The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series chronicling the eschaton and the collapse of the Republic.
255,167 PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CORONAVIRUS IN THE U.S.
Gizmodo
One of the most awful elements of the devastating August 4 explosion in Beirut, which killed over 200 people and injured more than 6,500, was that it could have easily been prevented. Using videos of the event that were shared on social media, forensics researchers have been able to reconstruct exactly what happened, including the shocking negligence that led to the tragedy. […]
Minutes after the August 4 explosion occurred, those who were recording the initial warehouse fire and captured the subsequent explosion on their smartphones started to share their videos on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. It didn’t take long for people all over the world to witness what had happened, and those videos eventually became a crucial tool for experts at a University of London research group, Forensic Architecture, to reconstruct what caused the tremendous blast that had the same yield as almost 1.5 kilotons of TNT.
Science Daily
Water may be naturally occurring on all rocky planets
The emergence of life is a mystery. Nevertheless, researchers agree that water is a precondition for life. The first cell emerged in water and then evolved to form multicellular organism. The oldest known single-cell organism on Earth is about 3.5 billion years old. So far, so good. But if life emerged in water, where did the water come from?
"There are two hypotheses about the emergence of water. One is that it arrives on planets by accident, when asteroids containing water collide with the planet in question," says Professor Martin Bizzarro from the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen.
Together with Assistant Professor Zhengbin Deng he has headed a new study that turns the theory about the emergence of water upside down.
Nature
Legendary Arecibo telescope will close forever — scientists are reeling
One of astronomy’s most renowned telescopes — the 305-metre-wide radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico — is closing permanently. Engineers cannot find a safe way to repair it after two cables supporting the structure broke suddenly and catastrophically, one in August and one in early November.
It is the end of one of the most iconic and scientifically productive telescopes in the history of astronomy — and scientists are mourning its loss.
“I don’t know what to say,” says Robert Kerr, a former director of the observatory. “It’s just unbelievable.”
Mongabay
‘CSI Amazon’: Epic study looks at what’s killing the rainforest’s trees
As more trees die in the Amazon Basin, the forest’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide weakens. But to understand why trees are dying at a faster rate, researchers first need to know why trees die at all, something that has been largely unknown on a large scale, until now.
A newly published study in the journal Nature Communications provides insight into the patterns driving tree death in the Amazon and may help scientists explain why and how the forest is changing.
According to the study, the main risk factor explaining tree death is the mean growth rate of species. Faster-growing tree species tend to have shorter life spans, and thus record more deaths over a given period.
As climate change progresses, these fast-growing species are faring better. But species that grow faster also die younger, meaning they absorb less carbon than slow-growing, long-lived species. This could spell trouble for the climate, as the Amazon accounts for 12% of the world’s land-based carbon sink.
Reuters
Pompeii's ruins yield scalded bodies of rich man and slave
Archaeologists have discovered the exceptionally well-preserved remains of two men scalded to death by the volcanic eruption that destroyed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in 79 AD, the Italian culture ministry said on Saturday.
One was probably a man of high status, aged between 30 and 40, who still bore traces of a woollen cloak under his neck. The second, probably aged 18 to 23, was dressed in a tunic and had a number of crushed vertebrae, indicating that he had been a slave who did heavy labour.
The remains were found in Civita Giuliana, 700 metres northwest of the centre of ancient Pompeii, in an underground chamber in the area of a large villa being excavated.
Phys.org
A team of researchers from the University of South Florida, the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Notre Dame has found evidence suggesting that as the planet heats up due to global warming, cooler climates are likely to see increase in infectious diseases. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of data for wildlife populations around the world as they experienced unusually warm or cool periods.
As the planet continues to warm due to human-produced greenhouse gas emissions, scientists attempt to predict what sorts of impacts warmer temperatures might bring. In this new effort, the researchers chose to investigate how the "thermal mismatch" hypothesis might play out. The theory suggests that as species acclimated to cooler climates face warming temperatures, their risk of infectious diseases increases; similarly, as species acclimated to warmer temperatures face cooler conditions, their risk of disease also rises.
