Planet Neuroscientists

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Imperial Irishman Hugh Brady (and his Dublin leprechauns)

in For Better Science on 2023-02-01 06:50:18 UTC.

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Spotted a UFO? There’s an App for That

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-31 20:19:41 UTC.

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arXiv announces new policy on ChatGPT and similar tools

The recent release of AI technology that generates new text has raised serious questions among the research community. For one, “Can ChatGPT be named an author of a research paper?”

The resounding answer from arXiv leaders and advisors is, “No.” A computer program cannot, for example, take responsibility for the contents of a paper. Nor can it agree to arXiv’s terms and conditions. Other organizations agree.

To address this issue, arXiv has adopted a new policy for authors regarding the use of generative AI language tools. 

The official policy is:

arXiv policy for authors’ use of generative AI language tools

January, 31 2023

arXiv recognizes that authors of scientific works use a variety of tools to do the science on which they report, and to prepare the report itself, from simple ones to very sophisticated ones. Community opinion on the appropriateness of such tools may be varied and evolving; AI powered language tools have in particular led to significant debate. We note that tools may generate useful and helpful results, but also errors or misleading results; therefore, knowing which tools were used is relevant to evaluating and interpreting scientific works. 

In view of this, we 

1. continue to require authors to report in their work any significant use of sophisticated tools, such as instruments and software; we now include in particular text-to-text generative AI among those that should be reported consistent with subject standards for methodology.
2. remind all colleagues that by signing their name as an author of a paper, they each individually take full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. If generative AI language tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s).
3. generative AI language tools should not be listed as an author; instead authors should refer to (1).

in arXiv.org blog on 2023-01-31 18:00:33 UTC.

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Submit to PLOS and post a preprint to EarthArXiv—at the same time

Note: this post was originally published on the PLOS Latitude Blog

We are thrilled to announce that the planned integration between PLOS and the EarthArXiv preprint server is now live!

Beginning today, authors submitting to PLOS Climate, PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, and PLOS Water will have the option to automatically forward their manuscript to EarthArXiv, right from our submission system. 

Participation is easy. During submission, authors will indicate whether their manuscript has been posted as a preprint already. If it has, we’ll ask for the DOI. If it has not, authors can check a box to opt-in to this new service. Once received by EarthArXiv, each manuscript will be screened for suitability, including checks for scope, appropriateness, and potential dual use research of concern. Most preprints will appear on the server within a week.

In fields related to our environment, the timely and thorough exchange of knowledge is vital. Preprints empower researchers to take control of their scientific communications and share research when it’s ready. PLOS authors use preprints to establish priority, share results more efficiently, seek community feedback, and build their careers.

Preprints also support more inclusive scientific communications, opening opportunities for collaboration and feedback, and allowing everyone to participate on their own terms. Including more of the research community deepens and expands both the scientific record and the network of expert peer reviewers, forging new connections and supporting high-quality research. Learn more about the benefits of preprints on our website.

The post Submit to PLOS and post a preprint to EarthArXiv—at the same time appeared first on The Official PLOS Blog.

in The Official PLOS Blog on 2023-01-31 14:52:48 UTC.

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Here are 7 new science museums and exhibitions to visit in 2023

If you’re a museum aficionado itching for a new place to explore, 2023 has you covered. New science museums and exhibitions are opening, and some zoos are expanding. This sampling of destinations to check out in the new year or beyond has something for everyone, whether you’re a wildlife lover, space nerd or history buff.

Grand Egyptian Museum
Outside Cairo
Opens: To be announced

2022 marked the 100th anniversary of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb (SN: 11/19/22, p. 14). Now, thousands of artifacts from the tomb — along with tens of thousands of other archaeological finds from ancient Egypt — will go on display when this museum, located within view of the Pyramids of Giza, opens. More than a decade in the making, it will be one of the largest archaeological museums in the world.

Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation
American Museum of Natural History
New York City
Opens: February 17

This multistory building will add tons of new exhibit space to the more than 150-year-old museum. Visitors can explore an insectarium that includes one of the world’s largest displays of live leaf-cutting ants and come face-to-face with dozens of butterfly species in a vivarium. Meanwhile, the interconnectedness of life will be on display in the immersive, 360-degree “Invisible Worlds” exhibition.

Galápagos Islands
Houston Zoo
Opens: September 2023

If you can’t travel to the Galápagos Islands, a trip to Texas might be the next best thing. Giant tortoises, iguanas, penguins, sea lions, sharks and other creatures will inhabit this new exhibition that will re-create the land and marine ecosystems of the archipelago made famous by Charles Darwin.

Kansas City Zoo Aquarium
Opens: September 2023

The 34 exhibits of this new aquarium will allow visitors to glimpse a wide variety of ocean locales without having to leave the Midwest. Underwater residents will include sea urchins and sea anemones in a warm intertidal zone, fish swimming in a coral reef, comb jellies floating in the open ocean and sea otters playing along a rocky shore.

SPACE
Franklin Institute
Philadelphia
Opens: Fall 2023

To design this new two-story gallery dedicated to the future of space exploration, exhibit planners met with local students and teachers to find out what they wanted to learn. The result is an experience that, among other things, will showcase the current and future technologies needed to live and work in space as well as the many career paths into the aerospace industry.

Bird House
Smithsonian’s National Zoo
Washington, D.C.
Opens: To be announced

With a focus on bird migration and conservation in the Americas, the zoo’s new bird house will feature three aviaries: The first will show how the Delaware Bay is a key refueling spot for migratory shorebirds, the second will demonstrate how seasonal wetlands in the Midwest serve waterfowl and the third will illustrate how a tropical coffee farm can provide respite for songbirds in winter.

Robot & AI Museum
Seoul, South Korea
Opens: To be announced

Though details are still scant, this museum dedicated to furthering public knowledge of robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning is expected to open later this year.

in Science News on 2023-01-31 14:00:00 UTC.

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Why Bother Bringing Back the Dodo?

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-31 12:11:16 UTC.

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The deadly VEXAS syndrome is more common than doctors thought

A mysterious new disease may be to blame for severe, unexplained inflammation in older men. Now, researchers have their first good look at who the disease strikes, and how often.

VEXAS syndrome, an illness discovered just two years ago, affects nearly 1 in 4,000 men over 50 years old, scientists estimate January 24 in JAMA. The disease also occurs in older women, though less frequently. Altogether, more than 15,000 people in the United States may be suffering from the syndrome, says study coauthor David Beck, a clinical geneticist at NYU Langone Health in New York City. Those numbers indicate that physicians should be on the lookout for VEXAS, Beck says. “It’s underrecognized and underdiagnosed. A lot of physicians aren’t yet aware of it.”

Beck’s team reported discovering VEXAS syndrome in 2020, linking mutations in a gene called UBA1 to a suite of symptoms including fever, low blood cell count and inflammation. His team’s new study is the first to estimate how often VEXAS occurs in the general population — and the results are surprising. “It’s more prevalent than we suspected,” says Emma Groarke, a hematologist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., who was not involved with the study.

VEXAS tends to show up later in life ­­— after people somehow acquire UBA1 mutations in their blood cells. Patients may feel overwhelming fatigue, lethargy and have skin rashes, Beck says. “The disease is progressive, and it’s severe.” VEXAS can also be deadly. Once a person’s symptoms begin, the median survival time is about 10 years, his team has found.

Until late 2020, no one knew that there was a genetic thread connecting VEXAS syndrome’s otherwise unexplained symptoms. In fact, individuals may be diagnosed with other conditions, including polyarteritis nodosa, an inflammatory blood disease, and relapsing polychondritis, a connective tissue disorder, before being diagnosed with VEXAS.

To ballpark the number of VEXAS-affected individuals, Beck’s team combed through electronic health records of more than 160,000 people in Pennsylvania, in a collaboration with the NIH and Geisinger Health. In people over 50, the disease-causing UBA1 mutations showed up in roughly 1 in 4,000 men. Among women in that age bracket, about 1 in 26,000 had the mutations.  

A genetic test of the blood can help doctors diagnose VEXAS, and treatments like steroids and other immunosuppressive drugs, which tamp down inflammation, can ease symptoms. Groarke and her NIH colleagues have also started a small phase II clinical trial testing bone marrow transplants as a way to swap patients’ diseased blood cells for healthy ones.

Beck says he hopes to raise awareness about the disease, though he recognizes that there’s much more work to do. In his team’s study, for instance, the vast majority of participants were white Pennsylvanians, so scientists don’t know how the disease affects other populations. Researchers also don’t know what spurs the blood cell mutations, nor how they spark an inflammatory frenzy in the body.

“The more patients that are diagnosed, the more we’ll learn about the disease,” Beck says. “This is just one step in the process of finding more effective therapies.”

in Science News on 2023-01-31 12:00:00 UTC.

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Did the Seeds of Life Ride to Earth Inside an Asteroid?

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-31 12:00:00 UTC.

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Scholar calls journal decision on ‘comfort women’ paper ‘rotten at the core’

The journal that published a hotly contested article by a professor at Harvard Law School arguing that Korean women forced into sexual slavery during World War II were willing prostitutes has reaffirmed a prior expression of concern over the paper, but stopped short of retracting the article.

However, the International Review of Law and Economics encourages readers of the article, by Mark Ramseyer, to “also consult the comments published in IRLE and in other venues for the broader historical perspective.”

Alexis Dudden, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut who has written extensively about Japan’s wartime system of military sexual slavery, called the statement “wishy-washy.”  

“For the denialists, this is a victory,” she told Retraction Watch. “The IRLE decision is rotten at the core.”

Japan’s record of sex trafficking of hundreds of thousands of women and girls as young as 8 — the so-called “comfort women” — has been thoroughly documented and is a matter of consensus among most historians outside that country. 

In his article, Ramseyer argued that the “political dispute between South Korea and Japan over the wartime brothels called ‘comfort stations’ obscures the contractual dynamics involved.” Instead, Ramseyer used game theory in an effort to show that the women negotiated voluntary contracts for sex work. The article, published online in December 2020 and titled “Contracting for sex in the Pacific War,” has been cited eight times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

Ramseyer also stated in an op-ed in JAPAN Forward that the narrative of comfort women as sex slaves was “pure fiction.”

The two articles quickly sparked international furor. In February 2021, the IRLE issued an expression of concern, noting that “concerns have been raised regarding the historical evidence in the article … These claims are currently being investigated and the International Review of Law and Economics will provide additional information as it becomes available.”

In its new statement from January 18, the journal said it solicited comments from several historians; asked Ramseyer for his response to the criticism; and requested confidential reviews from several additional historians with subject-matter expertise.

All of the experts had misgivings about Ramseyer’s interpretation of the evidence and agreed it did “not warrant overturning the historical consensus,” the journal says. Still, it found “nothing that rises to the level of clear data fabrication or falsification and the COPE description of honest error appears orthogonal to the current situation.”

The journal leaves open the question of whether “Ramseyer’s interpretation and judgment regarding the way he used sources constitutes qualitative error akin to a miscalculation or an experimental flaw”:

In the end the editors are divided on whether the paper should be retracted based on [COPE and Elsevier] guidelines. We are agreed, however, that the guidelines are clearly intended to present a high threshold for retraction and, as such, we have decided to retain the Expression of Concern attached to Professor Ramseyer’s article.

While Ramseyer’s article may not contain fabricated data, Dudden said his contortion of the historical record could still be construed as a version of that:

Maybe thinking of it in terms of how the Russian state is currently refusing even to call the Ukraine invasion a war, when we talk about data fabrication, that’s becoming truth for many Russians. And so that’s what data fabrication is here, playing with words.

“It’s human trafficking of minors for sex. And that’s what it is, and it’s state-sponsored. And Ramseyer denies all of that,” added Dudden, who edited a supplementary issue about the IRLE article in The Asia-Pacific Journal, for which she is a contributing editor. “That’s what right-wing radio does. But it’s not what academics do.”

In an email to Retraction Watch, Ramseyer pointed to an article in which he discussed the main accusations against him, adding:

Certainly, I stand by my article, my discussion of the accusations, and more longer [sic] more recent article about the controversy.

Amy Beth Stanley, a professor of history at Northwestern University, was among the people who contacted the IRLE to request a retraction of the paper. Along with other scholars, she laid out her reasoning in an article in The Asia-Pacific Journal, arguing that a paper “containing this level of academic misconduct should not have passed peer review, or have been published in an academic journal.” 

Stanley told Retraction Watch the IRLE‘s decision was a “reasonable outcome,” especially because COPE’s threshold for retraction is “extremely high” and relies “on language about ‘data falsification’ that seems more suited to scientific research.” 

However, she added:

In my opinion, citing evidence that doesn’t exist to say things that the evidence does not say does constitute “data falsification.” But I think this issue highlights the problem with our standards as they are written, especially for the humanities and social sciences, as I believe it is absolutely crucial to be able to distinguish scholarship that is fraudulent or dishonest from scholarship that is merely offensive, controversial, and unpopular.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

in Retraction watch on 2023-01-31 11:00:00 UTC.

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The Spaceport at the Edge of the World

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-31 11:00:00 UTC.

