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Blue Planet

Whales, bees, and viruses: Intelligent design all the way down and all the way up


Evolution News
Mon, 09 Dec 2019 12:28 UTC
Blue Whale
© NOAA
The largest animal on earth is a blue whale. The smallest organism (or component of life) is a virus. At both extremes, design is on display.


Blue Whale Diving Design

The heart of a blue whale, largest animal on earth, weighs as much as a cow (about 1,000 pounds, says NOAA), and pumps 60 gallons per beat. How does one measure the heartbeat of a blue whale? Ask the marine biologists at Stanford, who were so glad their method worked, they ran victory laps around their lab. First, they had to find the elusive blue whale. Then, they had to attach suction cups to the underside, equipped with electronic sensors to record the heart rate during the whale's deep dives. Finally, they had to find the suction cups after the experiment. A floating package with GPS transmitter led them to the spot for retrieving the data loggers. When they got their data, no wonder they were excited.

The team had tried their method on smaller, captive whales before attempting the grand prize on a blue whale in the wild. According to their paper in PNAS, "Extreme bradycardia and tachycardia in the world's largest animal," the blue whale is at the extremes of what is possible for a heart. The heart rate, normally 25 to 37 beats per minute at the surface, slowed down to only 2 beats per minute in the deepest part of the dive. That's much slower than they expected.

Comment: More on Intelligent Design: Also check out:

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Frog

Dozens of 'extinct' creatures found living in 'Lost City' deep within the Honduran rainforest

Elias Marat
The Mind Unleashed
Mon, 24 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
extinct creatures found honduras rainforest
© rond Larsen / Conservation International
Scientists documented 198 species of birds, 94 butterfly species, 40 of small mammals, 56 amphibian and reptile species, and 30 species of large mammals—including jaguars, ocelots and pumas—not to mention a huge variety of plants, fish, rodents and insects.
A specialized team of conservation scientists has found what appears to be a hidden oasis deep in the rainforest of Honduras that's teeming with dozens of rare and endangered creatures.

The remote settlement, known as the "Lost City of the Monkey God" or "White City" and located in the Mosquitia rainforest, is a stunning example of the biodiversity that was once common across the tropics and rainforests in the region. The rainforest is home to hundreds of species of bats, butterflies and reptiles, the Independent reports.

The "ecological SWAT team" from Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) conducted their three-week expedition in 2017 after ancient ruins were discovered in the rainforest, which remains one of the least-explored areas of the region. Their full report on the expedition and its dizzying array of findings was only published this week.

Comment: See also:

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Comet

TESS observes huge outburst from comet 46P/Wirtanen


Sci-News.com
Wed, 04 Dec 2019 17:18 UTC
NASA's exoplanet-hunting satellite captured the most complete and detailed observation of a comet's spontaneous outburst in history
© NASA
NASA's exoplanet-hunting satellite captured the most complete and detailed observation of a comet's spontaneous outburst in history. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) recorded the moment ice and dust exploded from the comet 46P/Wirtanen in 2018 as it made its closest pass to Earth
On September 26, 2018, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) observed an outburst of gas, ice and dust from the nucleus of comet 46P/Wirtanen. This is the most detailed observation to date of the formation and dissipation of a natural comet outburst.

Normal comet activity is driven by sunlight vaporizing the ices near the surface of the nucleus, and the outflowing gases drag dust off the nucleus to form the coma. However, many comets are known to experience occasional spontaneous outbursts that can significantly, but temporarily increase the comet's activity.

It is not currently known what causes these outbursts, but they are related to the conditions on the comet's surface.

A number of potential trigger mechanisms have been proposed, including a thermal event, in which a heat wave penetrates into a pocket of highly volatile ices, causing the ice to rapidly vaporize and produce an explosion of activity, and a mechanical event, where a cliff collapses, exposing fresh ice to direct sunlight.

Studies of the outburst behavior can help scientists understand the physical and thermal properties of a comet.


Comment: What about the 'electrical' nature of a comet? See also: 'Oumuamua reclassified from 'asteroid' to 'comet' (because they're essentially the same thing)

An important note on comets as detailed by Pierre Lescaudron in Earth Changes and The Human cosmic Connection:
Comets or Asteroids

The fundamental difference between asteroids and comets is not their chemical composition, i.e. dirty, fluffy icy comets vs. rocky asteroids. Rather, as has long been put forward by plasma theorists, what differentiates 'comets' from 'asteroids' is their electric activity.

