Author: Tyler MacDonald

Categories
Archaeology NWT_Animals SCI

Baby snake from dinosaur age found frozen in amber

For the first time ever, scientists discovered an ancient snake embryo contained in 105-million-year-old amber. The discovery reveals important information on the evolution of modern snakes.

“This snake is linked to ancient snakes from Argentina, Africa, India and Australia,” said paleontologist Michael Caldwell, lead author of the study and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. “It is an important—and until now, missing—component of understanding snake evolution from southern continents, that is Gondwana, in the mid-Mesozoic.”

Caldwell and his team, which includes researchers from China, Australia, and the United States, tracked the migration of the ancient Gondwanan snakes all the way back to 180 million years ago when they were transported by tectonic movements created by continents and their parts.

The team also gained information from the amber fragment that encased the specimen.

“It is clear that this little snake was living in a forested environment with numerous insects and plants, as these are preserved in the clast,” Caldwell said. “Not only do we have the first baby snake, we also have the first definitive evidence of a fossil snake living in a forest.”

The team used computerized tomography (CT) scans to study the ancient snake and compare it with the children of modern snakes, shedding light on the embryology and development of the ancient specimen.

“All of these data refine our understanding of early snake evolution, as 100-million year-old snakes are known from only 20 or so relatively complete fossil snake species,” Caldwell said. “There is a great deal of new information preserved in this new fossilized baby snake.”

The findings were published in Science Advances.

Categories
HEALTH Research SCI

Green public spaces decrease depression in city dwellers, study says

A new study suggests that greening vacant urban land decreases feelings of depression and increases overall mental health for residents in its proximity. The interesting findings could have implications for all cities across the United States, where approximately 15 percent of land is considered “vacant.”

“Dilapidated and vacant spaces are factors that put residents at an increased risk of depression and stress, and may explain why socioeconomic disparities in mental illness persist,” said lead author Eugenia South of the University of Pennsylvania. “What these new data show us is that making structural changes, like greening lots, has a positive impact on the health of those living in these neighborhoods. And that it can be achieved in a cost-effective and scalable way—not only in Philadelphia but in other cities with the same harmful environmental surroundings.”

Interestingly, the study revealed that interventions of trash clean-up did not significantly alter self-reported mental health.

“The lack of change in these groups is likely because the trash clean-up lots had no additional green space created,” said co-author John MacDonald, Ph.D., a professor of criminology and sociology at Penn. “The findings support that exposure to more natural environments can be part of restoring mental health, particularly for people living in stressful and chaotic urban environments.”

The study reveals how turning blighted neighborhood environments into green regions can create better trajectories for residents’ mental health.

“Greening vacant land is a highly inexpensive and scalable way to improve cities and enhance people’s health while encouraging them to remain in their home neighborhoods,” said senior author Charles C. Branas of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.

“While mental health therapies will always be a vital aspect of treatment, revitalizing the places where people live, work, and play, may have broad, population-level impact on mental health outcomes,” he added.

The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

Categories
Research SCI TECH_Technology

Eagled-eyed machine learning algorithm outperforms human experts

University of Wisconsin-Madison and Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers just trained artificial intelligence to consistently and quickly analyze and detect microscopic radiation damage in materials considered for nuclear reactors better than human experts.

“Machine learning has great potential to transform the current, human-involved approach of image analysis in microscopy,” said Wei Li, who participated in the research.

“In the future, I believe images from many instruments will pass through a machine learning algorithm for initial analysis before being considered by humans,” said engineering professor Dane Morgan, Li’s graduate school advisor.

The job in question is crucial for the development of safe nuclear materials and could make the time-consuming process more effective and efficient.

“Human detection and identification is error-prone, inconsistent and inefficient. Perhaps most importantly, it’s not scalable,” Morgan said. “Newer imaging technologies are outstripping human capabilities to analyze the data we can produce.”

After training the machine with 270 images, the neural network, in combination with a cascade object detector machine learning algorithm, was able to identify and classify about 86 percent of dislocation loops in a set of sample pictures. In comparison, human experts only found 80 percent of the defects.

“When we got the final result, everyone was surprised, not only by the accuracy of the approach, but the speed,” said Oak Ridge staff scientist Kevin Field. “We can now detect these loops like humans while doing it in a fraction of the time on a standard home computer.”

“This is just the beginning,” Morgan said. “Machine learning tools will help create a cyber infrastructure that scientists can utilize in ways we are just beginning to understand.”

Categories
NWT_Climate Research SCI

Great Barrier Reef ‘close to collapse’ due to climate change

A plan endorsed by Australian federal and state governments suggests that the current climate change path means that the Great Barrier Reef is heading toward a “collapse.” A “new and improved” Reef 2050 plan released on Friday attempts to acknowledge that climate change poses a huge threat to the reef.

