Science & Technology

How supereruption of Toba volcanoe 74,000 years ago disrupted climate

Rutgers University
Source
Tue, 27 Jul 2021 12:00 UTC

A massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia about 74,000 years ago likely caused severe climate disruption in many areas of the globe, but early human populations were sheltered from the worst effects, according to a Rutgers-led study.

The findings appear in the journal PNAS.

The eruption of the Toba volcano was the largest volcanic eruption in the past two million years, but its impacts on climate and human evolution have been unclear. Resolving this debate is important for understanding environmental changes during a key interval in human evolution.

"We were able to use a large number of climate model simulations to resolve what seemed like a paradox," said lead author Benjamin Black, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "We know this eruption happened and that past climate modeling has suggested the climate consequences could have been severe, but archaeological and paleoclimate records from Africa don't show such a dramatic response.

Comment: And it's possible that what caused the eruption was an encounter with a cometary body: Volcanoes, Earthquakes And The 3,600 Year Comet Cycle

Scientists' suspicious deaths are under the microscope

Alanna Mitchell, Simon Cooper & Carolyn Abraham
Globe and Mail
Sat, 04 May 2002 06:52 UTC

'Superstar scientist' Don Wiley

It's a tale only the best conspiracy theorist could dream up.

Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five months. Some of them world leaders in developing weapons-grade biological plagues. Others the best in figuring out how to stop millions from dying because of biological weapons. Still others, experts in the theory of bioterrorism.

Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle hint of espionage, a big whack of imagination, and the plot is complete, if a bit reminiscent of James Bond.

Comment: Notice how the authors are trivializing the murders with multiple allusions to fictional and stereotypical notions in an attempt to preemptively allay readers' suspicions. In all likelihood, these scientists' deaths - and the dark underbelly of Western military intelligence networks that connect them - could not be matched by anything in Hollywood fiction.

The first three died in the space of just over a week in November. Benito Que, 52, was an expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical School. Police originally suspected that he had been beaten on Nov. 12 in a carjacking in the medical school's parking lot. Strangely enough, though, his body showed no signs of a beating. Doctors then began to suspect a stroke.

Just four days after Dr. Que fell unconscious came the mysterious disappearance of Don Wiley, 57, one of the foremost microbiologists in the United States. Dr. Wiley, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University, was an expert on how the immune system responds to viral attacks such as the classic doomsday plagues of HIV, ebola and influenza.

Emerging secrets of the Alps: algae causing strange red snow

Dhananjay Khadilkar
BBC
Fri, 30 Jul 2021 12:00 UTC

It is a shocking, garish sight to come across on a peaceful mountainside. Hike high enough in the French alps during the late spring and early summer, and there is a good chance that you will come across some rather strange patches of snow among the grey limestone and stunted clumps of vegetation. This snow isn't white - it's blood red.

The peculiar phenomenon - sometimes known as blood snow - is the result of a defence mechanism produced by microscopic algae that grow in the Alpine snow. Normally these microalgae have a green colour as they contain chlorophyll, the family of pigments produced by most plants to help them absorb energy from sunlight. However, when the snow algae grow prolifically and are exposed to strong solar radiation, they produce red-coloured pigment molecules known as carotenoids, which act as a sunshield to protect their chlorophyll.

Comment: It's notable that elsewhere on the planet algae blooms in bodies of water also appear to be on the increase:

NIST's quantum crystal could be a new dark matter sensor

NIST
Thu, 05 Aug 2021 09:49 UTC

© R. Jacobson/NIST
NIST physicists John Bollinger (left) and Matt Affolter adjust the laser and optics array used to trap and probe beryllium ions in the large magnetic chamber (white pillar at left). The ion crystal may help detect mysterious dark matter.

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have linked together, or "entangled," the mechanical motion and electronic properties of a tiny blue crystal, giving it a quantum edge in measuring electric fields with record sensitivity that may enhance understanding of the universe.

