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Researchers can now collect and sequence DNA from the air

Ashley P. Taylor
Live Science
Mon, 05 Apr 2021 20:27 UTC
dna strand
© Shutterstock
We leave DNA all over the place, including in the air, and for the first time, researchers have collected animal DNA from mere air samples, according to a new study.

The DNA that living things, human and otherwise, shed into the environment is called environmental DNA (eDNA). Collecting eDNA from water to learn about the species living there has become fairly common, but until now, no one had attempted to collect animal eDNA from the air.

"What we wanted to know was whether we could filter eDNA from the air to track the presence of terrestrial animals," study author Elizabeth Clare, an ecologist at Queen Mary University of London, said in a video abstract for the study, published Mar. 31 in the journal PeerJ. "We were interested in whether we could use this 'airDNA' as a way to assess what species were present in a burrow or a cave where we could not easily see or capture them," she added.

As a proof-of-concept experiment, Clare and her colleagues tried collecting DNA from the air in an animal facility housing a model organism, the naked mole rat. The researchers detected both human and mole rat DNA in air from both the mole rat enclosures and the room where the enclosures are housed.
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Info

High-energy particle accelerators within our galaxy discovered

Govert Schilling
Sky & Telescope
Fri, 02 Apr 2021 17:48 UTC
Move over, CERN. Unknown sources in the Milky Way dubbed "PeVatrons" accelerate protons to energies of a few peta-electronvolts - dozens of times higher than the yield of the Large Hadron Collider. Now, new data from a high-altitude experiment in Tibet confirm that such very-high-energy cosmic rays are indeed produced in our own galaxy.
Ultra high-energy rays
© APS; Background (atomic hydrogen distribution): HEASARC / LAMBDA / NASA / GFSC
Ultra high-energy diffuse gamma rays (yellow points) are distributed along the Milky Way Galaxy. The gray shaded area indicates the area outside the detectors' field of view.
"The results paint a much fuller picture of the PeVatron population in the Milky Way," says Pat Harding (Los Alamos National Laboratory), who was not involved in the study.

The distribution of cosmic rays by energy suggests these particles come in two varieties. The most extreme ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are believed to come from remote galaxies (see the May 2021 issue of Sky & Telescope to learn more about these harbingers). But the majority of cosmic rays, with energies below 4 PeV, are thought to originate in the Milky Way. However, the true nature of the PeVatron particle accelerators has remained unknown, largely because the paths of cosmic rays are bent by galactic magnetic fields, so they do not "point back" to their origin.

A large team of Chinese and Japanese scientists known as the Tibet ASγ Collaboration has now detected a few dozen very-high-energy (VHE) gamma rays from the Milky Way that aren't associated with known sources. These gamma rays, collected between 2014 and 2017, are thought to be produced when cosmic rays slam into atomic nuclei in the interstellar medium. Theory says they carry about 10% of the original cosmic-ray energy. The most energetic one detected by the Tibet ASγ team packs a punch of 0.957 PeV - an all-time record.
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Rose

Fungi manipulate bacteria to enrich soil with nutrients

Boyce Thompson Institute
Phys.org
Fri, 02 Apr 2021 12:00 UTC
hyphae
© Maria Harrison
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi extend long filament-like structures called hyphae far out into the soil. The hyphae, which are smaller than a human hair, cultivate their own microbiome.
A team of researchers from the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) has discovered a distinct group of bacteria that may help fungi and plants acquire soil nutrients. The findings could point the way to cost-effective and eco-friendly methods of enriching soil and improving crop yields, reducing farmers' reliance on conventional fertilizers.

Researchers know that arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi establish symbiotic relationships with the roots of 70% of all land plants. In this relationship, plants trade fatty acids for the fungi's nitrogen and phosphorus. However, AM fungi lack the enzymes needed to free nitrogen and phosphorus from complex organic molecules.

A trio of BTI scientists led by Maria Harrison, the William H. Crocker Professor at BTI, wondered whether other soil microbes might help the fungi access those nutrients. In a first step towards examining that possibility, the team investigated whether AM fungi associate with a specific community of bacteria. The research was described in a paper published in The ISME Journal on March 1.

