It's a credit to how good Isaac Newton was at physics and math that people rarely mention that time he threatened to burn his mother's house down, or the equally-baffling time he stuck a number of needles into his own eyeballs to see what would happen.

Yes, when Newton wasn't revolutionizing our notions of motion and gravity he was, by today's standards, a bit of a weird dude. As well as dedicating a lot of his spare time to the study of alchemy – a medieval belief that metals could be turned into gold – Newton had a keen interest in the occult and the Biblical apocalypse.

In fact, in a few private pieces of speculation likely not meant to be seen publicly, Newton went about attempting to predict the end of the world, based on his Protestant understanding of the Bible and the events that followed. In one attempt, written on a letter slip next to real math calculations of the non-apocalypse type, Newton apparently made reference to the year 2060:

Prop. 1. The 2300 prophetick days did not commence before the rise of the little horn of the He Goat.
2 Those day [sic] did not commence a[f]ter the destruction of Jerusalem & ye Temple by the Romans A.[D.] 70.
3 The time times & half a time did not commence before the year 800 in wch the Popes supremacy commenced
4 They did not commence after the re[ig]ne of Gregory the 7th. 1084
5 The 1290 days did not commence b[e]fore the year 842.
6 They did not commence after the reigne of Pope Greg. 7th. 1084
7 The diffence [sic] between the 1290 & 1335 days are a parts of the seven weeks.

Therefore the 2300 years do not end before ye year 2132 nor after 2370. The time times & half time do n[o]t end before 2060 nor after [2344] The 1290 days do not [end] before 2090 nor after [2374].

Newton believed in apocalyptic visions in the Bible, where a battle of Armageddon would occur between “Gog and Magog” at the end of days. Newton probably only has himself to blame for talking of the "rise of the little horn of the He Goat" and leaving his notes lying around, but it should be noted that he was not predicting the end of the world would occur in 2060, so much as the end of an era.

"Newton was convinced that Christ would return around this date and establish a global Kingdom of peace," Stephen D. Snobelen, now professor of the history of science and technology at the University of King's College in Halifax wrote in 2003. "'Babylon' (the corrupt Trinitarian Church) would also fall and the true Gospel would be preached openly."

Newton, though he made such a prediction to himself, did not like the practice of predicting the end of the world because of the damage it did to religious prophesies that occurred when the apocalypse didn't.

"So then the time times & half a time are 42 months or 1260 days or three years & an half, recconing twelve months to a yeare & 30 days to a month as was done in the Calendar of the primitive year. And the days of short lived Beasts being put for the years of lived kingdoms, the period of 1260 days, if dated from the complete conquest of the three kings A.C. 800, will end A.C. 2060. It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner."

He wrote in one prediction, which again he likely did not want to be seen:

"This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fancifull men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, & by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail. Christ comes as a thief in the night, & it is not for us to know the times & seasons wch God hath put into his own breast."

Unfortunately for Newton, enough time has passed that his predictions will soon fail, placing him into the same category of the "fancifull men" discrediting prophecies as a whole.

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The Martian liquid core is smaller, denser, and probably smells worse than previously thought, the InSight lander has revealed by capturing seismic waves originating on the other side of the planet.

Our knowledge of Earth’s core comes from more than a century of studying the distorting effect it has on waves from earthquakes on the other side of the world. Now, it’s another planet’s turn. When the InSight mission landed on Mars, planetary scientists hoped to learn something about local seismic action. Picking up quakes from the other side of the planet was an improbable dream, but one achieved thanks to the project’s longevity.

On Earth, seismographs can measure the shaking produced by nearby earthquakes, and this can be compared to results from the other side of the planet to study the changes produced by passage through the core. We’ve only had one seismic measuring device on Mars, which had to do it all – yet a new paper reveals this was enough to gain insights into the Martian core, using comparisons between waves taking a direct route and those bent through the mantle.

“Two seismic signals, one from a very distant marsquake and one from a meteorite impact on the far side of the planet, have allowed us to probe the Martian core with seismic waves,” said Dr Jessica Irving of the University of Bristol in a statement. “We’ve effectively been listening for energy travelling through the heart of another planet, and now we’ve heard it.”

The waves indicate the Martian core has a radius of 1,780-1,810 kilometers (1,106-1125 miles), a little smaller and denser than previous estimates based on reflected waves. Using the density calculated and the velocity of the passing waves, the authors sought a combination of common elements that under Martian conditions would match the measurements.

As Irving noted; “So-called ‘farside’ events […] are intrinsically harder to detect because a great deal of energy is lost or diverted away as waves travel through the planet.” Mars is also far less seismically active than Earth, so it wasn’t a surprise InSight didn’t pick up anything suitable during the Martian year of its intended operation. However, on day 976 of the mission, a farside marsquake was observed, followed 24 days later by a meteorite impact whose location could be traced precisely.

Schematics of the internal structures of Earth, Mars, and the Moon, including the paths of seismic waves used to make the initial discovery on Earth and now on Mars Image Credit: Irving et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Although the denser core might be expected to indicate the presence of heavy metals, the team thinks the opposite is the case. “Rather than being just a ball of iron, it also contains a large amount of sulfur, as well as other elements including a small amount of hydrogen,” Irving said. The paper estimates a fifth of the core’s mass is light elements such as these, oxygen and carbon, in contrast to Earth’s overwhelmingly iron-nickel core. The presence of so many non-magnetic elements may help explain why Mars lost its planetary magnetic field so quickly, with disastrous consequences.

The findings will sharpen models of Mars’ formation. “There are small traces of hydrogen in Mars’ core. That means that there had to be certain conditions that allowed the hydrogen to be there, and we have to understand those conditions in order to understand how Mars evolved into the planet it is today,” said Dr Vedran Lekić of the University of Maryland in a different statement. 

The findings also have wider implications. We now have precise measurements of the inner workings of two planets, rather than just one, to use when trying to predict the compositions of the host of rocky planets being discovered around other stars.

The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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A Japanese company is about to attempt a Moon landing

In the dry, red dust of Western Australia’s vast Pilbara region, something green is growing. In October 2022, construction began on a massive solar photovoltaic and battery installation, around 40 soccer fields in size, that will soon power a 10-megawatt electrolyzer—a machine that uses electricity to convert water into hydrogen. But that hydrogen isn’t going to fuel cars or trucks or buses: It’s going to grow crops.

The Yuri Project—a joint venture between global fertilizer giant Yara, utilities company Engie, and investment and trading company Mitsui & Co.—is producing green hydrogen that’s combined with nitrogen to create ammonia for fertilizer production.

Given the long-running conversation about hydrogen-fueled vehicles, fertilizer probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about green hydrogen. But in the past few years, the discussion around the fuel has shifted and broadened as more industries see this zero-carbon fuel’s potential to decarbonize carbon-intensive industrial processes and sectors.

The production of ammonia for fertilizer contributes around 0.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, the industry is a major consumer of hydrogen, which is produced from natural gas or coal and generates significant carbon emissions. Green hydrogen, on the other hand, uses electricity from renewable sources to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using a process called electrolysis, which means the process generates zero carbon emissions.

That is an exciting prospect for Yara, which is the largest ammonia producer in the world. “The concept of green ammonia was first slated to us probably back in 2014,” says Leigh Holder, business development director for Yara Clean Ammonia in Australia. “It was viewed with a lot of skepticism back then, and a lot of that had to do with the cost of renewables.”

Now the price of renewable energy from sources such as wind and solar has plummeted, bringing green hydrogen within economic reach for a huge range of potential applications. Perhaps surprisingly, hydrogen-fueled passenger transport is not top of the list, says Fredrik Mowill, CEO of Hystar, a major manufacturer of proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers for the production of green hydrogen. “There’s probably been a disproportionate amount of attention given to transportation within green hydrogen,” Mowill says.

He says large-scale industrial applications—like the Yuri Project—are what will really drive demand. “A company like Yara will need enormous amounts of green hydrogen,” he says.

Another industry with a keen interest in green hydrogen is freight transport. In Australia, diesel-fueled trucks take a major cut out of the carbon budget. But electric trucks aren’t a viable solution, either on the long-haul routes to get goods to and from remote areas or when shifting heavy loads, such as around mines. “If we can start decarbonizing that through hydrogen, that’s a great application,” says Steven Percy, a senior research fellow in the Victorian Hydrogen Hub at Swinburne University in Melbourne. Hydrogen fuel cell electric trucks will soon be rumbling around the Sun Metals zinc refinery near Townsville in Queensland in Australia’s northeast—fueled by green hydrogen generated by a solar farm and electrolyzer operation next door. A 40-ton, 500-horsepower, hydrogen-powered truck was also unveiled at the European Conference on Energy Transition in Geneva last year.

