Science & TechnologyS


Question

Holobiont: Are you and your microbes a community or a single entity?

Derek J. Skillings
Aeon
Wed, 26 Sep 2018 16:47 UTC
cicada
© Photo courtesy Wikimedia.Cicada, North Carolina, May 2011.
Cicadas might be a pest, but they're special in a few respects. For one, these droning insects have a habit of emerging after a prime number of years (7, 13, or 17). They also feed exclusively on plant sap, which is strikingly low in nutrients. To make up for this deficiency, cicadas depend on two different strains of bacteria that they keep cloistered within special cells, and that provide them with additional amino acids. All three partners - the cicadas and the two types of microbes - have evolved in concert, and none could survive on its own.

These organisms together make up what's known as a holobiont: a combination of a host, plus all of the resident microbes that live in it and on it. The concept has taken off within biology in the past 10 years, as we've discovered more and more plants and animals that are accompanied by a jostling menagerie of internal and external fellow-travellers. Some of the microorganisms kill each other with toxins, while others leak or release enzymes and nutrients to the benefit of their neighbours. As they compete for space and food, cohabiting microbes have been found to affect the nutrition, development, immune system and behaviour of their hosts. The hosts, for their part, can often manipulate their resident microbiota in many ways, usually via the immune system.

You yourself are swarming with bacteria, archaea, protists and viruses, and might even be carrying larger organisms such as worms and fungi as well. So are you a holobiont, or are you just part of one? Are you a multispecies entity, made up of some human bits and some microbial bits - or are you just the human bits, with an admittedly fuzzy boundary between yourself and your tiny companions? The future direction of medical science could very well hinge on the answer.
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Info

King of the Monsters Godzilla, gets its own constellation

Casey Baseel
SoraNews24
Sat, 20 Oct 2018 00:22 UTC
Godzilla
© SoraNews24
Mt. Fuji constellation joins the kaiju in the gamma-ray-filled heavens.

When Godzilla made his screen debut in 1954, he was, like most Japanese media of the era, designed just for Japan. But in the decades since, the King of the Monsters has expanded his dominion, appearing in theaters around the world.

That international recognition even earned the kaiju his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but now Godzilla finds himself among not just movie stars, but celestial ones as well, as NASA has announced a Godzilla constellation.
Godzilla Constellation3
© PR Times, NASA
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Satellite

Space junk from Iridium satellite crashes into Californian orchard

Mike Wehner
bgr.com
Fri, 19 Oct 2018 11:28 UTC
space junk iridium
When a farmer in Hanford, California took a casual stroll out to his walnut orchard recently, the last thing he expected to find was a piece of space junk. But that's precisely what he got. There, amongst the trees, was a large hunk of mangled metal, charred and scrapped as though it had been through Hell.

Indeed, the object had endured incredible heat and destructive forces, but not from the underworld. The dome-shaped chunk was actually a piece of space junk, having made it all the way to the ground despite the intense friction it faced in the atmosphere. After a bit of searching, it has now been identified.

According to local news reports, the farmer contacted his local sheriff's department to aid him in figuring out what the object was. Law enforcement examined the strange item but had little clue, so they eventually reached out to nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base, which was able to identify it as a fuel tank from a satellite.

Comment: While the threat of space junk seems to be a relatively common occurrence, one wonders whether our changing atmosphere is leading to an increase in the number of bits of scrap which make impact with the ground: However, there is a much more pressing concern, also concerning debris from outer space, which poses a risk to the entire planet

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Seismograph

4 earthquakes strike days after fracking restarts in Blackpool, UK

Jane Wharton
Metro
Fri, 19 Oct 2018 18:13 UTC
fracking uk protest
© AFPFashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood (4th L) campaigns with fellow anti-fracking protesters gathering near the entrance to the Preston New Road drill site where energy firm Cuadrilla Resources have commenced fracking (hydraulic fracturing) operations this week
Blackpool has been hit by four earthquakes just days after the controversial practice of fracking began again in the area.

The latest quake hit this afternoon at levels where scientists say the process should 'proceed with caution.'

