4,000-year-old urn reveals the charred remains of a woman pregnant with twins

In the hands of a trained archeologist, a well-preserved grave can be read like an obituary, detailing the health, death, travels and even fortunes of a life long gone.

Advances in technology have been pushing the limits on how well-preserved a body needs to be in order for experts to extract a biography. In the case of one young Bronze Age woman in what is now central Hungary, not even cremation could hide her tragic tale.

Researchers from institutions in Italy and Hungary have analyzed numerous samples of human remains and artefacts uncovered in a 4,000-year-old cemetery near the Hungarian city of Szigetszentmiklós.

Consisting of hundreds of clay pots buried half a kilometer from the shore of the river Danube, the 'urnfield' cemetery preserves a trove of archeological data representing a long lost culture known as the Vatya.

The little we currently know of the Vatya is based on a scattering of fortified structures and cemeteries of cremated bodies buried in ceramic urns. It's barely enough to give an insight into a people who occupied the Danube basin for about half a millennia starting roughly 2100 BCE. 

The largest of those urnfields is a site near Szigetszentmiklós, uncovered during a rescue excavation prior to the construction of a new supermarket.

In total, 525 burials were found inside half a hectare (about an acre), mostly consisting of bone fragments, ash, and occasional grave goods made of ceramic or bronze.

The researchers took 41 samples from 29 of the burials, which included 26 urn cremations, and ran a variety of laboratory tests and measures to develop a clearer picture of who these people were.

One of those urns stood out from the rest. Coded gravesite 241, it contained more luxurious items that included a golden hair ring and a bronze neck ring, as well as two bone pins.

(Cavazzuti et al., PLOS ONE, 2021, CC-BY 4.0)

Above: Bronze neck-ring, gold hair-ring, bone pins/needles.

Even 241's urn contained signs of the respect her community held, its design uniquely reflecting an early Vatya motif.

Among its bone fragments were also signs that the occupant – a female in her late 20s or early 30s – wasn't buried alone. Two tiny infants, barely fetuses of around 30 weeks' gestation, went into the grave with her.

Where most of the urns contained a mere portion of the deceased's cremated body, the contents of 241 were comparatively more complete, almost as if an extraordinary level of care had been taken to collect every tiny fragment from the funerary pyre prior to burial.

(Cavazzuti et al., PLOS ONE, 2021, CC-BY 4.0)

Above: The woman's bones (left), and those of her fetuses (right).

Though fragmented, her body still contained tiny details on her life history that could be revealed through an analysis of its isotopes.

Her molars, for example, contain layers of material called dentine which capture significant biographical events as a chemical signature. The conical part of her femur would have been remodeled at a standard rate over the years, preserving signs of nutrition and movement.

Measuring these signatures helped the researchers develop a picture of a woman who came from afar when she was a child of somewhere around 8 to 13 years of age, possibly having been born in Southern Moravia – what is today the Czech Republic – if not the upper Danube.

Similar analyses of the remains in other urns reveal her integration wasn't unusual, with other women also coming from various places well outside the burial site's locality.

We might imagine this esteemed young woman marrying into the respected higher ranks of the Vatya community, holding onto her heirloom neck ring as an emblem of her distant upbringing; her bone clothing pins and hair ring given as gifts welcoming her to her new home.

Tragically, she would pass away in her prime, pregnant with twins. For all her remains can tell us, we can only guess if her death was a consequence of an early birth, or something else entirely.

The emotional tale of number 241's life aside, it's remarkable that a few burned remains can tell us so much about the Vatya's culture.

From a jumble of bones we can find traces of women journeying in from afar to create distant ties, reinforcing allegiances perhaps, but almost certainly affecting the power and politics of an age long gone.

Just how many tales are still out there, waiting to be translated by the right technology?

This research was published in PLOS One.

#Humans | https://sciencespies.com/humans/4000-year-old-urn-reveals-the-charred-remains-of-a-woman-pregnant-with-twins/

Here's Exactly How Much Drinking Bottled Water Impacts The Environment and Our Health

It's no secret that bottled water has more of an impact on the environment than filling up a bottle from the tap, but now researchers have crunched the numbers on just how much difference there is – and it's a lot.

Using Barcelona in Spain as a test case – home to some 1.35 million people, around 58 percent of whom consume bottled water at least some of the time – the new study estimates what the impact would be if everyone in the city switched completely to drinking bottled water.

The extra production burden would cost an extra US$83.9 million annually and lead to the loss of 1.43 animal species per year on average, the team found, due to the process of extracting and processing the raw materials needed.

There would be approximately 1,400 times more impact on ecosystems and 3,500 times more cost in terms of resources, compared with everyone in the city switching over to tap water and nothing else, the researchers worked out.

"The higher environmental impact of bottled water was attributed to the high input of materials (i.e., packaging) and energy needed for bottled water production as compared to tap water," write the researchers in their published paper.

Those figures are based on the Life Cycle Assessment commonly used by scientists, which weighs up the environmental load of a product over its entire lifespan: raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, distribution, use, and disposal.

In this case, the team did something unusual: they combined the LCA with a similar framework used to measure health, called the Health Impact Assessment (HIA). The aim was to see what sort of health trade-offs there might be when weighing up bottled water versus filtered and unfiltered tap water.

(Villanueva et al., Science of the Total Environment, 2021)

While the general consensus is that tap water and bottled water are equally safe to drink – not least because tap water is subject to much stricter regulations from governments – tap water can take on chemicals called trihalomethanes as it's cleaned, which have been linked to bladder cancer.

The researchers say there is a health risk, but that it's a very small one. If Barcelona switched en masse to tap water, life expectancy would drop by two hours per person, on average, or about 309 years of life years lost. With filtered water, that risk would go down further, to 36 years.

"Tap water quality has increased substantially in Barcelona since the incorporation of advanced treatments over the last years," says environmental epidemiologist Cristina Villanueva from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).

"However, this considerable improvement has not been mirrored by an increase in tap water consumption, which suggests that water consumption could be motivated by subjective factors other than quality."

Those factors could include risk perception, taste, odor, the impact of marketing campaigns by bottled water companies, and a lack of trust in public tap water quality, according to the researchers.

Consumption of bottled water is rising, and quite sharply in some areas, so it's important that we're all aware of the environmental consequences of buying and drinking water this way – not just in the production of the plastic, but also its disposal.

While the researchers admit some limitations to their study – including the Barcelona focus, the difficulty of combining the LCA and HIA measurements, the application of country-wide statistics where they weren't available for the city, and several other approximations – it's a worthwhile reminder of the environmental impacts of our choices.

"Our results show that considering both the environmental and the health effects, tap water is a better option than bottled water because bottled water generates a wider range of impacts," says environmental epidemiologist Cathryn Tonne, also from ISGlobal.

The research has been published in Science of the Total Environment.

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/heres-exactly-how-much-drinking-bottled-water-impacts-the-environment-and-our-health/

Senate confirms NASA CFO

WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed the White House’s nominee to be chief financial officer of NASA July 30, rounding out the senior leadership positions at the agency.

The Senate, on a voice vote late in the day, confirmed Margaret Vo Schaus to be the agency’s CFO. The White House nominated her for the position April 23. She had previously been director of business operations in the Office of the Under Secretary of Research and Engineering at the Department of Defense, and earlier worked at the Departments of Energy and Justice and at the Government Accountability Office.

“I look forward to working with Administrator [Bill] Nelson and Deputy Administrator [Pam] Melroy to oversee NASA’s budget to support the workforce and the groundbreaking missions ahead,” she said in an agency statement immediately after the Senate vote.

