paleontologists.

The Palaeohodites fossil potentially helps resolve the mystery of Ekgmowechashala’s strange presence in North America. It was likely a migrant to the continent instead of being the product of local evolution.

“Due to its unique morphology and its representation only by dental remains, its place on the mammalian evolutionary tree has been a subject of contention and debate. There’s been a prevailing consensus leaning towards its classification as a primate,” study co-author and University of Kansas PhD candidate Kathleen Rust said in a statement. “But the timing and appearance of this primate in the North American fossil record are quite unusual. It appears suddenly in the fossil record of the Great Plains more than 4 million years after the extinction of all other North American primates, which occurred around 34 million years ago.”

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

The Ekgmowechashala fossils found in the US during the 1960s include an upper molar that looks very similar to the Palaeohodites molars found in China, according to study co-author and University of Kansas paleontologist Chris Beard. The team from Kansas closely analyzed the fossils to establish evolutionary relationships between the American Ekgmowechashala and its cousin Palaeohodites. 

The paleontologists believe that Ekgmowechashala did not descend from an older North American primate that survived the climate shift roughly 33 million years ago that caused other North American primates to go extinct. Instead, Ekgmowechashala’s ancestors likely crossed over the icy Beringian region that once connected Asia and North America millions of years later.

Rising from the dead

Ekgmowechashala is an example of the “Lazarus effect” in paleontology. This is where a species suddenly appears in the fossil record long after their relatives have died off. It is a reference to Lazarus who, according to New Testament mythology, was raised from the dead. It is also a pattern of evolution seen in the fossil record of North American primates, who went extinct about 34 million years ago. 

“Several million years later Ekgmowechashala shows up like a drifting gunslinger in a Western movie, only to be a flash in the pan as far as the long trajectory of evolution is concerned,” Beard said in a statement. “After Ekgmowechashala is gone for more than 25 million years, Clovis people come to North America, marking the third chapter of primates on this continent. Like Ekgmowechashala, humans in North America are a prime example of the Lazarus effect.”

The past is prologue?

Studying the way primates were affected by previous changes in climate can provide important insight to today’s human-driven climate change. Organisms generally retreat to more hospitable regions with the available resources or end up going extinct. 

“Around 34 million years ago, all of the primates in North America couldn’t adapt and survive. North America lacked the necessary conditions for survival,” said Rust. “This underscores the significance of accessible resources for our non-human primate relatives during times of drastic climatic change.

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The freshly released images from NASA’s Lucy spacecraft’s first asteroid flyby reveal that Dinkinesh is actually a binary pair. A binary asteroid pair has a larger main asteroid and a smaller satellite orbiting around it. In the weeks leading up to the flyby, the Lucy team had wondered if Dinkinesh was actually a binary system because Lucy’s instruments detected the brightness of the asteroid changing over time. This is a sign that something is getting in the way of the light, likely a body orbiting the main space rock. 

[Related: NASA spacecraft Lucy says hello to ‘Dinky’ asteroid on far-flying mission.]

From a preliminary analysis of the first available images, the team estimates that the larger asteroid body is roughly 0.5 miles at its widest and that the smaller body is about 0.15 miles in size.

Dinkinesh is another name for the Lucy fossil that this mission is named after. The 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor were found in Ethiopia in 1974. The name Dinkinesh means “marvelous” in the Amharic language. 

“Dinkinesh really did live up to its name; this is marvelous,” Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement. “When Lucy was originally selected for flight, we planned to fly by seven asteroids. With the addition of Dinkinesh, two Trojan moons, and now this satellite, we’ve turned it up to 11.”

The November 1 encounter primarily served as an in-flight test of the asteroid-studying spacecraft. It specifically focused on testing the system that allows it to autonomously track an asteroid as it whizzes by at 10,000 miles per hour. The team calls this its terminal tracking system.

“This is an awesome series of images. They indicate that the terminal tracking system worked as intended, even when the universe presented us with a more difficult target than we expected,” Lockheed Martin guidance and navigation engineer Tom Kennedy said in a statement. “It’s one thing to simulate, test, and practice. It’s another thing entirely to see it actually happen.”

It will take up to a week for the remainder of the data from the flyby to be downloaded to Earth. This week’s encounter was carried out as an engineering check, but the team’s scientists are hoping this data will help them glean insights into the nature of small asteroids.

“We knew this was going to be the smallest main belt asteroid ever seen up close,” NASA Lucy project scientist Keith Noll said in a statement. “The fact that it is two makes it even more exciting. In some ways these asteroids look similar to the near-Earth asteroid binary Didymos and Dimorphos that DART saw, but there are some really interesting differences that we will be investigating.”

[Related: Why scientists are studying the clouds of debris left in DART’s wake.]

The Lucy team plans to use this first flyby data to evaluate the spacecraft’s behavior and  prepare for its next close-up look at an asteroid. This next encounter is scheduled for April 2025, when Lucy is expected to fly by the main belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson. This asteroid is named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johnson, one the scientists who discovered the Lucy fossils.

Launched in October 2021, NASA’s Lucy mission is the first spacecraft set to explore the Trojan asteroids. This group of primitive space rocks is orbiting our solar system’s largest planet Jupiter. They orbit in two swarms, with one moving  ahead of Jupiter and the other lagging behind it. 

There are about 7,000 asteroids in this belt, with the largest asteroid estimated to be about 160 miles across. The asteroids are similar to fossils and represent the leftover material that is still hanging around after the giant planets including Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune formed.

Lucy will then travel into the leading Trojan asteroid swarm. After that, the spacecraft will fly past six Trojan asteroids, including binary asteroids like Dinkinesh: Eurybates and its satellite Queta, Polymele and its yet unnamed satellite, Leucus, and Orus. 

In 2030, Lucy will return to Earth for yet another bump that will gear it up for a rendezvous with the Patroclus-Menoetius binary asteroid pair in the trailing Trojan asteroid swarm. This mission is scheduled to conclude some time in 2033.

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Among domestic cats, feline obesity is the most frequent nutritional disorder veterinarians in the United States see. Defined as a body weight that is 20 percent or more above a normal weight of eight to 12 pounds, it can impact a cat’s longevity and lead to diabetes and chronic inflammation among other health problems. A study published in the Journal of Animal Science in September found that overeating has some observable effects on feline gut microbiota and digestive system. 

[Related: A new shot can be a safe and effective alternative to surgical spaying.]

According to study co-author and University of Illinois nutritional scientist Kelly Swanson, about 60 percent of cats in the US are considered overweight. 

“While many studies have investigated feline weight loss, there has been little focus on the opposite process, which is also important. In this study, we wanted to learn more about the metabolic and gastrointestinal changes that occur as a result of overeating and weight gain in cats,” Swanson said in a statement. 

Complex changes

In the study, 11 adult spayed female cats were fed a standard dry cat food for two weeks. Baseline body measurements were taken and they were then allowed to eat as much as they wanted. The researchers also collected blood and poop samples at regular intervals and monitored their physical activity. Weight gain was assessed using a body condition score (BCS), which is similar to the controversial body mass index (BMI) in humans. BCS is measured on a 9-point scale where anything 6 or above is considered overweight. Like in humans, BCS is a quantitative, but also subjective, method for evaluating body fat in pets.

The cats immediately increased their food intake when they were allowed to overeat and they began to gain weight. When the study began, their average BCS was 5.41. Their BCS increased to 8.27 after 18 weeks of overfeeding. This corresponds to the cats being about 30 percent overweight by body mass. 

The researchers also analyzed changes in how much the felines pooped, their gastrointestinal transit time, how well nutrients were being digested, and changes in the build up of their gut microbiome over the 20-week study.

“We found that as cats ate more and gained weight, gastrointestinal transit time was reduced, and so was digestive efficiency. When the body gets less food, it will be more efficient in extracting nutrients. But when the amount of food increases, it passes through the digestive system faster and fewer nutrients are extracted in the process,” Swanson explained.  

A cat-specific bacteria shift 

During the 18 weeks of weight gain, the composition of the cats’ gut microbiome also changed. An anti-microbial bacteria that helps stimulate the immune system and inhibits pathogens called Bifidobacterium increased. At the same time, a bacteria that degrades fiber and has been linked to pro-inflammatory disease called Collinsella decreased. According to Swanson, these results are the opposite of what has been measured in overweight humans and suggests that their association to weight gain is complicated.  

[Related: Your cat probably knows when you’re talking to it.]

“The change in the gastrointestinal transit time was a novel finding and a potential reason for the change in fecal microbiota. Future studies should consider measuring transit time to better explain modifications to the microbiome of pets,” Swanson added. 

The more the cats ate, the more they pooped. At the same time that the cats were putting on pounds, fecal pH decreased, meaning that their poop became more acidic. A low fecal pH in humans indicates that the body isn’t absorbing fat or carbohydrates well. It appears that a lower fecal pH with higher food intake also reduced digestibility for cats. 

To measure activity level, the team used special collars. The cats were kept in a group setting where they could interact with one another and play with toys, except on the days when stool samples were collected.

“We expected that weight gain might lead to decreased physical activity, but we did not observe any consistent changes in activity level. However, this could vary with individual cats and their environment, and how much their owners interact with them,” said Swanson.

At the end of the study, the cats were put on a restricted-feeding diet that helped them return to their previous weights. A better understanding of the gastrointestinal and metabolic changes that occur with obesity in domestic pets could help with future prevention and treatment plans. Another new study co-authored by Swanson, demonstrated that restricted feeding can promote safe weight and fat loss in cats. 

The team also suggests that pet parents encourage regular physical activity with their cats. They can make it fun for the cats by stimulating foraging by placing food around the house, or using food puzzles during mealtime. Both of these strategies promote engagement and mental enrichment, according to Swanson. 

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A team of scientists at Northwestern University have developed synthetic melanin that can accelerate healing in human skin. It is applied in a cream and can protect the skin from the sun and heal chemical burns, according to the team. The findings are described in a study published November 2 in the journal Nature npj Regenerative Medicine.

What is melanin?

Melanin is a pigment that is naturally produced in humans and animals. It provides pigmentation to the hair, eyes, and skin. It protects skin cells from sun damage by increasing pigmentation in response to the sun–a process commonly called tanning. 

“People don’t think of their everyday life as an injury to their skin,” study co-author and dermatologist Kurt Lu said in a statement. “If you walk barefaced every day in the sun, you suffer a low-grade, constant bombardment of ultraviolet light. This is worsened during peak mid-day hours and the summer season. We know sun-exposed skin ages versus skin protected by clothing, which doesn’t show age nearly as much.”

[Related: A new artificial skin could be more sensitive than the real thing.]

Aging in the skin is also due to simply getting older and external factors like environmental pollution. Sun damage, chronological aging, and environmental pollutants can create unstable oxygen molecules called free radicals. These molecules can then cause inflammation and break down the collagen in the skin. It is one of the reasons that older skin looks very different than younger skin. 

‘An efficient sponge’

In the study, the team used a synthetic melanin that was engineered with nanoparticles. They modified the melanin structure so that it has a higher free radical-scavenging capacity.

Researchers used a chemical to create a blistering reaction to a sample of human skin tissue in a dish. The blistering looked like a separation of the upper layers of the skin from each other and was similar to an inflamed reaction to poison ivy. 

They waited a few hours, then applied their topical melanin cream to the injured skin. The cream facilitated an immune response within the first few days, by initially helping the skin’s own free radical-scavenging enzymes recover. A cascade of responses followed where healing sped up, including the preservation of the healthy layers of skin underneath the top layers. The synthetic melanin cream soaked up the free radicals and quieted the immune system. By comparison, blistering persisted in the control samples that did not have the melanin cream treatment. 

“The synthetic melanin is capable of scavenging more radicals per gram compared to human melanin,” study co-author and chemist/biomedical engineer Nathan Gianneschi said in a statement.  “It’s like super melanin. It’s biocompatible, degradable,nontoxic and clear when rubbed onto the skin. In our studies, it acts as an efficient sponge, removing damaging factors and protecting the skin.”

According to the team, the super melanin sits on the surface of the skin once it is applied and isn’t absorbed into the layers below. It sets the skin on a cycle of healing and repair that is directed by the body’s immune system. 

[Related: The lowest-effort skincare routine that will still make your skin glow.]

Protection from nerve gas

Gianneschi and Lu are studying using melanin as a protective dye in clothing. The thought is the pigment could act as an absorbent for toxins, particularly nerve gas. 

“Although it [melanin] can act this way naturally, we have engineered it to optimize absorption of these toxic molecules with our synthetic version,” Gianneschi said in a statement

They are also pursuing more clinical trials for testing their synthetic melanin cream. In a first step, they recently completed a trial showing that the synthetic melanins do not irritate human skin. Since it protects tissue from high energy radiation, it could also be an effective treatment for burns cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy often experience. 

This research was funded by the United States Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health.

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The ability to get lost in thoughts and use our imaginations to daydream might not be completely unique to humans. A study published November 2 in the journal Science found that rats can think about objects and places that are not right in front of them. 

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

Imagining locations that are away from our current position is a component of both memory and conjuring up possible future scenarios. If animals have this ability, they could have a form of imagination that is similar to our species.

“The rat can indeed activate the representation of places in the environment without going there,” Chongxi Lai, a co-author of the study and engineer and neuroscientist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said in a statement. “Even if his physical body is fixed, his spatial thoughts can go to a very remote location.”

To learn more, Lai and a team at Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland designed a series of experiments to see if rats can use their thoughts to imagine going towards a specific location or moving a remote object.

Reading a rat’s mind

When humans and rodents experience events or visit places, specific neural activity patterns are activated in their hippocampus. This area of the brain is responsible for spatial memory and stores mental maps of the rat’s world. It is also involved in recalling past events and imagining future situations. To recall memories, specific patterns related to places and events are generated in the hippocampus. Chimpanzees have been shown to have the ability to pretend, but scientists are still figuring out how chimps and other non-human animals think. 

To peer inside of a rat’s brain and look at these brain patterns, the team developed a real-time “thought detector.” This system measures neural activity and translates what it means using a brain-machine interface (BMI). 

The BMI produced a connection between the electrical activity occurring in the rat’s hippocampus and the animal’s position in a 360-degree virtual reality arena. It allowed the researchers to see if a rat can activate hippocampal activity to think about a location in the virtual arena without physically traveling there. 

A rat ‘thought dictionary’

With the BMI in place, the team worked to decode the brain signals in the rats. They built a “thought dictionary” of what the brain activity patterns looked like when the rat was traveling through the virtual arena in the experiment.

To do this, the rat was harnessed into a virtual reality system. As the rat walked on a spherical treadmill, its movements were translated onto a 360-degree screen. The rat was rewarded when it navigated towards its goal.

While the rat walked on the treadmill, the BMI system recorded the activity occurring in the hippocampus. The team saw which neurons were activated when the rat navigated the virtual arena to reach each goal. These signals provided them with the basis for a real-time translation of what was going on in the hippocampus.

With the thought dictionary set up, the team disconnected the treadmill. The rat was rewarded for the first step of reproducing the hippocampal activity pattern that was associated with walking towards a goal location.

The Jumper task and the Jedi task

Next, they designed two different tasks for the rats to perform–the Jumper task and the Jedi task.

In the Jumper task, the BMI translated the rat’s brain activity into motion on a screen. The animal was essentially using its thoughts to find a reward by thinking about where it needs to go to obtain it. This is a thought process similar to traveling to work or school and imagining the buildings and places we will pass along the way. 

[Related: We probably have big brains because we got lucky.]

The Jedi task had a rat hypothetically move an object to a location in its mind. The rat was fixed in a virtual place, but controlled its hippocampal activity to envision moving the object towards a goal. This is similar to how a person sitting on a couch imagining  getting up and refilling a water glass in a kitchen. The team then changed the location of the rat’s goal, which required it to produce activity patterns associated with the new location.

They found that the rats can precisely and flexibly control their hippocampal activity. Surprisingly, they could sustain this activity and hold their thoughts on a given location for many seconds. This time frame is similar to the amount of time humans can take to relive past events or imagine new scenarios.

“The stunning thing is how rats learn to think about that place, and no other place, for a very long period of time, based on our, perhaps naïve, notion of the attention span of a rat,” Tim Harris, a study co-author and biophysicist from Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said in a statement.

According to the team, this study shows how BMI can be used to probe hippocampal activity and could be a new way to study this critical region of the brain. BMI is increasingly used in prosthetics, and this new work could be used to develop devices based on these same principles.

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On November 1, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft successfully completed its first asteroid flyby. The 56 feet-long spacecraft came within 230 miles of the asteroid Dinkinesh aka “Dinky.” This fairly small space rock is in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. 

[Related: Meet Lucy: NASA’s new asteroid-hopping spacecraft.]

Dinkinesh is the first of 10 asteroids the probe will visit over the next 10 years. The asteroid is about 10 to 100 times smaller than the Jupiter Trojan asteroids that are the main target of the Lucy mission. Dinkinesh is another name for the Lucy fossil that this mission is named after. The 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor were found in Ethiopia in 1974.

Lucy zoomed by Dinkinesh at about 10,000 miles per hour.  This encounter was the first in-flight test of the spacecraft’s terminal tracking system. 

“The Lucy operations team has confirmed that NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has phoned home after its encounter with the small main belt asteroid, Dinkinesh,” NASA wrote in a blog post. “Based on the information received, the team has determined that the spacecraft is in good health and the team has commanded the spacecraft to start downlinking the data collected during the encounter.”

It will take NASA up to a week to download the data on how Lucy performed during this first in-flight test during the encounter. NASA planned for the high-resolution grayscale camera onboard Lucy to take a series of images every 15 minutes. Dinkinesh has been visible to Lucy’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) as a single point of light since early September. The team began to use L’LORRI to assist with the navigation of the spacecraft. 

Lucy’s thermal infrared instrument (L’TES) should also begin to collect data. Since L’TES was not designed to observe an asteroid quite as small as Dinkinesh, the team is interested to see if it can detect the half-mile wide asteroid and measure its temperature during the encounter.

Astronomers plan to use the data from this approach to gain a better understanding of small near-Earth asteroids and if they originate from larger main belt asteroids. 

Launched in October 2021, NASA’s Lucy mission is the first spacecraft set to explore the Trojan asteroids. These are a group of primitive space rocks orbiting our solar system’s largest planet Jupiter. They orbit in two swarms, with one ahead of Jupiter and the other lagging behind it. Lucy is expected to provide the first high-resolution images of what these space rocks look like. 

There are about 7,000 asteroids in this belt with the largest about 160 miles across. The asteroids are similar to fossils and represent the leftover material that is still hanging around after the giant planets including Uranus, Neptune, Jupiter, and Saturn formed.

[Related: New image reveals a Jupiter-like world that may share its orbit with a ‘twin.’]

In 2024, Lucy will return towards Earth for a second gravity push that will give it the energy needed to cross the solar system’s main asteroid belt. It is expected to observe asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson in 2025. This asteroid is named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johnson, one the scientists who discovered the Lucy fossils.

It will then travel into the leading Trojan asteroid swarm. After that, the spacecraft will fly past six Trojan asteroids: Eurybates and its satellite Queta, Polymele and its yet unnamed satellite, Leucus, and Orus. 

In 2030, Lucy will return to Earth for yet another bump that will gear it up for a rendezvous with the Patroclus-Menoetius binary asteroid pair in the trailing Trojan asteroid swarm. This mission is scheduled to end some time in 2033.

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Scavenging has been maligned as a food gathering strategy and is generally associated with animals like vultures and hyenas. Millions of years ago, carnivorous dinosaurs may have evolved this technique of taking meat from dead carcasses too. The findings are described in a study published November 1 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

[Related: Dinosaur cannibalism was real, and Colorado paleontologists have the bones to prove it.]

Carnivorous dinosaurs like the cannibalistic Allosaurus were surrounded by both living and dead prey. The bodies of large sauropod dinosaurs, some of whom could weigh more than 500,000 pounds, could have provided an important food source for carnivores.

In this study, a team of researchers from Portland State University created a simplified computer simulation of a dinosaur ecosystem from the Jurassic age. They used the animals that have been found in the 163.5 to 145 million year-old Morrison Formation in the western United States as the basis. This enormous fossil formation was once home to a wide variety of plants and dinosaurs.

The model included large carnivores common to the area like Allosaurus, large sauropods and their carcasses, and a large group of living and huntable Stegosaurus’. The carnivores were assigned traits that would improve their hunting abilities with the energy from living meat sources or their scavenging abilities with the sustenance from the carcasses. The model then measured the evolutionary fitness of the simulated predators. 

The model found that when there were a large amount of sauropod carcasses around, scavenging was more profitable than hunting for the Allosaurus. Meat eaters in these kinds of ecosystems may have evolved specialized traits to help them detect and exploit these large carcasses.

“Our evolutionary model demonstrates that large theropods such as Allosaurus could have evolved to subsist on sauropod carrion as their primary resource,” the authors wrote in a statement. “Even when huntable prey was available to them, selection pressure favored the scavengers, while the predators suffered from lower fitness.”

[Related: This 30-pound eagle would take down 400-pound prey and dig through their organs.]

This model represents only a simplified depiction of a complex ecosystem, so more variables like additional dinosaur species may alter the results. While theoretical, using models like this one can help scientists better understand how the availability of meat from carcasses can influence how predators evolve. A September 2023 modeling study found that even early humans living in southern Europe roughly 1.2 to 0.8 million years ago were scavengers. They may have competed in groups of five or more to fight off extinct giant hyenas for the carcasses of animals that had been abandoned by larger predators like saber-toothed cats.

“We think allosaurs probably waited until a bunch of sauropods died in the dry season, feasted on their carcasses, stored the fat in their tails, then waited until the next season to repeat the process,” the authors wrote. “This makes sense logically too, because a single sauropod carcass had enough calories to sustain 25 or so allosaurs for weeks or even months, and sauropods were often the most abundant dinosaurs in the environment.”

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When looking at a sea star–or starfish–it’s not really clear which part of its identical five pointed body is considered its head. This question has puzzled biologists for decades, but some new research says that a starfish’s whole body could function like a head. The findings are described in a study published November 1 in the journal Nature and might have solved the mystery of how sea stars and other echinoderms evolved their distinctively shaped bodies.

[Related: This strange 500-million-year-old sea urchin relative lost its skeleton.]

Searching for heads and trunks 

Sea stars are invertebrates that belong to a group of animals called echinoderms.This group also includes sea urchins and sand dollars and they all have bodies that are arranged in five equal and symmetric sections. Early in their evolution, echinoderms had a bilaterally designed ancestor with two mirrored sides more like a human’s. 

“How the different body parts of the echinoderms relate to those we see in other animal groups has been a mystery to scientists for as long as we’ve been studying them,” Jeff Thompson, a co-author of the study and evolutionary biologist at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “In their bilateral relatives, the body is divided into a head, trunk, and tail. But just looking at a starfish, it’s impossible to see how these sections relate to the bodies of bilateral animals.”

In the new study, an international team of scientists compared the molecular markers in sea stars with a wider group of animals called deuterostomes. This group includes echinoderms like sea star and bilateral animals including vertebrates. Deuterostomes all share a common ancestor, so comparing their development can offer clues into how echinoderms evolved their more unique five-pointed body plan.

They used multiple high-tech molecular and genomic techniques to see where different genes were expressed during a sea star’s development and growth. Micro-CT scanning also allowed the team to understand the shape and structure of the animals in closer detail.

Sea star mapping

Team members from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Pacific BioSciences, used techniques called RNA tomography and in situ hybridization to build a three-dimensional map of a sea star’s gene expression to see where specific genes are being expressed during development. They specifically mapped the expression of the genes that control the growth of a sea star’s ectoderm, which includes its nervous system and skin. 

They found gene signatures associated with head development almost everywhere in juvenile sea stars. The expression of genes that code for an animal’s torso and tail sections were also largely missing.

[Related: What’s killing sea stars?]

“When we compared the expression of genes in a starfish to other groups of animals, like vertebrates, it appeared that a crucial part of the body plan was missing,” said Thompson. “The genes that are typically involved in the patterning of the trunk of the animal weren’t expressed in the ectoderm. It seems the whole echinoderm body plan is roughly equivalent to the head in other groups of animals.”

The molecular signatures that are typically associated with the front-most portion of an animal’s head were also localized towards the middle of each of the sea star’s five arms. 

“It’s as if the sea star is completely missing a trunk, and is best described as just a head crawling along the seafloor,” study co-author and Stanford University evolutionary biologist Laurent Formery said in a statement. “It’s not at all what scientists have assumed about these animals.” 

Sea stars and other echinoderms may have evolved their five-section body plan by losing the trunk region that their bilateral ancestors once had. This chance would have allowed them to move around and feed differently than animals with two symmetrical arms.

“Our research tells us the echinoderm body plan evolved in a more complex way than previously thought and there is still much to learn about these intriguing creatures,” said Thompson. “As someone who has studied them for the last ten years, these findings have radically changed how I think about this group of animals.”

This research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust, NASA, the NSF, and the Chan Zuckerberg BioHub.

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As Earth rotates and the sun moves across the sky from east to west, sunflowers turn their brilliant yellow faces to follow it. The mechanics behind this process, called heliotropism, is still a mystery to plant biologists. A study published October 31 in the journal PLOS Biology likely rules out that a sunflower’s ability to follow the sun is related to a more well-known response to light that all plants follow. Sunflowers probably rely on several more complicated processes to track the sun instead. 

[Related: The mathematical theory that connects swimming sperm, zebra stripes, and sunflower seeds.]

Since plants are rooted in one place, they can’t move if light they need to make food is blocked by a neighbor or if they are in a shady spot. They rely on growth or elongation to move towards the light and there are several molecular systems behind this. The best-known response is the phototropic response. Proteins called phototropins sense blue light falling unevenly on a seedling and the plant’s growth hormones are redistributed. This ultimately causes it to bend towards the light.

Plant biologists have long assumed that the sunflower’s ability to follow the sun would be based on the same mechanism as phototropism. To track the sun, the sunflower’s head leans slightly more on the eastern side of its stem. This positions their head towards the direction where the sun rises. It then shifts west as the sun moves across the sky. An earlier study showed that sunflowers have an internal circadian clock that anticipates the sunrise and coordinates the opening of its florets with the time when pollinating insects arrive in the morning. 

To investigate whether this sun-tracking ability is a shru, the team behind the new study used sunflowers grown in a laboratory and others grown outdoors in sunlight. They looked to see which genes were switched on when both sets of plants were exposed to their light sources. The indoor sunflowers grew straight towards their blue light source in the lab and activated the genes associated with phototropin. The flowers that were grown outdoors and swung their heads with the sun had a different pattern of gene expression. These sunflowers also didn’t have any apparent differences in phototropin molecules between one side of the stem and another. 

“We’ve been continually surprised by what we’ve found as we study how sunflowers follow the sun each day,” study co-author and University of California, Davis plant biologist Stacey Harmer said in a statement. “In this paper, we report that they use different molecular pathways to initiate and maintain tracking movements, and that the photoreceptors best known for causing plant bending seem to play a minor role in this remarkable process.”

The team also blocked blue, ultraviolet, red, or far-red light with shade boxes. The blinders didn’t have any effect on the heliotropism response. According to the team, this indicates that there are probably multiple pathways responding to different wavelengths of light to achieve the same goal of following the sun. 

[Related: Dying plants are ‘screaming’ at you.]

