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Cells from your mum, siblings and other family members embed themselves in your organs. Now we know they play a role in keeping you healthy - and might even influence how you think

We now know that there are at least 45 different blood types and that yours may influence your risk of disease, from malaria to cancer

Water is the most common chemical molecule found throughout the entire universe. What water has going for it is that its constituents, hydrogen and oxygen, are also ridiculously common, and those two elements really enjoying bonding with each other. Oxygen has two open slots in its outmost electron orbital shell, making it very eager to find new friends, and each hydrogen comes with one spare electron, so the triple-bonding is a cinch.

Hydrogen comes to us from the big bang itself, making it by both mass and number the #1 element in the cosmos. Seriously, the stuff is everywhere. About 75% of every star, every interstellar gas cloud, and every wandering bit of intergalactic space debris never to know the warmth of stellar fusion in 13.8 billion years of cosmic history is made of hydrogen. That hydrogen got its start when our universe was only about ten minutes old, and all the hydrogen that has ever existed (except for random radioactive decays and fission reactions, but that would come later) formed before our universe turned 20 minutes.

A dozen minutes, 13.8 billion years ago. When you quench your thirst with a healthy glass, that’s what you’re consuming.

We can understand this epoch of cosmic history, known as the nucleosynthesis era, because over the past century we’ve become rather skilled at dealing with nuclear reactions, and in one of the hallmarks of our species we have unleashed this radical understanding into the physical nature of reality and deployed it for both peacetime energy generation and wartime bombs.

Our understanding of nuclear physics tells us that earlier than the ten-minute mark, our universe was too hot and too dense for protons and neutrons to form. Instead their subatomic parts, known as quarks, were unglued in a heaving maelstrom of nuclear forces, constantly binding and unbinding in a seething rage-filled sea of gluons, the force carriers of the strong nuclear force.

Once the universe expanded and cooled enough, condensates of protons and neutrons formed like droplets on the windowpane, low-energy pockets capable of keeping themselves together despite the temperatures. Eventually, however, as soon as the party got going it fizzled out: when the universe became too large and too cool, a mere dozen minutes later, there wasn’t sufficient density to bring the quarks close enough together to perform their nuclear binding trick. Some protons and neutrons would find each other in those storm-filled days, though, forming heavier versions of hydrogen, some helium, and a small amount of lithium.

And since then those hydrogen atoms have wandered about the cosmos; most lost in the intergalactic wastes, some participating in the glorious construction of stars and planets, and a lucky few finding themselves locked in a chemical dance with oxygen.

The oxygen has another tale to tell, also a story of fusion, on its way to becoming water. But not the fusion of the first few heady minutes of the big bang, but in the dance within the hearts of stars. There, crushing pressures and violent temperatures slam hydrogen atoms together, forcing them to fuse into helium, in the process releasing an almost vanishingly small amount of energy. But that forced marriage happens millions of times every second, in every one of the trillions upon untold trillions of stars strewn about the cosmos, enough to light up the universe for all conscious observers to enjoy.

Near the end of a star’s life, it turns to fusing the built-up ash of helium piled in its core, The fusion of helium produces two products: carbon and oxygen. Now this oxygen would end up forever closed off from the cosmos, locked behind a million-kilometer thick wall of plasma, if it were not for a trick of physics that happens when the star meets its final days.

Our Sun will someday experience this fate, about four and a half billion years now. When it grows old and weary, it will swell and turn red, violently spasming as it draws its last fatal breaths. Those gargantuan shudders release material from the star, launching it into the surrounding system, billowed by gusty winds of fundamental particles streaming away at nearly the speed of light. Fit by ragged fit, the Sun will lose its own self, driving away over half its mass into a spreading nebula, the only sign that distant eyes can perceive of yet another noble star laying down its struggle against the all-consuming night.

But in that gruesome death, a miracle. The cycle born anew: the hydrogen and helium, the primordial elements of the star, now mixed with carbon and oxygen drift off into the interstellar void, someday to take part in the formation of a new star, a new solar system, a new world wet with water, and, if the chances are perfect, a new life.

The post Thirsty? Water is More Common than you Think appeared first on Universe Today.

As I have written many times, including in yesterday’s post, people occupying space is hard. The environment of space, or really anywhere not on Earth, is harsh and unforgiving. One of the issues, for example, rarely addressed in science fiction or even discussions of space travel, is radiation. We don’t really have a solution to deal with radiation exposure outside the protective atmosphere and magnetic field of Earth.