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Muon scanning hints at mysteries within an ancient Chinese wall

For nearly 650 years, the fortress walls in the Chinese city of Xi’an have served as a formidable barrier around the central city. At 12 meters high and up to 18 meters thick, they are impervious to almost everything — except subatomic particles called muons.

Now, thanks to their penetrating abilities, muons may be key to ensuring that the walls that once protected the treasures of the first Ming Dynasty — and are now a national architectural treasure in their own right — stand for centuries more.

A refined detection method has provided the highest-resolution muon scans yet produced of any archaeological structure, researchers report in the Jan. 7 Journal of Applied Physics. The scans revealed interior density fluctuations as small as a meter across inside one section of the Xi’an ramparts. The fluctuations could be signs of dangerous flaws or “hidden structures archaeologically interesting for discovery and investigation,” says nuclear physicist Zhiyi Liu of Lanzhou University in China.

Muons are like electrons, only heavier. They rain down all over the planet, produced when charged particles called cosmic rays hit the atmosphere. Although muons can travel deep into earth and stone, they are scattered or absorbed depending on the material they encounter. Counting the ones that pass through makes them useful for studying volcano interiors, scanning pyramids for hidden chambers and even searching for contraband stashed in containers impervious to X-rays (SN: 4/22/22).

Though muons stream down continuously, their numbers are small enough that the researchers had to deploy six detectors for a week at a time to collect enough data for 3-D scans of the rampart.

It’s now up to conservationists to determine how to address any density fluctuations that might indicate dangerous flaws, or historical surprises, inside the Xi’an walls.

in Science News on 2023-01-30 15:00:00 UTC.

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A new metric of extinction risk considers how cultures care for species

In shallow coastal waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans, a seagrass-scrounging cousin of the manatee is in trouble. Environmental strains like pollution and habitat loss pose a major threat to dugong (Dugong dugon) survival, so much so that in December, the International Union for Conservation of Nature upgraded the species’ extinction risk status to vulnerable. Some populations are now classified as endangered or critically endangered.

If that weren’t bad enough, the sea cows are at risk of losing the protection of a group who has long looked after them: the Torres Strait Islanders. These Indigenous people off the coast of Australia historically have been stewards of the dugong populations there, sustainably hunting the animals and monitoring their numbers. But the Torres Strait Islanders are also threatened, in part because sea levels are rising and encroaching on their communities, and warmer air and sea temperatures are making it difficult for people to live in the region.

This situation isn’t unique to dugongs. A global analysis of 385 culturally important plant and animal species found that 68 percent were both biologically vulnerable and at risk of losing their cultural protections, researchers report January 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings clearly illustrate that biology shouldn’t be the primary factor in shaping conservation policy, says cultural anthropologist Victoria Reyes-García. When a culture dwindles, the species that are important to that culture are also under threat. To be effective, more conservation efforts need to consider the vulnerability of both the species and the people that have historically cared for them, she says.

“A lot of the people in the conservation arena think we need to separate people from nature,” says Reyes-García, of the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. But that tactic overlooks the caring relationship many cultural groups – like the Torres Strait Islanders – have with nature, she says.

“Indigenous people, local communities, also other ethnic groups – they are good stewards of their biodiversity,” says Ina Vandebroek, an ethnobotanist at the University of the West Indies at Mona in Kingston, Jamaica, who was not involved in the work. “They have knowledge, deep knowledge, about their environments that we really cannot overlook.”

One way to help shift conservation efforts is to give species a “biocultural status,” which would provide a fuller picture of their vulnerability, Reyes-García and colleagues say. In the study, the team used existing language vitality research to determine a culture’s risk of disappearing: The more a cultural group’s language use declines, the more that culture is threatened. And the more a culture is threatened, the more culturally vulnerable its important species are. Researchers then combined a species’ cultural and biological vulnerability to arrive at its biocultural status. In the dugong’s case, its biocultural status is endangered, meaning it is more at risk than its IUCN categorization suggests.

This intersectional approach to conservation can help species by involving the people that have historically cared for them (SN: 3/2/22). It can also highlight when communities need support to continue their stewardship, Reyes-García says. She hopes this new framework will spark more conservation efforts that recognize local communities’ rights and encourage their participation – leaning into humans’ connection with nature instead of creating more separation (SN: 3/8/22).      

in Science News on 2023-01-30 13:00:00 UTC.

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The Case of the Incredibly Long-Lived Mouse Cells

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-30 12:00:00 UTC.

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Exclusive: Deepfake pioneer to lose two papers after misconduct finding of faked data

Two papers coauthored by a computer scientist whose work on visual effects has been credited in big-name Hollywood movies will soon be retracted after a publisher’s investigation found falsification of data in the articles. 

Retraction Watch has also learned that the University of Southern California (USC) found that Hao Li “falsely presented his research” in the two publications while he was a professor there. The articles, both published in journals of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), describe a system to create a 3D digital avatar head from a person’s photo using artificial intelligence. 

Li co-founded and is CEO of Pinscreen, a startup which is commercializing that technology. On its website, Pinscreen touts its products as “the most advanced AI-driven versatile avatars.” Besides personalized avatars for use in virtual or augmented reality systems, Pinscreen offers the ability to replace a person’s face in videos, creating what’s known as “deepfakes.” 

MIT Technology Review named Li an “innovator under 35” in 2013, and in a 2019 profile the magazine called him “a pioneer of digital fakery.” The article also described Li’s work to create an onscreen image of the actor Paul Walker for the movie Furious 7, after Walker died halfway through filming. Li’s other visual effects credits include Blade Runner 2049 and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies.

Both of the articles to be retracted date from 2017. “Avatar digitization from a single image for real-time rendering” was published in ACM Transactions on Graphics, and “Pinscreen: creating performance-driven avatars in seconds” accompanied a presentation at the ACM computer graphics conference SIGGRAPH 2017 Real Time Live!

In the presentation, which was uploaded to YouTube (beginning at 31:15), Li and several Pinscreen employees take the stage to explain and demonstrate the company’s technology. 

“What we’re going to show you later is how to build a high-quality 3D avatar from a single image, fully rigged, animatable, and we’re going to show you how to bring them to life using a single webcam,” Li said. 

To demonstrate, Iman Sadeghi, then Pinscreen’s vice president of engineering, took a picture of himself with a webcam, and a few seconds later, a 3D image of his head appeared on the computer screen, animated and changing its facial expressions. Sadeghi then proceeded to click on photos of other people, and their avatar heads appeared on the screen, apparently generated in real time. 

But according to a lawsuit Sadeghi filed later, and USC’s investigation, Pinscreen’s technology at the time of the presentation could not perform as it appeared to do. At the request of the university’s investigation committee, a consultant reviewed the computer code Sadeghi used to present and found that all of the avatars in the demonstration had been built beforehand. The model of Sadeghi’s head would appear no matter what picture the webcam took as an input, according to the consultant.  

Sadeghi sued Pinscreen in 2018 (as reported at the time by the LA Times and USC Annenberg Media), alleging Li had fired him for raising concerns about the company misrepresenting its technology in the SIGGRAPH Real Time Live! presentation and other venues. The suit is ongoing in Los Angeles Superior Court. 

After filing his suit, Sadeghi reported the falsification to ACM and USC, where Li was a professor in the Viterbi School of Engineering and director of the Institute for Creative Technologies Vision and Graphics Lab. USC began looking into the allegations. 

According to a version of USC’s investigation report posted on Sadeghi’s website, the investigation committee concluded that Li: 

Knowingly and intentionally presented a falsified demonstration of his software at the SIGGRAPH Real-Time-Live show on August 1, 2017 with the intention to mislead the audience into believing that they were viewing a real-time demonstration of the automatic avatar-generating software that he and his team claimed to have developed, when in fact, Dr. Li and his team presented pre-programmed, manually produced avatar generation.

A spokesperson for the engineering school has not responded to our request for comment on the report. 

Li’s research was funded by two federal grants. One, on which Li was the principal investigator, was from the Office of Naval Research. The title of the project in the attached grant matches the title of the Young Investigator Award that Li won to develop realistic avatars for virtual training systems for the Navy. USC’s announcement of the award in 2018 stated that it was worth $600,000 over three years. 

Li left USC in 2020, and, according to his website, spent the next two years as a distinguished fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He is now an associate professor at Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi. He did not respond to our request for comment. 

In responses to USC’s inquiry report, Li denied that he misrepresented Pinscreen’s technology and said that preloading the avatars for the presentation was allowed in case of connectivity issues. His response also references letters from SIGGRAPH organizers that he said support his claims. He wrote: 

Let me be very clear: there was absolutely NO fabrication and/or falsification from either our teams at USC or Pinscreen at any point in time. Nor did I or anyone associated with me mislead the public or the scientific community. 

ACM’s investigation concluded last year, and did not vindicate Li’s defense that the conference organizers had allowed the preloaded avatars as presented. According to a decision letter dated Sept. 14, 2022 and posted online to Sadeghi’s website, the ACM Ethics and Plagiarism Committee of the ACM Publications Board investigated complaints about the work and found the authors “guilty” of violating the organization’s policy on plagiarism, misrepresentation, and falsification: 

Specifically, the Committee found that the presentation at SIGGRAPH 2017 Real Time Live! falsely presented pre-generated images as dynamically created. This fact should have been disclosed to the audience, but was not. This data falsification extended to the ACM Transaction on Graphics article. 

The committee decided that the violation was “severe,” and imposed penalties including retraction of the articles and a five-year ban on submitting work to or serving in any official role for ACM publications. 

Scott Delman, ACM’s director of publications who signed the letter, told us the letter was “confidential” and “not intended to be made public.” 

Sadeghi also posted a letter he sent to ACM in response, asking for the organization to reconsider the penalties for himself. In his letter, dated October 14, Sadeghi wrote that he had reported the violations to the group, and to USC, and that he had “actively participated and provided information during both investigations and preserved key evidence.” 

He continued: 

As the CEO of Pinscreen and my direct superior in the company, Li exploited his power differential to force me into participating in his fraud. Li depended on that differential as well as my obligations under the Confidentiality Contract to keep his coercive, abusive, and fraudulent practices from being reported.

My involvement in Pinscreens fraudulent publications and presentations is an untoward consequence of Li’s coercive and abusive practices. The repeated whistleblowing and objections I presented to Li resulted in the retaliatory termination of my employment immediately after Pinscreen’s public deception at ACM SIGGRAPH Real-Time Live 2017. According to the policy, ACM should investigate this coercive and abusive situation and seek to remediate the untoward consequences and the retaliatory actions. 

Holding the perpetrator and the victim of coercion equally accountable for fraud simply because both are listed as the authors on the fraudulent publications is against the spirit of the Code.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

in Retraction watch on 2023-01-30 11:00:00 UTC.

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Next Open NeuroFedora meeting: 30 January 1300 UTC

Photo by William White on Unsplash.

Happy new year!!

Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 30 January at 1300 UTC. The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend. You can join us over:

• Matrix (using your web-browser)
• IRC

You can use this link to convert the meeting time to your local time. Or, you can also use this command in the terminal:

$ date --date='TZ="UTC" 1300 2023-01-30'

The meeting will be chaired by @ankursinha. The agenda for the meeting is:

• New introductions and roll call.
• Tasks from last meeting.
• Open Pagure tickets.
• Package health check.
• Open package reviews check.
• CompNeuro lab compose status check for Fedora 38/rawhide.
• Neuroscience query of the week
• Next meeting day, and chair.
• Open floor.

We hope to see you there!

in NeuroFedora blog on 2023-01-30 09:42:51 UTC.

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The potential problems of Eliezer Masliah

in For Better Science on 2023-01-30 09:07:45 UTC.

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‘Nasty’ Geometry Breaks a Decades-Old Tiling Conjecture

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-29 13:00:00 UTC.

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Trove in trouble: why does it cost money to keep the resource online?

in Open Access Tracking Project: news on 2023-01-29 11:31:00 UTC.

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The American West’s Salt Lakes Are Turning to Dust

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-28 13:00:00 UTC.

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Weekend reads: ‘Against Reviewer 2;’ forced to grant guest authorships; problems in oversight of bat virus research in China

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

• ‘Kafkaesque nightmare’: Judge wants researcher reinstated as NIH grant PI after med school’s misconduct finding
• Publisher investigating “serious concerns” about article on ivermectin, COVID, and the microbiome
• J&J subsidiary alleges fraud in paper that linked cosmetic talc with mesothelioma
• Springer Nature retracts chapter on sign language deaf scholars called “extremely offensive”

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 289. There are more than 38,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

• “For Epistemic Respect – Against Reviewer 2.”
• “Study: PhD Researchers Forced to Grant ‘Guest Authorships.'”
• A US “Federal watchdog finds problems with NIH oversight of grant funding bat virus research in China.”
• “Science journals ban listing of ChatGPT as co-author on papers.” Nature sets out rules for AI chatbots. And another journal drafts a policy for authors.
• “Our results suggest that these models can capture the concepts in the scholarly text and produce high-quality revisions…”
• “Publish less, disrupt more.”
• “Is science really getting less disruptive — and does it matter if it is?”
• A US “Federal watchdog finds problems with NIH oversight of grant funding bat virus research in China.”
• “Dhaka University develops plagiarism punishment policy.”
• “The falsifications in science are getting better – and so are those who fight them.”
• “Taiwan ministry demands money back from Acer in plagiarism case.”
• “German universities taking six years to act on plagiarism claims.”
• “A review of ecotherapy and implications for the COVID-19 pandemic” is retracted.
• “A U.S. judge lectures the government on how academic research works.”
• “Acclaimed University of Michigan researcher leaves after articles retracted.”
• “Methodological review boards would threaten scientific creativity,” says Andrew Barnas. Original proposal here.
• “How do journals deal with problematic articles? Editorial response of journals to articles commented in PubPeer.”
• “CNET’s AI Journalist Appears to Have Committed Extensive Plagiarism.”

