‘Extremely Critical Fire Weather’ Threatens the Southwest

Parts of the region — including large swaths of New Mexico — have been seared by drought and raked by high winds, fueling existing wildfires and creating ideal conditions for new ones.

A large swath of the United States faced twin weather threats on Friday as a severe drought turned parts of the Southwest into a tinderbox, ripe for more wildfires, and powerful storms threatened to produce tornadoes and hail across the Central Plains.

More than 160,000 acres across New Mexico have already burned in recent weeks, and the National Weather Service warned on Friday of an “extremely critical fire weather area” over northeast New Mexico, southeast Colorado and southwest Kansas. It also described a “critical fire weather” area over the southern High Plains, which includes Texas and Oklahoma.

Late Friday, a storm chaser posted video of debris swirling in a tornado as it ripped through a residential area in Andover, Kan., which is about 15 miles west of Wichita. The tornado was “causing some pretty good damage down there,” said Chris Jakub, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wichita.

That system had traveled about 25 miles east of Andover by around 9:30 p.m. local time, Mr. Jakub said, adding that it had hit some residential areas. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear.

The Weather Service blamed strong gusty winds, low relative humidity and an abundance of dry grass and brush for the elevated risk of wildfires. Parts of the Southwest — including large parts of New Mexico — have been seared by drought and raked by high winds, creating ideal conditions for wildfires to ignite and spread quickly.

“It’s been like hell. It’s been like we’re getting ready to burn up here in town,” said Bill Cox, who with his sister owns the Hillcrest Restaurant in Las Vegas, N.M., a city of 13,000 people.

Their city, about 70 miles east of Santa Fe, is the largest community near the Calf Canyon and Hermit’s Peak fires, which started separately this month but have merged into one, scorching more than 65,000 acres.

More than 950 firefighters have been battling the blaze, and the authorities have ordered evacuations in parts of San Miguel and Mora Counties, as they warned residents to be on high alert. A main concern: strong winds, which were expected to gust up to 60 miles per hour on Friday.

“This emerging situation remains extremely serious and refusal to evacuate could be a fatal decision,” the sheriff’s offices in those counties said in a statement. More than 275 structures, including 166 homes and three commercial buildings, have been destroyed in San Miguel County, officials said.

Mr. Cox said the fire had burned a golf course and come within a half mile of his property outside Las Vegas. Roads have been blocked, and smoke has filled the air.

“People are freaking out,” he said. “People are really on edge.”

Logs in the area are drier than the kiln-dried two-by-fours sold in hardware stores, said Mike Johnson, a fire information officer working on the Calf Canyon and Hermit’s Peak fire. “With the fuel conditions we have, folks need to be prepared not only for this fire, but from any new starts that are going to be established,” he said.

Mr. Cox said he had given Red Cross workers burritos when they came to his restaurant, and offered them more on their next visit. “The whole community is stepping up and working together,” he said.

Another fire farther north, the Cooks Peak fire, has charred more than 55,000 acres in northeastern New Mexico since it started on April 17.

More than 520 firefighters have been battling that blaze, but the high winds on Friday were making it too dangerous for firefighting aircraft to join in, said David Shell, a spokesman for the Southwest Area Incident Management Team, which is coordinating efforts to fight the Cooks Peak fire.

“It’s scary out there,” Mr. Shell said. “You have to have your head on a swivel because conditions can change quickly. If the direction of the wind changes quickly, you have to be prepared to react immediately.”

The fire has been ripping through dry ponderosa pine, oak brush and grass.

“On a scale of one to five, I’d say it’s like a six,” Mr. Shell said, describing the combustible conditions. “It’s going to test our fire lines to the maximum.”

Scott Overpeck, a Weather Service meteorologist in Albuquerque, said there was not much relief in the forecast, with only a few storms expected on Sunday.

“We really need the rainfall to really solve the problems,” Mr. Overpeck said. “But if we can just get a break in the winds, a break in the humidity levels, that will allow fire operations and firefighters to contain the fires.”

Weather is not the only factor feeding the fires: Global warming increases the likelihood of drought.

As temperatures rise, soil and vegetation become parched, creating more kindling for wildfires. Climate change can also affect precipitation patterns around the world, making dry areas even drier.

In an effort to prevent more wildfires, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico on Monday signed an executive order urging the state’s municipalities and counties to ban the sale of fireworks.

Her office noted that, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, more than 70 percent of New Mexico has been experiencing extreme to exceptional drought conditions.

“Fire conditions across New Mexico remain extremely dangerous — it’s essential that we mitigate potential wildfires by removing as much risk as possible,” Ms. Lujan Grisham said in a statement.

Even as parts of the Southwest confronted dangerously dry weather, a strong storm over the Central Plains, which includes Kansas and Nebraska, had increased the risk of severe thunderstorms over the Central and Southern Plains through Saturday morning, the Weather Service said.

These thunderstorms could bring lightning, strong wind gusts, tornadoes and hail measuring two inches or larger, the service said. On Saturday, the threat of severe thunderstorms was expected to move eastward to the Western Ohio Valley, with possible lightning, wind gusts, hail and tornadoes.

Vimal Patel contributed reporting.

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/extremely-critical-fire-weather-threatens-the-southwest/

Changing climate impacts biodiversity in protected areas globally

Protected areas -- such as nature reserves, national parks, and wilderness areas -- are essential to conserving biodiversity. New research published in Environmental Research Letters provides insights for developing climate-smart conservation strategies. The study looked at the global network of protected areas, evaluated potential for shifts in where plants and animals occur due to climate change, and as a result identifies the need for strategic conservation plans that transcend international borders and protect at-risk species.