“Margaret has demonstrated the ability to lead and manage operations at the Departments of Energy and Defense, and she will bring her expertise to do an outstanding job here at NASA,” Nelson said in the same statement. “Margaret will be integral to determining future missions and help turn program dreams into reality.”

Vo Schaus is the third and last of the Biden administration’s nominees for NASA leadership positions to win confirmation. Nelson, nominated in March, was confirmed by the Senate via unanimous consent April 29. Melroy, nominated in April, won confirmation on a voice vote June 17. None of the nominees faced any opposition from senators.

A fourth Senate-confirmed position at NASA is inspector general. Paul Martin has held that position since 2009.

In addition to the Senate-confirmed positions, NASA named Bob Cabana as associate administrator, the highest-ranking civil service position at the agency, in May. Cabana, the longtime director of the Kennedy Space Center, succeeded Steve Jurczyk, who retired in May after serving as acting administrator for a little more than three months.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/senate-confirms-nasa-cfo/

The Arctic is now leaking out high concentrations of 'forever chemicals'

Polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are known as 'forever chemicals' because they don't naturally break down in the environment. Now a new study reveals the increasing pace of Arctic ice melt is leaking more of these chemicals into the environment.

PFAS don't originate in the Arctic, but they do settle there – they're used in all kinds of human-made products and processes, from pizza boxes to foam used to fight fires. Once released into the atmosphere, they're often trapped in Arctic ice floes.

This is nothing new. But in a worrying new study by chemists from Lancaster University in the UK, it appears the concentrations of PFAS in bulk sea ice are closely related to the salinity of the water. So the more briny the sea, the more concentrated these forever chemicals get.

The problem is that the planet warms up, cycles of melting and freezing form pockets of highly saline ocean water, packing PFAS into tiny pools. Eventually, those highly concentrated chemicals are released into general circulation.

"The changing nature of sea ice, with earlier and erratic periods of thaw, could be altering the processing and release of pollutants alongside key nutrients, which in turn affects biota at the base of the marine food web," says environmental chemist Crispin Halsall, from Lancaster University in the UK.

PFAS are known to be toxic to humans and animals alike, which is why their release into the food chain is such a worry. Previous studies have linked them with problems including liver damage and issues with fetal growth.

Earlier research had shown that PFAS concentrations in surface seawater close to melting Arctic ice floes were up to two times higher than comparable readings taken in the North Sea.

Based on another recently published study, it seems that many of these chemicals arrive via snowfall on top of the ice.

To investigate in more detail how these chemicals are likely to be released, the team used an artificial sea-ice chamber to run controlled experiments that measured the movement of chemicals between water and ice during phase shifts.

Initially, as ice melts, the water carries a large percentage of the salts dissolved in it.

Not only did this portion also contain a large amount of PFAS, the team found, they consisted largely of shorter chain varieties. Later, when the meltwater was fresher, the PFAS chains were somewhat longer.

Long periods of thawing in the Arctic are releasing this brine and causing it to mix more regularly with snow meltwater – which may be where these increased contamination concentrations are coming from, according to the researchers.

The issue is that we're now seeing the Arctic Ocean dominated by one-year ice - replacing older ice that's formed over many years. This young ice contains a lot of mobile brine that can interact with snow and further concentrate PFAS contaminants.

And that's an immediate problem for organisms in direct contact with the ice – organisms at the bottom of the Arctic food chain – which often snack on the brine channels of the ice floes they're connected to, and will now be exposed to more of these chemicals.

The study is part of the EISPAC (Effects of Ice Stressors and Pollutants on the Arctic marine Cryosphere) project, being run by organizations from the UK and Germany. The team is calling for further restrictions on the use of PFAS in the future.

"More controlled experiments, together with careful observational studies in the field, are now required to understand these complex yet potentially important processes, particularly with regard to chemical exposure to organisms at the base of the marine food web," conclude the researchers.

The research has been published in Environmental Science & Technology.

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/the-arctic-is-now-leaking-out-high-concentrations-of-forever-chemicals/

Measuring conservation in a way that counts

A new study raises questions on whether current conservation science and policy for protected areas could be saving more biodiversity -- with political and economic expediency often having taken precedence in the past.

Lead author Professor Bob Pressey, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University (JCU), said the term 'save' in conservation needs to be better defined.

"Across the world, protected areas are established where they least interfere with commercial activities, even though those activities can cause decline and extinction," Prof Pressey said.

"But 'saving' means intervening in a way that prevents the loss of ecosystems and species," he said.

"There lies the problem. Business as usual means expanding protected areas where they make little difference while threatened biodiversity continues to disappear."

Prof Pressey said measures other than saving are used to assess conservation progress, and these are often politically convenient: money invested, km² protected areas established and the number of species contained in national parks. These measures can hide a lack of progress in real conservation.

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"What do these measures actually tell us about saving?" he said. "Not much. Real progress in saving biodiversity is measured by how much loss we have avoided."

While political, institutional and communication barriers are difficult to overcome, conservation measures need to be redefined. As an example, the study suggests the Aichi global Target 11 to increase protected areas to 17% of land and 10% of oceans hampers conservation. The target has instead motivated a race to increase coverage in the most expedient ways, both politically and economically.

Prof Pressey said there is a real risk that post-2020 targets will do the same unless they focus on avoiding loss.

"The future of nature conservation lies in identifying where science and policy can make the most difference -- and then measuring, year by year, the difference made," he said.

The study brought together a team of scientific and policy experts from across Australia, Austria, and the USA. Their results will contribute to ongoing global discussions about the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

"Better science is needed to demonstrate that we can predict where, when, and how we can most effectively save biodiversity," Prof Pressey said.

"And global policy makers need to revise their expectations and targets to address conservation impact, or avoided loss."

He said saving biodiversity means developing global guidance for all jurisdictions to implement local interventions.

"With this, we can achieve smarter and more meaningful conservation targets that go beyond the extent of the area being protected."

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/measuring-conservation-in-a-way-that-counts/

Diversity of life and the 'paradox of sex'

There are huge differences in species numbers among the major branches of the tree of life. Some groups of organisms have many species, while others have few. For example, animals, plants and fungi each have over 100,000 known species, but most others -- such as many algal and bacterial groups -- have 10,000 or less.

A new University of Arizona-led study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, tested whether sexual reproduction and multicellularity might help explain this mysterious pattern.

"We wanted to understand the diversity of life," said paper co-author John Wiens, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "Why are most living things animals, plants and fungi?"

To address this, Wiens worked with a visiting scientist in his lab, Lian Chen from Nanjing Forestry University in China. They estimated rates of species proliferation in 17 major groups that spanned all living organisms, including bacteria, protists, fungi, plants and animals. The hard part was to estimate how many species in each group were multicellular versus unicellular and how many reproduced sexually versus asexually. For five years, Chen sifted through more than 1,100 scientific papers and characterized the reproductive modes and cellularity of more than 1.5 million species.

They found that both multicellularity and sexual reproduction helped explain the rapid proliferation of animal, plant and fungal species. The rapid proliferation of these three groups explains why they now include more than 90% of Earth's known species.

The duo also found that the rapid proliferation of sexual species may help explain the "paradox of sex." The paradox is why so many species reproduce sexually, despite the disadvantages of sexual reproduction.

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"For sexual species, only half the individuals are directly producing offspring. In an asexual species, every individual is directly producing offspring," Wiens said. "Sexual reproduction is not as efficient. Another disadvantage of sexual reproduction is that you do need two individuals to make something happen, and those two individuals have to be the right sexes. Asexual species, on the other hand, only need one individual to reproduce."

Chen and Wiens found a straightforward answer to the paradox of sex. The reason why there are so many sexual species is because sexual species actually proliferate more rapidly than asexual species. This had not been shown across all of life before.

