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Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday, 11/2/24 [1]

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

Date: 2024-11-02  

Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame, jck and jeremybloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.

OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.

NASA Generated $76 Billion For US Economy In 2023

NASA's economic impact report highlights that in fiscal year 2023, the agency's initiatives contributed $75.6 billion to the U.S. economy, created over 300,000 jobs, and drove advancements in areas like space exploration, climate research, and technology innovation. The agency's budget for that year was $25.4 billion. Space.com reports: The Moon to Mars program alone created $23.8 billion in economic output and 96,479 jobs, while investments in climate research and technology contributed $7.9 billion and 32,900 jobs. The report also drills down into impacts in each state, with 45 states seeing over $10 million in impact and eight states surpassing the $1 billion mark. [...] NASA's missions supported 304,803 jobs across America, according to the report -- the third agency-wide study of its kind -- generating an estimated total of $9.5 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. Additionally, NASA's technological innovations and transfers in 2023 led to 40 new patent applications, 69 patents issued, and thousands of software usage agreements. A number of NASA technology spinoffs have become everyday household items. The full NASA economic impact report can be found here.

Planet-Heating Pollutants in Atmosphere Hit Record Levels in 2023

The concentration of planet-heating pollutants clogging the atmosphere hit record levels in 2023, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said. From a report: It found carbon dioxide is accumulating faster than at any time in human history, with concentrations having risen by more than 10% in just two decades. "Another year, another record," said Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the WMO. "This should set alarm bells ringing among decision makers." The increase was driven by humanity's "stubbornly high" burning of fossil fuels, the WMO found, and made worse by big wildfires and a possible drop in the ability of trees to absorb carbon. The concentration of CO2 reached 420 parts per million (ppm) in 2023, the scientists observed. The level of pollution is 51% greater than before the Industrial Revolution, when people began to burn large amounts of coal, oil and fossil gas.

Record Levels of Heat-Related Deaths in 2023 Due To Climate Crisis, Report Finds

Heat-related deaths, food insecurity and the spread of infectious diseases caused by the climate crisis have reached record levels, according to a landmark report. The Guardian: The Lancet Countdown's ninth report on health and the climate breakdown reveals that people across the world face unprecedented threats to their health from the rapidly changing climate. "This year's stocktake of the imminent health threats of climate inaction reveals the most concerning findings yet," warned Dr Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown at University College London. "Once again, last year broke climate change records with extreme heatwaves, deadly weather events, and devastating wildfires affecting people around the world. No individual or economy on the planet is immune [to] the health threats of climate change. The relentless expansion of fossil fuels and record-breaking greenhouse gas emissions compounds these dangerous health impacts, and is threatening to reverse the limited progress made so far and put a healthy future further out of reach." The report finds that in 2023, extreme drought lasting at least one month affected 48% of the global land area, while people had to cope with an unprecedented 50 more days of health-threatening temperatures than would have been expected without the climate crisis. As a result, 151 million more people faced moderate or severe food insecurity, risking malnutrition and other harm to their health.

One of the fastest-spinning stars in the Universe

New research in our Milky Way has revealed a neutron star that rotates around its axis at an extremely high speed. It spins 716 times per second, making it one of the fastest-spinning objects ever observed. The Milky Way still holds many secrets about the universe. Now, researchers from DTU have managed to uncover one more of them using an X-ray space telescope mounted on the International Space Station (ISS). It is a small but extremely massive and fast-spinning object -- a neutron star, part of a so-called 'X-ray binary star system' named '4U 1820-30'. It's found in the Sagittarius constellation towards the centre of our galaxy. "We were studying thermonuclear explosions from this system and then found remarkable oscillations, suggesting a neutron star spinning around its centre axis at an astounding 716 times per second," says DTU Space senior scientist Dr Gaurava K. Jaisawal, who is part of an international team of researchers behind the new finding and first author on an article about it just published in the Astrohysical Journal.