There are other challenges, however, that do not involve space itself but just the fact that people living off Earth will have to be in an enclosed environment. Whether this is a space station or habitat on the Moon or Mars, people will be living in a relatively small finite physical space. These spaces will be enclosed environments – no opening a window to let some fresh air in. Our best experience so far with this type of environment is the International Space Station (ISS). By all accounts, the ISS smells terrible. It is a combination of antiseptic, body odor, sweat, and basically 22 years of funk.

Perhaps even worse, the ISS is colonized with numerous pathogenic bacteria and different types of fungus. The bacteria is mainly human-associated bacteria, the kinds of critters that live on and in humans. According to NASA:

The researchers found that microbes on the ISS were mostly human-associated. The most prominent bacteria were Staphylococcus (26% of total isolates), Pantoea (23%) and Bacillus (11%). They included organisms that are considered opportunistic pathogens on Earth, such as Staphylococcus aureus (10% of total isolates identified), which is commonly found on the skin and in the nasal passage, and Enterobacter, which is associated with the human gastrointestinal tract.

This is similar to what one might find in a gym or crowded office space, but worse. This is something I often considered – when establishing a new environment off Earth, what will the microbiota look like? On the one hand, establishing a new base is an opportunity to avoid many infectious organisms. Having strict quarantine procedures can create a settlement without flu viruses, COVID, HIV or many of the germs that plague humans. I can imagine strict medical examinations and isolation prior to gaining access to such a community. But can such efforts to make an infection-free settlement succeed?

What is unavoidable is human-associated organisms. We are colonized with bacteria, most of which are benign, but some of which are opportunistic pathogens. We live with them, but they will infect us if they are given the chance. There are also viruses that many of us harbor in a dormant state, but can become activated, such as chicken pox. It would be near impossible to find people free of any such organisms. Also – in such an environment, would the population become vulnerable to infection because their immune systems will become weak in the absence of a regular workout? (The answer is almost certainly yes.) And would this mean that they are a setup for potentially catastrophic disease outbreaks when an opportunistic bug strikes?

In the end it is probably impossible to make an infection-free society. The best we can do is keep out the worst bugs, like HIV, but we will likely never be free of the common cold and living with bacteria.

There is also another issue – food contamination. There has been a research program aboard the ISS to grow food on board, like lettuce, as a supplement of fresh produce. However, long term NASA would like to develop an infrastructure of self-sustaining food production. If we are going to settle Mars, for example, it would be best to be able to produce all necessary food on Mars. But our food crops are not adapted to the microgravity of the ISS, or the low gravity of the Moon or Mars. A recent study shows that this might produce unforeseen challenges.

First, prior research has shown that the lettuce grown aboard the ISS is colonized with lots of different bacteria, including some groups capable of being pathogens. There have not been any cases of foodborne illness aboard the ISS, which is great, so the amounts and specific bacteria so far have not caused disease (also thoroughly washing the lettuce is probably a good idea). But it shows there is the potential for bacterial contamination.

What the new study looks at is the behavior of the stomata of the lettuce leaves under simulated microgravity (they slowly rotate the plants so they can never orient to gravity). The stomata of plants are little openings through which they breath. They can open and close these stomata under different conditions, and will generally close them when stressed by bacteria to prevent the bugs from entering and causing infection. However, under simulated microgravity the lettuce leaves opened rather than closed their stomata in response to a bacterial stress. This is not good and would make them vulnerable to infection. Further, there are friendly bacteria that cause the stomata to close, helping them to defend against harmful bacteria. But in microgravity these friendly bacteria failed to cause stomata closure.

This is concerning, but again we don’t know how practically relevant this is. We have too little experience aboard the ISS with locally grown plants. It suggests, however, that we can choose, or perhaps cultivate or engineer, plants that are better adapted to microgravity. We can test to see which cultivars will retain their defensive stomata closure even in simulated microgravity. Once we do that we may be able to determine which gene variants convey that adaptation. This is the direction the researchers hope to go next.

So yeah, while space is harsh and the challenges immense, people are clever and we can likely find solutions to whatever space throws at us. Likely we will need to develop crops that are adapted to microgravity, lunar gravity, and Martian gravity. We may need to develop plants that can grow in treated Martian soil, or lunar regolith. Or perhaps off Earth we need to go primarily hydroponic.

