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.
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Pet Parrots Prefer Live Video-Calls Over Watching Pre-Recorded Videos
When given the choice, pet parrots prefer to video-call each other instead of watch pre-recorded videos of other birds. Those are the findings from a new paper (PDF) set to appear next week at a conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Hawaii. Phys.Org reports: The study, led by animal-computer interaction specialists at the University of Glasgow, gave tablet devices to nine parrots and their owners to explore the potential of the video chats to expand the birds' social lives. Their results suggest that the clever birds, who often suffer from loneliness in captivity, may be able to tell the difference between live and pre-recorded content on digital devices, and strongly prefer interacting with other birds in real time.
Over the course of the six-month study, the parrots chose to initiate calls to other birds significantly more often than they opted to watch pre-recorded footage. They also seemed more engaged in the live chats, spending much longer on calls with other birds than they did watching videos from a library of options. The findings could help steer the future course of the emerging "animal internet," which uses digital technology to empower animals to interact with humans and each other in new ways.
The Highest Observatory On Earth Is Now Open
The world's highest astronomical site is officially open for business after being in the works for 26 years. Space.com reports: The Japanese University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory, or TAO, which was first conceptualized 26 years ago to study the evolution of galaxies and exoplanets, is perched on top of a tall mountain in the Chilean Andes at 5,640 meters (18,500 feet) above sea level. The facility's altitude surpasses even the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, which is at an elevation of 5,050 meters (16,570 feet).
TAO is located on the summit of Atacama's Cerro Chajnantor mountain, whose name means "place of departure" in the now-extinct Kunza language of the indigenous Likan Antai community. The region's high altitude, sparse atmosphere and perennially arid climate is deadly to humans, but makes an excellent spot for infrared telescopes like TAO as their observational accuracies rely on low moisture levels, which render Earth's atmosphere transparent in infrared wavelengths.
TAO's 6.5-meter telescope consists of two science instruments designed to observe the universe in infrared, which is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than visible light but shorter than microwaves. One of the instruments, named SWIMS, will image galaxies from the very early universe to understand how they coalesced out of pristine dust and gas, a process whose specifics remain murky despite decades of research. The second, named MIMIZUKU, will aid the overarching science goal by studying primordial disks of dust within which stars and galaxies are known to form, according to the mission plan. Constructing the telescope on the summit of Mt. Chajnantor "was an incredible challenge, not just technically, but politically too," Yuzuru Yoshii, a professor at the University of Tokyo in Japan who spearheaded TAO since 1998, said in a statement. "I have liaised with Indigenous peoples to ensure their rights and views are considered, the Chilean government to secure permission, local universities for technical collaboration, and even the Chilean Health Ministry to make sure people can work at that altitude in a safe manner."
"Thanks to all involved, research I've only ever dreamed about can soon become a reality, and I couldn't be happier," he added.
Scientists work out the effects of exercise at the cellular level
The health benefits of exercise are well known but new research shows that the body's response to exercise is more complex and far-reaching than previously thought. In a study on rats, a team of scientists from across the United States has found that physical activity causes many cellular and molecular changes in all 19 of the organs they studied in the animals.
Exercise lowers the risk of many diseases, but scientists still don't fully understand how exercise changes the body on a molecular level. Most studies have focused on a single organ, sex, or time point, and only include one or two data types.
To take a more comprehensive look at the biology of exercise, scientists with the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC) used an array of techniques in the lab to analyze molecular changes in rats as they were put through the paces of weeks of intense exercise. Their findings appear in Nature.
Every breath you take: Study models the journey of inhaled plastic particle pollution
With recent studies having established the presence of nano and microplastic particles in the respiratory systems of both human and bird populations, a new University of Technology Sydney (UTS) study has modelled what happens when people breathe in different kinds of plastic particles and where they end up.
Led by Senior Lecturer of Mechanical Engineering Dr Suvash Saha, the UTS research team has used computational fluid-particle dynamics (CFPD) to study the transfer and deposition of particles of different sizes and shapes depending on the rate of breathing.
The results of the modelling, published in the journal Environmental Advances, have pinpointed hotspots in the human respiratory system where plastic particles can accumulate, from the nasal cavity and larynx and into the lungs.