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

in Retraction watch on 2023-01-28 12:00:00 UTC.

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Prairie voles can find partners just fine without the ‘love hormone’ oxytocin

Prairie voles have long been heralded as models of monogamy. Now, a study suggests that the “love hormone” once thought essential for their bonding — oxytocin — might not be so necessary after all.

Interest in the romantic lives of prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) was first sparked more than 40 years ago, says Devanand Manoli, a biologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Biologists trying to capture voles to study would frequently catch two at a time, because “what they were finding were these male-female pairs,” he says. Unlike many other rodents with their myriad partners, prairie voles, it turned out, mate for life (SN: 10/5/15).

Pair-bonded prairie voles prefer each other’s company over a stranger’s and like to huddle together both in the wild and the lab. Because other vole species don’t have social behaviors as complex as prairie voles do, they have been a popular animal system for studying how social behavior evolves.

Research over the last few decades has implicated a few hormones in the brain as vital for proper vole manners, most notably oxytocin, which is also important for social behavior in humans and other animals.

Manoli and colleagues thought the oxytocin receptor, the protein that detects and reacts to oxytocin, would be the perfect test target for a new genetic engineering method based on CRISPR technology, which uses molecules from bacteria to selectively turn off genes. The researchers used the technique on vole embryos to create animals born without functioning oxytocin receptors. The team figured that the rodents wouldn’t be able to form pair-bonds — just like voles in past experiments whose oxytocin activity was blocked with drugs.

Instead, Manoli says, the researchers got “a big surprise.” The voles could form pair-bonds even without oxytocin, the team reports in the March 15 Neuron.

“I was very surprised by their results,” says Larry Young, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, who was not involved with the study but has studied oxytocin in prairie voles for decades.

A key difference between the new study and past studies that used drugs to block oxytocin is the timing of exactly when the hormone’s activity is turned off. With drugs, the voles are adults and have had exposure to oxytocin in their brains before the shutoff. With CRISPR, “these animals are born never experiencing oxytocin signaling in the brain,” says Young, whose research group has recently replicated Manoli’s experiment and found the same result.

It may be, Young says, that pair-bonding is controlled by a brain circuit that typically becomes dependent on oxytocin through exposure to it during development, like a symphony trained by a conductor. Suddenly remove that conductor and the symphony will sound discordant, whereas a jazz band that’s never practiced with a conductor fares just fine without one.

Manoli agrees that the technique’s timing matters. A secondary reason for the disparity, he says, could be that drugs often have off-target effects, such that the chemicals meant to block oxytocin could have been doing other things in the voles’ brains to affect pair-bonding. But Young disagrees. “I don’t believe that,” he says. “The [drug] that people use is very selective,” not even binding to the receptor of oxytocin’s closest molecular relative, vasopressin. 

Does this result mean that decades of past work on pair-bonding has been upended? Not quite.

“It shows us that this is a much more complicated question,” Manoli says. “The pharmacologic manipulations … suggested that [oxytocin] plays a critical role. The question is, what is that role?”

The new seemingly startling result makes sense if you look at the big picture, Manoli says. The ability for voles to pair-bond is “so critical for the survival of the species,” he says. “From a genetics perspective, it may make sense that there isn’t a single point of failure.”

The group now hopes to look at how other hormones, like vasopressin, influence pair-bonding using this relatively new genetic technique. They are also looking more closely at the voles’ behavior to be sure that the CRISPR gene editing didn’t alter it in a way they haven’t noticed yet.

In the game of vole “love,” it looks like we’re still trying to understand all the players.

in Science News on 2023-01-27 16:00:00 UTC.

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Mysterious marks on Ice Age cave art may have been a form of record keeping

As far back as roughly 25,000 years ago, Ice Age hunter-gatherers may have jotted down markings to communicate information about the behavior of their prey, a new study finds.

These markings include dots, lines and the symbol “Y,” and often accompany images of animals. Over the last 150 years, the mysterious depictions, some dating back nearly 40,000 years, have been found in hundreds of caves across Europe.

Some archaeologists have speculated that the markings might relate to keeping track of time, but the specific purpose has remained elusive (SN: 7/9/19). Now, a statistical analysis, published January 5 in Cambridge Archeological Journal, presents evidence that past people may have been recording the mating and birthing schedule of local fauna.

By comparing the marks to the animals’ life cycles, researchers showed that the number of dots or lines in a given image strongly correlates to the month of mating across all the analyzed examples, which included aurochs (an extinct species of wild cattle), bison, horses, mammoth and fish. What’s more, the position of the symbol “Y” in a sequence was predictive of birth month, suggesting that “Y” signifies “to give birth.”

The finding is one of the earliest records of a coherent notational system, the researchers say. It indicates that people at the time were able to interpret the meaning of an item’s position in a sequence and plan ahead for the distant future using a calendar of sorts — reinforcing the suggestion that they were capable of complex cognition.

“This is a really big deal cognitively,” says Ben Bacon, an independent researcher based in London. “We’re dealing with a system that has intense organization, intense logic to it.”

A furniture conservator by day, Bacon spent years poring through scientific articles to compile over 800 instances of these cave markings. From his research and reading the literature, he reasoned that the dots corresponded to the 13 lunar cycles in a year. But he thought that the hunter-gatherers would’ve been more concerned with seasonal changes than the moon.

In the new paper, he and colleagues argue that rather than pinning a calendar to astronomical events like the equinox, the hunter-gatherers started their calendar year with the snowmelt in the spring. Not only would the snowmelt be a clear point of origin, but the meteorological calendar would also account for differences in timing across locations.

For example, though snowmelt would start on different dates in different latitudes, bison would always mate approximately four lunar cycles — or months — after that region’s snowmelt, as indicated by four dots or lines.

“This is why it’s such a clever system, because it’s based on the universal,” Bacon says. “Which means if you migrate from the Pyrenees to Belgium, you can just use the same calendar.”

He needed data to prove his idea. After compiling the markings, he worked with academic researchers to identify the timing of migration, mating and birth for common Ice Age animals targeted by hunter-gatherers by using archaeological data or comparing with similar modern animals. Next, the researchers determined if the marks aligned significantly with important life events based on this calendar. When the team ran the statistical analysis, the results strongly supported Bacon’s theory.

When explaining the markings, “we’ve argued for notational systems before, but it’s always been fairly speculative as to what the people were counting and why they were counting,” says Brian Hayden, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, who peer-reviewed the paper. “This adds a lot more depth and specificity to why people were keeping calendars and how they were using them.”

Linguistic experts argue that, given the lack of conventional syntax and grammar, the marks wouldn’t be considered writing. But that doesn’t make the finding inherently less exciting, says paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger of the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar in Portugal, who wasn’t involved in the study. Writing systems are often mistakenly considered a pinnacle of achievement, when in fact writing would be developed only in cultural contexts where it’s useful, she says. Instead, it’s significant that the marks provide a way to keep records outside of the mind.

“In a way, that was the huge cognitive leap,” she says. “Suddenly, we have the ability to preserve [information] beyond the moment. We have the ability to transmit it across space and time. Everything starts to change.”

The debate over these marks’ meanings continues. Archaeologist April Nowell doesn’t buy many of the team’s assumptions. “It boggles my mind why one would need a calendar … to predict that animals were going to have offspring in the spring,” says Nowell, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. “The amount of information that this calendar is providing, if it really is a calendar, is quite minimal.”

Hayden adds that, while the basic pattern would still hold, some of the cave marks had “wiggle room for interpretation.” The next step, he says, will be to review and verify the interpretations of the marks.

in Science News on 2023-01-27 14:00:00 UTC.

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It’s possible to reach net-zero carbon emissions. Here’s how

Patricia Hidalgo-Gonzalez saw the future of energy on a broiling-hot day last September.

An email alert hit her inbox from the San Diego Gas & Electric Company. “Extreme heat straining the grid,” read the message, which was also pinged as a text to 27 million people. “Save energy to help avoid power interruptions.”

It worked. People cut their energy use. Demand plunged, blackouts were avoided and California successfully weathered a crisis exacerbated by climate change. “It was very exciting to see,” says Hidalgo-Gonzalez, an electrical engineer at the University of California, San Diego who studies renewable energy and the power grid.

This kind of collective societal response, in which we reshape how we interact with the systems that provide us energy, will be crucial as we figure out how to live on a changing planet.

Earth has warmed at least 1.1 degrees Celsius since the 19th century, when the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels began belching heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Scientists agree that only drastic action to cut emissions can keep the planet from blasting past 1.5 degrees of warming — a threshold beyond which the consequences become even more catastrophic than the rising sea levels, extreme weather and other impacts the world is already experiencing.

The goal is to achieve what’s known as net-zero emissions, where any greenhouse gases still entering the atmosphere are balanced by those being removed — and to do it as soon as we can.

Scientists say it is possible to swiftly transform the ways we produce and consume energy. To show the way forward, researchers have set out paths toward a world where human activities generate little to no carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases — a decarbonized economy.

The key to a decarbonized future lies in producing vast amounts of new electricity from sources that emit little to none of the gases, such as wind, solar and hydropower, and then transforming as much of our lives and our industries as possible to run off those sources. Clean electricity needs to power not only the planet’s current energy use but also the increased demands of a growing global population.

Once humankind has switched nearly entirely to clean electricity, we will also have to counter­balance the carbon dioxide we still emit — yes, we will still emit some — by pulling an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it somewhere permanently.

Achieving net-zero emissions won’t be easy. Getting to effective and meaningful action on climate change requires overcoming decades of inertia and denial about the scope and magnitude of the problem. Nations are falling well short of existing pledges to reduce emissions, and global warming remains on track to charge past 1.5 degrees perhaps even by the end of this decade.

Yet there is hope. The rate of growth in CO₂ emissions is slowing globally — down from 3 percent annual growth in the 2000s to half a percent annual growth in the last decade, according to the Global Carbon Project, which quantifies greenhouse gas emissions.

There are signs annual emissions could start shrinking. And over the last two years, the United States, by far the biggest cumulative contributor to global warming, has passed several pieces of federal legislation that include financial incentives to accelerate the transition to clean energy. “We’ve never seen anything at this scale,” says Erin Mayfield, an energy researcher at Dartmouth College.

Though the energy transition will require many new technologies, such as innovative ways to permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere, many of the solutions, such as wind and solar power, are in hand — “stuff we already have,” Mayfield says.

The current state of carbon dioxide emissions

Of all the emissions that need to be slashed, the most important is carbon dioxide, which comes from many sources such as cars and trucks and coal-burning power plants. The gas accounted for 79 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. The next most significant greenhouse gas, at 11 percent of emissions in the United States, is methane, which comes from oil and gas operations as well as livestock, landfills and other land uses.

The amount of methane may seem small, but it is mighty — over the short term, methane is more than 80 times as efficient at trapping heat as carbon dioxide is, and methane’s atmospheric levels have nearly tripled in the last two centuries. Other greenhouse gases include nitrous oxides, which come from sources such as applying fertilizer to crops or burning fuels and account for 7 percent of U.S. emissions, and human-made fluorinated gases such as hydrofluorocarbons that account for 3 percent.

Globally, emissions are dominated by large nations that produce lots of energy. The United States alone emits around 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. It is responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions throughout history and ceded the spot for top annual emitter to China only in the mid-2000s. India ranks third.

Because of the United States’ role in producing most of the carbon pollution to date, many researchers and advocates argue that it has the moral responsibility to take the global lead on cutting emissions. And the United States has the most ambitious goals of the major emitters, at least on paper. President Joe Biden has said the country is aiming to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Leaders in China and India have set net-zero goals of 2060 and 2070, respectively.

Under the auspices of a 2015 international climate change treaty known as the Paris agreement, 193 nations plus the European Union have pledged to reduce their emissions. The agreement aims to keep global warming well below 2 degrees, and ideally to 1.5 degrees, above preindustrial levels. But it is insufficient. Even if all countries cut their emissions as much as they have promised under the Paris agreement, the world would likely blow past 2 degrees of warming before the end of this century. 

Every nation continues to find its own path forward. “At the end of the day, all the solutions are going to be country-specific,” says Sha Yu, an earth scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and University of Maryland’s Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Md. “There’s not a universal fix.”

But there are some common themes for how to accomplish this energy transition — ways to focus our efforts on the things that will matter most. These are efforts that go beyond individual consumer choices such as whether to fly less or eat less meat. They instead penetrate every aspect of how society produces and consumes energy.

