Science & TechnologyS


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 ImagesThe 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 alScanning 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
© EIKEIPCC Address (in German)
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Attention

Two of the biggest US earthquake faults might be linked

Alexandra Witze
Nature
Fri, 06 Dec 2019 13:14 UTC
San Andreas fault
© Underwood Archives/GettyThe earthquake that devastated San Francisco, California, in 1906 arose from the San Andreas fault — which might be linked to another major fault zone to the north.
A controversial study argues that at least eight times in the past 3,000 years, quakes made a one-two punch off the west coast of the United States. A quake hit the Cascadia fault off the coast of northern California, triggering a second quake on the San Andreas fault just to the south. In some cases, the delay between the quakes may have been decades long.

The study suggests that Cascadia, which scientists think is capable of unleashing a magnitude-9 earthquake at any time, could set off quakes on the northern San Andreas, which runs under the San Francisco Bay Area.

Several earthquake scientists told Nature that more work is needed to confirm the provocative idea. Researchers have long considered the two faults seismically separate.

Comment: See also:

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Cow Skull

Paleoartist sketches what modern animals would look like using techniques applied to dinosaurs to highlight flaws in approach

Milly Vincent
Daily Mail
Wed, 04 Dec 2019 12:41 UTC
swan dinosaur
A modern-day swan - imagined using its skeleton in a streamlined version of reality
Dinosaurs have always been illustrated as a bony lot, and is it any wonder when much of what palaeontologists have to base their reconstructions on are bones?

Palaeoartist C. M. Kosemen believes that there was more to the shapely dinosaurs than has been depicted, including larger layers of fat and areas of soft tissue.

He believes Hollywood is to blame for giving dinosaurs their skeletal 'monster' image.

In a series of sketches Mr Kosemen has set about making that point by re-imagining modern day animals from their skeletons.

Comment: It's an interesting critique, particularly when we consider that there are published papers highlighting the significant artistic license that goes into human facial reconstruction dating back to even the recent past.

It's possible that direct comparisons with modern day creatures may not be totally accurate, if environmental conditions were quite different when compared to the present era, but with numerous fossil discoveries of ancient creatures turning up all the time, showing the impressions of feathers, skin and even coloration, it's seems that we're getting closer to what they may have looked like:

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Butterfly

The many wonders of butterflies and how they evolve by design


Evolution News
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 04:42 UTC
butterfly
© Carleton University/Wikimedia CommonsPhoto: Numata Longwing, a Heliconius butterfly
Butterflies, those universally loved flying works of art, offer many reasons to celebrate design in nature.
  • They showcase aesthetic beauty beyond the requirements of survival (see "Beauty, Darwin and Design," featuring Paul Nelson).
  • Their migrations show foresight over multiple generations.
  • The one-gram Monarch butterflies astonish biologists with their exceptional endurance to survive hardships while flying thousands of miles on paper-thin wings (see "2-Minute Wonder: A Monarch's Journey").
  • Their navigation systems exhibit stunning accuracy to arrive at locations they have never seen.
  • Their keen senses can find the right host plants from miles away; they can smell very faint pheromones for mating; and they can distinguish precise angles of sunlight for orientation and timing of migration.
  • Their wing scales, organized into "photonic crystals," give precision control of light waves to create iridescent colors.
  • Last, but not least, their metamorphosis from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to flying adult is, as Illustra Media showed in the film Metamorphosis, like turning a Model T into a helicopter inside a garage by breaking down and reassembling all the parts.

Comment: One particularly curious, and clever, wing pattern is that of the Macrocilix Maia moth - as detailed on Wikipaedia:
The moth features two symmetrical patterns resembling flies feeding on bird droppings. The moth has a pungent odor.[5]
Macrocilix Maia
© wikiMacrocilix Maia
See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Bulb

Accessing higher-energy light to fight cancer

Holly Ober
UC Riverside News
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 20:33 UTC
laser beam
Materials scientists at the University of California, Riverside and The University of Texas at Austin have demonstrated that it is possible to achieve photon up-conversion, the emission of light with energy higher than the one that excites the material, when using carefully designed structures containing silicon nanocrystals and specialized organic molecules.