Earth-like environment likely on ancient Mars
A research team using the ChemCam instrument onboard NASA's Curiosity rover discovered higher-than-usual amounts of manganese in lakebed rocks within Gale Crater on Mars, which indicates that the sediments were formed in a river, delta, or near the shoreline of an ancient lake. The results were published today in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
"It is difficult for manganese oxide to form on the surface of Mars, so we didn't expect to find it in such high concentrations in a shoreline deposit," said Patrick Gasda, of Los Alamos National Laboratory's Space Science and Applications group and lead author on the study. "On Earth, these types of deposits happen all the time because of the high oxygen in our atmosphere produced by photosynthetic life, and from microbes that help catalyze those manganese oxidation reactions.
"On Mars, we don't have evidence for life, and the mechanism to produce oxygen in Mars's ancient atmosphere is unclear, so how the manganese oxide was formed and concentrated here is really puzzling. These findings point to larger processes occurring in the Martian atmosphere or surface water and shows that more work needs to be done to understand oxidation on Mars," Gasda added.
Scientists track 'doubling' in origin of cancer cells
Working with human breast and lung cells, Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists say they have charted a molecular pathway that can lure cells down a hazardous path of duplicating their genome too many times, a hallmark of cancer cells.
The findings, published May 3 in Science, reveal what goes wrong when a group of molecules and enzymes trigger and regulate what's known as the "cell cycle," the repetitive process of making new cells out of the cells' genetic material.
The findings could be used to develop therapies that interrupt snags in the cell cycle, and have the potential to stop the growth of cancers, the researchers suggest.
Sleep resets brain connections -- but only for first few hours
During sleep, the brain weakens the new connections between neurons that had been forged while awake -- but only during the first half of a night's sleep, according to a new study in fish by UCL scientists.
The researchers say their findings, published in Nature, provide insight into the role of sleep, but still leave an open question around what function the latter half of a night's sleep serves.
The researchers say the study supports the Synaptic Homeostasis Hypothesis, a key theory on the purpose of sleep which proposes that sleeping acts as a reset for the brain.
Scientists identify new brain circuit in mice that controls body's inflammatory reactions
The brain can direct the immune system to an unexpected degree, capable of detecting, ramping up and tamping down inflammation, shows a new study in mice from researchers at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute.
"The brain is the center of our thoughts, emotions, memories and feelings," said Hao Jin, PhD, a co-first author of the study published online today in Nature. "Thanks to great advances in circuit tracking and single-cell technology, we now know the brain does far more than that. It is monitoring the function of every system in the body."
Future research could identify drugs that can target this newfound brain circuit to help treat a vast range of disorders and diseases in which the immune system goes haywire.
Sugar-based catalyst upcycles carbon dioxide
A new catalyst made from an inexpensive, abundant metal and common table sugar has the power to destroy carbon dioxide (CO2) gas.
In a new Northwestern University study, the catalyst successfully converted CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO), an important building block to produce a variety of useful chemicals. When the reaction occurs in the presence of hydrogen, for example, CO2 and hydrogen transform into synthesis gas (or syngas), a highly valuable precursor to producing fuels that can potentially replace gasoline.
With recent advances in carbon capture technologies, post-combustion carbon capture is becoming a plausible option to help tackle the global climate change crisis. But how to handle the captured carbon remains an open-ended question. The new catalyst potentially could provide one solution for disposing the potent greenhouse gas by converting it into a more valuable product.
Significant new discovery in teleportation research -- Noise can improve the quality of quantum teleportation
In teleportation, the state of a quantum particle, or qubit, is transferred from one location to another without sending the particle itself. This transfer requires quantum resources, such as entanglement between an additional pair of qubits. In an ideal case, the transfer and teleportation of the qubit state can be done perfectly. However, real-world systems are vulnerable to noise and disturbances -- and this reduces and limits the quality of the teleportation.
Researchers from the University of Turku, Finland, and the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, have now proposed a theoretical idea and made corresponding experiments to overcome this problem. In other words, the new approach enables reaching high-quality teleportation despite the presence of noise.
"The work is based on an idea of distributing entanglement -- prior to running the teleportation protocol -- beyond the used qubits, i.e., exploiting the hybrid entanglement between different physical degrees of freedom," says Professor Jyrki Piilo from the University of Turku.
A 'cosmic glitch' in gravity
A group of researchers at the University of Waterloo and the University of British Columbia have discovered a potential "cosmic glitch" in the universe's gravity, explaining its strange behaviour on a cosmic scale.
For the last 100 years, physicists have relied upon Albert Einstein's theory of "general relativity" to explain how gravity works throughout the universe. General relativity, proven accurate by countless tests and observations, suggests that gravity impacts not simply three physical dimensions but also a fourth dimension: time.
