ADA Space raises $55.6 million in Series B round

HELSINKI — Chinese satellite operator and remote sensing data firm ADA Space raised $55.6 million in a Series B investment round for its artificially intelligent satellite network plans.

The short announcement from ADA Space Nov. 20 states that the 355 million yuan in funding will be used for satellite network capacity building and research and development.

The round was led by Hengjian Holding, an investment vehicle of the Guangdong Provincial People’s government. Guangdong-based Shenzhen Oriental Fortune Capital and Dongguan Financial Holdings and Beijing-based Qingchuang Bole and others followed.

ADA Space, full name Chengdu Guoxing Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd., was founded in 2018 and is based in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, southwest China. 

It uses AI applications for optimizing remote sensing data from its satellites. The firm previously raised $21.37 million in a 2020 A+ round led by Aplus Capital and Galaxy Holding Group.

The company says it aims to accelerate the development of the “Xingshidai” AI satellite constellation. Early plans called for a network of 192 satellites.

Xingshidai-10, launched in July, last week completed on-orbit tests and entered service. It delivers full-color resolution images with a resolution of 1 meter and multispectral images at 4-meter resolution. Notably the satellite also bears the name “Guangdong Hengjian,” apparently for the latest main investor.

ADA Space is also developing an Earth observation live streaming app, Live Earth, and cloud infrastructure, named ADA CLOUD. ADASpace claims it has provided services to around 100 business and government users.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in September approved ADA Space to participate in a “2021 Big Data Industry Development Pilot Demonstration Project.”

ADA Space also signed a deal in September with China Great Wall Industry Corp., a commercial arm of China’s main space contractor CASC, to launch its new, self-developed fourth-generation AI satellite on the second Long March 8 rocket. 

The launcher is set to fly with multiple payloads from the coastal Wenchang spaceport in February 2022.

China partially opened its traditionally state-owned space sector to private capital in late 2014. Hundreds of companies have since emerged, with support from national policies, military-civil fusion, provincial and local assistance and serious investment.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/ada-space-raises-55-6-million-in-series-b-round/

Why some people find it harder to be happy, according to science

The self-help industry is booming, fueled by research on positive psychology – the scientific study of what makes people flourish.

At the same time, the rates of anxiety, depression and self-harm continue to soar worldwide. So are we doomed to be unhappy, despite these advances in psychology?

According to an influential article published in Review of General Psychology in 2005, 50 percent of people's happiness is determined by their genes, 10 percent depends on their circumstances and 40 percent on "intentional activity" (mainly, whether you're positive or not).

This so-called happiness pie put positive-psychology acolytes in the driving seat, allowing them to decide on their happiness trajectory. (Although, the unspoken message is that if you are unhappy, it's your own fault.)

The happiness pie was widely critiqued because it was based on assumptions about genetics that have become discredited. For decades, behavioral genetics researchers carried out studies with twins and established that between 40 percent and 50 percent of the variance in their happiness was explained by genetics, which is why the percentage appeared in the happiness pie.

Behavioral geneticists use a statistical technique to estimate the genetic and environmental components based on people's familial relatedness, hence the use of twins in their studies.

But these figures assumed that both identical and fraternal twins experience the same environment when growing up together – an assumption that doesn't really hold water.

In response to the criticism about the 2005 paper, the same authors wrote a paper in 2019 that introduced a more nuanced approach on the effect of genes on happiness, which recognized the interactions between our genetics and our environment.

Nature and nurture

Nature and nurture are not independent of each other. On the contrary, molecular genetics, the study of the structure and function of genes at the molecular level, shows that they constantly influence one another.

Genes influence the behavior that helps people choose their environment. For example, extroversion passed from parents to children helps children build their friendship groups.

Equally, the environment changes gene expression. For example, when expecting mothers were exposed to famine, their babies' genes changed accordingly, resulting in chemical changes that suppressed production of a growth factor. This resulted in babies being born smaller than usual and with conditions such as cardiovascular disease.

Nature and nurture are interdependent and affect each other constantly. This is why two people brought up in the same environment may respond to it differently, meaning that behavioral genetics' assumption of an equal environment is no longer valid.

Also, whether or not people can become happier depends on their "environmental sensitivity" – their capacity to change.

Some people are susceptible to their environment and so can significantly change their thoughts, feelings and behavior in response to both negative and positive events.

So when attending a wellbeing workshop or reading a positive psychology book, they may become influenced by it and experience significantly more change compared to others – and the change may last longer, too.

But there is no positive psychology intervention that will work for all people because we are as unique as our DNA and, as such, have a different capacity for wellbeing and its fluctuations throughout life.

Are we destined to be unhappy? Some people might struggle a little harder to enhance their wellbeing than others, and that struggle may mean that they will continue to be unhappy for longer periods. And in extreme cases, they may never experience high levels of happiness.

Others, however, who have more genetic plasticity, meaning they are more sensitive to the environment and hence have an increased capacity for change, may be able to enhance their wellbeing and perhaps even thrive if they adopt a healthy lifestyle and choose to live and work in an environment that enhances their happiness and ability to grow.

But genetics does not determine who we are, even if it does play a significant role in our wellbeing. What also matters are the choices we make about where we live, who we live with and how we live our lives, which affect both our happiness and the happiness of the next generations.

Jolanta Burke, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Positive Psychology and Health, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. 

#Humans | https://sciencespies.com/humans/why-some-people-find-it-harder-to-be-happy-according-to-science/

New way to detect coronavirus through building ventilation systems

Researchers at East Carolina University's Brody School of Medicine have found a new way to detect the virus that causes COVID-19 by testing the air passing through building ventilation systems. The discovery could lead to earlier detection of the virus, improved quarantine protocols, reduced transmission and fewer outbreaks.

Dr. Sinan Sousan, an assistant professor in Brody's Department of Public Health and Research Faculty at North Carolina Agromedicine Institute, and expert of environmental and occupational airborne exposure, and Dr. Rachel Roper, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology with an extensive background studying coronaviruses, spearheaded the effort to learn whether SARS-CoV-2 could be detected through the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in student dorms.

Their research was recently published in The American Journal of Infection Control, and represents a breakthrough in the way the virus can be detected before an individual tests positive.

"I think it's important because you want to know if someone in the building is infected, potentially contagious and infecting other people, so it's a really important public health measure," Roper said of the study, adding that this method could also be used to test for other airborne viruses and pathogens such as influenza.

Researchers collected samples from two large student dorms and an isolation suite housing students that had tested positive for COVID-19 several times per week for more than three months beginning in January 2021.

Sousan's team collected a total of 248 air samples, testing four collection methods that deposited samples into small filters, saline solutions and cartridges that were then preserved and transported to Roper's lab for RT-PCR analysis. The testing revealed the presence of SARS-COV-2 in the isolation suite air samples 100% of the time. In the dorms where students were not already in COVID-19 isolation, researchers were able to detect the virus in the air samples 75% of the time when students on the same floor later tested positive via nasal swab.

The trick to success was capturing air samples with virus that was concentrated enough to be detected, and maintaining the virus's stability within the samples to get it back to lab with intact RNA for the PCR analysis, Roper said.

Similarly to testing a building's wastewater, implementing building air sampling on a broader scale could allow for earlier detection of the virus, particularly in shared spaces.

"Detection in air provides advance notice of potential exposures in specific locations within a building," said Mike Van Scott, interim vice chancellor for ECU's Division of Research, Economic Development and Engagement. "It was fortuitous that SARS-CoV-2 could be detected in wastewater, but the next respiratory virus that we encounter may not be as stable, and detection in air would allow us to respond quickly."

