Science & TechnologyS


Question

Researchers probe 'never-before-seen' influx of tropical pyrosomes off Alaska

Jennie Lyons
NOAA
Tue, 24 Oct 2017 05:52 UTC
pyrosomes
Researchers at NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center are reporting a never-before-seen phenomenon in Alaska waters-an influx of strange organisms that resemble flattened, translucent sea pickles.

It may sound like déjà vu. A similar story made headlines along the West Coast last summer, but this is a new situation for Alaska.

Scientists call these jelly-like organisms pyrosomes. The creatures typically live in tropical waters around the world, occasionally emerging a little farther north in sub-tropical waters. But no one has ever recorded pyrosomes as far north as Alaska.

Pyrosomes were encountered in NOAA acoustic, surface, and bottom trawl surveys throughout the year from Kodiak to the offshore waters of southeastern Alaska.

"Fishermen first observed pyrosomes in Alaska in early February in such high densities that the organisms clogged their fishing gear," said Jim Murphy, fisheries research biologist, Alaska Fisheries Science Center. "I was contacted by biologists at Alaska Department of Fish and Game who shared specimens with me and I identified the species."

The big question is: Was this just an unusual year - a unique phenomenon - or does this reflect a lasting change that could have food web implications? Scientists across the surveys witnessed rockfish species and sablefish eating pyrosomes. Pyrosomes filter and ingest tiny plant and animal cells from the plankton and may compete with other small grazers that represent more preferable or more nutritious fish prey. At this point, there are more questions than answers.

Comment: Pacific invasion: Bizarre asexual, glow-in-the-dark sea creatures

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Comet 2

First-known interstellar comet spotted by astronomers

Kelly Beatty
Sky & Telescope
Wed, 25 Oct 2017 20:53 UTC
Telescopes only picked it up a week ago, but it's likely been traveling through interstellar space for millions of years.
Comet PanSTARRS (C/2017 U1)
© NASA/JPL/HorizonsComet PanSTARRS (C/2017 U1) raced within about 0.25 astronomical unit of the Sun in early September and is now relatively close to Earth. Based on its extreme orbit, astronomers believe it arrived here from interstellar space.
For centuries, skywatchers have chronicled the comings and goings of thousands of comets. Every one of them has come from someplace in our own solar system, either the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune or the much more distant Oort Cloud at the fringes of the Sun's realm.

But an object swept up just a week ago by observers using the PanSTARRS 1 telescope atop Haleakala on Maui has an extreme orbit - it's on a hyperbolic trajectory that doesn't appear to be bound to the Sun. Preliminary findings, published earlier today by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC), suggest that we are witnessing a comet that escaped from another star.

"If further observations confirm the unusual nature of this orbit," notes Gareth Williams, the MPC's associate director, "this object may be the first clear case of an interstellar comet."
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Blue Planet

Ancient tree fossils show they bizarrely pulled themselves apart as they grew


Geology IN
Wed, 25 Oct 2017 19:12 UTC
petrified wood
Tree fossil
The first trees to have ever grown on Earth were also the most complex, new research has revealed.

Fossils from a 374-million-year-old tree found in north-west China have revealed an interconnected web of woody strands within the trunk of the tree that is much more intricate than that of the trees we see around us today.

The strands, known as xylem, are responsible for conducting water from a tree's roots to its branches and leaves. In the most familiar trees the xylem forms a single cylinder to which new growth is added in rings year by year just under the bark. In other trees, notably palms, xylem is formed in strands embedded in softer tissues throughout the trunk.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists have shown that the earliest trees, belonging to a group known as the cladoxlopsids, had their xylem dispersed in strands in the outer 5 cm of the tree trunk only, whilst the middle of the trunk was completely hollow.
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Info

Ionospheric cold plasma discovered at the magnetopause

David Shultz
EOS Org
Tue, 24 Oct 2017 12:44 UTC
Magnetospheric Multiscale
© Southwest Research Institute, CC BY 2.0Artist’s conception of the four Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft investigating magnetic reconnection at the boundary of Earth’s magnetosphere.
The Sun and Earth both produce powerful magnetic fields, and their intersection creates a complex system of physics that determines the space weather experienced by our planet.

The solar wind-a constant stream of charged particles (plasma) emitted from the Sun-collides with Earth's magnetic field, like water flowing around a rock in a river. The collision of the two magnetic fields produces a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection, in which the field lines of both the planet and its star snap together following the perturbation. The process releases jets of high-energy plasma, which can produce auroras and disrupt communication systems when they collide with Earth's magnetic field.

Scientists believe that plasma from the magnetosheath-the magnetically weak layer of the magnetosphere where Earth's field contacts the outflowing solar wind-is the dominant driver of magnetic reconnection. However, a new publication by Li et al. shows that "cold" plasma from the planet's ionosphere may play a larger role than previously thought.
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Laptop

'Bad Rabbit' cryptoware attack: Latest virus hits companies in Russia, Turkey, Germany & Ukraine


RT
Tue, 24 Oct 2017 20:56 UTC
bad rabbit computer virus
© Kaspersky Lab
A new global cyber virus attack began on Tuesday and targeted corporate networks mainly in Russia, cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab said. A number of companies in Germany, Turkey and Ukraine have been affected on a smaller scale.

