Here are some of this week’s top science stories:
- Rain fell on the peak of greenland’s ice sheet for the first time in recorded history.
- Two new species of sauropod dinosaurs discovered in China.
- Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier” is being melted by heat from Earth’s interior.
- Bat pups babble and their mothers use baby talk.
- Rising ocean levels are killing trees along the North Carolina coast, creating ghost forests.
- Sweden's tallest mountain is shrinking from climate change.
- Geologists explore the mysterious and missing gap of millions of years time in the Grand Canyon’s strata.
- Evolution deniers are finally a minority in the United States.
- Scientists develop the first carbon-free steel.
- Deforestation in Brazilian Amazon hits highest annual level in a decade.
Details and links to sources below the fold.
This is an open thread. Everyone is encouraged to share articles, stories, and tweets in your comments.
627,073 PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CORONAVIRUS IN THE U.S. 200.9 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE U.S. HAVE RECEIVED A VACCINATION DOSE
Mother Jones
Scientists Blindsided by Rain at the Summit of Greenland’s Ice Cap
Rain has fallen on the summit of Greenland’s huge ice cap for the first time on record. Temperatures are normally well below freezing on the 10,551 ft peak, and the precipitation is a stark sign of the climate crisis.
Scientists at the US National Science Foundation’s summit station saw rain falling throughout 14 August but had no gauges to measure the fall because the precipitation was so unexpected. Across Greenland, an estimated seven billion tons of water was released from the clouds.
The rain fell during an exceptionally hot three days in Greenland when temperatures were 18 C higher than average in places. As a result, melting was seen in most of Greenland, across an area about four times the size of the UK.
NPR News
Rain Fell On The Peak Of Greenland's Ice Sheet For The First Time In Recorded History
Greenland saw rain at the highest point of its ice sheet for the first time since scientists have been making observations there, the latest signal of how climate change is affecting every part of the planet.
According to the U.S. National Snow & Ice Data Center, rain fell for several hours on an area 10,551 feet in elevation on Aug. 14, an unprecedented occurrence for a location that rarely sees temperatures above freezing.
It was also the latest date in the year scientists had ever recorded above-freezing temperatures at the National Science Foundation's Summit Station.
The rainfall coincided with the ice sheet's most recent "melt event," in which temperatures get high enough that the thick ice begins to melt.
Scientists Discover Not 1, But 2 New Dinosaur Species In China
Scientists in China discovered two new dinosaur species when analyzing fossils from the country's northwest regions. Their findings, published in a study in Scientific Reports, conclude that two of the specimens were from previously unknown species.
The dinosaurs are some of the first vertebrates to be reported in the region, "increasing the diversity of the fauna as well as the information on Chinese sauropods," according to the study.
Scientists estimate the species lived around 120 to 130 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous period. Both were sauropods, a category of plant-eating dinos with long necks that includes brachiosaurus.
Scientists named the species ] sinensis (or "silu" which is Mandarin for "Silk Road") and Hamititan xinjiangensis (named for where the fossil specimen was found in Xinjiang).
Live Science
Rare embryo from dinosaur age was laid by human-size turtle
…About 90 million years ago, a giant turtle in what is now central China laid a clutch of tennis ball-size eggs with extremely thick eggshells. One egg never hatched, and it remained undisturbed for tens of millions of years, preserving the delicate bones of the embryonic turtle within it.
In 2018, a farmer discovered the egg and donated it to a university. Now, a new analysis of this egg and its rare embryo marks the first time that scientists have been able to identify the species of a dinosaur-age embryonic turtle.
This specimen also sheds light on why its species, the terrestrial turtle Yuchelys nanyangensis, went extinct 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period, when the dinosaur-killing asteroid struck Earth. The thick eggshell allowed water to penetrate through, so clutches of eggs were likely buried in nests deep underground in moist soil to keep them from drying out in the arid environment of central China during the late Cretaceous, the researchers said.
West Antarctica is one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth. For evidence, you need look no further than Thwaites Glacier — also known as the "Doomsday Glacier."