"As the planet continues to warm, we expect a number of species to move out of some protected areas and into others as they shift their ranges in response to climate change," says lead-author Sean Parks, a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute.

The researchers found that some species currently in protected areas may have to cross international boundaries to find more suitable climate conditions. As they move, they may face physical barriers, such as border fences, and non-physical barriers, such as inconsistent conservation policies in different areas and countries.

Climate conditions are expected to change in over a quarter of the current land-based global network of protected areas under a scenario of 2°C warming. The study found that more than a third of protected lands could gain new climates. Understanding these shifts away from known to new climate conditions within protected areas helps the international conservation community forecast planning needs and make more strategic investment decisions for limited conservation funding.

"The Rocky Mountain Research Station is committed to addressing the threat of climate change, by providing research needed to support new strategies for stewarding protected areas and other wildlands within the United States and internationally," says Jason Taylor, Director of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute.

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#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/changing-climate-impacts-biodiversity-in-protected-areas-globally/

How to balance economic development goals with environmental conservation

An international study published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice gives fast-growing nations a simple, inexpensive guide to inform planning and decision-making to help balance economic development goals with environmental conservation and human well-being.

The study shows how simple analyses using easily accessible biodiversity data can support application of the "mitigation hierarchy," a tool used to ensure that project developers first avoid negative impacts on nature, then minimize and restore any damage and, as a last resort, compensate for residual impacts on nature.

The authors show how data from sources like Google Earth can be used to map the locations of threatened species and ecosystems, identify locations with important biodiversity where development should be avoided, and identify degraded areas where developers might conduct environmental restoration to compensate for the impacts of a project.

"Over 100 countries now either have or are creating policies which require developers to achieve better biodiversity outcomes by avoiding and minimizing impacts, and compensating for residual impacts on biodiversity where necessary," said lead author Dr. Kendall Jones, conservation planning specialist at the Wildlife Conservation Society. "However, these policies are lacking in many of the most biodiverse regions of the planet, which are also the places where development frontiers are eroding natural areas at a rapid pace. Applying the mitigation hierarchy in these places is a crucial step to help balance environmental conservation and local livelihoods against broader economic development."

The methods and techniques are demonstrated using a case study in Mozambique, a nation that has undergone rapid economic growth over the past 30 years, resulting in environmental degradation and potentially significant impacts in coming years. Mozambique has recently implemented national legislation requiring developers to adequately apply the mitigation hierarchy, including biodiversity offsets, and the analyses outlined in this study helped inform the policy development process.

The work was conducted as part of the 6-country COMBO+ programme -- funded by the Agence Francaise de Developpement and Fonds Francais pour l'Environnement Mondial -- which works with host governments and partners to improve mitigation policy and practice.

Dr. Hugo Costa of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Mozambique, and an author of the paper, said the study provided valuable guidance for fast developing countries that often face the combined problem of rapid development and limited data to inform development of environmental policies.

Said Dr. Costa: "By showing how simple analyses can facilitate application of the mitigation hierarchy in countries like Mozambique, this paper provides conservationists and governments the tools to ensure that pursuing economic development goals doesn't come at the expense of us being able to meet national and international biodiversity targets."

Dr. Costa also stressed that the mitigation hierarchy is useful for ensuring that project development addresses the wellbeing of local people.

"This isn't just about biodiversity. Rigorous application of the mitigation hierarchy also allows us to safeguard the wellbeing of communities, and ensure that developers design measures that include local communities as part of the solution and improve people's livelihoods and wellbeing," Costa added.

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#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/how-to-balance-economic-development-goals-with-environmental-conservation/

These Bloodworms Grow Copper Fangs and Have Bad Attitudes

Scientists figured out the biochemical process that lets the turf-conscious worms grow sharp teeth using very simple materials.

Glycera dibranchiata is exactly the kind of creature you don’t want to find at the bottom of your beach bucket. They are called bloodworms for their translucent skin. Long and venomous, the worms are native to both coasts of North America and have four sharp fangs and a somewhat grumpy temperament: As they burrow through the sand, they will attack whatever they sense nearby.

“They get very protective of their turf,” said Herbert Waite, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies the creatures. “I think they are basically introverts.”

When disgruntled, the worms shoot out a proboscis of peculiar construction to grip their prey.

“You can imagine, if your head was a balloon, normally it’s sucked inside your body. Then, when you want to eat, you inflate it and bite and then suck it back in,” said William Wonderly, a chemist also at Santa Barbara who collaborated with Dr. Waite to study the creatures. “It reminds me a lot of the aliens in ‘Alien,’ where they have a little mouth that they shoot out and retract.”

The worms have another feature that is less obvious but just as odd. Their fangs, which sprout from specialized cells on their skin, are devilishly hard and made up of just three ingredients, including melanin. While melanin is one of the pigments behind human skin and hair color, bloodworms somehow make it into a tough material infused with copper, which makes up a whopping 10 percent or so of the fangs by weight. But how the worms pull off the chemical transformation used to be a mystery.

A closer view of the bloodworm’s fangs.Herbert Waite

In a paper published Monday in the journal Matter, Dr. Wonderly, Dr. Waite and colleagues revealed that the creatures do it by relying on the third ingredient in the fangs, a deceptively simple protein with many talents. The finding unlocks a biochemical secret of this unusual creature and highlights how nature finds surprisingly simple ways to build complex anatomical features.