"This model of gravity has been essential for everything from theorizing the Big Bang to photographing black holes," said Robin Wen, the lead author on the project and a recent Waterloo Mathematical Physics graduate.
"But when we try to understand gravity on a cosmic scale, at the scale of galaxy clusters and beyond, we encounter apparent inconsistencies with the predictions of general relativity. It's almost as if gravity itself stops perfectly matching Einstein's theory. We are calling this inconsistency a 'cosmic glitch': gravity becomes around one per cent weaker when dealing with distances in the billions of light years. "
Did a magnetic field collapse trigger the emergence of animals?
The Ediacaran Period, spanning from about 635 to 541 million years ago, was a pivotal time in Earth's history. It marked a transformative era during which complex, multicellular organisms emerged, setting the stage for the explosion of life.
But how did this surge of life unfold and what factors on Earth may have contributed to it?
Researchers from the University of Rochester have uncovered compelling evidence that Earth's magnetic field was in a highly unusual state when the macroscopic animals of the Ediacaran Period diversified and thrived. Their study, published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, raises the question of whether these fluctuations in Earth's ancient magnetic field led to shifts in oxygen levels that may have been crucial to the proliferation of life forms millions of years ago.
According to John Tarduno, the William Kenan, Jr. Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, one of the most remarkable life forms during the Ediacaran Period was the Ediacaran fauna. They were notable for their resemblance to early animals -- some even reached more than a meter (three feet) in size and were mobile, indicating they probably needed more oxygen compared to earlier life forms.
Ice shelves fracture under weight of meltwater lakes
When air temperatures in Antarctica rise and glacier ice melts, water can pool on the surface of floating ice shelves, weighing them down and causing the ice to bend. Now, for the first time in the field, CIRES-led research shows that ice shelves don't just buckle under the weight of meltwater lakes -- they fracture. As the climate warms and melt rates in Antarctica increase, this fracturing could cause vulnerable ice shelves to collapse, allowing inland glacier ice to spill into the ocean and contribute to sea level rise.
"Ice shelves are extremely important for the Antarctic Ice Sheet's overall health as they act to buttress or hold back the glacier ice on land," said Alison Banwell, a CIRES scientist in the Earth Science and Observation Center (ESOC) and lead author of the study published today in the Journal of Glaciology. "Scientists have predicted and modeled that surface meltwater loading could cause ice shelves to fracture, but no one had observed the process in the field, until now."
The new work may help explain how the Larsen B Ice Shelf abruptly collapsed in 2002. In the months before its catastrophic breakup, thousands of meltwater lakes littered the ice shelf's surface, which then drained over just a few weeks.
75,000-year-old female Neanderthal from cave where species buried their dead
A new documentary has recreated the face of a 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal whose flattened skull was discovered and rebuilt from hundreds of bone fragments by a team of archaeologists and conservators led by the University of Cambridge.
The team excavated the female Neanderthal in 2018 from inside a cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where the species had repeatedly returned to lay their dead to rest. The cave was made famous by work in the late 1950s that unearthed several Neanderthals which appeared to have been buried in succession.
'Secrets of the Neanderthals', produced by BBC Studios Science Unit, is released on Netflix worldwide. The documentary follows the team led by the universities of Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores as they return to Shanidar Cave to continue excavations.
Gemini south reveals origin of unexpected differences in giant binary stars
Using the Gemini South telescope a team of astronomers have confirmed for the first time that differences in binary stars' composition can originate from chemical variations in the cloud of stellar material from which they formed. The results help explain why stars born from the same molecular cloud can possess different chemical composition and host different planetary systems, as well as pose challenges to current stellar and planet formation models.
It is estimated that up to 85% of stars exist in binary star systems, some even in systems with three or more stars. These stellar pairs are born together out of the same molecular cloud from a shared abundance of chemical building blocks, so astronomers would expect to find that they have nearly identical compositions and planetary systems. However, for many binaries that isn't the case. While some proposed explanations attribute these dissimilarities to events occurring after the stars evolved, a team of astronomers have confirmed for the first time that they can actually originate from before the stars even began to form.
More plants on the menu of ancient hunter-gatherers
It has long been thought that meat played an important role in the diet of hunter-gatherers before the Neolithic transition. However, due to the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from Paleolithic sites, little information exists about the dietary habits of pre-agricultural human groups. A new study challenges this notion by presenting compelling isotopic evidence of a strong preference for plants among 15,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Morocco. This is the first time a significant amount of plant consumption has been measured for a pre-agricultural population, shedding new light on the dietary practices of ancient human societies.