The genes involved in heliotropism have not yet been identified. “We seem to have ruled out the phototropin pathway, but we did not find a clear smoking gun,” Harmer said.

When the sunflowers grown in the lab were moved outside, they began to track the sun on their first day. They initially showed a huge burst of gene expression on the shaded side of the plant that did not happen on the following days. Harmer said this suggests some kind of “rewiring” is going on in the plant.

In addition to weeding out some of the process behind how sunflowers track the sun, this work also has relevance for designing future experiments with plants to understand their mechanisms.

“Things that you define in a controlled environment like a growth chamber may not work out in the real world,” Harmer said. 

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Lampreys are the vampires of the ocean and the lakes they can invade. While these eel-like parasitic vertebrates don’t use two sharp fangs to suck blood, lampreys have a toothed oral sucker that latches onto their prey and feasts on their host’s blood. Modern day lampreys are found in temperate zones of most of the world’s oceans except in Africa. However, specimens of their extinct ancient ancestors are fairly rare in the fossil record, despite dating back roughly 360 million years. Now, paleontologists in northern China have found two unusually large fossilized lamprey species that fill a large evolutionary gap. The specimens are described in a study published October 31 in the journal Nature Communications.

[Related: Why sea lampreys are going to be a bigger problem for the Great Lakes.]

“We found the largest fossil lampreys ever found in the world,” study co-author and Chinese Academy of Sciences paleontologist Feixiang Wu tells PopSci. “Based on these fossils, our study assumed that the most recent common ancestor of modern lampreys was likely eating flesh rather than sucking blood as conventionally believed.”

The earliest known lampreys date back about 360 million years ago during the Paleozoic Era. These early species are believed to have been only a few inches long and had weak feeding structures. The 160 million-year-old fossils in this new study were discovered in the Lagerstätte Yanliao Biota in northeastern China and date back to the Jurassic. The longer of the two specimens is named Yanliaomyzon occisor. It is more than 23 inches long and is estimated to have had 16 teeth. The shorter 11 inch-long species is named Yanliaomyzon ingensdentes and had about 23 teeth. By comparison, modern lampreys range from six to 40 inches long.

Their well-preserved oral discs and “biting” structures indicate that these lamprey species had already evolved enhanced feeding structures, bigger body size, and were predators by the Jurassic period. It also appears that they had already evolved a three-phased life cycle by this point

Lampreys begin their lives as burrowing freshwater larvae called ammocetes. During this stage, they have rudimentary eyes and feed on microorganisms with their toothless mouths. They spend several years in this stage, before transforming into adults. Some move into saltwater, while others will remain in freshwater. As adults, they become parasites that attach to a fish with their mouths and feed on their blood and tissue. Lampreys eventually return to freshwater to reproduce, where they build a nest, then spawn, and then die.

It is still unclear when lampreys evolved this lifecycle and their more complex teeth for feeding. These new well-preserved fossils fill an important gap in the fossil record and give some insights into how its lifecycle and feeding originated. 

[Related: Evolution made mosquitos into stealthy, sensitive vampires.]

The study also pinpoints where and when today’s lamprey’s first appeared. “We put modern lampreys’ origin in the Southern Hemisphere of the Late Cretaceous,” says Wu. 

The Late Cretacous lasted from 100.5 million years ago to 66 million years ago and ended with the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. In future research, the team would like to search for specimens from the Cretaceous. According to Wu, this time period could be very important to their evolutionary history.

More fossilized specimens could also provide more accurate ideas of what kinds of flesh ancient lampreys feasted on with all those teeth and how that has evolved over time. 

“Living lampreys are always hailed as ‘water vampires,’ but their ancestor might be a flesh eater, their teeth tell,” says Wu. 

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As the darkest nights of the year approach in the Northern Hemisphere, the night skies will light up, giving us a chance to see three meteor showers. Our closest planetary neighbor Venus will also be particularly radiant this month. It is also the time of year to keep an eye out for the Aurora Borealis. Here are some of the events to look out for this month. If you happen to get any stellar sky photos, please tag us and include #PopSkyGazers.

[Related: Astronomers find 12 more moons orbiting Jupiter.]

November 2 to 3 – Jupiter at Opposition

The month kicks off with our solar system’s largest planet appearing at its biggest and brightest state of the year, which is called opposition. Jupiter hits opposition at 12 a.m. EDT on November 3 and will be visible in the eastern horizon for skygazers in the Northern Hemisphere. 

According to Larry Wassterman from the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, opposition occurs when a planet, Earth, and the sun lie along a straight line with Earth in the middle. The planet and the sun are on the opposite sides of Earth so they are considered in opposition. 

“The planet is as close to the Earth as possible and will appear as big and as bright as it can ever get. This is a great time to take a look and discover Jupiter in opposition for yourself. During Jupiter’s opposition, Earth will pass between Jupiter and the Sun, and the proximity will make Jupiter appear larger in the sky. On the day of opposition, Jupiter rises when the Sun sets,” Wassterman writes. 

November 5 and 6 – Southern Taurids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak 

November’s first meteor shower is predicted to peak November 5th and 6th. Both of the Taurids meteor showers don’t have very definite peaks. The meteors ramble along in space and are especially noticeable from late October into early November, when both the Southern and Northern Taurids overlap. 

According to EarthSky, under dark skies with no moon, both South Taurids produce about five meteors per hour and 10 total when the North and South Taurids overlap. Fireballs are also possible, like the ones that appeared in 2022. Taurid meteors are slower than those from other meteor showers, but can be very bright.  

The Taurids are visible almost everywhere on Earth, except for the South Pole. 

[Related: Meteorites older than the solar system contain key ingredients for life.]

November 9 – Moon and Venus Conjunction

Already the brightest planet in our solar system, Venus will shine particularly brilliantly early this month. Venus will put on a show in the eastern horizon at 2:55 AM EST. As the morning continues Venus will shift upwards, and be one teach one degree to the upper right by the time morning twilight begins at about  5:44 a.m. EST. For some viewers, the moon will pass in front of Venus, blocking it from view at this time. 

Visibility will be best in northern Canada, most of Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, west Russia, most of Europe, parts of north Africa, and most of the Middle East.

November 11 through 13 – Northern Taurids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

Due to the moon’s phases, the best chance for seeing the Northern Taurids this month is from November 11 through the 13. Ideal viewing times will be around midnight because the moon will only be about 2 percent full that night. The sky will be darker and more primed for you to spot any meteors under clear skies.

November 18 – Leonids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

For the Leonids, the night sky will be free of moonlight when the shower is predicted to peak on November 18th. For best viewing, watch late on the night of November 17 until dawn on November 18. The morning of November 17 may also be worthwhile for viewing. It is possible to see 10 to 15 Leonid meteors per hour under a moonless sky. 

The Leonid meteor shower is famous for producing one of the greatest meteor storms in living history. On November 17, 1966, there were thousands of meteors per minute during a 15-minute span. Leonid meteor storms sometimes happen in cycles of 33 to 34 years, but this cycle did not occur during the 1990s as anticipated. 

The Leonids will be visible in both hemispheres.

[Related: The moon is 40 million years older than we thought, according to crystals collected by Apollo astronauts.]

November 27 – Full Beaver Moon

November’s full moon will reach peak illumination on November 27 at 4:16 a.m. EST. The moon will also appear very full and close on the night of November 26. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, it is called the Beaver Moon in reference to the time of year when beavers begin to shelter in their lodges, after storing up food for the winter. This was also when beavers pelts are at their thickest.

Some other names for November’s full moon include the Whitefish Moon or Adikomemi-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the Little Winter Moon or Gahsá’kneh in Seneca, and the Leaf Fall Moon or Yapa Huktugere Nuti in the Catawba language.

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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For the first time, astronomers using data from the Keck II telescope have detected the presence of an infrared aurora on the planet Uranus. The discovery could shed light on some of the unknown properties of the magnetic fields of our solar system’s planets. It could also help explain why a planet so far from the sun is hotter than it should be. The findings are described in a study published on October 23 in the journal Nature Astronomy. 

[Related: Uranus got its name from a very serious authority.]

The NIRSPEC instrument (Near InfraRed SPECtrograph) at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii  was used to collect 6 hours of observations of Uranus in 2006. The study’s authors carefully studied 224 images to find signs of a specific particle–ionized triatomic hydrogen or H3+. They found evidence of H3+ in the data after collisions with charged particles. The emission created an infrared auroral glow over Uranus’ northern magnetic pole. The image itself is an artist’s rendition of the infrared aurora, superimposed on a Hubble Space Telescope image of Uranus.

Uranian auroras vs. Earth auroras

Auroras on the planet Uranus are caused when charged particles from the sun interact with the planet’s magnetic field the same way they do on Earth. The particles are funneled along magnetic field lines toward the magnetic poles. When they enter the Uranian atmosphere, the charged particles bump into atmospheric molecules. This causes the molecules to glow. 

The dominant gasses in Uranus’ atmosphere are hydrogen and helium and they are at much lower temperatures than on Earth. The presence of these gasses at these temperatures cause Uranus’ auroras to predominantly glow at ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. By comparison, auroras on Earth come from oxygen and nitrogen atoms colliding with the charged particles and the colors are mostly blue, green, and red and can generally be seen with the human eye at the right latitudes. 

Uranus and Neptune are unusual planets in our solar system because their magnetic fields are misaligned with the axes in which they spin. Astronomers haven’t found an explanation for this, but clues could lie in Uranus’s aurora. 

Measuring the infrared

In the study, a team of astronomers used the first measurements of the infrared aurora at Uranus since investigations into the planet began in 1992. The ultraviolet aurorae of Uranus was first observed 1986, but the infrared aurora has not been observed until now, according to the team. 

By analyzing specific wavelengths of light emitted from the planet. With this data, they can analyze the light called emission lines from these planets, which is similar to a barcode. In the infrared spectrum, the lines emitted by the H3+ particles will have different levels of brightness depending on how hot or cold the particle is and how dense this layer of the atmosphere is. The lines then act like a thermometer taking the planet’s temperature.

The astronomers found that there were distinct increases in H3+ density in Uranus’s atmosphere with little change in temperature. This is consistent with ionization that is caused by the presence of an infrared aurora. These measurements can help astronomers understand the magnetic fields on the other outer planets in the solar system. They could also scientists identify other planets that are suitable for supporting life.

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

“The temperature of all the gas giant planets, including Uranus, are hundreds of degrees Kelvin/Celsius above what models predict if only warmed by the sun, leaving us with the big question of how these planets are so much hotter than expected? One theory suggests the energetic aurora is the cause of this, which generates and pushes heat from the aurora down towards the magnetic equator,” study co-author and University of Leicester PhD student Emma Thomas said in a statement. 

Clues to life on exoplanets

According to Thomas, most of the exoplanets astronomers have discovered are in the sub-Neptune category, so they are a similar size as Neptune and Uranus. Similar magnetic and atmospheric characteristics could also exist on these exoplanets. Uranus’s aurora directly connects to the planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere, so studying it can help astronomers make predictions about the atmospheres and magnetic fields and their suitability for supporting life.

These results may also provide insight into a rare phenomenon on Earth called geomagnetic reversal. This occurs when the north and south poles switch hemisphere locations. According to NASA, pole reversals are pretty common in Earth’s geologic history and the last one occurred roughly 780,000 years ago. Paleomagnetic records show that over the last 83 million years, Earth’s magnetic poles have reversed 183 times. They’ve also reversed at least several hundred times in the past 160 million years. The time intervals between these reversals have fluctuated, but average about 300,000 years.

“We don’t have many studies on this phenomena and hence do not know what effects this will have on systems that rely on Earth’s magnetic field such as satellites, communications and navigation,” said Thomas. “However, this process occurs every day at Uranus due to the unique misalignment of the rotational and magnetic axes. Continued study of Uranus’s aurora will provide data on what we can expect when Earth exhibits a future pole reversal and what that will mean for its magnetic field.”

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Paleontologists in North Dakota have discovered new species of mosasaur. These giant meat-eating aquatic lizards swam the Earth’s seas about 80 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period. This new species is named Jormungandr walhallaensis after a sea serpent in Norse mythology named Jörmungandr and Walhalla, North Dakota where its fossils were found. The findings are described in a study published October 30 in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.  

[Related: Dinosaurs who stuck together, survived together.]

“If you put flippers on a Komodo dragon and made it really big, that’s what it would have looked like,” study co-author and Richard Gilder Graduate School PhD student Amelia Zietlow, said in a statement.

The first mosasaur specimens were discovered over 200 years ago and the word “mosasaur” even predates the word “dinosaur” by roughly 20 years. There are still several unanswered questions about these ancient sea lizards, including how many times they evolved to have flippers and when they became fully aquatic. Scientists believe that they evolved to have their signature flippers at least three times and possibly four or more. It is also still a mystery if mosasaurs are more closely related to present day monitor lizards or snakes or another living creature entirely. This new specimen fills in some knowledge gaps of how the different groups of mosasaurs are related to each other.

“As these animals evolved into these giant sea monsters, they were constantly making changes,” Zietlow said. “This work gets us one step closer to understanding how all these different forms are related to one another.”

Researchers in northeastern North Dakota first discovered the Jormungandr fossil in 2015. It included a nearly complete skull, jaws, and cervical spine, and a number of vertebrae. An extensive analysis revealed that the fossil is of a new species that has multiple features that are also seen in two other mosasaurs: Clidastes and Mosasaurus. Clidastes is a smaller animal of about six to 13 feet long that lived roughly 145 million years ago. Mosasaurus was much larger at almost 50 feet long and lived about 99.6 to 66 million years ago alongside the Tyrannosaurus rex. 

[Related: This four-legged snake fossil was probably a skinny lizard.]

The new specimen is about 24 feet long and has flippers. It also has a shark-like tail similar to other early mosasaur species. It also likely would have had “angry eyebrows,” caused by a bony ridge on its skull. Its slightly stumpy tail would have also been shorter than the rest of its body.

Jormungandr was likely a precursor to the bigger Mosasaurus. 

“This fossil is coming from a geologic time in the United States that we don’t really understand,” study co-author and paleontologist from the North Dakota Geological Survey Clint Boyd said in a statement. “The more we can fill in the geographic and temporal timeline, the better we can understand these creatures.”

In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr is an enormous sea serpent or worm who encircles the Earth. Jörmungandr is believed to be the middle child of the trickster god Loki and the giantess Angrboða. Thor the god of thunder also has an ongoing battle with Jörmungandr and it is believed that the two will fight to the death during Ragnarok, or the end of the world. 

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Despite being our closest planetary neighbor, Venus is a pretty inhospitable place. It is about 100 times hotter than Earth and spacecraft exploring its thick atmosphere have been crushed in only two hours. However, Venus may have once had tectonic plate movements that are similar to what occurred during Earth’s early days. The new finding gives astronomers some novel scenarios to evaluate regarding the possibility of early life on Venus, its evolutionary past, and the history of the solar system. The findings are described in a study published October 26 in the journal Nature Astronomy. 

[Related: We finally know why Venus is absolutely radiant.]

In the study, researchers used atmospheric data from Venus and computer modeling to show that the composition of the planet’s current atmosphere and surface pressure could have only resulted from an early form of plate tectonics. This process is critical to life and involves multiple continental plates pushing, pulling, and sliding beneath one another. 

On Earth, these plate tectonics have intensified over billions of years. This process has formed new continents, mountains, and led to the chemical reactions that stabilized Earth’s surface temperature. It also created an environment that is more conducive for life to develop.

Venus went in the opposite direction and has surface temperatures of 867 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead. Astronomers have always believed that Venus has a “stagnant lid.” This means that the planet’s surface only has a single plate with minimal amounts of give, so most of the gasses remain trapped beneath the outer crust lid.

The team used current data on Venus’ atmosphere as the endpoint for these models and started by assuming Venus has had a stagnant lid through its entire existence. They were quickly able to see that computer simulations recreating the planet’s current atmosphere didn’t match up with where Venus is now. 

Next, the team simulated what would have had to happen on Venus for the planet to get to its current state. They eventually matched the numbers almost exactly when they accounted for limited tectonic movement early in Venus’ history followed by the stagnant lid model that exists today.

Due to the abundance of nitrogen and carbon dioxide present in Venus’ atmosphere, the team believes that Venus must have had plate tectonics about 4.5 billion to 3.5 billion years ago after the planet formed. They suggest that like on Earth, this early tectonic movement would have been limited in terms of the number of plates moving around and in how much they shifted. The process also would have been occurring on Venus and Earth at the same time. 

“One of the big picture takeaways is that we very likely had two planets at the same time in the same solar system operating in a plate tectonic regime—the same mode of tectonics that allowed for the life that we see on Earth today,” study co-author and Brown University planetary geophysicist Matt Weller said in a statement. 

[Related: A private company wants to look for life just above Venus.]

According to the team, this further bolsters the possibility that microbial life existed on ancient Venus. It also shows that at one point, both Earth and Venus were even more alike than scientists previously thought before diverging. Both planets are about the same size, have the same mass, density, and volume and live in the same solar neighborhood.

The work also shows the possibility that plate tectonics on all planets might simply come down to timing, so life itself may also be a product of the perfect timing. 

“We’ve so far thought about tectonic state in terms of a binary: it’s either true or it’s false, and it’s either true or false for the duration of the planet,” study co-author and Brown University geobiologist and geophysicist Alexander Evans said in a statement. “This shows that planets may transition in and out of different tectonic states and that this may actually be fairly common. Earth may be the outlier. This also means we might have planets that transition in and out of habitability rather than just being continuously habitable.”

Understanding the transition of tectonic states will be important for future studies of nearby moons and distant exoplanets. Jupiter’s fourth largest moon Europa has already shown evidence of Earth-like plate tectonics.

“We’re still in this paradigm where we use the surfaces of planets to understand their history,” Evans said. “We really show for the first time that the atmosphere may actually be the best way to understand some of the very ancient history of planets that is often not preserved on the surface.”

Future NASA DAVINCI missions will measure gasses in Venus’ atmosphere and could help solidify this study’s findings and the details of how this happened may hold important implications for Earth.

“That’s going to be the next critical step in understanding Venus, its evolution and ultimately the fate of the Earth,” Weller said. “What conditions will force us to move in a Venus-like trajectory, and what conditions could allow the Earth to remain habitable?”

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Bats and spiders get most of the attention for Halloween and spooky season, but October is also ladybug time in many parts of the United States. Alongside their appropriately nicknamed cousins the “Halloween beetle,” residents from Wisconsin to North Carolina to New Hampshire historically report seeing more of these insects indoors this time of year. Here’s why.

[Related: These fold-up robots fly just like ladybugs.]

Looking for warmth

Ladybugs typically spend the warmer summer months outside in gardens and grasses. As fall settles in, the insects likely begin to seek a place to hibernate indoors when the temperatures begin to drop. 

They could also be looking for a safe and warm place to lay their eggs. According to This Old House, ladybugs will often leave a trail of pheromones that tells other ladybugs in the colony, “Hey, this place is safe, warm, and perfect for egg-laying,” when they find a good spot to lay eggs. 

They are most commonly spotted by doors and windows, where it is easy for them to squeeze inside under cracks. They can also hitch a ride on potted plants and flowers brought into the home.

How to tell a ladybug from a Halloween beetle

The more well-known and common seven spotted ladybugs (Hippodamia convergens) are often confused with their cousins the Asian lady beetle aka harlequin ladybird or the Halloween beetle (Harmonia axyridis). These bugs are also red, but can also appear more orange and have more spots on their backs. It is also more typical for them to swarm houses in the fall and before the winter. Both species are members of the Coccinellidae family of beetles, but belong to a different genus. 

The easiest way to tell the two cousins apart is to look at their spots. If there are more spots, it’s a Halloween beetle. If there are only seven, it’s a ladybug. You can also look around their “neck.” Halloween beetles have different markings that look a bit like a butterfly or a black “M.” They are also generally larger than ladybugs. 

Ladybugs also typically have a rounded or oval shape. Halloween beetles also have an oval appearance, but they are slightly longer with a pointed head and snout. 

According to University of Kentucky entomologists, Asian lady beetles seem to be attracted to lit up surfaces that have a light-dark surface contrast. Homes that are partially illuminated by the sun are then attractive to the beatles. 

[Related: How many ants are there on Earth? Thousands of billions.]

“Once the beetles alight on buildings, they seek out crevices and protected places to spend the winter. They often congregate in attics, wall cavities, and other protected locations,” the entomologists told WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee. “Since lady beetles are attracted to light, they are often seen around windows and light fixtures.”

Can they hurt me or my house?

Ladybugs do more good than harm. They do not carry any diseases and they are a garden’s best friend, by eating aphids and worms that can ruin spring flowers and veggies. Halloween beetles are generally more likely to infest a home. 

They are not typically aggressive to humans, but Halloween beetles can bite if they feel trapped or threatened. Like other insects, their bites can create small, red, and itchy marks. 

Halloween beetles can also harm furniture or carpets with their secretions. Some safe ways to keep them away include planting mums, lavender, bay leaves, cloves, citronella, and plants in the citrus and mint families to naturally repel ladybugs, sealing entry points to your home, and using door sweeps at the bottom of doors. 

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Living long lives past reproductive age is a real rarity for female members of the animal kingdom. Humans and some species of toothed whales are the only known animals to go through menopause and the reasons behind it are an evolutionary puzzle. A team of primatologists recently found that a group of wild chimpanzees in Uganda also show signs of menopause. The findings are described in a study published October 26 in the journal Science and could provide more insight into this rare biological phenomenon.

[Related: Adolescent chimpanzees might be less impulsive than human teens.]

In humans, menopause typically occurs between the ages of 45 and 55 and is characterized by a natural decline in reproductive hormones and the end of ovarian functions. Some symptoms in humans include chills, hot flashes, weight gain, and thinning hair. The evolutionary benefits of this process are still a mystery for biologists. It is also still unclear why menopause evolved in humans but not in other known long-lived primates. 

“During our ongoing twenty five year study of chimpanzees at Ngogo in Kibale National Park, Uganda, we noticed that many old females did not reproduce for decades,” study co-author and Arizona State University primatologist Kevin Langergraber tells PopSci. “It’s a surprising trait from the perspective of evolution: how and why can natural selection favor the extension of lifespan past the point at which individuals can no longer reproduce? We need to know in what species it occurs and which it doesn’t as a first step [to that question].”

To look closer, the authors calculated a metric called the post-reproductive representation (PrR). This measurement is the average proportion of adult lifespan that an animal spends in its post-reproductive state. Most mammals have a PrR close to zero, but the team found that Ngogo chimpanzees have a PrR of 0.2. This means that the female chimpanzees in this group live 20 percent of their adult years in a post-reproductive state. 

Urine samples from 66 female chimpanzees from different stages in their reproductive lives also showed that the transition to this post-reproductive state was marked by changes in hormones like gonadotropins, estrogens, and progestins. 

While similar hormonal variations are also a way to tell that this transition is happening in humans, the post-reproductive chimpanzees were not involved in raising their offspring’s children. In these chimpanzees, the common grandmother hypothesis, where females live longer after menopause to help take care of future generations, does not appear to apply. This contrasts with some populations of orca whales, where grandmothers are a critical part of raising their offspring’s young to ensure their survival. 

[Related: Nice chimps finish last—so why aren’t all of them mean?]

According to the team, there are two possible explanations for these longer post-reproductive lifespans. Chimpanzees and other mammals in captivity can have artificially long post-reproductive lifespans because they are protected from natural predators and some pathogens. Even though they’re a wild population, the Ngogo chimpanzees could also be similarly protected and live artificially long lives. They live in a relatively remote area that is undisturbed by logging and hunting by humans and are exposed to fewer human pathogens. Their current habitat could also be closer to what existed in their evolutionary past compared with other populations of primates that are more affected by humans.

“The study both illuminates and raises questions about the evolution of menopause,” University of Exeter evolutionary biologist Michael Cant wrote in a related review on the study. “It also highlights the power of difficult long-term field studies–often run on small budgets and at constant risk of closure–to transform fundamental understanding of human biology and behavior.” Cant is not an author of the study.

Langergraber says future studies like this one could answer the question of how common substantial post-reproductive lifespans have been throughout chimpanzee evolutionary history and if impacts from humans have kept their survivorship rates artificially low.

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Animals have a wide range of ways to make sense of the world around them. Dogs sniff the air around them. Dolphins use echolocation. Humans glance at each other. For the electric knifefish, “shimmying” around in the water like a tadpole helps it make sense of its watery world. But knifefish are not the only ones that wiggle with purpose. In a study published October 26 in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, scientists describe a wide range of organisms that perform these same wavy patterns of movement to feel out the environment around them. 

[Related: Five animals that can sense things you can’t.]

The team behind this study was interested in what the nervous system does when animals move to improve their perception of the world, and if that behavior could be translated to robotic control systems.

“Amoeba don’t even have a nervous system, and yet they adopt behavior that has a lot in common with a human’s postural balance or fish hiding in a tube,” study co-author and Johns Hopkins University mechanical engineer Noah Cowan said in a statement. “These organisms [knifefish and amoebas] are quite far apart from each other in the tree of life, suggesting that evolution converged on the same solution through very different underlying mechanisms.”

Shimmying in the dark

Knifefish are blade-shaped fish found in freshwater lakes and rivers in Central and South America. They can reach three feet long and eat insects, crustaceans, and other fish. In the wild, they are hardwired to hide to avoid predators. They send out weak electric discharges that sense the predators’ location and find shelter. Wiggling around rapidly helps them actively sense their surroundings to find a place to hide.

While watching electric knifefish in an observation tank, the team noticed that when it was dark, the fish shimmied back and forth significantly more frequently. The fish swayed more gently with occasional bursts of quick movements when the lights were on. 

“We found that the best strategy is to briefly switch into explore mode when uncertainty is too high, and then switch back to exploit mode when uncertainty is back down,” co-author and Johns Hopkins computational cell biologist and neuroethologist Debojyoti Biswas said in a statement. When a predator could be nearby, the knifefish will quickly search for somewhere to hide. If they feel safe, they can return back to a more normal and less wiggly state to find food.

Exciting the senses

In the study, the team created a model that simulates the key sensing behaviors of the fish. They used work from other labs and spotted these same sensory-dependent movements in other organisms including amoeba, moths, cockroaches, moles, bats, mice, and even humans.

According to the authors, this is the first time scientists have deciphered this mode-switching strategy in fish and linked the behavior across species. They believe that all organisms have a brain computation that manages uncertainty in their environment.

[Related: How cats and dogs see the world.]

“If you go to a grocery store, you’ll notice people standing in line will change between being stationary and moving around while waiting,” Cowan said. “We think that’s the same thing going on, that to maintain a stable balance you actually have to occasionally move around and excite your sensors like the knifefish. We found the statistical characteristics of those movements are ubiquitous across a wide range of animals, including humans.”

Understanding these sensory mechanisms and their nuances could be used to improve search and rescue drones, space rovers, and other autonomous robots. These same characteristics for looking around could be built into future robots to help them perceive the space around them. The team also plans to explore how these mechanisms work in living things—even in plants.

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“It’s been forever considered a garbage fish, but it’s probably the most delicious fish that we serve,” David Standridge says about the bottom-dwelling sea robin. Standridge is the executive chef of a farm-to-sea-to-fork restaurant The Shipwright’s Daughter in Mystic, Connecticut. For him, the historically maligned but mild tasting sea robin is the “poster child” for a fish that should be eaten more because it is so abundant.