A bloodworm’s fangs grow out of a set of cells that function as hoppers, storing the materials for their assembly, Dr. Wonderly said. The team examined the proteins being used in these cells and pinpointed one, called multitasking protein, as a major component of the final product. This protein, they report in the new paper, is made mainly of just two amino acids, a small number, but it plays a crucial role in the fang’s assembly.

The scientists found that the protein catalyzes a reaction to create melanin and recruits copper ions. Then, it links melanin into polymers, assembles itself and melanin into a structure and uses the copper to seal the whole thing together. Essentially, multitasking protein seems to steer melanin away from its tendency to form into the blobs you’d see microscopically in human hair and skin, Dr. Wonderly said. That allows it to become something totally different: part of a lethal killing machine that hides in sand.

Not all of the bloodworm’s mysteries are solved: Little is understood about how the organism first evolved this system and how copper is handled within the worm’s body.

“A huge question is how the copper gets concentrated in the jaws,” Dr. Wonderly said. “To really understand, you would need the baby worms. But because they have a complicated spawning cycle, they’re hard to grow in the lab.”

The team is hoping to learn more about how the worms assemble this unusual polymer by tracing how the melanin is produced and how the worm builds it from precursors within its body.

“There are so many things that nature has figured how to do in a very efficient, clever way,” Dr. Waite said. “It requires basic science and a childlike curiosity to uncover.”

#News | https://sciencespies.com/news/these-bloodworms-grow-copper-fangs-and-have-bad-attitudes/

Dolphin bycatch from fishing practices unsustainable, study finds

An international team of researchers have developed a method to assess sustainable levels of human-caused wildlife mortality, which when applied to a trawl fishery shows that dolphin capture is not sustainable.

The study, led by scientists at the University of Bristol and United Arab Emirates University was published today in Conservation Biology.

Human activities like commercial fishing can result in the accidental death of non-targeted wildlife, threatening protected and endangered species. "Bycatch and discarding of marine wildlife in commercial fisheries are major challenges for biodiversity conservation and fisheries management the world over," said Dr. Simon Allen of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, who studies dolphin behaviour and interactions with fisheries.

Some fisheries are not selective and damage habitat, as well as capturing protected species, like dolphins, seals, turtles, sharks and rays. "Bycatch Reduction Devices were placed in Western Australian trawl nets in 2006, but no quantitative assessment of the impact was carried out. We set out to model different levels of dolphin capture, including those reported in skippers' logbooks and those by independent observers. Unfortunately, our results show clearly that even the lowest reported annual dolphin capture rates are not sustainable," Dr. Allen said.

The study's lead author, Dr. Oliver Manlik, Assistant Professor at the United Arab Emirates University, said: "We introduce a novel approach to assessing human-caused mortality to wildlife that can be applied to fisheries bycatch, hunting, lethal control measures or wind turbine collisions. And when we incorporate stochastic factors, random events, we show that previous methods of assessing wildlife mortality were not conservative enough." Dr. Manlik added "This raises concerns for the dolphin population and highlights a problem with other assessments that do not account for random events, like heatwaves, because these environmental fluctuations are becoming more frequent and intense with climate change."

With only voluntary or low levels of fisheries monitoring and no quantitative conservation objectives, Dr. Allen notes that the UK and EU are also failing to address the bycatch problem. Greater transparency and the application of more rigorous methods would improve the scientific basis for decision-making around the impacts of fisheries on non-target species like dolphins, whales, seals and seabirds. The researchers include a co-author from the Species Conservation Toolkit Initiative and intend to make the new method of assessing human impacts, called 'Sustainable Anthropogenic Mortality in Stochastic Environments' or 'SAMSE', easily accessible to researchers and wildlife managers worldwide.

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#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/dolphin-bycatch-from-fishing-practices-unsustainable-study-finds/

Hunting for the next virus

Can computers help?

This is the Coronavirus Briefing, an informed guide to the pandemic. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.

The New York Times

• The F.D.A. will consider whether to offer coronavirus vaccines to children under 5, beginning in June.

• Moderna became the first company to ask the F.D.A. to authorize a vaccine for children under 6.

• South Africa may be entering its fifth Covid wave earlier than expected, The Guardian reports.

• Find the latest updates here, as well as maps and a vaccine tracker.

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Searching for the next virus

The Covid-19 pandemic is not over yet, but some researchers are already worrying about mousepox.

Colin Carlson, a biologist at Georgetown University, has spent the last few years training computers to predict which dangerous viruses could jump from animals to humans, following in the footsteps of the coronavirus (which came from bats), H.I.V. (chimpanzees) and hundreds of other pathogens.

His team used machine learning to develop a short list of potentially dangerous viruses that could eventually make a leap. Mousepox — a virus that infects mice and is similar to smallpox but had not been considered a significant danger to humans — repeatedly came up “super high,” he told my colleague Carl Zimmer.

Digging through the scientific literature, the researchers came across documentation of a mysterious outbreak in 1987 in rural China. Schoolchildren came down with an infection that caused sore throats and inflammation in their hands and feet. When samples from that outbreak were analyzed decades later, scientists found mousepox DNA.

Mousepox is just one of many possible viruses that could cause a new pandemic that computers might be able to suss out beforehand. I asked Carl to explain the complex process experts use to look for potentially dangerous viruses. He said the work started in the field: “It’s not easy. You have to go and catch bats or rodents or tranquilize a lion with darts to take a sample. Not only that, but chances are that in one animal, you wouldn’t find a virus. So you have to catch a bunch.

“Let’s say you’re looking in raccoons. You have to swab them, get feces samples, identify the genetic material. You identify 10 new viruses. Now what? Should we worry about them? Do they pose a threat? What machine learning can do is say, ‘This virus looks a lot like other viruses we’re familiar with.’ You can go through thousands of known viruses. You can make predictions. Then you can test them on a virus you’ve never seen before.”