They also found that another explanation for the large number of sexual species is that sexual reproduction and multicellularity are strongly associated across the tree of life, and that multicellularity helps drive the large number of sexual species.

"Multicellularity is actually more important than sexual production. We did a statistical analysis that showed it is probably at least twice as important for explaining these patterns of diversity as sexual reproduction," Wiens said.

And while this study alone can't pinpoint exactly why multicellularity is so important, researchers have previously suggested that it has to do with the variety of cell types within a multicellular organism.

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"If you're a single cell, there's not much variety there," Wiens said. "But multicellularity allows for different tissues or cell types and allows for diversity. But how exactly it leads to more rapid proliferation will need more study."

Chen and Wiens also tested how their conclusions might change if most living species on Earth were species of bacteria that are still unknown to science.

"Most bacteria are unicellular and asexual. But because bacteria are much older than plants, animals and fungi, they have not proliferated as rapidly, even if there are billions of bacterial species," Wiens said. "Therefore, multicellularity and sexual reproduction still explain the rapid proliferation of animals, plants and fungi."

Future work will be needed to understand how multicellularity and sexual reproduction drive biodiversity. Wiens is also interested in how some groups are both multicellular and reproduce sexually yet don't proliferate rapidly.

"We have some ideas," he said. "One example is rhodophytes, the red algae. These are mostly marine, and we know from animals that marine groups don't seem to proliferate as rapidly."

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Arizona. Original written by Mikayla Mace Kelley. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/diversity-of-life-and-the-paradox-of-sex/

Space Force eyes solar-powered vehicles for operations near the moon

RSA won an SBIR contract funded by the Space Force to design a spacecraft with a solar-thermal propulsion system. 

WASHINGTON — A startup under contract to the U.S. Space Force is investigating the use of solar-powered vehicles for operations in deep space beyond Earth orbit.

As the Space Force plans possible missions in cislunar space — the vast area between the Earth and the moon — one of the concerns are the limitations of traditional chemical propulsion. Spacecraft powered by solar thermal energy that use water as its main propellant could provide a viable alternative, says Shawn Usman, astrophysicist and founder of startup Rhea Space Activity.

RSA won a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 study contract funded by the Space Force to design a spacecraft with a solar-thermal propulsion system.

The company envisions a spacecraft that, once launched into space, will deploy an origami-like solar reflector panel. The concentrated sunlight will provide both thermal and electric propulsion using water as the propellant.

The solar reflector, shaped like a parabolic dish antenna, also will be used to collect and transmit communication signals, Usman says. The spacecraft, named Scorpius, could support military needs for in-space maneuvers and other operations in the cislunar region hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth.

Delivering payloads fast to destinations beyond geosynchronous orbit is not efficient with chemical propulsion, he says. Electric propulsion can move large payloads but it could take months or years to reach cislunar space.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in a program known as Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) is developing a nuclear-thermal propulsion system as an alternative to conventional chemical propulsion.

Beau Rideout, aerospace engineer at RSA, says one of the problems with systems like DRACO are safety and policy challenges of working with nuclear reactors.

Rideout says the Scorpius vehicle promises capabilities similar to DRACO but without using radioactive material to achieve its high-performance level of propulsion.

RSA’s propulsion concept is based on Howe Industries’ solar thermal propulsion system developed for small satellites. Howe Industries, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, has won NASA and DARPA contracts for its ThermaSat engine.

Troy Howe, president of Howe Industries, says Scorpius is “a new twist on an old concept.” He notes that solar thermal propulsion has been extensively studied since the 1990s but considered impractical.

Rideout says the RSA design would be more effective because it uses high-thrust maneuvers instead of the old low-thrust, continuous burn concept, and takes advantage of the Earth-moon gravitational environment.

The Scorpius concept was designed based on input from the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), Usman says. “They said they wanted a bimodal system and asked us to think about different payloads or different capabilities that can be used using this propulsion system.”

“We suggested doing the communications part because we already have this huge dish that also serves as part of the propulsion architecture,” he says. “And so that was kind of the far out idea that we came up with and SMC really liked it as a new way of doing deep space communications.”

RSA’s SBIR Phase 1 contract provides $50,000 for the initial study. The company will pitch Scorpius to an audience of U.S. Air Force and Space Force officials August 19 at a “Space Pitch Day” event hosted by SMC. The goal is to win a Phase 2 contract that would be worth up to $1.7 million.

That funding would pay for laboratory testing. If the project is successful, the Space Force could fund a Phase 3 award to fly a demonstration spacecraft and prove the concept.

A small satellite about 100 kilograms would be used to prove the concept. The final vehicle size would be around 22,000 kilograms and five meters in diameter when stowed.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/space-force-eyes-solar-powered-vehicles-for-operations-near-the-moon/

For India’s Pharma Tycoons, Covid-19 Vaccines Are The New Cash Cows

After suffering a deadly second wave of Covid-19, India is seeking to vaccinate the majority of its 1.4 billion population in the next few months. According to estimates, that will require more than 2 billion vaccine doses by December. That mind-boggling number has lured a pack of pharma tycoons to jump into the fray to supply them.

Known for its prowess in delivering low-cost generic drugs to the world—annual generic exports amount to $24 billion—India is also a vaccines powerhouse. It is home to the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest producer of vaccines by number of doses produced, founded by horse breeder Cyrus Poonawalla, who became a billionaire exporting affordable vaccines.

Cyrus Poonawalla, chairman of Serum Institute of India, in Pune, Maharashtra, India, on Monday, May ... [+] 4, 2015.

Sanjit Das/Bloomberg

Yet, ironically, the country has been plagued with a Covid-19 vaccine shortage, resulting in a slow vaccination rollout. So far, only a tenth of India’s population is fully vaccinated and a third has received at least one dose. According to the World Health Organization, five Covid-19 vaccines have been approved for use and 13 more are in various stages of clinical trials in India.

Early in the pandemic, Poonawalla’s son Adar, who’s leading Serum‘s much-publicized Covid-19 vaccine efforts, took the plunge committing $800 million, partly to build a new factory exclusively for Covid-19 vaccines. The Pune-based company is currently producing 110 million doses every month mainly of Covishield, under an agreement with Astra-Zeneca. Priced between 400 rupees and 600 rupees per dose, Covishield generates (at the base rate) an estimated $600 million in monthly revenue for Serum.

Additionally, Serum is developing a veritable arsenal of other Covid-19 vaccines: Novovax (called Covavax in India) in agreement with Novavax, and Covi-Vac, an intra-nasal vaccine for which it has a tie up with Codagenix. In July, Serum announced that it will be manufacturing Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, which has secured emergency use authorization from the Indian drug regulator.

Apart from Covishield, Indians are currently also receiving jabs of Covaxin, a homegrown vaccine being made by the Hyderabad-based vaccine producer Bharat Biotech International, founded by entrepreneur Krishna Ella. The company, which developed Covaxin along with the state-owned Indian Council of Medical Research, is churning out 25 million doses a month. Bharat Biotech is also working on an intra-nasal vaccine, for which it has commenced clinical trials.

Pankaj Patel takes part in a business dialogue at the 2017 Eastern Economic Forum at Far Eastern ... [+] Federal University on Russky Island in Vladivostok, Russia, on September 6, 2017

Artyom KorotayevTASS via Getty Images

Hyderabad city has another vaccine maker in Biological E, which has secured a license to make Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Covid-19 vaccine for India; it is also codeveloping Corbevax, together with Dynavax and the Baylor College of Medicine, which is undergoing phase three trials. Biological E has also signed an agreement with Canadian biotech firm Providence Therapeutics Holdings for making an mRNA vaccine, PTX Covid-19-B. The agreement provides for Providence to supply 30 million doses to Biological E and other buyers. The plan is to produce 600 million doses in 2022 and ramp up capacity to one billion doses eventually.