The accomplishment, published in Nature Chemistry, brings scientists one step closer to developing minimally invasive photodynamic treatments for cancer. The advance could also hasten new technologies for solar-energy conversion, quantum information, and near-infrared driven photocatalysis.

High energy light, such as ultraviolet laser light, can form free radicals able to attack cancer tissue. Ultraviolet light, however, doesn't travel far enough into tissues to generate therapeutic radicals close to the tumor site. On the other hand, near-infrared light penetrates deeply but doesn't have enough energy to generate the radicals.
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Attention

Growing babies outside the womb

Neera Bhatia and Evie Kendal
The Conversation
Wed, 27 Nov 2019 17:05 UTC
Artificial Womb
© Flip BoardResearchers are developing artificial wombs as we speak. So we need to talk about the pros and cons before science fiction becomes reality.
The idea of growing babies outside the body has inspired novels and movies for decades.

Now, research groups around the world are exploring the possibility of artificial gestation. For instance, one group successfully grew a lamb in an artificial womb for four weeks. Australian researchers have also experimented with artificial gestation for lambs and sharks.

And in recent weeks, researchers in The Netherlands have received €2.9m ($4.66m) to develop a prototype for gestating premature babies.

So it's important to consider some of the ethical issues this technology might bring.

What is an artificial womb?

Growing a baby outside the womb is known as ectogenesis (or exogenesis). And we're already using a form of it. When premature infants are transferred to humidicribs to continue their development in a neonatal unit, that's partial ectogenesis.

But an artificial womb could extend the period a fetus could be gestated outside the body. Eventually, we might be able to do away with human wombs altogether.

This may sound far-fetched, but many scientists working in reproductive biotechnology believe that with the necessary scientific and legal support, full ectogenesis is a real possibility for the future.

Comment:

Scientists predict that babies will be grown in artificial wombs within ten years

Ectogenesis: Artificial wombs could soon be a reality

Welcome to the Matrix - Artificial wombs successfully pass 1st test, human trials could begin within 3yrs

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Beaker

'Deliberate falsehood': Scientists shred Chinese CRISPR babies experiment after leak of unpublished research


RT
Wed, 04 Dec 2019 00:43 UTC
crispr babies
© Reuters / Julia Symmes Cobb
A controversial genetic experiment to make Chinese twins resistant to HIV is causing renewed outrage after the release of the original research, with scientists charging that it failed to meet its goals and ignored basic ethics.

The MIT Technology Review published portions of two previously unseen research papers on Tuesday, principally authored by Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui, who last year attempted to use CRISPR DNA editing technology to immunize twins - Lulu and Nana - against HIV.

While He's bold claims about what the experiment accomplished have come under scrutiny before, a wave of new criticism has followed the publication, which was passed to MIT by an unnamed source. Chief among the complaints is that He's experiment didn't achieve its main goal: producing a mutation in the CCR5 gene that would create resistance to HIV.

Comment: See also:

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Info

Certain brain regions smaller among women using birth control pills

Chloe Williams
Live Science
Wed, 04 Dec 2019 12:47 UTC
A brain region called the hypothalamus is smaller among women who use birth control pills, compared with non-users, a new study finds.
Brain MRI Images
© M. Lipton et al., Radiological Society of North AmericaBrain MRI images showing the hypothalamus, in red. A new study finds that this brain region is smaller in women who use birth control pills, compared with women not taking the pill.
Birth control pills may slightly alter the structure of women's brains, according to a new study.

The study found that women taking the pill, or oral contraceptives, had a smaller hypothalamus than women not taking the pill. The hypothalamus is a pea-size structure deep inside the brain that helps regulate involuntary functions, such as appetite, body temperature and emotions. It also serves as a link between the nervous system and endocrine system, a network of glands that produce hormones.

About 150 million women use oral contraceptives worldwide, according to a 2019 report from the United Nations' Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Despite their widespread use, research looking at how oral contraceptives affect the brain is sparse. "It's a pretty understudied area," said Dr. Michael Lipton, professor of radiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, who led the recent research.
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