Conducted by an international team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany), Géoscience et Environnement Toulouse (Toulouse, France), and the Institut National des Sciences de l'Archéologie et du Patrimoine (Rabat, Morocco), the study examines the diet of individuals associated with the Iberomaurusian culture discovered in the cave of Taforalt, Morocco. Using a comprehensive multi-isotopic approach, including zinc and strontium isotope analysis in dental enamel, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur analysis in collagen, as well as amino acid analysis of human and faunal remains, the researchers uncovered surprising insights into ancient dietary practices.
The study's major conclusions clearly show that the diet of these hunter-gatherers included a significant proportion of plants belonging to Mediterranean species, predating the advent of agriculture in the region by several millennia. Archaeobotanical remains found at the site, such as acorns, pine nuts, and wild pulses, further support this notion. Moreover, the study suggests that plant foods were also introduced into infant diets and may have served as weaning products for this human population. This finding has significant implications, as it suggests the potential for earlier weaning practices in pre-agricultural communities compared to previously thought norms for hunter-gatherer societies.
Genomes of 'star algae' shed light on origin of plants
Land plants cover the surface of our planet and often tower over us. They form complex bodies with multiple organs that consist of a broad range of cell types. Developing this morphological complexity is underpinned by intricate networks of genes, whose coordinated action shapes plant bodies through various molecular mechanisms. All of these magnificent forms burst forth from a one-off evolutionary event: when plants conquered Earth's surface, known as plant terrestrialization.
Among those algae most closely related to land plants, diverse body types are found -- ranging from single-celled algae to more complex cell filaments.
From this group of relatives, an international group of researchers led by the Universities of Göttingen and Nebraska-Lincoln has now generated the first genome data of such complex specimens, on four filamentous "star algae" of the genus Zygnema. Their results were published in Nature Genetics.
In medieval England, leprosy spread between red squirrels and people, genome evidence shows
Evidence from archaeological sites in the medieval English city of Winchester shows that English red squirrels once served as an important host for Mycobacterium leprae strains that caused leprosy in people, researchers report May 3 in the journal Current Biology.
"With our genetic analysis we were able to identify red squirrels as the first ancient animal host of leprosy," says senior author Verena Schuenemann of the University of Basel in Switzerland. "The medieval red squirrel strain we recovered is more closely related to medieval human strains from the same city than to strains isolated from infected modern red squirrels. Overall, our results point to an independent circulation of M. leprae strains between humans and red squirrels during the Medieval Period."
"Our findings highlight the importance of involving archaeological material, in particular animal remains, into studying the long-term zoonotic potential of this disease, as only a direct comparison of ancient human and animal strains allows reconstructions of potential transmission events across time," says Sarah Inskip of the University of Leicester, UK, a co-author on the study.
How evolving landscapes impacted First Peoples' early migration patterns into Australia
New research led by the University of Sydney offers fresh understanding of the migration patterns of Australia and New Guinea's First Peoples, and where they lived in the 40,000 years following humanity's arrival on the then combined continent.
Using a dynamic model charting the changing landscape, researchers have provided a more realistic description of the of the areas inhabited by the first humans to traverse Sahul: the landmass combining what is now Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea.
Led by Associate Professor Tristan Salles from the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney, the research model factors-in evolution of the landscape, driven by climate, during the time of human dispersal. This is a novel approach; previous studies of migration patterns have relied heavily on archaeological findings.
Physics confirms that the enemy of your enemy is, indeed, your friend
In the 1940s, Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider introduced social balance theory, which explains how humans innately strive to find harmony in their social circles. According to the theory, four rules -- an enemy of an enemy is a friend, a friend of a friend is a friend, a friend of an enemy is an enemy and, finally, an enemy of a friend is an enemy -- lead to balanced relationships.
Although countless studies have tried to confirm this theory using network science and mathematics, their efforts have fallen short, as networks deviate from perfectly balanced relationships. Hence, the real question is whether social networks are more balanced than expected according to an adequate network model. Most network models were too simplified to fully capture the complexities within human relationships that affect social balance, yielding inconsistent results on whether deviations observed from the network model expectations are in line with the theory of social balance.
The Northwestern team, however, successfully integrated the two key pieces that make Heider's social framework work. In real life, not everyone knows each other, and some people are more positive than others. Researchers have long known that each factor influences social ties, but existing models could only account for one factor at a time. By simultaneously incorporating both constraints, the researchers' resulting network model finally confirmed the famous theory some 80 years after Heider first proposed it.