“Coral bleaching is projected to increase in frequency … those coral reefs that survive are expected to be less biodiverse than in the past,” the plan says, recognizing that “holding the global temperature increase to 1.5°C or less is critical to ensure the survival of coral reefs”.

“Respected coral scientists have documented in peer-reviewed journals that most of the world’s coral reefs will not survive unless the global temperature increase is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” it continued.

WWF-Australia head of oceans Richard Leck claims that Australia’s emissions reductions are not in line with limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

“It is simply not good enough for the revised plan to suggest the global community must work to limit warming when Australia is not doing its fair share,” he said.

Australian Marine Conservation Society’s reef campaign director Imogen Zethoven claims that increased climate change recognition must be followed by action, suggesting that bleaching events would happen less often under an average temperature increase of 1.6 degrees Celsius.

“The onset of twice-a-decade bleaching will then become the onset of annual bleaching and eventually [the entire reef] will be affected,” she said.

Whether or not Australia will be able to save the Great Barrier Reef in time is yet to be seen.

Categories
HEALTH HND_Disease SCI

Foodborne illness might be on the rise, report says

A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that foodborne illness might be on the rise. Approximately 48 million people get sick from one of 31 pathogens each year, sending about 128,000 people to the hospital and causing 3,000 deaths.

Catherine Donnelly, a professor of food science at the University of Vermont, believes that the increase might at least partly be due to improvements in the tools that detect food contamination as well as outbreak reporting, surveillance, and investigation.

“Surveillance has drastically improved, and state public health labs are linked to databases at CDC, allowing quick identification of patterns of illness and links to food products,” she said. “As a result, we see more reports of foodborne illness.”

“People are tending to eat more produce and eat it in different forms, and those are good things, because we want people to eat more fresh produce, but when that happens, you’re likely to increase the risk,” said FDA deputy commissioner Mike Taylor.

And this risk is likely due to the fact that fresh produce is “sold and prepared without any kill step” to remove illness-causing germs.

“Foods travel longer distances to get from farms to consumers, and pathogens can be introduced along the way,” Donnelly said. “There is wider geographic distribution of centrally produced foods, so when something goes wrong during production, the impacts are widespread.

“Many outbreaks linked to poultry, eggs and meat can be traced back to farms where intensive production practices can lead to [the] spread of highly virulent pathogens,” she said, and some reflect “poor food handling practices.”

Regardless, Taylor doesn’t think there’s cause for a huge alarm.

“People should know that there’s a lot of high tech, high-powered science going into figuring out how to do better at preventing foodborne illness,” Taylor said. “People should know that the system — government and industry — they’re not just sitting back.”

Categories
HEALTH HND_Cancer SCI

Cancer patients who use alternative therapies ‘twice as likely’ to die

A new study of 1,290 United States cancer patients suggests that people who opt for alternative therapies are “twice as likely” to die. Often, these patients refuse life-saving treatments like surgery or chemotherapy in favor of alternative therapies.

“The reality is despite the fact that many patients believe that these types of unproven therapies will improve their survival and possibly even improve their chances of a cure, there’s really no evidence to support that claim…” said Skyler Johnson of from Yale School of Medicine, lead author of the study.

“Although they may be used to support patients experiencing symptoms from cancer treatment, it looks as though they are either being marketed or understood to be effective cancer treatments,” he added.

Martin Ledwick, Cancer Research United Kingdom’s head information nurse, believes that complementary medicine can increase quality of life and wellbeing for some patients.

“But it is important that patients considering them do not see them as an alternative to conventional treatments that have been shown though clinical trials to make a real difference to survival,” he said.

And Arnie Purushotham, director at King’s Health Partners Comprehensive Cancer Centre, believes that there is a clear difference between complementary treatments and alternative therapies.

“The medical community is united in agreeing that alternate therapy is not an effective means of treating cancer patients,” he said.

“However, there is increasing evidence that complementary therapy like acupuncture, yoga and relaxation therapy may be beneficial in alleviating cancer patients’ symptoms like pain and fatigue.”

The findings were published in JAMA Oncology.

Categories
Geology Research SCI

Study reveals new clues about Great Dying, Earth’s largest mass extinction

A new study sheds light on the causes of the largest mass extinction in the Earth’s history, also referred to as the End-Permian Extinction and the Great Dying.

The event took place approximately 250 million years ago when a giant volcanic eruption hit what is now Russia’s province of Siberia. The eruption sent almost 90 percent of life into extinction. In geology, the eruption is referred to as the Siberian Flood Basalts, which ran for nearly one million years.

“The scale of this extinction was so incredible that scientists have often wondered what made the Siberian Flood Basalts so much more deadly than other similar eruptions,” said Michael Broadley of the Centre for Petrographic and Geochemical Research in Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, France, and lead author of the study.

The research was co-authored by the late Lawrence Taylor, who is the former director of the Planetary Geosciences Institute at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

“Taylor was instrumental in supplying samples of mantle xenoliths, rock sections of the lithosphere [a section of the planet located between the crust and the mantle] that get captured by the passing magma and erupted to the surface during the volcanic explosion,” Broadley said. “Taylor also provided advice throughout the study.”