Since the 1980s, Thwaites has lost an estimated 595 billion tons (540 billion metric tons) of ice, single-handedly contributing 4% to the annual global sea-level rise during that time…
Now, new research suggests that the warming ocean and atmosphere aren't the only factors pushing Thwaites to the brink; the heat of the Earth itself may also be giving West Antarctica's glaciers a disproportionately nasty kick.
In a study published Aug. 18 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, researchers analyzed geomagnetic field data from West Antarctica to create new maps of geothermal heat flow in the region — essentially, maps showing how much heat from Earth's interior is rising up to warm the South Pole.
Houston Chronicle
Researchers identify source of dinosaur-killing asteroid
The dinosaur-killing asteroid took a back road to Earth. The 6-mile-wide space rock likely escaped from the outer asteroid belt before striking our planet 66 million years ago. Researchers previously thought this portion of the asteroid belt didn’t have many good exit routes to Earth. Now, they believe dinosaur-killing asteroids could hit the Earth once every 250 million years on average.
This discovery, published in the Icarus journal, is changing researchers’ understanding of how massive asteroids get bumped toward the Earth, how likely they are to impact us in the future and what role they might have played in the Earth’s evolution.
“In a sense, the asteroid belt becomes another place to try to probe the Earth’s early history,” said Bill Bottke, a co-author of the paper and director of the Southwest Research Institute’s department of space studies in Boulder, Colo.
The Conversation
Meet the diverse group of plant-eating dinosaurs that roamed Victoria 110 million years ago
During the Early Cretaceous period, 110 million to 107 million years ago, Australia was much further south than it is today. Yet fossils from several sites on the Otway Coast in Victoria show dinosaurs were common in the region.
The most abundant were ornithopods — small plant-eaters with beaks and cheeks full of teeth. But until recently, it was unclear exactly how many species coexisted at the same time.
So far, five ornithopod species have been named from the Cretaceous of Victoria. There are three from the Otway Coast: Atlascopcosaurus loadsi, Diluvicursor pickeringi and Leaellynasaura amicagraphica; and two from the Bass Coast: Qantassaurus intrepidus and Galleonosaurus dorisae.
The rocks exposed on the Bass Coast (and the fossils they contain) are around 15 million to 20 million years older than those on the Otway Coast. During this interval, Australia’s climate warmed dramatically.
Bat pups babble and bat moms use baby talk, hinting at the evolution of human language
[…] Luckily, in Central America’s tropical jungle, there’s a mammal that engages in a very conspicuous vocal practice behavior that is strongly reminiscent of human infant babbling: the neotropical greater sac-winged bat, Saccopteryx bilineata. The pups of this small bat, dark-furred with two prominent white wavy stripes on the back, engage in daily babbling behavior during large parts of their development.
Greater sac-winged bats possess a large vocal repertoire that includes 25 distinct syllable types. A syllable is the smallest acoustic unit, defined as a sound surrounded by silence. These adult bats create multisyllabic vocalizations and two song types. The territorial song warns potential rivals that the owner is ready to defend their home turf, while the courtship song lets female bats know about a male bat’s fitness as a potential mate.
Of particular interest to me and my colleagues, the greater sac-winged bat is capable of vocal imitation – the ability to learn a previously unknown sound from scratch by ear. It requires acoustic input, like human parents talking to their infants, or in the case of the greater sac-winged bat, adult males that sing.
Space.com
Trekking out to my research sites near North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, I slog through knee-deep water on a section of trail that is completely submerged. Permanent flooding has become commonplace on this low-lying peninsula, nestled behind North Carolina's Outer Banks. The trees growing in the water are small and stunted. Many are dead.
Throughout coastal North Carolina, evidence of forest die-off is everywhere. Nearly every roadside ditch I pass while driving around the region is lined with dead or dying trees.
As an ecologist studying wetland response to sea level rise, I know this flooding is evidence that climate change is altering landscapes along the Atlantic coast. It’s emblematic of environmental changes that also threaten wildlife, ecosystems, and local farms and forestry businesses.
Sweden's tallest mountain is shrinking from climate change
Sweden's highest mountain peak shrunk by 6 and half feet (2 meters) in one year due to the melting of the glacier that covers it, a new study has found.
