(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Good News Roundup 7-12-23: Summer Science Extravaganza [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-07-12 Good Morning, Gnusies! Welcome to the Summer Science Extravaganza, the first of its kind here on the GNR. Okay, okay, I made it up. But there’s just so much going on and being discovered about the past, the future, and our universe that it deserves to be dragged out from under the pile of everything that’s burying it in the news. On with the show! x YouTube Video A discovery in space and time! And one that won’t destroy the universe. Scientists Discover Time Moving 5x Slower Shortly After Big Bang–Exactly as Einstein Predicted In a groundbreaking paper published in Nature, Professor Geraint Lewis of Sydney University and Dr. Brendon Brewer at Auckland University used quasars as clocks to track the speed of time in the early universe—perhaps less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Quasars are the universe’s most powerful known objects, and they showed that time moved 500% slower in the earliest chapter of the universe than it would today. “Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower,” said Professor Lewis. “If you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second—but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag.” … Lewis explains that he and his team used spectroscopy to separate the light from the 200 or so quasars into green, red, and infrared, which allowed them to chart the lights’ path through space and time rather like the ticking of a clock. ... It’s the third or fourth time in recent memory that a bold prediction of Einstein has been proven correct, demonstrating the superb intellect of a man who is getting more predictions right from his grave than some scientists do in the lab. Not here yet, but any journey starts with a first step — or in this case, the discovery of three tiny proteins. Simple Blood Test for ‘Silent Killer’ Ovarian Cancer on the Horizon After Discovery of 3 Telltale Proteins A simple blood test for ovarian cancer is on the horizon now that three telltale proteins have been discovered. … The Japanese team extracted them from the most common type of ovarian cancer (high-grade serous carcinoma or HGSC), and used a scanning technique called liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. The findings published in the journal Science Advances showed each of the three identified proteins was useful as a biomarker for HGSCs. “The results of this research suggest that these diagnostic biomarkers can be used as predictive markers for specific therapies,” said lead author Dr. Akira Yokoi, of Nagoya University. “Our results allow doctors to optimize their therapeutic strategy for ovarian cancer, therefore, they may be useful for realizing personalized medicine.” Feathers from the days of the actualfax dinosaurs! Not, you know, present day dinosaurs (aka birds). Bird Feathers Preserved in Amber 99 Million Years Ago May Point to Dinosaur Survival Clue Bird feathers from 99 million years ago not only shows that modern birds are descended from dinosaurs but might also point to why some of their ancestors died out. The feathers, found preserved in amber in Myanmar, show how molting was the key to some early extinctions. ... The bird, named Enantiornithine, had to keep itself warm while undergoing rapid shedding, a factor in the species’ ultimate doom, say scientists. … “Enantiornithines were the most diverse group of birds in the Cretaceous, but they went extinct along with all the other non-avian dinosaurs,” explained Professor Jingmai O’Connor of The Field Museum Chicago, who published the research in the journals Cretaceous Research and Communications Biology. “When the asteroid hit, global temperatures would have plummeted and resources would have become scarce, so not only would these birds have even higher energy demands to stay warm, but they didn’t have the resources to meet them.” Lots more info in the article! This one’s one of my favorites this month. So little is known about okapis that I got them confused with tapirs and insisted, at least to myself, they were from South America until I looked them up on the interwebs. Glad to see them getting some attention. Birth of Rare Okapi at Zoo is Inspiring Hope for One of the Least Understood Endangered Species on Earth Zookeepers threw a coming-out party for the baby calf of an okapi couple—a rare birth of ‘one of the least known and understood species on the planet’. Known as the forest giraffe, the endangered mammal was born at Chester Zoo on May 12 to a 10-year-old mother and a 20-year-old male named Stomp. The adorable calf, named Arabi, has been snuggled up in a nest behind-the-scenes but has now taken her first tentative steps outside at six-weeks-old. … “Every birth is incredibly special indeed,” said Hannah Owens, an okapi keeper at Chester Zoo. “Mum has been doing a fantastic job of feeding and nurturing her calf every day.” Mike Jordan, animal and plant director at the zoo, added: “The arrival of this okapi calf is not only a cause for celebration but also a significant milestone in our ongoing commitment to the conservation and protection of this charismatic species.” x YouTube Video Humans aren’t the only ones who use baby talk! Dolphin Moms Use ‘Baby Talk’ with Their Calves, Research Shows A new examination of dolphin vocalizations found that mother bottlenose dolphins whistle at a higher pitch when talking to their offspring, exactly like human mothers do with theirs. While difficult to confirm in theory, a number of highlights from the study reveal the finding to be a robust one, including that the dolphins only used their “baby talk” voice with their calves, only in situations that weren’t stressful, and that human babies are known to prefer baby talk to adult speech. … The researchers at the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program used