The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series dedicated to chronicling the eschaton and the decline of the Republic. Please add news, signs of life or hope, or other items in the comments.
Inside ScienceLizards Prefer to Poop on the Largest Rock They Can Find
Simon Baeckens knows when he's in a good spot for catching lizards. It's when he sees the largest, most prominent rocks are crowned in poop.
"It's not like I'm a poop researcher or anything," he clarified. Baeckens, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, studies the pheromones and physical traits of lizards in the family Lacertidae, also known as wall lizards, which are native to Europe, Africa and Asia. But after years of collecting lizards from the wild, it was clear to him that his research subjects did not choose their toilets randomly.
Previous studies have indicated that wall lizards use their feces to communicate. Males will avoid areas where another male has defecated, suggesting that lizard droppings may function as a "keep out" sign. Wall lizards can also glean information from the scent of other lizards' feces.
How the Last Dragons Survived Extinction
Extinction wiped out their closest family members as well as most of the ancient reptiles of comparable size. But the largest lizards still on the planet, the Komodo dragon, survived due to a lucky combination of mediocre habitat on their home islands and unintended human interventions.
“You would have thought the Komodo would have been wiped out, and yet it survived,” said Rick Shine, a biologist at Macquarie University in Sydney and one of the authors of a new report on the reptiles published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation. […]
“It’s just a devastatingly efficient predator,” Shine said.
Science DailyIs it autism? The line is getting increasingly blurry
Around the world, the number of people diagnosed with autism is rising. In the United States, the prevalence of the disorder has grown from 0.05% in 1966 to more than 2% today. In Quebec, the reported prevalence is close to 2% and according to a paper issued by the province's public health department, the prevalence in Montérégie has increased by 24% annually since 2000.
However, Dr. Laurent Mottron, a professor at Université de Montréal's Department of Psychiatry and a psychiatrist at the Hôpital en santé mentale de Rivière-des-Prairies of the CIUSSS du Nord-de-l'Île-de-Montréal, has serious reservations about this data.
After studying meta-analyses of autism data, his research team found that the difference between people diagnosed with autism and the rest of the population is actually shrinking.
Biochar: A better start to rain forest restoration
An indigenous farming technique that's been around for thousands of years provides the basis for restoring rain forests stripped clear of trees by gold mining and other threats.
A carbon-based soil amendment called biochar is a cheap and effective way to support tree seedling survival during reforestation efforts in the Amazon rain forest, according to new research from Wake Forest University's Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (CINCIA). […]
The scientists found that using biochar combined with fertilizer significantly improved height and diameter growth of tree seedlings while also increasing the number of leaves the seedlings developed. The experiment, based in a Peruvian Amazon region called Madre de Dios, the heart of illegal gold mining trade in that country, used two tropical tree species: the fast-growing Guazuma crinita and Terminalia amazonia, a late successional tree often used as timber.
Hurricanes drive the evolution of more aggressive spiders
Researchers at McMaster University who rush in after storms to study the behaviour of spiders have found that extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones may have an evolutionary impact on populations living in storm-prone regions, where aggressive spiders have the best odds of survival.
Raging winds can demolish trees, defoliate entire canopies and scatter debris across forest floors, radically altering the habitats and reshaping the selective pressures on many organisms, suggests a new study published today in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
"It is tremendously important to understand the environmental impacts of these 'black swan' weather events on evolution and natural selection," says lead author Jonathan Pruitt, an evolutionary biologist and Canada 150 Chair in McMaster's Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour.
Phys.orgOxygen depletion in ancient oceans caused major mass extinction
Late in the prehistoric Silurian Period, around 420 million years ago, a devastating mass extinction event wiped 23 percent of all marine animals from the face of the planet.
For years, scientists struggled to connect a mechanism to this mass extinction, one of the 10 most dramatic ever recorded in Earth's history. Now, researchers from Florida State University have confirmed that this event, referred to by scientists as the Lau/Kozlowskii extinction, was triggered by an all-too-familiar culprit: rapid and widespread depletion of oxygen in the global oceans.