The research was funded by university COVID-19 relief funds, and completed with assistance research specialist Ming Fan and former undergraduate students Kathryn Outlaw and Sydney Williams. ECU Facilities Services staff also assisted, drilling holes into the HVAC units and ductwork of three student dormitories and provided building access, allowing the researchers to collect samples.

Story Source:

Materials provided by East Carolina University. Original written by Natalie Sayewich. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/new-way-to-detect-coronavirus-through-building-ventilation-systems/

Physicists detect elusive 'ghost particles' in the LHC for the very first time

A major milestone in particle physics has just been made at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

For the first time, candidate neutrinos have been detected, not just at the LHC, but in any particle collider.

The six neutrino interactions, detected using the neutrino subdetector FASERnu, not only demonstrate the feasibility of the technology, they open up a new avenue for studying these mysterious particles, particularly at high energies.

"Prior to this project, no sign of neutrinos has ever been seen at a particle collider," said physicist Jonathan Feng of the University of California Irvine, co-leader of the FASER Collaboration.

"This significant breakthrough is a step toward developing a deeper understanding of these elusive particles and the role they play in the Universe."

Neutrinos are actually everywhere. They're one of the most abundant subatomic particles in the Universe; but they carry no charge and have almost zero mass so, although they stream through the Universe at almost the speed of light, they barely interact with it at all. Billions of the things are streaming through you right now. To a neutrino, the rest of the Universe is basically incorporeal; that's why they're also known as ghost particles.

Although they interact rarely, that's not the same as never. Detectors such as IceCube in Antarctica, Super-Kamiokande in Japan, and MiniBooNE at Fermilab in Illinois use sensitive photodetector arrays designed to pick up the showers of light that emerge when a neutrino interacts with other particles in a completely dark environment, for example.

But for a long time, scientists have wanted to also study neutrinos produced at particle colliders. That's because collider neutrinos, which emerge primarily from the decay of hadrons, are produced at very high energies, which are not very well studied. Detecting collider neutrinos provides access to neutrino energies and types that are rarely seen elsewhere.

FASERnu is what is known as an emulsion detector. Lead and tungsten plates are alternated with layers of emulsion: During particle experiments at the LHC, neutrinos can collide with nuclei in the lead and tungsten plates, producing particles that leave tracks in the emulsion layers, a bit like the way ionizing radiation makes tracks in a cloud chamber.

The plates need to be developed like photographic film. Then, physicists can analyze the particle trails to find out what produced them; whether it was a neutrino, and then what the neutrino's 'flavor', or type, was. There are three neutrino flavors – electron, muon and tau – as well as their antineutrino counterparts.

In the FASERnu pilot run conducted in 2018, six candidate neutrino interactions were recorded in the emulsion layers. That may not seem like many, considering how many particles are produced in a run at the LHC, but it gave the collaboration two vital pieces of information.

"First, it verified that the position forward of the ATLAS interaction point at the LHC is the right location for detecting collider neutrinos," Feng said. "Second, our efforts demonstrated the effectiveness of using an emulsion detector to observe these kinds of neutrino interactions."

The pilot detector was a relatively small apparatus, at around 29 kilograms (64 pounds). The team is currently working on the full version, around 1,100 kilograms (over 2,400 pounds). This instrument will be significantly more sensitive, and will allow the researchers to differentiate between neutrino flavors and their antineutrino counterparts.

They're expecting that the third observing run of the Large Hadron Collider will produce 200 billion electron neutrinos, 6 trillion muon neutrinos, and 9 billion tau neutrinos, and their antineutrinos. Since we've only detected around 10 tau neutrinos, total, to date, this will be a pretty big deal.

The collaboration is also eyeing even more elusive prey. They have their hopes pinned on a detection of dark photons, which are at the moment hypothetical, but which could help reveal the nature of dark matter, the mysterious directly-undetectable mass that makes up most of the Universe's matter.

But the neutrino detections alone are a tremendously exciting step forward for our understanding of the fundamental components of the Universe.

"Given the power of our new detector and its prime location at CERN, we expect to be able to record more than 10,000 neutrino interactions in the next run of the LHC, beginning in 2022," said physicist and astronomer David Casper of the University of California, Irvine, FASER project co-leader.

"We will detect the highest-energy neutrinos that have ever been produced from a human-made source."

The team's research has been published in Physical Review D.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/physicists-detect-elusive-ghost-particles-in-the-lhc-for-the-very-first-time/

Introduced birds are not replacing roles of human-caused extinct species

Human-caused bird extinctions are driving losses of functional diversity on islands worldwide, and the gaps they leave behind are not being filled by introduced (alien) species, finds a new study led by UCL and University of Gothenburg researchers.

The study, published in Science Advances, shows how human impacts such as habitat destruction and climate change are impoverishing ecosystems, even on islands where alien birds actually outnumber the species that have gone extinct.

Lead author Dr Ferran Sayol (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, UCL Biosciences), who began the research while based at the University of Gothenburg, said: "Humans have drastically changed bird communities, not only by driving animals to extinction but also by introducing species into new habitats across the globe. There has been some debate as to whether introduced species might replace the roles of the extinct species, thus maintaining functional diversity within the ecosystem; here, we found that is unfortunately not the case.

"Some of the extinct species had a role in their ecosystem that has not been replaced by other birds. For example, some giant flightless species, like the moas of New Zealand and the elephant birds of Madagascar, were probably acting like large terrestrial herbivores as grazers, similar to ungulates like cattle and sheep on the continents, before being driven extinct by humans.

"Other valuable functions that may be lost with bird extinctions can include pollination and seed dispersal, which can have cascading harmful effects on other species."

For this study, the researchers compiled an exhaustive list of all bird species that have been present in nine different archipelagos* before and after human-caused extinctions occurred. This covered 1,302 bird species, including 265 globally or locally extinct, and 355 established introductions from 143 separate species. In addition, the scientists visited different museum collections, including the Natural History Museum, to measure several morphological traits in skin or skeleton specimens. With this data, the researchers were able to quantify the trait diversity before and after bird extinctions, and identify the ecological niches extinct birds once filled.

The research team found that before human arrival, island bird communities were more morphologically diverse than they are today. Their findings show how human-driven extinctions have disproportionally affected some types of birds (for example, larger birds and flightless birds are more likely to go extinct), leading to the loss of certain ecological roles.

The researchers also found that different archipelagos are becoming more and more similar in terms of trait diversity as native birds go extinct and the same kind of alien species are being newly established in many places.

Co-author Professor Tim Blackburn (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research and the Institute of Zoology, ZSL) said: "Some groups of birds have been particularly successful at establishing outside their natural areas -- for example, many species of parrot and starling. Because of this, islands are becoming more homogeneous as the same kind of birds are established everywhere."

Co-author Dr Alex Pigot (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research) said: "Our findings add to evidence that conservation efforts should be focused on preserving functionally distinct threatened species, to stem the tide of harmful losses to biodiversity that are driven by human actions. Huge numbers of species are being driven to extinction by human-driven effects such as habitat loss and climate change, so it is vital that we act now to reduce our negative impact on global biodiversity."

The study was funded by Swedish Research Council and Carl Tryggers Stiftelse för Vetenskaplig Forskning and three SYNTHESYS grants from the European Union, and involved researchers from UCL, University of Gothenburg, Zoological Society of London, Imperial College London, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the University of Bayreuth.

* The study covered the following archipelagos: Hawaii, Cuba & Jamaica, Bermuda, Saint Helena, Canary Islands, Madagascar, Mascarene Islands, New Caledonia, and New Zealand.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/introduced-birds-are-not-replacing-roles-of-human-caused-extinct-species/

Mysterious vanishing of advanced Chinese civilization 4,000 years ago finally solved

About 5,300 years ago, an ancient civilization emerged in the east of China, building a brilliant city the likes of which had perhaps never been seen before in all of Asia – nor possibly even the whole world.