Science
To explain away dark matter, gravity would have to be really weird, cosmologists say
Dark matter, the invisible stuff whose gravity is thought to hold galaxies together, may be the least satisfying concept in physics. But if you want to get rid of it, a new study finds, you’ll need to replace it with something even more bizarre: a force of gravity that, at some distances, pulls massive objects together and, at other distances, pushes them apart. The analysis underscores how hard it is to explain away dark matter.
Concocting such a theory of gravity “is so complicated that it seems very unlikely that anyone could come up with a scenario that would work,” says Scott Dodelson, a theoretical physicist at Carnegie Mellon University, who wasn’t involved in the new work. Still, some theorists say it may be possible to pass the test.
According to cosmologists’ prevailing theory, dark matter pervades pretty much every galaxy, providing the extra gravity that keeps stars from swirling out into space, given the speeds at which astronomers see the galaxies rotating. A vast web of clumps and strands of the stuff served as the scaffolding on which the cosmos developed. Yet, after of decades of trying, physicists haven’t spotted particles of dark matter floating around, and many would happily dismiss the idea—if it didn’t work so well.
The Guardian
Covid vaccine technology pioneer: 'I never doubted it would work'
The Hungarian-born biochemist who helped pioneer the research behind the mRNA technology used in the two Covid-19 vaccines showing positive results believes it was always a no-brainer.
“I never doubted it would work,” Katalin Karikó told the Guardian. “I had seen the data from animal studies, and I was expecting it. I always wished that I would live long enough to see something that I’ve worked on be approved.”
This month has been the pinnacle of Karikó’s lifelong work researching mRNA, or messenger ribonucleic acid.
The 65-year-old, who left Hungary in 1985 to pursue an academic career in the US with her husband, toddler and just £900 hidden in a teddy bear, has now been suggested as a possible Nobel prize winner.
The Atlantic
Hospitals Can’t Go On Like This
The reports have come in from all across the country: Hospitals are filling up, especially in the Midwest, and they are running out of the staff they need to take care of patients.
Last week, the United States broke its record from April for the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, blowing past 60,000 all the way to 73,000, according to data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.
Now new data released by the Department of Health and Human Services quantify the crisis in America’s hospitals in closer detail. At The Atlantic’s request, HHS provided data on the number of hospitals experiencing staffing shortages. From November 4 to November 11, 958 hospitals—19 percent of American hospitals—faced a staffing shortage. This week, 1,109 hospitals reported that they expect to face a staffing shortage. That’s 22 percent of all American hospitals.
In eight states, the situation is even more dire. More than 35 percent of hospitals in Arkansas, Missouri, North Dakota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin are anticipating a staffing shortage this week. COVID-19 puts pressure on hospitals in two ways. One, staff members get sick or are exposed to the coronavirus and have to stay home, reducing the labor supply. Two, more patients arrive at the hospital, increasing demand. A surge of cases makes both factors worse.
Deutsche Welle
Coronavirus: Can we trust recent COVID vaccine successes?
AstraZeneca, BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna have recently published promising trial results. With some vaccines likely to soon be approved, the EU has reserved a large supply. But some questions are yet to be answered.
Finally, some good news — soon, frontrunning vaccine developers could submit applications for fast-tracked authorizations of their coronavirus vaccines. Three companies have reported early Phase III successes in the last several days.
The latest team to release positive interim results is Swedish-British company AstraZeneca, developers of a viral vector vaccine, who published their final report on the combined Phase II/ Phase III study on November 18 in The Lancet.
NPR News
Deep Sleep Protects Against Alzheimer's, Growing Evidence Shows
During deep sleep, the brain appears to wash away waste products that increase the risk for Alzheimer's disease.
A host of new research studies suggest that this stage of sleep — when dreams are rare and the brain follows a slow, steady beat – can help reduce levels of beta-amyloid and tau, two hallmarks of the disease.