But perhaps hydrogen’s greatest potential lies in its ability to store energy for rainy days. While fossil fuels are stores of energy from prehistoric sunlight, hydrogen can be used to store the solar energy of the previous 12 hours. “You need green hydrogen to continue to increase the amount of renewable power,” says Mowill. Once an electricity grid gets to a critical mass of renewable inputs from sources such as wind and solar, something has to step in to stabilize and smooth out those peaks and troughs of supply and demand. “You can’t solve that with batteries; it’s at a scale that wouldn’t be practical,” Mowill says. “Hydrogen is a very good way of balancing out this.”

And unlike batteries, hydrogen can be efficiently transported. It can be compressed into liquid hydrogen, which does require some energy, or it can be converted into ammonia, which is already transported around the world, then “cracked” back into hydrogen and nitrogen at its destination.

Countries like Japan and South Korea, which are home to energy-intensive industries (such as steel and the manufacturing of cars and ships) but lack the renewable resources to power them sustainably, are eager to import hydrogen from countries with an excess of renewable energy, such as Australia.

“The idea is basically that you produce those hydrogen molecules or hydrogen direct derivatives in countries with abundant renewable resources,” says Carlos Trench, head of hydrogen projects at Engie Australia & New Zealand. “Then you transport the molecules—whether it’s ammonia or any other derivative—and then you reconvert that molecule into green power at the destination where a direct development of renewables is not feasible.”

Japan has already declared its intention to be a world leader in the hydrogen economy as part of its carbon-neutrality strategy. South Korea is hoping hydrogen will supply around one-third of its energy by 2050.

But Percy stresses that despite all the excitement, green hydrogen is still currently a bit player in the global decarbonization game. “It’s really very small-scale right now,” he says. But it is ramping up.

China’s state-owned energy company Sinopec has started construction on what will be the world’s largest green hydrogen facility. When completed, it will produce 30,000 tons of green hydrogen each year. (At the moment, less than a million tons of low-carbon hydrogen is produced annually, and much of that is created using fossil fuels, with the resulting carbon then captured.)

Spain is also striding ahead with production and in 2020 unveiled its plans to become a major hydrogen producer. It set a target of producing 4 gigawatts of green hydrogen annually by 2030—but it has already surpassed this four times over and has plans for more production facilities.

Cost is still an issue. About 60 percent of the expense of green hydrogen is the cost of the renewable energy used to produce it, Percy says, so as renewable energy gets cheaper, hydrogen will too. The cost of the electrolyzer technology is another major component of hydrogen’s relatively high price, but Mowill says electrolyzers are becoming more efficient. There are also the logistics of storage, compression, and transportation, which further bump up the price of a molecule of green hydrogen.

But as hydrogen’s star rises, these costs will inevitably come down, Percy says. “If you look at what happened with solar, both solar and battery systems came down about 80 percent in about 10 years,” he says. He predicts the same will happen with hydrogen once it finds more solid technological ground. “The trials that are happening now are really important for the industry to learn from,” he says. “While it’s a pilot scale today, in five years’ time they’re likely to be ready for something bigger.”

Forget Cars, Green Hydrogen Will Supercharge Crops

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The Universe sucks: The mysterious Great Attractor that’s pulling us in

When the secondary cosmic rays reach the topmost meters of the Earth’s surface, they transform elements within minerals, such as oxygen, into rare radioisotopes known as “cosmogenic radionuclides,” including beryllium-10 (Be-10) and carbon-14 (C-14).

Scientists can analyze the fluctuations in the concentrations of these nuclides to determine the length of time that rocks have been exposed on the Earth’s surface. This provides researchers with valuable insights into planetary processes, such as erosion rates, with just a single kilogram of river sand.

Gregory Hoke, the Jessie Page Heroy Professor and department chair of Earth and environmental sciences at Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences, J.R. Slosson, a postdoctoral researcher at UMass Amherst who received a Ph.D. from Syracuse University, and Nat Lifton, associate professor of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at Purdue University, recently co-authored a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters analyzing cosmogenic radionuclides in samples from the Argentine Andes.

The goal of the project was to document the amount of time material resides on the hillslopes in the Andes Mountains relative to the overall erosion rate of the river basin. This information is critical to helping scientists identify landslide risks and understand how climate change will impact the dynamics of material transport on hillslopes as regions get wetter or drier.

History Written in the Sand

To determine erosion rates, the team obtained samples of river sand collected at the foot of the eastern flank of the Andes Mountains in the Mendoza and San Juan provinces, located in west-central Argentina. The river sand is to be a representative, well-mixed sample of the entire catchment (or runoff area) upstream of where the sample was collected. In Hoke’s lab at Syracuse University, the sand was treated to isolate pure quartz from the other minerals present in the sample.

The researchers use pure quartz because it is an optimal source for Be-10 and C-14. Splits of pure quartz were sent to the University at Buffalo and Lifton’s lab where beryllium and carbon were extracted, respectively. Subsequent measurements of C-14 were performed at Purdue University’s PRIME Lab and Be-10 was analyzed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to figure out the concentrations of each radionuclide.

A Tale of Talus

The highest non-volcanic peaks in the Andes are located between Santiago, Chile, and Mendoza, Argentina. The river basins that drain the high Andes span 5,000 m (16,500 ft) in elevation and their hillslopes are lined with accumulations of rocky debris known as talus and scree.

Because Be-10 and C-14 are produced proportionally but decay at vastly different rates, the cosmogenic radionuclide concentrations within a sample reveal the rate at which sediment is produced from bare rock surfaces (Be-10) and the time it takes to travel down hillslopes through landslides (C-14). As sediment is mobilized and buried through land sliding, the rate of production of both isotopes diminishes, but because C-14 decays 1,000 times faster than Be-10, their proportionality changes rapidly. This change in proportion allowed the authors to apply a statistical model to determine the average duration of time it takes material to travel down talus slopes.

EES professor Gregory Hoke co-authored a study investigating how long material resides on hillslopes in the Andes Mountains.

According to author Gregory Hoke, this is one of the first studies to use the combination of Be-10 and C-14 to show the long-term average rate of sediment generation and the time and process it takes to move down to and through the rivers, giving a broader picture of the factors involved.

“Previously, we’ve relied nearly exclusively on Be-10 and sediment concentration measurements made at river gauge stations to estimate average erosion rates,” notes Hoke. “What attracted us to study these catchments with C-14 was the agreement of gauge and Be-10 data. We expected to see the two isotopes and gauge data yield the same rates and demonstrate that mountain erosion was occurring at a steady state.”

While the concentration of Be-10 came back as anticipated over the long timescale, they found that C-14 was much lower than anticipated, meaning that sediments eroded from the high mountain watersheds and were shielded from cosmic rays for at least 7 to 15 thousand years. The authors explain that temporary storage in talus slopes best explains the lower concentration of C-14 relative to Be-10.

“This study shows that it is possible to fill an important gap in the observational timescale using the C-14/Be-10 pair that brings to life what really happens on the hillslopes,” says Hoke.

With the risk that landslides pose to humans and infrastructure, J.R. Slosson says their results indicate that C-14 can be significant in unraveling sediment transport dynamics going forward, and potentially help predict where future landslides might occur. He explains, “utilizing C-14 along with Be-10 provides a new window into the complexity of sediment transport in mountain settings and can provide a backdrop for evaluating contemporary changes in earth surface processes.”

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A study published in the prestigious journal Scientific Reports has revealed the nature of the black stains on the passepartout of the ancient document.

The Codex Atlanticus is one of the most extensive and fascinating collections of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and writings. Its preservation is a great challenge for scholars and researchers. An in-depth study, published in Scientific Reports, was conducted by Politecnico di Milano on folio 843 of the Codex, to understand the origins of some black stains that appeared a few years ago on the modern passepartout that binds Leonardo’s original folios.

The interdisciplinary research team coordinated by Lucia Toniolo, Professor of Materials Science and Technology at the Politecnico di Milano, used a series of non-invasive and micro-invasive analysis techniques to investigate the phenomenon and study its nature and causes.

Black stains on the passepartout of the Folio 843 of Codex Atlanticus. Credit: Politecnico di Milano

 

The Codex Atlanticus, donated to the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in 1637, was the subject of a major restoration carried out by the Laboratorio del Libro Antico (Laboratory for the Restoration of Ancient Books) of the Abbey of Grottaferrata between 1962 and 1972. The intervention ended with the production of 12 volumes with 1119 folios: each page has a passepartout with a panel (added by the restorers in Grottaferrata) framing Leonardo’s original fragments. Since 1997, the Codex has been stored in an environment with a strictly controlled microclimate, in accordance with paper conservation standards.