The surviving traces of the Liangzhu culture, which rose up along the banks of the Yangtze River Delta in China's east, are a testament to what this unique Neolithic society was capable of in the final stretches of the Stone Age.

The archaeological ruins of Liangzhu City demonstrate numerous signs of social, cultural, and technological advancements for the period, especially in agriculture and aquaculture.

Sophisticated architectural features, meanwhile – including clever hydraulic engineering that enabled canals, dams, and water reservoirs – led to allusions of Liangzhu being a Neolithic "Venice of the East".

None of these marvels would last, however.

(Hangzhou Liangzhu Archaeological Site Administrative District Management Committee)

Above: Aerial view of palace area of Liangzhu.

After a single innovative millennium, the Liangzhu culture mysteriously collapsed around 4,300 years ago, and the ancient city was abruptly abandoned.

Exactly why has never been fully understood, although many have suggested some form of catastrophic flooding led to the sudden decline.

"A thin layer of clay was found on the preserved ruins, which points to a possible connection between the demise of the advanced civilization and floods of the Yangtze River or floods from the East China Sea," explains geologist Christoph Spötl from the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

"However, no clear conclusions on the cause were possible from the mud layer itself."

Now, we have a clearer picture of the deluge that drowned this astounding place.

In a new study, Spötl and an international team of researchers went far deeper than the ancient mud deposits, examining mineral formations (or speleothems) such as stalagmites from two underwater caves in the region, which preserve chemical signatures of climatic conditions long ago.

Stalagmites in Shennong Cave. (Haiwei Zhang)

Led by first author Haiwei Zhang from China's Xi'an Jiaotong University, their analysis of the stalagmite samples shows the collapse of Liangzhu City coincided with a period of extremely high precipitation that likely lasted for decades over 4,300 years ago, probably due to increased frequency of El Niño–Southern Oscillation conditions.

"This is amazingly precise in light of the temporal dimension," Spötl says.

"Massive monsoon rains probably led to such severe flooding of the Yangtze and its branches that even the sophisticated dams and canals could no longer withstand these masses of water, destroying Liangzhu City and forcing people to flee."

According to the researchers, previous instances of climate change in the Yangtze River Delta region may have also impacted other Neolithic cultures that inhabited the area before the Liangzhu society rose up in a period of dry and relatively stable environmental conditions.

But history and weather meant this prosperous city could not endure forever.

"Archeological studies show the presence of large-scale hydraulic complexes such as large earthen dams near the Liangzhu city, which were constructed between [5,300 and 4,700 years before present]," the researchers write in their study.

"This suggests that the Liangzhu society was effectively managing water resources by using hydraulic infrastructure for flood mitigation and/or irrigation to survive in a dry climate."

With time, however, that dry climate seems to have gotten progressively drier, culminating in a possible 'megadrought' around 4,400 years ago, at which point dam construction appears to have ceased, since existing dams would have been sufficient under the arid conditions.

And then the rains came, falling in two distinct burst periods between roughly 4,400–4,300 years ago.

"Our speleothem records, together with geochemical evidence of flood deposits above the Liangzhu culture layer, suggest that massive rainfall in the entire middle-lower reaches of the Yangtze River Valley might have induced fluvial flooding and/or overbank marine flooding transported by the Yangtze River plume and thus impeded human habitation and rice farming," the authors explain.

"Massive flooding and inundation due to poor drainage in the low-lying land may have forced the Liangzhu people to abandon their capital city and dwellings in the Taihu Plain, ultimately leading to the collapse of the entire Liangzhu civilization."

For hundreds of years afterward, humid conditions remained, during which time other ancient cultures temporarily rose up to succeed the Liangzhu – at least, until another megadrought likely led to the "final demise" of Neolithic human societies in the region.

At about the same time, Chinese society was about to begin a transformational new chapter, with the founding of the Xia dynasty in 2070 BCE, considered to be the first dynasty of China, led by Yu the Great.

"While many documents indicate that the leader Yu built the Xia Dynasty because he successfully managed river flooding, some studies suggest that Yu's control of the flooding can be ascribed to climate change," the researchers explain, noting that their own speleothem data also back up the idea.

"This observation provides new robust evidence that the rise of the Xia Dynasty occurred in the context of a major climate transition from wet to dry, in line with the Chinese historic records and previous studies."

The findings are reported in Science Advances.

#Humans | https://sciencespies.com/humans/mysterious-vanishing-of-advanced-chinese-civilization-4000-years-ago-finally-solved/

Jaw-dropping simulation shows stars shredded as they get too close to a black hole

We just got a little more insight into stellar death by black hole.

In a series of simulations, a team of astrophysicists has chucked a bunch of stars at a range of black holes, and recorded what happens.

It's the first study of its kind, the scientists said, that combines Einstein's theory of general relativity with realistic models of the densities of main-sequence stars. The results will help us understand what is happening when we observe the flares of light from distant black holes shredding unfortunate stars.

And the simulations, supporting a paper that was published last year, are also gorgeous as heck.

When a star ventures a little too close to a black hole, things turn violent pretty quickly. The extreme gravitational field of the black hole starts deforming and then pulling the star apart, due to what we call tidal forces – the stretching of one body due to the gravitational pull of another.

When a star gets so close to a black hole that the tidal force results in material being stripped from the star, we call that a tidal disruption event.

In the worst-case scenario for the star, there's no escape. The disruption is total, and some of the star's material gets slurped down onto the black hole like a spaghetti noodle.

But not every encounter between a black hole and a star ends this way. Some stars have been observed surviving. The simulations, led by astrophysicist Taeho Ryu of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, were designed to find out what factors contributed to a star's survival.

The team created six virtual black holes, with masses between 100,000 and 50 million times that of the Sun. Each of these black holes then had encounters with eight main-sequence stars, with masses between 0.15 and 10 times that of the Sun.

They found that the main factor that contributed to a star's survival was the initial density of the star. The denser the star, the more likely it is to survive an encounter with a black hole. In the video above, you can see these encounters play out around a supermassive black hole 1 million times the Sun's mass. The stars with the highest density are yellow, and the lowest are blue.

The team also found that partial disruptions occur at the same rate as total disruptions, and the proportion of the star's mass that is lost can be described surprisingly easily using a simple expression.

Future research to fill in the finer details will help model the effects of these encounters, including the heretofore relatively neglected partial disruption events, the researchers said.

This will reveal what can happen to a star after it survives an encounter with a black hole; whether it continues along the main sequence, or turns into a stellar remnant; and if it will continue in orbit around the black hole to meet total disruption at a later date.

The paper accompanying the simulations was published in The Astrophysical Journal in 2020.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/jaw-dropping-simulation-shows-stars-shredded-as-they-get-too-close-to-a-black-hole/

Novel approach to a plant-based diet, unique to long-necked dinosaurs

How did the largest animals to ever walk the Earth dominate their environments? By doing something totally revolutionary: keeping it simple. Published in BMC Ecology and Evolution, a new study led by Postdoctoral Research Scientist and periodic dinosaur dentist Dr. Keegan Melstrom at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's Dinosaur Institute ??reveals that colossal sauropod dinosaurs, the largest animals to ever walk the Earth, had a strategy for dining on plants unique to long-necked dinosaurs: linking tooth complexity to how fast teeth were replaced.

"In nearly every other animal we look at, the complexity of a tooth relates to the animal's diet," says Dr. Melstrom. "Carnivores have simple teeth, herbivores have complex teeth, often with distinct ridges, crests, and cusps for processing plant material. But sauropods break this incredibly consistent pattern. Instead, these dinosaurs link complexity to tooth replacement rate, with simple teeth being replaced every few weeks!"