The Kebnekaise glacier, captured in an image by the European satellite Sentinel 2 on July 28, has lost one third of its mass in recent years due to climate change, according to a statement by the European Copernicus Earth observation program, which manages the Sentinel Earth observation constellation.
Measurements of the Kebnekaise mountain started in the 1940s, according to the Bolin Centre for Climate Research of Stockholm University, Sweden, which is in charge of the monitoring. Those observations show that the height of the mountain's southern peak varies throughout the year due to snow drift and the recession of ice in summer. It is usually at its highest in May and lowest in mid-September. The difference between the winter and summer height could amount to up to two or three meters.
Phys.org
Geologists dig into Grand Canyon's mysterious gap in time
A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder reveals the complex history behind one of the Grand Canyon's most well-known geologic features: A mysterious and missing gap of time in the canyon's rock record that covers hundreds of millions of years. […]
"The Great Unconformity is one of the first well-documented geologic features in North America," [Barra Peak, lead author of the new study and a graduate student in geological sciences at CU Boulder] said. "But until recently, we didn't have a lot of constraints on when or how it occurred."
Now, she and her colleagues think they may be narrowing in on an answer in a paper published this month in the journal Geology. The team reports that a series of small yet violent faulting events may have rocked the region during the breakup of an ancient supercontinent called Rodinia. The resulting havoc likely tore up the earth around the canyon, causing rocks and sediment to wash away and into the ocean.
Diving among ancient ruins where Romans used to party
Fish dart across mosaic floors and into the ruined villas, where holidaying Romans once drank, plotted and flirted in the party town of Baiae, now an underwater archaeological park near Naples.
Statues which once decorated luxury abodes in this beachside resort are now playgrounds for crabs off the coast of Italy, where divers can explore ruins of palaces and domed bathhouses built for emperors.
Rome's nobility were first attracted in the 2nd century BC to the hot springs at Baiae, which sits on the coast within the Campi Flegrei—a supervolcano known in English as the Phlegraean Fields.
CU Boulder Today
Engineers uncover the secrets of fish fins
[…] New research led by the University of Colorado Boulder has uncovered the engineering secrets behind what makes fish fins so strong yet flexible. The team’s insights could one day lead to new designs for robotic surgical tools or even airplane wings that change their shape with the push of a button.
The researchers published their results Aug. 11 in the journal Science Robotics.
Francois Barthelat, senior author of the study, noted that fins are remarkable because they can achieve feats of dexterity even though they don’t contain a single muscle. (Fish move these structures by twitching sets of muscles located at the base of the fins).
Paleontologists discover 3 new species of primitive ungulates
Paleontologists at CU Boulder have discovered three new fossil mammal species at the site of an ancient riverbed in southern Wyoming.
The new species lived within a few hundred thousand years after a mass extinction event roiled the globe and killed off non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago. They were ancestors of today’s hoofed animals, such as cattle, horses, deer and moose—but much smaller. They also offer a new window into what western North America looked like after dinosaurs vanished from the face of Earth, making way for the Age of Mammals.
“Paleontologists spend a lot of time and effort studying dinosaurs and what caused their extinction,” said Jaelyn Eberle, curator of fossil vertebrates at the CU Museum of Natural History and a professor of geological sciences. “I’m much more interested in what happened after.”
Nature
The mutation that helps Delta spread like wildfire
As the world grapples with the hyper-infectious Delta coronavirus variant, scientists are racing to understand the biological basis for its behaviour.
A slew of studies has highlighted an amino-acid change present in Delta that might contribute to its swift spread. Delta is at least 40% more transmissible than is the Alpha variant identified in the United Kingdom in late 2020, epidemiological studies suggest.
“The key hallmark of Delta is that transmissibility seems to be ramping up to the next notch,” says Pei-Yong Shi, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “We thought Alpha was pretty bad, very good at spreading. This one seems to be even more.”
Decades-old SARS virus infection triggers potent response to COVID vaccines
People who were infected almost two decades ago with the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) generate a powerful antibody response after being vaccinated against COVID-19. Their immune systems can fight off multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants, as well as related coronaviruses found in bats and pangolins.