In 2006, very small black stains were discovered on the passepartout, located around the panel that frames and binds the folio. This phenomenon of blackening, observed on some 210 pages of the Codex from folio 600 onwards, has caused great concern among museum curators and scholars. An initial intervention in 2009 led to unbinding the volumes. Today, the drawings are individually mounted on passepartouts, in folders and acid-free boxes. The research carried out by the Politecnico began in 2021 during an initial pilot project on three Codex drawings funded by Fondo Italiano di Investimento, which included the removal and replacement of the passepartout of the folio 843.

Nano-particles made up of mercury and sulfur on Folio 843 of Codex Atlanticus. Credit: Politecnico di Milano

 

Previous studies had ruled out that the stains resulted from microbiological deterioration processes. Research by the Politecnico di Milano, combining hyperspectral photoluminescence imaging and UV fluorescence imaging with micro-ATR-IR imaging, revealed the presence of starch glue and vinyl glue located in the areas where the staining is most concentrated, right near the edge of the folio.

In addition, the presence of round inorganic nanoparticles, 100-200 nanometres in diameter, made up of mercury and sulfur, was detected, which had accumulated within the cavities formed between the cellulose fibers of the passepartout paper. Finally, using synchrotron analysis, conducted at ESRF in Grenoble, it was possible to identify these particles as metacinnabar, a mercury sulfide in an unusual black crystalline phase.

In-depth studies on paper preservation methods have allowed us to formulate some hypotheses on the formation of metacinnabar. The presence of mercury could be associated with the addition of an anti-vegetative salt in the glue mixture used in Grottaferrata’s restoration techniques, which could have been applied only in certain areas of the passepartout paper, precisely where it holds Leonardo’s folio, to ensure adhesion and prevent microbiological infestations on the Codex. The presence of sulfur, on the other hand, has been linked to air pollution (in Milan in the 1970s, levels of sulfur dioxide SO2 were very high) or to the additives used in the glue, which over time would have led to a reaction with mercury salts and the formation of metacinnabar particles, responsible for the black stains.

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Tuesday, April 25

• The first launch we have next week is a Falcon 9 from SpaceX. This will be a run-of-the-mill Starlink satellite launch to help boost the broadband satellite constellation. There’s a little bit of confusion about the number of satellites being sent up on this mission, but it could be 46 satellites. Similar to other Starlink satellites, these will be coated with anti-reflective coatings to lessen disruption to astronomers. The mission will launch between 1:02 p.m. and 2:48 p.m. UTC from Vandenberg AFB in California. It will be viewable on SpaceX’s website.

Wednesday, April 26

• The day after the Falcon 9 launch, SpaceX will send up a Falcon Heavy carrying the ViaSat 3 Americas, Arcturus, and G-Space 1 communications satellites to orbit. The Falcon Heavy is a derivative of the Falcon 9 but has two side boosters which should make it a bit more interesting to watch. Apparently, all of the boosters and the centre core in this mission will be expended. Once in orbit, ViaSat 3 will provide broadband services. The launch will take place at 11:29 p.m. UTC and the launch window will stay open for an hour. It will take off from Florida this time. To view the launch, just head over to SpaceX’s website.

Friday, April 28

• Lastly, we have another SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from Space Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission will take off at 9:12 p.m. UTC carrying two O3b mPOWER broadband satellites into a Medium Earth Orbit for SES. This mission too will be streamed by SpaceX.

Recap

• The first launch we got last week was the Long March 4B caring the FengYun-3G satellite from the Juiquan Satellite Launch Centre in China. The satellite is will provide services for weather forecasting, disaster prevention and mitigation, climate change response, and ecological conservation.

• Next up we saw the launch of a Falcon 9 carrying 21 Starlink satellites into a low Earth orbit.

• The third launch was the big launch of the week that you’ve probably already seen, SpaceX’s launch of Starship atop the Super Heavy booster. If you’ve not watched the launch yet, keep your eyes peeled for the great shot of the thrusters underneath the rocket while it’s flying.

• The final launch was a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from India. It was carrying the TeLEOS-2 and Lumelite-4 satellites.

That’s all we have for you this week, be sure to check in next time!

TWIRL 111: SpaceX dominates the flight schedule with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches

A warmer planet, less nutritious plants and … fewer grasshoppers?

This story originally appeared on Undark and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Approximately 300 miles south of New Zealand, the Auckland Islands lie in a belt of winds known as the Roaring Forties. In the late 19th century, sailing ships departing Australasia would catch a ride back to Europe by plunging deep into the Southern Ocean to ride the westerlies home.

But these seas were poorly charted, and weather conditions frequently horrendous.

Sometimes, navigators miscalculated the islands’ position and, too late, found their vessels thrown upon the islands’ rocky ramparts. Ships were torn to pieces and survivors cast ashore on one of the most remote and inhospitable places on the planet. These castaways soon found out they were not alone.

The main land mass in the Auckland archipelago, Auckland Island, was—and still is—home to pigs, initially introduced in the first half of the 19th century by European hunters and explorers, as well as a group of Indigenous New Zealanders fleeing conflict.

The pigs have no natural predators, and over time, they have wrought destruction upon Auckland Island’s flora and fauna. Government conservationists now want them gone—but there’s a twist: These once domesticated farm animals have evolved into ultra-resilient, disease-free pigs that have caught the eye of scientists who study xenotransplantation, a type of medical procedure in which cells, tissues, or organs from one species are transferred into another species.

Last year, for the first time, surgeons transplanted pig hearts and pig kidneys into humans. Such procedures have not yet been tested in clinical trials, and they are not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration or regulatory agencies in New Zealand. But researchers say that xenotransplantation could eventually prove effective at treating a range of conditions and may alleviate the huge global need for donor organs. The Auckland Island pigs, with their unique genetics, may be especially well-suited for this purpose.

Some of the hardy quadrupeds are now housed in a research facility on the New Zealand mainland. Meanwhile, conservation authorities are preparing a massive effort to eradicate those left in the wild.

The first European ship to reach the Auckland Islands (known as Maukahuka or Motu Maha in the Māori language) was the whaler Ocean, in 1806. The ship’s captain returned the following year to drop off a team of seal hunters. During this visit, pigs were first released as a food source. Subsequent introductions continued, and in the late 1800s, with the tales of shipwreck and survival piling up, the New Zealand and Australian governments got involved, releasing additional pigs for the castaways.

The pigs, which were of mostly European and Asian origin, had to learn to live with the persistent cold, rain, and wind—far from ideal conditions for animals bred for sheltered barnyards. But because pigs produce up to two litters each year, they can adapt relatively quickly, said Michael Willis of the Rare Breeds Conservation Society of New Zealand. Soon, Auckland Island’s pigs formed one unique strain.

In the winter, they survived by eating the island’s endemic plants and scavenging carrion. In the summer, their fortunes changed, and they gorged on plump albatross chicks and protein-filled penguin eggs. Twenty-five species of seabird breed on the Auckland Islands, but after two centuries of pig predation, their numbers have fallen. New Zealand conservationists are increasingly wary of the porcine prowlers.

The archipelago is “an immensely special place,” said Stephen Horn, a project manager at New Zealand’s Department of Conservation. It’s the biggest remaining stronghold of the yellow-eyed penguin, the world’s rarest penguin species, and the Gibson’s wandering albatross, which breeds there exclusively. (Currently, said Horn, seabirds on Auckland Island nest only on the precipitous edges of the land, where even the most tenacious pig won’t venture.)

The pigs have also taken a toll on the spectacular flowering plants known as megaherbs, which are now “almost non-existent” on Auckland Island, Horn said. “They’re absent until you get to the extremely steep cliff areas. Then you can see patches of green that are out of reach” of the pigs.

Horn believes there are between 700 and 1,500 pigs on the island, with the population fluctuating widely. Survival to breeding age, he said, is low. Those that do make it have to be tough and adaptable. “On one hand, super admirable,” he said, “the way they’re able to adapt and survive in those conditions.” And on the other hand, incredibly damaging. “They use the coastline pretty heavily,” he said. “They’ll eat anything that turns up, scavenging things like dead whales and seals or even krill and squid.”

Mindful of the Department of Conservation’s long-held wish to eradicate the pigs, the Rare Breeds Conservation Society sent a team to retrieve some in 1999. Using dogs, they managed to catch 17. “Hunger appeared to be the pigs’ constant companion,” wrote team member Peter Jackson for New Zealand Geographic. “The suckling sows had only two or three teats producing milk, which told how few piglets survived.”

The team loaded the pigs on a boat and brought them back to the southern New Zealand town of Invercargill. There, the animals were put into a quarantine facility, intended to protect the country’s domestic pig herd from potential diseases.

Keeping the pigs in quarantine required money the Society didn’t have, so they prevailed upon Invercargill’s then-mayor, Tim Shadbolt, a colourful former left-wing activist, who dipped into his contingency fund for the approximately 2,300 in today’s New Zealand dollars, or $1,400, needed to feed them.