The shapes of an animal's teeth are thought to reveal a lot about its diet and by extension its lifestyle. The banana-sized knives ringing the mouths of T. Rex are perfect for ripping flesh, and deadly simple sharp teeth abound in living and extinct carnivores. Typically, herbivores have extremely complex teeth: perfect for grinding down fibrous leaves or grasses. When it comes to the largest animals to ever walk the Earth, sauropods chewed their own path. Unlike any other plant-eating animals living or extinct, sauropods rely on quickly replacing their teeth to keep the salad flowing.

Keep It Simple, Sauropods

"The diet of extinct dinosaurs was incredibly varied, spanning tiny meat-eaters to massive plant-eaters," says Dr. Melstrom. "Our research sheds light on the range of adaptations that allowed so many plant-eaters to live alongside one another."

Using computerized tomography (CT) and microCT scanning, Dr. Melstrom and his colleagues made 3D models of specimens from around the globe, capturing the great diversity of tooth complexity in Late Jurassic dinosaurs.

"This whole project was conducted during the pandemic. Instead of traveling the world to gather data, we relied on researchers who had made their data available to other scientists, as well as the incredible collections here at NHM. I think this project really demonstrates the importance of sharing information, it can lead to new discoveries even during a pandemic," says Dr. Melstrom.

They converted the toothy hills and valleys of dinosaur teeth into numbers, quantifying tooth complexity between the three groups of dinosaurs: meat-eating theropods, plant-eating ornithischians, and similarly herbivorous sauropods.

What they found was an entirely new evolutionary strategy to handle a plant-based diet 150 million years ago. While meat-eating dinosaurs had sharp simple teeth expected for carnivores, and ornithischians had the more complex teeth similar to herbivores living today, sauropods had very simple teeth, unlike any other known herbivores extinct or living.

In sauropods, they found that the more complex the tooth, the more slowly teeth were replaced, a correlation that demonstrates that tooth replacement rate is related to tooth complexity, unlike any other known animals. More specifically, diplodocoids like Apatosaurus and Diplodocus exhibited incredibly fast replacement rates and simple teeth, possibly allowing them to eat different foods from the other group of sauropods, macronarians like ??Brachiosaurus, which had more complex teeth.

Simple teeth would have made sense for sauropods' long necks. Smaller teeth built to be lost weigh less than the tougher teeth of all other herbivores, which helps lighten the skull at the end of those long necks. The peculiar tooth replacement pattern meant these sauropods could focus on plant food other dinosaurs and non-dinosaur plant-eaters passed by.

"Time and time again, the fossil record shows us that there isn't one solution to evolutionary problems. For sauropods, when it comes to eating tough plants, the simplest solution was the best," says Dr. Melstrom.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/novel-approach-to-a-plant-based-diet-unique-to-long-necked-dinosaurs/

Kids start appreciating humor and cracking jokes surprisingly early, survey reveals

A quick and easy parent survey has allowed psychologists to track how children first develop their sense of humor – and what they find most funny.

To date, it's one of the best timelines we have of when kids start to make sense of certain jokes and funny acts. Some forms of humor even seem to occur at just a few months of age.

The questionnaire is called the Early Humor Survey (EHS) and includes just 20 queries. First, parents of children between 0 and just under 4 years old were asked if their kid laughs and if they appreciate or produce humor, either verbal or physical. 

Then, the questions delve into specific types of humor, such as "Has your child ever seen anyone make this type of joke?". These broad categories of humor include topics like "Making fun of others, e.g. calling someone a poopoohead" or "Saying strange things/mixing up concepts/nonsense" like saying, "Cats have five legs".

When the survey was given to nearly 700 parents in the US, UK, and Australia, the researchers found a clear and consistent age-related pattern in the emergence of humor, no matter a child's nationality or their parent's level of education.

In the first year of life, parents said they observed multiple ways in which their children appreciated humor and sometimes produced it themselves.

More than 75 percent of parents, for instance, said their kids were laughing when they were just two months old. By the age of one year, virtually all parents reported laughter from their offspring.

Generally, the authors found children appreciate humor before they start producing it themselves. By 8 months, for instance, 97.5 percent of parents said their children were laughing at jokes or funny behavior, like when playing peekaboo, being tickled, seeing a silly face, or hearing a strange noise.

Only later do kids begin trying out these jokes for themselves. At almost one year old, the survey reveals about 50 percent of kids are acting funny or saying silly things, usually by showing hidden body parts, misusing objects, chasing, teasing, or inventing strange words.

In the 'terrible twos', almost all kids are producing these same jokes, including more aggressive forms of humor like spitting out water or pushing people.

At three years of age, kids even start creating their own 'meta' jokes, like saying a cow 'quacks' or purposefully mislabeling an object.

The findings largely support previous research, which suggests humor develops alongside our motor, social, and language skills. Yet compared to other forms of play, studies on childhood humor are surprisingly limited.

When you consider how important humor can be to human social interactions, creativity, and wellbeing, that's a big oversight. The EHS, researchers argue, is currently our most reliable way of measuring this crucial sense in the first four years of life.

If the same age-related patterns can be replicated among even larger cohorts in different areas of the world, the survey could one day reveal a universal timeline for humor development – if one exists at all.

Still, while the survey appears reliable across the English-speaking nations tested, it does not incorporate a comprehensive list of all types of humor and it does come with some key limitations.

The questionnaire is only based on a parent's observations of their child's humor, and while this gives us a better idea of how children use humor on a daily basis in the home, it does seem to differ from results in more formal experiments.

"[W]hile the EHS is reliable in terms of parental inter-observability, lab experiments do not necessarily capture the everyday humor reported by parents," the authors write.

When the same researchers tested the level of humor in 84 children with an official experimenter, they were not able to replicate the same timeline of humor development as seen in the EHS.

In these trials, the experimenter would model 21 jokes for children, interspersed with 21 'control acts' that were not funny. For instance, the experimenter would hold up a toy horse and say, "The horse goes neigh! Neigh!", or they would say, "The horse goes quack! Quack!", which is a joke.

After each act, whether it was a control act or a joke act, the experimenter would ask the child to try out the same thing.

Ultimately, children in the study laughed more at the joke trials than the control trials. But when the authors controlled for age, the results did not reveal a clear timeline.

The discrepancy could boil down to the fact that the experimenter is a stranger, who kids might feel shy or scared to laugh or joke with, but further research will be needed to tease apart these mixed results.

In the future, the team hopes their survey will be used globally for humor research, allowing psychologists to zoom in on certain types of humor and how kids at different ages respond to them.

The results might also reveal how parents and educators can better incorporate specific types of humor into lessons, books, television shows, and daily play.

The study was published in Behavior Research Methods.

#Humans | https://sciencespies.com/humans/kids-start-appreciating-humor-and-cracking-jokes-surprisingly-early-survey-reveals/

Trees on the move: Researchers reveal how wildfire accelerates forest changes

Refugees are on the move in forests across the western U.S. As climate conditions change, the ranges of tree species are shifting, especially toward cooler or wetter sites. A new Stanford analysis provides some of the first empirical evidence that wildfire is accelerating this process, likely by reducing competition from established species. The study, published Nov. 15 in Nature Communications, raises questions about how to manage land in an era of shifting ecosystems -- a key issue as President Biden prepares to sign into law an infrastructure bill that allocates more than $5 billion for forest restoration and wildfire risk reduction.

"Complex, interdependent forces are shaping the future of our forests," said study lead author Avery Hill, a graduate student in biology at Stanford's School of Humanities & Sciences. "We leveraged an immense amount of ecological data in the hopes of contributing to a growing body of work aimed at managing these ecosystem transitions."