Such massive changes will need to overcome a lot of resistance, including from companies that make money off old forms of energy as well as politicians and lobbyists. But if society can make these changes, it will rank as one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments. We will have tackled a problem of our own making and conquered it.

Here’s a look at what we’ll need to do.

Make as much clean electricity as possible

To meet the need for energy without putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, countries would need to dramatically scale up the amount of clean energy they produce. Fortunately, most of that energy would be generated by technologies we already have — renewable sources of energy including wind and solar power.

“Renewables, far and wide, are the key pillar in any net-zero scenario,” says Mayfield, who worked on an influential 2021 report from Princeton University’s Net-Zero America project, which focused on the U.S. economy.

The Princeton report envisions wind and solar power production roughly quadrupling by 2030 to get the United States to net-zero emissions by 2050. That would mean building many new solar and wind farms, so many that in the most ambitious scenario, wind turbines would cover an area the size of Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma combined.

How much solar and wind power would we need?

Achieving net-zero would require a dramatic increase in solar and wind power in the United States. These maps show the footprint of existing solar and wind infrastructure in the contiguous United States (as of 2020) and a possible footprint for a midrange scenario for 2050. Gray shows population density of 100 people per square kilometer or greater.

Such a scale-up is only possible because prices to produce renewable energy have plunged. The cost of wind power has dropped nearly 70 percent, and solar power nearly 90 percent, over the last decade in the United States. “That was a game changer that I don’t know if some people were expecting,” Hidalgo-Gonzalez says.

Globally the price drop in renewables has allowed growth to surge; China, for instance, installed a record 55 gigawatts of solar power capacity in 2021, for a total of 306 gigawatts or nearly 13 percent of the nation’s installed capacity to generate electricity. China is almost certain to have had another record year for solar power installations in 2022.

Challenges include figuring out ways to store and transmit all that extra electricity, and finding locations to build wind and solar power installations that are acceptable to local communities. Other types of low-carbon power, such as hydropower and nuclear power, which comes with its own public resistance, will also likely play a role going forward.

Get efficient and go electric

The drive toward net-zero emissions also requires boosting energy efficiency across industries and electrifying as many aspects of modern life as possible, such as transportation and home heating.

Some industries are already shifting to more efficient methods of production, such as steelmaking in China that incorporates hydrogen-based furnaces that are much cleaner than coal-fired ones, Yu says. In India, simply closing down the most inefficient coal-burning power plants provides the most bang for the buck, says Shayak Sengupta, an energy and policy expert at the Observer Research Foundation America think tank in Washington, D.C. “The list has been made up,” he says, of the plants that should close first, “and that’s been happening.”

To achieve net-zero, the United States would need to increase its share of electric heat pumps, which heat houses much more cleanly than gas- or oil-fired appliances, from around 10 percent in 2020 to as much as 80 percent by 2050, according to the Princeton report. Federal subsidies for these sorts of appliances are rolling out in 2023 as part of the new Inflation Reduction Act, legislation that contains a number of climate-related provisions.

Shifting cars and other vehicles away from burning gasoline to running off of electricity would also lead to significant emissions cuts. In a major 2021 report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine said that one of the most important moves in decarbonizing the U.S. economy would be having electric vehicles account for half of all new vehicle sales by 2030. That’s not impossible; electric car sales accounted for nearly 6 percent of new sales in the United States in 2022, which is still a low number but nearly double the previous year.

Make clean fuels

Some industries such as manufacturing and transportation can’t be fully electrified using current technologies — battery powered airplanes, for instance, will probably never be feasible for long-duration flights. Technologies that still require liquid fuels will need to switch from gas, oil and other fossil fuels to low-carbon or zero-carbon fuels.

One major player will be fuels extracted from plants and other biomass, which take up carbon dioxide as they grow and emit it when they die, making them essentially carbon neutral over their lifetime. To create biofuels, farmers grow crops, and others process the harvest in conversion facilities into fuels such as hydrogen. Hydrogen, in turn, can be substituted for more carbon-intensive substances in various industrial processes such as making plastics and fertilizers — and maybe even as fuel for airplanes someday.

In one of the Princeton team’s scenarios, the U.S. Midwest and Southeast would become peppered with biomass conversion plants by 2050, so that fuels can be processed close to where crops are grown. Many of the biomass feedstocks could potentially grow alongside food crops or replace other, nonfood crops.

Cut methane and other non-CO₂ emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions other than carbon dioxide will also need to be slashed. In the United States, the majority of methane emissions come from livestock, landfills and other agricultural sources, as well as scattered sources such as forest fires and wetlands. But about one-third of U.S. methane emissions come from oil, gas and coal operations. These may be some of the first places that regulators can target for cleanup, especially “super emitters” that can be pinpointed using satellites and other types of remote sensing.

In 2021, the United States and the European Union unveiled what became a global methane pledge endorsed by 150 countries to reduce emissions. There is, however, no enforcement of it yet. And China, the world’s largest methane emitter, has not signed on.

Nitrous oxides could be reduced by improving soil management techniques, and fluorinated gases by finding alternatives and improving production and recycling efforts.

Sop up as much CO₂ as possible

Once emissions have been cut as much as possible, reaching net-zero will mean removing and storing an equivalent amount of carbon to what society still emits.

One solution already in use is to capture carbon dioxide produced at power plants and other industrial facilities and store it permanently somewhere, such as deep underground. Globally there are around 35 such operations, which collectively draw down around 45 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. About 200 new plants are on the drawing board to be operating by the end of this decade, according to the International Energy Agency.

The Princeton report envisions carbon capture being added to almost every kind of U.S. industrial plant, from cement production to biomass conversion. Much of the carbon dioxide would be liquefied and piped along more than 100,000 kilometers of new pipelines to deep geologic storage, primarily along the Texas Gulf Coast, where underground reservoirs can be used to trap it permanently. This would be a massive infrastructure effort. Building this pipeline network could cost up to $230 billion, including $13 billion for early buy-in from local communities and permitting alone.

Another way to sop up carbon is to get forests and soils to take up more. That could be accomplished by converting crops that are relatively carbon-intensive, such as corn to be used in ethanol, to energy-rich grasses that can be used for more efficient biofuels, or by turning some cropland or pastures back into forest. It’s even possible to sprinkle crushed rock onto croplands, which accelerates natural weathering processes that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Another way to increase the amount of carbon stored in the land is to reduce the amount of the Amazon rainforest that is cut down each year. “For a few countries like Brazil, preventing deforestation will be the first thing you can do,” Yu says.

When it comes to climate change, there’s no time to waste

The Princeton team estimates that the United States would need to invest at least an additional $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years for the country to have a shot at achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Congress has begun ramping up funding with two large pieces of federal legislation it passed in 2021 and 2022. Those steer more than $1 trillion toward modernizing major parts of the nation’s economy over a decade — including investing in the energy transition to help fight climate change.

Between now and 2030, solar and wind power, plus increasing energy efficiency, can deliver about half of the emissions reductions needed for this decade, the International Energy Agency estimates. After that, the primary drivers would need to be increasing electrification, carbon capture and storage, and clean fuels such as hydrogen.

The trick is to do all of this without making people’s lives worse. Developing nations need to be able to supply energy for their economies to develop. Communities whose jobs relied on fossil fuels need to have new economic opportunities.

Julia Haggerty, a geographer at Montana State University in Bozeman who studies communities that are dependent on natural resources, says that those who have money and other resources to support the transition will weather the change better than those who are under-resourced now. “At the landscape of states and regions, it just remains incredibly uneven,” she says.

The ongoing energy transition also faces unanticipated shocks such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which sent energy prices soaring in Europe, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which initially slashed global emissions but later saw them rebound.

But the technologies exist for us to wean our lives off fossil fuels. And we have the inventiveness to develop more as needed. Transforming how we produce and use energy, as rapidly as possible, is a tremendous challenge — but one that we can meet head-on. For Mayfield, getting to net-zero by 2050 is a realistic goal for the United States. “I think it’s possible,” she says. “But it doesn’t mean there’s not a lot more work to be done.”

in Science News on 2023-01-27 12:00:00 UTC.

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How Sensor-Dangling Helicopters Can Help Beat the Water Crisis

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-27 12:00:00 UTC.

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Software highlight: Michalis Pagkalos: Dendrify

Michalis Pagkalos will introduce and discuss Dendrify, a framework for incorporating dendrites to spiking neural networks, in this session.

• Date: February 7, 1600 UTC (Click here to see your local time) (Add to calendar).
• Zoom (link)

The abstract for the talk is below:

Current SNNs studies frequently ignore dendrites, the thin membranous extensions of biological neurons that receive and preprocess nearly all synaptic inputs in the brain. However, decades of experimental and theoretical research suggest that dendrites possess compelling computational capabilities that greatly influence neuronal and circuit functions. Notably, standard point-neuron networks cannot adequately capture most hallmark dendritic properties. Meanwhile, biophysically detailed neuron models can be suboptimal for practical applications due to their complexity, and high computational cost. For this reason, we introduce Dendrify, a new theoretical framework combined with an open-source Python package (compatible with Brian2) that facilitates the development of bioinspired SNNs. Dendrify allows the creation of reduced compartmental neuron models with simplified yet biologically relevant dendritic and synaptic integrative properties. Such models strike a good balance between flexibility, performance, and biological accuracy, allowing us to explore dendritic contributions to network-level functions while paving the way for developing more realistic neuromorphic systems.

• Manuscript: Introducing the Dendrify framework for incorporating dendrites to spiking neural networks | Nature Communications
• Source code: Poirazi-Lab/dendrify: Introducing dendrites to spiking neural networks. Designed for the Brian 2 simulator.
• Documentation: https://dendrify.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

in INCF/OCNS Software Working Group on 2023-01-27 11:01:32 UTC.

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‘Kafkaesque nightmare’: Judge wants researcher reinstated as NIH grant PI after med school’s misconduct finding

A federal judge has denied a request for a preliminary injunction by a breast cancer researcher at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn who sued the university last year after an institutional investigation determined that she committed research misconduct. 

However, the judge noted “troubling aspects of this case that bear on serious public health concerns” – namely the discontinuation of the scientist’s research – and also expressed concern about SUNY Downstate and the NIH’s treatment of her. 

As we’ve previously reported, Stacy Blain, an associate professor of pediatrics and cell biology at SUNY Downstate, has alleged the university discriminated against her for decades because of her sex, and that the investigation’s finding of misconduct was the result of retaliation after she complained of the discrimination. 

In a request for a preliminary injunction filed the same day as she filed the lawsuit, Blain asked a judge to order SUNY Downstate not to initiate disciplinary proceedings or other “adverse employment actions” against her, not to contact journals asking for retractions of her papers, and to reinstate her as the principal investigator on two grants from the National Institutes of Health from which she’d been removed. 

In denying the request, Judge Frederic Block ruled this week that Blain had failed to prove “that there is a likelihood of success that she will prevail on the merits.” He also wrote:

The tangled circumstances that flowed from the anonymous whistleblower’s complaint back in 2019 has embroiled Dr. Blain in a Kafkaesque nightmare. She stands accused by SUNY Downstate of research misconduct, but she might very well be exonerated at her disciplinary hearing. Only time will tell.

On the federal level, ORI is reviewing the finding of research misconduct. Its decision will not be rendered for some indeterminate period of time and there is no certainty that it will agree that Dr. Blain is culpable. 

The opinion summarized the evidence that Block found concerning. Among it was testimony from Andrew Koff, a molecular biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. 

Koff testified that an experimental cancer drug Blain had invented could make it to clinical trials “within two years,” and that SUNY Downstate’s requests to retract Blain’s papers would “end the program.” He also said that he disagreed with the conclusion in SUNY Downstate’s investigation of Blain that the data falsification would be obvious to any cell biologist. 

Koff – whom Block described as “one of the world’s leading molecular biologists” – serves as a scientific advisor to Concarlo Therapeutics, the biotech company Blain founded in 2016 to commercialize her research. A lawyer for Blain said Koff did disclose his role in court. 

Block wrote that, as a result of the evidence Blain presented, he had: 

became concerned about NIH’s wisdom in jettisoning Dr. Blain. Her discovery of the drug that holds out the promise of reducing cancerous growths suggests that it was in the public’s best interest for NIH to have allowed her to continue her quest to rid the world of cancer.

It is the Court’s hope that Dr. Blain can be returned as the PI on the grant. Although the Court has acknowledged that it has no jurisdiction to adjudicate the decisions and actions of SUNY Downstate, ORI and NIH, it believes that this is a rare occasion when a court should stray from the strictures of its jurisdiction and speak to the public in dicta because of the profound public interests at stake.

Still, Block concluded that the evidence Blain presented thus far did not establish sex discrimination or retaliation by SUNY Downstate: 

There is no evidence that SUNY Downstate took any action that it would not have taken against a similarly situated male professor.

Block also wrote that he believed “the investigation of Dr. Blain was not in SUNY Downstate’s reputational or financial interest,” and was “convinced that only the most serious and legitimate reasons would lead SUNY Downstate to act against those interests.” 

A spokesperson for SUNY Downstate has previously told us that the university “does not comment on pending litigation.” 