Could machine learning, in its still-early phase, have foretold Covid’s advent? No, Carl said, because the virus wasn’t known before 2019. But now that we’re sure it originated in bats, machine learning might help us identify types of bats that pose a threat. “Finding those bats should be really high-priority,” he said.

Mammals alone may carry up to 100,000 separate viruses, not even counting those in birds or reptiles. “We’re swimming in an ocean of virus diversity and we barely know about it,” said Carl, author of the book “A Planet of Viruses.” “That’s one reason scientists need to harvest powerful tools like machine learning.”

One thing seems certain: Opportunities for animal-to-human transmission will keep rising because of climate change. As animals seek cooler climes, species will bump against each other. Viruses will leap between them. “A virus that was very distant will become very close,” Carl said.

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A woman exercises while being kept in isolation at the Greenland Yingtong Building in Shanghai on Wednesday.The New York Times

Shanghai is too angry to be silent

Frustration at the recent, urgent Shanghai pandemic lockdowns grew so strong that displays of anger and grief burst into public view.

During the outbreak, authorities turned the city’s high-rise office buildings into mass isolation centers, replacing desks and employees with beds tightly crammed together. Authorities seized citizens’ homes to set up quarantine centers in buildings. Inside the centers, there was lots of noise, little privacy and few showers. Garbage piled up. Overhead lights were never turned off. Food was scarce.

The Chinese government usually scrubs the internet of dissent. But The Times found videos and photos of the quarantines and some of the protests and put together a visual analysis of what has been happening in the city. Take a look.

What else we’re following

• Experts aren’t sure if we’re in an invisible Covid wave, The Atlantic reports.

• The Bay Area’s largest transit system, BART, has reinstated a mask requirement at least until July 18.

• Wimbledon’s decision to allow unvaccinated players to enter this year’s tournament means Novak Djokovic might be able to compete.

• Measles cases rose by almost 80 percent this year as the pandemic disrupted vaccination campaigns, The Guardian reports.

• Here’s another thing the pandemic is remaking: the multibillion-dollar retail fashion market.

• Our columnist David Leonhardt looked at the thorny situation with vaccines for young children.

• More than 12 million Shanghai residents are now able to leave their homes because their areas are at lower risk, Reuters reports.

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What you’re doing

Since 2017, I’ve worked for a local anime convention. Recently, we finally put on our first event with confidence that we would prevent Covid. We followed all the rules: All attendees had to be vaccinated, as well as masking and social distancing. So far, we’ve come out of it with no cases. It was the most normal things had felt in a long time, even with the safety precautions. That, however, hasn’t stopped the event from driving a wedge between me and my partner, who is extremely worried about the virus and feels we were irresponsible. I’m at my wit’s end and just wish things could be normal again.

— Kristi, Honolulu

Let us know how you’re dealing with the pandemic. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.

Sign up here to get the briefing by email.

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Email your thoughts to briefing@nytimes.com.

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/hunting-for-the-next-virus/

This new fabric can ‘hear’ sounds or broadcast them

Someday, our clothes may eavesdrop on the soundtrack of our lives.

A new fiber acts as a microphone. It can pick up speech, rustling leaves — even chirping birds. It then turns those acoustic signals into electrical ones. Woven into fabric, these fibers can hear handclaps and faint sounds. They can even catch the beating of its wearer’s heart, researchers report March 16 in Nature.

Fabrics containing these fibers might become an easy, comfy — and maybe trendy — way to listen to our organs or to aid hearing.

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Cloth that interacts with sounds has existed for perhaps hundreds of years, says Wei Yan. He worked on the fabric while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, in Cambridge. As a materials scientist, he uses physics and chemistry to investigate and design materials.

Fabrics have usually been used to muffle sound, notes Yan, who now works at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Using fabric instead as a microphone, he says, is “totally a different concept.”

Taking a beat from the eardrum

The new research was inspired by the human eardrum, Yan says. Sound waves cause the eardrum to vibrate. The ear’s cochlea (KOAK-lee-uh) converts those vibrations into electrical signals. “It turns out that this eardrum is made of fibers,” notes materials scientist Yoel Fink. He was part of the MIT team that spun up the new fabric.

Fibers in the eardrum’s inner layers crisscross. Some extend out from the eardrum’s center. Others form circles. Made of the protein collagen, those fibers help people hear. Their arrangement, Fink says, resembles the fabrics people weave.

Explainer: What is Acoustics?

Similar to what it does to the eardrum, sound vibrates fabric. The new fabric contains cotton fibers and others made of a stiff material called Twaron. That combination of threads helps turn the energy from sounds into vibrations. But the cloth also includes a special fiber. It contains a blend of piezoelectric materials. Such materials produce a voltage when pressed or bent. Tiny buckles and bends of the piezoelectric fiber create electrical signals. Those signals can be sent to a device that reads and records the voltage.

The fabric microphone works at a range of sound levels. It can sense the difference between a quiet library and heavy traffic, the team reports. The researchers are still working to use computer software to help detangle the sounds they want to hear from a backdrop of noise. When woven into clothing, the sound-sensing fabric feels like regular fabric, Yan says. In tests, it continued to work as a microphone even after going through the wash 10 times.

A special type of fiber (pictured, center) is woven into this fabric. It creates electrical signals when bent or buckled, turning the entire material into a microphone..Fink Lab/MIT, Elizabeth Meiklejohn/RISD, Greg Hren

Piezoelectric materials have “huge potential” for applications, says Vijay Thakur. A materials scientist, he works at Scotland’s Rural College in Edinburgh and did not play a role in developing the new fabric.