As the climate changes, animal and plant species are shifting their ranges toward conditions suitable for their growth and reproduction. Past research has shown that plant ranges are shifting to higher, cooler elevations at an average rate of almost five feet per year. In many studies, these range shifts lag behind the rate of climate change, suggesting that some species may become stranded in unsuitable habitats. The factors that impact plant species' ability to keep up with climate change are key to maintaining healthy populations of the dominant trees in western forests, yet have remained largely mysterious.

To better understand the distance, direction and rate at which tree ranges are shifting, Hill and study co-author Chris Field, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, looked at how the phenomenon is affected by wildfire, a potent and widespread driver of ecosystem structure and composition in the western United States.

Using U.S. Forest Service data collected from over 74,000 plots across nine Western states, the researchers identified tree species that are shifting their ranges toward cooler, wetter sites -- an expected response to the recent warming and drying. Then, they compared the rate of these range shifts between places that were burned by wildfire and places that were not.

Of eight species that had seedlings growing in climates significantly different from mature trees of the same species, Hill and Field found strong evidence that two -- Douglas fir and canyon live oak -- had larger range shifts in areas that burned than in areas that did not.

Although the analysis did not reveal the mechanism for how wildfire accelerates range shifts for certain trees, the researchers hypothesized that burned areas with their open canopies and scorched understory present less competition from other plant species.

The findings demonstrate not only that fire can accelerate tree migration, but that some species may be slowing the range shifts of others through competition. This, in turn, raises questions about the impact of fire management on trees' ability to keep up with climate change, and points to the importance of low-intensity prescribed and natural fires.

"This study highlights a natural mechanism that can help forests remain healthy, even in the face of small amounts of climate change," said Field. "It also illustrates the way that ecosystem processes often have several layers of controls, a feature that emphasizes the value of detailed understanding for effective management."

Field is also the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, a professor of Earth system science and biology, and a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy.

The research was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Stanford University. Original written by Rob Jordan. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/trees-on-the-move-researchers-reveal-how-wildfire-accelerates-forest-changes/

Trees on the move: Researchers reveal how wildfire accelerates forest changes

Refugees are on the move in forests across the western U.S. As climate conditions change, the ranges of tree species are shifting, especially toward cooler or wetter sites. A new Stanford analysis provides some of the first empirical evidence that wildfire is accelerating this process, likely by reducing competition from established species. The study, published Nov. 15 in Nature Communications, raises questions about how to manage land in an era of shifting ecosystems -- a key issue as President Biden prepares to sign into law an infrastructure bill that allocates more than $5 billion for forest restoration and wildfire risk reduction.

"Complex, interdependent forces are shaping the future of our forests," said study lead author Avery Hill, a graduate student in biology at Stanford's School of Humanities & Sciences. "We leveraged an immense amount of ecological data in the hopes of contributing to a growing body of work aimed at managing these ecosystem transitions."

As the climate changes, animal and plant species are shifting their ranges toward conditions suitable for their growth and reproduction. Past research has shown that plant ranges are shifting to higher, cooler elevations at an average rate of almost five feet per year. In many studies, these range shifts lag behind the rate of climate change, suggesting that some species may become stranded in unsuitable habitats. The factors that impact plant species' ability to keep up with climate change are key to maintaining healthy populations of the dominant trees in western forests, yet have remained largely mysterious.

To better understand the distance, direction and rate at which tree ranges are shifting, Hill and study co-author Chris Field, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, looked at how the phenomenon is affected by wildfire, a potent and widespread driver of ecosystem structure and composition in the western United States.

Using U.S. Forest Service data collected from over 74,000 plots across nine Western states, the researchers identified tree species that are shifting their ranges toward cooler, wetter sites -- an expected response to the recent warming and drying. Then, they compared the rate of these range shifts between places that were burned by wildfire and places that were not.

Of eight species that had seedlings growing in climates significantly different from mature trees of the same species, Hill and Field found strong evidence that two -- Douglas fir and canyon live oak -- had larger range shifts in areas that burned than in areas that did not.

Although the analysis did not reveal the mechanism for how wildfire accelerates range shifts for certain trees, the researchers hypothesized that burned areas with their open canopies and scorched understory present less competition from other plant species.

The findings demonstrate not only that fire can accelerate tree migration, but that some species may be slowing the range shifts of others through competition. This, in turn, raises questions about the impact of fire management on trees' ability to keep up with climate change, and points to the importance of low-intensity prescribed and natural fires.

"This study highlights a natural mechanism that can help forests remain healthy, even in the face of small amounts of climate change," said Field. "It also illustrates the way that ecosystem processes often have several layers of controls, a feature that emphasizes the value of detailed understanding for effective management."

Field is also the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, a professor of Earth system science and biology, and a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy.

The research was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Stanford University. Original written by Rob Jordan. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/trees-on-the-move-researchers-reveal-how-wildfire-accelerates-forest-changes/

Oldest Known Decorative Jewelry In Eurasia Found In Polish Cave

In 2010, archeologists found a pendant designed with a row of dots at the Stajnia Cave in Poland. This week, researchers revealed that they pinpointed the age of this pendant to approximately 41,500 years old, which makes it the oldest decorated piece of jewelry found on the Eurasian continent. 

Humans have been creating and wearing jewelry for thousands of years. But it can be a challenge to find out exactly how long ago prehistoric humans started decorating items and using them as fashion accessories. 

One way for archeologists to figure out the date of an object found at an excavation site is by looking at the surrounding location. For example, deeper layers are older, and items close to each other are likely the same age. However, that’s not always very accurate, because sometimes buried materials can move around over the years with changing climate and ground conditions. But for materials that used to be part of living organisms, there is another way to find out their age: radiocarbon dating. 

This is the method that researchers used to measure the age of the pendant found at the Stajnia Cave as well as an awl found nearby, which was possibly used to make the decorative pattern in this or similar pendants. It was possible to use radiocarbon dating to find out the age of these objects because they were both made from materials that were once part of living organisms. The pendant was made of mammoth ivory and the awl from horse bone.

Aerial view of Stajnia Cave.

Marcin Żarski

Every plant and animal contains small amounts of a radioactive form of carbon (C14), but when they die, the C14 gradually decays. Because the rate of radioactive decay is constant over time, it’s possible to make a reasonable estimate of materials that originated from plant or animal materials by measuring the C14 that’s left in the material today. With modern methods of measuring radioactive decay these estimates are getting more and more accurate. 

To measure the age of the pendant and awl, the researchers took small amounts of collagen from the ivory and bone. In an article in Scientific Reports they describe that they sent the samples to two separate radiocarbon dating labs. Reassuredly, both labs came back with very similar results, which led the researchers to conclude that the pendant was made about 41,500 years ago. 

Since technically the radiocarbon method only tells you when the mammoth and horse died that the respective ivory and bone fragments came from, there was a small possibility that someone had made the jewelry much later, using old ivory and an awl from old bone. However, to rule that out the scientists also looked at the age of remains found in the same area. Those were also about the same age, which makes it much more likely that whoever made the pendant did so with relatively fresh ivory and bone. 

At 41,500 years old, this pendant is now the oldest known decorative jewelry found on the Eurasian continent. It still pales in comparison to the age of some of the jewelry found in Africa, but it dates back to the paleolithic era, when modern humans started to settle across Europe. There are still many unanswered questions about this pendant, such as whether the decoration had a practical use (like tallying a hunt or tracking the moon) or if it was the result of artistic expression. But either way, it’s an interesting insight in Paleolithic life!