spectrograms to study the contour and bandwidth of every call. Every dolphin has a unique whistle, and the spectrograms showed that the whistling directed at the calves had lower lows, and higher highs, just like the way humans tend to coo at their babies with whooping tones. “It was very much like what human mothers do when they talk in a high-pitched voice to their infants,” Laela Sayigh, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the study’s lead author, told Science News. “We have no idea of what they’re communicating, but likely, it’s, ‘I’m here. I’m here.’” … Some scientists are seeing the study as a landmark: the touchstone of a future host of papers looking for baby speech in other animal vocalizations like parrots or primates. This is really cool. I hope it works. For anyone with a taste for Shakespeare or the Arthurian legend or similar stories, this kind of restoration sparks the imagination of what was and what could be again. Return of the epiphytes In an oak woodland in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park, a team of scientists are trying to regrow a rainforest. … Over the past five years, Christopher Ellis, a lichenologist at the the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), has been leading an experiment in how to return the lost epiphytes to this would-be rainforest. Epiphytes are plants which depend on trees for physical support, and include species of mosses, liverworts and lichens, which create the tangled emerald beauty for which these habitats are known. “When you get rid of the rhododendron, you are left with the trees – but a lot of the biodiversity that makes the rainforest special is missing,” says Ellis. “Some of those species find it very hard to recolonise into recovered woodland, so that’s what the project is about.” This is the first time that epiphyte translocation has been tested in Scotland – and it could have enormous implications for the future of this vulnerable ecosystem. I got shivers reading about this project. This may not sound like science, but there’s so much science stuff that is positively impacted by local farms and food production that it's going in here anyways: lower carbon footprint due to less transportation needed; food produced for taste and nutrition rather than looks and transportability; breeds and varietals adapted to local conditions. I can't tell you how many of the local farmers who sell their goods at the local markets I talk to about their farming practices, the conditions of their farms and crops and livestock with respect to local conditions, etc. BTW: About food assistance vouchers and higher costs typically associated with buying food at the farmers markets? Some — like here in Cuyahoga County — have incentives to buy produce by matching a certain amount of money spent on anything eligible (baked goods, meat, eggs, etc. as well as fruits and vegetables) with a secondary currency good just for fruits and vegetables. Farmers markets thrive as customers and vendors who latched on during the pandemic remain loyal Some shoppers shy away from farmers market vendors because prices are typically higher than those at grocery stores due to the labor and small scale involved, even though most farmers markets accept food assistance vouchers. But the inflation of the past two years has brought about a shift. Prices for some typically cheap staple items in grocery stores rose sharply due to high inflation and various issues. For instance, egg prices rose partly due to avian flu and toward the end of last year the cost of a dozen had doubled from 12 months earlier. Bread and flour prices rose partly because of the Ukraine crisis. “The benefit to shopping at a farmers market is that it’s directly from the farm and so they’re not going to see the same type of supply chain issues (grocery stores have),” [Taylor Choy, operations manager at Green City Market in Chicago] said. “In fact, I’ve seen the cost of eggs at a grocery store increase, but then our price of our eggs at our market stayed the same.” I can vouch for the egg prices — locally, a dozen organic eggs at the farmers market costs less than at the grocery store. And the grocery store doesn’t carry duck eggs, which I prefer for baking bread. We lost some of the smaller local markets here in Cuyahoga County due to the pandemic. I hope that with the nationwide growth in markets, they get reestablished in the coming years. There’s certainly space for them. This is amazing. Free range wild bison. Something I never thought I’d see. 'Absolutely epic': Blackfeet release wild buffalo on tribal land On Monday, the Blackfeet Nation transferred 30 wild buffalo (iinnii in the Blackfoot language) to tribal lands near Chief Mountain, an area steeped in Blackfeet cultural significance in the northwest corner of the reservation bordering Glacier National Park. The buffalo were brought to the Blackfeet from Alberta in 2016 after testing negative for diseases. In the seven years since, the tribe has been growing the captive herd in preparation for the release. … Rosalyn LaPier, Blackfeet and Métis, and her family own 120 acres in the foothills of Chief Mountain. She said the tribe has created a conservation district in the area to allow for grazing. “Our land isn’t fenced,” she explained. “So bison, like bears and elk and deer and moose and antelope, can walk freely across the land.” … The Chief Mountain release, LaPier said, is not just momentous for the tribe but also presents scientists with a new opportunity. “One thing scientists don’t know is where bison want to go,” she said. “They’ve always been fenced in so we have no idea, as scholars and scientists, where they want to go when they roam. Even in Yellowstone, the bison are killed or relocated when they leave the border of the park. So this will be really interesting to see what happens.” x YouTube Video That’s it for me, gnusies! 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