A slew of India’s generic champions quickly latched on to the vaccine opportunity. Prominent among them was pharma billionaire Pankaj Patel’s Zydus Cadila, headquartered in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, which has developed its own Covid-19 vaccine–ZyCov-D. The company has submitted phase 3 trial data and is awaiting emergency use authorization from India’s regulator for administering it to adults as well as children.

Satish Reddy of Dr Reddys Laboratories on December 17, 2012 in Bangalore, India.

Hemant Mishra/Mint via Getty Images

Gennova Biopharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Emcure Pharmaceuticals in Pune, is collaborating with HDT Biotech Corporation of the U.S. to develop an mRNA vaccine–HGC019. Emcure, which is preparing for a stock market debut, is controlled by Satish Mehta, who has featured among India’s richest previously.

After India allowed the import of foreign vaccines into the country, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, controlled by the billionaire Reddy family in Hyderabad, struck an agreement with the Russian Direct Investment Fund to distribute the Sputnik V vaccine. The Russian sovereign wealth fund has signed agreements with half a dozen other Indian companies as well—Hetero Biopharma, Gland Pharma (which is a part of the Shanghai Fosun Pharma group), Strides Pharma Science, Panacea Biotec, Virchow Laboratories and Morepen Laboratories.

Chairman of Indian pharmaceutical firm Cipla, Yusuf Hamied poses for a portrait in London on March ... [+] 9, 2016.

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images

Pharma major Cipla, controlled by billionaire Yusuf Hamied, saw its shares spike in June when it secured approval to import Moderna’s vaccine into India. The company is helping Moderna with getting approvals for launching the vaccine. Both Moderna and Pfizer are lobbying the Indian government to provide them indemnity from any legal liability for side effects resulting from their vaccines, before they start selling them in India.

#News | https://sciencespies.com/news/for-indias-pharma-tycoons-covid-19-vaccines-are-the-new-cash-cows/

Here's what ancient climate tipping points may be able to reveal about Earth's future

Abrupt disruptions to Earth's climate thousands of years ago that caused extreme sea-level rise and mass ice cap melting can serve as an early warning system for today's planetary tipping points, according to new research. 

Climate tipping points – which are irrevocable over centuries or longer – are thresholds past which large and rapid changes to the natural world may occur.

They include looming catastrophes such as the melting of the ice sheets atop Greenland and West Antarctica, which contain enough frozen water to lift oceans more than a dozen meters (40 feet). 

But they are notoriously hard to anticipate, given the relatively small or incremental changes in variables such as atmospheric carbon concentrations that trigger them.

In a review of past climate events published in the journal Nature Geoscience, an international team of scientists examined two major instabilities in the Earth system, caused by changes in ice, oceans, and rainfall patterns.

They looked at the conditions that led to the Bølling–Allerød warming event nearly 15,000 years ago, which saw surface air temperatures soar up to 14 degrees Celsius over Greenland. 

The team also studied the end of the so-called African humid period around 6,000-5,000 years ago, which led to regional changes in ecosystems and pre-historic human societies. 

They found that various past climate systems, such as ocean dynamics and rainfall patterns, tended to slow as they reached a tipping point, after which they failed to recover from perturbations. 

"Earth's recent past shows us how abrupt changes in the Earth system triggered cascading impacts on ecosystems and human societies, as they struggled to adapt," said Tim Lenton, review co-author and director of the University of Exeter's Global Systems Institute. 

"We face the risk of cascading tipping points again now – but this time it is of our own making, and the impacts will be global," said Lenton. 

"Faced with that risk, we could do with some early warning systems." 

Compound changes

While current atmospheric CO₂ levels of around 412 parts per million have some precedent – at least 800,000 years ago – the rate of CO₂ accumulation does not. 

Scientists are divided on when or if most tipping points will be triggered, but many believe effects such as ice-sheet melt are already "locked-in" due to carbon pollution. 

Authors of the review, which was published online Thursday, said it showed evidence that the impacts of past abrupt changes to the Earth system combined to create planet-wide disruption. 

Changes to ice levels and ocean currents, for example, at the start of the Bolling-Allerod warming lead to cascading impacts such as low ocean oxygen levels, vegetation cover, and atmospheric CO₂ and methane levels.

"It sounds counterintuitive, but to foresee the future we may need to look into the past," said lead author Victor Brovkin from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. 

"The chance to detect abrupt changes and tipping points – where small changes lead to big impacts – increases with the length of observations," he said. 

"This is why analysis of abrupt changes and their cascades recorded in geological archives is of enormous importance."

© Agence France-Presse

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/heres-what-ancient-climate-tipping-points-may-be-able-to-reveal-about-earths-future/

In the absence of genetic variation, asexual invasive species find new methods of adapting to their environment

Without the benefits of evolutionary genetic variation that accompany meiotic reproduction, how does an asexual invasive species adapt over time to a new environment to survive? In all-female weevil species that produce only female offspring from unfertilized eggs, the insects' survival techniques have led to the surprising discovery that these creatures can pass down gene regulation changes to future generations.

New research from Wellesley College has found that two types of weevils, common yet invasive beetles in many parts of the world, have been using epigenetic changes to adapt and respond to different toxins in the plants they eat. The findings, published in PLOS ONE under the title "Host-Specific Gene Expression as a Tool for Introduction Success in Naupactus Parthenogenetic Weevils," have implications for how we consider asexual invaders and how successful they can be because of gene regulation.

The researchers, led by Andrea Sequeira, Wellesley College Gordon and Althea Lang '26 Professor of Biological Sciences, collected samples of parthenogenetic, invasive, and polyphagous weevils, Naupactus cervinus and N. leucoloma, from Florida, California, and Argentina over the course of five years, starting in 2015. Despite being from different locations within the United States where they have been introduced, often through commerce, the weevils are asexual and genetically identical. Yet the team found that they have uniquely adapted to produce different proteins that allow them to eat and digest a variety of plants, even those that produce toxins.

Sequeira worked with a talented team: Ava Mackay-Smith, Mary Kate Dornon, Rosalind Lucier, Anna Okimoto, and Flavia Mendonca de Sousa from Wellesley College, and Marcela Rodriguero, Viviana Confalonieri, Analia Lanteri from the University of Buenos Aires and the Museo de Ciencias Naturales in La Plata, Argentina. Together, they analyzed patterns of gene expression in three gene categories that can mediate weevil-host plant interactions through identification of suitable host plants, short-term acclimation to host plant defenses, and long-term adaptation to host plant defenses and their pathogens.

"We found that some host plant groups, such as legumes, appear to be more taxing for weevils and elicit a complex gene expression response," Sequeira said. "However, the weevil response to taxing host plants shares many differentially expressed genes with other stressful situations, such as organic cultivation conditions and transition to novel hosts, suggesting that there is an evolutionarily favorable shared gene expression regime for responding to different types of stressful situations."

"We also found that mothers are able to 'prime' their young with these epigenetic changes," lead author and 2020 Wellesley College alumna Ava Mackay-Smith said. "Originally, we thought that these changes would only be seen in a single generation. When we studied larvae, who do not yet have mouths or eat plants, we found evidence of the same proteins and adaptations from their mothers."

Sequeira noted this finding is especially important because classic understanding has been that in both sexual and asexual reproduction, all epigenetic marks are erased between generations and each generation starts over.