"Our observations show that the majority of the attack's victims are located in Russia. We're also registering similar attacks in Ukraine, Turkey and Germany, but on a considerably smaller scale. The malware spreads through a number of compromised websites of Russian media outlets," the company said in its blog.

The new virus appears to be dubbed 'BadRabbit,' according to a dark net page where the details on ransom for the encrypted files were posted. The initial ransom is 0.05 Bitcoin ($300), but the virus features a timer and promises to raise the price if the ransom is not paid in time.

The attacks were reported by the Interfax news agency and Fontanka.ru news outlet, as well as by the subway system in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and the airport of Odessa. The new cryptoware appears to be deliberately targeting corporate networks, according to Kaspersky Lab.
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Microscope 2

Plant mechanism discovery: Corrects defects in protein folding


Scienmag
Tue, 24 Oct 2017 00:00 UTC
plant diagram
© Ernesto Llamas
Various human nervous system diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's diseases, are associated with the same basic disorder: the loss of nerve cells capacity to fold their proteins correctly, which causes protein aggregations that form "clumps" that end up generating the cell death.

Plants, like animals, use proteins to carry out the cellular functions that keep them alive. The protein composition is determined by the information present in the cellular DNA, but to exercise their biological function the proteins must also be folded in a three-dimensional configuration. If a protein does not fold correctly, it will not be able to fulfill its function. Stress situations, such as a sudden increase in temperature, cause missteps in the folding process, thus producing misfolded proteins that have to be either removed or repaired, otherwise they could cluster and form toxic aggregates.
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Robot

Google's AI watches YouTube clips to learn about human behavior


New York Post
Tue, 24 Oct 2017 19:31 UTC
robot watches humans
© iStockphoto
Robots are watching us. Literally.

Google has curated a set of YouTube clips to help machines learn how humans exist in the world. The AVAs, or "atomic visual actions," are three-second clips of people doing everyday things like drinking water, taking a photo, playing an instrument, hugging, standing or cooking.

Each clip labels the person the AI should focus on, along with a description of their pose and whether they're interacting with an object or another human.

"Despite exciting breakthroughs made over the past years in classifying and finding objects in images, recognizing human actions still remains a big challenge," Google wrote in a recent blog post describing the new dataset. "This is due to the fact that actions are, by nature, less well-defined than objects in videos."

The catalog of 57,600 clips only highlights 80 actions but labels more than 96,000 humans. Google pulled clips from popular movies, emphasizing that they drew from a "variety of genres and countries of origin."
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Fish

Blue Planet documentary series explores gender-bending fish

Sarah Knapton
Telegraph
Tue, 24 Oct 2017 19:11 UTC
Asian Sheepshead Wrasse
© Tony WU/BBCWhen a female kobudai reaches a certain size and age she can undergo a remarkable transformation - turning from a female into a male
Mating is never easy when you have an unsightly bulbous appendage protruding from your head.

But the male Asian Sheepshead Wrasse has even greater problems to contend with.

The female wrasse is endowed with the extraordinary ability to unexpectedly switch gender, a change which not only scuppers any burgeoning relationship with the male but also creates another headache for him - a new love rival.

The gender-bending ability of the wrasse has been captured in detail for the first time for BBC Blue Planet II which airs on Sunday.

Scientists believe the female wrasse makes the switch because she can pass on more genes as a male, although it is unclear why some change while others remain female.
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Life Preserver

Agricultural breakthrough: Chinese scientists grow high-yield rice in salt water, will be able to feed over 200M people


RT
Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:27 UTC
rice field
© SIPA Asia / Global Look Press
Chinese scientists are claiming to have achieved a crucial agricultural breakthrough, growing high-yield rice in salt water.

The new strain has been previously tried and tested, but scientists from the Qingdao Saline-Alkali Tolerant Rice Research and Development Center reportedly managed to nearly triple yields, to 4.5 metric tons per hectare, making it ready for commercialization.

Saltwater cultivation may boost China's rice production by nearly 20 percent and will be able to feed more than 200 million people, according to the research leader Yuan Longping, known as China's 'father of hybrid rice.'
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Microscope 1

Ancient crops began to be managed by man almost 30,000 years ago - 10 millennia earlier than thought


PhysOrg
Tue, 24 Oct 2017 17:16 UTC
man farm field crops
© University of Warwick
Ancient hunter-gatherers began to systemically affect the evolution of crops up to thirty thousand years ago - around ten millennia before experts previously thought - according to new research by the University of Warwick.

Professor Robin Allaby, in Warwick's School of Life Sciences, has discovered that human crop gathering was so extensive, as long ago as the last Ice Age, that it started to have an effect on the evolution of rice, wheat and barley - triggering the process which turned these plants from wild to domesticated.

In Tell Qaramel, an area of modern day northern Syria, the research demonstrates evidence of einkorn being affected up to thirty thousand years ago, and rice has been shown to be affected more than thirteen thousand years ago in South, East and South-East Asia.

Furthermore, emmer wheat is proved to have been affected twenty-five thousand years ago in the Southern Levant - and barley in the same geographical region over twenty-one thousand years ago.
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