Science & Technology
But the biological mechanisms by which it works its magic, and whether it confers any additional benefits to cats, had remained unanswered questions until now.
An international team of researchers published a study in Science Advances on Wednesday, finding that catnip and silver vine, an even more potent herb found in the mountains of Japan and China, ward off mosquitoes.
At that time, just 1.5 billion years after Earth formed, the mantle — the layer of silicate rock between the crust and the outer core that was more active in the past — heated up, causing magma from that layer to ooze into fragments of older crust above it. Those fragments acted as "seeds" for the growth of modern-day continents.
The researchers found evidence for this growth spurt hiding in ancient zircon crystals in stream sediments in Greenland. These extremely durable crystals — made up of zirconium silicate — formed during the growth spurt around 3 billion years ago.
"There have probably been multiple crust-forming events in the Earth's history," lead researcher Chris Kirkland, a professor of geoscience at Curtin University in Australia, told Live Science. "But this global injection event 3 billion years ago is definitely one of the biggest."

Saturn's increasing obliquity means we are sometimes getting a better view of both the rings and the auroras at it's pole than we would if it were more upright.
The gas from which the planets formed swirled in the plane of their orbits. Without anything to change them, each should point straight up at right angles to their path around the Sun. The reality is messier. The angle between a planet's equator and its orbital plane is called its obliquity. Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter behave as expected, with obliquity values of just a few degrees, making their seasons almost undetectable. Mars and Neptune have values a little greater than the Earth's 23.4º, while Uranus has flopped over entirely and is rotating sideways, and a little backward, its obliquity an improbable 98 degrees.
The reasons for each tilt are as individual as the planets themselves, and sometimes all is not as it seems. Saturn's obliquity of 26.7º - neatly fitting between Mars and Neptune - isn't unusual, but still requires an explanation. Most astronomers believe the cause lies more than four billion years ago when the Solar System was young and resonance with Neptune's orbit tilted Saturn over. Dr Melaine Saillenfest of Sorbonne Université has challenged that, arguing it's actually happening before our eyes.

Recent research shows that the insect’s microbial community is central to protecting the hive from invaders—both big and small.
For the targeted hive, the attack can spell disaster — bees may be killed trying to defend the colony's food, while the honey theft leaves the colony at risk of starvation over the winter. Colonies try to prevent these invasions by stationing guard bees outside the hive to monitor the thousands of bees entering and exiting the hive. Guard bees use the smell of other bees' cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs), compounds that form a waxy, water-resistant layer coating diverse insect species, to identify individuals that try to infiltrate from different colonies. Differences in CHC composition were thought to depend on genetics, but researchers have shown that day-old bees can be integrated into a foreign hive with few cases of rejection.
Comment: Studies of the human microbiome are revealing similar findings:
- Links between gut microbes and depression strengthened
- "Exposome": Scientists measure invisible clouds of matter that orbit every human being
- How viruses and bacteria balance each other in the gut microbiome
- Parasite infection closely linked to gastrointestinal microbiome
- Bees use shark 'supersense' to help find food
- Bumblebees bite plants to make them flower early
- Bumble bees lacking high-quality habitat have higher pathogen loads

Six asteroids will greet Joe Biden taking the oath of office.
NASA has identified six asteroids that will blaze past Earth on inauguration day. The space agency labelled the plethora of space rocks as Near Earth Objects (NEOs), meaning they warrant close scrutiny.
"NEOs are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth's neighbourhood," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says.
The tightest shave will see an asteroid come significantly closer to Earth than the Moon, the largest passing visitor measuring up to 305 feet (93 meters) in width. In a weird inauguration-day quirk of fate, the Statue of Liberty in New York is also 93 meters tall.

This is what a comet looks like – just a dot to our eyes – when it’s far from the sun. Astronomers spotted Comet Leonard (inside the tick marks) in early January 2021, a year before its closest sweep past our sun. The comet might be visible to the unaided eye by the end of this year.
Discovered last week, new images of Comet Leonard appear to show the dusty visitor to the Solar System already has a bright nucleus and a tail.
Scientists from the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute have started to picture what such a machine would look like. Imagine an AI program with an intelligence far superior to humans. So much so that it could learn on its own without new programming. If it was connected to the internet, researchers say the AI would have access to all of humanity's data and could even take control of other machines around the globe.
Study authors ask what would such an intelligence do with all that power? Would it work to make all of our lives better? Would it devote its processing power to fixing issues like climate change? Or, would the machine look to take over the lives of its human neighbors?
China achieved "quantum supremacy" with the development of its Jiuzhang quantum computer, which last month surpassed Google's Sycamore quantum device with its ability to calculate 100 trillion times faster than the fastest classical supercomputer.
The development sent shock waves around the world. But before this news could be fully digested by rival players in the quantum race, Beijing announced it had also built the world's first fully integrated quantum network. Earlier this month, a network of satellite relays and fiber optic cables between Shanghai and Beijing was able to "teleport" huge amounts of data.
When darkness comes, electric eels emerge from South American river bottoms to attack their prey with up to 860 volts of electricity — enough to kill a person. Now, scientists have revealed the snakelike fish don't always go it alone: They hunt in packs, similar to wolves, orcas, and some species of tuna. The finding, a first among electric fishes, may open the way for new studies to investigate when social predation evolved among fishes.
"I was shocked," says Douglas Bastos, a biologist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research who first saw a group attack in 2012. Usually the eels, which can grow as long as a broomstick and weigh up to 20 kilograms, prey alone at night, targeting single resting fishes, he notes. "This behavior is unprecedented for electrical eels and also rare among freshwater fishes."
Comment: In recent years science has come to discover that there is cross-species hunting cooperation, so, whilst this is an interesting find, some of the comments in the article above also reveal just how limiting the scientific perspective can be sometimes; and particularly that shaped by Darwinian theory:
- Huntsman spiders found weaving 'frog traps' out of silk and leaves
- Darwinism, Creationism... How About Neither?
- The Truth Perspective: Are Cells the Intelligent Designers? Why Creationists and Darwinists Are Both Wrong
- The Truth Perspective: Mind the Gaps: Locating the Intelligence in Evolution and Design
- The Truth Perspective: Unlocking the Secrets of Consciousness, Hyperdimensional Attractors and Frog Brains

NASA said the 'hot-fire' test of the RS-25 engines that will power the Artemis lunar missions shut down prematurely
NASA conducted a test firing of the engines for its giant Space Launch System (SLS) lunar rocket on Saturday but they shut down earlier than planned, the space agency said.
The "hot-fire" test at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi was supposed to last a little over eight minutes — the time the engines would burn in flight — but they shut down just over a minute into the burn.
Comment: See also: