Death Due To Misinformation

We have been here before, and apparently we the people are easily misled, and we will be here again. During the COVID pandemic I was surprised and at time shocked by the lack of understanding about what was happening. It seemed like very basic biology--understanidng why a messanger RNA vaccine would be a novel approach is harder to follow, but what a novel virus brought with it in terms of risks and challenges is a foundational block in a high school education. The move towards making vaccines optinal--and not covered by insurance--is going to kill people, mostly children and elderly people. It will also, very importantly, maim people. The ravages of surviving the damage from high fever have been largely forgotten by most, but will become very real. And not vaccinating against COVID, a virus that we do not yet fully understand but know that fully a third of people recovering from COVID have cognitive impairment and longer term damage that we do not yet know how to treat, and given the support for science in this administration, are unlikely to learn more about in the short term. I encourage you to stroll through some pre-vaccination era cemetaries and note how many children are buried there--I have started collecting photos of just this--because sadly, if the anti-vaccination trend continues, we will have children populating them once again.

The Science Is Clear

Let me start off by saying that it baffles me why only 59% of people think that RFK Jr. is doing a bad job. He and the current administration are breaking everything. The ends to the means is to have Republicans make it true what they have always stood by--don't trust the government. Why you would trust the wealthy, the ones who want to keep all the money to themselves, is beyond me. The problem is that people are also inclined to believe them, and thereby not trust the science. Science doesn't care who you voted for or what you believe. The GOP, on the other hand, wants you to blame women. It is both the text and the subtext of this administration. The attack on women's health and a woman's ability to make reproductive health care decisions is about the subjugation of women. Taking away equality in the work place is affirmative action for mediocre white men at the expense of competent women. The current president, a convicted sex offender, complaining that beating your wife should not be considered a crime is about devaluing women. I get it--if you are an incompetent underperforming man, then not being able to be the dictator at home feels like a loss, but it is a loss that is deserved. Women who choose to cede their power have the right to do so--what nobody has the right to do is make that choice for all women.

The Tersa Sphinx Moth Turnaround

I was staying in a slightly sad hotel in Orlando recently, attending a less than perfect conference, and not altogether being able to live life to its fullest in the moment.  These things happen, and they seem to happen more in Florida than other places that I go, and I completely concede that I need to do a better job of adapting to my circumstances.  But then, things took a turn for the better.  I was on my way to the ice machine I came up this exceptionally beautiful moth.  It is huge, maybe three inches tall with a similar wing span, and it really took my breath away (well, the moth and the humidity combined). It has a sleek design that no doubt was one of the design influences for the Bat Mobile.  My only regret is that I did not see it fly because exactly how that works seems mysterious to me. 

Dogs=Longer Life

I have had 1-4 dogs my entire adult life, even though I never grew up with one, so I love it when these studies come out.
Researchers in Sweden tracked more than 3.4 million Swedish people with no heart disease over a period of 12 years. Some owned dogs and some didn’t. By looking at how many died in the 12-year follow-up, and adjusting for relevant factors like age and sex, the scientists calculated the risk of death. It turns out that dog owners had a 20 percent lower risk of dying compared to people who didn’t have a dog. The benefits were particularly strong for dog owners who lived alone: they had a 33 percent lower risk of death, and an 8 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease, like stroke and heart failure.
For the study, researchers analyzed 12 years of government-collected data on 3.4 million Swedish residents, which includes information on birth, sex, age, health, marital status, as well as death. Since 2001, dog owners in Sweden have had to register their dogs by using an ear tattoo or under-skin chip, so the researchers could also check which of those 3.4 million people owned a puppy. Dog owners were then compared with pet-less people: those who had a dog were found to have a lower risk of death due to cardiovascular disease or other causes during the 12-year follow-up. Dog owners who lived alone had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, as did people who had hunting dogs compared to other breeds.
So head out to the animal shelter and adopt a used dog.  It is good for you.

Slower Earth, More Earthquakes?