Their study, published today in the journal Geology, resolves a longstanding paleoclimate mystery, and raises urgent concerns about the ruinous fate that could befall our modern oceans if well-established trends of deoxygenation persist and accelerate.
If you swirl a glass of wine clockwise, the wine inside will also rotate clockwise. But, if you're making a blueberry pancake and you swirl the pan clockwise, the pancake will rotate counterclockwise. Don't believe us? Go try it.
The same thing happens with a glass of beads. A few beads will rotate clockwise when the glass is swirled clockwise. However, a lot of beads in a glass when swirled clockwise will rotate counterclockwise.
"It's a really surprising behavior because, unlike wine and pancakes, these are the exact same objects, in the exact same situation," said Lisa Lee, a graduate student in Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).
Lee and the rest of the research team set about to understand physically why collections of particles behave like this. As it turns out, it's all about friction. The research was published in Physical Review E.
Tech XploreArtificial intelligence uncovers new details about Old Master paintings
Artificial intelligence has been used to analyse high-resolution digital X-ray images of the world famous Ghent Altarpiece, as part of an investigative project led by UCL.
The finding is expected to improve our understanding of art masterpieces and provide new opportunities for art investigation, conservation and presentation.
Researchers from the National Gallery, Duke University and UCL worked with technical images acquired from the brothers Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece, a large and complex 15th-century altarpiece in St Bavo's Cathedral, Belgium.
Fake news model in staged release but two researchers fire up replication
Not the most comforting news in the world of tech: The artificial intelligence lab (OpenAI) cofounded by Elon Musk said its software could too easily be adapted to crank out fake news. "Two grads re-created it anyway." That was Wired's coverage on August 26 of a story about two recent master's graduates in computer science having released what they said was "a re-creation of OpenAI's withheld software" for anyone to download and use.
Withheld? Why? It had been withheld over concerns about the societal impact. In February, OpenAI announced their model, GPT-2, and said it was trained to predict the next word in 40GB of Internet text.
They spelled out their release strategy: "Due to concerns about large language models being used to generate deceptive, biased, or abusive language at scale, we are only releasing a much smaller version of GPT-2 along with sampling code. We are not releasing the dataset, training code, or GPT-2 model weights." In May, said MIT Technology Review, "a few months after GPT-2's initial debut, OpenAI revised its stance on withholding the full code to what it calls a "staged release." Popular ScienceHumans started transforming Earth a lot earlier than we thought
Today, humans are changing the planet at an unprecedented rate. Despite the threat of climate change, we're increasing our fossil fuel emissions. We've also imperiled up to one million species and altered over 70 percent of the land's ice-free surface.
While the magnitude of global change today is unmatched in history, that doesn't mean that ancient societies didn't leave any impacts on the environment. In fact, humans have vastly altered the land they've inhabited for the last 3,000 years, a study published Thursday in Science suggests.
We don’t have an overabundance of archaeological data about how ancient humans lived and used their land. But the models we do have tend to underestimate the amount of land ancient civilizations used for foraging, agriculture, and grazing, the study reports. Those simulations used estimates of human populations in those times to predict land use. But, this “backcasting” is “essentially based on a lot of assumptions and a little bit of data,” says Erle Ellis, an environmental scientist at the University of Maryland and one of the study’s authors.
Amazing new photos of asteroid Ryugu present a new mystery: who cleaned up all the dust?
Last October, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft dropped a toaster-sized lander onto the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu. The Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) tumbled around a bit, but accomplished its objective with flying colors. It cruised the rocky landscape for 17 hours, measuring temperature and magnetism, and taking some flash-photography using LEDs. The robot was battery-powered, so after it had done its duty, the little guy powered down... forever.
But MASCOT didn't "die" for nothing, as exemplified by a report published last week in Science. New analyses of the lander's photos show that Ryugu's surface is composed of two kinds of rock: bright and smooth, and dark and rough. The two types are distributed pretty evenly, too. This backs the theory that Ryugu was born from a cataclysmic event of some sort—for example, an asteroid (perhaps made up of bright, smooth stone) could have smashed into another (potentially dark and rough) object, sending debris flying. Ryugu could have been born when gravity compacted that rubble.