I also wonder how solvable the funk problem is. It seems likely that a sufficiently robust air purifier could make a huge impact. Environmental systems will not only need to scrub CO2, add oxygen, and manage humidity and temperature in the air aboard a station, ship, or habitat. It will also have to have a serious defunking ability.

 

The post Microbes Aboard the ISS first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

A nuclear war could lead to food shortages due to soot blocking out the sun, but a model suggests seaweed farming could expand to meet up to 15 per cent of the food eaten by humans

The carcasses of headless goats are floating in the Chattahoochee River; too many for a prosaic explanation.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss399_Chris_Anderson_2024_01_17.mp3 Download MP3

As head of TED, Chris Anderson has had a ringside view of the world’s boldest thinkers sharing their most uplifting ideas. Inspired by them, he believes that it’s within our grasp to turn outrage back into optimism. It all comes down to reimagining one of the most fundamental human virtues: generosity. What if generosity could become infectious generosity? Consider:

• how a London barber began offering haircuts to people experiencing homelessness—and catalyzed a movement
• how two anonymous donors gave $10,000 each to two hundred strangers and discovered that most recipients wanted to “pay it forward” with their own generous acts
• how TED itself transformed from a niche annual summit into a global beacon of ideas by giving away talks online, allowing millions access to free learning.

In telling these inspiring stories, Anderson has given us “the first page-turner ever written about human generosity” (Elizabeth Dunn). More important, he offers a playbook for how to embark on our own generous acts—whether gifts of money, time, talent, connection, or kindness—and to prime them, thanks to the Internet, to have self-replicating, even world-changing, impact.

Chris Anderson has been the curator of TED since 2001. His TED mantra—“ideas worth spreading”—continues to blossom on an international scale. He lives in New York City and London but was born in a remote village in Pakistan and spent his early years in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where his parents worked as medical missionaries. After boarding school in Bath, England, he went on to Oxford University, graduating in 1978 with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. Chris then trained as a journalist, working in newspapers and radio, and founded Future Publishing that focused on specialist computer publications but eventually expanded into other areas such as cycling, music, video games, technology and design. He then built Imagine Media, publisher of Business 2.0 magazine and creator of the popular video game users website IGN, publishing some 150 magazines and websites and employed 2,000 people. This success allowed Chris’s nonprofit organization to acquire the TED Conference, then an annual meeting of luminaries in the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design held in Monterey, California. He expanded the conference’s remit to cover all topics, and now has TED Fellows, the TED Prize, TEDx events, and the TED-Ed program offering free educational videos and tools to students and teachers. Astonishingly, TED talks have been translated into 100 languages and garner over 1 billion views a year. His new book is Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading.

Shermer and Anderson discuss:

• how his life turned out (genes, environment, luck)
• what makes TED successful while other platforms failed or stalled
• TED talks go public for free vs. paying customers
• power laws and giving: do 10% donate 90%?
• Amanda Parker gave away her music and asked people to pay: survival bias—how many people have tried this and failed?
• blogs, podcast, Substack … saturation markets
• changing business landscape of charging vs. giving away
• What makes things infectious?
• What is generosity? Idea vs. character trait—virtue ethics
• altruism and reciprocal altruism, reputation and self-reputation
• religion and morality: do we need an “eye in the sky” to be good?
• Can people be good without God?
• philanthropy: 2700 billionaires have more wealth than 120 poorest countries combined
• giving & philanthropy seems like a rich-person’s game. How can average people participate?
• incentivizing giving as a selfish act: why “pay it forward”?
• public vs. private solutions to social problems
• How can one person make a difference?
• The Mystery Experiment
• Ndugu Effect
• donor fatigue
• Giving What We Can.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

Many chiropractors continue to claim that vertebral subluxations can affect organ function by interfering with nerve flow in spinal nerves, a view that is scientifically indefensible.

The post Chiropractic Subluxation Theory: Science or Gobbledegook? first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A recent study published in Astrobiology investigates the potential habitability in the clouds of Venus, specifically how amino acids, which are the building blocks of life, could survive in the sulfuric acid-rich upper atmosphere of Venus. This comes as the potential for life in Venus’ clouds has become a focal point of contention within the astrobiology community in the last few years. On Earth, concentrated sulfuric acid is known for its corrosivity towards metals and rocks and for absorbing water vapor. In Venus’ upper atmosphere, it forms from solar radiation interacting with sulfur dioxide, water vapor, and carbon dioxide.