“Part of supporting local and supporting small business is really building a more resilient food system,” says Standridge. “So that’s the first thing that we look at when we look at abundance, and what species we are choosing.”

Seared sea robin, smoked swordfish tater tots, and locally caught whiting wrapped in sugar kelp (tempura fried) are just some of the potentially sustainable dishes diners can find on the menu here. While using ingredients sourced by local farmers is difficult to scale up to more mainstream restaurants and grocery chains, The Shipwright’s Daughter’s creative work with both supply chains and flavor profiles make for a delicious starting point. 

[Related: Why seaweed is a natural fit for replacing certain plastics.]

The Shipwright’s Daughter is a 2023 James Beard Foundation Smart Catch leader, working with other restaurants and chefs to evaluate the environmental impact of the fish served. Standridge uses the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch–an assessment tool that helps consumers and chefs alike gauge the sustainability of their seafood–to evaluate every fish on the menu. This year, 97.3 percent of the fish served is certified sustainable, according to Standridge. 

While the menu adjusts to the seasons and what’s readily available, one of its popular items is a delightful soup with a subtly flavored local white fish called scup, served with kelp vinegar and smoked sea beans. The seared sea robin is surprisingly light. A member of the distinct Triglidae family of fish, sea robins are covered in spines. They use “walking rays” to crawl along the bottom of the ocean and help them sense the mollusks and crustaceans that they eat. Yet, the dish is approachable–for the more selective eaters.

These fish live along coastal Connecticut and Rhode Island, which cuts down on shipping costs and reduces the amount of fossil fuels used to bring fish from the water to the dinner plate. The entrees on the menu range from about $25 to $60, which is on par with smart casual restaurants in Mystic. The seaside town is an emerging New England food destination with everything from artisanal doughnuts to fusion cuisine from Bangladeshi chef Sheuli Solaiman. 

Standridge also works closely with nearby Stonington Kelp Co. co-owner and sugar kelp farmer Suzie Flores to incorporate this giant seaweed into many of their signature dishes. Alongside her husband, Flores farms three acres of kelp on sturdy mooring lines about a mile from shore in Fishers Island Sound. She sells it fresh from the docks of a local marina in season and at multiple farmers markets in Connecticut. From there, consumers have a wide range of ways to eat it, from fresh salads, pickled, or even powdered and sprinkled on pasta and pizza for a little kick of extra nutrients.

[Related: Eating sustainably may mean skipping the lobster for now.]

Standridge and Flores share a similar approach to both sustainability and food and Flores devotes a great deal of time promoting kelp and growing this viable market so people of all incomes can eventually benefit from it. 

“Sustainability is kind of a multi-faceted approach,” Flores tells PopSci. “It’s something that is grown while doing as little harm as you can. It’s also possibly about negating harm and can be restorative in some ways and can help support an economy and community. It’s not just about growing something using no fertilizer, not using any freshwater, or putting pressure on resources, but it also is about developing an economy around it as well.”

Flores cultivates sugar kelp which is a native seaweed that grows along the Northeastern United States and up into Canada. Farmed sugar kelp grows over the winter months and is harvested every spring. It absorbs excess nitrogen from the water, while also producing oxygen. Sugar kelp also grows as quickly as six and a half feet from the time it is planted to harvest, according to Flores. 

[Related: Why seaweed farming could be the next big thing in sustainability.]

Nutritionally, sugar kelp is an excellent source of fiber, vitamins C and K, calcium, and more. “I feel like it’s kind of common knowledge that fish is good for you, and the reason fish is good for you is because of all of the things that are present in seaweed,” says Flores.

Seaweeds like kelp could be major components of building a more sustainable food system. They can be used in cow feed to reduce methane emissions and research from Tufts University found that it could help tackle food insecurity. The plants with a reputation for being a messy nuisance can even be used in tasty desserts including the restaurant’s sea salt caramels and its light and sweet kelp cake. 

“We pickle as much as we can and then it’s just really a delicious kind of condiment for anything. In that form, you can mix it into soups and sauces, you can put it into salads,” says Standridge. “We can do a lot of things where you just kind of want a little bit of ocean flavor in something that’s not going to be overpowering. It’s a great product.”

One of the biggest challenges of sustainable agriculture is bringing it up to scale so healthy foods like kelp are more affordable. Standridge says that his restaurant and others that use seaweed can help encourage people to try to incorporate more of it into their diets because diners there are typically more open to trying something new. It can pique interest in kelp and other ingredients that consumers may be less familiar with.

Financial support from organizations like NOAA Sea Grant and the National Science foundation can help fund the next steps of scaling seaweed production up and using existing fishing infrastructure to keep seaweed sustainable and economical. Educational events like Kelp Harvest Week or maintaining a presence at farmer’s markets has also helped the public become more open to eating seaweed. 

“If you go to an apple orchard, there’s usually apples that are down on the bottom and rotting. You wouldn’t pick those up and have that be your representation of an apple,” says Flores. “We harvest our kelp fresh from a line out in the ocean, so it’s not the same seaweed that you find washed up on the shore. And that makes a huge difference.”

Bringing sustainable ingredients up to scale requires time, investment, and faces the tug of war of maintaining its low environmental impact without generating more waste or burning unnecessary fossil fuels. Despite the challenge, supporting smaller farms and fisheries could prove to be a tool in working towards a more sustainable food system for more of us, perhaps with a side of pickled kelp. 

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In parts of Brazil, water levels are so low due to severe drought that previously submerged ancient rock carvings are visible for the first time since 2010. The petroglyphs including depictions of animals and other natural objects are located on the shores of Rio Negro, at an archeological site known as the Ponto das Lajes–Place of Slabs– near where the Rio Negro and the Solimões river flow into the Amazon River.

These carvings were previously seen during a drought 13 years ago, when the Rio Negro’s water levels dropped to what was then an all-time known low of 44.7 feet. As of October 23, the water levels in the Rio Negro are at 42.2 feet. Some experts predict that the drought could last until early 2024. 

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

According to the BBC, archaeologist Jaime Oliveira told local media that the markings were carved by people who lived in the area in pre-Columbian times. “This region is a pre-colonial site which has evidence of occupation dating back some 1,000 to 2,000 years. What we’re seeing here are representations of anthropomorphic figures.”

In addition to the faces and animals, grooves in one of the rocks were potentially used by Indigenous people in the area as a whetstone to sharpen their arrows. Carlos Augusto da Silva of the Federal University of Amazonas identified 25 groups of these carvings on a single rock.

Pieces of ceramics that archaeologists believe are thousands of years old have also been found at the site. The area was home to large Indigenous villages before European colonists arrived in the Seventeenth Century. 

[Related: Historic drought brings eerie objects and seawater to the surface of the Mississippi River.]

The carvings re-emerged earlier in October amid this unusually dry season. A similar situation arose in Europe in the summer of 2022, when one of the worst droughts in 500 years revealed “hunger stones,” in rivers across the continent. These stones covered in engraved markings show the water levels from previous dry times and some come with grim warnings. Near the town of Děčín in the northern Czech Republic, one haunting stone read “If you see me, then weep,” or “Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine.”

Scientists attribute this drought in South America to an El Niño weather pattern and warming in the North Atlantic linked to human-made climate change. 

Due to the low water levels, endangered pink river dolphins in Lake Tefé, Brazil are at risk of suffocation and a major hydropower plant near Porto Velho has also been shut down. Tens of thousands living in remote communities who can only travel by boat are also being isolated from the rest of the world.

These dry conditions are also accelerating the destruction of the most biodiverse rainforest on Earth. Parts of the Amazon rainforest have already begun to change from humid ecosystems that store large amounts of heat-trapping gasses into more dry forests that release these gasses into the atmosphere. Climate change, deforestation and fires have made it harder for the Amazon region as a whole to recover from severe droughts.

“This is a catastrophe of lasting consequences,” Luciana Vanni Gatti, a scientist at Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research, told The New York Times. “The more forest loss we have, the less resilience it has.”

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Research has long suggested that music can help lower pain perception without medication and could even help babies tolerate heel-prick blood tests. Emerging research has also found that music might change our experience of certain types of discomfort.  Importantly,  the type of music you’re listening to may play a role. According to a small Canadian study published October 25 in the journal Frontiers in Pain Research, listening to our favorite music can reduce pain intensity and bittersweet music specifically can help reduce the general unpleasantness of pain. 

[Related: Spotify wants to understand your body on music.]

In the body, hypoalgesia is a decreased sensitivity to pain. It happens when pain stimuli are disrupted between their origin point like a knee or foot and where they are recognized as pain by the conscious mind, primarily in the brain’s thalamus and cortex. 

To look into this response, researchers placed heat on the left arms of 63 healthy participants. The sensation was similar to the feeling of a hot cup of coffee being held against the skin. The participants either listened to two of their favorite music tracks, relaxing music selected for them by the researchers, scrambled music, or silence. 

The participants were asked to rate the intensity and unpleasantness of the pain. When scrambled sound or silence was played, the participants rated the pain as less intense by about four points on a 100-point scale. They also said the pain was less unpleasant by about nine points when listening to their preferred tracks, compared with silence or scrambled sound. The relaxing music that was selected for them did not produce this effect, as in zero points.

“In our study, we show that favorite music chosen by study participants has a much larger effect on acute thermal pain reduction than unfamiliar relaxing music,” study co-author and PhD candidate at the Université de Montréal Darius Valevicius said in a statement. “In addition, we used scrambled music, which mimics music in every way except its meaningful structure, and can therefore conclude that it is probably not just distraction or the presence of a sound stimulus that is causing the hypoalgesia.”

They also examined if musical themes could modulate the pain-decreasing effects of favorite music. Participants were asked about their emotional response to their favorite music and the researchers assigned four themes: energizing/activating, happy/cheerful, calming/relaxing, and moving/bittersweet. The different emotional themes varied in their ability to reduce pain.

“We found that reports of moving or bittersweet emotional experiences seem to result in lower ratings of pain unpleasantness, which was driven by more intense enjoyment of the music and more musical chills,” Valevicius said. 

[Related from PopSci+: The science is clear: Metal music is good for you.]

While neurologists don’t fully understand what stimulates the chills and physical responses we get with some music, these reactions appear to indicate a neurophysiological process that can block some pain signals. Chills can manifest as a tingling sensation, shivers, or goosebumps.

According to the authors, some of the limitations include how long the participants listened to the music samples. For example, listening to relaxing music for longer than seven minutes may have stronger effects than the shorter tracks that the participants listened to. They also need to address if listening to favorite music can be effective with other, non-thermal stimuli like chronic pain.

“Especially when it comes to the emotion themes in favorite music like moving/bittersweet, we are exploring new dimensions of the psychology of music listening that have not been well-studied, especially in the context of pain relief. As a result, the data we have available is limited, although the preliminary results are fairly strong,” Valevicius said.

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Among birds, raptors are known for their sight, penguins for their huddling techniques, and some kingfishers are skillful divers. Some of these colorful and long-beaked birds dive headfirst into water to catch fish at break-neck speeds, all without damaging their brains. How they accomplish this feat is all in their genes, according to a study published October 24 in the journal Communications Biology.

[Related: Birds are so specialized to their homes, it shows in their bones.]

The special type of diving kingfishers perform is called plunge-diving. Other birds including gannets and pelicans also plunge-dive, but it is not a common foraging method in the animal kingdom. While kingfishers don’t generally hurt themselves on these dives that can reach up to 25 miles per hour, they do not come without risk. 

“For kingfishers to dive headfirst the way they do, they must have evolved other traits to keep them from hurting their brains,” Shannon Hackett, study co-author and associate curator of birds at the Field Museum, said in a statement.

Kingfishers are divided into three families that generally share vivid plumage and smaller feet. Kingfisher species also have varied diets. Not all of them eat fish, with many species eating lizards, insects, and even other kingfishers. After a 2017 study found that the groups of kingfishers that eat fish are not even closely related within the kingfisher family tree, it became clear to Hackett that fishy diets and diving abilities likely all evolved from a common ancestor.

“The fact that there are so many transitions to diving is what makes this group both fascinating and powerful, from a scientific research perspective,” says Hackett. “If a trait evolves a multitude of different times independently, that means you have power to find an overarching explanation for why that is.”

In the study, the team compared the DNA of 30 different kingfisher species to see which genes explain the birds’ diet and their ability to dive without sustaining brain damage. They used specimens from various field work.

“When our scientists do fieldwork, they take tissue samples from the bird specimens they collect, like pieces of muscle or liver. Those tissue samples are stored at the Field Museum, frozen in liquid nitrogen, to preserve the DNA,” study co-author and evolutionary biologist Chad Eliason said in a statement. 

They began the process of sequencing the full genomes for each of the kingfisher species, generating the entire genetic code of each bird. They then used software to compare the billions of base pairs that make up these genomes to look for the genetic variations that the diving kingfishers have in common.

[Related: What engineers learned about diving injuries by throwing dummies into a pool.]

They found that the fish-eating birds had several modified genes associated with both diet and brain structure. There were mutations in two interesting places. One mutation was on the birds’ AGT gene, which has been associated with dietary flexibility in other species. The other was on the MAPT gene, which codes for tau proteins that relate to feeding behavior.

Tau proteins help stabilize tiny structures inside the brain. However, the accumulation of too many tau proteins can be harmful. Traumatic brain injuries and Alzheimer’s disease in humans have been associated with a buildup of tau. 

“I learned a lot about tau protein when I was the concussion manager of my son’s hockey team,” said Hackett. “I started to wonder, why don’t kingfishers die because their brains turn to mush? There’s gotta be something they’re doing that protects them from the negative influences of repeatedly landing on their heads on the water’s surface.”

The team suspects that these tau proteins may be a mixed-bag for the brain. The same genes that keep the neurons in the brain organized are the same ones that fail from repeated concussions or if someone has Alzheimer’s.

“My guess is there’s some sort of strong selective pressure on those proteins to protect the birds’ brains in some way,” Hackett said. 

Some next steps for this research now that the correlated genomic variations have been identified include looking to see what these mutations do and to the proteins that are being produced. They’re also interested in what is going to compensate in a brain for all of the concussive forces and see how it can be applied to human brains.

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When foraging, bumblebees often have a choice to make. Do they go for the nectar that is the easiest to get, or should they work harder to get nectar with a higher sugar content? A new study found that the priority for the bumblebees is getting the most calories in the shortest amount of time, even at the expense of using up more energy. This trade-off ensures an immediate energy boost for the bumblebee colony, according to a study published October 24 in the journal iScience.

[Related: Female honeybees may pass down ‘altruistic’ genes.]

The study looked at a common species in the United Kingdom called Bombus terrestris or the buff-tailed bumblebee. Bumblebees will drink nectar from flowers and regurgitate it into their nest for other bees to use. They only store a small amount of nectar in their nests, so they must make the most of every opportunity to forage. 

To make these choices, bumblebees appear to trade off the time that they spend collecting nectar with the energy content of that nectar. If the sugar content is worth it, the bees will work to collect it despite being more difficult to access. By comparison, honeybees make their foraging decisions by optimizing the amount of energy they are expelling for any nectar, likely to prolong a honeybee’s working life.  

“Bumblebees can make decisions ‘on the fly’ about which nectar sources are the most energetically economical,” study co-author and University of Oxford bee biologist Jonathan Pattrick said in a statement. “By training bumblebees to visit artificial slippery flowers and using different ‘nectars’ with high, medium or low amounts of sugar, we found that they could make a trade-off between the energy content of the nectar and how difficult it was to access.”

For the study, Patrick and a team of biologists made 60,000 observations of the bumblebee’s behavior over six months. This allowed them to precisely estimate bumblebee foraging energetics and each bumblebee in the study was observed for up to eight hours a day without a break. The team used artificial flowers that were positioned vertically and horizontally and had slippery surfaces that made it difficult for the bees to grip. 

A computer program measured the split-second timing as the bees flew between the fake flowers and foraged for nectar to see how much energy the bumblebees spent flying and how much they collected while drinking. They then identified how the bees decided whether to spend extra time and energy collecting high-sugar nectar from the slippery flowers, or take the easier option of collecting lower-sugar nectar from flowers they could land on.

Each bumblebee was then given one of three tests.

In test one, the nectar on both the vertical and horizontal artificial flowers contained the same amount of sugar. The bumblebees chose to forage from the horizontal flowers instead of spending the extra time and energy hovering around the vertical flowers.

In test two, the vertical flowers had much more sugary nectar than the horizontal flowers and the bumblebees chose to drink almost exclusively from the vertical flowers.

[Related: Bee brains could teach robots to make split-second decisions.]

In test three, the vertical flowers had slightly more sugary nectar than the horizontal flowers. This created a situation where the bumblebees had to make a tradeoff between the time and energy they spent foraging and the energy content in the nectar they were drinking. They ended up feeding from the horizontal flowers.

Based on these test results, the authors conclude that the bumblebees can choose to spend additional time and energy foraging from the more hard-to-access nectar sources, but only if the eventual reward is really worth it. Understanding how this works can help make predictions about what types of flowers the bumblebees are likely to visit and inform choices of the kinds of flowers planted to make fields more bumblebee friendly.

“It’s amazing that even with a brain smaller than a sesame seed, bumblebees can make such complex decisions,” study co-author and University of Cambridge biochemist Hamish Symington said in a statement. “It’s clear that bumblebee foraging isn’t based on a simple idea that ‘the more sugar there is in nectar, the better’ – it’s much more subtle than that. And it highlights that there’s still so much to learn about insect behavior.”

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With its 19 feet-long torpedo-shaped body and long teeth the newly-described Lorrainosaurus was a fearsome mega predator. The fossilized remains of a 170-million-year-old marine reptile is the oldest-known pliosaur and dates back to the Jurassic era. The discovery is described in a study published October 16 in the journal Scientific Reports.

[Related: Millions of years ago, marine reptiles may have used Nevada as a birthing ground.]

Pliosaurs were members of a group of ocean-dwelling reptiles that are closely related to the more famous long-necked plesiosaurs. Unlike their cousins, these pliosaurs had short necks and massive skulls. From snout to tail, it was likely about 19 feet long and very little is known about the plesiosaurs from this time.

“Famous examples, such as Pliosaurus and Kronosaurus–some of the world’s largest pliosaurs–were absolutely enormous with body-lengths exceeding 10m [32 feet]. They were ecological equivalents of today’s killer whales and would have eaten a range of prey including squid-like cephalopods, large fish and other marine reptiles. These have all been found as preserved gut contents,” study co-author and Uppsala University paleontologist Benjamin Kear said in a statement.

Pliosaurs first emerged over 200 million years ago and remained relatively small players in marine ecosystems. Following a landmark restructuring of the marine predator ecosystem in the early to middle Jurassic era (about 175 to 171 million years ago) they reached apex predator status.

“This event profoundly affected many marine reptile groups and brought mega predatory pliosaurids to dominance over ‘fish-like’ ichthyosaurs, ancient marine crocodile relatives, and other large-bodied predatory plesiosaurs,” study co-author and paleobiologist at the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences Daniel Madzia said in a statement.

The fossils in this study were originally found in 1983 in northeastern France, but were recently analyzed by an international team of paleontologists who identified this new pliosaur genus called Lorrainosaurus. The teeth and bones represent what was once a complete skeleton that decomposed and was spread along the ancient seafloor by scavengers and ocean currents. 

[Related: The planet’s first filter feeder could be this extinct marine reptile.]

“Lorrainosaurus was one of the first truly huge pliosaurs. It gave rise to a dynasty of marine reptile mega-predators that ruled the oceans for around 80 million years,” Sven Sachs, a study co-author and paleontologist from the Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld in Germany, said in a statement.

Other than a short report published in 1994, these fossils remained obscure until the team reevaluated the specimens. Finding Lorrainosaurus’ remains indicates that the reign of gigantic mega-predatory pliosaurs likely began earlier than paleontologists previously thought. These giants were also locally responsive to the major ecological changes in the marine environments that covered present day Europe during the early Middle Jurassic.

“Lorrainosaurus is thus a critical addition to our knowledge of ancient marine reptiles from a time in the Age of Dinosaurs that has as yet been incompletely understood,” said Kear.

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It’s a little slice of Mars right here on Earth. The volcanoes of the dry and arid Atacama desert in Argentina and Chile climb roughly 20,000 feet above sea level, with blistering winds, parched conditions, and freezing temperatures. However, a team of biologists who discovered a living two ounce leaf-eared mouse three years ago, have now found multiple mummified mice in these extreme conditions. The findings are described in a study published October 23 in the journal Current Biology.

[Related: Male mice are utterly terrified of bananas.]

“The most surprising thing about our discovery is that mammals could be living on the summits of volcanoes in such an inhospitable, Mars-like environment,” study co-author and University of Nebraska, Lincoln evolutionary biologist Jay Storz said in a statement. “Well-trained mountain climbers can tolerate such extreme elevations during a one-day summit attempt, but the fact that mice are actually living at such elevations demonstrates that we have underestimated the physiological tolerances of small mammals.”

Finding freeze-dried mummy mice

As far back as the 1970s and 1980s, archaeologists reported seeing mouse cadavers at these extreme heights. The assumption was that they naturally must have hitched a ride up the summit with the Incas. These sites are considered sacred to the Inca and the belief was that they could have been brought up along with firewood up the slopes or potentially were offered up as sacrifices.

“You can’t fault the archaeologists for thinking this way, because what other explanation is there?” said Storz. “Nothing could be living up there, so they had to have been brought there.”

Inadvertently, doubts on the mice as hitchhikers theory were cast early in 2020. Storz and his friend and fellow mountaineer Mario Pérez Mamani, captured a live specimen of leaf-eared mouse atop the 22,000-foot peak of Llullaillaco, a volcano on Chile-Argentina border. 

Along with the discovery of more live mice, they’ve now found 13 mouse mummies on the summits of three neighboring volcanoes—Salín, Púlar, and Copiapo—all close to four miles above sea level.

“These are basically freeze-dried, mummified mice,” Storz said.

It’s all relative

The frozen in time state also helped preserve their DNA and crucial genetic information. Alongside collaborators from the University of Montana, Storz compared the genetic variation among the leaf-eared mice collected in the lowlands, midlands, and highlands of Atacama Desert. This cross-habitat zone analysis can help trace the evolutionary history of animal populations that are separated by physical barriers, distance, or altitude.

[Related: 1,000-year-old mummy with full head of hair and intact jaw found in Peru.]

The team questioned whether the mummified mice living on top of the Andes Mountains may be a different subpopulation of the leaf-eared rodent that has a colonization history that differs from their more low-land dwelling peers. According to Storz, they found that the mice from the summits and those from the flanks or the base of the volcanoes in the surrounding desert are “one big happy family.”

Two pairs of the leaf-eared mummies found on Salín were also closely related, possibly siblings or parents and offspring. Along with the discovery of the live mouse burrows, the equal ratio of males to females found among the mummies, also points to the leaf-eared mouse living in and not just touring these summits. 

‘How in God’s name is anything living up there?’

Puna de Atacama is among Earth’s most inhospitable places and NASA has visited the Atacama to practice for future missions on Mars. Its less than 0.6 inches of annual rainfall make it a good analogue for the Red Planet and a rovers designed to dig in Martian soil to search for microbial life have been tested here. 

“Even at the base of the volcanoes, the mice are living in an extreme, Martian environment. And then, on the summits of the volcanoes, it’s even more so. It feels like outer space,” said Storz. “It just boggles the mind that any kind of animal, let alone a warm-blooded mammal, could be surviving and functioning in that environment. When you experience it all firsthand, it even further impresses upon you: How in God’s name is anything living up there?”

To learn more, Storz and team have established laboratory colonies of leaf-eared mice that were collected from various altitudes. They acclimated each group to conditions that simulate the Puna de Atacama, hoping to pinpoint the physiological adaptations that the rodents cope with life at the extreme. They’re are also continuing mountaineering surveys of small mammals living on high Andean peaks in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile.

They believe it possible that avoiding predators such as birds of prey, foxes, mountain lions, and smaller cats could be what’s driving the mice to live here. 

“But why they’re ascending to these extreme elevations is still a mystery,” Stoz said.

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The moon is our closest neighbor in space and the only celestial body humans have set foot on, yet we are still learning about it. In fact, Earth’s moon might actually be 40 million years older than scientists previously believed. By conducting an atom-by-atom analysis on crystals that were brought back by Apollo astronauts in 1972, a team of geochemists and plenary scientists now calculate that the igneous orb is at least 4.46 billion years old. The findings are described in a study published today in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters.

Intertwined fates

Heck is a curator for the meteorite collection at the Field Museum in Chicago and a professor at the University of Chicago. He says that studying the moon also helps us understand our own planet because of the topographical differences.

“Earth’s surface is much, much younger because there’s so much geologic activity [here] from volcanism and weathering,” explains Heck. “The moon’s surface is essentially an archive of solar system dynamics. This is a record that we don’t have on Earth, but our planet’s evolution is tied to these impacts that happened in the early solar system.”

A historical perspective

In the study, the team looked at moon dust brought back by the Apollo 17 crew. The 1972 lunar landing included NASA geologist Harrison Schmidt, who collected multiple rocks to study back on Earth. His samples contain very small crystals that were created billions of years ago and can help indicate when the moon was formed.

The energy created by the impact from the object that struck Earth and created the moon melted the rock that eventually became the lunar surface. That offers a clue to the elements that existed on the celestial body since its emergence versus the ones that appeared much later. For example, zirconium, a silver metal found on both the Earth and the moon, could not form and survive on the molten lunar surface: Any zircon crystals that are currently present on the moon must have formed after the magma ocean cooled. Determining the age of these structures can thus reveal the minimum possible age for the moon, assuming that they emerged right after the impact.

Looking atom by atom

Researchers have previously suggested that the moon is older than estimated, but this new study is the first to use an analytical method called atom probe tomography to pinpoint the age from the oldest known lunar crystal retrieved by humans.

“In atom probe tomography, we start by sharpening a piece of the lunar sample into a very sharp tip using a focused ion beam microscope, almost like a very fancy pencil sharpener,” study co-author and planetary scientist Jennika Greer said in a statement. “Then, we use UV lasers to evaporate atoms from the surface of that tip. The atoms travel through a mass spectrometer, and how fast they move tells us how heavy they are, which in turn tells us what they’re made of.”

This atom-by-atom analysis revealed how much of the zircon crystals had undergone radioactive decay—a process where atoms that have an unstable configuration shed some protons and neutrons. They then transform into different elements, like how uranium decays into lead. Based on the amount of conversion and the known half-lives of different chemical isotopes, experts can estimate the age of the sample.

“Radiometric dating works a little bit like an hourglass,” Heck said in a statement. “In an hourglass, sand flows from one glass bulb to another, with the passage of time indicated by the accumulation of sand in the lower bulb. Radiometric dating works similarly by counting the number of parent atoms and the number of daughter atoms they have transformed to. The passage of time can then be calculated because the transformation rate is known.”

The team working with the Apollo 17 sample found that the proportion of lead isotopes (the daughter atoms created during the decay) indicated that the crystals were about 4.46 billion years old, so the moon must at least be that old too. While this puts the moon’s age back 40 million years, that’s still a very short time compared to the universe’s roughly 13.7 billion-year history. 