Mackay-Smith believes that having a better understanding of epigenetic changes in invasive, asexual species may eventually help regulate or mitigate their potential negative impact on an environment, native plants, or crops, for example. "Knowing what is in this insect's repertoire, you could imagine that since we've now identified the proteins that are regulated differently, you could target a specific protein and design a targeted pesticide that removes only that species of weevil, without harming other native insects or fauna."

Both Mackay-Smith and Sequeira are excited to see that perhaps genetic variation is not the only form of heritable variation for natural selection to act upon and that epigenetic processes may increase the evolutionary potential of organisms in response to stress and other environmental challenges -- adaptations that could be relevant in the context of climate change.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Wellesley College. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/in-the-absence-of-genetic-variation-asexual-invasive-species-find-new-methods-of-adapting-to-their-environment/

Ariane 5 launches two satellites on first mission in nearly a year

ORLANDO — An Ariane 5 successfully launched two commercial communications satellites July 30 in the first flight of the rocket in nearly a year, and the first of two missions before it launches a NASA space telescope.

The Ariane 5 lifted off at 5 p.m. Eastern time from the spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The rocket’s upper stage deployed the Star One D2 satellite 30 minutes after liftoff and the Eutelsat Quantum satellite six minutes later, both into geostationary transfer orbits.

Star One D2 is a Maxar-built satellite for Brazilian operator Embratel Star One. The 6,190-kilogram satellite carries a payload of C-, Ka-, Ku- and X-band transponders that will serve a variety of applications, from broadband service in Central and South American to government communications over the Atlantic. The spacecraft will operate from 70 degrees west in GEO.

Eutelsat Quantum was built by Airbus Defence and Space for Eutelsat through a public-private partnership with the European Space Agency. The 3,461-kilogram satellite, based on a platform developed by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., is the first commercial satellite with a “fully flexible” software-defined payload, allowing its spot beams to be reconfigured to meet changing markets. Eutelsat will initially operate the satellite at 48 degrees east in GEO to provide Ku-band service in the Middle East and North Africa.

“I am happy for my customers,” Stéphane Israël, chief executive of Arianespace, said on the webcast after the company confirmed the mission’s success. “It’s very important for Arianespace since it was the first Ariane 5 of the year. It had to be a success and, tonight, it’s a great success.”

The launch was the first for the Ariane 5 since Aug. 16, 2020, when the vehicle launched two communications satellites and Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicle 2. This was only the fourth Ariane 5 launch since the beginning of 2020, an unusually slow pace for a vehicle that had been a mainstay of the commercial launch market.

The Ariane 5 had effectively been grounded for months since that August 2020 launch. In May, Arianespace confirmed that launch, as well as the previous one in February 2020, suffered “a less than fully nominal separation” of the payload fairing. In neither incident were any of the payloads damaged, but Arianespace postponed launches to investigate the issue with the fairing manufacturer, Ruag.

At the time Arianespace said that the efforts of Ruag and the Ariane 5 prime manufacturer, ArianeGroup, “remains positive,” but the companies did not comment further on the problem.

The issue raised concerns because of the upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope on the Ariane 5. ESA is providing the launch of the $8.8 billion spacecraft as part of its contribution to the mission, in exchange for a share of observing time.

The launch is the first of two of the Ariane 5 before the high-profile launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, attended the launch in French Guiana and met with ESA and Arianespace officials to discuss preparations for the JWST launch.

Neither NASA nor ESA have announced a launch date for JWST, beyond a launch readiness date of Oct. 31. NASA officials have previously said that they estimated JWST would launch about four months after this Ariane 5, based on a cadence of one Ariane 5 launch every two months, which would mean a launch no earlier than late November.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/ariane-5-launches-two-satellites-on-first-mission-in-nearly-a-year/

This miniature particle accelerator powers a tiny laser with huge promise

Particle accelerators are hugely important in the study of the matter of the Universe, but the ones we think of tend to be gigantic instruments – surrounding cities in some cases. Now scientists have made a much smaller version to power an advanced laser, a setup that could be just as useful as its larger counterparts.

The particle accelerator in question is a plasma wakefield accelerator, which generates short and intense bursts of electrons, and the laser it's powering is what's known as a free-electron laser (FEL), which uses its light to analyze atoms, molecules, and condensed matter in incredibly high resolutions.

While this scenario has been tried before, the resulting laser light hasn't been intense enough to be useful at smaller scales. Here, the researchers were able to keep the setup enclosed in few normal-sized rooms while amplifying the final electron beam produced by the laser, increasing the intensity by 100 times in the last step of the process.

"We proved the feasibility of the new technical route with the laser electron accelerator with ultra-high acceleration capability, and it downsized the facility size from kilometer level to 12 meters," says physicist Leng Yuxin, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

There were various challenges for the team in scaling down the technology while also keeping it practically useful. They had to shrink down the variation in the energy of the electrons to just 0.5 percent, for example, which required a series of optimizations that controlled the electron acceleration and ensured smooth travel.

The electrons are fired down a vacuum pipe and through a series of three magnetized undulators, which use their magnetic fields to shake the electrons and produce light. The emitted light pushes back on the electrons, pushing them into smaller groups that then generates the laser beam.

Increasing the electric field through the undulators while maintaining stability is one of the reasons that the setup could be made as compact as it was. It means many of the benefits of particle accelerators can be applied in experiments that are run inside a single room.

"The features of FEL, including its super high-resolution rates regarding time and space and super strong peak brightness, makes it possible to realize three-dimensional, multimodal imaging of matters with ultra-high precision," says physicist Wang Wentao, from CAS.

Not only is the new setup smaller than your standard particle accelerator and FEL configuration, it's also much more affordable as well – which opens up all kinds of potential new applications, even if the device isn't as powerful as the full-scale versions.

Actually getting the new particle accelerator and its FEL ready for practical lab experiments is going to take a lot more time and a lot more research, but the scientists have shown what's possible in terms of scaling down the whole system.

And while certain questions remain about how well the small accelerator and laser will match up to the results we're already getting from the bigger versions, other experts have been quick to praise the new research in what it's managed to do. A lot of new and exciting discoveries could be on the way.

"The application of the potential technology is likely to immensely expand human's understanding of the mystery of life and the revolution of living things," says Wentao.

The research has been published in Nature.

#Physics | https://sciencespies.com/physics/this-miniature-particle-accelerator-powers-a-tiny-laser-with-huge-promise/

Marine ecologists reveal mangroves might be threatened by low functional diversity of invertebrates

Mangrove forests were once dominant in the tropics but have recently been disappearing at alarming rates worldwide. Although this threatened ecosystem supports a broad range of specialised invertebrates, little is known about the impact of mangrove deforestation on the functional diversity and resilience of these resident fauna.

The International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem (also known as the World Mangrove Day), declared by UNESCO and celebrated every year on 26th July, aims to raise awareness on the importance of mangrove ecosystems. Mangroves are more than just trees, together they form a unique, special and vulnerable habitat. Their ecological functioning depends upon the mutual relationships between their floral and faunal components, and there is no viable mangrove forest without a healthy community of invertebrates sustaining it.

To address this question, which is crucial in order to manage pristine mangroves and rehabilitate degraded ones, Dr Stefano CANNICCI (Associate Director of the Swire Institute of Marine Science and Associate Professor from the Research Division for Ecology & Biodiversity, The University of Hong Kong), along with Professor Joe Shing Yip LEE (Professor and Director, Simon FS Li Marine Science Laboratory, School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong) and their colleagues compiled a dataset of 209 crustacean and 155 mollusc species from 16 mangrove forests around the world. They found that mangroves, when compared with other ecosystems, are among those with the lowest functional redundancy among resident fauna recorded to date, which suggests that these coastal vegetations are one of the most precarious ecosystems in the world in the face of the recent anthropogenic changes. Thus, a high functional redundancy is a sort of 'ecological insurance' for a given forest, since if one species is lost, another can fulfil its function, ultimately keeping the ecosystem viable.