Here, Universe Today discusses this new research with Dr. Sara Seager, who is a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a co-author on the study, regarding the motivation behind the study, how it builds off previous studies, and what this could mean regarding the search for life in the clouds of Venus. Therefore, what is the motivation behind this recent research?

“We are pushing forward the decades-old speculative idea that there might be some kind of microbial-type life in the clouds of Venus,” Dr. Seager tells Universe Today. “The surface of Venus is too hot for life, but just like on Earth as one climbs a mountain or goes up in an airplane, the temperature gets colder and colder above the surface. In the Venus clouds 50 km above the surface the temperature is just right for life. However, the clouds of Venus are not made of water as Earth clouds are, but sulfuric acid is a highly destructive and toxic chemical. The motivation is to explore whether or not sulfuric acid can support complex molecules needed for life.”

For the study, the researchers examined 20 biogenic amino acids within sulfuric acid concentrations that mirrored Venusian atmospheric conditions. After four weeks, the researchers discovered that 11 of the 20 biogenic amino acids didn’t react—or exhibited stability—to the sulfuric acid concentrations while the eight amino acids exhibited stability in the sulfuric acid concentrations after experiencing alteration, and one experiencing instability after alteration. This alteration specifically pertained to the amino acid’s side chain, which is the part of the amino acid that contains each amino acid’s distinctive chemical characteristics, or its uniqueness compared to other amino acids. Along with demonstrating that amino acids remain stable in sulfuric acid concentrations, the study notes how this research “…also informs the possible origins of life on Venus, if life exists there.”

While this study focuses on the ability of amino acids to survive in sulfuric acid, a June 2023 study, which Dr. Seager was lead author, investigated if nucleic acid bases could survive in concentrated sulfuric acid, and whose findings also produced positive results, as well. So, how does this most recent study build off the June 2023 study?

“We can broadly say that biochemistry of life on Earth is composed of four different categories of compounds: nucleic acid bases, amino acids, fatty acids, and carbohydrates,” Dr. Seager tells Universe Today. “Carbohydrates are not stable, but we are working through all the others. This work relates to the June 2023 study as a continuation of working through different classes of molecules. You’ll be hearing more as we make further progress.”

In addition to the June 2023 study, this recent study comes as discussions about the potential for life in the clouds of Venus continue to gain traction, including a myriad of studies between 2020 and 2021 being published in Astrobiology outlining the potential for habitable conditions for life within Venus’ clouds. These studies included using models to determine how life could be possible, the potential presence of phosphorus within the clouds, and a potential instrument package that could be used to sample aerosols within Venus’ clouds to detect potential biogenic markers.

One such future mission that Dr. Seager mentions to Universe Today is Rocket Lab’s First Private Mission to Venus, which was outlined in a 2022 study published in Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics and which Dr. Seager tells Universe Today has a current scheduled launch date of January 2025. The mission is slated to use Rocket Lab’s configurable Photon spacecraft that will be fitted with a small, 1-kg (2.2-lb) scientific instrument whose purpose is to shine a laser into the clouds of Venus with the goal of literally lighting up potential organic molecules that might be present. But with all these studies and planned missions, will we ever find life in the clouds of Venus, and in what form?

“If there is life it is most likely simple, single-celled life,” Dr. Seager tells Universe Today. “If we can continue to send space missions to probe the Venus atmosphere directly, we can make progress in answering this question.”

What further discoveries will researchers make about the potential for life in the clouds of Venus in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

The post Venus’ Clouds Contain Sulfuric Acid. That’s Not a Problem for Life. appeared first on Universe Today.

A massive study is claimed to show that regular primary care health checks can prevent multiple diseases, but it’s too soon to close the case

With a little help from a fungus and earthworms, chickpeas have been grown in lunar soil. It is a step forward in figuring out how to make long-term stays on the moon sustainable

A raindrop can weigh 40 times as much as a water strider. So how does the insect deal with rain when getting hit with a droplet is equivalent to a car crashing into a human?

Low vaccination rates have led to measles outbreaks in several countries, but many people are unaware of how the virus can have an effect called ‘immune amnesia’

Nobel prizewinner Jim Peebles, who helped create our model of how the universe evolved, discusses dark matter, the value of iconoclastic ideas and the astronomical anomalies to keep your eye on

Today’s AI computer vision costs are too steep for most US firms to consider replacing human workers with the technology. But that could change in the long run

In the excellent sci fi show, The Expanse, which takes place a couple hundred years in the future, Mars has been settled and is an independent self-sustaining society. In fact, Mars is presented as the most scientifically and technologically advanced society of humans in the solar system. This is presented as being due to the fact that Martians have had to struggle to survive and build their world, and that lead to a culture of innovation and dynamism.