ScienceGreat white sharks have suddenly disappeared from one of their favorite hangouts
Sightings of white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) have crashed this year in False Bay near Cape Town, South Africa—one of the best-known hot spots of the predators in the world—and scientists aren’t sure why. Orcas, which love to dine on shark liver, may have scared them off, researchers say, but human activities could also play a role.
Shark Spotters, a local charity that monitors the city’s beaches daily and warns swimmers if sharks are near, has not recorded a single confirmed white shark sighting this year—not even during the summer months, from January to April, when the fish usually come close to shore. […]
The absence is unprecedented in Shark Spotters’ 16-year history, says the charity’s research manager, Tamlyn Engelbrecht. Usually, there are more than 200 sightings each year; the number has never been zero.
‘A little bit of everything is burning.’: A NASA scientist dissects Amazon fires
A rash of fires in the Brazilian Amazon has caused diplomatic tensions between Brazil and several European countries and triggered protests from environmental groups around the world. Brazil’s government has pledged to stop the fires and sent in the military but denies its policies and rhetoric are responsible.
Science talked with remote sensing specialist Douglas Morton, one of the scientists who is closely watching the blazes. Morton heads the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which monitors land use and environmental changes through satellite data. Between January and late August, NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites have detected 100,000 “fire spots” in the Brazilian Amazon—the highest number in that period since 2010. The numbers are in line with those from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.
NatureAncient stone tools hint at settlers’ epic trek to North America
Projectile points and other stone tools recovered near a riverbank in Idaho suggest that ancient humans reached the western United States more than 16,000 years ago.
The finds make the site, called Cooper’s Ferry, one of the oldest-known human settlements in North America, if not the oldest, says Loren Davis, an archaeologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, who led the 10-year excavation that made the discoveries. His team’s results were published in Science…
Cooper’s Ferry joins a growing list of archaeological sites in North and South America that are overturning dogma about how and when the Americas were first settled. Overwhelming evidence now suggests that the region’s first inhabitants travelled from Asia along the Pacific Coast more than 16,000 years ago — and not via inland routes several thousand years later, say Davis and others.
Ocean drilling revolutionized Earth science — now geologists want to plumb new depths
This month, off the coast of Ecuador, scientists are hunting for hot, teeming masses of microbes living in two long, skinny holes drilled into the bottom of the ocean.
This cruise, aboard the legendary research ship JOIDES Resolution, is the latest in the five-decade history of scientific ocean drilling. The practice of boring holes in the sea floor has revolutionized earth science, helping researchers to confirm the theory of plate tectonics, discover microbes deep in the ocean crust and probe the hidden risks of earthquakes and tsunamis. But to keep the field alive for years to come, scientists must now convince international funding agencies that there are discoveries waiting to be made.
Mongabay‘We have cut them all’: Ghana struggles to protect its last old-growth forests
The West African country of Ghana is known for having rich natural resources including vast tracts of rainforest. But its primary forest has all but vanished, with what remains generally relegated to reserves scattered throughout the country’s southern third.
These reserves are under official protection. However, that hasn’t stopped logging and other illegal activities from deforesting them.
An analysis of satellite data published earlier this year by U.S.-based World Resource Institute (WRI), found Ghana experienced the biggest relative increase in primary forest loss of all tropical countries last year. According to the report, the loss of Ghana’s primary forest cover jumped 60 percent from 2017 to 2018 – almost entirely from its protected areas.
WRI found that while mining and logging were partly to blame for Ghana’s deforestation, the expansion of cocoa farms was the main culprit.
The GuardianThe greatest threat to life on Earth may come from space
Next year, Nasa will launch what all involved hope will be the most impactful space mission to date. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) is designed to smash headlong into its target. It’s an attempt to deflect an asteroid as a test of what to do if we spot a similar space rock on a collision course with our planet.
It’s hardly news we want to hear at a time of so many domestic problems, but the threat from near-Earth asteroids is just one of a string of dangers that the planet and its technology are facing from space. Explosions on the sun create “space weather” that can play havoc with our satellites and other electrical systems, while the growing amount of space debris imperils the satellites that we all invisibly rely on.
