Scientists repot flowering plants ’ tree of life—and find it has tangled roots
About 150 million years ago, life on Earth began a complete revamp, thanks to the rapid rise of one giant group: the flowering plants, or angiosperms. The more efficient photosynthesis of magnolias, waterlilies, as well as many early lineages now extinct pumped oxygen into the atmosphere, and their nectar and fruits provided new types of food for insects and other animals, fueling new, more complex ecosystems that still dominate the planet today.
The sprouting of angiosperms happened so fast that the origins of certain groups has long been mired in mystery. Now, almost 300 plant biologists have banded together to r...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 24, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
U.K. visa changes imperil recruitment of scientific talent, policy experts warn
New U.K. immigration rules will deter international scientific talent and harm universities, science policy experts say. This month, a rise in the minimum salary that international skilled workers must meet to obtain a visa took effect, coming on top of a sharp hike in the fee migrants must pay to access health care, as well as new restrictions on visas for family members.
The changes “will make it much harder for higher education institutions to attract talent from overseas,” says Jenny Sherrard, national head of equality and policy for the University and College Union (UCU). They are “counterproductive to the...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 23, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Oldest ever ice offers glimpse of Earth before the ice ages
VIENNA—
Samples of eerie blue glacial ice from Antarctica are a staggering 6 million years old, scientists announced last week,
doubling the previous record
for Earth’s oldest ice. The ice opens a new window on Earth’s ancient climate—one that isn’t exactly what scientists expected.
Bubbles in the ice
trap
air from
the Pliocene epoch, a time before the ice ages when the planet was several degrees warmer than today and carbon dioxide (CO
2
)
levels may have been just as high as they are now. But an initial analysis of the bubbles suggests CO...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 22, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
U.S. government in hot seat for response to growing cow flu outbreak
In early March, veterinarian Barb Peterson noticed the dairy cows she cared for on a Texas farm looked sick and produced less milk, and that it was off-color and thick. Birds and cats on the farm were dying, too. Peterson contacted Kay Russo at Novonesis, a company that helps farms keep their animals healthy and productive. “I said, you know, I may sound like a crazy, tinfoil hat–wearing person,” Russo, also a veterinarian, recalled at a 5 April public talk sponsored by her company. “But this sounds a bit like influenza to me.”
She was right, as Peterson and Russo soon learned. On 19 March, birds on the Tex...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 22, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Forced to eat bat feces, chimps could spread deadly viruses to humans
On a sunny day 7 years ago in the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda, researchers were startled to observe chimpanzees scoop dry bat feces from under a hollow tree and devour it. In 60 years of observations at Budongo, no one had ever seen such a thing, recalls veterinary epidemiologist Tony Goldberg of the University of Wisconsin—Madison. “Aside from the ick factor, we all had the exact same thought,” he says. “They must be exposed to horrible bat-borne viruses.”
That suspicion proved correct. Though the bat feces is rich in nutrients,
it contains dozens of previously unknown viruses
, Goldberg and...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 22, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Where did Earth ’s oddball ‘quasi-moon’ come from? Scientists pinpoint famed lunar crater
Astronomers suspect an unusual near-Earth rocky object is not a typical escapee from the Solar System’s asteroid belt, but is instead a chunk of the Moon blasted into space eons ago by a spectacular impact. Now, a team of researchers has modeled what sort of lunar impact could have ejected such a gobbet of Moon and deposit it in a stable, nearby orbit. Surprisingly, only one strong candidate emerged: the asteroid strike that created the famous Giordano Bruno crater, the youngest large crater on the Moon, the
group reports today
in
Nature Astronomy
.
“The authors’ modeling techniques are soli...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 19, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Africa intensifies battle against mpox as ‘alarming’ outbreaks continue
Researchers and public health officials in Africa are intensifying their battle against mpox, a neglected infectious disease that long has circulated on the continent and suddenly gained notoriety in 2022 when it started to spread rapidly in Europe and North America. At a meeting last week in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, scientists from there and nine other affected African countries reviewed an alarming rise of cases on the continent, discussed plans to improve mpox surveillance and introduce vaccination, and launched an African-led research consortium.
The meeting, convened by the Africa Centres for Disease Co...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 19, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Controversial wolf killing appears to help caribou, but concerns persist
Since 2015, a slaughter has unfolded in the mountains of British Columbia, all in the name of saving southern mountain caribous, classified as threatened in Canada. Each winter, sharpshooters hired by the provincial government kill hundreds of wolves from low-flying helicopters, sometimes using a tracking collar attached to a “Judas wolf” that leads them to other pack members. Nearly 2200 of the predators had been killed, including 248 in the most recent winter.