This is a  version of the Turner thesis, which has been invoked as one justification for the extreme expense and difficulty of settling locations off Earth. I was recently pointed to this article discussing the Turner thesis in the context of space settlement, which I found interesting. The Turner thesis is that the frontier mindset of the old West created a culture of individualism, dynamism, and democracy that is a critical part of the success of America in general. This theory was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but fell out of academic favor in the second half of the 20th century. Recent papers trying to revive some version of it are less than compelling, showing that frontier exposure correlates only very softly with certain political and social features, and that those features are a mixed bag rather than an unalloyed good.

The article is generally critical of the notion that some version of the Turner thesis should be used to justify settling Mars – that humanity would benefit from a new frontier. But I basically agree with the article, that the Turner thesis is rather weak and complex, and that analogies between the American Western frontier and Mars (or other space locations) is highly problematic. In every material sense, it’s a poor analogy. On the frontier there was already air, food, soil, water, and other people living there. None of those things (as far as we know) exists on Mars.

But I do think that something closer to The Expanse hypothesis is not unreasonable. Just as the Apollo program spawned a lot of innovation and technology, solving the problems of getting to and settling Mars would likely have some positive technological fallout. However, I would not put this forward as a major reason to explore and settle Mars. We could likely dream up many other technological projects here on Earth that would be better investments with a much higher ROI.

I do support space exploration, including human space exploration, however. I largely agree with those who argue that robots are much better adapted to space, and sending our robotic avatars into space is much cheaper and safer than trying to keep fragile biological organisms alive in the harsh environment of space. For this reason I think that most of our space exploration and development should be robotic.

I also think we should continue to develop our ability to send people into space. Yes, this is expensive and dangerous, but I think it would be worth it. One reason is that I think humanity should become a multi-world spacefaring species. This will be really hard in the early days (now) but there is every reason to believe that technological advancements will make it easier, cheaper, and safer. This is not just as a hedge against extinction, but also opens up new possibilities for humanity. It is also part of the human psyche to be explorers, and this is one activity that can have unifying effect on shared human culture (depending, of course, on how it’s done).

There is still debate about the effectiveness of sending humans into space for scientific activity. Sure, our robots are capable and getting more capable, but for the time-being they are no substitute for having people on site actively carrying out scientific exploration. Landers and rovers are great, but imagine if we had a team of scientists stationed on Mars able to guide scientific investigations, react to findings, and take research in new directions without having to wait 20 years for the next mission to be designed and executed.

There are also romantic reasons which I don’t think can be dismissed. Being a species that explores and lives in space can have a profound effect on our collective psyche. If nothing else it can inspire generations of scientists and engineers, as the Apollo program did. Sometimes we just need to do big and great things. It gives us purpose and perspective and can inspire further greatness.

In terms of cost the raw numbers are huge, but then anything the government does on that scale has huge dollar figures. But comparatively, the amount of money we spend on space exploration is tiny compared to other activity of dubious or even whimsical value. NASAs annual budget is around $23 billion, but Americans spend over $12 billion on Halloween each year. I’m not throwing shade on Halloween, but it’s hard to complain about the cost of NASA when we so blithely spend similar amounts on things of no practical value. NASA is only 0.48% of our annual budget. It’s almost a round off error. I know all spending counts and it all adds up, but this does put things into perspective.

Americans also spent $108 billion on lottery tickets in 2022. Those have, statistically speaking, almost no value. People are essentially buying the extremely unlikely dream of winning, which most will not. I would much rather buy the dream of space exploration. In fact, that may be a good way to supplement NASA’s funding. Sell the equivalent of NASA lottery tickets for a chance to take an orbital flight, or go to the ISS, or perhaps name a new feature or base on Mars. People spend more for less.

The post Is Mars the New Frontier? first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

A row of gaseous krypton atoms has been trapped inside a carbon nanotube, allowing researchers to better observe how they interact in a confined space

Investigating gun crime is challenging if bullets have been removed from the scene – a tool that can identify bullets from the shavings they leave as they ricochet off surfaces could help

Endometriosis takes an average of 6.6 years to be diagnosed worldwide, with one study finding it can take 27 years in the UK

Chemical analysis of rocks found in South Africa shows that ancient microorganisms sustained themselves in a variety of ways, adding to evidence for an early origin of life on Earth