The link between Earth’s rotation and seismic activity was noted in a paper by Roger Bilham and Rebecca Bendick presented at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.
They contend that the  correlation between Earth’s rotation and earthquake activity is strong and suggests there is going to be an increase in numbers of intense earthquakes in 2018.
In their study, Bilham and Bendick looked at earthquakes of magnitude 7 and greater that had occurred since 1900.
They found five periods when there had been significantly higher numbers of large earthquakes compared with other times. “In these periods, there were between 25 to 30 intense earthquakes a year,” said Bilham. “The rest of the time the average figure was around 15 major earthquakes a year.” The researchers searched to find correlations between these periods of intense seismic activity and other factors and discovered that when Earth’s rotation decreased slightly it was followed by periods of increased numbers of intense earthquakes. “The rotation of the Earth does change slightly – by a millisecond a day sometimes – and that can be measured very accurately by atomic clocks,” said Bilham.

Eastward Kelvin Waves

I read a recent issue of Science which hypothesized an explanation of why Kelvin waves always move eastward and I realized that I did not even know what Kelvin waves are, much less what direction they move.  Why does that even matter?  While I think of myself as a person who believes in and supports science, there are very large gaps in my knowledge, and because I live in a country where climate deniers are in charge of government, it is more important to be an educated voter.

So here goes.  Equatorial Kelvin waves occur constantly in Earth's atmosphere and ocean. They constitute an isolated and powerful component of the observed atmospheric wave spectrum, whereas oceanic Kelvin waves drive up- and downwelling in the Pacific Ocean thermocline, which affects the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. In the atmosphere, Kelvin waves are initiated by and coupled to convective activity (storm systems), mostly over the Indian and the western Pacific Oceans.  So as we have more dramatic temperature changes, Kelvin waves will play more of a role in weather.

Hydroelectric Power

Developing countries around the world are expanding hydropower to meet growing energy demand.  The move away from fossil fuels is one to applaud, and cost effective alternatives are hard to come by.  The resulting impact on the environment locally may be compromised in an effort to protect the atmosphere of the planet, but the truth is that we jsut don't know.  What we do know is that there are a number of cities in the devloped and developing world that are significantly hampered by air pollution (Beijing and Dehli, to name two), and that needs to improve.
In the Brazilian Amazon, >200 dams are planned over the next 30 years, and questions about the impacts of current and future hydropower in this globally important watershed remain unanswered. In this context, a sutdy recently published in Science applied a hydrologic indicator method to quantify how existing Amazon dams have altered the natural flow regime and to identify predictors of alteration. The type and magnitude of hydrologic alteration varied widely by dam, but the largest changes were to critical characteristics of the flood pulse. Impacts were largest for low-elevation, large-reservoir dams; however, small dams had enormous impacts relative to electricity production. Finally, the “cumulative” effect of multiple dams was significant but only for some aspects of the flow regime. This analysis is a first step toward the development of environmental flows plans and policies relevant to the Amazon and other megadiverse river basins.

Plastic from Plants

Polymers protect us from the elements, increase the fuel efficiency of cars, protect food from pathogens, help cure disease, and enable renewable-energy technologies. To promote, foster, and enable a sustainable society, we need polymers. Yet polymers can also create serious environmental challenges. Nearly all plastic packaging produced—more than 80 billion kg annually—originates from fossil resources and is disposed of after a relatively short period of use.
Biodegradable plastics are those that can be completely degraded in landfills, composters or sewage treatment plants by the action of naturally occurring micro-organisms. Truly biodegradable plastics leave no toxic, visible or distinguishable residues following degradation. Their biodegradability contrasts sharply with most petroleum-based plastics, which are essentially indestructible in a biological context. Because of the ubiquitous use of petroleum-based plastics, their persistence in the environment and their fossil-fuel derivation, alternatives to these traditional plastics are being explored. Issues surrounding waste management of traditional and biodegradable polymers are discussed in the context of reducing environmental pressures and carbon footprints.  Plants naturally produce numerous polymers, including rubber, starch, cellulose and storage proteins, all of which have been exploited for biodegradable plastic production. Bacterial bioreactors fed with renewable resources from plants--so-called 'white biotechnology'--have also been successful in producing biodegradable polymers.