“It’s amazing being able to have proof that the rock you’re holding is the oldest bit of the moon we’ve found so far. It’s an anchor point for so many questions about the Earth. When you know how old something is, you can better understand what has happened to it in its history,” Greer said.

From Apollo to Artemis

In future studies, clues pulled from these decades-old samples could be pooled with those from samples taken by upcoming Artemis lunar missions. Artemis III is scheduled for 2025 and will land on and explore the lunar South Pole. The Apollo 17 mission collected samples from the Taurus-Littrow valley on the eastern edge of Mare Serenitatis, so crystals from a different region of the moon could yield unimaginable discoveries. 

[Related: Scientists have new moon rocks for the first time in nearly 50 years]

“I am convinced that there is older stuff on the moon—we just haven’t found it yet. I even think we have older zircons in the Apollo samples. This is really the power of sample return,” says Heck. 

A mixture of new samples and future advances in technology could further anchor the timeline of how our solar system was formed and beyond.  “Maybe in 50 or 100 years or even later, new generations of scientists will have the tools we can only dream about today to address scientific questions we can’t even think about today,” says Heck. “These templates are a legacy for future generations.”

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As cold and flu season approaches, pharmacy chain CVS announced that they are removing some over-the-counter allergy and cold medicines from their shelves since their active ingredient has been deemed ineffective as a decongestant when taken orally. The removed medications include Vicks Dayquill, Benadryl Allergy Plus Congestion, Sudafed PE, Vicks Sinex, and others that contain a decongestant called phenylephrine.

[Related: Why adult cold medicine is not good for children.]

A CVS spokesperson told CNBC that other oral cold medications that do not contain phenylephrine as the only active ingredient will remain on CVS’ shelves. Medications that contain phenylephrine account for about  $1.8 billion in annual sales, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

In September, an independent advisory committee to the FDA declared that phenylephrine is ineffective as a decongestant when taken in pill form. The panel refused to certify the effectiveness of these medications, adding that further trials to prove otherwise were required. 

“Modern studies, when well conducted, are not showing any improvement in congestion with phenylephrine,” Mark Dykewicz, an allergy specialist at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine, told CBS News last month. 

In 2006, phenylephrine began to be substituted for an ingredient called pseudoephedrine in many non-prescription cold and allergy medicines. Pseudoephedrine was restricted amid reports of it being used to make the illegal drug methamphetamine. Phenylephrine cannot be used to make meth and was considered a suitable replacement. These medications with pseudoephedrine are still considered safe and can be bought without a prescription, but are now behind the pharmacy counter and require a photo ID. 

Allergies and respiratory infections alert the body to send white blood cells to the sinuses, nose, and throat, which causes the creation of mucus and swelling in the nasal membranes. Phenylephrine temporarily reduces the swelling in the blood vessels in the nasal passages when it is administered in the nose. Some experts say that when taken in a pill form, phenylephrine gets absorbed by the gut and metabolized so well that only a small amount of the decongestant will make it to the bloodstream. 

According to a 2015 citizen petition asking the FDA to remove drugs with phenylephrine, the amount that gets into the bloodstream is not enough to actually reach the nose and work to clear congestion. Citizen petitions like this one are a way for consumer groups, industry groups, or individuals to call on the FDA to change regulations or take other administrative action. The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology supported this citizen petition.

[Related: Why we still don’t have a vaccine for the common cold.]

Consumers should consult a medical professional to best determine what decongestant to take, but can look for those that contain pseudoephedrine or antihistamines like Claratin or Zyrtec. Nasal sprays that contain phenylephrine are also still considered effective, in addition to those that contain another ingredient called oxymetazoline.

In September, director of endoscopic skull base surgery and a professor of otolaryngology at Stanford Medicine Zara Patel, told CNN that seeing a medication removed from store shelves like this should not be a reason to distrust regulatory agencies.

“This is how science works. As we gain more information, recommendations may change, and that’s not a bad thing. That’s the wonderful thing about science. We can use new information and change our perspective,” said Patel. She is not affiliated with the FDA committee.

Other national pharmacy chains including Walgreens and Rite Aid have not yet announced if they are pulling these medications as well.

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A group of paleontologists, park rangers, and geologists have discovered a new species of ancient shark in the rock layers of Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. It was uncovered in a large fossil deposit that includes at least 40 different species of shark and their relatives, and even well-preserved skeletal cartilage. 

[Related: Megalodons were likely warm-blooded, despite being stone-cold killers.]

The new species is named Strigilodus tollesonae and is a petalodont shark. These extinct  sharks had petal-shaped teeth and lived about 337 million years ago. According to the National Park Service, it is more closely related to present day ratfish than sharks or rays and it was identified from teeth found in the cave’s walls. Strigilodus tollesonae likely had teeth that included one rounded cusp used for clipping and a long, ridge inert side that crushed prey the way molars do. Paleontologists believe that it likely lived like modern day skates and fed on worms, bivalves, and small fish. 

Strigilodus tollesonae translates to “Tolleson’s Scraper Tooth” and it is named after Mammoth Cave National park guide Kelli Tolleson for her work in the paleontological study that uncovered the new species. 

The limestone caves that make up the 400-mile long Mammoth Cave System were formed about 325-million-years ago during the Late Paleozoic. Geologists call this time period the Mississippian Period, when shallow seas covered much of North America including where Mammoth Cave is today. 

In 2019, the park began a major paleontological resources inventory to identify the numerous types of fossils associated with the rock layers. Mammoth Cave park staff reported a few fossil shark teeth that were exposed in the cave walls of Ste. Genevieve Limestone in several locations. Shark fossils can be difficult to come by, since shark skeletons are made of cartilage instead of bone. Cartilage is not as tough as bone, so it is generally not well-preserved in the fossil record. 

The team then brought in shark fossil specialist John-Paul Hodnett of the Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission to help identify the shark fossils. Hodnett and park rangers discovered and identified multiple different species of primitive sharks from the shark teeth and fine spine specimens in the rocks lining the cave passages.

“I am absolutely amazed at the diversity of sharks we see while exploring the passages that make up Mammoth Cave,” Hodnett said in a statement. “We can hardly move more than a couple of feet as another tooth or spine is spotted in the cave ceiling or wall. We are seeing a range of different species of chondrichthyans [cartilaginous fish] that fill a variety of ecological niches, from large predators to tiny little sharks that lived amongst the crinoid [sea lily] forest on the seafloor that was their habitat.”

[Related: This whale fossil could reveal evidence of a 15-million-year-old megalodon attack.]

In addition to Strigilodus tollesonae, the team have identified more than 40 different species of sharks and their relatives from Mammoth Cave specimens in the past 10 months. There appear to be at least six fossil shark species that are new to science. According to the team, those species will be described and named in an upcoming scientific publication.

The majority of the shark fossils have been discovered in areas of the park that are inaccessible to the public, so photographs, illustrations, and three-dimensional models have been made to display the discovery. The park also plans to celebrate the new shark fossils with multiple presentations and exhibits on Monday October 23. 

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Jupiter and its dynamic atmosphere are ready for another closeup in a new image taken with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Using the telescope’s data, scientists have discovered a new and never-before-captured high-speed jet stream. The jet stream sits over Jupiter’s equator above the main cloud decks, barrels at speeds twice as high as a Category 5 hurricane, and spans more than 3,000 miles. The findings were described in a study published October 19 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

[Related: This hot Jupiter exoplanet unexpectedly hangs out with a super-Earth.]

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system and its atmosphere has some very visible features, including the infamous Great Red Spot, which is large enough to swallow the Earth. The planet is ever-changing and there are still mysteries in this gas giant that scientists are trying to unravel. According to NASA, the new discovery of the jet stream is helping them decipher how the layers of Jupiter’s famously turbulent atmosphere interact with each other. Now, JWST is helping scientists look further into the planet and see some of the lower and deeper layers of Jupiter’s atmosphere where gigantic storms and ammonia ice clouds reside. 

“This is something that totally surprised us,” study co-author Ricardo Hueso said in a statement.  “What we have always seen as blurred hazes in Jupiter’s atmosphere now appear as crisp features that we can track along with the planet’s fast rotation.” Hueso is an astrophysicist at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain.

The research team analyzed data from JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) that was obtained in July 2022. The Early Release Science program was designed to take images of Jupiter 10 hours apart (one Jupiter day) in four different filters. Each filter detected different types of changes in the small features located at various altitudes of Jupiter’s atmosphere.

The resulting image shows Jupiter’s atmosphere in infrared light. The jet stream is located over the equator, or center, of the planet. There are multiple bright white spots and streaks that are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms. Jupiter’s northern and southern poles are dotted by auroras that appear red and extend to the higher altitudes of the planet. 

“Even though various ground-based telescopes, spacecraft like NASA’s Juno and Cassini, and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have observed the Jovian system’s changing weather patterns, Webb has already provided new findings on Jupiter’s rings, satellites, and its atmosphere,” study co-author and University of California, Berkeley astronomer Imke de Pater said in a statement.  

The newly discovered jet stream travels at roughly 320 miles per hour and is located close to 25 miles above the clouds, in Jupiter’s lower stratosphere. The team compared the winds observed by JWST at higher altitudes with the winds observed at deeper layers by the Hubble Space Telescope. This enabled them to measure how fast the winds change with altitude and generate wind shears.

[Related: Jupiter formed dinky little rings, and there’s a convincing explanation why.]

The team hopes to use additional observations of Jupiter to determine if the jet’s speed and altitude change over time. 

“Jupiter has a complicated but repeatable pattern of winds and temperatures in its equatorial stratosphere, high above the winds in the clouds and hazes measured at these wavelengths,” Leigh Fletcher, a study co-author and planetary scientists at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “If the strength of this new jet is connected to this oscillating stratospheric pattern, we might expect the jet to vary considerably over the next 2 to 4 years–it’ll be really exciting to test this theory in the years to come.”

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There is about a month and a half left in the 2023 Atlantic Hurricane season, and it’s a season that has seen some rapidly intensifying storms. In less than 24 hours, Hurricane Idalia went from a Category 1 hurricane to a Category 4 with winds near 130 MPH. The storm made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast as a high Category 3. Weeks later, Hurricane Lee grew from a Category 1 storm to a Category 5 in only 24 hours.

[Related: The future of hurricanes is full of floods—a lot of them.]

According to a study published October 19 in the journal Scientific Reports, Atlantic hurricanes may be more than twice as likely to strengthen from a Category 1 storm to a major Category 3 hurricane or higher in a 24-hour period than they were between 1970 and 1990. They also are more likely to strengthen more rapidly along the east coast of the United States.

As ocean temperatures continue to reach record highs due to human-caused climate change, the trend is worrying. Tropical weather systems like hurricanes and tropical storms gain strength over unusually warm sea surface temperatures. Warm ocean water is like carbohydrates for hurricanes and gives the storms more energy. Faster storm intensification has already been linked to climate change, but the changes in the intensification rates of storms across the 41 million square mile wide Atlantic Ocean Basin have been less clear. 

“Our oceans have absorbed about 90 percent of the excess warming that has occurred in recent decades due to human-caused climate change,” study co-author and Rowan University climate scientist Andra Garner tells PopSci. “I wanted to see what kinds of changes might already have occurred to the overall rates at which Atlantic hurricanes have been strengthening.”

In the study, Garner looked at every Atlantic hurricane between 1970 and 2020 and analyzed how the wind speed changed over each hurricanes’ lifespan. The storms were split into three time periods–a historical era (1970 to 1990), an intermediate era (1986 to 2005), and a modern era (2001 to 2020). To establish the maximum intensification rate, Garner calculated the greatest increase in wind speed over any 24-hour period within the hurricane’s lifespan. 

She found that the chance of a hurricane’s maximum intensification rate being 23 miles per hour or more had increased from 42.3 percent in the historical era to 56.7 percent today. The probability of a weak hurricane strengthening to become a major hurricane in 24 hours also increased from 3.23 percent to 8.12 percent. 

“The storms we’ve seen this year, like Hurricane Idalia and Hurricane Lee, align with what my research findings would tell us to expect,” Garner says. “Hurricane Idalia and Hurricane Lee both occurred over exceptionally warm ocean waters, and strengthened quickly as a result of those warm ocean waters (and other favorable conditions). I think that this lines up very well with a trend that my research indicates that we could expect to continue if ocean waters continue to warm.”

[Related: Florida’s aquatic animals prepare early for storms like Hurricane Idalia.]

The locations within the Atlantic Basin where hurricanes were most likely to see their maximum intensification rate has also changed between these eras. Hurricanes were more likely to strengthen most quickly off the Atlantic coast of the US and in the Caribbean Sea, and less likely to strengthen most quickly in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Better understanding these locations and intensification rates could help create better action plans for communities at risk. Three of the five of the most economically damaging Atlantic hurricanes have all occurred since 2017 and these storms all had rapid growth. According to Garner, this is an “urgent warning for humanity,” and it should continue without major changes to our behavior and quickly transitioning away from fossil fuels. However, there is still time to act. 

“It’s really important to remember that there is absolutely still hope. We know that we are the cause of this problem, which means we can also be the solution—and we already have the tools at our disposal (green energy, etc.) to actually be the solution,” says Garner. “So there’s hope that we could secure a more sustainable future.”

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Honeybees are a model of teamwork in nature, with their complex society and hives that generate enough energy to create an electrical charge. They also appear to be some of the rare animals that display a unique trait of altruism, which is genetically inherited. The findings were described in a study published September 25 in the journal Molecular Ecology.

[Related: Bee brains could teach robots to make split-second decisions.]

Giving it all for the queen bee

According to the American Psychological Association, humans display altruism through behaviors that benefit another individual at a cost to oneself. Some psychologists consider it a uniquely human trait and studying it in animals requires a different framework for understanding. Animals experience a different level of cognition, so what drives humans to be altruistic might be different than what influences animals like honeybees to act in ways that appear to be altruistic.

In this new study, the researchers first looked at the genetics behind retinue behavior in worker honeybees. Retinue behavior is the actions of worker bees taking care of the queen, like feeding or grooming her. It’s believed to be triggered by specific pheromones and worker bees are always female. 

After the worker bees are exposed to the queen’s mandibular pheromone (QMP), they deactivate their own ovaries. They then help spread the QMP around to the other worker bees and they only take care of the eggs that the queen bee produces. Entomologists consider this behavior ‘altruistic’ because it benefits the queen’s ability to produce offspring, while the worker bees remain sterile. 

The queen is also typically the mother of all or mostly all of the honeybees in the hive. The genes that make worker bees more receptive to the queen’s pheromone and retinue behavior can be passed down from either female or male parent. However, the genes only result in altruistic behavior when they are passed down from the female bee parent.

“People often think about different phenotypes being the result of differences in gene sequences or the environment. But what this study shows is it’s not just differences in the gene itself—it’s which parent the gene is inherited from,” study co-author and Penn State University doctoral candidate Sean Bresnahan said in a statement. “By the very nature of the insect getting the gene from its mom, regardless of what the gene sequence is, it’s possibly going to behave differently than the copy of the gene from the dad.”

A battle of genetics 

The study supports a theory called the Kinship Theory of Intragenomic Conflict. It suggests that a mothers’ and fathers’ genes are in a conflict over what behaviors to support and not support. Previous studies have shown that genes from males can support selfish behavior in mammals, plants, and honeybees. This new study is the first known research that shows females can pass altruistic behavior onto their offspring in their genes. 

[Really: What busy bees’ brains can teach us about human evolution.]

Worker bees generally have the same mother but different fathers, since the queen mates with multiple male bees. This means that the worker bees share more of their mother’s genes with each other. 

“This is why the Kinship Theory of Intragenomic Conflict predicts that genes inherited from the mother will support altruistic behavior in honeybees,” Breshnahan said. “A worker bee benefits more from helping, rather than competing with, her mother and sisters—who carry more copies of the worker’s genes than she could ever reproduce on her own. In contrast, in species where the female mates only once, it is instead the father’s genes that are predicted to support altruistic behavior.”

Pinpointing conflict networks

To look closer, the team crossbred six different lineages of honeybees. Bresnahan says that this is relatively easy to do in mammals or plants, but more difficult in insects. They used honeybee breeding expertise from co-author Juliana Rangel from Texas A&M University and Robyn Underwood at Penn State Extension to create these populations.

Once the bee populations were successfully crossed and the offspring were old enough, the team assessed the worker bees’ responsiveness to the pheromone that triggers the retinue behavior. 

“So, we could develop personalized genomes for the parents, and then map back the workers’ gene expression to each parent and find out which parent’s copy of that gene is being expressed,” Bresnahan said.

The team identified the gene regulatory networks that have this intragenomic conflict, finding that more genes that have a parental bias were expressed. These networks consisted of genes that previous research showed were related to the retinue behavior.

“Observing intragenomic conflict is very difficult, and so there are very few studies examining the role it plays in creating variation in behavior and other traits,” study co-author and Penn State entomologist Christina Grozinger said in a statement. “The fact that this is the third behavior where we have found evidence that intragenomic conflict contributes to variation in honeybees suggests that intragenomic conflict might shape many types of traits in bees and other species.”

The team hopes that this research will help provide a blueprint for more studies into intragenomic conflict in other animals and plants.

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The recent “ring of fire” solar eclipse looked stunning across portions of North and South America and we now have a new view of the stellar event. The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite created the image of the eclipse on Saturday October 14, depicting the mostly blue Earth against the darkness of space, with one large patch of the planet in the shadow of the moon. 

[Related: Why NASA will launch rockets to study the eclipse.]

Launched in 2015, DSCOVR is a joint NASA, NOAA, and U.S. Air Force satellite. It offers a unique perspective since it is close to 1 million miles away from Earth and sits in a gravitationally stable point between the Earth and the sun called Lagrange Point 1. DSCOVR’s primary job is to monitor the solar wind in an effort to improve space weather forecasts. 

A special device aboard the satellite called the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) imager took this view of the eclipse from space. According to NASA, the sensor gives scientists frequent views of the Earth. The moon’s shadow, or umbra, is falling across the southeastern coast of Texas, near Corpus Christi.

An annular solar eclipse occurs when the moon moves between Earth and the sun. The sun does not vanish completely in this kind of eclipse. Instead, the moon is positioned far enough from Earth to keep the bright edges of the sun visible. This is what causes the “ring of fire,” as if the moon has been outlined with bright paint.

While this year’s event could be seen to some degree across the continental United States, the 125-mile-wide path of annularity began in Oregon around 9:13 AM Pacific Daylight Time. The moon’s shadow then moved southeast across Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, before passing over Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. It continued south towards Mexico’s Yucatan, Peninsula, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Brazil

Unlike the colorful Aurora Borealis, eclipses are much easier to predict. Scientists can say when annular and solar eclipses will happen down to the second centuries in advance. The precise positions of the moon and the sun and how they shift over time is already known, so scientists can see how the moon’s shadow will fall onto Earth’s globe. Advances in computer technology have also enabled scientists to even chart eclipse paths down to a range of a few feet.

[Related: We can predict solar eclipses to the second. Here’s how.]

The next annular solar eclipse will be at least partially visible from South America on October 2,2024. One of these ‘ring of fire’ eclipses will not be visible in the United States until June 21, 2039. However, a total solar eclipse will darken the sky from Maine to Texas on April 8, 2024. There is still plenty of time to get eclipse glasses or make a pinhole camera to safely watch the next big celestial event. 

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A giant seismic event on Mars—a “marsquake”—that shook the Red Planet last year had an unexpected source, surprising astrophysicists from around the world. They suspected a meteorite strike. Instead, enormous tectonic forces within Mars’s crust, which caused vibrations that lasted for six hours, caused the quake and not a meteorite strike. The findings are described in a study published October 17 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

[Related: Two NASA missions combined forces to analyze a new kind of marsquake.]

NASA’s InSight lander recorded the magnitude 4.7 marsquake on May 4, 2022, which scientists named S1222a. Its seismic signal was similar to those of previous quakes that were caused by meteorite impacts, so the team began to search for an impact crater. 

In the new study, a team from the University of Oxford worked with the European Space Agency, Chinese National Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation, and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency to scour more than 55 million square miles on Mars. Each group examined the data coming from its own satellites to look for a crater, dust cloud, or other signature of a meteorite impact. Because the search came up empty, they now believe that S1222a was caused by the release of huge tectonic forces from within the Martian interior. 

That doesn’t mean Mars’s tectonic plates are moving the way they do during an earthquake. The best available evidence suggests the planet is remaining still. “We still think that Mars doesn’t have any active plate tectonics today, so this event was likely caused by the release of stress within Mars’ crust,” study co-author and University of Oxford planetary geophysicist Benjamin Fernando said in a statement. “These stresses are the result of billions of years of evolution; including the cooling and shrinking of different parts of the planet at different rates.”

While Fernando explains that scientists do not fully understand why some parts of Mars seem to have more stress than others, these results can help them investigate further. “One day, this information may help us to understand where it would be safe for humans to live on Mars and where you might want to avoid!” he said.

S1222a was one of the last events recorded by NASA’s InSight mission before its end. The InSight lander launched in May 2018 and survived “seven minutes of terror” to touch down on Mars, where it studied the planet’s interior and seismology for years. The last of the spacecraft’s data was returned in December 2022, after increasing dust accumulation on its solar panels caused InSight to lose power. 

[Related: InSight says goodbye with what may be its last wistful image of Mars.]

In its four years and 19 days of service, InSight recorded more than 1,300 marsquakes. At least eight of these events were from a meteorite impact; the largest two formed craters that were almost 500 feet in diameter. If the S1222a event was formed by an impact, the team estimates that the crater to be would have been at least 984 feet in diameter.

The team is applying knowledge from this study to other work, including future missions to our moon and the tectonics that are similar to California’s famed San Andreas fault located on one of Saturn’s moons named Titan. They also hope that it encourages additional major international collaborations to study the Red Planet and beyond. 

“This has been a great opportunity for me to collaborate with the InSight team, as well as with individuals from other major missions dedicated to the study of Mars,” study co-author and New York University Abu Dhabi astrophysicist Dimitra Atri said in a statement. “This really is the golden age of Mars exploration!”

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The Guinness World Records officially dubbed Pepper X the world’s hottest chili pepper earlier this year, going public with the announcement on October 9. Pepper X has a rating of an average of 2.69 million Scoville Heat Units (SHU). On the SHU scale, zero is considered bland, while a regular jalapeño pepper registers at about 5,000 SHU. For a non-food comparison, pepper spray used in self-defense is about 1.6 million SHUs and bear spray is about 2.2 million.

[Related: Spiciness isn’t a taste, and more burning facts about the mysterious sensation.]

Winthrop University in South Carolina calculated this off-the-charts Scobille score with specimens collected over the past four years. Pepper X has a greenish-yellow color with grooves and ridges. According to the five brave souls who have eaten it, Pepper X has an earthy flavor once the heat begins to subside.  

It dethroned the 10-year reign of the 1.64 million SHU Carolina Reaper, but both peppers were created by the same chili pepper expert to be extra spicy. Ed Currie is the founder of Puckerbutt Pepper Company and has been working on Pepper X since the bright red Carolina Reaper first took the title in 2013.

When creating a new breed of pepper, it can take several years for the desired traits to emerge through selective breeding. It takes about 10 generations for hybrid peppers to stabilize with predictable traits and consistent fruit.

Pepper X was a crossbreed with Carolina Reaper and a mystery pepper that Currie did not disclose. His goal was to create an extremely hot pepper that also had some sweetness. The spice of Pepper X even made an expert like Currie wince in pain.

“I was feeling the heat for three-and-a-half hours. Then the cramps came,” Currie told the Associated Press. “Those cramps are horrible. I was laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain.”

A chemical in peppers called capsaicin is what causes the burning sensation when eating a spicy pepper like the Carolina Reaper or Pepper X. Humans and other mammals will perceive capsaicin as a threat when eaten, which sends the strong burning signal throughout the body. 

According to University of Tennessee epidemiologist Paul D. Terry, the short-term effects of eating extremely spicy foods range from enjoying the sensation of heat to a more unpleasant burning sensation on the lips, tongue, and mouth. Spicy foods can also cause various forms of digestive tract discomfort, headaches, and vomiting, so it is best to avoid eating them if you experience these effects. 

[Related: Leftovers of a 2,000-year-old curry discovered on stone cooking tools.]

Capsaicin is painless except when eaten in large quantities and is likely not harmful over a long period of time. Some experts generally agree that spicy food does not cause stomach ulcers, but the association with stomach cancer isn’t as clear.

The burning sensation also releases endorphins and dopamine. Currie began growing peppers after overcoming addiction to drug and alcohol and says that kick is a natural high for him. He shares the peppers he creates with medical researchers, in hopes that they can be used to explore new cures for disease or help those with chronic pain or discomfort.

Correction (October 21, 2023): An earlier version of the story mistakenly said that capsaicin is harmful except when eaten in large quantities. It should have said that capsaicin is not harmful.

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The ocean’s diverse seaweeds are full of nutrients and can be very tasty. While seaweed is common in many Asian dishes, it is not as popular in many traditionally European cuisines. However, this was not always the case. New archaeological evidence also shows that early Europeans ate seaweeds and freshwater plants 8,000 years ago. The findings are described in a study published October 17 in the journal Nature Communications and anchor the plants in the past.

[Related: Why seaweed is a natural fit for replacing certain plastics.]

In the study, researchers examined biomarkers that were taken from the calcified dental plaque of 74 individuals found at 28 archaeological sites from northern Scotland to southern Spain. The plaques revealed “direct evidence for widespread consumption of seaweed and submerged aquatic and freshwater plants.”

The samples where biomolecular evidence survived showed signs that red, green, or brown seaweed and freshwater aquatic plants were eaten. One sample from Scotland’s Orkney archipelago also had evidence of a type of sea kale. The researchers also found that seaweeds and freshwater plants were continually eaten in Europe into the Early Middle Ages. 

“Not only does this new evidence show that seaweed was being consumed in Europe during the Mesolithic Period around 8,000 years ago when marine resources were known to have been exploited, but that it continued into the Neolithic when it is usually assumed that the introduction of farming led to the abandonment of marine dietary resources,” study co-author and University of York bioarchaeologist Stephen Buckley said in a statement.

The nutritional benefits from eating seaweed were likely very well understood by ancient European populations. Some historical accounts report laws related to collection of seaweed in Iceland, France, and Ireland dating back to the 10th Century. Sea kale is also mentioned by Roman naturalist and writer Pliny as an anti-scurvy remedy for sailors on long sea voyages. Through the 18th century, seaweed was considered a famine food and is featured in a popular Irish-language folk song. 

[Related: Why seaweed farming could be the next big thing in sustainability.]

Currently, there are roughly 10,000 different species of seaweeds around the world, but only 145 species are regularly consumed. Depending on the type of seaweed, the plants are a great source of fiber, iron, and potassium among other vitamins and minerals. Cultivating seaweed can also be very environmentally friendly, as the seaweed produces oxygen while absorbing excess nitrogen in the water.

“Our study also highlights the potential for rediscovery of alternative, local, sustainable food resources that may contribute to addressing the negative health and environmental effects of over-dependence on a small number of mass-produced agricultural products that is a dominant feature of much of today’s western diet, and indeed the global long-distance food supply more generally,”  study co-author and University of Glasgow archaeologist Karen Hardy said in a statement. “It is very exciting to be able to show definitively that seaweeds and other local freshwater plants were eaten across a long period in our European past.”

