Natural Science

[Seldom Bucket]

Scientists turn yeast into psychedelic psilocybin factories

With psilocybin on the cusp of becoming a clinically validated and approved medicine, scientists are exploring new ways to produce the chemical without needing to grow magic mushrooms or relying on costly synthesis techniques. A team of Danish researchers has presented a novel method of producing the psychedelic chemical using common yeast.

"It's infeasible and way too expensive to extract psilocybin from magic mushrooms and the best chemical synthesis methods require expensive and difficult-to-source starting substrates,” explains Nick Milne, an author on the new study published in the journal Metabolic Engineering. “Thus, there is a need to bring down the cost of production and to provide a more consistent supply chain.”

If psilocybin research continues down the path it is currently on, there will be a great need for large-scale production in the coming years. It is not commercially viable to extract the chemical from magic mushrooms, but as Milne and his team suggest in their study, current synthesis methods are not ideal either.

Scientists turn yeast into psychedelic psilocybin factories

With psilocybin on the cusp of becoming a clinically validated and approved medicine, scientists are exploring new ways to produce the chemical without needing to grow magic mushrooms or relying on costly synthesis techniques. A team of Danish researchers has presented a novel method of producing…

newatlas.com

 

[Seldom Bucket]

Plate tectonics may have started 400 million years earlier than we thought

Modern plate tectonics may have gotten under way as early as 3.2 billion years ago, about 400 million years earlier than scientists thought. That, in turn, suggests that the movement of large pieces of Earth’s crust could have played a role in making the planet more hospitable to life.

Geologist Alec Brenner of Harvard University and his colleagues measured the magnetic orientations of iron-bearing minerals in the Honeyeater Basalt, a layer of rock that formed between 3.19 billion and 3.18 billion years ago. The basalt is part of the East Pilbara Craton, an ancient bit of continent in Western Australia that includes rocks as old as 3.5 billion years.

This craton, the researchers found, was on the move between 3.35 billion and 3.18 billion years ago, drifting around the planet at a rate of at least 2.5 centimeters per year. That’s a speed comparable to modern plate motions, the team reports April 22 in Science Advances.

Plate tectonics may have started 400 million years earlier than we thought

Magnetic minerals in ancient rocks suggest that plate tectonics may have been under way as early as 3.2 billion years ago.

www.sciencenews.org

 

[Dave]

Psst... it's "science", Heppy.

 

[biometrics]

Psst... it's "science", Heppy.

Lol, I only noticed that now myself, the brain fills in the blanks. I'll fix it.

 

[Seldom Bucket]

Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice inland, but still losing it overall

In the tug-of-war between coastal melting and inland ice buildup, the meltdown is winning in both Greenland and Antarctica.


Initial observations from NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite in 2018 and 2019 reveal how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have changed since the original ICESat mission collected data from 2003 to 2008. Both missions measured the height of ice near Earth’s poles by bouncing laser light off the surface. Since each satellite’s position in space was known, clocking how long it took reflected light to return to the satellite revealed the ice’s height, allowing researchers to discern changes in ice thickness between measurements.


These data indicate that ice in eastern Antarctica and central Greenland thickened slightly from 2003 to 2019. The researchers suspect this is the result of increased snowfall, because in a warmer climate, more ocean water evaporates and the air holds more moisture. But a minor thickening of inland ice was no match for the massive ice losses along Greenland and Antarctica’s coastlines, researchers report online April 30 in Science. Greenland and Antarctica lost an average 200 billion and 118 billion metric tons of land ice per year, respectively, over this 16-year period.

Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice inland, but still losing it overall

Inland ice accumulation is not enough to counteract the amount of ice melting off Antarctica and Greenland into the oceans, satellite data show.

www.sciencenews.org

 

[Seldom Bucket]

Tree trunks take a licking as koalas source water

Koalas are one of the world's most charismatic animals. But there is a lot we still don't know about them. For example, how do the marsupials access water in the treetops? Do they only absorb moisture from the gum leaves they eat? Or do they come down from the trees to drink from a waterhole? Until now, no one really knew.

A study published today in Ethology, led by a researcher from The University of Sydney, has captured koala drinking behaviour in the wild for the first time. The paper describes how koalas drink by licking water running down smooth tree trunks during rain.

The news arrives in time to celebrate Wild Koala Day on Sunday 3 May.

Tree trunks take a licking as koalas source water

Koalas are one of the world's most charismatic animals. But there is a lot we still don't know about them. For example, how do the marsupials access water in the treetops? Do they only absorb moisture from the gum leaves they eat? Or do they come down from the trees to drink from a waterhole...

phys.org

 

[Seldom Bucket]

Why mammals like elephants and armadillos might get drunk easily

A

n elephant, a narwhal and a guinea pig walk into a bar. From there, things could get ugly.

All three might get drunk easily, according to a new survey of a gene involved in metabolizing alcohol. They’re among the creatures affected by 10 independent breakdowns of the ADH7 gene during the history of mammal evolution. Inheriting that dysfunctional gene might make it harder for their bodies to break down ethanol, says molecular anthropologist Mareike Janiak of the University of Calgary in Canada.

Why mammals like elephants and armadillos might get drunk easily

Differences in a gene for breaking down alcohol could help explain which mammals get tipsy.

www.sciencenews.org

 

[Seldom Bucket]

Inside Deep Undersea Rocks, Life Thrives Without the Sun

Microbial life, almost unbelievably resilient, abides in boiling hot springs and bone-dry deserts, in pools of acid and polar ice, kilometres up into the sky and kilometres below the ocean floor. And while scientists are eager to uncover microbes in even less familiar territories beyond our solar system, it’s the last Earth-bound frontier on that list — the deep subsurface — where they’re now making exciting progress in their efforts to probe life’s extreme adaptability.