When the electric potential difference between an asteroid and the surrounding plasma is not too high, the asteroid exhibits a dark discharge mode or no discharge at all. But when the potential difference is high enough, the asteroid switches to a glowing discharge mode. At this point the asteroid is a comet. From this perspective, a comet is simply a glowing asteroid and an asteroid is a non-glowing comet. Thus the very same body can, successively, be a comet, then an asteroid, then a comet, etc., depending on variations in the ambient electric field it is subjected to.

Comment: Comet 67P surprises scientists with 'bright outbursts', collapsing cliffs and rolling boulders during Rosetta mission

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Brain

Scientists discover a prolonged stay in Antarctica has a chilling effect on the brain


RT
Fri, 06 Dec 2019 09:37 UTC
Antarctica research station
© Pixabay/Michelle Maria
Antarctica research station
While the prospect of a polar research expedition in the Antarctic might seem like a dream come true for many, the reality of prolonged darkness in isolation is so severe that it actually shrinks parts of the human brain.

Researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development studied the effects of social isolation and extreme environmental conditions on the brains of five men and four women who spent a total of 14 months in the Antarctic, nine of which saw them cut off from the outside world.

The plucky participants ventured to the Neumayer-Station III, which experiences temperatures as low as -50 degrees Celsius (-58 degrees Fahrenheit) and almost complete darkness during the winter months.

To make matters worse, because of the harsh and unforgiving environment, there was no real chance to opt out of the mission during the winter months; emergency evacuation and food and equipment deliveries only take place during the summer months, so that is one long winter to spend with little privacy or personal space.
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Life Preserver

Fungi Perfecti: Mushroom extracts are saving millions of bees from Colony Collapse Disorder

Samuel Austin
livelearnevolve.com
Wed, 04 Dec 2019 14:15 UTC
bees
A recent study published in Nature Scientific Reports, a specific type of mushroom extract can help honey bees fight off a devastating virus that is suspected of contributing to massive bee die-offs in recent years.

Bees are dying, in massive numbers. Termed colony collapse disorder, a significant cause of the die-offs is a parasite named Varroa destructor. A tiny 2mm eight legged mite that invades honeybee hives around the world, latching onto the bees and feeding on their bodies, a process which transmits a devastating RNA virus.

This new study was conducted by researchers at Washington State University, with help from the USDA and a Washington based business called Fungi Perfecti.

Comment: Paul Stamets' epiphany that mushrooms could help save the world's bees

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Info

Men lose Y chromosomes as they age says study

Sarah Zhang
The Atlantic
Fri, 06 Dec 2019 17:31 UTC
Human Chromosomes
© BSIP/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES
A set of human chromosomes, with a pair of XY and XX chromosomes in the bottom right.
In the 1960s, doctors counting the number of chromosomes in human white blood cells noticed a strange phenomenon. Frequently — and more frequently with age — the cells would be missing the Y chromosome. Over time, it became clear this came with consequences. Studies have linked loss of the Y chromosome in blood to cancer, heart disease, and other disorders.

Now a new study — the largest yet of this phenomenon — estimates that 20 percent of 205,011 men in a large genetic database called the UK Biobank have lost Y chromosomes from some detectable proportion of their blood. By age 70, 43.6 percent of men had the same issue. It's unclear exactly why, but the authors think these losses might be the most glaring sign of something else going wrong inside the bodies of these men: They are allowing mutations of all kinds to accumulate, and these other mutations could be the underlying links to cancer and heart disease.

Mutations are, after all, spontaneously popping up in the human body all the time. Every cell division produces errors as small as miscopying one letter or as large as losing an entire chromosome. So over a lifetime, this can lead to what scientists call "clonal mosaicism" — in which a person's body is a mosaic of distinct populations of cells, each with their accumulated mutations. This is true of everyone to some extent, but it becomes more relevant as you get older. "The more you age, the more errors have taken place in cell division," says John R. B. Perry, a biologist at the University of Cambridge who led the recent study.
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Handcuffs

'Short window' to stop AI taking control of society, warns ex-Google employee

Marie Boran
The Irish Times
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 03:45 UTC
google employee walkout
© Nick Bradshaw
Google employees in Dublin take part in an organised walkout in November 2018: some 20,000 employees in 50 cities across the globe were involved in the walkout.
Meredith Whittaker warns we are becoming lab animals in a giant tech experiment.

The big news in tech this week is the announcement that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are stepping down as executives of parent company Alphabet, founded in 2015 with the goal of making it "cleaner and more accountable".

