Aquaculture uses far more wild fish than previously estimated, study finds

OCT. 16, 2024, by Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-aquaculture-wild-fish-previously.html

Biomass ratios of wild fish mortality to farmed fish product (FI:FO) for salmon farming, delineated by cause and repeated using four different datasets.

 Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn9698

A study published in the journal Science Advances suggests that global fish farming, or aquaculture, may rely on significantly larger quantities of wild-caught ocean fish than previously calculated. The study is part of a special issue focused on expanding contributions from the aquaculture industry to food systems with an aim towards sustainability.

These findings call into question long-held assumptions about the sustainability of the rapidly growing aquaculture industry and provide a range of plausible estimates for its impact on wild fish populations.

The research, led by an international team of scientists from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, Oceana, and New York University, provides a reassessment of the "fish-in:fish-out" (FI:FO) ratio for global fed aquaculture—a key metric used to evaluate the efficiency and sustainability of aquaculture.

The findings indicate that the ratio of wild fish inputs to farmed fish outputs is 27% to 307% higher than previous estimates, ranging from 0.36 to 1.15 compared to an earlier estimate of only 0.28. When accounting for wild fish mortality during capture and excluding unfed aquaculture systems, the ratio rises even further: 0.57 to 1.78. For carnivorous farmed species specifically, like salmon, trout, and eel, wild fish inputs likely exceeded twice the farmed fish biomass produced.

"Our study reveals that the aquaculture industry relies more heavily on wild fish extraction than previous research has suggested," said Spencer Roberts, a doctoral student at the Rosenstiel School in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, and lead author of the study. "This demonstrates the scale at which aquaculture could be impacting marine ecosystems."

The research team's approach included accounting for previously overlooked sources of wild fish in aquaculture feed, such as trimmings and byproducts from wild-caught fish. They also incorporated collateral fishing mortality, including "slipping"—a practice where unwanted catch is released but a large portion of the animals often do not survive. By analyzing multiple industry-reported datasets, the team provided a range of estimates and highlighted uncertainties in current reporting practices.

"This research shows that the assumptions we have made about carnivorous aquaculture have been too optimistic, and is another reason to think strategically about the kinds of aquatic species it makes the most sense to mass produce," said Jennifer Jacquet, a co-author of the study and a professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the Rosenstiel School

The study also examined the environmental trade-offs involved in reducing wild fish use in aquaculture feed. The researchers found that widely-cited estimates of declines in wild fish use from 1997-2017 would require a more than five-fold increase in the use of terrestrial crops over the same period.

Patricia Majluf, Ph.D., a senior scientist with Oceana in Peru, which is home to the largest fishmeal fishery in the world, notes that the growing use of by-products and trimmings has not phased out the capture and use of whole wild fish in feeds for aquaculture.

"The offshore aquaculture industry is growing so rapidly that the wild-caught fish is not being replaced in their feed. Instead, other feed sources are just supplementing wild fish use," states Majluf.

The findings have significant implications for policymakers, investors, and consumers. The study calls for more comprehensive and transparent reporting of feed ingredients in the aquaculture industry and suggests that policies promoting aquaculture expansion on sustainability grounds should be reconsidered.

Matthew Hayek, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University and the study's corresponding author, stated, "It's crucial that we have a more complete understanding of the industry's impact on both marine and terrestrial ecosystems and reduce these uncertainties."

He emphasizes that even with the wide uncertainty ranges reported, the impacts are still larger than previously reported, and "most offshore finfish aquaculture facilities produce carnivorous fish, and therefore are responsible for depleting far more fish from the ocean than what they can produce."

The researchers stress that while their study provides a more comprehensive view of aquaculture's environmental impacts, further research is needed to fully understand the sector's effects on issues such as nutrient pollution, habitat destruction, and the spread of diseases to wild fish populations.

As the demand for seafood continues to grow worldwide, these findings underscore the urgent need for more transparency in fish farming.

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Meat without vegetables: How bacteria in our stomachs today can tell us what was on the menu for the first humans

OCT. 16, 2024, by Chinese Academy of Sciences

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-meat-vegetables-bacteria-stomachs-today.html

Differentiation between Hardy and Ubiquitous strains is localized in the genome. 

Credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07991-z

In a study published in Nature, a team has uncovered new details about the long association between humans and our stomach bacteria.

Since its discovery in 1983, Helicobacter pylori has become notorious as the cause of around a million cases of stomach cancer a year as well as other life-threatening gastric diseases. The bacterium is also likely to have caused many stomach aches in our prehistory, since according to previous research, it has colonized the human stomach for more than 100,000 years.

In this study, researchers used an unprecedented collection of nearly 7,000 Helicobacter genomes from around the world to investigate the spread of the bacteria. They unexpectedly found a highly distinct variant of Helicobacter that they termed the Hardy ecospecies, which arose hundreds of thousands of years ago and spread around the world with us.