NASA's Hubble, Webb probe surprisingly smooth disk around Vega

In the 1997 movie "Contact," adapted from Carl Sagan's 1985 novel, the lead character scientist Ellie Arroway (played by actor Jodi Foster) takes a space-alien-built wormhole ride to the star Vega. She emerges inside a snowstorm of debris encircling the star -- but no obvious planets are visible. It looks like the filmmakers got it right. A team of astronomers at the University of Arizona, Tucson used NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes for an unprecedented in-depth look at the nearly 100-billion-mile-diameter debris disk encircling Vega. "Between the Hubble and Webb telescopes, you get this very clear view of Vega. It's a mysterious system because it's unlike other circumstellar disks we've looked at," said Andras Gáspár of the University of Arizona, a member of the research team. "The Vega disk is smooth, ridiculously smooth." x Hubble and Webb probe surprisingly smooth #disk around #Vega @NASAGoddard @AAS_Publishing @arxiv https://t.co/QIO70ntVDF — Phys.org (@physorg_com) November 1, 2024

Seeing a black hole's jet in a new light

Research led by the University of Michigan has pored over more than two decades' worth of data from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory to show there's new knotty science to discover around black holes. In particular, the study looks at the high-energy jet of particles being blasted across space by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Centaurus A. Jets are visible to different types of telescopes, including those that detect radio waves and others that collect X-rays. Since Chandra's 1999 launch, many astronomers have been particularly interested in the unexpectedly bright X-ray signals from jets.

Violating Bredt's rule: Chemists just broke a 100-year-old rule and say it's time to rewrite the textbooks

UCLA chemists have found a big problem with a fundamental rule of organic chemistry that has been around for 100 years -- it's just not true. And they say: It's time to rewrite the textbooks. Organic molecules, those made primarily of carbon, are characterized by having specific shapes and arrangements of atoms. Molecules known as olefins have double bonds, or alkenes, between two carbon atoms. The atoms, and those attached to them, ordinarily lie in the same 3D plane. Molecules that deviate from this geometry are uncommon. The rule in question, known as Bredt's rule in textbooks, was reported in 1924. It states that molecules cannot have a carbon-carbon double bond at the ring junction of a bridged bicyclic molecule, also known as the "bridgehead" position. The double bond on these structures would have distorted, twisted geometrical shapes that deviate from the rigid geometry of alkenes taught in textbooks. Olefins are useful in pharmaceutical research, but Bredt's rule has constrained the kind of synthetic molecules scientists can imagine making with them and prevented possible applications of their use in drug discovery.

Teens who made history with Pythagoras' theorem discovery publish their first academic paper with new proofs

In 2022, U.S. high school students Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson astonished teachers when they discovered a new way to prove Pythagoras' theorem using trigonometry after entering a competition at their local high school. As a result, both students were awarded keys to the city of New Orleans, and even received personal praise from Michelle Obama. Today they become published authors of a new peer-reviewed paper detailing their discoveries, published in the journal American Mathematical Monthly. Pythagoras' famous 2,000-year-old theorem, summarized neatly as a2+ b2= c2, means that you can work out the length of any side of a right-angled triangle as long as you know the length of the other two sides. Essentially, the square of the longest side (the hypotenuse) is equal to the squares of the two shorter sides added together. x #HighSchoolStudents present five new ways of proving Pythagoras' #Theorem via trigonometry https://t.co/vwDLIgkXYC — Phys.org (@physorg_com) October 28, 2024

Dinosaurs thrived after ice, not fire, says a new study of ancient volcanism

201.6 million years ago, one of the Earth's five great mass extinctions took place, when three-quarters of all living species suddenly disappeared. The wipeout coincided with massive volcanic eruptions that split apart Pangaea, a giant continent then comprising almost all the planet's land. Millions of cubic miles of lava erupted over some 600,000 years, separating what are now the Americas, Europe and North Africa. It marked the end of the Triassic period and the beginning of the Jurassic, the period when dinosaurs arose to take the place of Triassic creatures and dominate the planet. The exact mechanisms of the End Triassic Extinction have long been debated, but most prominent: Carbon dioxide surfaced by the eruptions built up over many millennia, raising temperatures to unsustainable levels for many creatures, and acidifying the oceans. But a new study says the opposite: cold, not warmth was the main culprit. The study presents evidence that instead of stretching over hundreds of thousands of years, the first pulses of lava that ended the Triassic were stupendous events lasting less than a century each. In this condensed time frame, sunlight-reflecting sulfate particles were spewed into the atmosphere, cooling the planet and freezing many of its inhabitants. Gradually rising temperatures in an environment that was hot to begin with -- atmospheric carbon dioxide in the late Triassic was already three times today's level -- may have finished the job later on, but it was volcanic winters that did the most damage, say the researchers. "Carbon dioxide and sulfates act not just in opposite ways, but opposite time frames," said lead author Dennis Kent of the Columbia Climate School's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "It takes a long time for carbon dioxide to build up and heat things, but the effect of sulfates is pretty much instant. It brings us into the realm of what humans can grasp. These events happened in the span of a lifetime."