Page and Brin said it was time to "assume the role of proud parents - offering advice and love, but not daily nagging" while handing the reins to Sundar Pichai.

A group of Google employees feel differently: "Some had seriously hoped Sergey and Larry would step in and fix Google. Instead of righting the sinking ship, they jumped ship," tweeted Google Walkout for Real Change, a worker's organisation protesting, various unfair practices and policies within the tech company.

Comment: For as much debasing of the Chinese social credit system you see in the western press, this system is basically already here, only in a more covert form. The future of the western world is a society run by these technocratic institutions, where the fate of the individual is determined by a set of algorithms.

See also:

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Whistle

Recordings reveal that plants make ultrasonic squeals when stressed

Adam Vaughan
New Scientist
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 00:01 UTC
spiny pincushion cactus
© Jose A. Bernat/Getty Images
The spiny pincushion cactus has been found to emit sounds when stressed.
Although it has been revealed in recent years that plants are capable of seeing, hearing and smelling, they are still usually thought of as silent. But now, for the first time, they have been recorded making airborne sounds when stressed, which researchers say could open up a new field of precision agriculture where farmers listen for water-starved crops.

Itzhak Khait and his colleagues at Tel Aviv University in Israel found that tomato and tobacco plants made sounds at frequencies humans cannot hear when stressed by a lack of water or when their stem is cut.

Microphones placed 10 centimetres from the plants picked up sounds in the ultrasonic range of 20 to 100 kilohertz, which the team says insects and some mammals would be capable of hearing and responding to from as far as 5 metres away. A moth may decide against laying eggs on a plant that sounds water-stressed, the researchers suggest. Plants could even hear that other plants are short of water and react accordingly, they speculate.

Comment: As researchers continue to uncover more of the fascinating world of plant intelligence, it becomes increasingly clear that plants are a lot more sentient that we would normally believe.

See also:

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Fireball 5

Scientists fed an ancient Earth organism metals from meteorites, and it started 'dancing'


RT
Fri, 06 Dec 2019 18:26 UTC
meteorite fragments consumed by M. sedula
© Springer Nature / Scientific Reports / Tetyana Milojevic et al
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of meteorite fragments consumed by M. sedula.
Meteorites may not sound appetizing, but for one strange microbe they're breakfast, lunch and dinner. The creature's bizarre eating habits could help unlock mysteries about how early life forms endured harsh conditions on Earth.


Comment: Why is that neo-Darwinian opener ALWAYS used in media articles?! Life did/does NOT 'spontaneously form in a volcanic soup'!!!


Metallosphaera sedula, a highly resilient microbe able to withstand extreme temperatures and highly acidic environments, can survive solely on a diet of space rocks, new research published in Scientific Reports has found. The finding not only sheds light on how organisms could survive on other planets, but provides valuable insight into how early life on Earth may have thrived on nutrients imported from deep space.

"Meteorites may have delivered a variety of essential compounds facilitating the evolution of life, as we know it on Earth," the study said.


Comment: This is already theorized in the Panspermia model, that life is seeded on planets by impacting space rocks. That may indeed be involved, but it's not the whole banana, obviously, because impacting space rocks also wreck life...


Comment: Vice.com has more from the research team involved:
When Milojevic decided to grow M. sedula on a meteorite (an unregulated process, since the organisms are non-pathogenic and meteorites aren't particularly rare), she wanted to see at the outset how the species would react. Not only did the microorganisms find the meteorite tasty — it turned out that they came back for seconds. "We found that the reaction is quite happy," she said. "Our students in the lab also immediately noticed the cells are very vivid, they're dancing on the space rock."


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Attention

4 Renowned scientists expose major IPCC shortcomings: "Models Clearly Erroneous"

Dr. Andreas Mueller summarized by P.Gosselin
No Tricks Zone
Fri, 06 Dec 2019 19:12 UTC
The Munich Climate Conference 2019

Last weekend the climate conference by the Germany-based European Institute for Climate and Energy EIKE took place in Munich, despite threats by leftist radicals.

More than a dozen leading international climate experts presented views that severely challenge mainstream alarmist climate science.

1. Alps glaciers smaller than today during much of the Holocene

Among the speakers was Prof. em. Christian Schlüchter is a leading Swiss geologist who studied the glaciers of the Alps in great detail for decades. In his talk he reported his findings from very old timber found in and below glaciers, and what those ancient tree remnants tell us about the glacial epochs of the Alps.
Prof em Christian
© EIKE
IPCC Address (in German)
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