James Walden, an attorney at Walden, Macht & Haran in New York who represents Blain, commented: 

First, we thank U.S. District Judge Frederic Block, for identifying and addressing what is at the heart of this matter.  As Judge Block stated, SUNY’s plagued research misconduct investigation against Dr. Blain has been a “Kafkaesque nightmare.”  As we have maintained all along, this investigation, as Judge Block found, was “compromised.”  For example, Judge Block was “greatly troubled” by the final investigation report’s exclusion of exculpatory evidence; Judge Block questioned the integrity of the investigation committee, noting that they failed to include witness statements supporting Dr. Blain’s research or interview witnesses who would have testified that Dr. Blain did not and would never engage in research misconduct.  Judge Block emphasized that one of the world’s leading molecular biologists – who was “eminently qualified” to take issue with the investigation committee’s findings – disagreed with the investigation committee’s conclusion that Dr. Blain committed research misconduct. 

For these reasons, Judge Block expressed that SUNY’s actions against Dr. Blain have harmed science and raised “serious public health concerns” and, to correct this travesty, Dr. Blain should be “returned as the [principal investigator] on the grant” from which she was removed as a result of the investigation.  The fact that a federal judge took the extraordinary step of making a public pronouncement of his disapproval and concern speaks volumes about the case and the integrity of Dr. Blain’s research. 

Although Judge Block did not grant Dr. Blain a preliminary injunction against SUNY, as Judge Block noted, all of the claims litigated survive and remain to be litigated with full discovery as to SUNY’s biased and unfair investigation.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

in Retraction watch on 2023-01-27 11:00:00 UTC.

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204 Free Episode Transcript

This is the FREE transcript for BS 204 with Guy Caldwell.

Additional transcripts are available via MyLibsyn Premium, Patreon, and at brainsciencepodcast.com. Scroll up/down for the episode audio.

© copyright 2023 Virginia Campbell, MD

in Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, MD: Neuroscience for Everyone on 2023-01-27 10:30:00 UTC.

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Highlights of the BMC Series – December 2022

BMC Ecology and Evolution – An insight into cancer palaeobiology: does the Mesozoic neoplasm support tissue organization field theory of tumorigenesis?

Metoposaurus krasiejowensis dwelled in what we now call Poland during the Late Triassic Period around 227–216.5 years ago. Discovered in Krasiejów – the village to which it owes its name – Metoposaurus krasiejowensis is the most abundant metoposaurid amphibian from the site. 

Unlike amniotes, the occurrences of cancer in anamniotes is scarcely documented. In this BMC Ecology and Evolution paper, Surmik et al., provided the first documentation of primary malignant bone tumor in a vertebra of a Mesozoic non-amniote. Gross anatomy, histology and x-ray computed micro-tomography revealed aggressive bone destruction and massive new bone formation, indicating a sarcoma of the osteosarcoma or chondrosarcoma variety. Using sections from the sample, the researchers found that the osteosarcoma penetrated deep from the surface of the bone into its interior. 

The discovery of neoplasm in this ancient patient not only expands our knowledge on the ancient ancestry of cancer, but can shine light onto the pathophysiological aspects of carcinogenesis. This in turn, may aid in the development of new treatment strategies for cancer. 

This publication is a part of the BMC Ecology and Evolution Collection on the “Evolutionary Biology and Ecology of Cancer”. To find out more, visit: https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/ECEVC.

BMC Medical Ethics – Effect of medical researchers’ creative performance on scientific misconduct: a moral psychology perspective

When does being good allow us to be bad? According to the theory of moral licensing, when an individual behaves in a way they consider moral, this increases confidence in their self image. This moral confidence then ‘licenses’ them against immoral choices in the future. A simple example would be, someone indulging themselves with unhealthy food, after a period of eating healthy food. Moral licensing is a theory widely used in social psychology to explain human behavior and moral-regulation. 

In an effort to better understand the influence of moral licensing on scientific misconduct, researchers from Beijing Information Science & Technology University and Hebei University of Engineering constructed a moderated mediation model. 287 medical researchers from China were recruited for the study, wherein researchers found that creative performance was positively associated with scientific misconduct. Zhang et al. argue that researchers with higher creativity are more likely to establish moral licensing, resulting in subsequent scientific misconduct. However, they also explained that participants with high levels of moral identity – the importance of morality to one’s identity – are more likely to restrain the establishment of moral licensing. 

Although an individual’s characteristics can play a role in scientific misconduct, other factors such as unethical academic climate and flawed organizational systems have been shown to encourage such behaviors. A holistic approach in limiting the occurrence of misconduct in science is required. This study published in BMC Medical Ethics provides a moral psychology perspective, and practical significance for prevention of scientific misconduct in medical research institutions.

BMC Gastroenterology – Markers of immune dysregulation in response to the ageing gut: insights from aged murine gut microbiota transplants

As humans live longer, the older population grows dramatically. This shift in the population has important implications for society. Understanding the intricacies of aging is crucial, to ensure that humans can live not only longer, but also healthier lives. The proper functioning of the host-immune system is largely affected by the gut microbiome, and age-related immune system decline significantly affects the health of older people. However, genetic evidence of age-related immune changes in the gut microbiota, remains under-explored. 

A recent study published in BMC Gastroenterology investigated a total of 112 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of small intestine samples from young mice transplanted with old donor gut microbiota. Using estimations from The Cancer Genome Atlas and the Genotype-Tissue Expression project, the association between the immune-associated DEGs and the microenvironment status in the normal gut tissues were established. Giannos and co-authors identified a 25-gene signature of immune-associated DEGs. Among others, these DEGs were associated with naive T-cell, effector memory T-cell, and central memory T-cell. In the recipient mice transplanted with old gut microbiota, antigen presentation was the most down-regulated pathway. These genes may have a role as candidate markers of immune dysregulation, in the aging gut. 

Disturbance in the composition and the diversity of the gut microbiota, coincides with the decline in immune homeostasis during aging. This study gives insight into the gene signatures associated with an aging gut, and the relationship between aging in the gut microbiota and immune functionality.

BMC Women’s Health – Barriers to uptake of cervical cancer screening services in low-and-middle-income countries: a systematic review

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women globally. Almost all cervical cancer cases are linked to human papillomaviruses infection and vaccination, and screening remains a key component in elimination of cervical cancer. Due to barriers to screening uptake, low and middle income countries bear the largest burden of cervical cancer mortality. Uncovering the barriers along with implementation of measures that prioritize increased screening uptake is crucial.

In a study published in BMC Women’s Health, researchers performed a systematic review to investigate the barriers to cervical cancer screening among women in low and middle income countries. After a screening of 2148 articles, 79 studies published between 2010 and 2020 were included, with the majority of the studies undertaken in Africa. Including studies using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods study designs, the authors identified five categories that described these barriers:

• Individual or personal barriers (including lack of knowledge, awareness and understanding of screening)
• Social barriers (including gender relations, community obstacles, misconceptions about screening and cancer)
• Cultural, traditional or religious barriers (concerns norms and expectations associated with culture and religious beliefs)
• Health system barriers (including lack of policies and services, lack of resources, and overall design, function and implementation of health systems)
• Structural barriers (including but not limited to financial constraints, unaffordable screening cost, low levels of education)

This review provides a comprehensive overview of the barriers of cervical cancer screening uptake and shows that the barriers are complex and layered. There is an urgent need to tackle the barriers from all directions, from implementation of policies supporting the sexual and reproductive health of women and girls, to addressing misconceptions prevalent in many communities. The researchers leave us with a takeaway message: “It is only in reducing the barriers to cervical cancer screening that so many women continue to face, that the aims of the WHO’s global strategy to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem will be fulfilled.”

BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making – Measurement of provider fidelity to immunization guidelines: a mixed-methods study on the feasibility of documenting patient refusals of the human papillomavirus vaccine

Global HPV immunization coverage remains sub-optimal. While parental hesitancy is a known significant barrier, provider recommendation remains the strongest patient-level predictor of HPV vaccine uptake. To improve HPV vaccine uptake, further refinement of more structured electronic health records is needed. Adding a patient refusal to vaccine measure can provide a better understanding of all instances where a provider recommended vaccination, and whether it led to refusal or vaccination. However, many electronic health records are not designed to document vaccine refusals in a way that is consistent and efficient. 

To improve healthcare provider performance and professional practice, audit and feedback plays an important role. In this study published in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, a parent trial was done to compare coach-based versus web-based practice to increase HPV vaccination uptake in community-based pediatric practices. Secondary data analysis was then conducted to look at whether adding a patient refusal measure as a parameter can improve the electronic health records and provider fidelity in the context of human papillomavirus vaccine. The researchers reported that measuring documented vaccine refusals, together with documented vaccine administration enables a more accurate measurement of provider compliance to vaccination guidelines. Although they found mixed results when it comes to feasibility and limited adoption among the pediatric practices, they found strong use among practices that adopt the method, along with ability to identify patient demographic patterns of vaccine refusals. 

Enabling a more systematic and streamlined documentation of vaccine refusals can aid in future assessment and feedback efforts by improving adherence to HPV vaccination guidelines. On top of addressing vaccine hesitancy, implementation of an efficient patient refusal documentation may aid in increased immunization coverage. 

The post Highlights of the BMC Series – December 2022 appeared first on BMC Series blog.

in BMC Series blog on 2023-01-27 10:28:41 UTC.

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BS 204 Guy Caldwell: The Role of Molecular Biology in Neuroscience

This month's episode is an encore presentation of an interview with Dr. Guy Caldwell from the University of Alabama. Dr. Caldwell explains how tools from molecular biology make it possible to use the famous C. Elegans roundworm to improve our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's disease.

Dr. Caldwell will return to Brain Science next month to give us an update on his work.

Links and References:

• Visit the Wormshack at the University of Alabama
• Molecular neurodegeneration, 14(1), 29. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13024-019-0329-1
• C. elegans Alpha-Synuclein Models of Parkinson's Disease. Brain sciences, 9(4), 73. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci9040073
• See show notes for BSP 59 for additional references.
• Scroll up or click here for the free episode transcript.

•  brainsciencepodcast.com/donations 

Announcements:

Please take a few minutes to complete this audience survey.

• Contact Dr. Campbell if you are interested a listener meet-up or sponsoring a talk by Dr. Campbell during her trip to Europe in April 2023.
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in Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, MD: Neuroscience for Everyone on 2023-01-27 10:00:00 UTC.

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Schneider Shorts 27.01.2023 – The Biggest Fraudster of All

in For Better Science on 2023-01-27 06:23:42 UTC.

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Publisher investigating “serious concerns” about article on ivermectin, COVID, and the microbiome

The publisher Frontiers has published an expression of concern for an article that proposed “ivermectin protects against COVID-19” via effects on the microbiome.  

The article, “Microbiome-Based Hypothesis on Ivermectin’s Mechanism in COVID-19: Ivermectin Feeds Bifidobacteria to Boost Immunity,” was published in July 2022 in Frontiers in Microbiology. The sole author, Sabine Hazan, is affiliated with ProgenaBiome, a company based in Ventura, Calif.  that “spearheads the movement of validating, verifying, and clinically applying its sequencing data, to better understand the microbiome.” 

The abstract of the article stated: 

Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic agent that has gained attention as a potential COVID-19 therapeutic. It is a compound of the type Avermectin, which is a fermented by-product of Streptomyces avermitilis. Bifidobacterium is a member of the same phylum as Streptomyces spp., suggesting it may have a symbiotic relation with Streptomyces. Decreased Bifidobacterium levels are observed in COVID-19 susceptibility states, including old age, autoimmune disorder, and obesity. We hypothesize that Ivermectin, as a by-product of Streptomyces fermentation, is capable of feeding Bifidobacterium, thereby possibly preventing against COVID-19 susceptibilities. Moreover, Bifidobacterium may be capable of boosting natural immunity, offering more direct COVID-19 protection. These data concord with our study, as well as others, that show Ivermectin protects against COVID-19.

The article’s conclusion, however, focused on ivermectin as a therapy for COVID rather than a prophylactic: 

We are hypothesizing the IVM mechanism of action as a therapeutic for COVID-19 is through feeding of Bifidobacterium, which then inhibits cytokine function and tames the cytokine storm (Figure 1). As such, IVM should be administered at the time of the cytokine storm.

According to Frontiers, the paper has received more than 50,000 views, more than the number of views for 99% of the publisher’s other articles. Altmetric shows thousands of tweets about the article, giving it an attention score in the top 5% of all the research the company monitors. The article has not been cited in other scientific papers, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

Starting in December 2022, commenters on PubPeer posted questions about the paper, such as why it referred to data that it did not appear to provide, and missing or inappropriate citations. 

After the fifth posted comment, about the format of a company name in the conflict of interest statement, Hazan replied: “Yes I can correct that. Thank you.”

Additional commenters posted more questions, including Elisabeth Bik, who worked in microbiome research at Stanford and a private company before her current fame as a scientific sleuth, but Hazan did not reply again. 

On January 5, Frontiers published the following expression of concern for the paper: 

With this notice, Frontiers states its awareness of the serious concerns raised regarding this article, which are now under investigation. The situation will be updated as soon as the investigation is complete.

