(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Overnight News Digest - Science Saturday Climate reparations, Humpback whales, JWST, Gender science [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-10 Welcome to Overnight News Digest- Saturday Science. Since 2007 the OND has been 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. Topics in tonight’s digest include: Horseshoe crabs endangered What is a woman? Or any other gender? Ancient galaxies discovered by JWST Science agrees with Eastern philosophy. There is no “Self.” ​​​​​​​Reparations - polluters must pay for climate damage Ukraine’s worst ecological disaster since Chernobyl Humpback whale rescued after eight hours Tinnitus treatment Magic Mushrooms & LSD Mycorrhizal fungi store 13 gigatons of carbon dioxide from plant roots Removing hydrogen from seawater Citizen science project looking at galaxies NPR by Chiara Eisner Coastal biomedical labs are bleeding more horseshoe crabs with little accountability Horseshoe crabs used to be everywhere. Millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the planet, each spring, the hard-shelled creatures gathered to mate in massive mounds along the beaches of the Atlantic coast. Later, migratory shorebirds like the robin-sized red knot learned to fly up from South America to join them for a feast. The crabs' eggs gave the birds the energy they needed to keep flying north to breed in the Arctic. But humans began to want something from the crabs, too – their blood. In the 1960s, scientists discovered that the sky blue blood inside horseshoe crabs would clot when it detected bacterial toxins. Vaccines, drugs and medical devices have to be sterile before they're put inside people. A better toxin detection system meant less contamination risk for patients, so fishermen soon started collecting and selling the prehistoric animals to be bled. Big Think by Ethan Siegel Ask Ethan: What is a woman? For most of human history, we've by default sorted people by sex, gender, and sexual preference into binary categories: where there are only two options to choose from. In most situations, however, the binary extremes only capture the majority of the population, further excluding and marginalizing a population of people that are already in the minority. By capitalizing on our modern, expert understanding of science and medicine, we can come to draw informed conclusions for what actions we ought to take to best serve — and protect — all members of our society. Space.com by Sharmila Kuthunur James Webb Space Telescope discovers 717 ancient galaxies that flooded the universe with 1st light The James Webb Telescope (JWST or Webb) has unveiled hundreds of ancient galaxies that could be among the first members of the universe — a leap from only a handful that were previously known to exist at the time. As early as 600 million years after the Big Bang , these very young galaxies flaunted complex structures and clusters of star formation, a new study reports. The study is part of an international collaboration called the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), which gathered a month's worth of observations from two tiny patches in the sky: One in the Ursa Minor constellation and another in the direction of the Fornax cluster . Within this region were over 700 newly discovered young galaxies… "If you took the whole universe and shrunk it down to a two hour movie, you are seeing the first five minutes of the movie," Kevin Hainline, an assistant research professor at the Steward Observatory in Arizona and a lead author of the new study, said while announcing the discovery on Monday (June 5) at the 242nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society being held in Albuquerque and online. "These are the galaxies that are starting the process of making the elements and the complexity that we see in the world around us today." Big Think by Chris Niebauer Eastern philosophy says there is no “self.” Science agrees Western philosophy typically conceptualizes the self as a stable, controlling entity, comparable to a pilot, while Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism argue that the self is an illusion, a byproduct of our thought processes. Modern neuroscience provides evidence that aligns with the Eastern view, revealing that the left hemisphere of the brain constantly creates narratives to interpret reality, leading to a mistaken identification with these self-narratives. This false sense of self, which is often equated with the incessant internal dialogue, contributes significantly to human mental suffering. We have a number for how much polluters cost the Earth – now to make them pay The Guardian by Nina Lakhani Here’s an indisputable (and blood-curdling) fact: fossil fuel companies have known for decades about the planet warming and other environmental harms caused by their oil, gas and coal. Nevertheless they denied it, lied about it, and colluded to spin alternative baseless “facts”, all the while expanding their business and profit margins. Like Big Tobacco, but worse. Another fact: countries like the UK, US, Canada and Germany got rich and powerful not because their people are smarter or work harder, but because they extracted and accumulated wealth from other places – and off the backs of other people. In the modern age, this wealth accumulation has been closely tied to burning fossil fuels to power factories and engines and digital technologies – and as a result the richest countries are responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gases driving climate breakdown. All of this brings us to reparations - a central tenet of climate justice which gets to the uncomfortable fact that we are not, in fact, all in this together. We didn’t all contribute equally to the climate crisis; we haven’t all benefited equally from burning fossil fuels, and we’re not all suffering the impacts of drought, extreme heat, floods, melting glaciers, and sea level rise in the same way. Climate reparations are about making the polluters pay for the loss and damage they’ve caused - and continue to cause - as a matter of justice and economic necessity. The Guardian by Jonathan Watts Dam breach could be Ukraine’s ‘worst ecological disaster since Chornobyl’ Ukrainian scientists are waiting for the water to subside before fully assessing the environmental impact of the Kakhovka dam breach, but one former minister warned it could prove the country’s worst ecological disaster since the Chornobyl nuclear meltdown. