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Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday, 6/1/24 [1]

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

Date: 2024-06-01  

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. Brain damage study reveals part of the brain necessary for helping others

Our willingness to help others is governed by a specific brain region pinpointed by researchers in a study of patients with brain damage to that region. Learning about where in the brain "helping" decisions are made is important for understanding how people might be motivated to tackle large global challenges, such as climate change, infectious disease and international conflict. It is also essential for finding new approaches to treating disorders of social interactions. The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, was carried out by researchers at the University of Birmingham and the University of Oxford, and shows for the first time how a region called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) has a critical role in helping, or "prosocial" behaviors.

The Earth's changing, irregular magnetic field is causing headaches for polar navigation

The Earth's liquid molten outer core, composed mostly of iron and nickel, exerts an electromagnetic field extending from the north and south pole that protects the planet from harmful solar particle radiation. Fluctuations in the strength of Earth's magnetic field—caused by daily changes in solar wind structure and intermittent solar storms—can impact the use of geomagnetic field models which are essential for navigation in satellites, planes, ships and cars. Magnetic field models differ based on the location of data collection—either on or near the Earth's surface or low Earth orbiting satellites. Past research has attributed model differences to space weather activity levels, but a recent analysis of six years of Earth and satellite magnetic field models found model discrepancies are also driven by modeling errors rather than geophysical phenomena alone. The results are published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.

Rivers of Lava on Venus Reveal a More Volcanically Active Planet

Witnessing the blood-red fires of a volcanic eruption on Earth is memorable. But to see molten rock bleed out of a volcano on a different planet would be extraordinary. That is close to what scientists have spotted on Venus: two vast, sinuous lava flows oozing from two different corners of Earth's planetary neighbor. From a report: "After you see something like this, the first reaction is 'wow,'" said Davide Sulcanese, a doctoral student at the Universita d'Annunzio in Pescara, Italy, and an author of a study reporting the discovery in the journal Nature Astronomy, published on Monday. Earth and Venus were forged at the same time. Both are made of the same primeval matter, and both are the same age and size. So why is Earth a paradise overflowing with water and life, while Venus is a scorched hellscape with acidic skies? Volcanic eruptions tinker with planetary atmospheres. One theory holds that, eons ago, several apocalyptic eruptions set off a runaway greenhouse effect on Venus, turning it from a temperate, waterlogged world into an arid desert of burned glass. To better understand its volcanism, scientists hoped to catch a Venusian eruption in the act. But although the planet is known to be smothered in volcanoes, an opaque atmosphere has prevented anyone from seeing an eruption the way spacecraft have spotted them on Io, the hypervolcanic moon of Jupiter. In the 1990s, NASA's spacecraft Magellan used cloud-penetrating radar to survey most of the planet. But back then, the relatively low-resolution images made spotting fresh molten rock a troublesome task.

Cut In Ship Pollution Sparked Global Heating Spurt

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The slashing of pollution from shipping in 2020 led to a big "termination shock" that is estimated have pushed the rate of global heating to double the long-term average, according to research. Until 2020, global shipping used dirty, high-sulphur fuels that produced air pollution. The pollution particles blocked sunlight and helped form more clouds, thereby curbing global heating. But new regulations at the start of 2020 slashed the sulphur content of fuels by more than 80%. The new analysis calculates that the subsequent drop in pollution particles has significantly increased the amount of heat being trapped at the Earth's surface that drives the climate crisis. The researchers said the sharp ending of decades of shipping pollution was an inadvertent geoengineering experiment, revealing new information about its effectiveness and risks. Dr Tianle Yuan, at the University of Maryland, US, who led the study, said the estimated 0.2 watts per sq meter of additional heat trapped over the oceans after the pollution cut was "a big number, and it happened in one year, so it's a big shock to the system." "We will experience about double the warming rate compared to the long-term average" since 1880 as a result, he said. The heating effect of the pollution cut is expected to last about seven years. The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, combined satellite observations of sulphur pollution and computer modeling to calculate the impact of the cut. It found the short-term shock was equivalent to 80% of the total extra heating the planet has seen since 2020 from longer-term factors such as rising fossil-fuel emissions.