#News | https://sciencespies.com/news/oldest-known-decorative-jewelry-in-eurasia-found-in-polish-cave/

Woodland and hedgerow creation can play crucial role in action to reverse declines in pollinators

The largest survey of pollinator abundance in Wales has found that woodland and hedgerow creation can play a crucial role in action to reverse declines in insects that are essential for crop yield and other wildlife.

Until now, there have been surprisingly limited scientific data about pollinators in Wales when compared to the rest of the UK. However, a major new study of hundreds of different sites has revealed the types of habitats where pollinating bees, hoverflies and butterflies are most abundant.

The large-scale survey was carried out by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and Butterfly Conservation Wales, in conjunction with the Welsh Government and more than 1,000 landowners across the country. The findings show that carefully managed woodland and hedgerow creation could play a key role in land management incentive schemes, alongside other actions such as restoring wildflower meadows and organic farming with mass-flowering crops.

The researchers -- who surveyed 300 squares of land across Wales measuring 1km x 1km -- found up to twice as many insects in broadleaved woodland areas as in intensively farmed grassland. They also estimated that without hedgerows, pollinator abundance on farmland could fall by up to 21 per cent.

This is because hedgerows and broadleaved woodland, which includes trees such as oak and maple as well as flowering shrubs, provide diverse habitats for pollinators. Many woody plant species provide food for larvae, as well as pollen and nectar for adult insects. Hedgerows and woodland also provide undisturbed nesting sites and shelter for many species.

At present, woodland makes up just 15 per cent of land cover in Wales, while around three-quarters is grassland, much of which does little to support biodiversity because it is intensively farmed. However, the Welsh Government aims to plant 180,000 hectares of new woodland by 2050 as part of its Net Zero Wales plan.

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Dr Jamie Alison of UKCEH, who led the new study of pollinators in Wales, says: "Woodland creation, if properly planned, is key to tackling climate change through capturing and storing large amounts of carbon. However, it also has many other benefits, including for insect biodiversity.

"The value of woodland in supporting pollinators is not widely recognised, but we find that it may be particularly important in countries such as Wales that are dominated by intensively farmed grasslands with few flowering species to support these insects."

However, Dr Alison pointed out that it is important to have a careful balance of different habitats across a landscape, to provide complementary features that support a variety of wildlife.

He says: "The solution doesn't start and end with woodland. Wildflower meadows, less intensive grassland habitats and flowering crops also play their part in supporting insects, while the type of tree cover is crucial. Timber plantations, for example, do not benefit pollinators, which thrive in the edges and gaps of natural woodland with a variety of flowering plant species."

The study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, found that habitats with more flowers supported higher numbers of over 50 pollinator species included in the survey. However, honeybees -- which are highly effective foragers -- tended to dominate over other species in areas with the highest cover of flowers.

Public attention largely focuses on managed honeybees, which are reared for their economic value. "Although they are effective pollinators, honeybees are just one species," says Dr Alison. "A key finding of our study is that different approaches are needed to benefit 'wild' pollinators -- including other bee species, hoverflies, butterflies and moths -- which are not managed by humans."

Around a third of global food production relies on pollinators -- mainly insects -- which are crucial to sustain populations of other animals as well as plants, but many of these insect species are in decline in the UK and globally. The authors of the study say that to successfully reverse global pollinator declines, future policies and farming subsidy systems need to consider creating woodland and hedgerow in areas that currently have low floral cover.

The researchers thanked the large number of farmers and land managers who gave permission for studies to be carried out on their land.

Dr George Tordoff of Butterfly Conservation, who coordinated the pollinator surveys, says "This massive, collaborative effort to survey the countryside of Wales has given us a much better understanding of the health of pollinator populations, and how this relates to different habitats, flower cover and length of hedgerows in the surrounding landscape."

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/woodland-and-hedgerow-creation-can-play-crucial-role-in-action-to-reverse-declines-in-pollinators/

Air pollution does not increase the risk of getting infected but does increase the risk of getting sick from COVID-19, study finds

Long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with a higher risk of developing COVID-19 among those people who get infected, shows a study led by the Barcelona Institute of Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation, and co-led by the GCAT| Genomes for Life-Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), Badalona. The study, published in Environment Health Perspectives, provides further evidence on the health benefits of reducing air pollution.

A series of studies suggest that regions with higher pre-pandemic levels of air pollution had a higher incidence of COVID-19 cases and deaths. However, the reasons for this associations are not yet clear; air pollution could favor airborne transmission of the virus, or it could increase an individual's susceptibility to infection or disease. "The problem is that previous studies were based on reported cases, which had been diagnosed, but missed all the asymptomatic or undiagnosed cases," says Manolis Kogevinas, ISGlobal researcher and first author of the study.

The research team decided to combine the technology developed by Carlota Dobaño's team to measure a series of virus-specific antibodies in a cohort of adults living in Catalonia (the COVICAT cohort), with information on the long-term exposure of such individuals to air pollutants (NO₂, PM_2.5, black carbon and ozone).

"This is the first study to perform mass screening of SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies in an adult cohort to examine the association between their residential exposure to air pollution before the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 infection, and disease," says Cathryn Tonne, cosenior author of the study together with Dobaño.

Higher viral burden and/or symptom severity

The study included 9,605 participants among which there were 481 confirmed cases (5%). In addition, blood samples from over 4,000 participants were taken to determine the presence and quantity of IgM, IgA and IgG antibodies to five viral antigens. Of these, 18% had virus-specific antibodies, but no association was found between infection and exposure to air pollutants. However, among those who were seropositive (i.e. got infected), an association was found between higher exposure to NO₂ and PM_2.5 and higher levels of IgG specific for the five viral antigens (an indication of higher viral burden and/or symptom severity).

For the total study population (the 9,605 participants), an association was found between higher exposure to NO₂ and PM_2.5 and disease (symptoms), particularly for severe cases that ended in the hospital or in intensive care. The association with PM_2.5 was stronger for men over 60 years of age and people living in socioeconomically deprived areas.

Strongest evidence globally

"Our study provides the strongest evidence globally on the association of ambient air pollution and COVID-19," says Kogevinas. "These results are in line with the association between air pollution and hospitalization described for other respiratory diseases such as influenza or pneumonia." Air pollution could also contribute by favouring the development of cardiovascular, respiratory or other chronic conditions, which in turn increase the risk of severe COVID-19.

"The combination of individual genetic risks that we have previously identified in COVICAT individuals and this new data on environmental impact caused by air pollution exposure will contribute to understanding the complex interplay and mechanisms underlying the severity of COVID-19," says Rafael de Cid, from the IGTP.

The authors conclude that the results provide additional support for the public health benefits of reducing air pollution levels, and highlight the influence of environmental factors on infectious diseases.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal). Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/air-pollution-does-not-increase-the-risk-of-getting-infected-but-does-increase-the-risk-of-getting-sick-from-covid-19-study-finds/

There may be more bird species in the tropics than we know

Study of a perky little bird suggests there may be far more avian species in the tropics than those identified so far. After a genetic study of the White-crowned Manakin, scientists say it's not just one species and one of the main drivers of its diversity is the South American landscape and its history of change. These results are published in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.

"We found that the White-crowned Manakin probably originated in the highland forests of the Andes Mountains in northern Peru," explains lead author Jacob Berv. "Today, this bird is also found across the Amazon Basin, in the lowland rainforests of Brazil, Peru, and many other countries, including parts of Central America." Berv conducted this research while a Ph.D. student at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and is currently a Life Sciences Fellow at the University of Michigan.

"This study shows that there is a lot of evolutionary history embedded in what is commonly referred to as a 'single widespread' species in Amazonia," says co-author Camila Ribas at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research. "The White-crowned Manakin is an example of a phenomenon that is probably more the rule than the exception in Amazonia -- diversity is vastly underestimated by the current taxonomy."