During the first year of quarantine, the pig population ballooned. “They dined on porridge and swedes and they became raging sexual beasts, producing larger litters than they did on the Auckland Islands,” Shadbolt recalled in a 2008 article in the Otago Daily Times. The pig’s food bill increased tenfold—an expenditure that whipped up a political storm in Invercargill, with councilors and constituents railing against what they characterized as a scandalous waste of public money. Shadbolt was unceremoniously stripped of his contingency fund.

The mayor, though, would be vindicated. These pigs from a previous century soon found an unlikely home in the futuristic world of xenotransplantation.

Globally, the demand for transplant organs is overwhelming. Every year, thousands of people die waiting for a new heart, liver, kidney, or lung that never arrives. In the United States alone, around 17 people on the organ waiting list die every day. For decades, xenotransplantation has been seen as a possibility to bridge this shortfall.

Since the 1960s, surgeons have transplanted chimpanzee and baboon parts into a small number of humans with life-threatening conditions, but these efforts have had little success. The biggest challenge is getting the human body’s immune system to accept the new organ.

The use of non-human primates for biomedical research is controversial, so over time, researchers looked to pigs. “Their organs, their tissues, and their physiology are sufficiently close to humans,” said Paul Tan, founder and CEO of New Zealand xenotransplantation research company NZeno. “Their cells function in a manner that is very close to humans. So their blood sugar levels and our blood sugar levels are pretty close.”

In the late 1980s, New Zealand pediatrician Bob Elliott and colleague David Collinson started a company called Diatranz to investigate whether pig islet cells could be used to treat Type-1 diabetes. For Collinson, the quest was personal. His son suffered from the disease.

Islet cells are found in the pancreas and produce insulin, but in Type-1 diabetes patients, are destroyed by the immune system. Trial transplants of human islet cells had met with mixed results, and in any case, with millions of Type-1 diabetes sufferers globally, there were nowhere near enough human donors to meet demand.

Diatranz aimed to surgically implant pig islet cells, encapsulated in a seaweed-derived polymer that shielded them from the human immune system, into the pancreases of diabetes patients. In the 1990s, though, the work stalled amid fears of disease.

Xenotransplantation, of both cells or organs, carries the risk of bacterial or viral infections crossing from the donor animal into humans. Pigs are not as closely related to humans as apes and baboons, a circumstance that makes transplanted pig parts less likely to spread disease to humans. Still, the risk persists.

While common diseases might be eliminated with medicines, a more serious risk was thought to come from viruses that essentially gatecrash the genetic material of the host animal. These are called retroviruses; they include HIV as well as viruses that cause certain cancers.

Some retroviruses, called endogenous retroviruses, have, in the deep past, even insinuated themselves into the DNA of sperm and egg cells—they are therefore part of the animal’s genetic makeup, replicated in every cell in the body and passed down through generations. There is currently no medication to eliminate retroviruses.

The concern was that pig tissues could secrete infectious particles of a porcine endogenous retrovirus, or PERV, which could then infect human cells to create a new, transmissible human disease. In the worst-case scenario, it was feared, such an event could trigger a global pandemic.

In the late 1990s, a London-based research team confirmed that, in a laboratory setting at least, PERVs could infect human cells.

The discovery, for a time, “killed xenotransplantation,” said Björn Petersen, a xenotransplantation researcher with the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, the German government’s animal-disease research center. “Pharmaceutical companies withdrew their money from the research.”

Around the world, the hunt was on for pigs that were as disease-free as possible.

In 1998, Diatranz partner Olga Garkavenko turned on her radio and got wind of Invercargill’s new arrivals. She decided to investigate.

The company obtained tissue samples from the quarantined pigs for analysis. The islands’ harsh conditions, it seemed, had been tough on disease.

“They remained isolated and therefore they remained free of a lot of common infections that you have in pigs,” said Tan. “The pigs that were weak were probably wiped out. Only the fittest survived.”

The pigs also have an unusually low number of retrovirus copies in their genome. Petersen noted that the population is also completely free of a type of PERV called PERV-C, which may pose the biggest risk to human transplant recipients. This was possible “because they were isolated for a long time and they never had contact with other pigs.”

Joachim Denner, a xenotransplantation researcher from the Free University of Berlin, said the Auckland Island pigs had another major advantage over other pig breeds—their small stature. At around 90 pounds in weight, he said, “they are the right size for transplantation.” A domestic pig weighs 300 to 700 pounds, and its organs, he added, are too large.

In 2004, Elliott, Tan, and others set up a company called Living Cell Technologies, or LCT, which absorbed Diatranz and took over the pigs’ care, building an expensive facility near Invercargill to keep them in medical-grade isolation while they were selectively bred for xenotransplantation.

The animals housed in quarantine were suddenly reputed to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each, much to then-mayor Shadbolt’s barely concealed glee.

The project brought jobs and millions of dollars of investment to Invercargill. “It has all come to fruition,” Shadbolt said in the 2008 Otago Daily Times article. “I rub it into those people who didn’t support me at every opportunity.”

By the 2010s, concerns around PERVs were lessening, as multiple clinical trials of cell transplants suggested not only that pig cells could be effective in treating diabetes, but also that PERVs weren’t passing to humans. New gene-editing technology also meant that retrovirus genes could be rendered non-functional before an animal was born.

With these advancements, the race to successfully implant pig organs in humans has gathered pace. Groups around the world now breed pigs for this purpose. It’s big business—a recent report estimated the global xenotransplantation market could be worth $24.5 billion by 2029.

In January 2022, a University of Maryland group, using a pig organ from the US company Revivicor, conducted the first successful transplant of a pig heart into a living patient. The patient survived for two months. While the cause of his death is still being examined, evidence of a disease called porcine cytomegalovirus was found during the autopsy. The pig used in the transplant, said Tan, would have been rigorously screened for the virus, which, he added, shows the importance of breeding pigs that are genuinely free from such diseases.

Paul Tan now runs NZeno, which has taken over the breeding and keeping of the Auckland Island pigs. LCT, meanwhile, has switched its focus to Parkinson’s disease and recently began clinical trials of a treatment that involves inserting capsules containing pig brain cells into the human brain to repair nerve damage.

NZeno supplies pig cells to LCT and is also trying to establish itself as a major player in the organ game. “We like to think that our strain of pigs, derived from the Auckland Islands, further developed at Nzeno, would be the ideal pig strain for human organ xenotransplantation,” said Tan. Their cells, he noted, have already been used in humans for years, and have a very good track record of safety. The small number of retrovirus copies in the pigs’ genomes, he said, also require less gene editing compared to other breeds.

NZeno recently provided its pig cells to a team at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, which aims to have a genetically-modified pig ready for a pig-human heart transplant by 2025. NZeno is also working with another xenotransplantation group in China that aims to develop kidneys for transplant.

Petersen agreed that there is a solid rationale for minimizing gene editing. “The more genetic modifications you do,” he said, “the more side effects you can maybe expect.” But, he added, there may be cases in which it doesn’t make sense to prioritize the minimization of gene editing. For example, “if you want to have a universal donor”—an animal that can supply a variety of suitable organs or cells for human transplant—“then you need to have a pig with more genetic modifications right from the beginning.”

Denner said the Auckland Island pigs, which he describes as the most disease-free pigs in the world, may yet prove their true worth. But he cautioned against viewing them—or any pig—as a silver bullet. “All these studies have limitations,” he said. “The real effect of PERVs on humans, we will see when we perform the first transplants of organs.”

For now, wild Auckland Island pigs continue to run free in their storm-battered home, but the clock is ticking. Over the past five years, New Zealand’s Department of Conservation has been preparing for eradication.

Stephen Horn leads the team charged with this enormous task. Previous work attached GPS trackers to pigs, trying to learn their movements, and Horn’s team has trialed various methods of killing them. The plan is to wipe out the pigs using a combination of traps, poisoning, and hunters shooting from helicopters and on foot.

“The approach is really high intensity, as quickly as possible,” said Horn, “and try to keep the population as naive as possible.”

“You need a suite of tools,” he continued, “because pigs are smart. Not every pig is going to be vulnerable to the same technique.”

Compounding the difficulty is the island’s size and isolation. It is several days’ dangerous sail from the mainland and, aside from a few uninhabitable hut shelters, the islands have no infrastructure to support human life. Once ashore, movement through the dense undergrowth and shoulder-high grasses is extraordinarily difficult.

“It’s rugged, remote, and massive,” said Horn. “It’s pretty overwhelming when you’re looking at it through a lens of animal pest control.”

Not everyone is thrilled at the prospect of the pigs’ demise. The animals are “very much part of our heritage,” said Willis of the Rare Breeds Conservation Society. The organization argues more effort should be made to preserve at least some of them. Perhaps the pigs could be fenced off, so as not to disrupt the entire island, said Willis. Or some could be relocated to another island, where they might not pose as much of a problem. As far as he is aware, however, these options are not being considered.