The Singapore-based authors of a small study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine1 say the results offer hope that vaccines can be developed to protect against all new SARS-CoV-2 variants, as well as other coronaviruses that have the potential to cause future pandemics.
The study is a “proof of concept that a pan-coronavirus vaccine in humans is possible”, says David Martinez, a viral immunologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It’s a really unique and cool study, with the caveat that it didn’t include many patients.”
Gizmodo
Evolution Deniers Are Finally a Minority in the U.S.
Americans continue to have a challenging relationship with science, modern medicine, and at times reality, but a review of annual surveys from 1985 to 2019 does yield some good news: Over half of surveyed participants believed in the science of evolution. That’s a win, I guess.
Nearly a century ago, the Scopes trial of 1925 pitted a science teacher and his curriculum (which included evolutionary theory) against the state of Tennessee, which had just banned the subject in schools because, they said, it contradicted the Bible’s creation story. […]
Over the decades, more and more Americans have accepted evolution by natural selection as a driving force of life on Earth. For a long time, though, the split was pretty much half-and-half, but a new study from the University of Michigan has found that the deniers are finally in the minority. The paper—published this week in the journal Public Understanding of Science—looked at opinions on evolution in public opinion surveys conducted since 1985. It found that a recent surge has pushed Americans over the halfway line in believing in the theory put forth by Darwin in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species.
Behold, Carbon-Free Steel Now Exists
This week, a Swedish firm announced it had delivered carbon-free steel to a customer—a world-first. It’s a huge step in the race to clean up one of the most carbon-intensive activities on Earth.
On Wednesday, HYBRIT, a partnership between steel company SSAB, state-owned mining firm LKAB, and state-owned utility Vattenfall, said it delivered the clean steel to Swedish automaker Volvo. This was just a test run, but the firm plans to ramp up production to commercial scale by 2026.
“The first fossil-free steel in the world is not only a breakthrough for SSAB, it represents proof that it’s possible to make the transition and significantly reduce the global carbon footprint of the steel industry,” Martin Lindqvist, president and CEO of SSAB, said in a statement.
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
Climate change on the Great Lakes has coastal communities bracing for higher water
Great Lakes coastal communities are wondering if their shoreline infrastructure will survive another round of record high water. The warning signs have been flashing for some time. […]
The U.S. Corps of Engineers hopes to inform that discussion with the Great Lakes Coastal Resiliency Study, an $11 million effort to assess the threat of climate change, and how best to prepare for extreme variations in water level on everything from urban ports to wetlands.
“We’ll be looking at both the built and natural environments,” said David Bucaro, chief of project management for the Corps of Engineers Chicago District.
President Biden’s 2021-22 budget proposal includes an initial $500,000 to begin the study. Support for it appears to be universal among business, industry and environmental interests.
The Washington Post
Birds’ eye size provides a clearer view of their behaviors and habitats, study says
Where do birds live? How do they behave? How vulnerable are they to changes in their habitat?
To answer those questions, researchers used to look toward factors such as size or migration patterns. But a study suggests the answer might be as simple as looking at a bird’s eyes.
When Ian Ausprey, a recent doctoral graduate of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s Ordway Lab of Ecosystem Conservation, realized there hadn’t been a definitive study of how birds’ eye size relates to their environment, he analyzed the eyes of nearly 3,000 bird species. He found eye size actually predicts birds’ habitat and behavior. The research was recently published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The Guardian
Human remains in tomb are best-preserved ever found in Pompeii
The partially mummified remains, including hair and bones, of a former slave who rose through the social ranks have been found in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.
The remains of Marcus Venerius Secundio were found in a tomb at the necropolis of Porta Sarno, which was one of the main entrance gates into the city. The tomb is believed to date back to the decades before Pompeii was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.
What have been described as the best-preserved human remains ever discovered in Pompeii include Secundio’s white hair and a partially visible ear. Initial tests show he died at about the age of 60.
Deforestation in Brazilian Amazon hits highest annual level in a decade
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has hit the highest annual level in a decade, a new report has shown, despite increasing global concern over the accelerating devastation since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019.