Around 2.5 million years ago, populations of this manakin species expanded out of the Andes, though many populations remain there today. Those that moved eventually became isolated in pockets of habitat defined by mountains, plains, rivers, and climate. Over the course of time, White-crowned Manakin populations evolved independently, accumulating differences in their songs and plumage patterns. Study authors suggest many of these pocket populations are now different enough from one another that they should be recognized as separate species. This is especially true if the variations in song make it unlikely that isolated populations would be able to recognize one another and breed -- the biological definition of a species.

"In order to understand evolutionary processes in Amazonia we need many more studies like this one, with dense geographical sampling," Ribas says. "For this we need to support biological collections that are able to accumulate samples through time."

Study authors say underestimating the number of species in South America has important consequences for conservation, especially for endemic species threatened by ongoing loss of habitat.

"We've basically just scratched the surface," notes Berv. "If what holds true for this species is indicative of what's taking place in other poorly studied species, then we have hugely underestimated the amount of biodiversity in the South American tropics."

Story Source:

Materials provided by Cornell University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/there-may-be-more-bird-species-in-the-tropics-than-we-know/

Researchers unlock the potential of trees for managing environmental impacts in cities

As the global climate change conversation intensifies and nations look to minimize environmental impacts in their own backyards, nature-based solutions are garnering new levels of interest. Trees are widely recognized for their role in sequestering carbon, and capturing and storing rainfall in their canopy to manage stormwater runoff, but to date there has been minimal research and clarity around how urban forests in particular can be used as practical stormwater management tools. Members of the academic community speculate that urban trees can help mitigate stormwater flows, but the actual amount of stormwater that trees remove through functions like transpiration, infiltration, and storage is not well established. To address this gap, University of Maryland researchers have conducted an empirical field study and concluded that single urban trees, such as street trees, function differently than trees grown in clusters featuring significantly greater transpiration rates. This result offers a new understanding of how to manage the landscape in urban settings to reduce the harmful effects of stormwater runoff.

The findings are published in Scientific Reports, with authorship from Mitch Pavao-Zuckerman and Sarah Ponte in UMD's Department of Environmental Science and Technology in partnership with the Center for Watershed Protection and the United States Forest Service.

"This work is important because urban trees are increasingly being considered as a stormwater management practice, but we don't have much information about how trees function in different parts of the landscape," explains Deb Caraco, senior watershed engineer with the Center for Watershed Protection. "Quantifying the impacts of urban trees affect different parts of the water balance, such as the evapotranspiration component discussed in Mitch and Sarah's paper, gives us a better understanding of the benefits of urban trees, and knowing where and how to plant and preserve them to achieve the greatest benefit."

To better understand how the relationships between transpiration and environmental influences change within different tree management contexts, Pavao Zuckerman's team evaluated three distinct urban settings -- single trees over turfgrass and a cluster of trees over turfgrass in Montgomery County, and a closed canopy forest with a leaf litter layer in Baltimore, Md. They built and used sap flux sensors -- which give a clearer picture of how trees access groundwater -- installed in 18 mature red maple trees to continually monitor transpiration rates during the growing season. They also measured soil water content, air temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation at each site. Single trees had a much greater transpiration rate, and were more responsive to climate influences than closed canopy or cluster trees. This data presents important implications for the future.

"This work explores how trees function in different urban contexts, say street trees vs. a forest patch, where their environments are very different than non-urban trees," explains Pavao-Zuckerman. "Cities can be hotter and drier for example. Our data can help make tree crediting policies better reflect the actual benefits of trees in urban landscapes because they interact with water and their environment differently in cities than they do outside cities. Our next step is to take this data set on how each tree functions and scale it up to see how an entire stand or patch of trees mitigates stormwater flows."

Some may envision a tree having the same characteristics regardless of where it is growing but due to Pavao-Zuckerman's work, we now see that the same tree species will function differently in different urban settings, and can help mitigate stormwater in cities which affects flooding and water quality which are becoming increasingly important public-facing issues.

"This work emphasizes the importance of thinking about cities as not a homogenous thing that we're trying to manage, but that environmental outcomes and benefits are going to vary within a city," says Pavao-Zuckerman. "A tree along a street isn't the same as a tree in a patch or woodlot. Considering this variability is important in our future research -- we are now modeling how these different settings may mitigate runoff from different sized rain storms for example."

Pavao-Zuckerman emphasizes that these findings can serve as helpful guidelines for those managing urban stormwater runoff. And that the current method of relying on data gathered from non-urban locations should be put to rest.

"Practitioners are now able to better integrate urban trees into their stormwater green infrastructure network. These findings suggest that approaches to use urban trees and forests to mitigate urban stormwater runoff should rely on data that is derived from urban settings, rather than non-urban locations."

The Chesapeake Bay Trust's Pooled Monitoring Initiative that provided funding for this project supports research for key restoration questions such as this study to guide future restoration efforts.

""The importance of trees to clean water, clean air, and provide shade resonates now more than ever as we look for ways to reduce urban heat islands, clean stormwater before it enters streams, and provide habitat for our wildlife," said Jana Davis, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Maryland. Original written by Graham Binder. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/researchers-unlock-the-potential-of-trees-for-managing-environmental-impacts-in-cities/

Phages kill dystentery-causing bacteria and reduce virulence in surviving bacteria

Phages are viruses that infect bacteria and can also be used to treat human infections. However, as with antibiotics, bacteria can readily evolve resistance to phage attack, highlighting a key limitation to the use of phages as therapeutics. Now, researchers from Yale University have shown that the naturally occurring phage A1-1 kills Shigella flexneri, a major cause of dysentery in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia and selects for phage-resistant mutants with reduced virulence. The research is published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

That serendipitous finding results from the fact that the phage's use of a particular surface receptor on the bacterium called OmpA, as a portal to enter and kill S. flexneri, means that bacteria that escape the phage's attack will either lack OmpA receptors, or that any remaining receptors will have mutated in ways that reduce virulence.

"We sought to discover a phage that was naturally capable of binding to outer membrane proteins of S. flexneri responsible for virulent cell to cell spread of this pathogen in the human intestine, hypothesizing that evolution of phage resistance should alter, or eliminate, this virulence factor protein," said Kaitlyn E. Kortright, a postdoctoral scientist at Yale.

This, said Kortright, is "a biomedically useful evolutionary tradeoff that improves upon standard phage therapy approaches."

The researchers pursued phage therapy against S. flexneri because that bacterium was already resistant to conventional antibiotics. Additionally, this pathogen is active primarily in low-income countries, where antibiotics are expensive and often unavailable, and clean drinking water is scarce. Phages, she explained, "might even be useful for treating water sources, by selecting for avirulent S. flexneri."

The investigators began this project not knowing whether or not a phage existed that can kill S. flexneri. They assumed "that such viruses had naturally evolved, and could be isolated from environmental samples," said Paul E. Turner, the Rachel Carson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale. To increase the odds, "we chose to search in a geographic region renowned for its extreme microbial biodiversity: Cuatro Cienegas, Mexico. Clearly a longshot, but apparently a reasonable idea, because this effort was successful."

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Materials provided by American Society for Microbiology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/phages-kill-dystentery-causing-bacteria-and-reduce-virulence-in-surviving-bacteria/

Cause of biodiversity loss: Logistical Herculean tasks

Research groups all over the world are trying to disentangle the causes of biodiversity loss. One thing is clear: there is no single cause. Behind the decline of biodiversity lies a complex bundle of causes.

That is why research in this field is enormously complex. Dr. Sarah Redlich from the Biocenter of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, accepted that challenge in the LandKlif project, which investigates the effects of climate change and land use on species diversity.