People have explored piezoelectric materials to generate energy from vibrations. But those materials have been limited by the very small voltages they produce. The way the new special fibers are made overcomes this challenge, he says. Their outer layer is super stretchy and flexible. It doesn’t take much energy to bend them. That concentrates the energy from vibrations into the piezoelectric layer. This makes the microphone more sensitive, says Thakur, who was not involved in the research.

High-tech threads

As a proof of concept, the team wove their fabric microphone into a shirt. Like a stethoscope, it could hear its wearer’s heartbeat. “This is really inspiring,” says Yogendra Mishra, who also was not involved in the new work. A materials engineer, he works at the University of Southern Denmark in Sønderborg. With a fiber mounted near the heart, this shirt could reliably measure someone’s heart rate.

It also could hear sound signatures of certain heart valves closing, the authors report. Used this way, the fabric microphone might listen for murmurs. Those are unusual sounds that can point to something wrong with how the heart is working.

Thakur says the fabric may someday be able to provide similar information as an echocardiogram (Ek-oh-KAR-dee-oh-gram). Such sensors use sound waves to image the heart. If shown to work for monitoring the body and for diagnosing disease, listening fabrics might find use in the clothes of young kids. Such apparel could make it easier to track heart conditions in little ones who have trouble staying still, he says.

The team also anticipates that the fabric microphone could help people who have trouble hearing. It might both amplify sound and help people detect a sound’s direction. To test this, Yan and his colleagues made a shirt with two sound-sensing fibers on its back. These fibers could detect the direction a clap came from. Because the two fibers were spaced apart, there was a small difference in when each picked up the sound.

And when hooked up to a power source, fabric made with the new fibers can even broadcast sound, acting as a speaker. Voltage signals sent to the fabric cause vibrations that make audible sounds.

“For the past 20 years, we’ve been trying to introduce a new way of thinking about fabrics,” says Fink at MIT. Fabrics have long provided beauty and warmth, but they can do more. They may help solve some acoustic problems. And perhaps, Fink says, they can beautify technology too.

This is one in a series presenting news on technology and innovation, made possible with generous support from the Lemelson Foundation.

#Physics | https://sciencespies.com/physics/this-new-fabric-can-hear-sounds-or-broadcast-them/

The ‘Ultimate Bird’ Once Prowled the Seas of a Young Japan

Researchers described Annakacygna, a family of flightless ancient swans that were filter-feeders.

It’s not unusual today to find swans on rivers and lakes, splitting their time between pulling up water plants and punishing the unwise with powerful blows of their bony-elbowed wings.

Eleven million years ago, however, swans in what is today called Japan did something unexpected: They took to the oceans. In a paper published this week in The Bulletin of Gunma Museum of Natural History, Japanese paleontologists formally described this family or genus of swans, Annakacygna, which had long, filter-feeding heads, small wings and seriously strange hips — all of which have lead the researchers to call it the “ultimate bird.”

The first set of remains of Annakacygna — a nearly articulated skeleton in a stone slab from a riverbed in Japan’s Gunma Prefecture — were excavated by a Japanese fossil hunter in 2000. After the fossil hunter donated the remains to the Gunma Museum of Natural History, the museum director, Hasegawa Yoshikazu, called in Hiroshige Matsuoka, a paleontologist, to examine them.

Initially Dr. Matsuoka thought he was looking at a strange duck, perhaps an animal that dove in the oceans just offshore of the then-newly risen Japanese Archipelago. But as bones were cleared from the slab, he concluded that the short-winged skeleton belonged to a flightless swan.

The species, which he and his co-author Dr. Yoshikazu named Annakacygna hajimei, was about four feet long, as large as the modern black swan. Another set of remains from a related species, which they named A. yoshiiensis, suggested a bird as long as the largest living swan species, the 5½-foot trumpeter swan.

Annakacygna hajimei’s pelvis, unusually broad and strong and thicker than usual for a water bird.Gunma Museum of Natural History.

A comparison of the musculoskeletal systems of the head of Annakacygna hajimei, top, and the present-day whooper, or common, swan.Gunma Museum of Natural History

Both birds were “fatter and heavier than these modern swans,” Dr. Matsuoka said. Comparing their remains to the dissected body of a common extant swan, he found that the birds differed in other ways as well. Their tails were highly mobile. Their hips were unusually broad and strong, and their bones were thicker than usual for a water bird, helping them ride low in the water.

Oddest of all were the wings. Flightless birds usually lose some of the utility of their wings, Dr. Matsuoka said, a process called degeneration. But in Annakacygna, the shoulder joints and muscle attachments that pull the arms backward were unexpectedly well-developed, with uniquely shaped wrists that kept the digits — and with them, the wings — permanently bent.

At first, these wings puzzled the team. But while watching a video of a mute swan holding a chick on her back, Dr. Matsuoka had a brainwave. Many modern swans habitually carry their young piggyback, he said, with their wings held back and up to shield the chicks. That posture in Annakacygna’s modern relatives suggested a new possibility: that the flightless swans might have enshrined this behavior into their anatomy, converting their bent wings and broad hips into specially adapted cradles to carry chicks safely across the briny deep.

Annakacygna hajimei’s full, reconstructed skeleton, including its puzzling, bent wings.Gunma Museum of Natural History.