Diversity: The key to survival

The authors classified these species into 64 functional entities based on unique combinations of three functional traits: feeding habits, behavioural traits potentially affecting ecosystem characteristics, and micro-habitat. More than 60% of the locations showed no functional redundancy, i.e., most of the functional entities at those locations consisted of only one species, with the notable exceptions being locations in South America, the eastern Indian Ocean and the western Pacific Ocean. On average, 57% of the functional entities are performed by a single species, suggesting that even a modest local loss of invertebrate diversity could have significant negative consequences for mangrove functionality and resilience, because invertebrates are crucial for the mangrove nutrient cycling and for oxygen provision to the tree roots and these functions will be lost with a decrease in functional diversity.

Moreover, the low functional diversity of the resident invertebrates indicates that mangroves are among the most vulnerable ecosystems on the planet. Nonetheless, some small mangrove patches, such as those in Hong Kong and Mozambique, harbor multifunctional invertebrate assemblages that may serve as biodiversity reservoirs, which could prove critical for future conservation efforts. Mangrove trees can be replanted but the local invertebrate fauna needs to naturally recruit the newly replanted sites. Without faunal recruitment, mangrove will not be able to develop, due to the lack of nutrients and oxygen in the soil. By contrast, some large forests, such as those in Cameroon, were characterised by low invertebrate functional diversity. Taken together, the findings suggest that faunal functional diversity may be a better measure of mangrove resilience than the conventional indicator of forest size. One of the most important messages to take away from this study is that, although the mangroves in Hong Kong are very small, they are very diverse, and they are still home for a lot of species, which perform multiple functions in the environment. Therefore, the mangroves in Hong Kong are the last pristine, and natural mangroves in the Pearl River Delta, and they could be sources of populations that can re-populate mangroves even in mainland China.

According to the authors, studying the functional diversity of the resident faunal assemblages is crucial for assessing the vulnerability of mangrove forests to environmental change and for designing effective management, conservation, and restoration plans. At present, the health and resilience of mangrove forests around the world are assessed through their overall increase in area. This approach, however, does not consider the real viability and functionality of those forests. A mangrove forest is not just a group of trees, but a complex ecosystem also built upon healthy faunal communities and on the interaction between such communities and the trees. Mangrove management and rehabilitation projects need to take into account not just the increase in size of a mangrove, but also the stability and redundancy of its faunal component.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/marine-ecologists-reveal-mangroves-might-be-threatened-by-low-functional-diversity-of-invertebrates/

Some birds steal hair from living mammals, study finds

Dozens of online videos document an unusual behavior among tufted titmice and their closest bird kin. A bird will land on an unsuspecting mammal and, cautiously and stealthily, pluck out some of its hair.

A new paper in the journal Ecology documents this phenomenon, which the authors call "kleptotrichy," from the Greek roots for "theft" and "hair." The authors found only a few descriptions of the behavior in the scientific literature but came up with dozens more examples in online videos posted by birders and other bird enthusiasts. In almost all the videorecorded cases, the thief is a titmouse plucking hair from a cat, dog, human, raccoon or, in one case, porcupine.

Many species of titmice, chickadees and tits -- all members of the family Paridae -- are known to use hair or fur to line their nests, said Mark Hauber, a professor of evolution, ecology and behavior at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the write-up with postdoctoral researcher Henry Pollock. The hair's role in the nest is still debated, although it is more commonly used by birds nesting in temperate climates, so maintaining warmth in the nest is thought to be one advantage.

The impetus for the study came from a chance sighting. Study co-author U. of I. natural resources and environmental sciences professor Jeffrey Brawn first observed the behavior with Pollock while on a spring bird count in central Illinois.

Scientists once assumed that birds with hair in their nests had collected it from the carcasses of dead mammals or found hair that had been shed into the environment, Brawn said.

"But the titmouse I saw was plucking hair from a live animal," he said. "This was from a live raccoon with claws and teeth. And the raccoon didn't seem to mind because it didn't even wake up."

A search of published research turned up just nine studies that documented 11 instances of the behavior, but a YouTube search yielded many more cases, Hauber said. Sometimes the target animals were sleeping, and sometimes they were awake.

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"We know, of course, that birds use a variety of materials to line their nests," Hauber said. "But why are these birds risking their lives to approach these mammals?"

The behavior suggests that the benefit of lining its nest with hair outweighs the danger to the bird, he said.

It may be that the birds simply need the hair to insulate their nests, but the presence of mammal hair -- and the associated odor of the mammal -- could also deter nest predators like snakes or other birds, the researchers said.

"There's a local species called the great crested flycatcher, which, like the titmouse, is a cavity nester, that actually puts shed snakeskins into its nest, possibly to deter predators," Brawn said.

"There are finches in Africa that put mammalian fecal material on top of their enclosed nests, presumably to confuse and thus keep predators away," Hauber said.

The hair also may repel nest and nestling parasites, which are a common threat to chick survival, especially in cavity nests like those of titmice, he said.

Regardless of the purpose of the behavior, the new paper is the first to document so many examples of hair-plucking by birds in a single report. In addition to citing nine papers about the phenomenon, it also links to dozens of online videos. Collectively, the videos show titmice -- and in one case, a black-capped chickadee -- plucking hair from 47 humans, 45 dogs, three cats, three raccoons and a porcupine.

"Unexpected interactions such as these remind us that animals exhibit all types of interesting and often overlooked behaviors and highlight the importance of careful natural history observations to shed light on the intricacies of ecological communities," Pollock said.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/some-birds-steal-hair-from-living-mammals-study-finds/

GAO denies Blue Origin and Dynetics protests of NASA lunar lander contract

ORLANDO — The U.S. Government Accountability Office denied protests July 30 that Blue Origin and Dynetics filed of NASA’s award of a single lunar lander contract to SpaceX.

In a statement, the GAO said that NASA did not violate procurement law when it decided to make a single Human Landing System (HLS) award to SpaceX in April after previously stating its intent to make two such awards.

“In denying the protests, GAO first concluded that NASA did not violate procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award,” Kenneth E. Patton, managing associate general counsel for procurement law at the GAO, said in the statement. The agency made clear in the competition that awards were contingent on available funding, and reserved the right to make a single award, or none at all.

“GAO further concluded there was no requirement for NASA to engage in discussions, amend, or cancel the announcement as a result of the amount of funding available for the program,” Patton said. “As a result, GAO denied the protest arguments that NASA acted improperly in making a single award to SpaceX.”

The GAO also denied claims Blue Origin and Dynetics made that NASA improperly evaluated the two companies’ proposals. “GAO next concluded that the evaluation of all three proposals was reasonable, and consistent with applicable procurement law, regulation, and the announcement’s terms,” he said in the statement.

The GAO did agree with the companies that NASA waived a “mandatory solicitation requirement” for SpaceX. “Despite this finding, the decision also concludes that the protesters could not establish any reasonable possibility of competitive prejudice arising from this limited discrepancy in the evaluation,” Patton concluded.

Blue Origin and Dynetics filed protests April 26, 10 days after NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to develop a crewed lunar lander, based on the company’s Starship vehicle, and perform a demonstration mission. Later lander missions will be open to SpaceX and other companies through a separate competition.

“NASA has executed a flawed acquisition for the Human Landing System program and moved the goalposts at the last minute,” Blue Origin said in April when it filed the protest, complaining that, among other issues, it was not given an opportunity to revise its proposal.