The quantum sensor consists of 150 beryllium ions (electrically charged atoms) confined in a magnetic field, so they self-arrange into a flat 2D crystal just 200 millionths of a meter in diameter. Quantum sensors such as this have the potential to detect signals from dark matter — a mysterious substance that might turn out to be, among other theories, subatomic particles that interact with normal matter through a weak electromagnetic field. The presence of dark matter could cause the crystal to wiggle in telltale ways, revealed by collective changes among the crystal's ions in one of their electronic properties, known as spin.

As described in the Aug. 6 issue of Science, researchers can measure the vibrational excitation of the crystal — the flat plane moving up and down like the head of a drum — by monitoring changes in the collective spin. Measuring the spin indicates the extent of the vibrational excitation, referred to as displacement.

This sensor can measure external electric fields that have the same vibration frequency as the crystal with more than 10 times the sensitivity of any previously demonstrated atomic sensor. (Technically, the sensor can measure 240 nanovolts per meter in one second.) In the experiments, researchers apply a weak electric field to excite and test the crystal sensor. A dark matter search would look for such a signal.

Minor CME leads to geomagnetic storm: Grid failure all but guaranteed by 2024

Cap Allon
Electroverse
Wed, 04 Aug 2021 06:49 UTC

The sun may have been quiet over the past week or so, but that didn't stop our planet's magnetic field allowing a minor CME to break its defenses and push the indexes into geomagnetic storm territory.

A minor coronal mass ejection (CME) erupted on the sun a few days ago, and, as expected, it impacted Earth on August 3; however, what wasn't forecast by the observers at NOAA and NASA was the event sparking a geomagnetic storm.

The event was barely a blip as far the telemetry was concerned:

Comment: See also:

3 new sources of tremors identified at Kīlauea correlated with disappearance of lava lake during massive 2018 eruption

Kate Wheeling, American Geophysical Union
Phys.org
Tue, 03 Aug 2021 12:00 UTC

© USGS
A view of Kīlauea’s summit lava lake. The lava lake is contained within a crater, which is set within the larger Halema‘uma‘u Crater. New research aims to understand the activity that led to the eruption in 2018 in Kīlauea’s lower East Rift Zone.

Kīlauea in Hawaii is the best-monitored volcano in the world. The 2018 eruption was the largest in some 200 years, providing researchers with a plethora of new data to understand the volcano's plumbing and behavior. Two new studies dig into data on volcanic tremor and deformation to better characterize the events leading up to and following the 2018 eruption.

In one study, Soubestre et al. used data from a permanent seismic network and tiltmeter located at Kīlauea's summit and derived models of tremor source processes to examine how volcanic tremors related to the disappearance of a lava lake and subsidence in Halema'uma'u Crater at the beginning and throughout the 2018 eruption. Here the authors used a seismic network covariance matrix approach to enhance coherent signals and cut out noise to detect and locate the volcanic tremor sources.

Comment: Kīlauea's historic eruption is just one example of a variety of extreme natural phenomena to have happened in recent years, and, taken together, signals an overall uptick occurring on our planet:

Exercise improves health through changes in DNA

University of Copenhagen
Mon, 26 Jul 2021 16:03 UTC

Six weeks of physical exercise led to changes in the epigenetic information of skeletal muscle cells in young men. These changes took place in areas of the genome that have been linked to disease. Scientists at the University of Copenhagen say their research shows, for the first time, how exercise remodels DNA in skeletal muscle, so that new signals are established to keep the body healthy.

While it is widely known that regular physical exercise decreases the risk of virtually all chronic illnesses, the mechanisms at play are not fully known. Now scientists at the University of Copenhagen have discovered that the beneficial effects of physical exercise may in part result from changes to the structure of our DNA. These changes are referred as 'epigenetic'.

DNA is the molecular instruction manual found in all our cells. Some sections of our DNA are genes, which are instructions for building proteins - the body's building blocks - while other sections are called enhancers that regulate which genes are switched on or off, when, and in which tissue. The scientists found, for the first time, that exercise rewires the enhancers in regions of our DNA that are known to be associated with the risk to develop disease.

"Our findings provide a mechanism for the known beneficial effects of exercise. By connecting each enhancer with a gene, we further provide a list of direct targets that could mediate this effect," says Professor Romain Barrès from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, the senior author of the research, which was published in Molecular Metabolism.