The policy has provoked lawsuits and protests from conservation groups and dueling papers in scientific journals about whether the carnage benefits carib...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 18, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
News at a glance: Global coral bleaching, preventing ship strikes on whales, and detecting prostate cancer
CLIMATE SCIENCE
Hot oceans prompt world’s worst coral bleaching
Coral reefs are on track for unprecedented damage from oceans that overheated during the past year, prompting government scientists to declare a global bleaching event for the fourth time in the past 25 years.
At least 54% of the world’s reefs, in 53 countries, have been hit by bleaching
since 2023, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the International Coral Reef Initiative announced on 15 April. Bleaching occurs when overheated coral polyps expel the symbiotic algae living inside them; it leaves c...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 18, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Bacteria found in mosquito guts could help scientists fight dengue, Zika
A team in China probing the guts of local mosquitoes has found a potential helper in the fight against two human diseases. Researchers identified a new bacterium that
disables the viruses responsible for dengue and Zika
before they can establish an infection in the insects. Although early stage, the work, reported this week in
Science
, paves the way for studying the bacterium’s effect on disease transmission in the real world.
It wouldn’t be the first time a microbe is used to thwart mosquito-borne diseases. About 15 years ago, researchers discovered that a different bacterium,
Wolbachia...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 18, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Daring ‘James Bond’ mission to drill Antarctic ice cores could reveal future of sea level rise
The helicopter hovered overhead, whipping up snow. Shielding his face, Peter Neff grabbed the dangling cargo load and guided it to the Antarctic ice. The helicopter sped back to the South Korean icebreaker
RV Araon
, 20 kilometers away, to fetch more gear. One trip down, 17 more to go,
thought Neff, a polar glaciologist
at the University of Minnesota (UM) Twin Cities. Time was ticking away on this day in January. In the best-case scenario, Neff and his team would have just 10 days to drill ice cores on Canisteo, a peninsula on the west coast of Antarctica—and a blizzard was already looming.
Ever...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 18, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Amid budget crunch, NASA seeks Hail Mary on Mars Sample Return
NASA’s Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission may be the most audacious robotic exploration campaign ever conceived: a multimission attempt to collect rock samples from the Red Planet and get them back to laboratories on Earth. But it is also exorbitantly expensive: A review last year
found it could cost
as much as $11 billion. Today, NASA’s leadership revealed that if the agency sticks with the current mission plan and spreads out its annual budget to politically acceptable levels, the samples wouldn’t be returned until 2040. “The bottom line is that $11 billion is too expensive, and not returning samples unt...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 15, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Hiring ban disrupts research at Florida universities
When Zhengfei Guan, an agricultural economist at the University of Florida (UF), advertised for a new postdoc last summer, one applicant from China quickly rose to the top of the pile. But after being offered the job, the young scholar decided he didn’t want to work in Florida.
His change of heart was triggered by a
new Florida law
prohibiting the state’s 12 public universities from employing graduate students and postdocs from China and six other “countries of concern” without special permission. Enacted in May 2023, the law restricts collaborations between Florida and Chinese academic institutions...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 12, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Brightest gamma ray burst of all time emerged from collapsing star
A burst of gamma rays more than 10 times brighter than any detected before struck Earth in October 2022,
searing the atmosphere
, wowing astronomers, and earning the nickname of the BOAT—the brightest of all time. Now, astronomers using NASA’s JWST orbiting observatory have identified the source of the blast—and stumbled on a new puzzle.
As theorists expected, what powered the burst was a type of supernova called a collapsar: a massive, rapidly rotating star that ran out of fuel and collapsed, blasting its outer layers into space before disappearing into a black hole. Researchers also think the extrem...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 12, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
Universities should experiment to improve caregiver support, U.S. National Academies says
“Innovation in caregiving support is desperately needed.” That’s one of the key take-home messages of a report released today by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)
exploring how the U.S. academic community can better support caregivers
—a group that
particularly struggled to stay afloat during the pandemic
. Many of the report’s recommendations are familiar, including paid family and medical leave and flexible grant deadlines. But the report also highlights the need for creative solutions, encouraging institutions to experiment with new approaches and to coll...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 11, 2024 Category: Science Source Type: news