Paul Tan said he would also jump at the chance to retrieve more pigs.

The Department of Conservation, said Horn, has fielded inquiries about recovering pigs, but the logistics of retrieving them from the Auckland Islands, as well as the enormous costs involved in quarantine, are major hurdles to overcome.

Horn said that while staff are actively discussing options for retrieving pigs, their focus is eradication. With a plan in place, the department just needs to secure enough funding to make it happen, he said, “to undo some of the damage that was done by people, on what is an extremely fragile but important place.”

How New Zealand’s Pesky Pigs Turned Into a Cash Cow

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Weird SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in mink suggests hidden source of virus in the wild

The Danube may be the world’s most multinational river, but it’s only one of an estimated 310 rivers and lakes shared between two or more countries, along with 468 underground water sources known as aquifers. I recently went to New York to a major UN conference – the first dedicated to water in decades – to try and help strengthen political commitment over these “transboundary” bodies of water.

It’s a crucial issue, as these shared water resources can be both a source of conflict and a driver of cooperation, sustainable development and peace. In wars such as those in Ukraine or Syria, water and infrastructure like bridges or sewers have been repeatedly targeted for their strategic value.

Tensions are also running high in Africa because Ethiopia is constructing a large dam on the Nile, upstream of Egypt. At a recent meeting of the Council of Arab Foreign Ministers, Egypt’s Sameh Shoukry warned of the “fatal consequences for Egypt’s national security” of “unilateral Ethiopian practices on … common river basins”.

Conversely, jointly managing the Sava River (the Danube’s longest tributary) since 2001 helped build peace and trust between former Yugoslav republics less than a decade after they had been at war. And when the mighty Paraná River – South America’s second largest – almost dried up in 2021, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina were able to share the limited water supplies peacefully and sustainably.

Such positive examples of cooperation are particularly pertinent given the increasing pressures that climate change places on the world’s water resources.

How to make sure countries share their water

Effective legal and governance arrangements are key. For example, Canada and the US can point to well over 100 years of cooperation through the 1909 Boundary Water Treaty and the International Joint Commission. Similarly, a peace treaty between Brazil and Paraguay in 1966 led to the creation of a binational commission and eventually to one of the world’s largest hydroelectric dams on the Paraná.

Governance arrangements are also capable of both managing conflict and cooperation simultaneously. Hungary and Slovakia have a long-running dispute over the implementation of a 1970s soviet-era hydropower project on the Danube, the Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros project.

But the countries have still worked together through the international Danube River commission to manage water across the basin. And in Asia, there have been examples of cooperation over the Indus (shared by India and Pakistan) and lower Mekong (Cambodia, Loas, Vietnam and Thailand) rivers even while the countries that share them were at war.

As unifying entities, basin organisations can take on responsibilities well beyond water itself. For example, within the context of threats from Islamist militant group Boko Haram, the Lake Chad Basin Commission is able to not only manage shared waters but also promote regional integration, peace, security and development.

Unfortunately, there are not enough of these governance arrangements in place. The UN bodies responsible for monitoring progress say only 24 countries have all their transboundary basin areas covered by cooperation agreements. The situation is particularly stark in the case of groundwater, where only eight groundwater-specific legal arrangements are in place.

Notable commitments – but still not enough

One of the key themes of the UN water conference was cooperation. This led to some notable commitments. A newly-established Transboundary Water Cooperation Coalition could coordinate countries, international organisations, academia and NGOs.

Also, several countries, including Iraq, Namibia, Nigeria and Zambia, formally joined or committed to joining at least one of the two UN water conventions. These are the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes and the 1997 Convention for the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses. Based on customary international law, they both set out basic principles by which countries can cooperate over their shared waters.

The 1992 convention, with its institutional framework – which includes three yearly meetings of the parties and various expert working groups – acts as a global forum for the exchange of best practice and the development of useful guidance and other tools to support transboundary cooperation.

Do these commitments provide the requisite step change? The short answer is no. Global pressures on transboundary waters due to population increase, growing water demands, unsustainable consumption patterns, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, and climate change, require urgent attention.

It is positive that over 20 countries have promised to join one or both water conventions. But currently only about a third of all countries sharing transboundary waters are party to one or both conventions.

The UN’s 2023 water conference may well go down as an important stepping stone in securing commitment on transboundary water cooperation, but much will depend on what countries deliver in the months and years to come.

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The Pentagon's recently-established All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) - set up to investigate unidentified flying objects - has not found any evidence of aliens in its analysis, its director has said.

At hearings (one open and one closed) held by the Senate Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities this week, Sean Kirkpatrick said most sightings of UFOs are not as strange as they first appear. They are often balloons, unmanned aerial systems, or aircraft, and look odd due to natural phenomena.

I encourage those who hold alternative theories to research to credible peer reviewed scientific journals

 

"I want to underscore that only a very small percentage of [unidentified anomalous phenomena] (UAP) reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as anomalous," he said during this opening testimony at the hearing.

AARO has failed to resolve some incidents, but it's not because something is inexplicable but due to a lack of data. "In our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics," Kirkpatrick confirmed.

In other words: It's not aliens. 

Kirkpatrick said that if the Office does find sufficient scientific data supporting the idea of an object of extraterrestrial origin, it would share its findings with NASA and alert US government personnel. Amateur UFO spotters are fine, he said, but need to apply scientific method to their claims.

"I encourage those who hold alternative theories or views to submit your research to credible peer reviewed scientific journals. ARRO is working very hard to do the same. That is how science works, not by blog or social media…By its very nature, the UAP challenge has for decades lent itself to mystery, sensationalism and even conspiracy.

"For that reason, AARO remains committed to transparency, accountability, and to sharing as much with the American public as we can, consistent with our obligation to protect not only intelligence sources and methods, but US and allied capabilities," he added.

Information on UFOs, however, is often classified even when cases are been resolved, he explained. Although officials may have identified what those objects are, they might not be completely benign.

They could, for example, be aircraft deployed by foreign states for defense or surveillance purposes. It's possible those objects could also be top secret technology being developed by the US or its allies that ARRO won't report either. 

Kirkpatrick said that most of the UFOs are spotted hovering 15,000 to 25,000 feet above ground, which is where most commercial flights operate. They are often round or spherical in shape and white, silver, or metallic in color, the DoD has said. They have apparent velocities anywhere from being stationary to two times the speed of sound.

AARO was launched last year with the goal of working together with different defense and intelligence agencies to detect and identify objects operating in US airspace near sensitive areas, like government or military bases, that could threaten national security.

The Office is, as of this week, examining 650 cases. Half are considered "especially interesting and anomalous," according to the Department of Defense.

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A pair of researchers claim to have deciphered one of the most mysterious of the Mayan calendars, which they believe represents a 45-year cycle of our neighboring planets. 

The recently published study of the 819-day Mayan calendar found it linked to synodic periods, which represent the amount of time it takes for another planet to return to the same position in the sky relative to the Earth and Sun. Mercury, for example, has a synodic period of around 116 days; Mars's is a much longer 780. 

Prior research, the pair wrote, tried to show planetary connections to the 819-day calendar, which is divided into four color-directional parts. However, they note that "its four-part, color-directional scheme is too short to fit well with the synodic periods of the visible planets."

Before this latest paper, it appears researchers simply didn't think in broad enough terms because some extrapolation and repetition appears to have been the solution staring everyone in the face from the start.

"By increasing the calendar length to 20 periods of 819-days a pattern emerges in which the synodic periods of all the visible planets commensurate with station points in the larger 819-day calendar," the researchers wrote. 

The math appears to bear that out. NASA reckons Mercury's synodic period is 115.88 days, but if we allow the ancient Mayans some leniency due to their lack of advanced scientific instruments and say it's 117 days, you can get exactly seven periods on the calendar.

The other planets visible from Earth and known to the Mayans – Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – all have similar mathematical matches when the calendar is allowed to make multiple cycles. Mars, which has the longest synodic period at 780 days, takes 21 periods to fit exactly into 20 cycles, both of which have 16,380 days, just shy of 45 years.

"The Maya astronomers who created the 819-day count envisioned it as a larger calendar system that could be used for predictions of all the visible planet's synod periods, as well as commensuration points with their cycles in the Tzolk'in and Calendar Round," the researchers wrote. 

The Tzolk'in calendar is the Mayan 260-day calendar most people are familiar with, while the Calendar Round is a combination of the 260-day calendar and another calendar known as the Haab, which more closely corresponds to our modern 365-day conception.

Interestingly enough, the 819-day calendar also matches the Tzolk'in when multiple occurrences are allowed: the 20-cycle, 16,380-day repetition of the synodic calendar matches with 63 cycles of the Tzolk'in so it all fits, mathematically speaking. 