Lightless, barren of essential nutrients and crushed under inconceivable pressures, the deep subsurface seems unrelentingly inhospitable, yet it is shaping up to be one of Earth’s biggest habitats. Moreover, its strangeness is forcing scientists to reckon with biological systems that operate on completely different energy sources and time scales from those that we surface dwellers are accustomed to.

Scientists have spent decades studying how and where microbes persist and even thrive beneath the oceans, far removed from the sun. Most of that work has focused on marine sediments, the tightly packed mud and detritus that in places extends for kilometres beneath the water. But there’s also the volcanic rock below that, the crust itself. The life in those rocks is much more difficult to access and analyse, and samples are scarce.

 

[Seldom Bucket]

Chicxulub collision put Earth’s crust in hot water for over a million years

The asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago left behind more than a legacy of mass destruction. That impact also sent superheated seawater swirling through the crust below for more than a million years, chemically overhauling the rocks. Similar transformative hydrothermal systems, left in the wake of powerful impacts much earlier in Earth’s history, may have been a crucible for early microbial life on Earth, researchers report May 29 in Science Advances.


The massive Chicxulub crater on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula is the fingerprint of a killer, probably responsible for the destruction of more than 75 percent of life on Earth, including all nonbird dinosaurs (SN: 1/25/17). In 2016, a team of scientists made a historic trek to the partially submerged crater, drilling deep into the rock to study the crime scene from numerous angles.


One of those researchers was planetary scientist David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. A dozen years earlier, Kring had found evidence at Chicxulub that the layers of rock bearing the signs of impact — telltale features such as shocked quartz and melted spherules — were subsequently cut through by veins of newer minerals such as quartz and anhydrite. Such veins, Kring thought, suggest that hot hydrothermal fluids had been circulating beneath Chicxulub some time after the impact.

 

[Seldom Bucket]

That 'Human Bone' Found in a NASA Mars Photo Isn't Even New. Here's The Real Story

A 2014 Mars photo that has strangely resurfaced in tabloids this month does not show a femur amidst the rubble of the Red Planet. Like all such photos to date, the object you see is just a plain old Mars rock. And NASA debunked it six years ago.

The image was taken using the Curiosity Rover's MastCam on 14 August 2014, and rapidly spread among conspiracy theorists as proof Mars once harboured life, prompting the space agency to set the record straight.

"Seen by Mars rover Curiosity using its MastCam, this Mars rock may look like a femur thigh bone. Mission science team members think its shape is likely sculpted by erosion, either wind or water," wrote a NASA spokesperson in a brief blog post.

 

[Tribs]

Wasn't sure if I should put this here or under maths

 

[Seldom Bucket]

How Your Heart Influences What You Perceive and Fear

We consider the brain the very centre of who we are and what we do: ruler of our senses, master of our movements; generator of thought, keeper of memory. But the brain is also rooted in a body, and the connection between the two goes both ways. If certain internal receptors indicate hunger, for instance, we’re driven to eat; if they indicate cold, we dress more warmly.


However, decades of research have also shown that those sensations do much more than alert the brain to the body’s immediate concerns and needs. As the heart, lungs, gut and other organs transmit information to the brain, they affect how we perceive and interact with our environment in surprisingly profound ways. Recent studies of the heart in particular have given scientists new insights into the role that the body’s most basic processes play in defining our experience of the world.

 

[Seldom Bucket]

Ultra-black fish that absorb 99.5% of light found in the deep ocean

Scientists have discovered ultra-black fish that absorb almost all light that hits them, allowing them to effectively hide in the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean. It appears to be a more efficient method than those used by other animals, and the find could help inform future advances in optical and camouflage technology.

The discovery was made by a team led by scientists from the Smithsonian and Duke University. The fish were found to absorb 99.5 percent of all light, making them appear as little more than silhouettes even in direct light. And it wasn’t just one clever species either – the technique has so far been found in 16 different, distantly related species.

It makes sense. These fish were all found living at ocean depths below 200 m (656 ft), in the inky blackness beyond the reach of sunlight. Many animals have adapted to this environment by producing their own light, called bioluminescence, which can be used to attract food or mates, or to illuminate predators and prey hiding in the dark.

 

[satanboy]

A 400-Year-Old Shark Found In The Arctic Could Be The Oldest Vertebrate On Earth

The Greenland shark grows very slowly and can live up to the age of at least 272 years. These sharks reach maturity only at about 150 years of age.

edu.thinking-minds.net

 

[satanboy]

Rare yellow turtle spotted for only second time looks like melted cheese

The unusual bright yellow creature, an albino Indian flapshell turtle, got rescued in West Bengal, India. And the internet thinks it looks like cheese, or an egg yolk.

www.cnet.com

 

[satanboy]

Octopuses Observed Punching Fish, Perhaps Out of Spite, Scientists Say

In new proof that 2020 has been a crappy year basically everywhere, scientists have captured video evidence of octopuses randomly punching at fish, possibly for no reason other than being spiteful.

www.sciencealert.com

 

[satanboy]

'Most complete wolf mummy ever' offers 57,000-year-old clues

Missing only her eyes, the mummified pup gives scientists more insight into how ancient wolves lived.

www.cnet.com

 

[satanboy]

Scientists Find Great White Shark With 12 ft In Length And A Weight Of 1,000 lb Was Bitten By Larger Creature

Somewhere in the depths of the ocean, something was picking on a massive great white shark.

www.apost.com

 

[satanboy]

Antarctic researchers discover mysterious creatures deep beneath ice shelf

"How did they get there?"

www.cnet.com

 

[Düber]

Antarctic researchers discover mysterious creatures deep beneath ice shelf

"How did they get there?"

www.cnet.com

It just shows you that there are so many interesting and exciting things that still have to be discovered on our own planet.