As is typical for Frontiers, but not considered best practice, the original article page does not link to the expression of concern or otherwise indicate it exists. The editorial office for the company did not respond to our request for comment. 

Hazan did not reply to Retraction Watch’s request for comment, but an account on Twitter that interacts with her frequently and called her a “beautiful, intelligent, innovative woman-of-color scientist,” tagged us in a tweet after we sent our email. Hazan also tweeted the following about scrutiny of her work: 

In February 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration sent Hazan a warning letter in her capacity as president of Topelia Therapeutics, informing her of “objectionable conditions” its inspectors observed in a visit to her company’s clinical research site. Specifically, the company had continued to enroll, randomize, and administer investigational drugs to research participants after the ethical approval for its protocol from an institutional review board had lapsed.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

in Retraction watch on 2023-01-26 20:52:39 UTC.

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Birds that dive may be at greater risk of extinction

Birds that dive underwater — such as penguins, loons and grebes — may be more likely to go extinct than their nondiving kin, a new study finds.

Many water birds have evolved highly specialized bodies and behaviors that facilitate diving. Now, an analysis of the evolutionary history of more than 700 water bird species shows that once a bird group gains the ability to dive, the change is irreversible. That inflexibility could help explain why diving birds have an elevated extinction rate compared with nondiving birds, researchers report in the Dec. 21 Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“There are substantial morphological adaptations for diving,” says Catherine Sheard, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Bristol in England, who was not involved with the study. For instance, birds that plunge into the water from the air, such as gannets and some pelicans, may have tweaks to the neck muscles and the bones in the chest. 

It’s possible that some diving birds are evolving under an evolutionary “ratchet,” where adaptations to exploit a certain food source or habitat unlock some new opportunities, but also encourage ever more specialized evolutionary tailoring. These birds may become trapped in their ways, increasing their risk of extinction. That’s especially true if their habitat rapidly changes in some negative way, possibly because of human-caused climate change (SN: 1/16/20).

Evolutionary biologists Josh Tyler and Jane Younger investigated the evolution of diving in Aequorlitornithes, a collection of 727 water bird species across 11 bird groups. The team divided species into either nondiving birds, or one of three diving types: foot-propelled pursuit (such as loons and grebes), wing-propelled pursuit (like penguins and auks) and the plunge divers.

Diving has evolved at least 14 separate times in the water birds, but there were no instances where diving birds reverted to a nondiving form, the researchers found.

The scientists also explored the link between diving and the development of new species, or their demise, in various bird lineages. Among 236 diving bird species, 75, or 32 percent, were part of lineages that are experiencing 0.02 more species extinctions per million years than the generation of new species. This elevated extinction rate was more common in the wing-propelled and foot-propelled pursuit divers compared with plunge divers. Bird lineages that don’t dive, on the other hand, generated 0.1 more new species per million years than the rate of species dying out.

“The more specialized you become, the more reliant you are on a particular diet, foraging strategy or environment,” says Tyler, of the University of Bath in England. “The range of environments available for foraging is much larger for the nondiving birds than for the specialist divers, and this may play into their ability to adapt and thrive.”

Within diving bird groups, the less specialized, the better. Take penguins, a group that has become the subject of a fair share of conservation concern (SN: 8/1/18). The researchers point out that gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) — which have a broad diet — have larger population sizes than related chinstrap penguins (P. antarcticus) that eat mostly krill, and may actually be as many as four very recently diverged species. 

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature considers both penguin species to be of “least concern” in terms of imminent extinction risk. But chinstrap numbers are declining in some areas, while gentoo population numbers remain generally stable.

If some diving birds are being trapped in their environments by their own adaptations, that doesn’t bode well for their long-term survival, say Tyler and Younger, who is at the University of Tasmania in Hobart.

According to the IUCN, 156 species, or about one-fifth, of the 727 species of water birds are considered vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. The researchers calculate that of the 75 diving bird species from lineages with heightened extinction rates, 24 species, or nearly one-third, are already listed as threatened.

in Science News on 2023-01-26 13:00:00 UTC.

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Fossils suggest early primates lived in a once-swampy Arctic

The Arctic today is a hostile place for most primates. But a series of fossils found since the 1970s suggest that wasn’t always the case.

Dozens of fossilized teeth and jaw bones unearthed in northern Canada belonged to two species of early primates — or at least close relatives of primates — that lived in the Arctic around 52 million years ago, researchers report January 25 in PLOS ONE. These remains are the first primate-like fossils ever discovered in the Arctic and tell of a groundhog-sized animal that may have skittered across trees in a swamp that once existed above the Arctic Circle.  

The Arctic was significantly warmer during that time. But creatures still had to adapt to extreme conditions such as long winter months without sunlight. These challenges make the presence of primate-like creatures in the Arctic “incredibly surprising,” says coauthor Chris Beard, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. “No other primate or primate relative has ever been found this far north so far.”

Between frigid temperatures, limited plant growth and months of perpetual darkness, living in the modern Arctic isn’t easy. This is especially true for primates, which evolved from small, tree-dwelling creatures that largely fed on fruit (SN: 6/5/13). To this day, most primates — humans and few other outliers like Japan’s snow monkeys excepted — tend to stick to tropical and subtropical forests, largely found around the equator.

But these forests haven’t always been confined to their present location. During the early Eocene Epoch, which started around 56 million years ago, the planet underwent a period of intense warming that allowed forests and their warm-loving residents to expand northward (SN: 11/3/15).

Scientists know about this early Arctic climate in part because of decades of paleontological work on Ellesmere Island in northern Canada. These digs revealed that the area was once dominated by swamps not unlike those found in the southeastern United States today. This ancient, warm, wet Arctic environment was home to a wide array of heat-loving animals, including giant tapirs and crocodile relatives.

For the new study, Beard and his colleagues examined dozens of teeth and jawbone fossils found in the area, concluding that they belong to two species, Ignacius mckennai and Ignacius dawsonae. These two species belonged to a now-extinct genus of small mammals that was widespread across North America during the Eocene. The Arctic variants probably made their way north as the planet warmed, taking advantage of the new habitat opening up near the poles.

Scientists have long debated whether this lineage can be considered true primates or whether they were simply close relatives. Regardless, it’s still “really weird and unexpected” to find primates or their relatives in the area, says Mary Silcox, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

For one thing, Ellesmere Island was already north of the Arctic Circle 52 million years ago. So while conditions may have been warmer and wetter, the swamp was plunged into continuous darkness during the winter months.

Newly arrived Ignacius would have had to adapt to these conditions. Unlike their southern kin, the Arctic Ignacius had unusually strong jaws and teeth suited to eating hard foods, the researchers found. This may have helped these early primates feed on nuts and seeds over the winter, when fruit wasn’t as readily available.

This research can shed light on how animals can adapt to live in extreme conditions. “Ellesmere Island is arguably the best deep time analog for a mild, ice-free Arctic,” says Jaelyn Eberle, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Studying how plants and animals adapted to this remarkable period in Arctic history, Beard says, could offer clues to the Arctic’s future residents.

in Science News on 2023-01-25 19:00:00 UTC.

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These shape-shifting devices melt and re-form thanks to magnetic fields

Shape-shifting liquid metal robots might not be limited to science fiction anymore.

Miniature machines can switch from solid to liquid and back again to squeeze into tight spaces and perform tasks like soldering a circuit board, researchers report January 25 in Matter.

This phase-shifting property, which can be controlled remotely with a magnetic field, is thanks to the metal gallium. Researchers embedded the metal with magnetic particles to direct the metal’s movements with magnets. This new material could help scientists develop soft, flexible robots that can shimmy through narrow passages and be guided externally.  

Scientists have been developing magnetically controlled soft robots for years. Most existing materials for these bots are made of either stretchy but solid materials, which can’t pass through the narrowest of spaces, or magnetic liquids, which are fluid but unable to carry heavy objects (SN: 7/18/19).

In the new study, researchers blended both approaches after finding inspiration from nature (SN: 3/3/21). Sea cucumbers, for instance, “can very rapidly and reversibly change their stiffness,” says mechanical engineer Carmel Majidi of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “The challenge for us as engineers is to mimic that in the soft materials systems.”

So the team turned to gallium, a metal that melts at about 30° Celsius — slightly above room temperature. Rather than connecting a heater to a chunk of the metal to change its state, the researchers expose it to a rapidly changing magnetic field to liquefy it. The alternating magnetic field generates electricity within the gallium, causing it to heat up and melt. The material resolidifies when left to cool to room temperature.

Since magnetic particles are sprinkled throughout the gallium, a permanent magnet can drag it around. In solid form, a magnet can move the material at a speed of about 1.5 meters per second. The upgraded gallium can also carry about 10,000 times its weight.

External magnets can still manipulate the liquid form, making it stretch, split and merge. But controlling the fluid’s movement is more challenging, because the particles in the gallium can freely rotate and have unaligned magnetic poles as a result of melting. Because of their various orientations, the particles move in different directions in response to a magnet.

Majidi and colleagues tested their strategy in tiny machines that performed different tasks. In a demonstration straight out of the movie Terminator 2, a toy person escaped a jail cell by melting through the bars and resolidifying in its original form using a mold placed just outside the bars.

On the more practical side, one machine removed a small ball from a model human stomach by melting slightly to wrap itself around the foreign object before exiting the organ. But gallium on its own would turn to goo inside a real human body, since the metal is a liquid at body temperature, about 37° C. A few more metals, such as bismuth and tin, would be added to the gallium in biomedical applications to raise the material’s melting point, the authors say. In another demonstration, the material liquefied and rehardened to solder a circuit board.

Although this phase-shifting material is a big step in the field, questions remain about its biomedical applications, says biomedical engineer Amir Jafari of the University of North Texas in Denton, who was not involved in the work. One big challenge, he says, is precisely controlling magnetic forces inside the human body that are generated from an external device.

“It’s a compelling tool,” says robotics engineer Nicholas Bira of Harvard University, who was also not involved in the study. But, he adds, scientists who study soft robotics are constantly creating new materials.

“The true innovation to come lies in combining these different innovative materials.”

in Science News on 2023-01-25 16:55:36 UTC.

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Brain-Computer Interface & their Applications, Challenges, Future & Our research contributions

This week on Journal Club session Yar Muhammad will talk about some of his work in a presentation entitled "Brain-Computer Interface & their Applications, Challenges, Future & Our research contributions". The abstract of the presentation could be found below, together with supporting papers.

An electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain–computer interface (BCI) is a system that provides a pathway between the brain and external devices by interpreting EEG. EEG-based BCI applications have initially been developed for medical purposes, with the aim of facilitating the return of patients to normal life. In addition to the initial aim, EEG-based BCI applications have also gained increasing significance in the non-medical domain, improving the life of healthy people, for instance, by making it more efficient, and collaborative and helping them develop themselves.

There are many challenges in EEG-based BCI development and research as the cross-subject classification of motor imagery data. Due to the highly individualized nature of EEG signals, it has been difficult to develop a cross-subject classification method that achieves sufficiently high accuracy when predicting the subject’s intention. In 2020, we proposed a multi-branch 2D convolutional neural network (CNN) that utilizes different hyperparameter values for each branch and is more flexible to data from different subjects. Our model, EEGNet Fusion, achieves 84.1% and 83.8% accuracy when tested on the 103-subject eegmmidb dataset for executed and imagined motor actions, respectively. The model achieved statistically significantly higher results compared with three state-of-the-art CNN classifiers: EEGNet, ShallowConvNet, and DeepConvNet. However, the computational cost of the proposed model is up to four times higher than the model with the lowest computational cost used for comparison.

In our recent studies, we improve the model with a 5-branches 2D CNN that employs several hyperparameters for every branch and this network is more adaptable to data from various subjects. The proposed model achieved promising results on three publicly available datasets, the EEG Motor Movement/Imagery, the BCI Competition IV 2a, and the BCI Competition IV 2b dataset. The eegmmidb dataset is used for testing for actual and imagined motor activity and our newly proposed model, EEGNet Fusion V2, achieves 89.6% and 87.8% accuracy, respectively.

Moreover, the proposed model outperforms on the BCI Competition IV-2a and 2b datasets with an accuracy of 74.3% and 84.1% for the cross-subject classifications, respectively. Compared with the EEGNet, ShallowConvNet, DeepConvNet, and EEGNet Fusion, the proposed model’s accuracy is higher. However, the proposed model has a bit higher computational cost, i.e., it takes around 3.5 times more computational time per sample than the EEGNet Fusion.

Papers:

• K. Roots, Y. Muhammad, N. Muhammad, "Fusion Convolutional Neural Network for Cross-Subject EEG Motor Imagery Classification", 2020, Computers, 9, 72
• K. Varbu, N. Muhammad, Y. Muhammad, "Past, Present, and Future of EEG-Based BCI Applications", 2022, Sensors, 22, 3331

Date: 2023/01/27
Time: 14:00
Location: online

in UH Biocomputation group on 2023-01-25 15:19:27 UTC.

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Procrastination may harm your health. Here’s what you can do

The worst procrastinators probably won’t be able to read this story. It’ll remind them of what they’re trying to avoid, psychologist Piers Steel says.