We asked the paper's authors to comment, but didn't immediately receive a response. Without the chance to ask some questions, its worth maintaining a cautious approach to interpretations of any Mayan calendars.

Much fuss was made over numerological interpretations of the Mayan calendar that led to eschatologists predicting a world-ending cataclysm in 2012, which clearly didn't happen. As is often the case when world-ending events fail to occur, the date was shifted to 2017. The Register would like to point out that we survived that apocalypse too. 

Two failures does not a strike out make so Mayan calendar "experts" said the world would instead end in 2020. While things definitely got weird a few years ago and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy, we again note that we're still here.

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Data on birds and mammals reveal there's a huge time lag between environmental change and its impact on animal populations, of up to 45 years depending on the species and the drivers of change.

This means the historic 'peace pact with nature' pledged at the United Nation's Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in December last year may already be out of date, as the extent of this lag was not taken into account in projections of future losses.

"There is wide recognition that time is short for the integrated, ambitious actions needed to stop biodiversity loss by 2050," write Natural History Museum zoologist Richard Cornford and colleagues. "This work shows that time is even shorter than had been thought."

Cornford and colleagues show that the past impacts of habitat loss and climate change explain today's trends in bird and mammal population sizes better than recent impacts. Their findings imply we will not see the overall consequences of changes we implement now for at least a decade in most cases, and until then we will witness already locked-in effects of past land use and climate change on species abundance.

"Larger species typically display longer ecological lags than smaller ones," Cornford and team explain. So we'll see today's impacts on smaller birds and mammal populations in about a decade, but have to wait even longer for the full impacts, either good or bad, to emerge for larger species.

Animal populations will still be responding to past environmental changes as late as 2050.

"Even radical land restoration efforts may therefore fail to end population declines by 2030," the researchers conclude.

How these lags influence different levels of the food chain and different regions are not yet clear. Cornford and colleagues call for urgent research to work this out.

Global rates of extinction are currently tens to thousands of times higher than expected without human interference. We've modified up to 70 percent of all land, leaving less productive habitats in our wake.

Climate change is already rearranging life in our oceans and is only going to get worse.

This new study reveals we must look even further into the future to understand their full impact on biodiversity. Protected areas are an asset in conservation efforts, particularly for birds, and COP15 pledged to secure 30 percent of the planet for protection.

"Even if 30 percent of land is protected by 2030, additional interventions mitigating exploitation will be required to adequately safeguard biodiversity and nature's contribution to people," the team warns.

The good news is that active management of protected areas does mitigate the threats from direct use of wildlife like hunting, which is important for the livelihoods of many people. This can continue if sustainable limits are maintained like hunting quotas.

What's more, taking the effort to manage and restore habitats has direct benefits for human health too, as healthy, functioning ecosystems are less likely to spill diseases into human populations.

Conserving biodiversity is a massive win-win for ourselves, the wider ecosystems we live within, and for climate change mitigation. Our actions had better be fast and meaningful if we're serious about saving what remains.

This research was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

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An international team of researchers found markers of biological aging that appeared to increase following stressful events such as major surgery, pregnancy, or a serious infection, and then returned to baseline levels after a period of recovery from those stressors.

Slowing down, let alone reversing, the effects of aging is something of a pipedream for medicine and health entrepreneurs.

Our growing understanding of the natural malleability of DNA, to which chemical tags are added or removed by cells, changing the way genes are expressed, is enticing research in this area.

These so-called epigenetic changes may reflect a person's exposure to lifestyle and environmental factors such as malnutrition, infection, or stress, in childhood or later life.

In this way, epigenetic changes mark the passing of time and can be used as a molecular 'clock' to estimate the biological age of tissues and organs compared to the person's chronological age.

Scientists can also estimate biological age by measuring the length of telomeres; the protective caps on the end of chromosomes that shorten each time cells divide.

Studies looking at telomeres have shown how the stress on new doctors or having multiple pregnancies can age cells beyond their years.

Past longevity research typically investigated ways to lengthen telomeres as a means of extending the lifespan of animals. Yet identifying ways to rewind epigenetic clocks has become a more recent focus.

"Despite the widespread acknowledgment that biological age is at least somewhat malleable, the extent to which biological age undergoes reversible changes throughout life and the events that trigger such changes remain unknown," explains Harvard Medical School molecular biologist Vadim Gladyshev, who co-authored the new study.

That's not to say scientists haven't chanced upon surprising results in the past that hint at biological age being reversible, even in humans.

Research shows that in spite of the toll an unborn baby takes on their mother's body, a mother's cells look 'younger' during pregnancy than her chronological age suggests they should be.

And in 2019, investigators conducting a small clinical trial realized that a cocktail of three common drugs may shed a few years off a person's biological age.

This new study, which used multiple epigenetic clocks to measure how biological age changes in response to stress in animal models and human datasets, also finds that stress-induced spurts of aging might only be a temporary thing.

"A clear pattern that emerged over the course of our studies is that exposure to stress increased biological age," write the researchers in their published paper.

"When the stress was relieved, biological age could be fully or partially restored. This is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by our analysis of biological age changes in response to major surgery."

Blood samples from elderly trauma patients undergoing emergency surgery showed surges in markers of biological age that returned to baseline a week after the operation.

This pattern reflected results from mice that had been surgically joined and then separated. However, patients opting for elective surgery showed no signs of accelerated aging.

Finding a signal among the noise of millions of cells abuzz with activity is difficult to do, hence why the researchers compared multiple epigenetic clocks. Interestingly, some detected no changes.

Even so, the researchers think their findings suggest that the body is capable of reversing biological aging processes.

But it's one thing to observe fluctuations in bodily processes, and another thing altogether to try and harness them therapeutically to reverse the effects of aging.

The body is capable of many remarkable things that modern medicine can barely replicate, and we don't yet know if these fleeting changes in cellular aging have any lasting or detectable health effects.

The research has been published in Cell Metabolism.

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What do I mean by mistakes here? I think we would all agree that we quickly learn that if we put our hand on a hot stove, for instance, we get burned, and so are unlikely to repeat this mistake again. That's because our brains create a threat-response to the physically painful stimuli based on past experiences.

But when it comes to thinking, behavioral patterns, and decision-making, we often repeat mistakes – such as being late for appointments, leaving tasks until the last moment, or judging people based on first impressions.

The reason can be found in the way our brain processes information and creates templates that we refer to again and again. These templates are essentially shortcuts, which help us make decisions in the real world. But these shortcuts, known as heuristics, can also make us repeat our errors.

As I discuss in my book Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias, humans are not naturally rational, even though we would like to believe that we are. Information overload is exhausting and confusing, so we filter out the noise.

We only see parts of the world. We tend to notice things that are repeating, whether there are any patterns or not, and we tend to preserve memory by generalizing and resorting to type.

We also draw conclusions from sparse data and use cognitive shortcuts to create a version of reality that we implicitly want to believe in. This creates a reduced stream of incoming information, which helps us connect dots and fill in gaps with stuff we already know.

Ultimately, our brains are lazy and it takes a lot of cognitive effort to change the script and these shortcuts that we have already built up. And so we are more likely to fall back on the same patterns of behaviors and actions, even when we are conscious of repeating our mistakes.

This is called confirmation bias – our tendency to confirm what we already believe in, rather than shift our mindset to incorporate new information and ideas.

We also often deploy "gut instinct" - an automatic, subconscious type of thinking that draws on our accumulation of past experiences while making judgements and decisions in new situations.

Sometimes we stick with certain behavior patterns, and repeat our mistakes because of an "ego effect" that compels us to stick with our existing beliefs. We are likely to selectively choose the information structures and feedback that help us protect our egos.

One experiment found that when people were reminded of their successes of the past, they were more likely to repeat those successful behaviors.

But when they were conscious of or actively made aware of their failures from the past, they were less likely to overturn the pattern of behavior that led to failure. So people were in fact still likely to repeat that behavior.

That's because, when we think of our past failures, we are likely to feel down. And in those moments, we are more likely to indulge in behavior that makes us feel comfortable and familiar.

Even when we think carefully and slowly, our brains have a bias towards the information and templates we had used in the past, regardless of whether these resulted in errors. This is called the familiarity bias.

We can learn from mistakes though. In one experiment, monkeys and humans had to watch noisy, moving dots on a screen and judge their net direction of movement.

The researchers found that both slowed down after an error. The larger the error, the longer the post-error slowing, showing more information was being accumulated.

However, the quality of this information was low. Our cognitive shortcuts can force us to override any new information that could help prevent repeating mistakes.

In fact, if we make mistakes while performing a certain task, "frequency bias" makes us likely to repeat them whenever we do the task again.

Simplistically speaking, our brains start assuming that the errors we've previously made are the correct way to perform a task – creating a habitual "mistake pathway".

So the more we repeat the same tasks, the more likely we are to traverse the mistake pathway, until it becomes so deeply embedded that it becomes a set of permanent cognitive shortcuts in our brains.