The Origin of the Mighty Oak

This week's Science Monday comes from the journal of the same name.
The mighty oak.  One of my favorite trees.
It is pretty universally popular, it turns out.  The oak is the national tree of the United States, Germany, and a dozen other countries—as well as the stuff of fine wine barrels—yet little is known about where the North American oak tree came from. Now, biologists have pieced together the past of the most dominant species of oaks and come to a startling conclusion: The mother of all oaks didn’t arise in the tropics, as many botanists thought, but rather near the Arctic Circle, then spread southward.
It is perhaps a spectacular example of an ecological opportunity in the south that allowed for an explosive species diversification.  To reconstruct the mighty American oak’s history, Andrew Hipp, a plant systematist at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, and colleagues obtained tens of thousands of pieces of DNA from 300 trees representing 146 oak species. That enormous amount of genetic material allowed the team to conduct comparisons that revealed which species are most closely related, and avoid the confusion created by genes that jump between the branches of a family tree when two species interbreed. “This is a demonstration of the power of next-generation sequencing techniques to unlock some previously intractable problems,” Pennington says. Hipp’s team also used oak fossils to help it date when certain branches of this family tree arose.

Spider Genome Advances

Happy Hallowe'en!  This is the velvet spider's best side (although, given the holiday, a shot of it's face wouldn't disappoint those who value the scary).
These findings come from recent publications in Science.  Silk genes, which code for extremely large proteins with stretches of amino acids that repeat many times, are themselves long and full of repetitive DNA that's hard to decipher. But the velvet spider genome, together with that of the orb weaver and the house spider, has exposed an unexpected variety of silk genes—“a lot more than we thought,” Coddington says. Researchers had already identified two genes for the class of silk known as major ampullate, which forms the superstrong dragline threads that anchor webs and are the inspiration for a major effort to make spider silk commercially. The social velvet spider's genome, however, revealed 10 genes just for that one kind of silk and nine other genes for additional silk proteins.

The newly deciphered genes help explain the molecular basis of spider silk properties. The silk genes contain short stretches of DNA called motifs that vary between species in number and in their exact sequence. By comparing the genetic differences with differences in silk properties, Hayashi's team has found that those motifs appear to influence strength, elasticity, and other features.

Sorting out this complexity may help bioengineers better understand and, ultimately, harness silk's remarkable strength and flexibility.  For example, silk glands contain nonsilk proteins that may serve as molecular chaperones to help with production of the fiber.  For researchers trying to make artificial silks, these findings are a gold mine.

Two Stars Collide: A Game Changer

Four times in the past 2 years, physicists working with mammoth gravitational-wave detectors have sensed something go bump in the dark, sending invisible ripples through spacetime. This past week, they announced the detection of a fifth such disturbance—but this time astronomers saw it, too, at every wavelength of light from gamma radiation to radio waves. Just as physicists had predicted, the unprecedented view of the cosmic cataclysm—in which two superdense neutron stars spiraled into each other—brought with it a cornucopia of insights, each one of them a major scientific advance. The super-dense stars crashed together 130 million light years away, spewing out precious metals and other heavy elements like platinum and uranium – and experts say the event has kickstarted a "new chapter in astrophysics" and confirmed theories about the origin of the mysterious neutron stars.  The combined observation with gravitational waves and light showed, as predicted, that so-called short gamma ray bursts, among the most powerful events in the cosmos, spring from neutron-star mergers. It demonstrated a hypothesized new type of stellar object called a kilonova because it shines thousands of times brighter than an ordinary nova. And it revealed that half the elements heavier than iron are produced, perhaps exclusively, in neutron-star death spirals.

Monarch's in California--Odds Not Looking Good

Have to go with Science Sunday this week because tomorrow is a holiday.  So here is some sad news.
Global climate change has made things difficult, and occasionally deadly, for beings that migrate.  Times are tough for monarch butterflies across the United States, but a new study in Biological Conservation shows that the subset of the monarch population that overwinter in California are likely to be the first to disappear.   Based on a combination of historical data and citizen science, researchers conclude that there has been a 97% decline in the butterfly population over a 40 year period,  from 10 million to about 300,000, Sierra reports. If the current trend continues, the butterflies face an 86% chance of extinction over the next 20 years. The exact cause for the die-off is unknown, but researchers speculate that in addition to changes in climate, a combination of land-use changes and pesticides may be to blame.  As we humans face fire and water in unprecedented amounts this year, these monarchs have been telling us for quite some time that we need to change our ways to heal our planet.  Which is home to all of us.