Fracking was stopped for years after two earthquakes in Lancashire and experts have now raised fears that 'there may be trouble ahead.'

David Smythe, Emeritus Professor of Geophysics, University of Glasgow, told Metro.co.uk: 'Recent research by Stanford University shows that these tiny tremors can be indicators of bigger quakes to follow - like canaries in a coal-mine.

'The problem for Cuadrilla is that if it carries on regardless, bigger earthquakes may well be triggered.

Comment: Earthquakes, contaminated ground water and polluted land are all proven consequences of fracking and yet the pathological UK authorities disregard life in their pursuit of pitiful profits:

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Meteor

Truck-size asteroid makes fourth-closest pass by Earth on record

Eric Mack
CNET
Fri, 19 Oct 2018 14:36 UTC
earth asteroid
© CC0/Pixbay

A space rock cruises over us, coming even closer than most communications satellites

An asteroid roughly the size of a pickup truck came within 10,000 miles of our heads Friday morning and then continued on its way without incident.

Only three observed asteroids have come closer to our planet, according to NASA records that date all the way back to 1900.

Asteroid 2018 UA was only 9,544 miles (15,360 kilometers) above the surface of the planet at its closest approach, which is much closer than the distance to the moon and even twice as close as most large man-made satellites in orbit. Earth's gravity managed to warp the space rock's orbit around the sun in the process.

Of the four closest asteroid flybys on record, 2018 UA is the second-largest at approximately 5 meters (16 feet).

Of course, those records don't account for asteroids that actually impact our atmosphere and become meteors, like the bolide that exploded over Russia in 2013, or the small asteroid that may have made it all the way to the ground in Africa in June.

Comment: Expecting an asteroid? Proposed budget for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office suddenly increased three-fold

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Bulb

China is launching an artificial, extra-bright moon to cut the cost of city lights


RT
Fri, 19 Oct 2018 17:21 UTC
Moon
© NASA / Joel KowskyThe fake moon will be eight times brighter than Earth’s moon.
In a move that sounds straight out of a sci-fi paperback, China is planning to launch the first artificial 'moon' into orbit in order to replace street lights and reduce energy costs.

Chinese scientists say the man-made moon, which is essentially an illuminated satellite, will be in orbit by 2020. It will be eight times brighter than Earth's moon and will shine down on the city of Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern Sichuan province.

It's hoped the innovation will replace the need for streetlights and will reduce annual electricity costs by up to 1.2 billion yuan ($173 million).
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Bizarro Earth

Eerie 'singing' sounds heard coming from the Antarctic ice shelf

Andrew Griffin
The Independent
Thu, 18 Oct 2018 17:16 UTC
Antarctic ice shelf
© NOAA PHOTO LIBRARY/FLICKR
Scientists have heard strange "singing" noises coming out of the ice shelf.

The low-frequency noises - which sound a little like moaning when sped up - could help researchers track the ice shelves as they collapse.

The singing tones come out of the surface of the massive Ross Ice Shelf when the winds blowing across the snow dunes cause it to vibrate. That means they produce the "tones" almost constantly, and now scientists have found they can listen to them.

Doing so could help them spot how the ice shelf is forming from afar, and track the damage that is being done by climate change by tuning into the tones.

Ice shelf collapses can be drastic and sudden. When they do, they can change the flow of water and raise sea levels, making it important to watch for any signs as they occur.

To try and understand how the Ross Ice Shelf is arranged, scientists put 34 very sensitive seismic detectors under its surface. They then monitored its vibrations from late 2014 to early 2017.

When they checked in on that data, they found that the snowy coat that sits on top of the ice shelf appeared to be almost constantly vibrating.

It was then they found that the shaking was caused by the winds travelling across the huge snow dunes and making the snow rumble, like a huge drum.

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Robot

From magnets to sex toys, biohackers are implanting everything

Stefan Nicola
Bloomberg
Fri, 19 Oct 2018 11:34 UTC
Biohackers implanting everything
© Digiwell/Twitter
Patrick Kramer sticks a needle into a customer's hand and injects a microchip the size of a grain of rice under the skin. "You're now a cyborg," he says after plastering a Band-Aid on the small wound between Guilherme Geronimo's thumb and index finger. The 34-year-old Brazilian plans to use the chip, similar to those implanted in millions of cats, dogs, and livestock, to unlock doors and store a digital business card.