Cognitive control

It sounds bleak, so what can be done?

We do have a mental ability that can override heuristic shortcuts, known as "cognitive control". And there are some recent studies in neuroscience with mice that are giving us a better idea of what parts of our brains are involved in that.

Researchers have also identified two brain regions with "self-error monitoring neurons" – brain cells which monitor errors. These areas are in the frontal cortex and appear to be part of a sequence of processing steps – from refocusing to learning from our mistakes.

Researchers are exploring whether a better understanding of this could help with development of better treatments and support for Alzheimer's, for example, as preserved cognitive control is crucial for wellbeing in later life.

But even if we don't have a perfect understanding of the brain processes involved in cognitive control and self-correction, there are simpler things we can do.

One is to become more comfortable with making mistakes. We might think that this is the wrong attitude towards failures, but it is in fact a more positive way forward. Our society denigrates failures and mistakes, and consequently, we are likely to feel shame for our mistakes, and try and hide them.

The more guilty and ashamed we feel, and the more we try and hide our mistakes from others, the more likely we are to repeat them. When we not feeling so down about ourselves, we are more likely to be better at taking on new information that can help us correct our mistakes.

It can also be a good idea to take a break from performing a task that we want to learn how to do better. Acknowledging our failures and pausing to consider them can help us reduce frequency bias, which will make us less likely to repeat our mistakes and reinforce the mistake pathways.

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The last eight years have been the warmest ever recorded, while concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide hit new peaks, the UN's World Meteorological Organization said.

"Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record and the melting of some European glaciers was, literally, off the charts," the WMO said as it launched its annual climate overview.

Sea levels are also at a record high, having risen by an average of 4.62 millimetres per year between 2013 and 2022—double the annual rate between 1993 and 2002.

Record high temperatures were also recorded in the oceans—where around 90 percent of the heat trapped on Earth by greenhouse gases ends up.

The 2015 Paris Agreement saw countries agree to cap global warming at "well below" two degrees Celsius above average levels measured between 1850 and 1900—and 1.5C if possible.

The global mean temperature in 2022 was 1.15C above the 1850-1900 average, the WMO report said.

Record global mean temperatures over the past eight years came despite the cooling impact of a drawn-out La Nina weather phenomenon that stretched over nearly half that period.

The report said greenhouse gas concentrations reached new highs in 2021.

The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 415.7 parts per million globally, or 149 percent of the pre-industrial (1750) level, while methane reached 262 percent and nitrous oxide hit 124 percent.

Data indicate they continued to increase in 2022.

Glacier game lost

WMO chief Petteri Taalas told a press conference that extreme weather caused by greenhouse gas emissions "may continue until the 2060s, independent of our success in in climate mitigation"

"We have already emitted so much, especially CO2 in the atmosphere that this kind of phasing out of the negative trend takes several decades."

The world's 40-odd reference glaciers—those for which long-term observations exist—saw an average thickness loss of more than 1.3 metres between October 2021 and October 2022—a loss much larger than the average over the last decade.

The cumulative thickness loss since 1970 amounts to almost 30 metres.

In Europe, the Alps smashed records for glacier melt due to a combination of little winter snow, an intrusion of Saharan dust in March 2022 and heatwaves between May and early September.

"We have already lost the melting of the glaciers game, because we already have such a high concentration of CO2," Taalas told AFP.

In the Swiss Alps, "last summer we lost 6.2 percent of the glacier mass, which is the highest amount since records started".

"This is serious," he said, explaining that the disappearance of the glaciers would limit freshwater supplies for humans and for agriculture, and also harm transport links if rivers become less navigable, calling it "a big risk for the future".

"Many of these mountain glaciers will disappear, and also the shrinking of the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers will continue for a long-term basis—unless we create a means to remove CO2 from the atmosphere," he said.

Glimmers of hope

Despite the report's bad news, Taalas said there was cause for some optimism.

The means to battle climate change were becoming more affordable, he said, with green energy becoming cheaper than fossil fuels, while the world is developing better mitigation methods.

The planet is no longer heading towards 3-5 C warming, as forecast in 2014, but was now on track for 2.5-3 C warming, he said.

"In the best case, we would still be able to reach 1.5 C warming, which would be best for the welfare of mankind, the biosphere and the global economy," the WMO secretary-general told AFP.

Taalas said 32 countries had reduced their emissions and their economies still grew.

"There is no more automatic link between economic growth and emissions growth," he said.

In stark contrast to the world leaders of 10 years ago, now "practically all of them are talking about climate change as a serious problem and countries have started acting", he said.

© 2023 AFP

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Viruses are defined as infectious agents that are made of a nucleic acid covered with a protein coat. They are only able to multiply when infecting a host. Viruses have been found in a wide range of environments ranging from the Antarctic to remote islands and large land masses to most water sources, including the world's oceans. In this new effort, the research team has found a whole new group of previously unknown viruses that live in all of the world's oceans by infecting plankton.

To learn more about viruses living in the ocean, members of the research team were analyzing data obtained by the Tara Ocean expedition—a large undertaking with the goal of better understanding the extent of invisible marine biodiversity. As part of that effort, expedition members collected almost 35,000 water samples from across the globe over the years 2009 to 2013. In addition to seawater, the samples also held algae, plankton and as it turns out, previously unknown viruses.

A close look at the viruses showed them to be double-stranded DNA viruses that infect plankton cells, helping them to regulate the flow of carbon and other nutrients in the oceans. The team has named them mirusviruses. They suggest that the viruses are a vital part of the plankton and ocean surface environment, which in turn helps to feed the creatures that live below.

They research team was also able to see that the viruses belonged to the Duplodnaviria virus family of viruses, which means they are related to the viruses that cause herpes in humans. But they also found that they were related in other ways to the Varidnaviria virus group, which the researchers suggest, means that they are chimeric.

The researchers also suggest that the discovery not only adds to knowledge regarding biodiversity in the word's oceans and how plankton work, but may also help with better understanding the roots of the virus behind herpes infections.

More information: Morgan Gaïa et al, Mirusviruses link herpesviruses to giant viruses, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05962-4

Journal information: Nature

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Once the test is done, the alert will be issued in the future in the case of severe flooding, fires, and extreme weather. Luckily, the UK is fairly tranquil when it comes to natural disasters so hopefully, these alerts will be issued sparingly. A number of entities can send these alerts; the emergency services, government departments, agencies, and public bodies that handle emergencies.

Circling back to the test that’s planned for Sunday, your phone will make a loud siren-like sound, it’ll vibrate, and it’ll read out the alert. All this will happen even if your phone is on silent and will last for about 10 seconds before ending. If you want to get a sneak peek at what to expect, check out this video that the government published.

Motorists, who should have their full attention on the road, are warned not to interact with the alerts while driving. The government says you should find somewhere safe to stop before reading it or let someone else in the vehicle read it. If there’s a real emergency in the future and you can’t check your phone, the government recommends switching on the car radio for developments.

You can learn more about the alert system on the government's dedicated webpage.

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China’s new supersonic reconnaissance drone may be a harbinger of pre-emptive strikes against the US, Japan and Taiwan. Moreover, it may test the reactions and defenses of regional states against airspace incursions.

This month, The Washington Post reported that China could soon deploy a new type to help target Taiwan and US military assets in the Pacific.  

The source cites leaked US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency documents from last August showing satellite imagery of two WZ-8 rocket-powered supersonic drones at Liuan Airfield, located 560 kilometers inland from Shanghai.

It says the drones are a cutting-edge reconnaissance system that could gather real-time mapping data to inform strategy or determine targets for missile strikes in a future conflict.

The leaked documents obtained by The Washington Post show projected flight paths for WZ-8 reconnaissance missions. In addition, its electro-optical cameras and other sensors could gather intelligence while flying in Taiwanese and South Korean airspace.

Although the WZ-8 is unarmed, the Post says it could be modified for strikes in the future, as it is difficult to detect and intercept. It says an H6-M bomber launches the WZ-8 from China’s east coast, which could fly at an altitude of 30,000 meters and three times the speed of sound into South Korean and Taiwanese airspace.

The Post says China introduced the WZ-8 drone in 2019 during celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the founding of People’s Republic of China. Still, only a few analysts thought the drones were operational then.

The WZ-8 may provide capabilities that existing strategic reconnaissance drones need to improve. For example, improvements in counter-satellite capabilities and air defenses highlighted the need for a supersonic high-speed intelligence-gathering platform to enter and exit heavily defended airspace, which can be hazardous even to the stealthiest drones.

Last April, Asia Times noted US and allied counter-space capabilities such as ground-based mobile lasers, radiofrequency jammers, microwave weapons, and hunter-killer satellites that can threaten China’s surveillance and targeting satellites.