Between August 2020 and July 2021, the rainforest lost 10.476 square kilometers – an area nearly seven times bigger than greater London and 13 times the size of New York City, according to data released by Imazon, a Brazilian research institute that has been tracking the Amazon deforestation since 2008. The figure is 57% higher than in the previous year and is the worst since 2012.
“Deforestation is still out of control,” Carlos Souza, a researcher at Imazon said. “Brazil is going against the global climate agenda that is seeking to urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
E&E News
Climate Hawks Could Take Over Two U.S. Financial Agencies
Two more climate hawks soon could be at the helm of key financial agencies.
There’s a growing expectation that President Biden will tap another two climate-conscious officials to lead independent financial agencies that could help blunt the impact of global warming on the U.S. financial system.
Rostin Behnam, acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, likely will be nominated to permanently lead the CFTC, which regulates the nation’s derivatives markets, according to news reports. Separately, Cornell University law professor Saule Omarova is a leading contender to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees major U.S. banks.
The appointments would mark a major win for Democrats, activists and experts who have raised alarms about the systemic threats posed by rising temperatures—and called on financial regulators to address them.
Real Vail
Colorado Beaver Summit fosters climate, drought solutions
The nonprofit conservation group Colorado Headwaters this week issued the following press release on its upcoming and online-only Colorado Beaver Summit:
Colorado and the West face unprecedented drought conditions and water scarcity driven by climate change. The cumulative effects of natural resource exploitation and misguided land management policies have made matters worse. The removal of beavers from the landscape two centuries ago by the fur trade was one of our earliest and most costly mistakes because it dramatically altered critical ecosystems that naturally conserved water in wetlands and alluvial aquifers, which in turn sustained streams and rivers during drought years.
Without beavers maintaining the dams they’d built for millions of years, rivers began to flow faster, carving channels below their floodplains, and water drained out of the landscape, including the aquifers.
The resulting ecosystem is drier, less resilient to drought and more prone to catastrophic wildfire. A 2006 study conducted in Rocky Mountain National Park found that aquifer recharge “may be the most important beaver-related factor in mitigating effects from climate change.”
Smithsonian Magazine
More Than 40 Million Acres of Land Have Burned in Siberia
As of early spring, wildfires have been surging through the taiga forest in Siberia. The region hardest hit was the Republic of Sakha in northeastern Russia. Also known as Yakutia, the area had 250 fires burning across 2,210 miles of land on July 5. By mid-July, residents of Yakutsk, the capitol of Sakha, were breathing in smoke from over 300 separate wildfires, as reported by the Siberian Times.
As of August 16, more than 40 million acres (17 million hectares) have burned, breaking a previous record—well before the fire season will end—set in 2012, according to Greenpeace Russia. […]
The Siberian wildfires are more substantial than this season's blazes in Greece, Turkey, the United States, and Canada combined. Local residents from Yakutia have been under a state of emergency for weeks as smoke continued to smother cities, even those that are thousands of miles away, reports the Moscow Times.
Lost Monastery Run by Early Medieval Queen Discovered in England
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a long-lost monastery where early medieval queen Cynethryth presided as abbess in the late seventh century C.E.
The team, including researchers from the University of Reading and local volunteers, found evidence of timber buildings where monks and nuns lived, as well as clay cooking pots, jewelry and personal belongings, reports BBC News. The scholars say the site, in the village of Cookham in Berkshire, England, may also hold Cynethyrth’s grave.
“Despite its documented royal associations, barely anything is known about what life was like at this monastery, or others on this stretch of the Thames, due to a lack of archaeological evidence,” says excavation leader Gabor Thomas, an archaeologist at the University of Reading, in a statement. “
The New York Times
Fatal Attraction: Scientists Blame Sea Snake Attacks on Sex Drive
If you are ever scuba-diving and a six-foot-long sea snake comes storming out of the shadows, here is what you should know.
First, remain calm. Though sea snakes rarely attack recreational divers, a venomous bite from one can quickly turn fatal, as it did for a trawler fisherman in Australia in 2018.