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, called an emergency meeting of his security council after the partial collapse of one of the biggest dams in the world. The country’s public prosecutor said it is investigating a possible case of “ecocide”. Ukraine and Russia have each accused the other of deliberately blasting the main concrete barrier. Other media point to satellite data that shows a road across the dam was already partly inundated in recent days and that water levels were at a record high. The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the collapse and described the explosion as an “environmental catastrophe”. Analysts told the Guardian that the scale of the damage would depend on the amount of water released and the extent of the damage to the barrier, both of which are still unknown. At the very least, it has forced the evacuation of thousands of people, flooded national parks and jeopardised water supplies to millions of people. In the worst-case scenario, it may pose a long-term danger to Europe’s biggest nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhia, and could also spread agrotoxins and petrochemicals into the Black Sea. The Guardian by Australian AP Humpback whale freed after gruelling eight-hour rescue mission in Australia A humpback whale trapped in waters south of Sydney has finally been freed after a gruelling eight-hour rescue mission. Rescue efforts began on Saturday morning after reports of a whale in distress off Five Islands near Port Kembla. Volunteer crews from Marine Rescue NSW and NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service were called to assist at about 8.30am. The whale, caught in a series of lines and floats, proved to be a challenge for rescuers to disentangle as weather conditions deteriorated and other whales in the area thwarted recovery attempts. New Atlas by Loz Blain Ring-busting tinnitus treatment combines sound and touch stimulation A "bi-sensory" treatment combining precisely timed sound and touch has shown impressive results in reducing people's experience of tinnitus, a common and debilitating form of hearing damage that presents as an incessant ringing sound in the ears. That ringing sound can become incredibly penetrating and stressful, particularly in a silent room. It's not a real sound, it's believed to be generated in a brain region called the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN). The DCN is one of the first processing stops for audio signals in the brain, but it also processes touch sensations from the head, the ear and the jaw. Inverse by Miriam Fausia LSD and Magic Mushrooms Dramatically Rewire the Brain, New Study Reveals From ketamine drips to microdosing on LSD, psychedelics are shaking up the way we approach and treat mental health. A growing body of scientific evidence shows that these long-stigmatized substances could be potential antidepressants, alleviating symptoms by slipping into areas of the brain traditional SSRIs can’t reach, and encouraging new neural connections. Despite these advances, psychedelics remain fairly mysterious. Researchers haven’t yet pinned down the various mechanisms through which they work inside our bodies. But now, they might be one step closer. An international team of scientists led by the University of Helsinki in Finland believes they’ve struck biochemical gold. In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the researchers found that psychedelics psilocin (the primary chemical in magic mushrooms) and LSD exert an antidepressant effect by binding to a protein, receptor tyrosine kinase beta (TrkB), which then activates brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that plays a crucial role in the growth, development, and maintenance of neurons; kind of like Miracle-Gro for the brain. New Scientist by Brian Owens Underground fungi absorb up to a third of our fossil fuel emissions The relationships between plants and the fungi that colonise their roots are responsible for locking away a huge amount of carbon underground – maybe equivalent to more than one-third of global emissions from fossil fuels. Almost all land plants on Earth have a symbiotic relationship with fungi that live in the soil around their roots, trading the carbon they draw from the air for nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. These mycorrhizal fungi store the carbon they get from their plant partners in their tissues and the surrounding soil, thus keeping it out of the atmosphere. But despite the interest in nature-based solutions to climate change, mycorrhizal fungi have been largely overlooked, says Heidi-Jayne Hawkins at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. So, she and her colleagues set out to calculate just how much carbon plants might be transferring to these fungi. The Verge by Justine Calma This startup is zapping seawater to tackle climate change A new California-based startup is trying to take on climate change by simultaneously taking carbon dioxide out of the ocean and air while creating hydrogen as an alternative fuel. Boeing has already inked an agreement with Equatic, the company that launched last week. The deal is for Boeing to purchase 2,100 metric tons of hydrogen from Equatic that it can use in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The hydrogen is a byproduct of Equatic’s efforts to filter planet-heating CO2 out of air and seawater. Boeing has also agreed to purchase 62,000 metric tons’ worth of carbon removal to offset some of its own climate pollution. […] But the process could potentially have some unforeseen consequences, some environmental advocates caution. “Equatic is attempting to exert control over very complex ocean chemistry,” John Fleming, senior scientist at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity… Zooniverse Blobs and blurs - extreme galaxies in clusters The Universe is full of faint and peculiar galaxies, which we call Blobs and Blurs! In the Blobs and Blurs project, we need your help to search for extremely faint and spread out galaxies (blurs) and isolated, blue, star-forming clouds (blobs). To identify these objects volunteers will search bite-sized optical and ultra-violet images covering the nearby Fornax galaxy cluster. Blurs (diffuse galaxies) are remarkably common and there are likely hundreds waiting to be found in the galaxy cluster, but only with the help of many volunteers can we be sure to find them all. Blobs (isolated star-forming clouds), on the other hand, are rare and challenging to identify; the first known blue blobs were only identified recently. With your help we can advance understanding of these extreme objects and learn about the processes driving the formation and evolution of galaxies. This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the science news of the day. Please share your articles and stories in the comments. 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