Kramer is chief executive officer of Digiwell, a Hamburg startup in what aficionados call body hacking-digital technology inserted into people. Kramer says he's implanted about 2,000 such chips in the past 18 months, and he has three in his own hands: to open his office door, store medical data, and share his contact information. Digiwell is one of a handful of companies offering similar services, and biohacking advocates estimate there are about 100,000 cyborgs worldwide. "The question isn't 'Do you have a microchip?' " Kramer says. "It's more like, 'How many?' We've entered the mainstream."

Research house Gartner Inc. identified do-it-yourself biohacking as one of five technology trends-others include artificial intelligence and blockchain-with the potential to disrupt businesses. The human augmentation market, which includes implants as well as bionic limbs and fledgling computer-brain connections, will grow more than tenfold, to $2.3 billion, by 2025, as industries as diverse as health care, defense, sports, and manufacturing adopt such technologies, researcher OG Analysis predicts. "We're only at the beginning of this trend," says Oliver Bendel, a professor at the University of Applied Sciences & Arts Northwestern Switzerland who specializes in machine ethics.
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Brain

Human brains carry electrical signals differently to other mammals, may explain unique computing power

Anne Trafton
MIT News
Fri, 19 Oct 2018 12:59 UTC
dendrites
© Lou Beaulieu-Laroche and Mark HarnettMIT neuroscientists can now record electrical activity from the dendrites of human neurons.
Neurons in the human brain receive electrical signals from thousands of other cells, and long neural extensions called dendrites play a critical role in incorporating all of that information so the cells can respond appropriately.

Using hard-to-obtain samples of human brain tissue, MIT neuroscientists have now discovered that human dendrites have different electrical properties from those of other species. Their studies reveal that electrical signals weaken more as they flow along human dendrites, resulting in a higher degree of electrical compartmentalization, meaning that small sections of dendrites can behave independently from the rest of the neuron.

These differences may contribute to the enhanced computing power of the human brain, the researchers say.

"It's not just that humans are smart because we have more neurons and a larger cortex. From the bottom up, neurons behave differently," says Mark Harnett, the Fred and Carole Middleton Career Development Assistant Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. "In human neurons, there is more electrical compartmentalization, and that allows these units to be a little bit more independent, potentially leading to increased computational capabilities of single neurons."

Comment: See also:

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Galaxy

Hyperion: Scientists discover largest and oldest supercluster of galaxies ever

Doris Elin Salazar
Space.com
Wed, 17 Oct 2018 15:37 UTC
Hyperion
© L. Calçada & Olga Cucciati et al./ESOThe Hyperion protocluster dates back to just 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang. An international team of astronomers led by Olga Cucciati scanned data from the VIMOS instrument of ESO's Very Large Telescope and found this colossal structure from the early universe.
Scientists recently uncovered the largest known structure of the ancient universe.

It's an object called a supercluster, which is not as foreign as it may sound. We reside in a supercluster, too. If space seems like a lonely place on dim nights, just remember that Earth is in the midst of plentiful galactic company. The sun's home, the Milky Way, is one galaxy out of many in its cosmic neighborhood. And the Milky Way galaxy is a member of a gathering of nearby galaxies called the Virgo supercluster, which is part of a larger supercluster called Laniakea (which translates to "immeasurable heavens" in Hawaiian).

These structures are typically found when scientists look at lower redshifts. In general, redshifts are a measure of how much an object's light has been stretched out as the object moves away from us. Astronomers use redshift to evaluate how long ago light left its source; because the universe is expanding, the less redshift that light shows, the later in the universe's history the light originally left its source.

Structures spotted at lower redshifts are cosmic contemporaries. But at higher redshifts, an object is determined to be much older.

Comment: Discoveries that throw into question mainstream science's understanding of the universe are coming thick and fast these days:

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