The team analyzed samples to determine the lithosphere composition, which revealed that prior to the Siberian Basalt floods, it was loaded with bromine, iodine, and chlorine, all of which belong to the halogen chemical group. After the volcanic eruption, they disappeared.

“We concluded that the large reservoir of halogens that was stored in the Siberian lithosphere was sent into the earth’s atmosphere during the volcanic explosion, effectively destroying the ozone layer at the time and contributing to the mass extinction,” Broadley said.

The findings were published in Nature Geoscience.

Categories
NWT_Animals Research SCI

New model identifies main factors that shaped evolution

A new computer simulation takes into account the numerous factors that drive evolutionary extinction and adaptation. The study outlining the model attempts to bring us closer to understanding the complex interactions between climate change and topography, and how these interactions affect the biodiversity and evolutionary histories of species in their natural ecosystems.

“We had hoped to be able to model in the simulation the most fundamental processes that shape the geography of life on Earth,” said Robert Colwell, who led the research with Brazilian colleague Thiago F. Rangel in collaboration with Neil Edwards and Philip Holden in the United Kingdom.

To create their model, the team looked to South America, which is the most biologically diverse continent on the planet. And since the Andes mountain range started developing 25 million years ago, it created an extremely varied landscape that gave rise to a plethora of biodiversity, making it a perfect area to study the evolution and ecology of biodiversity.

“The Andes are the longest mountain range on Earth, and the only trans-tropical one,” Rangel said. “They sit right beside the Amazon, the planet’s largest tropical rainforest and river basin. This is the reason South America has such exuberant biodiversity.”

“Our results demonstrate how intimately the evolution of life depends on the changing physical environment,” said Neil Edwards of The Open University modelling team.

The model comes at a time of unprecedented climate change, highlighting the unique and dynamic power of climate change and the many ways it shapes the evolution of life on Earth.

“The current pace of human driven climate change is much, much faster than anything in our model, but the same processes are happening in terms of species’ range shifts today,” Colwell said.

The findings were published in Science.

Categories
SCI

Geologists say we’re now living in the Meghalayan Age

Geologists just redefined the last 4,200 years of human civilization as the Meghalayan Age. The new classification will reportedly help scientists understand the events that have taken place over the last few-thousand years.

The announcement came from the International Commission on Stratigraphy and indicates significant changes in the Earth and its geologic record. For example, the devastating drought that occurred 4,200 years ago left a geologic imprint. One example is found in the rock record of stalagmites in India in the form of changes in oxygen isotopes.

“The Meghalayan Age is unique among the many intervals of the Geologic Time Scale in that its beginning coincides with a global cultural event produced by a global climatic event,” said Dr. Stanley Finney of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).

“The convergence of stratigraphy and human cultural evolution is extraordinary,” said Martin Head, a geologist at Brock University in Canada.

However, not all scientists agree that new ages are helpful in reclassifying recent history.

“They’ve suddenly announced [the Meghalayan] and stuck it on the diagram,” said  geography professor Mark Maslin. “It’s official, we’re in a new age; who knew? We have lots of new definitions that perhaps now contradict the Anthropocene Working Group and go against what most scientists perceive to be the most important change on Earth in the last 10,000 years.”

But others suggest that it might be possible for the Meghalayan and Anthropocene to exist simultaneously, and emphasize how difficult it is to precisely define the latter period. Time will tell how the debate plays out.

Categories
NWT_Climate NWT_Environment Research SCI

Global warming might cause insects to eat more crops, study says

A new study suggests that climate warming will increase crop losses for critical food grains due to the increased metabolic rate and population growth of insect pests.

“Climate change will have a negative impact on crops,” said Scott Merrill of the University of Vermont, co-author of the study. “We’re going to see increased pest pressure with climate change.”

The team found that just a 2-degree increase in global temperature averages will cause total crop losses of around 213 million tons for rice, wheat, and maize crops. These losses will stem from increased insect metabolism.

“When the temperature increases, the insects’ metabolism increases so they have to eat more,” Merrill said. “That’s not good for crops.”

However, the connection to population growth is more complicated. Since insects have optimal temperatures for population growth, losses will be highest in temperate regions and less severe in tropics.

“Temperate regions are not at that optimal temperature, so if the temperature increases there, populations will grow faster,” Merrill said. “But insects in the tropics are already close to their optimal temperature, so the populations will actually grow slower. It’s just too hot for them.”

Ultimately, farmers will have to find novel pest management methods, such as adding new crop rotations or boosting pesticide use. However, not all of these strategies will be available to every farmer.

“There are a lot of things richer countries can do to reduce the effect, by increasing pesticide use or expanding integrated pest management strategies,” Merrill said. “But poorer countries that rely on these crops as staple grains will have a harder time.”

The findings were published in Science.