The truth is our way of life utterly relies on space. The UK government now classes space as one of the nation’s 13 critical infrastructure sectors. And it needs protecting.
Scientists discover way to ‘grow’ tooth enamel
Scientists say they have finally cracked the problem of repairing tooth enamel.
Though enamel is the hardest tissue in the body, it cannot self-repair. Now scientists have discovered a method by which its complex structure can be reproduced and the enamel essentially “grown” back.
The team behind the research say the materials are cheap and can be prepared on a large scale. “After intensive discussion with dentists, we believe that this new method can be widely used in future,” said Dr Zhaoming Liu, co-author of the research from Zhejiang University in China.
Plan clears way for mining and drilling on land stripped from Utah monument
A new US government plan had cleared the way for coal mining and oil and gas drilling on land stripped from Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante monument by the Trump administration two years ago.
The plan, released by the Bureau of Land Management on Friday, would also open more lands to cattle grazing and recreation and acknowledges there could be “adverse effects” on land and resources in the monument. […]
The allowance for coal, oil and gas extraction on the lands cut was expected as the Trump administration carried out a “reckless” plan to undo protections on pristine lands, said Heidi McIntosh, the managing attorney of Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountains office.
GizmodoStunning Video Reveals Conditions Inside Wreck of Doomed Franklin Expedition
The ill-fated Franklin Expedition to map the Northwest Passage resulted in the loss of two ships, one of which, the HMS Terror, was explored by researchers earlier this month. Unprecedented footage taken from inside the well-preserved wreck highlight various artifacts left behind by the sailors who ultimately perished.
The scene inside the HMS Terror is as eerie as it is fascinating.
Aside from some silt and an assortment of odd sea creatures, the conditions inside the wreck appear largely unperturbed—a glimpse into the final state of the ship as it was abandoned by its crew over 170 years ago.
x xYouTube VideoIncredible Fossil Discovery Finally Puts a Face on an Elusive Early Hominin
The discovery of a nearly intact skull in Ethiopia is the first to show the facial characteristics of a critically important species linked to early hominin evolution. At the same time, the 3.8-million-year-old fossil is further complicating our understanding of Australopithecus—the genus that likely gave rise to humans.
Before the rise of Homo there was Australopithecus, a genus that lived in Africa from between roughly 4 million and 2 million years ago. The first fossils of Australopithecus were discovered in South Africa 95 years ago, and the genus is now known to encompass at least five species: anamensis, afarensis (known by the famous Lucy fossil), africanus, sediba, and garhi. It’s highly likely that one of these species—we still don’t know which one—spawned the Homo genus to which we belong. Frustratingly, the fossil record of these early hominins is exceptionally sparse, leading to tons of ambiguity on the matter.
Europe Is Warming Even Faster Than Climate Models Predicted
Over the past seven decades, the number of extreme heat days in Europe has steadily increased, while the number of extreme cold days has decreased, according to new research. Alarmingly, this trend is happening at rates faster than those proposed by climate models.
For most Europeans, this new study will hardly come as a surprise. This summer, for example, temperatures in southern France reached a record 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 degrees Fahrenheit), with similar temperature extremes happening at other locations on the continent.
Indeed, Europe is getting progressively hotter, and the data bears this out. What’s disturbing, however, and as new research published today in Geophysical Research Letters points out, this warming trend is occurring faster than the projections churned out by most European climate models. And as the new paper also notes, the observed increases in temperatures “cannot be explained by internal variability.” In other words, this warming trend is the result of human-caused climate change.
Live ScienceA Nuclear Winter Could Last Years After an All-Out War Between Russia and the US
If Russia and the United States launched an all-out nuclear war, it would spell disaster for everyone on Earth, a new study suggests. Not only would explosions, fires and radiation exposure kill millions in targeted cities, but a "nuclear winter" lasting months to years would also drastically alter the Earth's climate, causing freezing summers and worldwide famine.
The Cold War may be over, but nuclear bombs are still uniquely destructive, and there's more than enough of them to cause climate catastrophe, said study co-author Alan Robock, an environmental scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. […]
"There really would be a nuclear winter with catastrophic consequences," Joshua Coupe, a doctoral student in atmospheric science at Rutgers University and lead author of the study, said in a statement.