Medium and mighty: Intermediate-mass black holes can survive in globular clusters

Joint research led by Michiko Fujii of the University of Tokyo demonstrated a possible formation mechanism of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters, star clusters that could contain tens of thousands or even millions of tightly packed stars. The first ever star-by-star massive cluster-formation simulations revealed that sufficiently dense molecular clouds, the "birthing nests" of star clusters, can give birth to very massive stars that evolve into intermediate-mass black holes. The findings were published in the journal Science. "Previous observations have suggested that some massive star clusters (globular clusters) host an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH)," Fujii explains the motivation for the research project. "An IMBH is a black hole with a mass of 100-10000 solar masses. So far, there has been no strong theoretical evidence to show the existence of IMBH with 1000-10,000 solar masses compared to less massive (stellar mass) and more massive (supermassive) ones."

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope finds most distant known galaxy

Over the last two years, scientists have used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (also called Webb or JWST) to explore what astronomers refer to as Cosmic Dawn -- the period in the first few hundred million years after the big bang where the first galaxies were born. These galaxies provide vital insight into the ways in which the gas, stars, and black holes were changing when the universe was very young. In October 2023 and January 2024, an international team of astronomers used Webb to observe galaxies as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program. Using Webb's NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), they obtained a spectrum of a record-breaking galaxy observed only two hundred and ninety million years after the big bang. This corresponds to a redshift of about 14, which is a measure of how much a galaxy's light is stretched by the expansion of the universe. Stefano Carniani from Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and Kevin Hainline from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona were invited to tell more about how this source was found and what its unique properties tell us about galaxy formation. x Astronomers help find most distant galaxy using James Webb Space Telescope @arxiv https://t.co/kuAl2is2cW — Phys.org (@physorg_com) May 30, 2024

Moon orbiting 'dinky' asteroid is actually two tiny moons stuck together

When NASA's Lucy spacecraft flew past its first official target Dinkinesh in November 2023, researchers discovered that the asteroid -- known as "Dinky" -- was not alone in space. A satellite asteroid, which the team named "Selam," was orbiting Dinky. As Lucy sent more data back to Earth, the researchers discovered something surprising: Selam was not just one moon, it was a contact binary -- or two moons melded together. The Lucy team, which includes University of Maryland Professor of Astronomy and Geology Jessica Sunshine, detailed the unexpected finding in a paper published in the journal Nature on May 29, 2024. The researchers noted that the unusual arrangement challenges existing theories about how asteroids and other celestial bodies formed over time and provides additional insight into the internal structure, dynamics and evolutionary history of both Dinky and Selam.

Scientists uncover a multibillion-year epic written into the chemistry of life

The origin of life on Earth has long been a mystery that has eluded scientists. A key question is how much of the history of life on Earth is lost to time. It is quite common for a single species to "phase out" using a biochemical reaction, and if this happens across enough species, such reactions could effectively be "forgotten" by life on Earth. But if the history of biochemistry is rife with forgotten reactions, would there be any way to tell? This question inspired researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) in the USA. They reasoned that forgotten chemistry would appear as discontinuities or "breaks" in the path that chemistry takes from simple geochemical molecules to complex biological molecules. The early Earth was rich in simple compounds such as hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and carbon dioxide -- molecules not usually associated with sustaining life. But, billions of years ago, early life relied on these simple molecules as a raw material source. As life evolved, biochemical processes gradually transformed these precursors into compounds still found today. These processes represent the earliest metabolic pathways.

Complete X and Y chromosome sequences of living great ape species determined

Newly generated, complete "end-to-end" reference genomes for the sex chromosomes of five great ape species and one lesser ape species -- produced by an international collaborative team led by researchers at Penn State, the National Human Genome Research Institute and the University of Washington -- highlight extremely rapid changes on the male-specific Y chromosome among ape species. These findings shed light on the evolution of sex chromosomes and inform understanding of diseases related to genes on these chromosomes in both apes and humans. "The Y chromosome is important for human fertility, and the X chromosome harbors genes critical for reproduction, cognition and immunity," said Kateryna Makova, Verne M. Willaman Chair of Life Sciences, professor of biology at Penn State and leader of the research team. "Our study opens doors for many future investigations of sex chromosomes, how they evolved, and diseases associated with them. The living non-human great ape species we studied are all endangered. The availability of their complete sex chromosome sequences will facilitate studies of their sex-specific dispersal in the wild and of their genes important for reproduction and fertility."