The swans were well adapted to a coastal lifestyle in another way as well: long, filter-feeding beaks that resembled those of shoveler ducks, allowing them to dabble for plankton in the cool, rich seas off the Japanese coast. Modern swans, by contrast, have straight, vegetation-nibbling beaks.

Flightlessness isn’t unusual in water birds; modern steamer ducks, a few species of teal and several extinct varieties of geese ditched the skies for the water. Some of these waterfowl hit remarkable sizes: The Pleistocene giant swan of Malta, which some researchers have suggested was land-bound, was 30 percent larger than a living mute swan.

But while it’s smaller, Dr. Matsuoka said, Annakacygna is in a league all of its own. “I think all wild animals live for two purposes,” he said, namely maintaining the self (by eating) and the species (by breeding.) Judged by that rubric, the barge-like, baby-cradling, filter-feeding sea swan is something special.

“It’s the best survival form as an animal,” he said. “That’s why we call it the ‘ultimate bird.’”

#News | https://sciencespies.com/news/the-ultimate-bird-once-prowled-the-seas-of-a-young-japan/

South America’s Patagonian sheepdog related to ancestor of all modern UK herding breeds

South America’s Patagonia region – essentially, the southern parts of Chile and Argentina – is home to a breed of dog called the Patagonian sheepdog. But as the Patagonian sheepdog is not a recognised breed by the world’s kennel clubs, little research into its origins has ever been carried out.

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Now, though, a team of geneticists have used genotyping to determine how the Patagonian sheepdog breed came into being. Genotyping can be thought of as a kind of broad-stroke or low-resolution genetic sequencing: it’s a technique that will give you a useful overview of an individual’s DNA make-up as a whole, without having to go to the time, trouble or expense of sequencing each individual gene.

As reported in the journal PLOS Genetics, the researchers genotyped 159 individual Patagonian sheepdogs from Chile and Argentina, and compared their findings to published genetic data on 175 recognised domestic dog breeds and two species of wild dog. As a result of their labours, the researchers found out two things about the little-understood South American breed.

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Firstly, it’s not really one dog breed at all, but two. In the middle of the Patagonia region, high up in the Andes mountains, lie the Patagonian Ice Fields, and the team found that sheepdog populations to the north and south of this natural divide are genetically distinct from one another, with those to the north more closely related to Border collies, and those to the south more closely related to Australian kelpies.

They also discovered that the Patagonian sheepdog, which looks rather like an Old English sheepdog with its thick, shaggy coat, is actually more closely related to Border collies and Australian kelpies.

At first, this is surprising, but as the researchers pointed out, the Patagonia region was colonised by European settlers in the mid-late 1800s – before dog breeds had been ‘formalised’ by the Kennel Club, which led to ever more selective breeding, and to the huge variation seen between different dog breeds today. And as many of those settlers were sheep farmers who came originally from Scotland and Wales, it makes sense that they would have taken their collie dogs with them.

The Patagonian sheepdog, despite its name, is actually more closely related to Border collies and Australian kelpies © Rodrigo Muñoz

In fact, the researchers now believe that all modern sheepdogs share a common ancestor, as recently as 150-200 years ago. The Patagonian sheepdog, having undergone very little in the way of selective breeding, is probably the closest thing to that common ancestor or ‘foundational sheepdog’ still extant.

“Using a variety of genomic approaches, we ascertained the relationship between this dog population and modern herding breeds,” said one of the study’s authors Natasha Barrios, within the Faculty of Veterinary Sciences at the Universidad Austral de Chile.

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“We propose that the Patagonian sheepdog is the closest living relative of the common ancestor of modern UK herding breeds. These findings, in turn, increase our understanding of human migratory events at the time.”

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/south-americas-patagonian-sheepdog-related-to-ancestor-of-all-modern-uk-herding-breeds/

Why Americans Became More Vulnerable to Oil Price Spikes

When prices soared years ago, Americans launched broad efforts to wean the nation off oil and gas to protect households from price swings. But then supply rose and plans fizzled.

More than a decade ago, when Americans faced surging prices at the pump, policymakers developed a vision to wean people off gas and oil: more efficient cars, more compact and walkable communities, more renewable energy.

“We have a serious problem,” George W. Bush had warned in his 2006 State of the Union address. “America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.” It was a powerful statement for a Republican president with deep ties to the oil business.

His remarks — made as oil prices rose and eventually hit $100 a barrel for the first time in the country’s history — marked the start of several years of a remarkable bipartisan push to wean the nation off oil and gas and better insulate Americans from price shocks in the global oil market.

Officials drew up the first increase in fuel economy standards for cars and trucks in decades. National oil savings plans won broad support in Congress, to address energy dependency as well as the grave threat of climate change. Public transportation advocates launched “Dump the pump” days to urge commuters to take trains and buses.

Then the country lost momentum. A surge in oil and gas production at home, as well as a flood of cheap crude overseas, ushered in an era of lower energy prices. Ramping up supply, rather than reining in demand, came to define America’s push for energy independence.

Awash in fuel, Americans bought larger cars and homes that required more oil and gas to power them. Cities built more highways, public transportation use declined, and suburbs sprawled.

Yet the nation’s expansion of drilling over the past decade — which made the United States the world’s largest oil and gas producer — has ultimately made households vulnerable to volatile price swings. American oil and gas companies say that they have no control over high prices at the pump, citing a confluence of global factors: the Covid pandemic, supply chain disruptions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“No matter how often ‘drill, baby, drill’ is held up as a solution,” said Michael Greenstone, a professor of economics and director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, “the basic economics of it are the U.S. is still a small share of global capacity and global production, and therefore can’t affect the global price very much.”