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A team of scientists from Spain and the United States reconstructed the skull of an extinct great ape species from a set of well-preserved, but damaged skeletal remains. The bones belonged to Pierolapithecus catalaunicus who lived roughly 12 million years ago. Studying its facial features could help us better understand human and ape evolution and the findings are described in a study published October 16 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

[Related: This 7th-century teen was buried with serious bling—and we now know what she may have looked like.]

First described in 2004, Pierolapithecus was a member of a diverse group of extinct ape species that lived during the Miocene Epoch (about 15 to 7 million years ago) in Europe. During this time, horses were beginning to evolve in North America and the first dogs and bears also began to appear. The Miocene was also a critical time period for primate evolution.

In the study, the team used CT scans to virtually reconstruct Pierolapithecus’ cranium. They then used a process called principal components analysis and compared their digital reconstruction of the face with other primate species. They then modeled the changes occurring to some key features of ape facial structure. They found that Pierolapithecus shares similarities in its overall face shape and size with fossilized and living great apes. 

However, it also has distinct facial features that have not been found in other apes from the Middle Miocene. According to the authors, these results are consistent with the idea that Pierolapithecus represents one of the earliest members of the great ape and human family. 

“An interesting output of the evolutionary modeling in the study is that the cranium of Pierolapithecus is closer in shape and size to the ancestor from which living great apes and humans evolved,” study co-author and AMNH paleoanthropologist Sergio Almécija said in a statement. “On the other hand, gibbons and siamangs (the ‘lesser apes’) seem to be secondarily derived in relation to size reduction.”

Studying the physiology of extinct animals like Pierolapithecus can help us understand how other species evolved. This particular primate species is important because the team used a cranium and partial skeleton that belonged to the same individual ape, which is a rarity in the fossil record. 

[Related: Our tree-climbing ancestors evolved our abilities to throw far and reach high.]

“Features of the skull and teeth are extremely important in resolving the evolutionary relationships of fossil species, and when we find this material in association with bones of the rest of the skeleton, it gives us the opportunity to not only accurately place the species on the hominid family tree, but also to learn more about the biology of the animal in terms of, for example, how it was moving around its environment,” study co-author Kelsey Pugh said in a statement. Pugh is a primate palaeontologist with the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York and Brooklyn College.

Earlier studies on Pierolapithecus suggest that it could have stood upright and had multiple adaptations that allowed these hominids to hang from tree branches and move throughout them. However, Pierolapithecus’ evolutionary position is still debated, partially due to the damage to the specimen’s cranium.  

“One of the persistent issues in studies of ape and human evolution is that the fossil record is fragmentary, and many specimens are incompletely preserved and distorted,” study-coauthor and AMNH biological anthropologist Ashley Hammond said in a statement. “This makes it difficult to reach a consensus on the evolutionary relationships of key fossil apes that are essential to understanding ape and human evolution.”

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On October 13, President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced plans to develop seven regional clean hydrogen hubs across the US. The hubs will receive $7 billion in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to accelerate the domestic market for low-cost, clean hydrogen.

These new hubs aim to produce more than three million metric tons of clean hydrogen annually. They are estimated to help eliminate 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, or roughly the combined annual emissions of over 5.5 million gasoline-powered cars. 

According to the White House, advancing clean hydrogen is essential to achieving President Biden’s “vision of a strong clean energy economy that strengthens energy security, bolsters domestic manufacturing, creates healthier communities, and delivers new jobs and economic opportunities across the nation.” 

Why hydrogen?

Hydrogen is the simplest and most abundant element on Earth. However, it rarely exists on its own in nature and instead is usually found in compound form like in water (H₂0). Elemental hydrogen is also an energy carrier, meaning it can transport energy in a usable form from one place to another. However, hydrogen must be produced from another substance in order to do this.

Hydrogen fuel is made by separating water molecules, sometimes using a device called an electrolyzer. Fuel from hydrogen can also be produced from natural gas during a process called steam methane reforming that combines methane with steam. 

While a clean fuel itself, the current processes used to make it is anything but clean. Large quantities of fossil fuels are used, which emit greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and methane. Energy companies are working to advance cleaner versions of making emission-free hydrogen fuel and California, Texas, and Colorado are already working to become clean hydrogen centers.  

[Related: This liquid hydrogen-powered plane successfully completed its first test flights.]

These newly announced hubs will be focused on the goal of reducing the carbon dioxide emissions from hydrogen production. This huge undertaking will require large amounts of renewable energy to power the manufacturing process. It could also require additional nuclear power and a large network of carbon storage facilities that will grab and bury emissions in the regions where natural gas is still used to make hydrogen.

Cleanly manufacturing hydrogen could help decarbonize multiple industries in the US, as hydrogen is used to make fertilizer and is important in the chemical and petrochemical industry. 

“This has potential to be transformative,” Oleksiy Tatarenko, who focuses on hydrogen at RMI, a clean energy advocacy group, told The Washington Post. “But we need to get it right from day one. We need to ensure this hydrogen can demonstrate climate benefits.”

How long will this take?

Granholm tells PopSci that the initiative provides the US with the opportunity for,  “creating an entirely new economy around hydrogen and putting thousands and thousands of people to work, particularly people who have powered our nation for the last century.” 

The hubs will be an asset in bringing hydrogen production up to scale, to reduce the currently high costs of hydrogen production. It also incorporates multiple industries from construction to operations to design. 

“For the seven hydrogen hubs, it’s about a one-to six-investment, meaning for every dollar the federal government puts in, six dollars come from the private sector, so it’s government enabled, but private sector led,” says Granholm. “These projects are not just one year projects, these are projects that last several years to be able to plan and design, build, and operate.”

Where will the ‘hydrogen hubs’ be located?

The seven new hydrogen hubs will stretch across 16 states and are organized by geographic region.

“These states that were selected are not awardees yet. There’s a negotiation period that will occur between selection and award. So there is a period of time there for states to make sure that they’ve got an environment that will make these hubs of success, “ explains Granholm.

[Related: A beginner’s guide to the ‘hydrogen rainbow.’]

The Mid-Atlantic hub in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey will repurpose old oil infrastructure and use renewable and nuclear electricity from both established and innovative electrolyzer technologies.

The Appalachian hub will be located across West Virginia, Southeastern Ohio, and Southwestern Pennsylvania. This hub is slated to be among the largest in terms of production and will use the region’s methane gas to derive hydrogen. 

The California hub will span the entire Golden State and encompass the busy ports Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Oakland to produce hydrogen exclusively from renewable energy and biomass.

A Gulf Coast hub will be based in Houston, Texas, and could potentially expand into Louisiana. Houston is the traditional energy capital of the US and the plans for this hub include large-scale hydrogen production through both natural gas with carbon capture and renewables-powered electrolysis.

The Heartland Hydrogen hub spanning Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota will use wind energy to derive hydrogen in an effort to decarbonize the region’s critical agricultural sector. 

The Midwest hub in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan will further decarbonize industrial sectors by using hydrogen in steel and glass production, power generation, refining, heavy-duty transportation, and sustainable aviation fuel.

The Pacific Northwest hub in parts of Eastern Washington State, Oregon, and parts of Montana plans to produce clean hydrogen exclusively from renewable sources.

“The hub design in itself is important because it creates clusters of supply and demand that are close to one another, minimizing the need to tackle challenges that would come with moving hydrogen long distances,” Adria Wilson, the hydrogen policy lead at Breakthrough Energy, told CNBC.

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The endangered Texas ocelot is in serious trouble due to a combination of over-hunting, habitat loss, inbreeding, and getting hit by cars. Only two populations of these bobcat sized spotted and striped carnivores remain in Texas and they’re isolated from a larger population living in northwestern Mexico by highways and buildings. 

[Related: Watch bobcats, bears, and even birds use fallen logs as bridges.]

One conservation measure to help endangered ocelots and other animals near busy roads are special wildlife exits. A study published October 13 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution found that 10 mammal species use these special structures, which could help prevent more collisions with traffic.

Chain-link fencing along Texas highways has been used to reduce wildlife mortality from colliding with cars and trucks. However, this fencing can trap animals that get on the highway if they jump over or burrow under the fencing. In 2018, the Texas Department of Transportation built 10 exits for the endangered ocelots in an effort to keep the animals from getting trapped. The openings in the fencing are about 18 inches across and 23 inches wide and are funnel shaped to encourage the ocelots to move away from the highway and into the surrounding habitat. 

This new study tested if these wildlife exits are used by medium-sized carnivores in Texas. Two automatic cameras were installed at each of the 10 wildlife exits along a 7.3-mile stretch of State Highway 100 between Los Fresnos and Laguna Vista. The cameras were inspected every month between February 2019 and November 2020 and a team of scientists downloaded the images and sorted them into species. 

They found that the wildlife exits were used by 10 mammal species to get off the highway. The species ranged from the smaller black-tailed jackrabbits and Virginia opossums up to bobcats and coyotes. For the coyotes and bobcats, their activity peaked around 10 PM and then again between midnight and dawn.

“Here we show that a range of species, including middle-sized carnivores such as bobcats and coyotes, successfully use wildlife exits, a new type of mitigation structure specifically designed for the US endangered ocelot,” study co-author and former University of Texas Rio Grande Valley graduate student said in a statement. 

While the ocelots themselves were not photographed using the exits due to their small numbers, other automatic cameras near the highway saw them. About 43 percent of bobcats, a surrogate species for the ocelot, used the exits. According to the team, observing bobcats and coyotes using the exits implies that the endangered ocelots are likely to do so as well. 

[Related: Grizzlies are getting killed by roads, but the risks are bigger than roadkill.]

“We anticipated that the extreme rarity of ocelots would limit the amount of data collected on that species,” study co-author and conservation biologist  at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Kevin Ryer said in a statement. “For this reason, we also focused on more common bobcats and coyotes, as they have similar habitats, diets, body sizes, and behaviors as ocelots, with overlapping home ranges between them.”

The largest local species including white-tailed deer, nilgai, and javelina, could not use the narrow wildlife exits. Tunnels and crossing girds are the best methods for helping these bigger animals avoid traffic collisions. 

While the exits appear to function as designed, additional research could create improvements that prevent wildlife from going in the wrong direction. These wildlife exits also have the potential to be a valuable conservation measure on Texas highways.

“Wildlife collision mitigation is less expensive to implement during the construction phase of highways than retrofitting mitigation after construction,” study co-author and University of Texas Rio Grande Valley biologist Richard Kline said in a statement. “Although the entire wildlife community near the highway should be considered when planning mitigation, endangered species should be the focus.”

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Neanderthals cooked crab and created art, but they also could have haunted cave lions and used their skins. Some 48,000 year-old puncture wounds on a cave lion’s ribcage suggest that the big cat was killed by a Neanderthal’s wooden spear. The findings are described in a study published October 12 in the journal Scientific Reports and may be the earliest known example of lion hunting and butchering by these extinct humans.

[Related: Sensitive to pain? It could be your Neanderthal gene variants.]

For about 20,000 years, cave lions were the most dangerous animals in Eurasia, with a shoulder height of about 4.2 feet high. They lived in multiple environments and hunted large herbivores including mammoth, bison, hose, and cave bear. They get the name cave lions due to the fact that most of their bones have been found in Ice Age caves. The fearsome creatures went extinct at the end of the last Ice Age, but live on through their bones and the 34,000 rock art panels at Grotte Chauvet in France. 

In 1985, an almost complete cave lion skeleton was uncovered in Siegsdorf, Germany. The bones are believed to be from an old, medium-sized cave lion. There are cut marks across bones including two ribs, some vertebrae, and the left femur, which lead scientists to believe that ancient humans butchered the big cat after it died.  

However, the authors in this new study took another look at the remains. They describe a partial puncture wound located on the inside of the lion’s third rib. The wound appears to match the impact mark left by a wooden-tipped spear. The puncture is angled, which suggests that the spear entered the left of the lion’s abdomen and penetrated its vital organs before impacting the third rib on its right side. 

“The rib lesion clearly differs from bite marks of carnivores and shows the typical breakage pattern of a lesion caused by a hunting weapon,” Gabriele Russo, a study co-author and zooarchaeology PhD student at Universität Tübingen in Germany, said in a statement. 

The characteristics of the puncture wound also resemble the wounds found on deer vertebrae which are known to have been made by Neanderthal spears. The new findings could represent the earliest evidence of Neanderthals purposely hunting cave lions.

“The lion was probably killed by a spear that was thrust into the lion’s abdomen when it was already lying on the ground.” study co-author and University of Reading paleolithic archaeologist Annemieke Milks said in a statement. 

[Related: How many ancient humans does it take to fight off a giant hyena?]

The team also analyzed the findings from a 2019 excavation at the Unicorn Cave–or Einhornhöhle–in the Harz Mountains in Germany. The remains of several animals dating back to the last Ice Age or about 55,000 to 45,000 years ago were found, including some cave lion bones. They looked at bones from the toes and lower limbs of three cave lion specimens. These bones also had cut marks that are consistent with the markings generated when an animal is skinned.

The cut marks suggest that great care was taken while skinning the lion to ensure that the claws remained preserved within the fur. This finding could be the earliest evidence of Neanderthals using a lion pelt, potentially for cultural purposes.

“The interest of humans to gain respect and power from a lion trophy is rooted in Neanderthal behavior and until modern times the lion is a powerful symbol of rulers!” Thomas Terberger, a study co-author and archaeologist at the Universität Göttingen in Germany said in a statement. 

Future studies of cave lion bones could reveal more details of more complex Neanderthal behaviors and how the animal may have laid the basis for cultural development by our own species—Homo sapiens. 

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Hello gourd-geous! Travis Gienger from Anoka, Minnesota won the 50th World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off with a pumpkin weighing a whopping 2,749 pounds. This year’s victorious, lumpy veggie is named Michael Jordan and it could be baked into almost 700 pies. 

[Related: How do you breed a 2,624-pound pumpkin?]

According to Guinness World Records, the previous world record holder for heaviest pumpkin was a 2,702 pound squash grown in Italy in 2021.

Gienger is a horticulture teacher at Anoka Technical College who has been growing pumpkins for almost three decades, currently nurturing the behemoths in a patch in his backyard. This year, he decided to give the plants some extra care by watering them up to 12 times per day, in addition to extra fertilizing and feeding.  

He is a second generation great pumpkin grower, who first competed at the annual weigh-off in Half Moon Bay, California in 2020. Since then, he has won three of the city’s last four giant pumpkin contests. His 2,350 pound pumpkin named Tiger King won in 2020. The somehow even bigger pumpkin Maverick won in 2022 at 2,560 pounds.

He also shares the world record for the largest jack-’o-lantern by circumference. He won this prestigious honor in October 2022 for a pumpkin carved to look like an eagle with a circumference of 242 inches.

“I put in the work so that I can put a smile on people’s faces and it’s just so nice coming out here to see everyone in this town,” Gienger told The Associated Press.

Gienger won a $30,000 prize, most of which he plans to put into his daughter’s college fund and the rest will be used to “reinvest in the hobby.”

The annual Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival draws thousands of visitors every fall for multiple pumpkin-themed activities. The coastal city is known for large pumpkin patches, making it an ideal spot for this festival. 

Growing these giant gourds first took off during the 1970s, but it was not until 1996 that the first 1,000 pounder hit the pumpkin scene. Growers use special seeds that are annually swapped to create giant gourds. A pumpkin’s growing season can last over 100 days, giving them significantly more time to reach these titanic proportions than other crops. They also have a thick and woody rind that protects them better than other vegetables that have a high concentration of water.

[Related: These fungi demand more pumpkin in their pumpkin spice lattes.]

Most record-breaking pumpkins are a variety called Dill’s Atlantic Giant. They have been bred to produce increasingly large offspring. Some prize winners could have some innate advantages, including larger vascular tissue or a natural ability to grow faster, resist pests, or take in more nutrients from the soil. 

When not artificially flavoring lattes, getting carved up for decoration, or being the center of competitions, pumpkins are an excellent food to eat. They are chock full of nutrients that support the immune system, are heart-healthy, and their versatility makes them easy to fit into different types of dishes. 

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To avoid the amphibian pile-up that often comes with mating, some female frogs take drastic measures. According to research published October 11 in the journal Royal Society Open Science, female European common frogs will lay completely still and play dead to fend off potential mates. 

[Related: Check out some of the weirdest warty frogs in North America.]

In the study, a team from the Natural History Museum of Berlin in Germany placed a male frog in a box with one large female and one small female and recorded the mating behavior. They observed 54 instances of female frogs being clutched by the males and 83 percent of females tried rotating their body when gripped. About 48 percent of clasped females emitted “release calls” like squeaks and grunts and all of these vocal frogs rotated their bodies. 

Thirty-three percent of the frogs clasped by male expressed tonic immobility. This is when a frog stiffens its outstretched arms and legs to appear dead. The immobility tended to occur alongside both rotating and calling. Smaller females more frequently used all three tactics together than the bigger frogs. 

Interestingly, this unusual behavior had actually been seen centuries before. “I found a book written in 1758 by Rösel von Rosenhoff describing this behavior, which was never mentioned again,” study co-author Carolin Dittrich told The Guardian. “It was previously thought that females were unable to choose or defend themselves against this male coercion. Females in these dense breeding aggregations are not passive as previously thought.”

The team acknowledges that this behavior could also be a way to test a male’s strength and endurance, as those traits could boost their survival chances. They also point out that a larger sample size is needed to see if smaller females are more successful at escaping. 

This playing tactic is also used by other animals as a way to avoid being eaten.

The phrase “playing possum”  refers to a tactic deployed by the North American opossum found in the United States and Canada. When this marsupial is threatened by a predator, it will throw itself onto its back, bare its teeth, drool, and excrete a very bad smelling liquid out of its anal glands to get out of danger. 

North American wood ducks and colorful mallard ducks can immediately collapse when confronted with predators. In a 1975 experiment, 29 out of 50 different wild ducks played dead when they were exposed to captive red foxes. The ducks would also stay still long enough to be brought back to the fox’s den and wait until later to escape. The veteran foxes quickly learned that they needed to quickly deal a fatal injury to ducks that appeared dead.

[Related: Why some tiny frogs have tarantulas as bodyguards.]

Despite being apex predators, multiple species of sharks and rays also exhibit tonic immobility. Lemon sharks will turn onto their back and exhibit labored breathing and an occasional tremor when facing danger. Zebra sharks will also do this and will even stay immobile when being transported. 

Male nuptial gift-giving spiders will display a different death feigning behavior called thanatosis. It’s part of a courtship ritual that begins before mating with potentially cannibalistic female spiders. In a 2006 experiment, the males would “drop dead” when a female approached with interest. When entering thanatosis, the males would collapse and remain completely still, while retaining a gift of prey the male has already caught and wrapped in silk The male only cautiously begins to move when the female ate the gifts and initiated copulation.

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While sourdough starter is not the social media star it was in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, sourdough bread is still deliciously easy to make at home. It’s also a prime canvas for studying microbes. A study published October 4 in the open-access journal PeerJ found that using different types of flour creates different bacterial communities. These variations contribute to sourdough’s unique flavors and aromas. 

[Related: How to make a sourdough starter—and keep it alive.]

Professional and at-home bakers alike can influence the aroma of their loaves of sourdough bread simply by using different flours, according to study co-author and North Carolina State University microbial ecologist Erin McKenney.

“Our new work focuses on the role that different types of flour play in shaping those microbial ecosystems,” McKenney said in a statement. “As it turns out, the flour bakers use to ‘feed’ their starters plays a significant role in determining which types of bacteria thrive. And that, in turn, strongly influences the aroma that these sourdoughs produce.”

In this new study, McKenney and a team of researchers developed a protocol designed to reproduce what bakers actually do in their kitchens. They created four sourdough starters using 10 different flours, creating 40 starters in total. A sourdough starter is an active colony of wild yeast and good bacteria. It is cultivated by combining water and flour and then allowing the two to ferment. When it is continually fed, it forms a reliable “natural yeast” culture that can be used to raise or leaven breads and other pastries. 

The team used five flours that contain gluten: unbleached all-purpose flour, red turkey wheat, emmer, rye, and einkorn. They also used five gluten-free flours: teff, millet, sorghum, buckwheat, and amaranth. 

For 14 days, all 40 starters were kept in the same growing environment and were fed once a day. They collected data from each starter, measuring the pH and height all while recording the different scents each start was producing. The team also sampled the starters for DNA sequencing to determine the diversity and abundance of bacteria in each of the samples.

“We found that the starters started out being fairly similar to each other, but that changed substantially over time,” McKenney said. “Over the course of the 14 days, we found that each type of flour formed increasingly distinct microbial communities. Essentially, it appears that different types of bacteria are able to make the most of the nutritional compounds found in different types of flour.”

[Related: A new kind of quinoa flour may be coming to a sugar cookie near you.]

A variety of bacterial communities thriving on different nutritional inputs can yield a wide variety of metabolic outputs, as different bacteria produce different smells.

“The bacterial community in amaranth sourdough produces an aroma that smells almost exactly like ham,” McKenney says. “I’ve never smelled a sourdough that had such a meaty aroma. Rye produces a fruity aroma, buckwheat has an earthy smell, and so on. There’s a tremendous amount of variation.”

The study came with a few surprises. The rye flour created a much wider diversity of bacteria than any other type of flour the team studied with over 30 types of bacteria at maturity. Buckwheat came in second place for most diverse bacteria with 22 types. All of the other flours had between three and 14.

They also found that seven out of the 10 flours produced starters that had high levels of bacteria which produce acetic acid, making up between 12.6 and 45.8 percent of the bacteria from the flours. This acid often acts as a leavening agent when it is combined with baking soda. Starters made using teff, amaranth, and buckwheat were all lacking the acetic acid bacteria. 

“So it’s [the acetic acid] playing a significant role in those microbial ecosystems. This is surprising because we didn’t even know this type of bacteria was found in sourdough until 2020. Our previous work found that it was not uncommon, but to see it at such high levels, across so many types of flour, was definitely interesting,” said McKenney.

While McKenney and her team were working with bread under a microscope and in a lab, this kind of research also has more practical insights for sourdough enthusiasts. It shows how home bakers can modify the flour in starters to get the exact flavors and smells they are looking for. Starters take 10 days to become “functionally mature,” which is also helpful for bakers looking to time their next sourdough loaf. 

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The world of mummified poop, or coprolites, offers a fascinating look into the parasites and snacks that pass through people and animals’s digestive systems. Seeing what foods were around can give archeologists an idea of the landscape hundreds of years ago. A new DNA analysis of mummified poop from two pre-Columbian Caribbean cultures reveals that they ate a wide variety of plants, tobacco, and even cotton. The findings are described in a study published October 11 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

[Related: Ancient poop proves that humans have always loved beer and cheese.]

The study looked at the coprolites from two pre-Columbian cultures called the Huecoid and Saladoid. An earlier study of centuries old fecal matter supports a hypothesis that the Huecoid likely originated in the Andes Mountains in present-day Bolivia and Peru before migrating among different islands in the Caribbean around the third century CE. The Saladoid people likely originated in modern day Venezuela and traveled to the Puerto Rican island of Vieques by the sixth century CE.

“Archeologists at the University of Puerto Rico dedicated over 30 years to digs on the Island of Vieques, finding the coprolites along with many other priceless artifacts,” Gary A. Toranzos, study co-author and environmental microbiologist/paleo microbiologist at the University of Puerto Rico, tells PopSci. “One would consider finding coprolites easy [since] they are deposited every day. However, most people will not recognize them and the conditions for coprolite formation need to be very specific.”

Coprolites need dryness to preserve the DNA and it was believed that this preservation was impossible due to the Carribbean’s humid climate.  

“Narganes and Chanlate proved them wrong,” Toranzos says. 

In the study, Toranzos and microbiologist Jelissa Reynoso-García carefully extracted and analyzed plant DNA from ten coprolite samples from the La Hueca archaeological site in Puerto Rico. They then compared the extracted plant DNA against a database of diverse coprolite samples and contemporary plant DNA sequences.

They found that the Huecoid and Saladoid peoples enjoyed a diverse and sophisticated food system, including sweet potato, wild and domesticated peanut, chili peppers, a domesticated strain of tomatoes, papaya, and maize. Their analysis also detected tobacco, potentially due to chewing tobacco, pulverized tobacco inhalation, or tobacco as a food additive for medicinal and/or hallucinogenic purposes. 

[Related: What prehistoric poop reveals about extinct giant animals.]

Surprisingly, cotton was also detected in the samples. This could have been from ground cotton seeds used in oil or because women wet the cotton strands with their saliva leaving strands in the mouth while weaving. 

Additionally, they did not not find evidence of cassava consumption. Cassava is a root vegetable also called yucca and manioc. The authors were surprised that there weren’t any traces of it in these samples, as this plant was often reported as a staple food in the pre-Columbian Caribbean in sources from the time. 

“Cassava DNA was not found, likely because of the extensive preparation of the cassava powder to get rid of toxins in the plant,” says Toranzos.

Different food preparation techniques means that each coprolite sample is only a snapshot of what one specific person had been recently eating. The authors were only able to identify plants that are in current DNA sequence databases and plants that are now-extinct, rare, and in non-commercial crops were not detected. While it’s likely that the Huecoid and Saladoid people ate other plants or fungi than the study notes. The authors hope this analysis gives further insight into the lives of pre-Columbian people of the Americas.

“Even poop is a great resource for agriculture, and many other things,” Toranzos says. “Now we see they are a great way of obtaining information from those who lived thousands of years before us.”

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is showing off its imaging prowess again, this time with a stellar image of NGC 346. This is the brightest and biggest star-making region in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way called the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The SMC is about 21,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Tucana. 

[Related: JWST takes a jab at the mystery of the universe’s expansion rate.]

The image that looks like Edgar Allan Poe’s ominous raven in some angles was taken using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The blue wisps of light show emissions from molecules like silicates and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The red fragments highlight dust that is warmed by the largest and brightest stars in the center.

An arc at the center left might be a reflection of light from the star near the center of the arc, and similar curves appear to be associated with strats at the lower left and upper right. The bright patches and filaments denote areas with large numbers of protostars. While looking for the reddest stars, the research team found 1,001 pinpoint sources of light. Most of these are young stars still snuggled up in their dusty cocoons.

This SMC is more primeval than the Milky Way since it possesses fewer heavy elements. According to NASA, these elements are forged in stars through nuclear fusion and supernova explosions, compared to our own galaxy.

“Since cosmic dust is formed from heavy elements like silicon and oxygen, scientists expected the SMC to lack significant amounts of dust,” NASA wrote in a press release. “However the new MIRI image, as well as a previous image of NGC 346 from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera released in January, show ample dust within this region.”

Astronomers can combine JWST’s data in both the near-infrared and mid-infrared data to take a fuller census of the stars and protostars within this very dynamic region of space. This could help us better understand the galaxies that have existed billions of years ago, during an era known as Cosmic Noon. During Cosmic Noon, star formation was at its peak. Heavy element concentrations were lower, which we can see when we study the SMC.

[Related: The Whirlpool Galaxy’s buff, spiral arms grab JWST’s attention.]

This raven-like image is not the first JWST image that is picture perfect for spooky season. In September 2022, it released chilling new images of 30 Doradus aka the Tarantula Nebula. The nebula’s arachnid inspired nickname comes from its similar appearance to a burrowing tarantula’s silk-lined home. The Tarantula Nebula is about 161,000 light-years away from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, which is home to some of the hottest and biggest stars known to astronomers.