Orchids support seedlings through 'parental nurture' via shared underground fungal networks

The Common Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) is found all over the UK. These orchids produce tiny seeds that can be carried anywhere by the wind, yet they often appear in clumps with small seedlings growing near mature plants. This phenomenon has puzzled ecologists since Darwin's time, with the exact reason remaining a mystery. A new study, led by researchers from the University of Sheffield in collaboration with The University of Manchester, provides the first evidence that early stage orchid seedlings germinate and thrive near to adult plants due to a kind of parental nurture using underground fungal networks. Scientists investigated the idea that fungal networks, known as mycorrhizal networks, act as a direct pathway for established orchid plants to share recently produced sugars with developing seedlings.

People are altering decomposition rates in waterways

Humans may be accelerating the rate at which organic matter decomposes in rivers and streams on a global scale, according to a new study from the University of Georgia, Oakland University and Kent State University. That could pose a threat to biodiversity in waterways around the world and increase the amount of carbon in Earth's atmosphere, potentially exacerbating climate change. Published in Science, the study is the first to combine a global experiment and predictive modeling to illustrate how human impacts to waterways may contribute to the global climate crisis. "Everyone in the world needs water," said Krista Capps, co-author of the study and an associate professor in UGA's Odum School of Ecology and Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. "When human activities change the fundamental ways rivers work, it's concerning. Increases in decomposition rates may be problematic for the global carbon cycle and for animals, like insects and fish, that live in streams because the food resources they need to survive will disappear more quickly, lost to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide." x Study suggests faster decomposition rates in waterways could exacerbate #greenhouseGasEmissions, threaten biodiversity @universityofga @sciencemagazine https://t.co/XDx2h2Siqj — Phys.org (@physorg_com) May 31, 2024

How does 'not' affect what we understand? Scientists find negation mitigates our interpretation of phrases

When we're told "This coffee is hot" upon being served a familiar caffeinated beverage at our local diner or cafe, the message is clear. But what about when we're told "This coffee is not hot"? Does that mean we think it's cold? Or room temperature? Or just warm? A team of scientists has now identified how our brains work to process phrases that include negation (i.e., "not"), revealing that it mitigates rather than inverts meaning -- in other words, in our minds, negation merely reduces the temperature of our coffee and does not make it "cold." "We now have a firmer sense of how negation operates as we try to make sense of the phrases we process," explains Arianna Zuanazzi, a postdoctoral fellow in New York University's Department of Psychology at the time of the study and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the journal PLOS Biology. "In identifying that negation serves as a mitigator of adjectives -- 'bad' or 'good,' 'sad' or 'happy,' and 'cold' or 'hot' -- we also have a better understanding of how the brain functions to interpret subtle changes in meaning."

Scientists develop visual tool to help people group foods based on their levels of processing

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC scientists studying ultra-processed foods have created a new tool for assessing the rewarding and reinforcing properties of foods that make up 58 percent of calories consumed in the United States. The foods have been linked to a wide range of negative health outcomes. The research, which was published in April in the journal Appetite, provides a collection of carefully curated images of minimally processed and ultra-processed foods matched on 26 characteristics, including macronutrients, sodium, dietary fiber, calories, price, and visual characteristics such as a color and portion size. The work was based on the NOVA classification system -- "nova" means new in Portuguese -- which groups foods into four categories based on their level of processing. Nutrition researchers at the University of São Paulo in Brazil developed the scale while studying the country's sharp increase in obesity rates. The scale has its detractors. "A major criticism of the NOVA scale is that it's difficult to use or that foods are classified differently by different people," said Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, corresponding author and assistant professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. "We found that people with education in nutrition generally agreed on the food classifications, providing some data that it might not be a valid criticism."