Maybe they’re dragging their feet going to the gym. Maybe they haven’t gotten around to their New Year’s resolutions. Maybe they’re waiting just one more day to study for that test.

Procrastination is “putting off to later what you know you should be doing now,” even if you’ll be worse off, says Steel, of the University of Calgary in Canada. But all those tasks pushed to tomorrow seem to wedge themselves into the mind — and it may be harming people’s health.

In a study of thousands of university students, scientists linked procrastination to a panoply of poor outcomes, including depression, anxiety and even disabling arm pain. “I was surprised when I saw that one,” says Fred Johansson, a clinical psychologist at Sophiahemmet University in Stockholm. His team reported the results January 4 in JAMA Network Open.

The study is one of the largest yet to tackle procrastination’s ties to health. Its results echo findings from earlier studies that have gone largely ignored, says Fuschia Sirois, a behavioral scientist at Durham University in England, who was not involved with the new research.

For years, scientists didn’t seem to view procrastination as something serious, she says. The new study could change that. “It’s that kind of big splash that’s … going to get attention,” Sirois says. “I’m hoping that it will raise awareness of the physical health consequences of procrastination.”

Procrastinating may be bad for the mind and body

Whether procrastination harms health can seem like a chicken-and-egg situation.

It can be hard to tell if certain health problems make people more likely to procrastinate — or the other way around, Johansson says. (It may be a bit of both.) And controlled experiments on procrastination aren’t easy to do: You can’t just tell a study participant to become a procrastinator and wait and see if their health changes, he says.

Many previous studies have relied on self-reported surveys taken at a single time point. But a snapshot of someone makes it tricky to untangle cause and effect. Instead, in the new study, about 3,500 students were followed over nine months, so researchers could track whether procrastinating students later developed health issues.

On average, these students tended to fare worse over time than their prompter peers. They were slightly more stressed, anxious, depressed and sleep-deprived, among other issues, Johansson and colleagues found. “People who score higher on procrastination to begin with … are at greater risk of developing both physical and psychological problems later on,” says study coauthor Alexander Rozental, a clinical psychologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. “There is a relationship between procrastination at one time point and having these negative outcomes at the later point.”

The study was observational, so the team can’t say for sure that procrastination causes poor health. But results from other researchers also seem to point in this direction. A 2021 study tied procrastinating at bedtime to depression. And a 2015 study from Sirois’ lab linked procrastinating to poor heart health.

Stress may be to blame for procrastination’s ill effects, data from Sirois’ lab and other studies suggest. She thinks that the effects of chronic procrastinating could build up over time. And though procrastination alone may not cause disease, Sirois says, it could be “one extra factor that can tip the scales.”

No, procrastinators are not lazy

Some 20 percent of adults are estimated to be chronic procrastinators. Everyone might put off a task or two, but chronic procrastinators make it their lifestyle, says Joseph Ferrari, a psychologist at DePaul University in Chicago, who has been studying procrastination for decades. “They do it at home, at school, at work and in their relationships.” These are the people, he says, who “you know are going to RSVP late.”

Though procrastinators may think they perform better under pressure, Ferrari has reported the opposite. They actually worked more slowly and made more errors than non-procrastinators, his experiments have shown. And when deadlines are slippery, procrastinators tend to let their work slide, Steel’s team reported last year in Frontiers in Psychology. 

For years, researchers have focused on the personalities of people who procrastinate. Findings vary, but some scientists suggest procrastinators may be impulsive, worriers and have trouble regulating their emotions. One thing procrastinators are not, Ferrari emphasizes, is lazy. They’re actually “very busy doing other things than what they’re supposed to be doing,” he says.

In fact, Rozental adds, most research today suggests procrastination is a behavioral pattern.

And if procrastination is a behavior, he says, that means it’s something you can change, regardless of whether you’re impulsive.

Why procrastinators should be kind to themselves

When people put off a tough task, they feel good — in the moment.

Procrastinating is a way to sidestep the negative emotions linked to the task, Sirois says. “We’re sort of hardwired to avoid anything painful or difficult,” she says. “When you procrastinate, you get immediate relief.” A backdrop of stressful circumstances — say, a worldwide pandemic — can strain people’s ability to cope, making procrastinating even easier. But the relief it provides is only temporary, and many seek out ways to stop dawdling.

Researchers have experimented with procrastination treatments that run the gamut from the logistical to the psychological. What works best is still under investigation. Some scientists have reported success with time-management interventions. But the evidence for that “is all over the map,” Sirois says. That’s because “poor time management is a symptom not a cause of procrastination,” she adds.

For some procrastinators, seemingly obvious tips can work. In his clinical practice, Rozental advises students to simply put down their smartphones. Silencing notifications or studying in the library rather than at home can quash distractions and keep people on task. But that won’t be enough for many people, he says.

Hard-core procrastinators may benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy. In a 2018 review of procrastination treatments, Rozental found that this type of therapy, which involves managing thoughts and emotions and trying to change behavior, seemed to be the most helpful. Still, not many studies have examined treatments, and there’s room for improvement, he says.

Sirois also favors an emotion-centered approach. Procrastinators can fall into a shame spiral where they feel uneasy about a task, put the task off, feel ashamed for putting it off and then feel even worse than when they started. People need to short-circuit that loop, she says. Self-forgiveness may help, scientists suggested in one 2020 study. So could mindfulness training.

In a small trial of university students, eight weekly mindfulness sessions reduced procrastination, Sirois and colleagues reported in the January Learning and Individual Differences. Students practiced focusing on the body, meditating during unpleasant activities and discussed the best way to take care of themselves. A little self-compassion may snap people out of their spiral, Sirois says.

“You made a mistake and procrastinated. It’s not the end of the world,” she says. “What can you do to move forward?”

in Science News on 2023-01-25 13:00:00 UTC.

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You Might Survive a Nuclear Blast—if You Have the Right Shelter

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-25 13:00:00 UTC.

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The Problematic Arrival of Anti-Obesity Drugs

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-25 12:00:00 UTC.

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The Pullulating Polyps of OMICS

in For Better Science on 2023-01-25 05:54:14 UTC.

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Lots of Tatooine-like planets around binary stars may be habitable

SEATTLE — Luke Skywalker’s home planet in Star Wars is the stuff of science fiction. But Tatooine-like planets in orbit around pairs of stars might be our best bet in the search for habitable planets beyond our solar system.

Many stars in the universe come in pairs. And lots of those should have planets orbiting them (SN: 10/25/21). That means there could be many more planets orbiting around binaries than around solitary stars like ours. But until now, no one had a clear idea about whether those planets’ environments could be conducive to life. New computer simulations suggest that, in many cases, life could imitate art.

Earthlike planets orbiting some configurations of binary stars can stay in stable orbits for at least a billion years, researchers reported January 11 at the American Astronomical Society meeting. That sort of stability, the researchers propose, would be enough to potentially allow life to develop, provided the planets aren’t too hot or cold.

Of the planets that stuck around, about 15 percent stayed in their habitable zone — a temperate region around their stars where water could stay liquid — most or even all of the time.

The researchers ran simulations of 4,000 configurations of binary stars, each with an Earthlike planet in orbit around them. The team varied things like the relative masses of the stars, the sizes and shapes of the stars’ orbits around each other, and the size of the planet’s orbit around the binary pair.

The scientists then tracked the motion of the planets for up to a billion years of simulated time to see if the planets would stay in orbit over the sorts of timescales that might allow life to emerge.

A planet orbiting binary stars can get kicked out of the star system due to complicated interactions between the planet and stars. In the new study, the researchers found that, for planets with large orbits around star pairs, only about 1 out of 8 were kicked out of the system. The rest were stable enough to continue to orbit for the full billion years. About 1 in 10 settled in their habitable zones and stayed there.

Of the 4,000 planets that the team simulated, roughly 500 maintained stable orbits that kept them in their habitable zones at least 80 percent of the time.

“The habitable zone . . . as I’ve characterized it so far, spans from freezing to boiling,” said Michael Pedowitz, an undergraduate student at the College of New Jersey in Ewing who presented the research. Their definition is overly strict, he said, because they chose to model Earthlike planets without atmospheres or oceans. That’s simpler to simulate, but it also allows temperatures to fluctuate wildly on a planet as it orbits.

“An atmosphere and oceans would smooth over temperature variations fairly well,” says study coauthor Mariah MacDonald, an astrobiologist also at the College of New Jersey. An abundance of air and water would potentially allow a planet to maintain habitable conditions, even if it spent more of its time outside of the nominal habitable zone around a binary star system.

The number of potentially habitable planets “will increase once we add atmospheres,” MacDonald says, “but I can’t yet say by how much.”

She and Pedowitz hope to build more sophisticated models in the coming months, as well as extend their simulations beyond a billion years and include changes in the stars that can affect conditions in a solar system as it ages.

The possibility of stable and habitable planets in binary star systems is a timely issue says Penn State astrophysicist Jason Wright, who was not involved in the study.

“At the time Star Wars came out,” he says, “we didn’t know of any planets outside the solar system, and wouldn’t for 15 years. Now we know that there are many and that they orbit these binary stars.”

These simulations of planets orbiting binaries could serve as a guide for future experiments, Wright says. “This is an under-explored population of planets. There’s no reason we can’t go after them, and studies like this are presumably showing us that it’s worthwhile to try.”

in Science News on 2023-01-24 15:00:00 UTC.

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A bird with a T. rex head may help reveal how dinosaurs became birds

A 120-million-year-old fossil bird found in China could offer some new clues about how landbound dinosaurs evolved into today’s flying birds. The dove-sized Cratonavis zhui sported a dinosaur-like head atop a body similar to those of today’s birds, researchers report in the January Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The flattened specimen came from the Jiufotang Formation, an ancient body of rock in northeastern China that is a hotbed for preserved feathered dinosaurs and archaic birds. CT scans revealed that Cratonavis had a skull that was nearly identical (albeit smaller) as those of theropod dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex, paleontologist Li Zhiheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and colleagues report. This means that Cratonavis still hadn’t evolved the mobile upper jaw found in modern birds (SN: 5/2/18).

It’s among just a handful of specimens that belong to a recently identified group of intermediate birds known as the jinguofortisids, says Luis Chiappe, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County who was not involved in the study. Its dino-bird mishmash “is not unexpected.” Most birds discovered from the Age of Dinosaurs exhibited more primitive, toothed heads than today’s birds, he says. But the new find “builds on our understanding of this primitive group of birds that are at the base of the tree of birds.”

Cratonavis also had an unusually elongated scapula and hallux, or backward-facing toe. Rarely seen in Cretaceous birds, enlarged shoulder blades might have compensated for the bird’s otherwise underwhelming flight mechanics, the researchers say. And that hefty big toe? It bucks the trend of shrinking metatarsals seen as birds continued to evolve. Cratonavis might have used this impressive digit to hunt like today’s birds of prey, Li’s team says.

Filling those shoes may have been too big of a job for Cratonavis, though. Given its size, Chiappe says, the dino-headed bird would have most likely been a petite hunter, taking down the likes of beetles, grasshoppers and the occasional lizard rather than terrorizing the skies.

in Science News on 2023-01-24 13:00:00 UTC.

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Is It Time to Call Time on the Doomsday Clock?

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-24 12:00:00 UTC.

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J&J subsidiary alleges fraud in paper that linked cosmetic talc with mesothelioma

A key paper linking use of talc-based baby powder to cancer contains fraudulent information, according to a new complaint against an author of the article who has testified on behalf of plaintiffs. 

A judge had previously allowed the release of a document confirming the identity of one of the patients in the article, who had claimed exposure to asbestos besides in baby powder, contrary to the authors’ claim that the cases in the series had no other exposures. 

The paper, “Mesothelioma Associated With the Use of Cosmetic Talc,” was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in January 2020. It has been cited 22 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. Corresponding author Jacqueline Moline of Northwell Health in Great Neck, N.Y., has also referenced the article in expert testimony for plaintiffs in talc litigation, as well as in remarks before Congress. 

The abstract of the paper states that its objective is “to describe 33 cases of malignant mesothelioma among individuals with no known asbestos exposure other than cosmetic talcum powder.”

The authors further wrote that their article “is the first to describe mesothelioma among talcum powder consumers.” 

But some patients described in the publication had other exposures to asbestos, lawyers for LTL Management, a recently-formed subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that holds liability for cosmetic talc litigation, argue in a complaint against Moline. 

In the course of other cosmetic talc litigation, Northwell Health confirmed the identity of one of the patients in the study, whom Moline had described in her Congressional testimony. The patient had claimed worker’s compensation for asbestos exposure at a textile plant, apart from her exposure to cosmetic talc as a hairdresser. A judge ordered in December that the document Northwell provided to confirm the patient’s identity could be released and used in other litigation. 

Stacieann Yuhasz, the managing editor of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, told Retraction Watch that the journal “has received a letter to the editor regarding the Moline publication, and Dr. Moline has notified JOEM that a response will be submitted late January.” 

A spokesperson for Northwell informed us that Moline would not comment, “pending ongoing litigation.” 

We emailed Paul DeFilippo of the New York City firm Wollmuth, Maher, & Deutsch and Allison Brown of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, also based in New York City, the lawyers who filed the complaint on behalf of LTL Management, but did not hear back.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

in Retraction watch on 2023-01-24 11:00:00 UTC.