President George W. Bush delivering his 2006 State of the Union address in which he called on limiting America’s “addiction” to oil.Jason Reed/Reuters

During periods of lower prices, Americans modify their behavior, buying bigger cars that use more gasoline, for example. “And then, when these unexpected shocks happen, we’re much more exposed,” he said.

Conservation has now become a toxic concept in American politics. Oil industry groups frame conserving energy as deprivation. With midterm elections looming, and Republicans using high gas prices to attack President Biden’s policies, few Democrats have mentioned the idea of cutting back on use. Mr. Biden himself, who came to office promising bold action on climate change, has urged oil companies to step up production, though administration officials maintain the United States must make a transition away from fossil fuels in the long run.

“If you could convince Americans to conserve, that would probably have a much more dramatic, immediate impact on reducing price,” said Patrick De Haan, an oil analyst at GasBuddy, a Boston-based company that operates apps and websites that help people see real-time fuel prices at gas stations across the United States.

“But asking Americans to consume less seems like a threat — many perceive that as a threat to their freedom in some way,” he said.

President Biden’s climate agenda has tried to address some demand-side issues. The infrastructure bill he signed last year includes the largest investment in public transportation ever, with more than $100 billion for trains and buses over five years.

Still, the mind-set was evident in the response to a 10-point plan to cut oil use released by the International Energy Agency last month, which recommended measures like implementing car-free Sundays in cities. The I.E.A. contends that if advanced economies put its 10 recommendations into action, they could cut oil demand by 2.7 million barrels a day, on par with an expected global shortfall in Russian oil as buyers increasingly shun it.

“Energy watchdog issues draconian recommendations,” a Fortune article said. “Don’t plan on leaving the house on weekends.”

Rush hour traffic in Atlanta last year. Car travel in the United States uses more energy per passenger than in other major countries.Audra Melton for The New York Times

Some economists say that, on a macroeconomic scale, increased domestic energy production has insulated aspects of the United States’ economy from the worst effects of the crisis, for instance by creating more jobs and profit in the oil and gas sector. Compared to Western Europe, where there is little upside to an oil price shock because it produces far less oil, the effect on the United States, in “the aggregate, is more modest,” said Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, senior fellow at the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy of the Brookings Institution.

Still, that is little comfort to individual households, which are more reliant than ever on fuels whose prices rise and fall on global trends.

The United States has instead leaned on technology and efficiency improvements to keep energy use in check.

Understand the Latest News on Climate Change

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Warming oceans. A new study found that if fossil fuel emissions continue apace, warming waters could trigger ocean species loss by the year 2300 that is on par with the five mass extinctions in Earth’s past. But reining in emissions now could drastically reduce those extinction risks, researchers found.

Viral spillovers. Over the next 50 years, climate change will drive thousands of viruses to jump from one species of mammal to another, according to a new study. Researchers noted that the shuffling of viruses could increase the risk that one will jump into humans and cause a new pandemic.

Deforestation. A new report shows that tropical regions lost 9.3 million acres of primary old-growth forest in 2021, despite pledges by 141 nations at the United Nations climate talks in Glasgow in November to “halt and reverse” deforestation by 2030.

Extreme heat. A heat wave has been pummeling India and Pakistan for weeks, and it is expected to intensify. The scorching weather is a reminder of what lies ahead in an era of climate change, as heat waves grow more frequent, more dangerous and longer-lasting.

A mystery solved. Researchers have established that the collapses of two ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula over the last quarter-century were most likely triggered by vast plumes of warm air from the Pacific. As the world continues to warm, such plumes are expected to become more intense.

A prickly plant in danger. A new study estimates that, by midcentury, global warming could put 60 percent of cactus species at greater risk of extinction. Poaching, habitat destruction and other threats already make cactuses among the most endangered groups of organisms.

Between 1970 and 2018, the fuel economy of passenger vehicles on the road in the United States roughly doubled for both cars and light trucks, for example. And that trend is expected to accelerate as the Biden administration moves to reinstate stricter fuel economy standards, after an attempt by the Trump administration to roll them back. Transportation is by far the biggest user of petroleum, and the biggest contributor to climate change.

Several factors have blunted the effect of those improvements, however, said Eric Masanet, who researches emerging environmental technologies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Americans are buying a lot more cars: From 1970 to 2018, the U.S. population rose by 54 percent, but combined car and truck registrations rose by 141 percent. And vehicle travel, in miles, has continued to rise, which is a major reason the United States uses more energy per passenger and distance traveled than other major countries, he said. Public transportation ridership, which had already been on a slow and steady decline since the middle of the 2010s, cratered during the pandemic.

President Biden called for action on climate change during remarks on Earth Day in Seattle. He has also urged oil companies to step up production.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

And while all classes of vehicles have become more fuel efficient, the U.S. fleet has steadily shifted toward a mix dominated by larger and heavier vehicles such as pickups, vans and S.U.V.s, further slowing overall efficiency gains. The I.E.A. recently estimated that the shift toward bigger vehicles had negated 40 percent of the fuel savings that would have occurred under the more stringent fuel economy rules.

“It’s been one step forward, one step back,” Dr. Masanet said.

It is a similar picture for American homes. Americans now power and heat their homes far more efficiently than a few decades ago, because of improvements in space heating, which explains why direct energy use, and carbon dioxide emissions, haven’t risen as fast as the population.

But those gains have been offset by an increase in home sizes.

Average single-family homes built today are around 50 percent larger than comparable homes built in the early 1970s, with house sizes growing rapidly for much of the 2010s before slowing somewhat over the past few years, according to census data. American homes are among the biggest in the world.