Before researchers start researching, they have to come up with a plan. In technical jargon, this is called "study design". Sarah Redlich was instrumental in developing the sophisticated study design of the collaborative project LandKlif (part of the Bavarian climate research network bayklif). The design is presented in the current issue of the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

179 study areas across Bavaria

The main research question was: What influence do climate warming and land use have on the decline of plants and animals, including flying insects, but also on their ecological services such as pollination and pest control? The study design allowed 179 suitable forest, arable, grassland and settlement areas to be selected as study sites across Bavaria.

"We all know that we have to take action before it is too late. After all, the loss of species is becoming more and more alarming," says Sarah Redlich. However, it is important to know exactly which measures make sense to achieve a specific goal, and where to implement them - "otherwise the best projects are useless.

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Many things must be taken into account when designing a research project

In order to avoid misinterpretations of observations, the researchers around Sarah Redlich and project leader Professor Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter tinkered with their study design for many weeks before the actual LandKlif investigations began in April 2019.

"For example, we looked for near-natural landscapes as well as intensively used agricultural landscapes and settlement areas within different climates," explains the JMU biologist. This allows us to distinguish between the influence of land use and climate.

Potential sites such as fields or forests have to be analysed very precisely in advance in order to avoid false conclusions when studying species loss.

"For example, you cannot simply compare fields with and without flower strips to find out to what extent the flower strip influences the diversity of insects," explains Sarah Redlich. It is important to know whether there are nature reserves in the immediate vicinity of the fields or whether some of the fields are managed organically. Because all these aspects can be significant influencing factors: "We tried to filter out such hidden factors when searching for suitable study sites."

The size of the field or forest, the distance to other habitats, the nature of the area where the data recordings and experiments were carried out, but also the distribution of different habitats in the landscape: all this was taken into account in the design.

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Study design starts on the computer

Although field researchers develop their ideas and questions by observing nature, the planning and design of a field study often starts in the office. "In our case,  the initial selection of study sites took place on the computer," says Sarah Redlich. Geoinformation systems for analysing spatial data were an important tool.

At the end of the computer-assisted selection, however, there was no way around inspecting all 179 locations. This was done by ten doctoral students from various Bavarian universities.

"They had to check on site, for example, whether the sites were easily accessible and not too close to rivers or streams," explains the biologist. They also had to identify the landowners of each site and obtain their consent. This part of the study design and the subsequent field research were "logistical Herculean tasks".

But the effort was worth it: the results of an initial study have been published in a high-ranking journal and are receiving a lot of attention worldwide. Further studies are in preparation.

Agriculture and surface sealing as significant drivers

According to Sarah Redlich, a lot can already be done to counteract the loss of animals and plants – even if research does not yet fully understand what exactly influences the decline in biomass and diversity.

According to the JMU biologist, however, it is clear that intensive agriculture and the sealing of land are significant drivers of this alarming development, as essential plant and animal habitats are lost.

To create habitats, more flowering areas should be created and extensive farming methods used. It would also make sense to green facades in cities. Additionally, it is important to connect isolated habitats and reduce pollution from synthetic pesticides and industrial waste.

Climate change is also affecting biodiversity. Whether and how land use and climate interacts and what effects this has on biodiversity in Bavaria will be shown by the results of the field research, which are still pending.

In conclusion, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter emphasises: "Our study design is cross-scale, representative of landscape areas throughout Bavaria and it enables the combined analysis of climate and land use. We are thus laying an important foundation for a causal understanding of biodiversity decline and a still missing standardised biodiversity monitoring in Bavaria".

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/cause-of-biodiversity-loss-logistical-herculean-tasks/

Sea Lions' Whiskers Help Them Touch The World Around Them, Just Like Our Fingertips

Humans have amazing fingertips. They are sensitive and can be moved over objects to feel their softness, texture, size, and shape. These movements are both complex, and "task-specific". This means that you adopt different movements depending on what you want to feel about an object.

We squeeze or push objects to judge softness and feel around the edges of objects to judge size and shape. And if you wanted to feel the texture of an object, you would sweep your fingertips over the surface.

Being able to adopt different movement strategies shows that we can precisely control our fingertip movements and draw on our past experiences in order to pay attention to important aspects of an object – the edges of shapes and the surfaces of textures, for example.

This means that we have a high level of control over our sensory perception, and we call this active touch sensing.

Touch sensing in mammals

Most mammals do not have as moveable or sensitive fingertips as humans. Instead, they have whiskers, which are touch-sensitive hairs on their faces, and used to guide locomotion, foraging for food, and to explore objects.

Neuroscientists have been studying whiskers for decades, especially in laboratory rats and mice, trying to understand how signals from the whiskers are processed in the brain. But only now are we realizing that whiskers are also moved with amazing strategies, just like our fingers.

Rats, mice, and some other mammals can move their whiskers in a to-and-fro scanning motion called "whisking". Whisking is one of the fastest movements that mammals can make, occurring up to 25 times per second in mice.

When rats and mice contact objects they also adopt other whisker movements. These include bunching up their whiskers to make more of them touch a surface, making light touches to enable clearer signals against a surface, and slowing down whisker movements so they contact the surface for longer.

But no one knew whether animals could adapt their whisker movements specifically for different tasks.

Such "task-specific" movements would be an exciting discovery as it would indicate a precise level of control over their sensors and perception.

Choosing a candidate species

The first step in answering this important question was to choose a likely candidate species for our investigation.

Pinnipeds, including seals, sea lions, and walruses, have whiskers that are particularly thick and long, making them easier to measure than those of smaller mammals such as mice.

They also have some of the most sensitive whiskers of any mammal – they can detect textures and shapes to the same sensitivity as human fingertips, even in cold water when our fingers would go numb.

They are also moveable. We have previously found that California sea lions make the largest and most controlled movements with their whiskers when compared to harbor seals and Pacific walruses.

Those factors, plus their ability to perform object-discrimination tasks – where they could distinguish between objects based on size and shape – made California sea lions the ideal subject for our investigation on task-specific whisker movements.

Our work with Lo

For our study, we used a sea lion, Lo, for the full complement of experiments. Having only one individual is common in marine mammal studies, but it does put pressure on the investigators to collect good quality and highly quantitative data from that one individual.

Lo was trained to complete a texture-discrimination task using only her whiskers.

She had to find a medium-textured, fish-shaped object among other distractor fish. She also completed a size-discrimination task of finding a medium-sized fish amongst other distractors, and a visual task of finding a grey fish amongst other colored distractors (sea lions use very small whisker movements in visual tasks).

Lo was filmed doing the tasks thousands of times, and her whisker and head positions were tracked in the video footage.

Looking at the data and the video footage it was clear that Lo made task-specific movements with her whiskers. She made sweeping movements over textured surfaces and felt around the edges of the different-sized shapes. These specific movement strategies are also used by humans with our fingertips.

The ability to switch whisker exploration strategies between tactile tasks enabled Lo to complete the tasks efficiently. Lo found the correct fish in almost all trials and made decisions quickly, in under half a second. Video footage of the other sea lions also showed them employing the same strategies, so we think that this might be common among California sea lions in general.

And now other animals

Seeing the same movement strategies conserved from sea lion whisker movements to human fingertip movements showcases how important these strategies are for improving touch signals across different tasks.

It is likely that other species of Pinniped will be able to make task-specific whisker movements since they also have sensitive, moveable whiskers. We are investigating this now, along with other species of carnivores, such as otters.

This is the first time that task-specific whisker touch sensing has been documented. It demonstrates that studying whiskers can give us important insights into animal movement control, as well as their perception and cognition.

Robyn Grant, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Physiology & Behavior, Manchester Metropolitan University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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