At Least 227 Slaughtered Children Found at World's Largest Child Sacrifice Site in Peru
In the coastal desert north of Lima, Peru, archaeologists have uncovered the skeletal remains of 227 children seemingly slain and buried hundreds of years ago in a massive ritual sacrifice. According to researchers who have been excavating the site for more than a year, this find represents the single largest child burial site on Earth, and the bodies discovered so far may just be the tip of the proverbial blade.
"Wherever you dig, there's another one," the site’s chief archeologist Feren Castillo told news site AFP on Wednesday (Aug. 28).
The children's bodies, likely buried from 600 to 800 years ago, were found facing the sea in the modern-day town of Huanchaco, Peru, which was once a port favored by the pre-Colombian Chimú culture — a society that arose around the year 900 and resided along the northern coast of Peru until they were conquered by the Inca Empire around 1475.
Science NewsFly fossils might challenge the idea of ancient trilobites’ crystal eyes
Fossil crane flies found in Denmark have crystals in their eyes — individual, see-through mineral pieces where the living eyes’ lenses once were.
Those little crystals of calcium carbonate are renewing a fuss about more mysterious ancient animals, the trilobites. Fossils of those extinct, shield-shaped invertebrates also have crystalized mineral lenses in their eyes. There are no living trilobites, but since at least the 1970s, scientists have been imagining how crystal lenses might have worked for the creatures when they were alive (SN: 2/2/74). Now the crane fly researchers argue that crystal lenses, in crane flies as well as in trilobites, are just quirks of fossilization.
A chip made with carbon nanotubes, not silicon, marks a computing milestone
“Silicon Valley” may soon be a misnomer.
Inside a new microprocessor, the transistors — tiny electronic switches that collectively perform computations — are made with carbon nanotubes, rather than silicon. By devising techniques to overcome the nanoscale defects that often undermine individual nanotube transistors…, researchers have created the first computer chip that uses thousands of these switches to run programs.
The prototype, described in the Aug. 29 Nature, is not yet as speedy or as small as commercial silicon devices. But carbon nanotube computer chips may ultimately give rise to a new generation of faster, more energy-efficient electronics.
Scientific AmericanRobert Mueller Wanted the Facts to Speak for Themselves—Bad Move
Robert Mueller has shown a steadfast determination to remain as apolitical as possible in releasing his report and in his congressional testimony. Which is a tall order, given his task to investigate the president of the U.S. in a hyperpartisan political climate. It is easy to understand why he would not want to get dragged into the political food fight that is the unfortunate norm in Washington today. He has risked providing clarity on what the report really means, however.
In his hearing, his succinct answers provided little more understanding than the misinformation about the report believed by the American people. We’ve seen a similar reluctance on the part of scientists, who often say they don’t want to be perceived as political—or even worse, partisan. They’re afraid that such an image could undermine their credibility in presenting the data they spend their careers investigating. The reality is that their research is often funded by taxpayers—and taxpayers and lawmakers do, in fact, want a big-picture conclusion.
At 314 Action, our aim is to push scientists to get involved beyond an advisory role—to not just put the evidence out there and think it can speak for itself but rather communicate directly with the public and present the possible next steps. It is in this same regard that Mueller failed.
Researchers have gained control of the elusive “particle” of sound, the phonon. Although phonons—the smallest units of the vibrational energy that makes up sound waves—are not matter, they can be considered particles the way photons are particles of light. Photons commonly store information in prototype quantum computers, which aim to harness quantum effects to achieve unprecedented processing power. Using sound instead may have advantages, although it would require manipulating phonons on very fine scales.
Until recently, scientists lacked this ability; just detecting an individual phonon destroyed it. Early methods involved converting phonons to electricity in quantum circuits called superconducting qubits. These circuits accept energy in specific amounts; if a phonon’s energy matches, the circuit can absorb it—destroying the phonon but giving an energy reading of its presence.