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This Startup Is Using AI to Unearth New Smells

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-24 11:00:00 UTC.

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It’s A Good Thing When I Don’t Know What I’m Writing About

in The Spike on 2023-01-23 20:50:50 UTC.

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Some young sea spiders can regrow their rear ends

No backside, no problem for some young sea spiders.

The creatures can regenerate nearly complete parts of their bottom halves — including muscles, reproductive organs and the anus — or make do without them, researchers report January 23 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The ability to regrow body parts isn’t super common, but some species manage to pull it off. Some sea slug heads can craft an entirely new body (SN: 3/8/21). Sea spiders and some other arthropods — a group of invertebrates with an exoskeleton — can regrow parts of their legs. But researchers thought new legs were the extent of any arthropod’s powers, perhaps because tough exteriors somehow stop them from regenerating other body parts.

A mishap first clued evolutionary biologist Georg Brenneis in that sea spiders (Pycnogonum litorale) might be able handle more complex repairs too. He accidentally injured one young specimen that he was working on in the lab with forceps. “It wasn’t dead, it was moving, so I just kept it,” says Brenneis, of the University of Vienna. Several months later, the sea spider had an extra leg instead of a scar, he and evolutionary biologist Gerhard Scholtz of Humbolt University of Berlin reported in 2016 in The Science of Nature.

In the new study, most of the 19 young spiders recovered and regrew missing muscles and other parts of their lower halves after amputation, though the regeneration wasn’t always perfect. Some juveniles sported six or seven legs instead of eight.

None of four adults regenerated. That may be because adults no longer shed their skin as they grow, suggesting that regeneration and molting are somehow linked, Brenneis says. Two young sea spiders also didn’t regenerate at all. The animals survived with only four legs and without an anus. Instead of pooping, the pair regurgitated waste out of their mouths.

Next up is figuring out whether other arthropods also regenerate more than scientists thought, and how sea spiders do it, Brenneis says. “I would like to see how it works.”

in Science News on 2023-01-23 20:13:42 UTC.

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Earth’s inner core may be reversing its rotation

Our planet may have had a recent change of heart.

Earth’s inner core may have temporarily stopped rotating relative to the mantle and surface, researchers report in the January 23 Nature Geoscience. Now, the direction of the inner core’s rotation may be reversing — part of what could be a roughly 70-year-long cycle that may influence the length of Earth’s days and its magnetic field — though some researchers are skeptical.

“We see strong evidence that the inner core has been rotating faster than the surface, [but] by around 2009 it nearly stopped,” says geophysicist Xiaodong Song of Peking University in Beijing. “Now it is gradually mov[ing] in the opposite direction.”

Such a profound turnaround might sound bizarre, but Earth is volatile (SN: 1/13/21). Bore through the ever-shifting crust and you’ll enter the titanic mantle, where behemoth masses of rock flow viscously over spans of millions of years, sometimes upwelling to excoriate the overlying crust (SN: 1/11/17, SN: 3/2/17, SN: 2/4/21). Delve deeper and you’ll reach Earth’s liquid outer core. Here, circulating currents of molten metals conjure our planet’s magnetic field (SN: 9/4/15). And at the heart of that melt, you’ll find a revolving, solid metal ball about 70 percent as wide as the moon.

This is the inner core (SN: 1/28/19). Studies have suggested that this solid heart may rotate within the liquid outer core, compelled by the outer core’s magnetic torque. Researchers have also argued the mantle’s immense gravitational pull may apply an erratic brake on the inner core’s rotation, causing it to oscillate.  

Evidence for the inner core’s fluctuating rotation first emerged in 1996. Geophysicist Paul Richards of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., and Song, then also at Lamont-Doherty, reported that over a span of three decades, seismic waves from earthquakes took different amounts of time to traverse Earth’s solid heart.

The researchers inferred that the inner core rotates at a different speed than the mantle and crust, causing the time differences. The planet spins roughly 360 degrees in a day. Based on their calculations, the researchers estimated that the inner core, on average, rotates about 1 degree per year faster than the rest of Earth.

But other researchers have questioned that conclusion, some suggesting that the core spins slower than Song and Richards’ estimate or doesn’t spin differently at all.  

In the new study, while analyzing global seismic data stretching back to the 1990s, Song and geophysicist Yi Yang — also at Peking University — made a surprising observation.

Before 2009, seismic waves generated by sequences and pairs of repeating earthquakes — known as multiplets and doublets — traveled at different rates through the inner core. This indicated the waves from recurring quakes were crossing different parts of the inner core, and that the inner core was rotating at a different pace than the rest of Earth, aligning with Song’s previous research.

But around 2009, the differences in travel times vanished. That suggested the inner core had ceased rotating with respect to the mantle and crust, Yang says. After 2009, these differences returned, but the researchers inferred that the waves were crossing parts of the inner core that suggested it was now rotating in the opposite direction relative to the rest of Earth.

The researchers then pored over records of Alaskan earthquake doublets dating to 1964. While the inner core appeared to rotate steadily for most of that time, it seems to have made another reversal in rotation in the early 1970s, the researchers say.

Song and Yang infer that the inner core may oscillate with a roughly 70-year periodicity — switching directions every 35 years or so. Because the inner core is gravitationally linked to the mantle and magnetically linked to the outer core, the researchers say these oscillations could explain known 60- to 70-year variations in the length of Earth’s days and the behavior of the planet’s magnetic field. However, more work is needed to pin down what mechanisms might be responsible.

But not all researchers are on board. Yang and Song “identif[y] this recent 10-year period [that] has less activity than before, and I think that’s probably reliable,” says geophysicist John Vidale of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research. But beyond that, Vidale says, things get contentious.

In 2022, he and a colleague reported that seismic waves from nuclear tests show the inner core may reverse its rotation every three years or so. Meanwhile, other researchers have proposed that the inner core isn’t moving at all. Instead, they say, changes to the shape of the inner core’s surface could explain the differences in wave travel times.

Future observations will probably help disentangle the discrepancies between these studies, Vidale says. For now, he’s unruffled by the purported chthonic standstill. “In all likelihood, it’s irrelevant to life on the surface, but we don’t actually know what’s happening,” he says. “It’s incumbent on us to figure it out.”

in Science News on 2023-01-23 16:00:00 UTC.

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A rare rabbit plays an important ecological role by spreading seeds

A crucial link in the life cycle of one parasitic plant may be found in a surprising place — the bellies of the descendants of an ancient line of rabbits.

Given their propensity for nibbling on gardens and darting across suburban lawns, it can be easy to forget that rabbits are wild animals. But a living reminder of their wildness can be found on two of Japan’s Ryukyu Islands, if you have the patience to look for it: the endangered Amami rabbit, a “living fossil” that looks strikingly similar to ancient Asian rabbits.

One estimate suggests there are fewer than 5,000 of the animals left in the wild. The lives of Amamis (Pentalagus furnessi) are shrouded in mystery due to their rarity, but they seem to play a surprising ecological role as seed dispersers, researchers report January 23 in Ecology.

Seed dispersal is the main point in a plant’s life cycle when it can move to a new location (SN: 11/14/22). So dispersal is crucially important for understanding how plant populations are maintained and how species will respond to climate change, says Haldre Rogers, a biologist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, who was not involved with the study. Despite this, seed dispersal hasn’t received much attention, she says. “We don’t know what disperses the seeds of most plants in the world.”

Locals from the Ryukyu Islands were the first to notice that the “iconic yet endangered” Amami rabbit was nibbling on the fruit of another local species, the plant Balanophora yuwanensis, says Kenji Suetsugu, a biologist at Kobe University in Japan.

Rabbits generally like to eat vegetative tissue from plants, like leaves and stems, and so haven’t been thought to contribute much to spreading seeds, which are often housed in fleshy fruits.

To confirm what the locals reported, Suetsugu and graduate student Hiromu Hashiwaki set up camera traps around the island to catch the rabbits in the act. The researchers were able to record rabbits munching on Balanophora fruits 11 times, but still needed to check whether the seeds survived their trip through the bunny tummies.

So the team headed out to the subtropical islands and scooped up rabbit poop, finding Balanophora seeds inside that could still be grown. By swallowing the seeds and pooping them out elsewhere, the Amami rabbits were clearly acting as seed dispersers.

Balanophora plants are parasitic and don’t have chlorophyll, so they can’t use photosynthesis to make food of their own (SN: 3/2/17). Instead, they suck energy away from a host plant. This means where their seeds end up matters, and the Amami rabbits “may facilitate the placement of seeds near the roots of a compatible host” by pooping in underground burrows, Suetsugu says. “Thus, the rabbits likely provide a crucial link between Balanophora and its hosts” that remains to be further explored, he says.

Understanding the ecology of an endangered species like the Amami rabbit can help with conserving both it and the plants that depend on it.

An animal need not be in obvious peril for a change in its number to affect seed dispersal, with potentially negative consequences for the ecosystem. For example, “we think of robins as super common … but they’ve declined a lot in the last 50 years,” Rogers says. “Half as many robins means half as many seeds are getting moved around, even though no one’s worried about robins as a conservation issue.”

in Science News on 2023-01-23 15:00:00 UTC.

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The World’s Farms Are Hooked on Phosphorus. It’s a Problem

in WIRED Science on 2023-01-23 14:00:00 UTC.

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Readers discuss jazz music, the next generation of astronauts and more

In full swing

The swaying feeling in jazz music that compels feet to tap may arise from near-imperceptible delays in musicians’ timing, Nikk Ogasa reported in “Jazz gets its swing from small, subtle delays” (SN: 11/19/22, p. 5).

Reader Oda Lisa, a self-described intermediate saxophonist, has noticed these subtle delays while playing.“I recorded my ‘jazzy’ version of a beloved Christmas carol, which I sent to a friend of mine,” Lisa wrote. “She praised my effort overall, but she suggested that I get a metronome because the timing wasn’t consistent. My response was that I’m a slave to the rhythm that I hear in my head. I think now I know why.”

On the same page

Murky definitions and measurements impede social science research, Sujata Gupta reported in “Fuzzy definitions mar social science” (SN: 11/19/22, p. 10).

Reader Linda Ferrazzara found the story thought-provoking. “If there’s no consensus on the terms people use … then there can be no productive discussion or conversation. People end up talking and working at cross-purposes with no mutual understanding or progress,” Ferrazzara wrote.

Fly me to the moon

Space agencies are preparing to send the next generation of astronauts to the moon and beyond. Those crews will be more diverse in background and expertise than the crews of the Apollo missions, Lisa Grossman reported in “Who gets to go to space?” (SN: 12/3/22, p. 20).

“It is great to see a broader recognition of the work being done to make spaceflight open to more people,” reader John Allen wrote. “Future space travel will and must accommodate a population that represents humanity. It won’t be easy, but it will be done.”

The story also reminded Allen of the Gallaudet Eleven, a group of deaf adults who participated in research done by NASA and the U.S. Navy in the 1950s and ’60s. Experiments tested how the volunteers responded (or didn’t) to a range of scenarios that would typically induce motion sickness, such as a ferry ride on choppy seas. Studying how the body’s sensory systems work without the usual gravitational cues from the inner ear allowed scientists to better understand motion sickness and the human body’s adaptation to spaceflight.

Sweet dreams are made of this

A memory-enhancing method that uses sound cues may boost an established treatment for debilitating nightmares, Jackie Rocheleau reported in “L­earning trick puts nightmares to bed” (SN: 12/3/22, p. 11).

Reader Helen Leaver shared her trick to a good night’s sleep: “I learned that I was having strong unpleasant adventures while sleeping, and I would awaken hot and sweaty. By eliminating the amount of heat from bedding and an electrically heated mattress pad, I now sleep well without those nightmares.”

Finger-licking good

Nocturnal lemurs called aye-ayes pick their noses for snotty snacks using their middle fingers (shown below), which probably reach all the way to the back of the throat, Maria Temming reported in “Aye-ayes take nose picking to the extreme” (SN: 12/3/22, p. 4). Reader Kent Lange quipped: “Who nose what further research will discover?”

Pest perspectives

In “Why do we hate pests?” (SN: 12/3/22, p. 26), Deborah Balthazar interviewed former Science News Explores staff writer Bethany Brookshire about her new book, Pests. The book argues that humans — influenced by culture, class, colonization and much more — create animal villains.

The article prompted reader Doug Clapp to reflect on what he considers pests or weeds. “A weed is a plant in the wrong place, and a pest is an animal in the wrong place,” Clapp wrote. But what’s considered “wrong” depends on the humans who have power over the place, he noted. “Grass in a lawn can be a fine thing. Grass in a garden choking the vegetables I’m trying to grow becomes a weed. Mice in the wild don’t bother me. Field mice migrating into my house when the weather cools become a pest, especially when they eat into my food and leave feces behind,” Clapp wrote.

The article encouraged Clapp to look at pests through a societal lens: “I had never thought of pests in terms of high-class or low-class. Likewise, the residual implications of [colonization]. Thanks for provoking me to consider some of these issues in a broader context.”

in Science News on 2023-01-23 12:15:00 UTC.