Comment: Research is also revealing that conventional agriculture destroys these symbiotic relationships:

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Blue Planet

Dinosaur-killing asteroid strike gave rise to Amazon rainforest


BBC
Mon, 05 Apr 2021 11:43 UTC
asteroid
© SPL
The asteroid impact 66 million years ago led not just to the extinction of dinosaurs, but other forms of life
The asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs gave birth to our planet's tropical rainforests, a study suggests.

Researchers used fossil pollen and leaves from Colombia to investigate how the impact changed South American tropical forests.

After the 12km-wide space rock struck Earth 66 million years ago, the type of vegetation that made up these forests changed drastically.

The team has outlined its findings in the prestigious journal Science.

Comment: As Pierre Lescaudron concludes in his article The Seven Destructive Earth Passes of Comet Venus, it would appear that extinction level events are followed by an explosion of life on our planet:
Despite their apparent remoteness, cometary events are very real and might actually be one of the main punctuators of life and death on Earth. Most mass extinctions were triggered by cometary events and, interestingly, they were followed by the appearance of more complex forms of life.

We can witness this phenomenon, for example, at the Eoceone-Oligocene (E-O) boundary where numerous Eocene species went extinct and were "replaced" by the more complex Oligocene fauna:
Even more open landscapes allowed animals to grow to larger sizes than they had earlier in the Paleocene epoch 30 million years earlier. Marine faunas became fairly modern, as did terrestrial vertebrate fauna on the northern continents. This was probably more as a result of older forms dying out than as a result of more modern forms evolving.
Source
There is a similar pattern at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pt) boundary (attributed to the Chicxulub impact) where numerous Cretaceous species went extinct and were 'replaced' by the more complex Paleogene fauna:
The Paleogene is most notable for being the time during which mammals diversified from relatively small, simple forms into a large group of diverse animals in the wake of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that ended the preceding Cretaceous Period.
Source
If major cometary impacts trigger jumps in the complexity of life on our planet, the question is: how? One possible mechanism is via cometary-borne viruses. The presence of organic material in comets is now hypothesized by mainstream science. And we know that viruses can transfer DNA to their hosts.

So, are major cometary events the window of opportunity that 'intelligent design' uses to remove obsolete life forms (mass extinction) and to introduce more elaborate life-forms (life explosion) via the new DNA codes carried by the accompanying viruses?

That will be the topic of a future article.
See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Cow Skull

'Power cascade': Universal rule of how animals grow their pointy body parts revealed


Monash University
Mon, 29 Mar 2021 12:00 UTC
ram horn
© Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
An interdisciplinary team at Monash University discovered a new universal rule of biological growth that explains surprising similarities in the shapes of sharp structures across the tree of life, including teeth, horns, claws, beaks, animal shells, and even the thorns and prickles of plants.

Animals and plants often grow in specific patterns, like logarithmic spirals following the golden ratio. There are very simple processes that generate these patterns — a logarithmic spiral is produced when one side of a structure grows faster than another at a constant ratio. We can call these 'rules of growth', and they help us understand why organisms are certain shapes.

In the new study published today in BMC Biology, the research team demonstrates a new rule called the 'power cascade' based on how the shape 'cascades' down a tooth following a power law.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Mars

Mysterious 'Marsquakes' detected by Nasa's Insight lander in area of Red Planet where volcanic activity and landslides have been spotted

Bevan Hurley
Daily Mail
Sun, 04 Apr 2021 02:48 UTC
Mars surface
© NASA / JPL-CALTECH
Mysterious rumblings known as 'Marsquakes' have been detected by Nasa's InSight lander, offering further clues about volcanic activity beneath the surface of the Red Planet.

The tremors originated in a region called Cerberus Fossae - an area where Nasa scientists have picked up significant seismical activity and even landslides in the past.

They believe the tremors were likely caused by a sudden release of energy beneath the surface of the planet, but as Mars doesn't have tectonic plates like Earth, the precise cause and origins of the rumblings remain unknown.

The quakes were picked up by InSight's seismometer, an onboard device specially built to capture Marsquakes.

Using its robotic arm, InSight has partially buried the seismometer to protect it from strong seasonal winds and allow for more accurate readings.

Comment: Cosmic climate change: Earthquake detected on Mars! 'Marsquake' observed on Red Planet for very first time

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Galaxy

3 major scientific discoveries in the past century that point to God

Stephen C. Meyer
The Federalist
Fri, 02 Apr 2021 21:56 UTC
man and universe
This week, traditional Jews and Christians celebrate special acts of God in human history. Yet, polling data now show that an increasing number of young people, including those from religious homes, doubt even the existence of God.