Sinuses prevented prehistoric crocodile relatives from deep diving

An international team of paleobiologists have found that the sinuses of ocean dwelling relatives of modern-day crocodiles prevented them from evolving into deep divers like whales and dolphins. A new paper published today [30 October] in Royal Society Open Science suggests that thalattosuchians, which lived at the time of the dinosaurs, were stopped from exploring the deep due to their large snout sinuses. Whales and dolphins (cetaceans) evolved from land-dwelling mammals to become fully aquatic over the course of around 10 million years. During this time, their bone-enclosed sinuses reduced and they developed sinuses and air sacs outside of their skulls. x In the Jurassic, some crocodile relatives became full-time ocean dwellers, like whales.

But unlike whales, they had big skull sinuses, which kept them from becoming ace divers.

🚨New paper led by @drmarkyoung & our @GeosciencesEd team.https://t.co/r4f236RRIz — Steve Brusatte (@SteveBrusatte) October 30, 2024

Evolutionary paths vastly differ for birds, bats

New Cornell University research has found that, unlike birds, the evolution of bats' wings and legs is tightly coupled, which may have prevented them from filling as many ecological niches as birds. "We initially expected to confirm that bat evolution is similar to that of birds, and that their wings and legs evolve independently of one another. The fact we found the opposite was greatly surprising," said Andrew Orkney, postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Brandon Hedrick, assistant professor biomedical sciences. Both researchers are co-corresponding authors of research published on Nov.1 in Nature Ecology and Evolution. Because legs and wings perform different functions, researchers had previously thought that the origin of flight in vertebrates required forelimbs and hindlimbs to evolve independently, allowing them to adapt to their distinct tasks more easily.

Echolocating bats use an acoustic cognitive map for navigation

Echolocating bats have been found to possess an acoustic cognitive map of their home range, enabling them to navigate over kilometer-scale distances using echolocation alone. This finding, recently published in Science, was demonstrated by researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, the Cluster of Excellence Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz Germany, Tel Aviv University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Would you be able to instantly recognize your location and find your way home from any random point within a three-kilometer radius, in complete darkness, with only a flashlight to guide you? Echolocating bats face a similar challenge, with a local and directed beam of sound -- their echolocation -- to guide their way. Bats have long been known for their use of echolocation to avoid obstacles and orient themselves. However, the research team, led by Aya Goldshtein from Iain Couzin's group at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Cluster of Excellence Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz, has now shown that bats can identify their location even after being displaced and use echolocation to perform map-based navigation over long distances. To explore this, the team conducted experiments with Kuhl's pipistrelle (Pipistrellus kuhlii), a bat species weighing only 6 grams, in Israel's Hula Valley. Over several nights, the researchers tracked 76 bats near their roosts and relocated them to various points within a three-kilometer radius, but still within their home range. Each bat was tagged with an innovative lightweight reverse GPS tracking system called ATLAS, which provided high-resolution, real-time tracking.

Large herbivores have lived in Yellowstone National Park for more than 2,000 years

Large herbivores like bison or elk have continuously lived in the Yellowstone National Park region for about 2,300 years according to a new analysis of chemicals preserved in lake sediments. John Wendt of Oklahoma State University, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 30, 2024. The near-extinction of bison in North America in the 19th and 20th centuries was a major ecological catastrophe and little is known about where and how these animals lived before European colonization. In the new study, researchers attempted to determine the dominant large herbivores that lived in the northern Yellowstone National Park area by analyzing steroids from animal dung in lake sediments dating from about 238 B.C. to the present time.

The reasons flowers wilt could explain how plants spend (and save) their energy

Wilting flowers might not signal poor flower or plant health, but rather the effects of a sophisticated resource management strategy in plants, millions of years in the making. A study in the journal Plant Biology by researchers from Macquarie University and international collaborators has shown for the first time, that plants reuse resources from wilting flowers to support future reproduction. Lead author Honorary Professor Graham Pyke from Macquarie University says the findings help explain a common but poorly understood plant process. x The reasons #flowers wilt could explain how #plants spend (and save) their energy @macquarie_uni https://t.co/MycrESe2SH — Phys.org (@physorg_com) November 2, 2024

First blueprint of the human spliceosome revealed

Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona have created the first blueprint of the human spliceosome, the most complex and intricate molecular machine inside every cell. The scientific feat, which took more than a decade to complete, is published today in the journal Science. The spliceosome edits genetic messages transcribed from DNA, allowing cells to create different versions of a protein from a single gene. The vast majority of human genes -- more than nine in ten -- are edited by the spliceosome. Errors in the process are linked to a wide spectrum of diseases including most types of cancer, neurodegenerative conditions and genetic disorders. The sheer number of components involved and the intricacy of its function has meant the spliceosome has remained elusive and uncharted territory in human biology -- until now.