JWST has also imaged the “bones” of  IC 5332, a spiral galaxy over 29 million light years away from the Earth in the constellation Sculptor. The uniquely shaped galaxy has a diameter of roughly 66,000 light years, making it slightly larger than our Milky Way galaxy. The MIRI aboard the new telescope observes the furthest reaches of the universe and can see infrared light, so it’s able to peer through the galaxy’s clouds of dust and into the “skeleton” of stars and gas underneath its signature arms. MIRI basically was able to take an x-ray of a galaxy, revealing IC 5332’s bones and a world that looks different, yet somewhat the same.

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Bear enthusiasts of the world have spoken—128 Grazer was just crowned the winner of Fat Bear Week 2023. This is Grazer’s first time wearing the crown, and she beat out runner up 32 Chunk in the fierce Fat Bear Tuesday final by over 85,000 votes.

[Related: It’s Fat Bear season again! This is the best feed to keep up with these hairy giants.]

According to the National Park Service, Grazer is a large adult female, boasting a long straight muzzle, light brown summer fur, and blond ears. During late summer and fall, she is often one of the fattest bears to feed on the plentiful salmon in the Brooks River in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve.

She is also a particularly defensive mother bear who has raised two litters of cubs. Grazer is known for preemptively confronting and attacking much larger bears—even the large and dominant adult males—to keep her cubs safe. One of Katmai’s adult males named 151 Walker even avoids her, even though she did not have any cubs to protect this season. 

Grazer is the third female bear, or sow, to win the tournament. In 2019, 435 Holly was dubbed fattest bear and 409 Beadnose wore the prestigious crown in 2018. Beadnose is believed to have died in the five years since. 

“The girls did really well this year,” media ranger at Katmai National Park and Preserve Naomi Boak told The Washington Post. “It was the year of the sow.”

Like any competition, this year’s voting was packed with twists and turns. Four-time Fat Bear Week Champion 480 Otis was ousted on Friday October 6. Otis is the oldest and among the park’s most famous bears. This year, he arrived at Brooks River very skinny, but transformed into a thick bear. Otis was beaten by bear 901, a new mom and the 2022 runner up. 

On Saturday October 7, the 2022 winner bear 747 was defeated by Grazer, who went on to beat 901, Holly, and Chunk in the Final Four. 

[Related: How scientists try to weigh some of the fattest bears on Earth.]

First launched by the National Park Service in 2014 as Fat Bear Tuesday, Fat Bear Week is an annual tournament-style bracket competition where the public votes for their favorite chubby bear. Its goal is to celebrate the Brooks River brown bears at Katmai in southern Alaska and its remarkable ecosystem. It was expanded Fat Bear Week in 2015, following the first year’s success. In 2022, over one million votes were cast all around the world. 

At Katmai, bears are drawn to the large number of salmon readily available from late June through September. Salmon have long since been the lifeblood of the area, supporting Katmai’s people, bears and other animals. Fat bears exemplify the richness of this area, a wild region that is home to more brown bears than people along with the largest, healthiest runs of sockeye salmon left on the planet. The daily lives of the Brooks River bears can be followed via eight live-streaming cameras on explore.org from June through October. 

The winners, and all the bears, now get six months of restful solitude as winter approaches. 

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On October 10, the European Space Agency (ESA) published some interim data from its nearly a decade-long Gaia mission. The data includes half a million new and faint stars in a massive cluster, over 380 possible cosmic lenses, and the position of over 150,000 asteroids within the solar system. 

[Related: See the stars from the Milky Way mapped as a dazzling rainbow.]

Launched in December 2013, Gaia is an astronomical observatory spacecraft with a mission to generate an accurate stellar census, thus mapping our galaxy and beyond. A more detailed picture of Earth’s place in the universe could help us better understand the diverse objects that make up the known universe. 

500,000 new stars and cluster cores

In 2022, Gaia’s third data release (DR3) contained data on over 1.8 billion stars, which built a rather complete view of the Milky Way and beyond. Even with all that data, there were still gaps in the ESA’s mapping. Gaia still hadn’t fully explored areas of the sky that were particularly densely packed with stars, overlooking the stars that shine a little less brightly than their neighbors. 

A key example of this is in globular clusters. These are some of the oldest objects in the known universe and are especially valuable for looking back into our cosmic past. However, their bright cores can sometimes overwhelm telescopes trying to get a clear view. 

Gaia selected Omega Centauri to help fill in the gaps in the stellar map. Omega Centauri is the largest globular cluster that can be seen from Earth and is a good example of one of the galaxy’s more ‘typical’ clusters. Gaia enabled a special mode to truly map a wider patch of sky that is surrounding the cluster’s core whenever the cluster came into view.

“In Omega Centauri, we discovered over half a million new stars Gaia hadn’t seen before – from just one cluster!” study co-author and astrophysicist from the Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) Katja Weingrill said in a statement. “We didn’t expect to ever use it for science, which makes this result even more exciting.”

The data also allowed the team to detect new stars that are too close together to be properly measured.

“With the new data we can study the cluster’s structure, how the constituent stars are distributed, how they’re moving, and more, creating a complete large-scale map of Omega Centauri. It’s using Gaia to its full potential—we’ve deployed this amazing cosmic tool at maximum power,” study co-author and AIP astrophysicist Alexey Mints said in a statement. 

The half million new stars showed that Omega Centauri is one of the most crowded regions that Gaia has explored so far. 

Currently, Gaia is exploring eight more regions using these same techniques. The scoop from those exploration will be included in Gaia Data Release 4. It should help astronomers truly understand what is happening within these cosmic building blocks and more accurately confirm the age of our galaxy.

Spotting gravitational lenses 

Gravitational lensing happens when the image of a faraway object in space becomes warped by a disturbing mass, such as a galaxy or star, sitting between the observer and the object. The mass in the middle acts like a giant lens that can magnify the brightness of light and cast multiple images of the faraway source onto the sky. 

[Related: Gravitational Lens Splits Supernova’s Light 4 Different Ways.]

“Gaia is a real lens-seeker,” study co-author and Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux astrophysicist Christine Ducourant  said in a statement. “Thanks to Gaia, we’ve found that some of the objects we see aren’t simply stars, even though they look like them.”

Some of the objects here are not ordinary stars, but distant quasars. These quasars are extremely bright, high-energy galaxies powered by black holes. To date, Gaia has found 381 candidates for lensed quasars. This is a “goldmine” for cosmologists, says Ducourant , and the largest set of candidates ever detected at once. 

Detecting lensed quasars is challenging, since a lensed system’s constituent images can clump together on the sky in misleading ways.

“The great thing about Gaia is that it looks everywhere, so we can find lenses without needing to know where to look,” study co-author and Université Côte d’Azur astrophysicist Laurent Galluccio said in a statement. “With this data release, Gaia is the first mission to achieve an all-sky survey of gravitational lenses at high resolution.”

Asteroids and The Milky Way

One of the studies in this data release reveals more about 156,823 asteroids, pinpointing their positions over nearly double the previous timespan. In the fourth Gaia data release, the team plans to complete the set and include comets, planetary satellites, and double the number of asteroids.

[Related: Smashed asteroid surrounded by a ‘cloud’ of boulders.]

Another study maps the disc of the Milky Way by tracing the weak signals seen in starlight, faint imprints of the gas and dust that floats between the stars. The Gaia team stacked six million spectra to study these signals and the data will hopefully allow scientists to finally narrow down the source of these signals.

“This data release further demonstrates Gaia’s broad and fundamental value—even on topics it wasn’t initially designed to address,” study co-author and ESA Project Scientist Timo Prusti said in a statement. “Although its key focus is as a star surveyor, Gaia is exploring everything from the rocky bodies of the solar system to multiply imaged quasars lying billions of light-years away, far beyond the edges of the Milky Way. The mission is providing a truly unique insight into the Universe and the objects within it, and we’re really making the most of its broad, all-sky perspective on the skies around us.”

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In the years since the Neanderthal genome was first sequenced, geneticists have been peering into the past to look for traces of this extinct group of humans within our genes. The presence of these ancient genes could make carriers more at risk for severe COVID-19, influence nose shape, and even make some people more sensitive to pain. 

[Related: Neanderthal genomes reveal family bonds from 54,000 years ago.]

A new study published October 10 in the journal Communications Biology found that those carrying three Neanderthal gene variants are actually more sensitive to pain from skin pricking after prior exposure to mustard oil. In this case, mustard oil acts as an agonist, or a substance that initiates a physiological response. Adding it to the skin causes a quick response by neurons called nociceptors that create a sense of pain. 

SCN9A is a key gene in the perception of pain that is located on chromosome 2. It is highly expressed nociceptors that are activated when a sharp point or something hot is applied to the body. The neurons encode proteins within the body’s sodium channel and alert the brain which leads to the perception of pain. Earlier research found three variations in the SCN9A gene–M932L, V991L, and D1908G–in sequenced Neanderthal genomes and reports of greater sensitivity to pain among the living humans who have all three of these variants. 

“It has been shown in previous studies that some rare mutations in this gene that stop the channel from working can cause insensitivity to pain,” study co-author and University of Oxford neuroscientist David Bennett tells PopSci. “We were, however, interested in these other mutations, which were shown to have an opposite effect of enhancing the activity of this channel, thus leading their carriers to be somewhat more sensitive than non-carriers.”

According to Andrés Ruiz-Linares, study co-author and University College London human geneticist, earlier studies show that the mutations are quite rare in the British populations, but they are very frequent in Latin American populations. 

“We thus realized that we had, in our hands, the perfect dataset to not only replicate their study but also go further and identify the pain modality that was at work here,” Ruiz-Linares tells PopSci. 

In the study, the team measured the pain thresholds of 1,963 individuals from Colombia in response to a range of stimuli. The D1908G variant was present in roughly 20 percent of chromosomes within this population. About 30 percent of chromosomes carrying this variant also carried the M932L and V991L variants. All three variants were associated with a lower pain threshold in response to skin pricking after the skin was exposed to mustard oil, but not in response to pressure or heat. Additionally, carrying all three of these variants was associated with greater pain sensitivity than carrying only one of them. 

[Related: Neanderthals were likely creating art 57,000 years ago.]

The team then analyzed the genomic region that houses SCN9A using genetic data from 5,971 individuals from Peru, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. They found that the three Neanderthal variants were more common in regions where the population had a higher proportion of Native American ancestry, such as the Peruvian population.

“They [the mutations] have a rather wide range in these countries, from 2 to 42 percent,” study co-author and University College London statistical geneticist Kaustubh Adhikari tells PopSci. “Up to 18 percent of their populations could carry two copies of the mutation. These are, however, gross estimations. We also know, from the previous study, that these mutations are pretty rare in European populations.”

The team believes that the Neanderthal variants may sensitize the sensory neurons by changing the threshold at which a nerve impulse is generated. The variants could also be more common in populations with higher proportions of Native American ancestry due to random chance as well as population bottlenecks that occurred during when the Americas were first colonized by Europeans. 

“Although Neanderthal intermixing with Europeans is now well-known in popular culture, their genetic contribution to other human groups, such as Native Americans in this case, is less talked about,” study co-author and population geneticist at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment in France Pierre Faux tells PopSci. “In this study, we saw how important and relevant it is to study genetic backgrounds that are under-represented in medical cohorts.”

Since acute pain can play a role in moderating behavior and preventing further injury, the team is planning additional research to determine if carrying these variants and having greater sensitivity to pain was advantageous during human evolution. Understanding how these variants work could also help physicians understand and treat chronic pain.

“Genes are just one of many factors, including environment, past experience, and psychological factors, which influence pain,” says Bennet. 

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A new marine snail that would make the late great Jimmy Buffet proud has been discovered in the Florida Keys. The lemon-colored snail is named Cayo margarita after the Spanish word for “small, low island” and the tropical drink Buffet sings about in one of his biggest hits. The new and real resident of the fictional Margaritaville is described in a study published October 9 in the journal PeerJ.

[Related: This cone snail’s deadly venom could hold the key to better pain meds.]

Marine smells are distantly related to the land-dwelling gastropods in gardens around the world. The margarita snails come from a group nicknamed worm snails, since they spend many of their lives living in one place. Worm snails also do not have a protective covering found in other snails called an operculum. This body part allows the snails to retreat further inside their shell and keep their bodies moist.

“Worm snails are just so different from pretty much any other regular snail,” study co-author Rüdiger Bieler tells PopSci. “These guys are sitting in the middle of the coral reef where everybody is out trying to eat them. And they’ve given up that protection and just advertise with their bright colors.”

Bieler is a marine biologist and curator of invertebrates at the Field Museum in Chicago who has spent 40 years studying the Western Atlantic’s invertebrates. Even after decades studying the region, these worm snails were hiding in plain sight during dive trips, largely because these snails are kind of the ultimate introverts.

Once juvenile worm snails find a spot to hunker down and they cement their shell to a hard surface never really move again. “Their shell continues to grow as an irregular tube around the snail’s body, and the animal hunts by laying out a mucus web to trap plankton and bits of detritus,” Bieler explains. 

Bieler and the rest of the international team of researchers came across the lemon-yellow snails in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and a similar lime-colored snail in Belize. Within the same species of snails, it is possible to get many different colors. There can also be color variations in a single population or even cluster of snails. Bieler believes that they may do this to confuse some of the coral reef fish that can see color so that they do not have a clear target. Some may use their hue as a warning color.  

The team initially believed that the lime-green and lemon-yellow snails were different species, but DNA sequencing revealed just how unique they are. This new yellow species belongs to the same family of marine snails as the invasive snail nicknamed the “Spider-Man” snail. This same team found these snails in 2017 on the Vandenberg shipwreck off the Florida Keys.

[Related: Invasive snails are chomping through Florida, and no one can stop them.]

The snails in this new Cayo genus also share a key trait in common with another worm snail genus called Thylacodes. The species Thylacodes bermudensis is found near Bermuda, and while only distantly related to their Floridaian and Belizean cousins, they have small colored heads and mucus that pop out of tubular shells. This might work as a deterrent to keep corals, anemones, and other reef fish from getting too close. The mucus has some nasty metabolites in it which might explain why these snails risk exposing their heads. 

The study and the new snails described in it help illuminate the stunning biodiversity of the world’s coral reefs, which are under serious threat due to climate change and the record warm ocean temperatures this summer. 

“These little snails are kind of beacons for biodiversity that need to be protected because many of them are dying out before we even get a chance to study them,” says Biler. 

It is also an important lesson in always looking right under your nose for discovery.

“I’ve been doing this for decades. We still find new species and previously unknown morphologies right under our feet,” says Biler. “This [discovery] was at snorkeling depth and in one of the most heavily touristed areas in the United States. When you look closely, there are still new things.”

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The internet has recently fallen in love with South America’s charismatic rodents called Capybaras. From catchy songs to memes, it’s hard not to see the chunky charmers in your feed these days. Here are some fun facts about these captivating creatures to inform your scrolling.

[Related: Capybara spent a month on the lam after escape from Toronto Zoo.]

Where can I see a capybara in the wild?

Capybaras are the largest rodent in the world can be found east of the Andes Mountains and the riverbanks in Central and South America from Panama to Argentina. Since they are semi-aquatic like beavers and hippos, capybaras typically live beside ponds, swamps, marshes, or wherever standing water is available. They are also called “water hogs” or “capys” and can even stay under water for more than five minutes to escape from predators like anacondas and jaguars. 

They have been known to encroach further into human territory as their habitat is dwindling. Since 2020, hundreds of capybaras have taken over Nordelta, a private and gated neighborhood outside of Buenos Aires. The rodents had always been around, but remained hidden. The lockdowns triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic enabled the furry capys to spread and flourish in the posh neighborhood’s parks. 

Multiple zoos in the United States, including the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden (also home to some famous hippos), Southwick’s Zoo in Massachusetts, and the Cape May County Park and Zoo in New Jersey, are home to a handful of adorable specimens as well. 

Do capybaras really eat their own poop?

Yes, among other things. They eat their poop for beneficial bacteria that helps their stomach break down the thick fiber from their other food sources such as reeds and grains, according to the San Diego Zoo. 

Like other rodents, capybaras have ever-growing front teeth. They use their sharp and long chompers to graze on grass and water plants. When fresh grasses and water plants dry up during the dry season, they eat squashes, melons, reeds, and grains. An adult can eat about six to eight pounds of grasses per day. 

How big are capys?

There are two known species of capybara: Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris and Hydrochoerus isthmius.  Of the two, H.hydrochaeris is the largest living rodent in the world. It can grow up to 4.3 feet long and weigh a whopping 174 pounds. H. isthmius is a bit smaller. It can grow to about 3 feet long and weigh closer to 62 pounds.

[Related: These prehistoric rodents were social butterflies.]

Can I own a capybara as a pet in the United States?

It depends what state you call home. They are currently legal with restrictions in some states including Texas, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia. California and New York have more stringent rules, including that the animals can only be obtained by those with an approved scientific or educational reason. While ownership may be legal at the state, it may be illegal at the city level. 

Yahoo Finance estimates that the initial cost to buy a capy on the exotic animal market is about $1,000 per animal, while other estimates place the cost at $8,000. Vet bills can easily stretch between $600 to $1,000 each year?? and owners need to keep in mind the six to eight pounds of food that they can eat per day. Capybaras are also social animals, so owners need to be prepared to take in more than one for their pet to thrive. 

What are capys all over my feed?

Basically, capybaras are kind of the new Baby Shark. The song Capybara from Russian artist Сто-Личный Она-Нас went viral on TikTok earlier this year. Listen at your own risk, as it is a textbook earworm that will be stuck in your head for days.

Popular videos include a capybara sparring with a platypus and jumping into above ground pools. They are also the stars of pop culture memes, including one celebrating the billion dollar hit movie Barbie. 

They are also known for being some of the friendliest critters in the animal kingdom. They are very social and live together in herds of 10 to 20 animals. They spend time together cuddling, playing, socializing, and grooming one another. They have even been known to try to use alligators to hitch a ride. 

It also doesn’t hurt that they are really cute. In an era of doom scrolling, sometimes it’s just nice to look at their hippo-like eyes and ears as they look above the water. 

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After an uncharacteristic leak last week, all of this year’s Nobel laureates have officially been announced by the prize committees. Their contributions to science and the humanities range from lifesaving vaccinations to plays and novels that explore the human condition to fighting for human rights in Iran. 

[Related: All-knowing toilets and taste-testing rocks amongst 2023 Ig Nobel winners.]

Physiology or medicine

The 2023 Nobel prize in medicine was awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, two of the scientists whose work helped pave the way for mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 that have saved countless lives.

“Through their groundbreaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” the panel wrote in a press release. 

Messenger RNA (mRNA) in vaccines use a snippet of genetic code that brings instructions for making proteins. If the right virus protein is selected for the vaccine, then the body produces its own defenses against the virus. One of the major advantages of mRNA vaccines is that these vaccines can be made in extremely large quantities since their main components are made in laboratories.

Physics 

Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier will jointly share the prestigious Nobel prize in physics. The trio was awarded for their work probing the world of electrons. 

“Their experiments, which have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules,” the Nobel committee wrote on Tuesday. “Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.”

When perceived by humans, fast-moving events flow into each other similar to the way a flip book of still images can be perceived as continual movement. In the world of electrons, these changes occur in an attosecond, or only a millionth of a trillionth of a second. An attosecond is so short that there are as many attoseconds in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe roughly 13.8 billion years ago. 

Electrons’ movements in atoms and molecules are measured in these attoseconds. Agostini, Krausz, and L’Huillier have conducted experiments that demonstrate how attosecond pulses could actually be observed and measured, according to the awarding committee.

[Related: mRNA vaccine innovators win the Nobel Prize in medicine.]

Chemistry 

The chemistry prize was jointly awarded to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus, and Alexei Ekimov for the discovery and developments of quantum dots. These nanoparticles are so small that their size determines their properties. Quantum dots can now be found in computer monitors and television screens and even help biochemists and surgeons map tissues and remove tumors. 

“For a long time, nobody thought you could ever actually make such small particles,” Johan Åqvist, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said during a news conference. “But this year’s laureates succeeded.”

Quantum dots are among the smallest components of nanotechnology. Typically, an element’s properties are governed by how many electrons it has. When that matter shrinks down  to nano-dimensions quantum phenomena arise. This means the element’s properties are now governed by the size of the matter instead of the number of electrons it has. 

Ekimov created size-dependent quantum effects in colored glass and demonstrated that the particle size affected the color of the glass via quantum effects. Later, Brus became the first scientist in the world to prove that size-dependent quantum effects in particles were floating freely in a fluid. In 1993, Bawendi revolutionized the chemical production of quantum dots. His techniques resulted in almost perfect particles, which was necessary for using the quantum dots in a wide range of applications. 

Literature 

Norwegian author Jon Fosse was awarded the literature prize, “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable,” according to the prize committee. Fosse has written about 40 plays, in addition to numerous short stories, novels, children’s books, essays, and poetry. His 2021 work A New Name: Septology VI-VII has been described as Fosse’s “magnum opus” and was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2022.

In a 2022 interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books, Fosse said, “When I manage to write well, there is a second, silent language. This silent language says what it is all about. It’s not the story, but you can hear something behind it — a silent voice speaking.”

Fosse’s cultural significance in Norway is so huge that there is even a hotel suite named after him in Oslo. 

[Related: Rosalind Franklin missed out on a Nobel, but now she’ll help look for life on Mars.]

Peace

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2023 Peace Prize to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi,  “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.” 

Mohammadi is the deputy head of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, a non-governmental organization led by 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.

In September 2022 a young Kurdish woman named Mahsa Jina Amini was killed under custody of the Iranian morality police. Her death sparked the largest political demonstration against Iran’s theocracy since it came into power in 1979. Thousands of Iranains took to the streets in peaceful protests under the slogan Woman – Life – Freedom. At least 20,000 protestors were jailed, thousands were injured, and 500 demonstrators were killed when the regime cracked down on the protests.

The committee said that the Woman – Life – Freedom motto suitably expresses the dedication and work of Narges Mohammadi. She is serving multiple sentences in Evin Prison in Tehran, amounting to roughly 12 years behind bars. 

Economics

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Harvard professor Claudia Goldin for providing the first comprehensive account of “women’s earnings and labour market participation through the centuries,” which includes intensive research of on the gender pay gap.

Goldin is the third woman to ever receive the Nobel Prize in Economics, and the first one to win the award solo.

“Understanding women’s role in the labour is important for society. Thanks to Claudia Goldin’s groundbreaking research we now know much more about the underlying factors and which barriers may need to be addressed in the future,” said Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, in a release.

The physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, economics sciences, and literature prizes will be awarded in Stockholm, Sweden on December 10. The peace prize will be awarded on the same day, but  in Oslo, Norway. December 10 is the 127th anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.

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Meet Garumbatitan morellensis, a new species of large sauropod dinosaur. The Giganotosaurus relative called the present-day Iberian Peninsula home about 122 million years ago. The remains of this titan were discovered in Morella, Spain, and this discovery could help fill in some major evolutionary gaps. The findings were described in a study published September 28 in the journal Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

[Related: Cushy feet supported sauropods’ gigantic bodies.]

G. morellensis belongs to the sauropod group of dinosaurs, which includes some well-known favorites like Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus. Sauropods were four-legged Early Jurassic and Cretaceous Era dinos known for their long necks that could reach up to 49 feet long in some species and lengthy tails. G. morellensis is also a member of a subgroup of sauropods known as titanosaurs. These giants were the largest of an already big group and titanosaurs survived right up until the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs struck about 66 million years ago.

This new dinosaur’s remains were found and excavated in the Sant Antoni de la Vespa fossil-site in 2005 and 2008. This fossil deposit is home to one of the largest concentrations of sauropod dinosaur remains that date back to the Lower Cretaceous period in Europe (about 145 million to 66 million years ago). Scientists found the remains of a giant unidentified sauropod in Portugal in 2022 that could be Europe’s oldest known dinosaur fossil at 150 million-years-old. 

The team of paleontologists from Portugal and Spain found the remains of three G. morellensis individuals and one other sauropod. Their lucky find included a rare set of footprints. They also uncovered giant vertebrae, leg bones, and two near-complete sets of foot bones. 

“One of the individuals we found stands out for its large size, with vertebrae more than one meter wide [3.2 feet], and a femur that could reach two meters [6.5 feet] in length. We found two almost complete and articulated feet in this deposit, which is particularly rare in the geological record,” study co-author and University of Lisbon paleontologist Pedro Mocho said in a statement. 

G. morellensis was probably close to an average-size titanosaur and could have been near 94 feet long. Its leg shape and foot bones suggest that it was one of the more primitive sauropods from a subgroup called Somphospondyli, according to the authors. Somphospondylan fossils have been found on every present-day continent, but paleontologists are not sure where they originated. This discovery of such an early specimen in Spain points to Europe as a possible origin point for this subgroup, but more evidence is needed.  

[Related: Europe’s largest dinosaur skeleton may have been hiding in a Portuguese backyard.]

This discovery also highlights how complex the evolutionary history of sauropods in the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe is. Species related to these lineages have been found in Asia, North America, and possibly Africa. This points to a potentially long period of dinosaur dispersal within continents and this fossil deposit might fill in some major gaps of evolutionary history. 

“The future restoration of all fossil materials found in this deposit will add important information to understand the initial evolution of this group of sauropods that dominated dinosaur faunas during the last million years of the Mesozoic era,” study co-author and Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Madrid paleontologist Francisco Ortega said in a statement.

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The threat of avian influenza (H5N1) continues to be a serious health and economic issue. As of September, almost 60 million birds have been affected in the United States since the latest outbreak began in January 2022. There are currently 839 known H5N1 outbreaks around the world.

[Related: Thriving baby California condor is a ray of hope for the unique species.]

Earlier this month, France began Europe’s only mass-vaccination campaign against avian influenza. The country plans to vaccinate roughly 64 million ducks at 2,700 farms over the next year as an effort to end mass culls. Drastic actions like the culls cost the poultry industry millions of dollars every year. 

“Vaccination should mean we only face individual cases, avoiding the tidal waves sweeping through farms,” poultry chief at the SNGTV farm vets’ association Jocelyn Marguerie told DW News. 

To reduce the risk of more Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) spreading in the US, the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has barred poultry imports from France and its European Union trading partners including Iceland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Norway. The ban covers live ducks, duck eggs, and unmitigated/untreated duck products in addition to poultry products and is due to their recent vaccination campaign. 

According to a press release, the agency is concerned that the vaccines may mask that the virus is already circulating in poultry, as the vaccinated birds may not show any signs of infection and could lead to the contaminated animals being brought into the US. 

In France, the vaccine will be given in two doses and is obligatory for ducklings as young as 10 days old being raised on farms that have more than 250 birds. It will cost close to 100 million euros ($105 million) and 85 percent of the cost will reportedly be financed by the French government.

“Typically, animal vaccines in the US take approximately 3 years to develop and get FDA approval. Even though vaccination reduces mortality significantly, there is still concern that vaccinated birds can become infected and shed the virus,” Michelle Hawkins, an ABVP certified veterinarian at the University of California, Davis and the director of the California Raptor Center tells PopSci. “This is the main concern regarding France authorizing a vaccine. Ducks often carry avian influenza viruses without showing any clinical signs when infected.”