And while it can be difficult to measure sprawl, there are indications it’s growing. Though some cities are becoming more dense, “it’s also clear, if you look at new home starts, there are more new home starts in the edge of cities contributing to low-density urban development, to low-density single-family homes,” said Karen Seto, professor of geography and urbanization science at Yale School of the Environment. “We’re moving in the wrong direction,” she said.

Sprawling neighborhoods abut the Everglades in Florida.Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Undoubtedly, some of these gains have raised standards of living for millions of Americans. Still, a recent United Nations report notes that rich individuals have a high potential to use less energy — and to reduce their emissions of planet-warming gases — while maintaining living standards. The world’s richest 10 percent are responsible for an estimated 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, the report says, with much of that amount concentrated in the richest 1 percent.

“Conspicuous consumption by the wealthy is the cause of a large proportion of emissions in all countries, related to expenditures on such things as air travel, tourism, large private vehicles and large homes,” the report notes.

It concludes that overall, steps taken by nations to reduce their total energy demand, like investment in public transportation, could help cut emissions in key sectors by as much as 40 to 70 percent by 2050, compared to baseline scenarios.

“That’s a lot of potential,” said Felix Creutzig, a lead author of the U.N. report and chair of sustainability economics at the Technische Universität Berlin. “It makes it easier for every sector to reduce its emissions.”





#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/why-americans-became-more-vulnerable-to-oil-price-spikes/

What is a Black Moon?

With the Lyrid meteor shower last week, and with the Eta Aquariids next week to look forward to, astronomical events are starting to pick up for 2022. Tomorrow we'll be treated to a rare Black Moon as well as a partial solar eclipse.

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But when exactly is the Black Moon? Why is it special? And, what's its connection with the solar eclipse? Answers to these, and more, below.

If you’re looking forward to making the most of the clear nights this year, why not plan ahead with our full Moon UK calendar and astronomy for beginners guide?

What is a Black Moon?

There are several different definitions of a Black Moon, however, it typically refers to when there are two new Moons in a single calendar month. This phenomenon is down to the way the calendar falls.

The Moon takes approximately 29.53 days to orbit the Earth and complete one lunar cycle. If the first new Moon falls on the 1st of the month, in our Gregorian calendar, we see a second new Moon at the end of the month - and this is informally known as a Black Moon.

A Black Moon is the opposite of a Blue Moon, which is when there are two full Moons in a single calendar month.

The Moon’s appearance changes throughout the month as it completes one lunar cycle © NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

When is the Black Moon in 2022?

The Black Moon in 2022 falls on Saturday 30 April 2022. As a new Moon, illumination will be at just 0.2 per cent, and it will be at a distance of 395,380km from the Earth.

The Black Moon will cross the sky during the day, rising at 5:37am, and setting at 8:07pm Daylight Saving Time (DST).

The Black Moon on Saturday is special because it coincides with the first solar eclipse of the season.

The next Black Moon of this type falls on 19 May 2023.

When is the solar eclipse?

The solar eclipse begins at 7:45pm DST and reaches the maximum phase at 9:41pm, but unfortunately, it won't be visible from here in the UK. The path of the solar eclipse will travel over the southeast Pacific, southern South America, Antarctica and the Atlantic. Around 64 per cent of the Sun will be blotted out by the Moon at the maximum phase.

If you're lucky enough to glimpse it, the solar eclipse will take place in the constellation of Taurus the Bull

The next solar eclipse visible from the UK will be a partial solar eclipse on 25 October 2022. For a total solar eclipse, we have considerably longer to wait, the next occurrence being 23 September 2090, although there will be other opportunities around the world before then.

View of the 2019 partial solar eclipse, taken from Bangkok in Thailand. © Getty images

What causes a solar eclipse?

A solar eclipse happens when the Sun, Moon and Earth align perfectly in a straight line, so the Sun casts a shadow of the Moon over the Earth. In other words, from our viewpoint, the Moon - for a moment - blocks the light of the Sun from reaching Earth. A partial solar eclipse, like the one on 30 April 2022, happens when the Moon comes between the Sun and the Earth, but only part of the Sun is obscured.

A solar eclipse will only happen during a new Moon.

However, not every new Moon will result in a solar eclipse. This is because, relative to the Earth, the Moon's orbit is inclined (tilted) at an angle of 5.14 degrees. So as the Moon orbits the Earth, it's often above or below the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun - we call this the plane of the ecliptic. Therefore the Moon's shadow will often miss the Earth, appearing to us as though it's just above, or just below the Sun in the sky.

A diagram showing demonstrating how the Moon's shadow causes a solar eclipse © Getty

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How often do new Moons occur?

Like their fully-illuminated counterpart, new Moons occur on average, every 29.53 days, and they bookend one lunar cycle. Most of the time, there are 12 new Moons in a year. However, as the length of the lunar cycle is slightly shorter than months with 30 or 31 days (the exception being February), we sometimes get an extra new Moon. This year we have an extra new Moon, and it's the Black Moon on Saturday.

The lunar cycle is divided into four primary phases (new Moon, first quarter, full Moon and third quarter), and four intermediate phases (waxing crescent, waxing gibbous, waning gibbous and waning crescent) © Getty

A new Moon occurs when the Moon is located directly between the Sun and the Earth. The sunlight still hits the Moon, but since it reflects off the Moon's far side, which is tidally locked away from us, from our perspective the Moon cannot be seen.

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Other definitions of a Black Moon

• When there is no new Moon in a calendar month.
• When there is no full Moon in a calendar month.
• When there are four new Moons in a season.

#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/what-is-a-black-moon/