Moreover, polls probing such young "religiously unaffiliated agnostics and atheists" have found that science — or at least the claims of putative spokesmen for science — have played an outsized sole in cementing disaffection with religious belief. In one, more than two-thirds of self-described atheists, and one-third of agnostics, affirm "the findings of science make the existence of God less probable."

It's not hard to see how many people might have acquired this impression. Since 2006 popular "new atheist" writers — Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Stephen Hawking, Bill Nye, and Lawrence Krauss — have published a series of best-selling books arguing that science renders religious belief implausible. According to Dawkins and others, Darwinian evolution, in particular, establishes that "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose ... nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

Comment: The tide seems to be turning:

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Galaxy

Newly forming stars don't blast away material as previously believed, scientists don't know why they stop growing

Scott Alan Johnston
Universe Today
Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:00 UTC
Orion Nebula
© NASA, ESA, STScI, N. Habel and S. T. Megeath (University of Toledo)
Orion Nebula
We thought we understood how stars are formed. It turns out, we don't. Not completely, anyway. A new study, recently conducted using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, is sending astronomers back to the drawing board to rewrite the accepted model of stellar formation.

What we do know about star formation is that they are born from enormous clouds of hydrogen gas. The gas gets clumped together and compressed by gravity, increasing in pressure and temperature until the mass grows large enough to set off nuclear fusion. But stars don't seem to absorb all of the gas in their surroundings. Something stops them from reaching enormous sizes.

Comment: See also:

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Fire

New hazard map for Mount Fuji doubles estimate of lava flow

Eiraku Maiko
NHK
Wed, 31 Mar 2021 12:00 UTC
Mount Fuji

Computer Generated Image of an erupting Mount Fuji
Mount Fuji is one of the iconic symbols of Japan, a source of inspiration for artists for centuries and a can't-miss destination for modern-day tourists. It is also an active volcano.

Last week, the Japanese government revised its volcanic hazard map for Mount Fuji for the first time in 17 years. This comes as new data shows that lava flows from a major eruption could spread as far as 40 kilometers from the summit.

The map was presented at an online meeting of the Mount Fuji disaster management council last Friday. The council is made up of officials from the central government and the prefectural governments of Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures, whose border the mountain straddles, and neighboring Kanagawa Prefecture.

Comment: Considering the worldwide uptick in volcanic activity, with much more predicted to come, this is is a rather timely warning for residents: 34,000 quakes in two weeks near Fagradalsfjall volcano, Iceland - 900% increase in activity compared with whole of 2020

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Robot

Scientists create the next generation of biological 'Xenobots'


Tufts University
Wed, 31 Mar 2021 19:04 UTC
Xenobots
© Doug Blackiston
Using a fluorescent protein, Xenobots record exposure to blue light, by turning green.
Last year, a team of biologists and computer scientists from Tufts University and the University of Vermont (UVM) created novel, tiny self-healing biological machines from frog cells called "Xenobots" that could move around, push a payload, and even exhibit collective behavior in the presence of a swarm of other Xenobots.

Get ready for Xenobots 2.0.

The same team has now created life forms that self-assemble a body from single cells, do not require muscle cells to move, and even demonstrate the capability of recordable memory. The new generation Xenobots also move faster, navigate different environments, and have longer lifespans than the first edition, and they still have the ability to work together in groups and heal themselves if damaged. The results of the new research were published today in Science Robotics.

Compared to Xenobots 1.0, in which the millimeter-sized automatons were constructed in a "top down" approach by manual placement of tissue and surgical shaping of frog skin and cardiac cells to produce motion, the next version of Xenobots takes a "bottom up" approach. The biologists at Tufts took stem cells from embryos of the African frog Xenopus laevis (hence the name "Xenobots") and allowed them to self-assemble and grow into spheroids, where some of the cells after a few days differentiated to produce cilia - tiny hair-like projections that move back and forth or rotate in a specific way. Instead of using manually sculpted cardiac cells whose natural rhythmic contractions allowed the original Xenobots to scuttle around, cilia give the new spheroidal bots "legs" to move them rapidly across a surface. In a frog, or human for that matter, cilia would normally be found on mucous surfaces, like in the lungs, to help push out pathogens and other foreign material. On the Xenobots, they are repurposed to provide rapid locomotion.
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