Historic iceberg surges offer insights on modern climate change

A great armada entered the North Atlantic, launched from the cold shores of North America. But rather than ships off to war, this force was a fleet of icebergs. And the havoc it wrought was to the ocean current itself. This scene describes a Heinrich Event, or a period of rapid iceberg discharge from the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the last glacial maximum. These episodes greatly weakened the system of ocean currents that circulates water within the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC for short, brings warm surface water north and cold deep water south. This oceanic conveyor belt is a major component of the global climate system, influencing marine ecosystems, weather patterns and temperatures. It's also regarded as a potential tipping element of the Earth's climate, meaning that a tiny perturbation could push the system to a point of no return. "That's why a lot of people are worried about a potential collapse of the AMOC," said Yuxin Zhou, a postdoctoral researcher in UC Santa Barbara's Department of Earth Science. A weakened AMOC would have a global impact, dropping temperatures in the northern hemisphere and raising them in the south. We'd see dramatic cooling in western Europe and eastern North America, and changes in the tropical rain belt that impact the Amazon and central Africa. x Historic #iceberg surges offer insights on modern climate change @sciencemagazine https://t.co/DAYZD0o3L4 — Phys.org (@physorg_com) May 30, 2024

Marine Protected Areas don't line up with core habitats of rare migratory fish, finds new research

62% of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) designated to protect rare migratory fish species are outside of their core habitats, according to a new modelling study. The findings are published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology. A team of researchers in France from the "Pole MIAME" that gathers diadromous fish experts from multiple research institutions (OFB, INRAE, Institut Agro and UPPA) have developed a new modelling approach that accurately predicts core and unsuitable habitats of rare and data-poor diadromous fish (fish which migrate between marine and freshwater), such as threatened shads and the IUCN red-listed 'critically endangered' European eel.

Abandoned farmlands could play a role in fighting climate change: A new study shows exactly where they are

Farmland is often a battleground in the fight against climate change. Solar panels and energy crops are pitted against food production, while well-intended policy choices can create incentives for farmers to till up new lands, releasing even more heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere. That's why strategies for sustainable plant-based fuels focus on marginal lands -- fields that are too hard to cultivate or don't produce good enough yields to be considered profitable. A new tool developed by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison could help relieve that tension. Led by Yanhua Xie and Tyler Lark, researchers with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, the team used machine learning to map nearly 30 million acres of United States cropland abandoned since the 1980s, creating a tool that could guide decisions about how to balance production of energy and food. x Abandoned farmlands could play a role in fighting climate change. A study shows exactly where they are @UWMadison @IOPenvironment https://t.co/A515ukkz0H — Phys.org (@physorg_com) May 29, 2024

Scientists discover a novel modulator of human regulatory T cells

The research group of Professor Riitta Lahesmaa have discovered a novel modulator for human regulatory T cells. This novel regulator can strengthen or dampen immune response and provides a new basis for therapeutic approaches for immune mediated diseases. The Lahesmaa group is based at Turku Bioscience Centre of the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University in Finland and is part of the InFLAMES Research Flagship. The T cells in our blood fight against cancer, viruses and bacteria. Specific regulatory T cells are required to control faulty immune responses, and disruption in their function may lead to autoimmune diseases or cancer.

Intervention reduces stress and feelings of burden of family caregivers of older adults with dementia

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 80% of those living with dementia receive informal care from family members or friends. This equates to 16 million family caregivers in the U.S. However, caring for family members with dementia is often associated with increased caregiver burden (which includes emotional, physical, and financial strain), stress, and worse physical health for the caregiver. A recent study published in the Journal of Applied Gerontology, led by George Mason University researchers, found that a 9-week online stress management intervention program for family caregivers reduced burden scores by 15% for 97 family caregivers of older adults living with dementia. The Stress-Busting Program for Family Caregivers TM, intervention was specifically designed to help family caregivers with managing their own stress when caring for older adults living with dementia or a chronic illness.

Intermittent fasting shows promise in improving gut health, weight management

Participants following an intermittent fasting and protein-pacing regimen, which involves evenly spaced protein intake throughout the day, saw better gut health, weight loss and metabolic responses. These benefits were notably greater than those seen with simple calorie restriction. The findings could advance our understanding of the relationship between the gut microbiome and metabolism and improve strategies for managing obesity.

Picture this: Snapping photos of our food could be good for us

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