In a new study, scientists at JILA (a collaboration between the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado Boulder) tuned the energy units of their superconducting qubit so phonons would not be destroyed. Instead the phonons sped up the current in the circuit, thanks to a special material that created an electric field in response to vibrations. Experimenters could then detect how much change in current each phonon caused.
Sci-NewsImpulsiveness in Adolescence is Not Uniquely Human
“As is widely known, adolescence is a time of heightened impulsivity and sensation seeking, leading to questionable choices,” said University of Pittsburgh’s Professor Beatriz Luna, corresponding author of a review paper published in the journal Trends in Neurosciences.
“However, this behavioral tendency is based on an adaptive neurobiological process that is crucial for molding the brain based on gaining new experiences.”
Structural, functional, and neurophysiological comparisons between us and macaque monkeys show that this difficulty in stopping reactive responses is similar in our primate counterparts, who during puberty also show limitations in tests where they have to stop a reactive response.
Study Provides New Insights into Honeybee ‘Waggle Dance’ Communication
Honeybees (Apis mellifera) are social insects. As they mature, adult honeybees engage in four primary social roles — cleaners, nursers, food storers and foragers — and perform different tasks in different roles.
Successful foragers inform their nestmates of the location of nectar or water sources by doing a waggle dance. The dance encodes both the direction of and distance to the sources from the hive.
“Forager honeybees share information about the location and value of food sources by moving their body from side to side and beating their wings,” said lead author Dr. Ajayrama Kumaraswamy of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and colleagues.
BBC NewsGreat Barrier Reef outlook very poor, Australia says
The Great Barrier Reef's outlook has been officially downgraded from poor to very poor due to climate change.
Rising sea temperatures thanks to human-driven global warming remain the biggest threat to the reef, a five-year Australian government report says.
Actions to save it "have never been more time critical", the report reads.
Greta Thunberg: Why are young climate activists facing so much hate?
From the first protest by a single student, the school climate strike movement has been a lightning rod for criticism.
Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who inspired the now-global movement, has become a primary target. On Wednesday, the 16-year-old arrived in New York after completing her voyage across the Atlantic aboard an environmentally friendly yacht.
Ms Thunberg is not the only eco-activist under fire, though. Four young climate campaigners told the BBC of the abuse they have been subjected to…
These environmentalists have asked difficult questions of politicians, and been ruthlessly derided for doing so. With hostility heightening, why are young climate activists facing so much hate?
The AtlanticWhy Soviets Sent Dogs to Space While Americans Used Primates
[…] Human beings had lived for all of history beneath the cosmic tarp we call an atmosphere, safe from the universe. No one knew how our bodies would react to weightlessness. Some physicians thought basic functions, like swallowing and pumping blood to the heart, would be impossible without the steady tug of gravity.
“We take for granted now that animals and humans can function in space, but back then we knew absolutely nothing,” says Bill Britz, an American veterinarian who worked with the chimpanzees who flew to space in the early 1960s.
The goal for the Cold War rivals was the same: to prove that animals could survive in orbit so that people could, too. But why did the Soviets use dogs, while the Americans used primates?
Rumors Are Swirling Around a Black-Hole Discovery
Black-hole physicists have been excitedly discussing reports that the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors recently picked up the signal of an unexpectedly enormous black hole, one with a mass that was thought to be physically impossible.
“The prediction is no black holes, not even a few” in this mass range, wrote Stan Woosley, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, in an email. “But of course we know nature often finds a way.”
Ars TechnicaCeramics enter a new era with laser-welded joints
What makes a good construction material? There are many requirements, but one is the ability to efficiently connect different parts. Steel is almost the perfect example: you can join steel with fasteners (like nuts and bolts), by brazing, or by welding. The last of these is especially important. If we couldn’t weld metals, life would be quite different.
You don't see this with ceramics. Ceramic parts are the hard-wearing miracle of modern life, but unlike steel and aluminum, you won’t find ceramics everywhere. This is because ceramics, though very useful, are difficult to work with. Joining two ceramics, or even connecting a ceramic to a metal, is a difficult and energy-consuming process because ceramics cannot be welded. That has changed, thanks to a team of researchers that is developing a ceramic welding laser.