“Dynetics has issues and concerns with several aspects of the acquisition process as well as elements of NASA’s technical evaluation and filed a protest with the GAO to address them,” Dynetics said in a statement in April when it filed its separate protest. It argued that NASA should have revised the HLS competition, or canceled it, when realized the anticipated level of funding would not be available.

“We stand firm in our belief that there were fundamental issues with NASA’s decision, but the GAO wasn’t able to address them due to their limited jurisdiction,” a Blue Origin spokesperson said in a statement to SpaceNews. “We’ll continue to advocate for two immediate providers as we believe it is the right solution.”

Dynetics did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the GAO’s decision.

The GAO’s decision should free up NASA to proceed on its HLS contract with SpaceX, which had been in limbo since the protests were filed. NASA officials had declined to discuss details about their plans to develop lunar landers, citing a “blackout” period during the GAO’s evaluation of the protests.

“We are prohibited by law, and the procedures and policies of the GAO, from commenting and getting in on this competition, this bid protest,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a July 29 press conference at the Kennedy Space Center.

The GAO’s rejection of the protests is not surprising, given the relatively low success rate of contract protests. The GAO said in a December 2020 report that it sustained 15% of protests it resolved in fiscal year 2020, compared to 13% in fiscal year 2019. The only surprise was the timing of the announcement: the GAO had until Aug. 4 to rule on the protests, and Nelson, among others, had expected the GAO to wait until the deadline given the complexity of the protests.

Nelson said at the July 29 press conference that he still supported competition in the HLS program, provided there was sufficient funding. “I’m very optimistic at this point that Congress is going to give us some additional funds that will allow us to go forward with that competition,” he said, although Congress has not yet taken steps to provide significant additional funding to enable a second HLS award.

The GAO said the protest decision was under a protective order because it contains proprietary information from the companies involved. The agency has asked the companies to identify what information is considered proprietary so that it can release a public version of the decision document.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/gao-denies-blue-origin-and-dynetics-protests-of-nasa-lunar-lander-contract/

Scientists invented a simple new test for creativity, and you can try it out

What makes one person more creative than another? Creativity is hard to define and perhaps even more difficult to measure, but scientists think they've come up with a remarkably simple way of assessing at least one aspect of it.

It's a test that you can take yourself in a couple of minutes, and it works best when you don't know much about how the analysis works. Head over to the project page to give it a go, and then come back to read all about it.

The new method, called the Divergent Association Task (DAT), asks people to name 10 nouns that are as far apart in meaning as possible. "Cat" and "book" would be more divergent than "cat" and "dog", for example.

A computer algorithm then measures this semantic distance - how much the two words have to do with each other - between the nouns the person came up with. Based on an analysis of responses from 8,914 volunteers, DAT is at least as good as current methods for predicting creativity in a person.

"Several theories posit that creative people are able to generate more divergent ideas," write the researchers in their published paper. "If this is correct, simply naming unrelated words and then measuring the semantic distance between them could serve as an objective measure of divergent thinking."

The Alternative Uses Task (where you think of as many uses as possible for an object) and the Bridge-the-Associative Gap Task (where you try and link two words with a third word) are the two existing measures of creativity that DAT went up against.

The creativity scores from DAT correlated as well with the other scores as they did with one another, implying it's about as useful at assessing creativity as more complicated tools. What's more, the data show that its effectiveness seems to apply across different demographics, making it suitable for large-scale surveys. 

The key benefits of the new DAT test are that it's simple and quick to complete, and doesn't require any kind of human assessment, which might introduce bias. However, the researchers are keen to point out that it doesn't measure every aspect of creativity.

"Our task measures only a sliver of one type of creativity," says psychologist Jay Olson, from Harvard University.

"But these findings enable creativity assessments across larger and more diverse samples with less bias, which will ultimately help us better understand this fundamental human ability."

As Olson points out to CNN, the DAT test explores divergent thinking and verbal creativity – it won't show how creative you might be when cooking in the kitchen for example, which uses a different set of skills, but it can predict aptitude at certain problem-solving tasks.

Psychologists think that more creative people are able to link remote elements together in their minds more easily, which is what's being tested here. A more comprehensive measure would have to also take into account achievements in creative fields, such as music composition and inventions.

It's a complex picture – but the DAT approach might make carrying out future studies into creativity just a little bit simpler.

"Creativity is fundamental to human life," says Olson. "The more we understand its complexity, the better we can foster creativity in all its forms."

The research has been published in PNAS.

#Humans | https://sciencespies.com/humans/scientists-invented-a-simple-new-test-for-creativity-and-you-can-try-it-out/

Nelson remains hopeful Congress will provide additional lunar lander funding

ORLANDO — NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says he remains confident that Congress will provide NASA with additional funding so it can select a second lunar lander developer but declined to comment on Blue Origin’s proposal to lower its costs to enable a contract.

Speaking at a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center July 29 about the upcoming launch of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft on its second uncrewed test flight, Nelson said the commercial crew program provided an argument for selecting a second company in its Human Landing System (HLS) program.

“What if we hadn’t had two competitors, and what if it had only been Boeing?” he asked about the commercial crew program. Boeing has yet to fly people on its vehicle, while SpaceX, which made its first crewed launch more than a year ago, is currently in the middle of its second operational mission to the International Space Station. “Right there, that’s enough demonstration for you of why we want competition.”

He then said that NASA wants competition in the HLS program, despite awarding only one contract in April, to SpaceX, citing a lack of funding. “I’m very optimistic at this point that Congress is going to give us some additional funds that will allow us to go forward with that competition,” he said.

That additional funding has, so far, not been forthcoming from Congress. While Nelson told both House and Senate committees that NASA was looking for more than $5 billion for HLS, perhaps as part of a jobs and infrastructure bill, a House appropriations bill for fiscal year 2022 increases NASA’s budget for HLS by just $150 million, to $1.345 billion. An infrastructure bill currently being considered by the Senate does not appear to include any funding for HLS.

In a July 26 open letter to Nelson, Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, proposed waiving up to $2 billion in fees over three years and carrying out an additional demonstration mission at no cost to NASA if the agency gave the company a second HLS award. Blue Origin’s original bid for the HLS program was nearly $6 billion, more than double SpaceX’s winning $2.9 billion award.

That offer came as the Government Accountability Office continues to review protests filed by Blue Origin and the other HLS bidder, Dynetics, in April. The GAO has an Aug. 4 deadline to issue a ruling, and NASA, citing that review, has been quiet about its plans for the HLS program.

Nelson cited the GAO protest when asked how NASA would consider Bezos’s proposal. “I want you to ask me that question next week,” he said, after the GAO’s ruling.

Blue Origin’s HLS proposal was as the leader of its so-called “National Team” that includes Draper, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. During a July 29 earnings call, Northrop executives sidestepped a question about how Blue Origin’s proposal would affect its role in the HLS program.

“When we lead an effort, we will choose to make sizable investment to protect that program and increase our probability of win over its life because of the advantage that you have got when you are the leader, the prime-only effort. And that’s exactly what Blue Origin is doing,” Kathy Warden, president and chief executive of Northrop Grumman, said.

“In the case of Northrop Grumman, we have to do that similar business case assessment and we have come to different answers in terms of what our contribution should be to the overall program financials,” she added. “In any good partnership that you lay out the clear expectations of each party but also the benefits to be gained by each party and aligning of expectations for financial investment.”

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/nelson-remains-hopeful-congress-will-provide-additional-lunar-lander-funding/

The entire ISS just spun around as new Russian module malfunctioned after docking

A new Russian space-station module malfunctioned after it docked on Thursday. The module, called Nauka, starting unexpectedly firing its thrusters — which moved the entire station out of position.