"There is something about this deep sleep that is helping protect you," says Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
The New York Times
Designed to Deceive: Do These People Look Real to You?
There are now businesses that sell fake people. On the website Generated.Photos, you can buy a “unique, worry-free” fake person for $2.99, or 1,000 people for $1,000. If you just need a couple of fake people — for characters in a video game, or to make your company website appear more diverse — you can get their photos for free on ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com. Adjust their likeness as needed; make them old or young or the ethnicity of your choosing. If you want your fake person animated, a company called Rosebud.AI can do that and can even make them talk.
These simulated people are starting to show up around the internet, used as masks by real people with nefarious intent: spies who don an attractive face in an effort to infiltrate the intelligence community; right-wing propagandists who hide behind fake profiles, photo and all; online harassers who troll their targets with a friendly visage.
Scientific American
Clues to Puebloan History Drip Away in Melting Ice Caves
Researchers have discovered charcoal dating back almost 2,000 years in New Mexican ice caves—providing physical evidence that ancestral Puebloans used the ice deposits for drinking water during droughts.
Scientists are working fast to sample cores from the deposits, which likely formed thousands of years ago. Rising global temperatures have made it warm enough that the ice is beginning to disappear from the sites at El Malpais National Monument.
“Our wish is to try and find as much climate information as possible, because this ice is going away,” said Bogdan Onac, the lead researcher on the study.
Vox
Natural disasters are increasing. The world’s poorest are left to fend for themselves.
More than 100 disasters — many of which were climate- and weather-related — have affected more than 50 million people around the world since March, when the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. And though the money needed to protect against these disasters in the countries at risk exists, it’s not getting to those who need it most.
Those are the key findings of a new report from the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) released Tuesday. In it, the authors make clear that while global attention has been focused on the coronavirus pandemic — for good reason — the climate crisis and the resulting disasters facing communities around the world are just as catastrophic.
“It’s a very, very serious crisis the world is facing currently,” IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain said of the Covid-19 pandemic, speaking at a virtual news conference on November 17. But he noted that while there is some good news regarding the possibility of a vaccine for Covid-19, “unfortunately, there is no vaccine for climate change.”
Ars Technica
College undergrads find hidden text on medieval manuscript via UV imaging
A page from a 15th-century medieval manuscript turns out to contain hidden text that is only visible under UV light. The discovery is due to the efforts of a team of undergraduate students at Rochester Institute of Technology, who built their own multispectral imaging system as part of a class project and managed to complete it despite the ongoing pandemic.
It's not unprecedented to uncover previously hidden texts on ancient manuscripts. In 2016, an international team of scientists developed a method for "virtually unrolling" a badly damaged ancient scroll found on the western shore of the Dead Sea, revealing the first few verses from the Book of Leviticus. Similarly, in 2019, we reported that German scientists used a combination of cutting-edge physics techniques to virtually "unfold" an ancient Egyptian papyrus, part of an extensive collection housed in the Berlin Egyptian Museum. Their analysis revealed that a seemingly blank patch on the papyrus actually contained characters written in what had become "invisible ink" after centuries of exposure to light.
The Washington Post
Ellen Kalish is used to getting calls about taking in undomesticated animals at her nonprofit group, the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center in Saugerties, N.Y. So when a woman called on Monday asking if she could rehabilitate an owl, she was happy to help. Then, the caller told her where exactly this tiny owl was hiding out.
“She said, ‘At the Christmas tree in the Rockefeller Center,’ ” Kalish, the founder and director of the center, told The Washington Post. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I’ve never heard a story like that.”
The tale of the rescued owl — who has, naturally, since been dubbed “Rockefeller” — quickly became the silver lining of the rocky debut for this year’s version of the iconic Christmas tree. The 75-foot-tall Norway spruce from Oneonta, N.Y., emerged on Saturday looking worse for wear, with some calling its bedraggled branches and thin needles as a “metaphor for 2020.”