New findings on animal viruses with potential to infect humans

Scientists investigating animal viruses with potential to infect humans have identified a critical protein that could enable spillover of a family of organisms called arteriviruses. In a new study, researchers identified a protein in mammals that welcomes arteriviruses into host cells to start an infection. The team also found that an existing monoclonal antibody that binds to this protein protects cells from viral infection. Arteriviruses circulate broadly in many types of mammals around the world that serve as natural hosts -- such as nonhuman primates, pigs and horses -- but so far have not been detected in humans. x Scientists identify a protein that enables animal viruses to infect humans—and an antibody to protect against it @OhioState @NatureComms https://t.co/KtEAmYrque — Medical Xpress (@medical_xpress) October 31, 2024

Low-level lead poisoning is still pervasive in the US and globally

Chronic, low-level lead poisoning is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease in adults and cognitive deficits in children, even at levels previously thought to be safe, according to a new paper by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Simon Fraser University in Canada, and Harvard Medical School, and Boston Children's Hospital. Low-level lead poisoning is a risk factor for preterm Birth, cognitive deficits and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, (ADHD), as well as increased blood pressure and reduced heart rate variability. The findings are published in New England Journal of Medicine. In children exposure is responsible for an annual loss of some 765 million IQ points in children globally. Low-level lead poisoning is a risk factor for adults, which can result in chronic kidney failure, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. Lead accounted for 5.5 million deaths annually from cardiovascular disease. "The global burden of disease from lead exposure is staggering," said Ana Navas-Acien, MD, PhD, Leon Hess Professor and chair of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School. "In contrast to the decline in the rate of coronary heart disease in industrialized countries, the rate has increased over the past 30 years in industrializing countries. One in three children worldwide -- more than 600 million children -- have lead poisoning."

Human proteins identified that explain inter-individual differences in functional brain connectivity

A long-standing goal of neuroscience is to understand how molecules and cellular structures on a microscale give rise to communication between brain regions at the macroscale. A study published in Nature Neuroscience now identifies, for the first time, hundreds of brain proteins that explain inter-individual differences in functional connectivity and structural covariation in the human brain. "A central goal of neuroscience is to develop an understanding of the brain that ultimately describes the mechanistic basis of human cognition and behavior," said Jeremy Herskowitz, Ph.D., associate professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Neurology and co-corresponding author of the study with Chris Gaiteri, Ph.D., SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York. "This study demonstrates the feasibility of integrating data from vastly different biophysical scales to provide a molecular understanding of human brain connectivity." Bridging the gap from the molecular scale of proteins and mRNA to the brain-wide neuroimaging scale of functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging -- a span of about seven orders of magnitude -- was made possible by the Religious Orders Study and Rush Memory and Aging Project, or ROSMAP, at Rush University, Chicago, Illinois.

Your brain is ahead, predicting the world

When someone throws a ball at you, you almost immediately know to catch it -- even before you consciously realize it. In the past, people thought that in such a situation, the brain functioned like a camera: an image of the flying ball enters through your eyes and is then processed by your brain. The brain then programs an appropriate action to react to it. But doesn't that process take too long? Would you still be able to catch the ball in time? Researchers Christian Keysers, Giorgia Silani, and Valeria Gazzola show that this process in the brain works differently. Christian explains: "Your brain doesn't react to what entered the eye -- but it predicts what will happen, based on expectations and previous experiences. By doing so, our actions keep pace with the ball, despite the hundreds of milliseconds it takes the brain to process visual input and move our body. It plans ahead to allow time to execute the action and catch the ball. The image that enters through your eyes is mainly used to check if your expectations match reality. Only when there's a difference between your expectation and what you see, your brain uses the visual input to nudge its expectations in a more accurate direction." Valeria Gazzola: "What's interesting is that you also use your own motor programs and somatosensory cortices to predict the actions of others. When you perform a physical action, like lifting a carton of milk to pour some of it into your coffee, you have expectations about the weight of the carton, and how it should feel in your hand when you start lifting it. You don't really notice the weight of the carton consciously, because your brain predicted it. But if someone else already finished the milk, and the carton is so much lighter than you expected, the sudden difference between your expectations and the sensory feedback suddenly grabs your attention."

Trees cool better than reflective roofs in vulnerable Houston neighborhoods

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