The long-awaited science module had already encountered several technical issues on its way to the ISS, but once it docked to the space station on Thursday morning, it seemed to be in the clear. Then about three hours after its arrival — at about 12:34 pm ET — Nauka suddenly began firing its thrusters.

Astronauts on the ISS told flight controllers they were seeing something strange out their windows. Space journalist Anatoly Zak was among the first to notice their observations.

"Numerous particles are also seen outside the station indicating either major propellant leak or gas vent," Zak tweeted.

In response to the glitch, flight controllers began firing thrusters on two other parts of the Russian side of the ISS, including the service module, in what they called a "tug of war" to get the station back into its normal position. 

By 1:30 pm ET, ISS flight controllers announced that Nauka's thrusters had finally stopped firing and they had regained control of the station's positioning. Over that hour, Nauka had rotated the station by 45 degrees.

"All other station systems are operating perfectly," NASA said Thursday afternoon. "None of the other appendages were damaged in any way."

A helium leak could be to blame for the malfunction

A sudden loss of control over the space station's orientation is "not a common occurrence," NASA said, adding that there are procedures in place to fix such an issue when it does arise.

Occasionally, flight controllers deliberately change the ISS's orientation to avoid oncoming space debris, or make it easier for a spacecraft to successfully dock at the station.

The ISS crew is not in danger and never was, according to flight controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Currently there are two cosmonauts, Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov, aboard the station, as well as and five astronauts: Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, and Mark Vande Hei of NASA.

"It's safe to say the remainder of the day is no longer going to happen as scheduled, of course," a flight controller told the ISS astronauts Thursday afternoon. Controllers asked them to check the station's starboard, or right, side to see if there was any damage to the station's exterior or floating debris.

So far, the astronauts have reported nothing amiss. They didn't even feel the station moving during the incident, according to ISS program manager Joel Montalbano.

"You asked the crew, 'Hey, did the space station shake or anything like that?' And the response was negative," he said during a briefing on Thursday afternoon.

Montalbano added that he's "not too worried" given that the station's maximum spin speed was about half a degree per second.

It's not yet clear what caused the engines to fire out of turn. But Zak wrote that Russia's mission control discovered a helium gas leak in one or two of Nauka's tanks, which may have comprised the thrusters' operation.

Around 2:15 pm ET, Russian flight controllers confirmed with NASA that they had disabled the errant thrusters.

Zak also reported that Nauka has used up all the propellant available to its thrusters, so there's no chance of another "tug of war".

A dramatic docking

Nauka, which is also known as the Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM), was originally scheduled to launch in 2007, but technical issues and unexpected repairs led to years of delay.

The module expands the Russian side of the ISS, adding more science facilities, crew quarters, and a new airlock for spacewalks. It also features a new docking port for Russian spacecraft.

But Nauka didn't have a smooth journey into orbit. Shortly after launching on July 21, Nauka failed to fire its main engines and push itself to a higher altitude. Russian mission controllers had to instruct the 43-foot- (13-meter-) long, 2.5-ton module to fire its backup thrusters to get back on course.

After Nauka successfully docked on Thursday, the two ISS cosmonauts started checking for leaks, preparing to open the module's hatch, and integrating the module into the station's power and computer systems.

But after the engines started firing, flight controllers advised the ISS crew to keep the hatch closed and to close the station's 1.5-inch- (4-cm-) thick windows.

NASA and Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, will spend the next few days investigating the incident. Roscosmos will take the lead on analyzing Nauka, while NASA will focus on assessing space-station structures for any signs of damage.

"We'll have a quick look done by the end of the day tomorrow," Montalbano said.

"That'll tell us if we have any poke-outs that we're worried about that we want to go and look at."

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

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#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/the-entire-iss-just-spun-around-as-new-russian-module-malfunctioned-after-docking/

Eerie bioluminescence that creates 'milky sea' revealed in new satellite study

The ocean is vast, and deep, and dark, and inhospitable to us feeble land-dwelling creatures. There's much that remains unknown or poorly understood in its roiling, seething belly.

Technology is changing that.

For over a century, mariners have reported an eerily beautiful phenomenon they called the "milky sea" - enormous patches of glowing water that sometimes persist for several nights in a row. It wasn't until 2005 that this phenomenon was finally confirmed - in the form of photographs taken from a satellite in low-Earth orbit.

Now scientists have used nearly a decade's worth of satellite data to reveal the phenomenon in detail. Although much remains to be discovered, we've made some important steps towards understanding the largest known form of bioluminescence on Earth.

In his 1872 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Jules Verne wrote "It is called a milk sea .. a large extent of white wavelets often to be seen on the coasts of Amboyna .. the whiteness which surprises you is caused only by the presence of myriads of infusoria, a sort of luminous little worm".

The worm was conjecture on Verne's part, but milky seas are otherwise real. Patches of this phenomenon can be larger than 100,000 square kilometers (around 39,000 square miles), and have been reported a great deal in the last century or so: 235 sightings were cataloged between 1915 and 1993, which suggests an occurrence rate of at least thrice per year.

However, only once has a research vessel managed to sail through one, in 1985 in the Arabian Sea.

The water they collected contained, among other organisms, a bioluminescent marine bacterium called Vibrio harveyi; the researchers aboard the vessel concluded this was likely the source of the glow, but some features remained unexplained. In addition, their conclusions are yet to be verified.

The problems with verification are several. Milky seas occur in remote locations, primarily; and they are unpredictable, which means getting a research vessel in position prior to the appearance of one is nigh impossible. Now, using satellite imaging, a team of scientists led by marine biologist Steven Miller of Colorado State University hopes to fill in the gaps.

The NOAA's Suomi NPP and NOAA-20 are two weather satellites equipped with a variety of sensors, including an instrument called the Day/Night Band. This sensor is designed to capture low-light emission sources, under a variety of illumination conditions.

This means it's uniquely able to see faintly glowing patches of sea that other instruments might not. Sure enough, when Miller and his colleagues examined the Day/Night Band data for three commonly reported milky sea locations between 2012 and 2021, they found 12 instances of the phenomenon.

A three-night sequence from 2018 showing a milky sea in the Somali Sea. (Miller et al., Sci. Rep., 2021)

The Day/Night Band continues to amaze me with its ability to reveal light features of the night," Miller said. "Like Captain Ahab of Moby-Dick, the pursuit of these bioluminescent milky seas has been my personal 'white whale' of sorts for many years."

The glow has long been known to be a strange one. Unlike bioluminescent algae, which discharge flashes of light in a warning signal in response to being disturbed and often appear in tumbling waves and turbulent ship wakes, milky seas glow wide and steady. We don't know how they form, or why, or how the glow is composed and structured.

The team's data revealed that milky seas seem to resonate with the monsoons in the northwest Indian Ocean, which produces cool upwellings of nutrient-rich water, but no such monsoonal association was apparent in the Maritime Continent region.

This means that some other process could be providing nutrient upwellings when the milky seas appear there.

They also found that the bioluminescence remained stable and steady in choppy waters, which would not occur if the glow was confined to a surface slick. This suggests a well-mixed layer of water that contains the glowing organisms.

Physically sampling milky seas will, of course, help solve the mystery once and for all. The team hopes that their satellite data will show us the way to find them more easily.

"Milky seas are simply marvelous expressions of our biosphere whose significance in nature we have not yet fathomed," Miller said.

"Their very being spins an unlikely and compelling tale that ties the surface to the skies, the microscopic to the global scales, and the human experience and technology across the ages; from merchant ships of the 18th century to spaceships of the modern day. The Day/Night Band has lit yet another pathway to scientific discovery."

The research has been published in Scientific Reports.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/eerie-bioluminescence-that-creates-milky-sea-revealed-in-new-satellite-study/