In addition, Asia Times reported on the US Long-Range Discrimination Radar last August, which can potentially discriminate between China’s military and commercial satellites.

China has a comprehensive doctrine regarding the use of drones for reconnaissance purposes. As noted in the December 2021 issue of Red Diamond, a US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) publication, deep reconnaissance involves exploring areas beyond a given unit’s organic weapons systems.

It also notes that China’s deep reconnaissance operations involve a combination of long-range, high-endurance drones, such as the WZ-8 and other models.

The source says the People’s Liberation Army–Ground Force (PLA-GF) has adopted drones to spot long-range artillery, with fire direction, targeting, and forward observation, with drones being a significant area of its investment.

It also notes that China’s integration of sensors and shooters is agile, redundant, and reliable, given its considerable emphasis on battlefield surveillance and targeting capabilities.

For the PLA’s other branches, Kartik Bommakanti, in a report this month for the Observer Research Foundation, the introduction of drones and artificial intelligence (AI) has played a crucial role in modernizing the PLA Air Force (PLA-AF) and PLA Rocket Force (PLA-RF), showing an emphasis in the quality of delivering warheads, rather than the warheads themselves.

Asia Times reported on China’s emerging hypersonic weapons triad in February, with ship- and air-launched YJ-21 “carrier killer” missiles alongside its DF-17 road-mobile hypersonic missile becoming formidable assets for conventional deterrence.

The YJ-21 relies on satellite guidance provided by the PLA Strategic Support Force (PLA-SSF) to hit US aircraft carriers, making it a strategic weapon, while the DF-17 was notably among the missiles fired by China in its show of force against Taiwan last August, demonstrating its capability to box in Taiwan with long-range precision fire.  

Drones such as the WZ-8 can provide a backup targeting capability should China’s satellites be taken out of action by US and allied counter-space capabilities.

China’s WZ-8 supersonic drone and nascent hypersonic weapons triad may be critical elements of its emerging reconnaissance-strike complex.

Ian Easton notes in a 2014 report for the Project 2049 Institute that China’s reconnaissance-strike complex capabilities are intended to undermine US capabilities to project power into the Pacific during crisis or conflict or meet its security commitments to allies and coalition partners.

Easton says China’s conventional power, such as hypersonic missiles and guided artillery, holds strategic assets such as US aircraft carriers at risk, enables precision strikes against critical targets while minimizing collateral damage and munition expenditure, and threatens its neighbors to a far greater degree than traditional platform such as warships or fighter jets.

Also, drone reconnaissance missions over territorial waters suggest that China intentionally heightens the possibility of unintended incidents to extract concessions, as Easton says.

He also says the PLA’s reconnaissance capabilities enable intelligence-gathering operations to “prepare the battlefield.” In contrast, its strike capabilities are centered on offensive missile systems optimized for large pre-emptive attacks.

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Certain stem cells have a unique ability to move between growth compartments in hair follicles, but get stuck as people age and so lose their ability to mature and maintain hair color, a new study shows.

Led by researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the new work focused on cells in the skin of mice and also found in humans called melanocyte stem cells, or McSCs. Hair color is controlled by whether nonfunctional but continually multiplying pools of McSCs within hair follicles get the signal to become mature cells that make the protein pigments responsible for color.

Publishing in the journal Nature on April 19, the new study showed that McSCs are remarkably plastic. This means that during normal hair growth, such cells continually move back and forth on the maturity axis as they transit between compartments of the developing hair follicle. It is inside these compartments where McSCs are exposed to different levels of maturity-influencing protein signals.

Specifically, the research team found that McSCs transform between their most primitive stem cell state and the next stage of their maturation, the transit-amplifying state, and depending on their location.

Hair-coloring stem cells (at left, in pink) need to be in the hair germ compartment in order to be activated (at right) to develop into pigment. Credit: Courtesy of Springer-Nature Publishing or the journal Nature

 

The researchers found that as hair ages, sheds, and then repeatedly grows back, increasing numbers of McSCs get stuck in the stem cell compartment called the hair follicle bulge. There, they remain, do not mature into the transit-amplifying state, and do not travel back to their original location in the germ compartment, where WNT proteins would have prodded them to regenerate into pigment cells.

“Our study adds to our basic understanding of how melanocyte stem cells work to color hair,” said study lead investigator Qi Sun, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at NYU Langone Health. “The newfound mechanisms raise the possibility that the same fixed-positioning of melanocyte stem cells may exist in humans. If so, it presents a potential pathway for reversing or preventing the graying of human hair by helping jammed cells to move again between developing hair follicle compartments.”

Researchers say McSC plasticity is not present in other self-regenerating stem cells, such as those making up the hair follicle itself, which are known to move in only one direction along an established timeline as they mature. For example, transit-amplifying hair follicle cells never revert to their original stem cell state. This helps explain in part why hair can keep growing even while its pigmentation fails, says Sun.

Earlier work by the same research team at NYU showed that WNT signaling was needed to stimulate the McSCs to mature and produce pigment. That study had also shown that McSCs were many trillions of times less exposed to WNT signaling in the hair follicle bulge than in the hair germ compartment, which is situated directly below the bulge.

In the latest experiments in mice whose hair was physically aged by plucking and forced regrowth, the number of hair follicles with McSCs lodged in the follicle bulge increased from 15% before plucking to nearly half after forced aging. These cells remained incapable of regenerating or maturing into pigment-producing melanocytes.

The stuck McSCs, the researchers found, ceased their regenerative behavior as they were no longer exposed to much WNT signaling and hence their ability to produce pigment in new hair follicles, which continued to grow.

By contrast, other McSCs that continued to move back and forth between the follicle bulge and hair germ retained their ability to regenerate as McSCs, mature into melanocytes, and produce pigment over the entire study period of two years.

“It is the loss of chameleon-like function in melanocyte stem cells that may be responsible for graying and loss of hair color,” said study senior investigator Mayumi Ito, PhD, a professor in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology and the Department of Cell Biology at NYU Langone Health.

“These findings suggest that melanocyte stem cell motility and reversible differentiation are key to keeping hair healthy and colored,” said Ito, who is also a professor in the Department of Cell Biology at NYU Langone.

Ito says the team has plans to investigate means of restoring motility of McSCs or of physically moving them back to their germ compartment, where they can produce pigment.

For the study, researchers used recent 3D-intravital-imaging and scRNA-seq techniques to track cells in almost real time as they aged and moved within each hair follicle.

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Rocket Report: Starship RUDs on the way to space; Rocket Lab to reuse engine

A totally new type of virus has been found living on the sunlit surface of the seas and oceans. Dubbed mirusviruses – "mirus" meaning wonderful or strange in Latin – the microbes are related to both giant viruses and herpesviruses. As such, the discovery might help to illuminate the murky evolutionary history of herpes.

In a new study, scientists detailed the discovery of mirusviruses and explain that they belong to a realm of viruses called Duplodnaviria. This is a large type of double-stranded DNA viruses that includes herpesviruses like the herpes simplex virus.

Fortunately for us, mirusviruses are not interested in humans and tend to only infect single-celled plankton. This does suggest, however, that the ancestors of herpesviruses once infected marine single-cell organisms. That’s a fairly humble beginning considering that herpes has since managed to infect half of humanity.

Although their evolutionary heritage links back to herpesviruses, the majority of mirusvirus genes are similar to those of giant viruses (literally just really big viruses). Nevertheless, the researchers say this never-before-seen band of viruses is pretty unique. 

“Mirusviruses substantially deviate from all other previously characterized groups of DNA viruses,” the study authors conclude.

“The discovery of Mirusviricota is a reminder that we have not yet grasped the full ecological and evolutionary complexity of even the most abundant double-stranded DNA viruses in key ecosystems such as the surface of our oceans and seas,” they add. 

The new viruses were found by trawling through data gathered by the Tara Ocean expedition. This project collected over 35,000 samples of viruses, algae, and plankton from over 200 different locations worldwide. 

They also sequenced their genetic material, providing scientists with a plethora of data to pore over – and plenty of opportunities to discover new species. 

“In 2019, our research team observed an unusual evolutionary signal in the massive amounts of sequencing data provided by the Tara Oceans project. By tracking this signal, we discovered and then characterized a major DNA virus group: mirusviruses. The publication of this discovery in Nature marks the start of a new adventure and a gateway for the scientific community to detect and study mirusviruses in any number of ecosystems,” Tom Delmont, study author and expert in microbial ecology at the French National Center for Scientific Research, said in a statement. 

“Tara Oceans has transformed our understanding of plankton ecology. Our study proves that this incredible expedition also provides answers to fundamental evolutionary questions. Much remains to be discovered and understood about mirusviruses. They have yet to be cultivated, no images of their viral particle exist, and we have yet to study them in places other than the oceans!” added Morgan Gaïa, study first author.

The study is published in the journal Nature. 

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