Solar max might come a year early

Spaceweather.com
Wed, 04 Aug 2021 03:11 UTC

Solar Cycle 25 is heating up faster than expected. The latest sign may be found in sunspot counts from July 2021. Continuing a trend that started last year, they overperform the official forecast.

Issued by the NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel in 2019, the official forecast calls for Solar Cycle 25 to peak in July 2025. However, a better fit to current data shows Solar Cycle 25 peaking in October 2024. This is just outside the 8-month error bars of the Panel's forecast.

July 2021 was a remarkable month. Solar Cycle 25 crossed multiple thresholds, including its first X-flare and, at one point, 6 sunspots on the solar disk. The last time so many sunspots were seen at the same time was Sept. 2017 (SWx archive). One farside CME in July was so strong it affected Earth despite being on the "wrong" side of the sun. A handful of other CMEs narrowly missed our planet.

If solar activity increases apace, some of those blows will soon begin to land.

Comment: Solar Cycle 25: Is a Termination Event imminent?

Common insecticide is harmful to bees in 'any amount' - study

Jules Bernstein, University of California - Riverside
Phys.org
Mon, 02 Aug 2021 23:57 UTC

© David Rankin/UCR
An alfalfa leafcutter bee, the type used by UC Riverside scientists to study the effects of pesticide and water levels.

A new UC Riverside study shows that a type of insecticide made for commercial plant nurseries is harmful to a typical bee even when applied well below the label rate.

The study was published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Chemically similar to nicotine, neonicotinoids are insecticides that protect against plant-consuming insects like aphids, but seriously harm beneficial insects, like bees. They are widely used by commercial growers.

Comment: Fortunately for humans, nicotine delivered via tobacco smoking can actually be extremely beneficial.

Comment: Mainstream agricultural practices destroy soil health and in turn the ability that plants have to fight off predators. That we have to use pesticides at all shows how little we know about life on our planet and our inability to produce and manage abundance:

Giraffes have complex social systems says study

University of Bristol,
Tue, 03 Aug 2021 22:11 UTC

Scientists at the University of Bristol have discovered evidence that giraffes are a highly socially complex species.

© Zoe Muller
A mother Rothschild's giraffe tending to her baby. The photo was taken in Soysambu Conservancy, in the Rift Valley region of Kenya. Giraffes are attentive mothers to their offspring, and all female adults in a group are invested in each others' offspring.

Traditionally, giraffes were thought to have little or no social structure, and only fleeting, weak relationships. However in the last ten years, research has shown that giraffe social organisation is much more advanced than once thought.

In a paper published in today in the journal Mammal Review, Zoe Muller, of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, has demonstrated that giraffes spend up to 30% of their lives in a post-reproductive state. This is comparable to other species with highly complex social structures and cooperative care, such as elephants and killer-whales which spend 23% and 35% of their lives in a post-reproductive state respectively. In these species, it has been demonstrated that the presence of post-menopausal females offers survival benefits for related offspring. In mammals - and -ncluding humans - this is known as the 'Grandmother hypothesis' which suggests that females live long past menopause so that they can help raise successive generations of offspring, thereby ensuring the preservation of their genes. Researchers propose that the presence of post-reproductive adult female giraffes could also function in the same way, and supports the author's assertion that giraffes are likely to engage in cooperative parenting, along matrilines, and contribute to the shared parental care of related kin.

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Science & Technology

How supereruption of Toba volcanoe 74,000 years ago disrupted climate

Scientists' suspicious deaths are under the microscope

Emerging secrets of the Alps: algae causing strange red snow

NIST's quantum crystal could be a new dark matter sensor

Minor CME leads to geomagnetic storm: Grid failure all but guaranteed by 2024

3 new sources of tremors identified at Kīlauea correlated with disappearance of lava lake during massive 2018 eruption

Exercise improves health through changes in DNA

Solar max might come a year early

Common insecticide is harmful to bees in 'any amount' - study

Giraffes have complex social systems says study

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