Hawkins also cited a concern about how quickly HPAI can mutate which could potentially reduce the vaccine’s efficacy.

[Related: One way to fight off bird flu: extra-CRISPRed chicken.]

Recently, commercial flocks have been culled in South Africa to stop the spread and the virus which has been detected in at least 67 countries. It has also been found in domestic cats in Poland and has even jumped from wild birds into seals on the East and West Coasts of the US. 

While vaccination is not enough to completely stop the disease yet, the jabs are a tool in fighting it. The Department of Agriculture began evaluating four HPAI vaccine candidates for animals and began some trials in April 2023. Other countries including Egypt, China, Mexico, and Vietnam have been vaccinating flocks for years. 

Currently, the risk of avian flu to humans is low, with only one reported human case of this virus in the US. There are trials underway of vaccines for humans if the virus mutates to become more of a threat to people. Researchers in the United Kingdom have also isolated a gene called BTN3A3 that could keep the virus from infecting humans. 

In the meantime, vigilance from bird owners and other protective measures including avoiding contact with wild birds and reporting dead birds to the proper authorities remain crucial. 

“It is critical that bird owners look at what they can do immediately to protect their flocks– now,” says Hawkins. 

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Lions are often incorrectly called the “king of the jungle,” and not just because most live in plains and grasslands or because lionesses do most of the hunting. These days, the giant cats are not feared as much as another “super predator”—the animals living in an ecological park in South Africa now fear humans more than lions, according to a study published October 5 in the journal Current Biology. Roughly 95 percent of the mammals living among lions are more afraid of human voices than the big cats or hunting sounds. 

[Related: The rare case of a lioness with a mane.]

The study focused on Greater Kruger National Park in South Africa. It’s a protected area of about 1,328 square miles and is home to one of the world’s largest remaining roaming lion populations. African lions have been considered endangered since 2015, but lions are still among the biggest group-hunting land predators on Earth. However, humans are battling their supremacy, as multiple studies have shown that humans kill prey at higher rates than lions do. This new research compares the fear animals have of humans versus lions to see which species causes more fear.

In the study, a team of biologists observed how 19 mammal species reacted to a series of recordings. The sounds included human voices, lion vocalizations to signal the presence of a top non-human predator, and barking dogs and gunshots associated with hunting. The clips of human voices were played at a more conversational volume, came from radio or TV recordings, and included four of the most commonly used languages in the region (Tsonga, Northern Sotho, English, and Afrikaans). 

“The key thing is that the lion vocalizations are of them snarling and growling, in ‘conversation’ as it were, not roaring at each other,” Western University conservation biologist Michael Clinchy said in a statement. “That way the lion vocalizations are directly comparable to those of the humans speaking conversationally.”

The team used a waterproof camera system that had enough battery life to record day and night over the course of several months and captured 15,000 videos. The observations were also taken during the dry season and the team put the systems at waterholes to get recordings of all the animals coming by to drink. 

“One night, the lion recording made this elephant so angry that it charged and just smashed the whole thing,” study co- author and Western University conservation biologist Liana Y. Zanette said in a statement. 

When the animals heard human sounds, they were twice as likely to run and ditch the waterhole than they were when lions or hunting noises were played. About 95 percent of species, including giraffes, leopards, hyenas, warthog, impala, elephants, and rhinoceroses, ran more often or abandoned waterholes more quickly in response to human sounds than lions.  

“There’s this idea that the animals are going to habituate to humans if they’re not hunted. But we’ve shown that this isn’t the case,” said Clinchy. “The fear of humans is ingrained and pervasive, so this is something that we need to start thinking about seriously for conservation purposes.”

[Related: How a 19-year-old lion fathered 35 cubs in 18 months.]

The team is now looking into whether their sound systems could be used to steer endangered species like the Southern white rhino away from poaching areas in South Africa. Efforts to keep rhinos away from certain areas through the use of human voices have seen success in some early studies.

“I think the pervasiveness of the fear throughout the savannah mammal community is a real testament to the environmental impact that humans have,” says Zanette. “Not just through habitat loss and climate change and species extinction, which is all important stuff. But just having us out there on that landscape is enough of a danger signal that they respond really strongly. They are scared to death of humans, way more than any other predator.”

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The natural process of rock weathering could be emitting as much carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the air as the world’s volcanoes. A study published October 4 in the journal Nature finds that natural weathering can also act as a large source of greenhouse gas emissions. Understanding this natural source of the greenhouse gas could have important implications for modeling climate change scenarios.

[Related: The truth about carbon capture technology.]

The idea of storing excess carbon in rocks to combat climate change is hotly debated. While rocks can act like a carbon sink in some scenarios (and there has been some preliminary success with one Icelandic company sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it in rocks) it is still not a silver bullet to our carbon woes. 

The Earth’s stones contain a large amount of carbon from the remains of animals and plants that lived millions of years ago. The geological carbon cycle also helps regulate the planet’s temperature. During chemical weathering–when chemicals in rainwater change the minerals in the rock— the stones can suck up carbon dioxide when certain minerals are attacked by the weak acid found in rainwater. Chemical weathering can help counteract the continuous carbon dioxide released by the world’s volcanoes and is part of the Earth’s natural carbon cycle. 

This new study measured an additional natural process of carbon dioxide release from rocks to the atmosphere. The newly analyzed process occurs when rocks that are formed on ancient seafloors are pushed back up to Earth’s surface. This type of event happens when mountains form. The event exposes the organic carbon from the remains of long dead organisms in the rocks to oxygen in the air and water. The carbon can then react with the oxygen and release carbon dioxide. So instead of acting like a carbon sink, weathering rocks could be a source of carbon dioxide. 

To study the weathering of organic carbon in rocks, the team used a tracer element called rhenium. Rhenium is released into water when the organic carbon in rocks reacts with oxygen. 

The team first figured out how much organic carbon is present in rocks near the surface of water and then worked out where rocks were being exposed most rapidly by erosion. 

“The challenge was then how to combine these global maps with the river data, while considering uncertainties. We fed all of our data into a supercomputer at Oxford, simulating the complex interplay of physical, chemical, and hydrological processes,” study co-author and University of Oxford geoscientists Jesse Zondervan said in a statement. “By piecing together this vast planetary jigsaw, we could finally estimate the total carbon dioxide emitted as these rocks weather and exhale their ancient carbon into the air.”

They then compared how much carbon dioxide could be drawn down by natural rock weathering of silicate materials and pinpointed many large areas where weathering was a source of carbon dioxide. These hotspots of carbon dioxide release include mountain rangers with high uplift rates, such as the eastern Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains, and the Andes. The global carbon dioxide release rate from rock organic carbon weathering was found to be 68 megatons of carbon per year, a bit more than the amount of carbon dioxide emitted during heating and cooling buildings in extreme weather in the US in 2022. 

[Related: Ancient rocks hold the story of Earth’s first breath of oxygen.]

“This is about 100 times less than present day human CO₂ emissions by burning fossil fuels, but it is similar to how much CO₂ is released by volcanoes around the world, meaning it is a key player in Earth’s natural carbon cycle,” study co-author and University of Oxford geochemist Robert Hilton said in a statement. 

The authors caution that these events could have fluctuated during the planet’s past, possibly during periods of mountain building when the influx of rocks to the surface could have released enough carbon dioxide to influence global climate. 

The team is now looking into how this natural release of carbon dioxide could increase over the coming century, as human-caused climate changes and erosion could increase a natural leak of carbon. 

“While the carbon dioxide release from rock weathering is small compared to present-day human emissions, the improved understanding of these natural fluxes will help us better predict our carbon budget,” said Zondervan.

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Over 1,500 animal species, from bonobos to sea urchins to penguins are known to engage same-sex sexual behavior. Still, scientists don’t understand exactly how it came to be or why it happens. While some say the behavior might have existed since the animal kingdom first arose more than half a billion years ago, it may have actually evolved repeatedly in mammals. A study published October 3 in the journal Nature Communications suggests that the behavior possibly plays an adaptive role in social bonding and reducing conflict, and evolved multiple times.

[Related: A massive study confirms no one ‘gay gene’ controls sexual preference.]

The behavior is particularly prevalent in nonhuman primates. It has been observed in at least 51 species from small lemurs up to bigger apes. For one population of male macaques, same-sex sexual behavior may even be a common feature of reproduction and is related to establishing dominance within groups, handling a shortage of different-sex partners, or even reducing tension following aggressive behavior. 

In this new study, the team from institutions in Spain surveyed the available scientific literature to create a database of records of same-sex sexual behavior in mammals. They traced the behavior’s evolution across mammals and tested for any evolutionary relationships with other behaviors. 

The team found that same-sex sexual behavior is widespread across mammal species, occurs in similar frequency in both males and females, and likely has multiple independent origin points. This analysis found that the behavior helps establish and maintain positive social relationships in animals including chimpanzees, bighorn sheep, lions, and wolves.

“It may contribute to establishing and maintaining positive social relationships,” study co-author José Gómez told The New York Times. “With the current data available, it seems that it has evolved multiple times.” Gómez is an evolutionary biologist at the Experimental Station of Arid Zones in Almería, Spain. 

Importantly, they caution that the study should not be used to explain the evolution of sexual orientation in humans. This research focused on same-sex sexual behavior defined as short-term courtship or mating interactions, instead of a more permanent sexual preference. 

Additionally, male same-sex sexual behavior was likely evolved in species with high rates of male adulticide–-when adult animals kill other adults. The team believes that this suggests the behavior may be an adaptation meant to mitigate the risks of violent conflict between males.

Harvard University primatologist Christine Webb, who did not participate in the study, told The Washington Post that the findings add to other research and widen the scope of what it means for a behavior to be considered adaptive.

[Related: Same-sex mounting in male macaques can help them reproduce more successfully.]

“This general question of evolutionary function—that behavior must aid in survival and reproduction—what this paper is arguing is that reaffirming social bonds, resolving conflicts, managing social tensions, to the extent that same-sex sexual behavior preserves those functions—it’s also adaptive,” Webb said. 

Webb also added that it makes sense that other animals would have sex for a variety of reasons the way that humans do.

The authors caution that these associations could also be driven by other evolutionary factors. Same-sex sexual behavior has also only been carefully studied in a minority of mammal species, so our understanding of the evolution of same-sex sexual behavior may continue to change as more mammalian species are studied.

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Earth’s amphibians are in serious trouble, but there is still time to save this unique class of animals. A study published October 4 in the journal Nature finds that two out of five amphibians are threatened with extinction and they continue to be the most threatened class of vertebrates. However, the new research also found that since 1980, the extinction risk of 63 species has been reduced due to conservation interventions.

[Related: Why you can’t put a price on biodiversity.]

“This proves that conservation works and it’s not all bad news,” Jennifer Luedtke, a study co-author and the manager of IUCN Red List Assessments at conservation organization Re:wild, said during a press conference. “We found that habitat protection alone is not sufficient. We need to mitigate the threats of disease and climate change.”

A check-up for amphibians

The findings are part of Global Amphibian Assessment II, an international series of conservation analyses based on evaluations of the 8,011 amphibian species listed on the IUCN Red List. The first Global Amphibian Assessment was published in 2004 and found that amphibians are Earth’s most threatened class of vertebrates. This second report confirms that the smooth-skinned animals are still more threatened than birds or mammals.

In the study, the team found that 118 species have been driven to extinction between 2004 and 2022. About 40 percent of the species studied are still categorized as threatened. This study also covers about 94 percent of the known amphibian species in 2022. According to Luedtke, about 155 new amphibian species are discovered every year, so there will likely be more species to add to the next Global Amphibian Assessment. 

Climate change and associated habitat loss are the primary driver of these declines. The team estimates that current and projected climate change effects are responsible for 39 percent of status deteriorations since 2004. Habitat loss has affected roughly 37 percent of species in the same period. 

Why amphibians are so vulnerable to climate change

Amphibians’ unique skin puts them in more danger in the face of a changing planet, since they use their skin to breathe. Increased frequency and intensity of storms, floods, droughts, changes in moisture levels and temperature, and sea level rise can all affect their very important breathing sites.

“They don’t have any protection in their skin like feathers, hair, or scales. They have a high tendency to lose water and heat through their skin,” Patricia Burrowes, a study co-author and herpetologist formerly with the University of Puerto Rico, said during a press conference. “The majority of frogs are nocturnal, and if it’s very hot, they will not come out because they will have lost so much water even in their retreat sites that they don’t have the energy to go out to feed. They won’t grow and won’t have energy to reproduce. And that can have demographic impacts.”

[Related: Hellbender salamanders may look scary, but the real fright is extinction.]

Extinctions have continued to increase with 37 documented in 2022. By comparison 23 species were reported extinct by 1980 and 33 in 2004. According to the report, the most recent species to go extinct were the frogs Atelopus chiriquiensis from Costa Rica and western Panama and Taudactylus acutirostris from Australia.

“Amphibians are essential parts of the ecosystem in a variety of ways, one of them being their role in the food web,” Kelsey Neam, study co-author and Re:wild’s Species Priorities and Metrics Coordinator, said during a press conference. “Amphibians are prey for many species and without amphibians, those animals lose a major source of their food and they are preying upon other animals like insects and other invertebrates. Without them to fulfill that niche, we will see a collapse of the food web.”

Amphibian pandemics

The most heavily affected amphibians were salamanders and newts, with three out of five salamander species at risk for extinction. While habitat loss is also the primary threat to salamanders, they are also particularly vulnerable to a disease called chytridiomycosis. It is caused by a fungal pathogen caused by the chytrid fungus that disrupts amphibian’s skin and physiological functions. When infected, amphibians can’t rehydrate properly, which creates an electrolyte imbalance that causes fatal heart attacks.

“Droughts exacerbate the infection intensity,” said Burrowes. “When the frogs have the potential to present some kind of defense mechanism, that defense mechanism is monitored by changes in precipitation and temperature.”

North America is home to the world’s most biodiverse community of salamanders, including a group of lungless salamanders in the Appalachian Mountains. This has conservationists concerned about what would happen if another deadly fungal disease called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, or B.sal, arrives in the Americas from Asia or Europe.

‘We know what to do’

The report highlights that the time to help these critical animals is now. The authors point to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted by 190+ signatory countries at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in December 2022. The signing nations committed to halting all human induced extinctions, reversing and reducing the extinction risk of species tenfold, and to recovering populations to a healthy level.

“We know what to do. It’s time to really commit the resources to actually achieving the change that we say we want,” said Luedtke. “Amphibians will be the better for it and so will we.”

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The 2023 Nobel prize in chemistry was jointly awarded to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus, and Alexei Ekimov for the discovery and developments of quantum dots. These nanoparticles are so small that their size determines their properties. Quantum dots can be found in modern computers, televisions, and LED lights, among numerous other applications.

[Related: In photos: Journey to the center of a quantum computer.]

Bawendi is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brus is a professor emeritus at Columbia University, and Ekimov works for a company called Nanocrystals Technology in New York State.

“For a long time, nobody thought you could ever actually make such small particles,” Johan Åqvist, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said during a news conference. “But this year’s laureates succeeded.”

Size matters in the nanoscale

Quantum dots are among the smallest components of nanotechnology. Typically, an element’s properties are governed by how many electrons it has. When that matter shrinks down  to nano-dimensions quantum phenomena arise. This means the element’s properties are now governed by the size of the matter instead of the number of electrons it has. 

Quantum dots are made of only a thousand atoms. By comparison, one quantum dot is to a soccer ball as a soccer ball is to the planet Earth.

The quantum dots that Bawendi, Brus, and Ekimov produced are particles small enough for their properties to be determined by quantum phenomena. They are among the smallest, but most important particles, nanotechnology.

“Quantum dots have many fascinating and unusual properties. Importantly, they have different [colors] depending on their size,” Åqvist said in a statement. 

The movement of electrons in quantum dots is highly constrained. This then affects how they absorb and release visible light, allowing for very bright colors. The quantum dots themselves are nanoparticles that glow red, blue, or green and the color depends on the size of the particles. Larger dots shine red and smaller dots shine blue. The change in color depends on how electrons act differently in more confined or less confined spaces. 

Big discoveries, super small particles

In 1937, physicists theorized that size-dependent quantum effects could arise in nanoparticles. However, it was almost impossible to sculpt in nano dimensions, so few believed that it was possible.

During the early 1980s, Ekimov created size-dependent quantum effects in colored glass. The color of the glass came from the nanoparticles of copper chloride. With this colorful experiment, Ekimov demonstrated that the particle size affected the color of the glass via quantum effects.

[Related: Quantum computers are starting to become more useful.]

A few years later, Brus became the first scientist in the world to prove that size-dependent quantum effects in particles were floating freely in a fluid. Brus and Ekimov were actually working independently from one another when they made their initial discoveries. 

In 1993, Bawendi revolutionized the chemical production of quantum dots. His techniques resulted in almost perfect particles, which was necessary for using the quantum dots in a wide range of applications. 

Quantum dots can now be found in computer monitors and television screens and even help biochemists and surgeons map tissues and remove tumors. 

Last year’s chemistry prize was also awarded to a trio of chemists: Carolyn R. Bertozzi for her work in bioorthogonal chemistry alongside K. Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal for laying the foundation for click chemistry. 

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Parrots are the chatterboxes of the animal kingdom. These famously social birds can learn new sounds throughout their lives and even produce calls that can be individually recognized by other members of their flock. A new study of monk parakeets found that individual birds have a unique tone of voice similar to humans called a “voice print.” The findings are described in a study published October 3 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

[Related: The next frontier in saving the world’s heaviest parrots: genome sequencing.]

“It makes sense for monk parakeets to have an underlying voice print,” Simeon Smeele, a co-author of the study and biologist studying parrot social and vocal complexity at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, said in a statement. “It’s an elegant solution for a bird that dynamically changes its calls but still needs to be known in a very noisy flock.”

In humans, our voice print leaves a unique signature in the tone of our voice across every word we say. These voice prints remain even though humans have a very complex and flexible vocal repertoire. Other social animals also use similar cues to recognize one another. Individual dolphins, bats, and birds have a “signature call” that makes them identifiable to other members of their groups. However, signature calls encode identity in only one call type, and there hasn’t been much evidence that suggests animals have unique signatures that last throughout their entire repertoire of calls. 

Parrots use their tongue and mouth to modulate calls similar to the way humans speak. According to Smeele, “their grunts and shrieks sound much more human than a songbird’s clean whistle.” 

Parrots also live in large groups with fluid membership where multiple birds vocalize at the same time. Members need a way to keep track of which individual is making what sound. The question became if the right physical anatomy coupled with the need to navigate complex social lives, helped parrots evolve a voice print. 

In the study, Smeele and his team traveled to Barcelona, Spain—home to the largest population of individually marked parrots in the wild. The parakeets are considered an invasive species and they swarm Barcelona’s parks in flocks with hundreds of members. The Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona has been marking the parakeets for 20 years and have individually identified 3,000 birds.

The team used microphones to record the calls of hundreds of individuals and collected over 5,000 vocalizations in total. They also re-recorded the same individuals over a period of two years, which revealed the stability of the calls over time.

Using a set of computer models, they detected how recognizable individual birds were within each of the five main call types given by this species (contact, tja, trrup, alarm, and growl). They found high variability in the “contact call” that birds use to broadcast their identity. According to the team, this overturned a long-held assumption that contact calls contain a stable individual signal. The new findings suggested that the parakeets are actually using something else for individual recognition.

[Related: These clever cockatoos carry around toolkits to get to food faster.]

To investigate if voice prints were at play, the team used a machine learning model widely used in human voice recognition. The model detects the identity of the speaker using the quality, or timbre, of their voice. The team trained the model to recognize calls of individual birds that were categorized as “tonal” in sound. They then tested to see if the model could detect the same individual from a separate set of calls that were classified as “growling” in sound. The model was able to identify the individual parrots three times better than expected, providing evidence that monk parakeets do actually have a recognizable, individual voice print. 

While exciting, the authors caution that this evidence is still preliminary. Future experiments and analyses could use the parrot tagging work from the team in Barcelona. The GPS devices could help determine how much individuals overlap in their roaming areas.

“This can provide insight into the species’ remarkable ability to discriminate between calls from different individuals,” study co-author and ecologist from Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona Juan Carlos Senar said in a statement.

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In space, the brightness of a galaxy is typically determined by its mass. However, some new research suggests that less massive galaxies can actually glow just as brightly as larger ones. Due to irregular and brilliant bursts of star formation, some  younger galaxies appear deceptively large. The new findings are detailed in a study published October 3 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[Related: Our universe mastered the art of making galaxies while it was still young.]

The first stellar images released by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2022 came with a bit of a quandary. To some astronomers, the young galaxies appeared to be too bright, too massive, and too mature to have formed so soon after the big bang, almost as if an infant grew into an adult after only a few years. 

“The discovery of these galaxies was a big surprise because they were substantially brighter than anticipated,” study co- author and Northwestern University astrophysicist Claude-André Faucher-Giguère said in a statement. “Typically, a galaxy is bright because it’s big. But because these galaxies formed at cosmic dawn, not enough time has passed since the big bang. How could these massive galaxies assemble so quickly? Our simulations show that galaxies have no problem forming this brightness by cosmic dawn.”

The period in cosmological history called Cosmic Dawn lasted from about 100 million years to 1 billion years after the big bang and is marked by the formation of the first stars and galaxies in the universe. 

“The JWST brought us a lot of knowledge about cosmic dawn,” study co-author and Northwestern University astrophysicist Guochao Sun said in a statement. “Prior to JWST, most of our knowledge about the early universe was speculation based on data from very few sources. With the huge increase in observing power, we can see physical details about the galaxies and use that solid observational evidence to study the physics to understand what’s happening.”

The team used advanced computer simulations to model how galaxies formed just after the big bang. Part of Northwestern’s Feedback of Relativistic Environments (FIRE) project, the simulations combine astrophysical theory and advanced algorithms to model how galaxies form. These models help researchers see how galaxies grow and change shape all while considering mass, energy, momentum, and chemical elements returned from stars. 

“The key is to reproduce a sufficient amount of light in a system within a short amount of time,” Sun said. “That can happen either because the system is really massive or because it has the ability to produce a lot of light quickly. In the latter case, a system doesn’t need to be that massive. If star formation happens in bursts, it will emit flashes of light. That is why we see several very bright galaxies.”

[Related: Your guide to the types of stars, from their dusty births to violent deaths.]

The simulations in the study created galaxies that were just as bright as the ones observed by JWST. They also found that the early galaxies formed at cosmic dawn likely had stars that formed in bursts. This is a concept called bursty star formation, where stars form in an alternating pattern. It begins with the formation of a bunch of stars at once, then millions of years with little to no stars, and then another burst of stars. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy followed a very different pattern of star formation at a steady rate.

According to Faucher-Giguère, bursty star formation is particularly common in low-mass galaxies. However, the details of why this happens are still the subject of other research. The team on this study believes that it happens when the initial bursts of stars explode as supernovae a few million years later. The gas is kicked out and then falls back inwards to form new stars and drives the cycle again. 

When the galaxies get massive enough, they have significantly stronger gravity. So when the  supernovae explode, they aren’t strong enough to eject gas from the star system and the gravity binds the galaxy together. The result is a more steady state.

“Most of the light in a galaxy comes from the most massive stars,” Faucher-Giguère said in a statement. “Because more massive stars burn at a higher speed, they are shorter lived. They rapidly use up their fuel in nuclear reactions. So, the brightness of a galaxy is more directly related to how many stars it has formed in the last few million years than the mass of the galaxy as a whole.”

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The 2023 Nobel prize in physics was just awarded to three physicists for their work probing the world of electrons. Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier will jointly share the prestigious prize.

[Related: When light flashes for a quintillionth of a second, things get weird.]

These physicists “are being recognised for their experiments, which have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules,” the Nobel committee wrote on Tuesday. “Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.”

Agostini is a professor emeritus at Ohio State University. Krausz is affiliated with the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. L’Huillier is a professor at Lund University in Sweden and the fifth woman ever awarded the physics prize. 

Discovering the attosecond

When perceived by humans, fast-moving events flow into each other similar to the way a flip book of still images can be perceived as continual movement. To better investigate these extremely brief events, special technology is needed.

In the world of electrons, these changes occur in an attosecond, or only a millionth of a trillionth of a second. An attosecond is so short that there are as many attoseconds in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe roughly 13.8 billion years ago. 

Electrons’ movements in atoms and molecules are measured in these attoseconds. Agostini, Krausz, and L’Huillier have conducted experiments that demonstrate how attosecond pulses could actually be observed and measured, according to the awarding committee.

Overtones of light

In 1987, L’Huillier discovered that many different overtones of light arose when she transmitted infrared laser light through a noble gas. Each individual overtone is a light wave that has a given number of cycles for each cycle in the laser light. The overtones are caused by the laser light interacting with atoms in the gas. They give some electrons an extra energy boost that is then emitted as light. In the almost four decades since, L’Huillier has continued to explore this phenomenon which laid the foundation for subsequent breakthroughs.

[Related: This record-breaking X-ray laser is ready to unlock quantum secrets.]

In 2001, Agostini produced and investigated a series of consecutive light pulses. During these experiments, each pulse lasted only 250 attoseconds. At the same time, Krausz was working with another type of experiment. His experiment made it possible to isolate a single light pulse that lasted 650 attoseconds.

This work enabled the investigation into physical processes that are so rapid that they were previously impossible to follow. 

“We can now open the door to the world of electrons. Attosecond physics gives us the opportunity to understand mechanisms that are governed by electrons. The next step will be utilizing them,” Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics Eva Olsson said in a statement.

This groundbreaking work has potential applications in electronics and medicine in the future. In electronics, understanding and controlling how electrons behave in a material is crucial. Attosecond pulses could also identify different molecules in future medical diagnostics.

“In much the same fashion that a photographer may use a flash of light to capture a hummingbird’s wing or a baseball being hit, this year’s Nobel prize winners developed revolutionary methods to generate and measure extremely fast laser pulses that can capture some of the most rapid physical effects known,” Johns Hopkins University physicist N. Peter Armitage told PopSci in an email. “Among other aspects, their work gives insight into the motion of electrons between atoms and allows movies of chemical reactions to be made. It’s remarkable fundamental science, and was done for that reason, but these discoveries may ultimately allow insight into the effects that give superconductivity at high temperatures and efficient energy harvesting from light.”

The 2022 Nobel prize in physics was awarded to John F. Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger for their independent contributions to understanding quantum entanglement. Other past winners include Pierre and Marie (Sklodowska) Curie in 1903 and Max Planck in 1918.

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Fictional murderous barbers and real life serial killers are woven into London’s spooky history with legendary tales of their dastardly deeds. However, Sweeney Todd or Jack the Ripper may have paled in comparison to students from Oxford in the 14th century. A project mapping medieval England’s known murder cases found that Oxford’s student population was the most lethal of all social or professional groups, committing about 75 percent of all homicides.

[Related: How DNA evidence could help put the Long Island serial killer behind bars.]

First launched in 2018, Cambridge’s Medieval Murder Maps plots crime scenes based on translated investigations from 700-year-old coroners’ reports. These documents were recorded in Latinand are catalogs of sudden or suspicious deaths that were deduced by a jury of local residents. They also included names, events, locations, and even the value of murder weapons. The project recently added the cities of York and Oxford to its street plan of slayings during the 14th century. 

The team used these rolls and maps to construct the street atlas of 354 homicides across the three cities. It has also been updated to include accidents, sudden deaths, deaths in prison, and sanctuary church cases. 