Second, your best bet for survival when charged by a marine serpent is to resist the urges of flight or fight.
“These big sea snakes can swim a lot faster than we can, so we can’t get away,” said Rick Shine, a herpetologist at Macquarie University in Australia. He adds that hitting the snake is also a bad idea. “The snake’s likely to get pretty angry about it and might actually drop into a more aggressive frame of mind.”
So what’s a sea-snake-beleaguered diver to do? According to a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, Dr. Shine and his co-authors suggest that you let that highly venomous reptile slither right on up and lick you.
The sea snake doesn’t want to bite you, they say. It wants to, well …
CBC News
If you're anxious about climate change, here are some ways to feel more empowered
Last week's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sounded the alarm once again on climate change, with the authors calling it a "code red for humanity." […]
It's enough to make even the most optimistic person experience feelings of climate grief or anxiety.
"When we feel we can do nothing, it's very easy to slide into despair," said Dr. Robin Cox, director of the Adaptation Learning Network at Royal Roads University in Victoria, B.C.
She says those feelings are completely natural in the face of increasing extreme weather events, but there are things you can do to feel less helpless in a changing world.
First, there's a measure of self-care. Cox says it's important to acknowledge dark feelings and manage them, by taking walks in nature, getting good sleep and eating well. And it's important to also take in moments of delight to help combat feelings of despair.
CNN
Apes say hello and goodbye, just like people do, research shows
Just like people, chimpanzees and bonobos aren't ones for leaving without saying goodbye.
Apes purposefully use signals to begin and end social interactions -- behaviors not typically seen outside of humans until now, according to a new study published in the journal iScience.
Researchers analyzed more than 1,200 interactions with groups of chimps and bonobos in zoos and found that they commonly exchange gazes or swap gestures to share their intentions about social interactions. Those gestures included touching each other, holding hand and even butting heads.
Bonobos exchanged "hello" signals prior to playing 90% of the time and chimps 69% of the time, according to the study, and goodbyes were even more common.
Mongabay
Scientists look to wheatgrass to save dryland farming and capture carbon
Farming in eastern Wyoming is not for the faint of heart. The semiarid landscape receives unpredictable weather and is considered an unforgiving environment for agriculture.
Despite this, farmers have grown annual winter wheat crops in eastern Wyoming, but at a cost. Given the harsh growing conditions, farmers note that with falling wheat prices, soil degradation, and variable weather, annual crops feel like a losing proposition.
“Farmers — especially in this region, but across the country — are really looking for things that can give them some resilience in the face of climate change,” said Hannah Rodgers, a soil science doctoral student at the University of Wyoming.
To encourage farmers to keep fields flourishing, conservationists are suggesting a new approach: plant a new perennial grain called Kernza. This novel grain was developed by the Land Institute, a Kansas-based organization, as a way for farmers to boost the health of their soils while providing a more profitable crop.
Indonesia reports two new Javan rhino calves in the species’ last holdout
Indonesian conservation authorities have announced separate sightings of two new Javan rhino calves, extending a trend of stable population growth for the nearly extinct species.
The calves, a male and a female, were spotted on April 12 and June 9, respectively, by camera traps in Ujung Kulon National Park on the western tip of Indonesia’s Java Island, the species’ last holdout on Earth.
The addition of the two Javan rhinos (Rhinoceros sondaicus) brings the species’ total population to 75 individuals. There has been at least one newborn Javan rhino calf recorded every year since 2012, according to the International Rhino Foundation (IRF).
Ars Technica
Cuttlefish remember the what, when, and where of meals—even into old age
Can you remember what you had for dinner last weekend? That ability is a function of episodic memory, and how well we can recall the time and place of specific events typically declines with age. Cuttlefish also seem to exhibit a form of episodic memory, but unlike with humans, their capability doesn't decrease as they get older, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“Cuttlefish can remember what they ate, where, and when, and use this to guide their feeding decisions in the future," said co-author Alexandra Schnell of the University of Cambridge, who conducted the experiments at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. "What’s surprising is that they don’t lose this ability with age, despite showing other signs of aging like loss of muscle function and appetite."