They estimate that  the per capita homicide rate in Oxford was potentially 4 to 5 times higher than late medieval London or York. It also put the homicide rate at about 60 to 75 per 100,000—about 50 times higher than the murder rates in today’s English cities. The maps, however, don’t factor in the major advances in medicine, policing, and emergency response in the centuries since.

York’s murderous mayhem was likely driven by inter- knife fights among tannery workers (Tanners) to fatal violence between glove makers (Glovers) during the rare 14th century period of prosperity driven by trade and textile manufacturing as the Black Death subsided. But Oxford’s rambunctious youth made for a dangerous scene.

By the early 14th century, Oxford had a population of roughly 7,000 inhabitants, with about 1,500 students. Among perpetrators from Oxford, coroners referred to 75 percent of them as “clericus.” The term most likely refers to a student or a member of the early university. Additionally, 72 percent of all Oxford’s homicide victims also have the designation clericus in the coroner inquests.

“A medieval university city such as Oxford had a deadly mix of conditions,” lead murder map investigator and University of Cambridge criminologist Manuel Eisner said in a statement. “Oxford students were all male and typically aged between fourteen and twenty-one, the peak for violence and risk-taking. These were young men freed from tight controls of family, parish or guild, and thrust into an environment full of weapons, with ample access to alehouses and sex workers.”

Many of the students also belonged to regional fraternities known as “nations,” which could have added more tension within the student body.

One Thursday night in 1298, an argument among students in an Oxford High Street tavern resulted in a mass street fight complete with battle-axes and swords. According to the coroner’s report, a student named John Burel had, “a mortal wound on the crown of his head, six inches long and in depth reaching to the brain.”

Interactions with sex workers also could end tragically. One unknown scholar got away with murdering Margery de Hereford in the parish of St. Aldate in 1299. He fled the scene after stabbing her to death instead of paying what he owed. 

[Related: A lost ‘bawdy bard’ act reveals roots of naughty British comedy.]

Many of the cases in all three cities also involved intervention of bystanders, who were obligated to announce if a crime was being committed, or raise a “hue and cry.” Some of the bystanders summoned by hue ended up as victims or perpetrators.

“Before modern policing, victims or witnesses had a legal responsibility to alert the community to a crime by shouting and making noise. This was known as raising a hue and cry,” co-researchers and Cambridge crime historian Stephanie Brown said in a statement. “It was mostly women who raised hue and cry, usually reporting conflicts between men in order to keep the peace.”

Medieval street justice was also coupled with plentiful weapons in everyday life, which could  make even minor infractions lethal. London’s cases include altercations that started over littering and urination that led to homicide. 

“Knives were omnipresent in medieval society,” said Brown. “A thwytel was a small knife, often valued at one penny, and used as cutlery or for everyday tasks. Axes were commonplace in homes for cutting wood, and many men carried a staff.”

The team told The Guardian that they hope this project encourages people to reflect on the possible notices behind historic homicide and explore the parallels between these incidents and the altercations in the present. 

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The 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, two of the scientists whose work helped pave the way for mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Karikó is a biochemist from Sagan’s University in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Karikó was also senior vice president and head of RNA protein replacement at BioNTech until 2022 and has been an advisor for the company. Weissman is a vaccine researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and Director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations.

[Related: How does an mRNA vaccine work?]

The prize is awarded by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university and comes with its signature gold medicine and about $1 million (11 million Swedish crowns). 

“Through their groundbreaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” the panel wrote in a press release. 

A potential game changer for vaccines

Previously, growing viruses, or at least pieces of viruses, were necessary to make a vaccine. The viruses were often cultivated in giant vats of cells or in or in chicken eggs, like the majority of flu shots. The viruses are then purified before being made into a vaccine.  

Using messenger RNA (mRNA) in vaccines is very different. It starts with a snippet of genetic code that brings instructions for making proteins. If the right virus protein is selected for the vaccine, then the body produces its own defenses against the virus. 

Genetic information encoded in DNA is transferred to mRNA, which is used as a blueprint for protein production in our cells. During the 1980s, efficient methods for producing mRNA without cell culture began. This process, called in vitro transcription, accelerated the development of molecular biology applications to several fields, but using mRNA technologies for vaccines had several roadblocks. In vitro transcribed mRNA was considered unstable and challenging to deliver since it required scientists to develop sophisticated carrier lipid systems to enclose the mRNA and produced some early inflammatory reactions. 

[Related: The FDA just green-lit America’s first COVID vaccine.]

Karikó was devoted to the idea of using mRNA for vaccines and other therapeutics during the 1990s when she became colleagues with Weissman. Weissman was interested in dendritic cells, which are important for immune surveillance and triggering vaccine-induced immune responses. 

The breakthrough

The two began to focus on how different RNA types interact with the immune system and noticed that the dendritic cells recognize in vitro transcribed mRNA as a foreign substance. This leads to their activation and release of inflammatory signaling molecules.mRNA from mammalian cells did not give rise to the same reaction,  the panel wrote. Different types of mRNA, therefore, must be distinguishable.

RNA contains four bases that are abbreviated A, U, G, and C. These letters correspond to the letters of genetic code in DNA A, T, G, and C. Karikó and Weissman knew that bases in RNA from mammalian cells are often chemically modified, and in vitro transcribed mRNA is not. They then wondered if the absence of altered bases in the in vitro transcribed RNA could explain unwanted inflammatory reactions. 

To learn more, they created different variants of mRNA which had unique chemical alterations at their bases. They delivered these to dendritic cells and the results were huge.  

The inflammatory response was almost wiped out when these base modifications were included in the mRNA. This was a seismic shift in scientific understanding of how cells recognize and respond to different forms of mRNA. . Their results were published in 2005.

COVID-19 and The Future

Interest in mRNA technology began to accelerate with their discovery. In 2010 several companies were working on developing the method for viruses such as Zika virus and MERS-CoV.

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

After the COVID-19 pandemic began, two base-modified mRNA vaccines encoding the SARS-CoV-2 surface protein were developed at a breakneck pace. Two highly effective vaccines were approved in December 2020.

One of the major advantages of mRNA technology was that vaccines could be made in extremely large quantities since their main components are made in laboratories, Exeter University infectious disease expert Bharat Pankhania told the Associated Press.  mRNA tech could be used to refine vaccines for diseases including Ebola, malaria, and dengue, as well as help immunize people against auto-immune diseases like lupus and even some types of cancer.

The laureates will receive their awards at ceremonies on December 10. The 2022 medicine prize was awarded to Svante Pääbo for sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal. Other past winners include Karl Landsteiner in 1930 for the discovery of human blood groups and co-winner Alexander Fleming for the discovery of penicillin in 1945.

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Chances are you have heard about this one already. The moon will pass between Earth and the sun and cast a huge shadow on our planet in the process. With the right protective eyewear, it will be a sight to behold—the phenomenon produces a “ring of fire” as if the moon is outlined with flames.  

Astronomers have calculated precisely when the best views will be where you are, so consult this list when scheduling an outing to safely check out the sky. The duration will range from little more than one minute to almost five, depending where you are located in its path. This eclipse has a 125-mile-wide path of annularity that will begin in Oregon at 12:13 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. It will leave the US at about 1:03 p.m. EDT and head southeastward toward Central and South America. 

October 21 and 22 – Orionids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

The annual Orionid meteor shower is expected to peak on October 22 in a moonless sky, but the wee hours of the morning of October 21 could also yield some meteors. According to EarthSky, under a dark sky with no moon, the Orionids can produce a maximum of about 10 to 20 meteors per hour. On October 22, the moon will be setting around midnight, which means its light shouldn’t interfere with the shower. The best time to try and spot the shower is just after midnight into the early morning hours 

October 23 – Venus at Greatest Elongation

In August, the planet Venus moved between the Earth and the sun and rose in the east. Venus will be farthest from the sunrise on October 23 and should remain visible in the morning sky until May 2024, where it will be a very bright “morning star.” 

During this month’s greatest elongation, Venus will appear higher in the sky from the Northern Hemisphere than from the Southern Hemisphere. This is because of the steep angle of the path of the sun, moon, and planets in the mornings during the autumn months. 

October 28- Full Hunter’s Moon and Partial Lunar Eclipse

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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Despite only eating fish, the Southern Resident orcas of the Pacific Northwest’s Salish Sea are known for a perplexing behavior. They harass and even kill porpoises without eating them and scientists are not really sure why. A study published September 28 in the journal Marine Mammal Science looked at over 60 years of data to try and solve this ongoing mystery.

[Related: Raising male offspring comes at a high price for orca mothers.]

While their relatives called transient killer whales eat other organisms including squid, shark, and porpoises, the Southern Resident orcas exclusively eat fish, particularly Chinook salmon. The strange porpoise-harassing behavior was first scientifically documented in 1962. The new study analyzed 78 documented incidents and found three plausible explanations.

Orcas at play

The behavior may be a form of social play for orcas. Like many intelligent species including dogs, elephants, and kangaroos, these whales sometimes engage in playful activities as a way to bond, communicate, or just simply enjoy themselves. Going after porpoises might benefit their group coordination and teamwork.

This theory may be reminiscent of the orcas who became famous for sinking boats in Spain and Portugal. While the Southern Resident killer whales and the whales from the Iberian Peninsula are two different populations with distinct cultures, their affinity for play could be something both populations share, according to the authors of the study. 

Hunting practice

Going after a larger animal like porpoises might help these whales hone their critical salmon-hunting skills. They may view porpoises as moving targets to practice their hunting techniques, even if a meal is not the end result.

Mismothering behavior

The orcas may be attempting to provide care for porpoises that they perceive as either sick or weak. This could be a behavioral manifestation of their natural inclination to help others within their pod. Female orcas have been observed carrying their deceased calves and have been observed carrying porpoises in a similar manner.  

Scientists also call mismothering behavior displaced epimeletic behavior. It could be due to their limited opportunities to care for their young, according to study co-author and science and research director at Wild Orca Deborah Giles. 

“Our research has shown that due to malnutrition, nearly 70 percent of Southern Resident killer whale pregnancies have resulted in miscarriages or calves that died right away after birth,” Giles said in a statement.

An endangered group

Southern Resident killer whales are considered an endangered population. Currently, only 75 individuals exist and their survival is essentially tied to Chinook salmon. A 2022 study found that these orcas have been in a food deficit for over 40 years and another study found that the older and fatter fish are also becoming more scarce in several populations.

“I am frequently asked, why don’t the Southern Residents just eat seals or porpoises instead?” said Giles. “It’s because fish-eating killer whales have a completely different ecology and culture from orcas that eat marine mammals—even though the two populations live in the same waters. So we must conclude that their interactions with porpoises serve a different purpose, but this purpose has only been speculation until now.”

Even with these three theories for the behavior, the team acknowledges that the exact reason behind porpoise harassment may always remain a mystery. What is clear is that porpoises are not a part of the Southern Resident killer whale diet, so eating them is highly unlikely. 

“Killer whales are incredibly complex and intelligent animals. We found that porpoise-harassing behavior has been passed on through generations and across social groupings. It’s an amazing example of killer whale culture,” Sarah Teman, a study co-author and marine mammal biologist with the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s SeaDoc Society, said in a statement. “Still, we don’t expect the Southern Resident killer whales to start eating porpoises. The culture of eating salmon is deeply ingrained in Southern Resident society. These whales need healthy salmon populations to survive.”

However, this research does underscore the importance of salmon conservation in the Salish Sea and the Southern Resident’s entire range. They generally stay near southern Vancouver Island and Washington State, but their range can extend as far as the central California coast and southeastern Alaska.  Maintaining an adequate salmon supply will be vital to their survival and well-being of the Salish Sea ecosystem as a whole.

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Sea turtles have been around for at least 110 million years, yet relatively little is known about their evolution. Two of the most common sea turtles on Earth are olive ridley and Kemp’s ridley turtles that belong to a genus called Lepidochelys that could help fill in some of the gaps of sea turtle biology and evolution. A team of paleontologists not only discovered the oldest known fossil of turtle from the Lepidochelys genus, but also found some traces of ancient turtle DNA. The findings are detailed in a study published September 28 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

[Related: 150 million-year-old turtle ‘pancake’ found in Germany.]

The DNA comes from the remains of a turtle shell first uncovered in 2015 in the Chagres Formation on Panama’s Caribbean coast. It represents the oldest known fossil evidence of Lepidochelys turtles. The turtle lived approximately 6 million years ago, curing the upper Miocene Epoch. At this time, present day Panama’s climate was getting cooler and drier, sea ice was accumulating at Earth’s poles, rainfall was decreasing, sea levels were falling.

“The fossil was not complete, but it had enough features to identify it as a member of the Lepidochelys genus,” study co-author and Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia paleontologist Edwin Cadena tells PopSci. Cadena is also a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

The team detected preserved bone cells called osteocytes. These bone cells are the most abundant cells in vertebrates and they have nucleus-like structures. The team used a solution called DAPI to test the osteocytes for genetic material.

“In some of them [the osteocytes], the nuclei were preserved and reacted to DAPI, a solution that allowed us to recognize remains of DNA. This is the first time we have documented DNA remains in a fossilized turtle millions of years old,” says Cadena.

According to the study, fossils like this one from vertebrates preserved in this part of Panama are important for our understanding of the biodiversity that was present when the Isthmus of Panama first emerged roughly 3 million years ago. This narrow strip of land divided the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean and joined North and South America. It created a land bridge that made it easier for some animals and plants to migrate between the two continents.

[Related: Hungry green sea turtles have eaten in the same seagrass meadows for about 3,000 years.]

This specimen could also have important implications for the emerging field of molecular paleontology. Scientists in this field study ancient and prehistoric biomatter including proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and DNA that can sometimes be extracted from fossils. 

Molecular paleontology aims to determine if scientists can use this type of evidence to determine more about the organisms than their physical shape, which is typically what is preserved in most fossils. Extracting this tiny material from bones was critical in sequencing the Neanderthal genome, which earned Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo the 2022 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.

“Many generations have grown up with the idea of extracting and bringing back to life extinct organisms,” says Cadena. “However, that is not the real purpose of molecular paleontology. Instead, its goal is to trace, document, and understand how complex biomolecules such as DNA and proteins can be preserved in fossils.”

This new turtle specimen could help other molecular paleontologists better understand how soft tissues can be preserved over time. It could also shift the idea that original biomolecules like proteins or DNA have a specific timeline for preservation in fossils and encourage re-examining older specimens for traces of biomolecules. 

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Despite having the critical and even miraculous ingredients to sustain life from microscopic viruses up to big blue whales, planet Earth likely has a future that spells some doom for most, if not all, species of mammals—including humans. A study published September 25 in the journal Nature Geosciences made the bold prediction that in about 250 million years, all of Earth’s major land masses will join together as one. When they do, it could make our planet one extremely hot and almost completely uninhabitable for mammals.

[Related: Mixing volcanic ash with meteorites may have jump-started life on Earth.]

“Widespread temperatures of between 40 to 50 degrees Celsius [104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit], and even greater daily extremes, compounded by high levels of humidity would ultimately seal our fate,” study co-author and University of Bristol paleoclimatologist Alexander Farnsworth said in a statement. “Humans—along with many other species—would expire due to their inability to shed this heat through sweat, cooling their bodies.”

The models in this study predict that CO₂ levels would rise to between 410 parts per million and 816 parts per million in a few million years This is roughly the same as today’s level, which is already pushing the planet into dangerously hot water, or up to twice as high.

“They do explain quite nicely that it’s a combination of both those factors, kind of a double whammy situation,” geophysicist Ross Mitchell of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who was not involved in the study, told Science magazine. “If there’s any disagreement I have with this paper, it’s that they’re more right than they thought they were.”

This prediction aligns well with Earth’s past periods of mass extinction and the volatile history of our planet. Here are some other times that mammalian and human life on Earth was almost completely wiped out.

The Pleistocene Ancestral Bottleneck

About 800,000 to 900,000 years ago, the population of human ancestors drastically dropped. A study published in August estimates that there were only about 1,280 breeding individuals alive during this transition between the early and middle Pleistocene. About 98.7 percent of the ancestral population was lost at the beginning of this ancestral bottleneck that lasted for roughly 117,000 years.

During this time, modern humans spread outside of the African continents and other early human species like Neanderthals began to go extinct. The Australian continent and the Americas also saw humans for the first time and the climate was generally cold. 

Some of the potential reasons behind this population drop are mostly related to extremes in climate. Temperatures changed, severe droughts persisted, and food sources may have dwindled as animals like mammoths, mastodons, and giant sloths went extinct. According to the study, an estimated 65.85 percent of current genetic diversity may have been lost due to this bottleneck.

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

The Great Dying

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 66 million years ago.

According to a study published in May, saber-toothed creature called Inostrancevia filled a gap in southern Pangea’s ecosystem, when it was already devoid of top predators. Eventually, Inostrancevia also went extinct about 252 million years ago, as Earth’s species fought to gain a foothold on a changing planet. 

This example of how the past is prologue 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,” study co-author museum curator and paleontologist Christian Kammerer told PopSci in May. “[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.”

The Ultimate Mammalian Survivor

Despite Earth constantly trying to kill us, life finds a way. Some of our very early ancestors potentially even shared a brief moment with Titanosaurs and the iconic Triceratops. These distant mammalian relatives also survived the Earth’s most famous mass extinction event: the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs on a spring day about 66 million years ago.

[Related: This badger-like mammal may have died while trying to eat a dinosaur.]

A study published in June revealed that a Cretaceous origin for placental mammals, the diverse group that includes humans, dogs, and bats, briefly co-existed with dinosaurs. After an asteroid struck the Earth near Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, the devastation in its wake wiped out all of the non-avian dinosaurs and many mammals, such as a Madagascan rodent-looking animal named Vintana sertichi  that weighed up to 20 pounds Scientists have long debated if placental mammals were present with the dinosaurs before the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction, or if they only evolved after the dinosaurs died out. 

This study used statistical analysis that showed groups that include primates, rabbits and hares (Lagomorpha), and dogs and cats (Carnivora) evolved just before the K-Pg mass extinction and the impact that the modern lines of today’s placental mammals started to take shape after the asteroid hit. As with other mammals, they likely began to diversify once the dinosaurs were out of the picture.

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Most nutritionists advise people to “eat the rainbow” to balance their diet—think greens like kale, purples like eggplant, reds like tomatoes.  Consuming nutritious and naturally occuring orange foods like carrots packed with vitamin A, fiber, antioxidants, and pigments called carotenoids is a must to get a full and healthy spectrum. Carotenoids even got their name because they were first isolated from carrots.  But what is exactly behind the bright hue of some of our favorite carrots? Only three specific genes are required to give orange carrots their signature color, according to a study published September 28 in the journal Nature Plants.

[Related: Carrots were once a crucial tool in anti-Nazi propaganda.]

In the study, a team from North Carolina State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison looked at the genetic blueprints of more than 600 varieties of carrots. Surprisingly, they found that these three required genes all need to be recessive, or turned off.

“Normally, to make some function, you need genes to be turned on,” study co-author and North Carolina State University horticultural scientist Massimo Iorizzo said in a statement.  “In the case of the orange carrot, the genes that regulate orange carotenoids—the precursor of vitamin A that have been shown to provide health benefits—need to be turned off,” Iorizzo said. 

In 2016, this team sequenced the carrot genome for the first time and also uncovered the gene involved in the pigmentation of yellow carrot. For this new study, they sequenced 630 carrot genomes as part of a continuing study on the history and domestication of the crunchy root veggie.

The team performed selective sweeps, or structural analyses among five different carrot groups. During these sweeps, they looked for areas of the genome that are heavily selected in certain groups. They found that many of the genes involved in flowering were under selection, primarily to delay the flowering process. This event causes the edible root that we eat called the taproot to turn woody and inedible. 

“We found many genes involved in flowering regulation that were selected in multiple populations in orange carrot[s], likely to adapt to different geographic regions,” said Iorizzo. 

Additionally, the study created a general timeline of carrot domestication and found more evidence that carrots were domesticated in the 9th or 10th century CE in western and central Asia. 

“Purple carrots were common in central Asia along with yellow carrots. Both were brought to Europe, but yellow carrots were more popular, likely due to their taste,” said Iorizzo.

[Related: WTF are purple carrots and where did they come from?]

In about the 15th or 16th century, orange carrots made their appearance in western Europe, potentially as the result of crossing a yellow carrot with a white one. The bright color and sweet flavor of orange carrots likely made it more popular than other varieties, so farmers continued selecting for them. In northern Europe, different types of orange carrots were developed in the 16th and 17th centuries and orange carrots of various shades can be seen in paintings from that area. They continued to grow in popularity as more understanding about the importance of alpha- and beta-carotenes and vitamin A in the diet for eye health progressed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

The findings in this study shed more light on the traits that are important to improving carrots and could lead to better health benefits from the nutritious vegetable.

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One of the most enduring mysteries about our earliest ancestors and extinct human relatives is how they ate and procured enough food to sustain themselves millions of years ago. We believe that archery first arrived in Europe about 54,000 years ago and Neanderthals were cooking and eating crab about 90,000 years ago, but scavenging was likely necessary to get a truly hearty meal. A modeling study published September 28 in the journal Scientific Reports found that groups of hominins roughly 1.2 to 0.8 million years ago in southern Europe may have been able to compete with giant hyenas for carcasses of animals abandoned by larger predators like saber-toothed cats.

[Related: An ‘ancestral bottleneck’ took out nearly 99 percent of the human population 800,000 years ago.]

Earlier research has theorized that the number of carcasses abandoned by saber-toothed cats may have been enough to sustain some of southern Europe’s early hominin populations. However, it’s been unclear if competition from giant hyenas (Pachycrocuta brevirostris) would have limited hominin access to this food source. These extinct mongoose relatives were about 240 pounds–roughly the size of a lioness–and went extinct about 500,000 years ago. 

“There is a hot scientific debate about the role of scavenging as a relevant food procurement strategy for early humans,” paleontologist and study co-author Jesús Rodríguez from the National Research Center On Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Burgos, Spain tells PopSci. “Most of the debate is based on the interpretation of the scarce and fragmentary evidence provided by the archaeological record. Without denying that the archaeological evidence should be considered the strongest argument to solve the question, our intention was to provide elements to the debate from a different perspective.”

For this study, Rodríguez and co-author Ana Mateos looked at the Iberian Peninsula in the late-early Pleistocene era. They ran computer simulations to model competition for carrion–the flesh of dead animals–between hominins and giant hyenas in what is now Spain and Portugal. They simulated whether saber-toothed cats and the European jaguar could have left enough carrion behind to support both hyena and hominin populations—and how this may have been affected by the size of scavenging groups of hominins. 

They found that when hominins scavenged in groups of five or more, these groups could have been large enough to chase away giant hyenas. The hominin populations also exceeded giant hyena populations by the end of these simulations. However, when the hominins scavenged in very small groups, they could only survive to the end of the simulation when the predator density was high, which resulted in more carcasses to scavenge.  

[Related: Mysterious skull points to a possible new branch on human family tree.]

According to their simulations, the potential optimum group size for scavenging hominins was just over 10 individuals. This size was large enough to chase away saber-toothed cats and jaguars. However, groups of more than 13 individuals would have likely required more carcasses to sustain their energy expenditure. The authors caution that their simulations couldn’t specify this exact “just right” group size, since the numbers of hominins needed to chase away hyenas, saber-toothed cats, and jaguars were pre-determined and arbitrarily assigned.

“The simulations may not determine the exact value of the optimum, but show that it exists and depends on the number of hominins necessary to chase away the hyenas and of the size of the carcasses,” says Rodríguez.

Scavenged remains may have been an important source of meat and fat for hominins, especially in winter when plant resources were scarce. This team is working on simulating the opportunities hominins had for scavenging in different ecological scenarios in an effort to change a view that scavenging is marginal and that hunting is a more “advanced” and more “human” behavior than scavenging. 

“The word for scavenger in Spanish is ‘carroñero.’ It has a negative connotation, and is frequently used as an insult. We do not share that view,” says Rodríguez. “Scavengers play a very important role in ecosystems, as evidenced by the ecological literature in the last decades. We view scavenging as a product of the behavioral flexibility and cooperative abilities of the early hominins.”

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About 465 million years ago, a now extinct arthropod called a trilobite was eating its way across the present day Czech Republic. After it died, the passage of time actually preserved the plentiful contents of this specimen’s prehistoric guts. A team of paleontologists is using this full fossilized belly to learn more about the feeding habits and lifestyle of these common fossilized arthropods. The findings are detailed in a study published September 27 in the journal Nature.

[Related: Trilobites may have jousted with head ‘tridents’ to win mates.]

More than 20,000 species of trilobite lived during the early Cambrian to the end-Permian period roughly 541 to 252 million years ago. They are some of the most common fossil specimens from this time period, yet paleontologists do not know much about their feeding habits since gut contents usually disappear over time, and until recently there were no known fossil specimens with them intact.

In the study, a team from institutions in Sweden and the Czech Republic examined a fossil specimen of Bohemolichas incola first uncovered near Prague over 100 years ago. Study co-author and paleontologist Petr Kraft from Charles University in Prague had long suspected that this specimen may have a gut full of food intact, but did not have a suitable technique to look inside the trilobite’s innards. Study co-authors and paleontologists Valéria Vaskaninova and Per Ahlberg from Uppsala University in Sweden suggested using a synchrotron in one of their fossil scanning sessions. This machine is a large electron accelerator that produces powerful laser-like x-rays to take high-quality scans of the fossil

“The results were fantastic, showing all the gut contents in detail so that we could identify what the trilobite had been eating,” Ahlberg tells PopSci. “Remains of ostracods (small shell-bearing crustaceans, still around today), hyoliths (extinct cone-shaped animals of uncertain affinities) and stylophorans (extinct echinoderms that look like little armor-plated electric guitars). These are all kinds of animals that lived in the local environment.”

The team believes that Bohemolichas incola was likely an opportunistic scavenger. It also was potentially a light crusher and a chance feeder, which means that it ate both dead or living animals, which either disintegrated easily or were actually small enough to be swallowed whole. However, after this particular Bohemolichas incola died, the circle of life continued and the scavenger became the scavenged. Vertical tracks of other scavengers were found on the specimen. These unknown creatures burrowed into this trilobite’s carcass and targeted its soft tissue, but avoided its gut. Staying away from the gut implies that there were some noxious conditions inside Bohemolichas incola’s digestive system and potentially ongoing enzymatic activity.

[Related: These ancient trilobites are forever frozen in a conga line.]

“We were able to draw conclusions about the chemical environment inside the gut of the living trilobite. The shell fragments on the gut have not been etched by stomach acids, and this shows that the gut pH must have been close to neutral, similar to the condition in modern crabs and horseshoe crabs,” says Ahlberg. “This may indeed be a very ancient shared characteristic of trilobites and these modern arthropods.”

Future studies into trilobites could use similar techniques to look for more gut fills. Since this group is a very diverse group of animals, it can’t be assumed that this particular species is representative of the feeding habits for all. 

“This project shows how cutting-edge technology can come together with really old museum specimens. The trilobite was collected in 1908, and has been in a museum ever since, but it is only now that we have the technology to unlock its secrets,” says Ahlberg. “This illustrates not only the rapid technological progress of our time, but also the importance of well-maintained museum collections.”

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