The researchers proposed that the ecospecies is specialized to live in the stomachs of people whose diet principally consists of meat or fish, i.e., carnivores. Thus, the genetic variation found in the bacteria in our stomachs today can inform us what our ancestors ate.

"Helicobacter-related disease disproportionately affects poorer communities. We have made a substantial effort to collect bacteria from around the world, involving clinicians and researchers from more than 20 countries. This unprecedented collection of genomes will allow us to develop interventions and treatments suitable for every context," said Prof. Yoshio Yamaoka, a corresponding author of the study.

"Our diverse global sample allowed us to have a better understanding of the history of Helicobacter in humans, which confirmed previous findings that these bacteria were already passengers in our stomachs when we left Africa more than 50,000 years ago. However, we also identified something surprising, in the form of a new ecospecies of Helicobacter, which we called Hardy. This differs from the common type, which we called Ubiquitous, in more than 100 genes.

"The Hardy ecospecies turns out to be exceptionally informative about what the bacteria need to do to survive in our stomach, but also, more fundamentally, about how diversity is maintained in bacteria," said Elise Tourette, first author of the study.

"Most humans living today are omnivores or vegetarians, which means that a substantial proportion of our diet consists of plant material. However, in some parts of the world, plant material has historically been unavailable for large parts of the year and people relied heavily on fish or meat for sustenance.

"So far, the Hardy ecospecies has only been identified in humans from these Indigenous populations, in locations such as Siberia and Northern Canada. It has also been found in tigers and cheetahs in zoos, due to an ancient host jump, and has key genetic differences that could adapt it to the conditions found in a carnivore's stomach. This association is particularly intriguing because our analysis also implies that both ecospecies accompanied humans since the origin of our species in Africa more than 200,000 years ago.

"If the ecospecies is indeed adapted to carnivores, then it implies that the humans that spread out across the world often did not eat much plant matter, even when it was available to them," explained Prof. Daniel Falush, another corresponding author of the study.

Phylogenetic trees for all strains in the dataset. 

Credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07991-z

One important genetic difference between the Hardy and Ubiquitous strains is in genes called ureases. The stomach is an inhospitable environment for almost all organisms because of its high acidity.

Helicobacter has two main strategies to avoid being dissolved along with the food we eat. The first is to burrow into the mucus lining the stomach, where it is less acidic than in the center of the stomach. The second is to produce urease. Urease deacidifies the immediate environment around the bacterium. Ubiquitous Helicobacter pylori makes a urease protein that incorporates nickel atoms within it.

Most Hardy Helicobacter, including those from Indigenous populations as well as from tigers and cheetahs, encoded a second urease, which incorporated iron atoms instead of nickel. This alternative urease was believed to help Helicobacter survive in the stomachs of carnivores, which were more acidic than those of omnivores and may also have had a higher availability of iron atoms and a lower availability of nickel.

In support of this hypothesis, other Helicobacter species from carnivorous mammals, such as dolphins, cats, and ferrets, had this second urease, while Helicobacter isolated from omnivore species, such as pigs and macaques, did not.

"Helicobacter pylori can live in our stomachs for decades, in a constant running battle with the human immune system, which can result in gastric disease. What is fascinating to me is that as well as differing in genes involved in nutrient uptake, the Hardy ecospecies differs from the normal Ubiquitous Helicobacter in a large fraction of the genes it uses to interact with the stomach cells and cells of the immune system.

"The bacteria seem to have a completely different strategy for interacting with its host. Figuring out what this strategy is can provide a great deal of new insight into the development of gastric diseases, including the oftentimes deadly gastric cancer," added Prof. Kaisa Thorell.

By analyzing nearly 7,000 Helicobacter pylori genomes from around the world, Tourrette and team concluded that the first modern humans were infected by two distinct types of the bacterium, Hardy and Ubiquitous. Both ecospecies spread out of Africa during the early migrations of humans, getting as far as South America.

The Ubiquitous ecospecies has been found in all human populations sampled to date, but the Hardy ecospecies has only been sampled from a small number of Indigenous populations, implying it might have gone extinct in many locations on its migration path. However, one African lineage of Hardy strains made a host jump to big cats and has been isolated from cheetahs, lions, and tigers in zoos.

Understanding why the ecospecies can coexist in some populations but not others promises to shed light on our prehistory and on the substantial burden of gastric disease that we still suffer from today.

The team included Prof. Falush of the Shanghai Institute of Immunity and Infection (SIII) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. Yamaoka of Oita University, Japan, and Prof. Thorell of Gothenberg University, Sweden.

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Canada's agricultural policies are falling short of health and sustainability goals

OCT. 17, 2024, by K. Kevany, H. Nye, M. K. Mullinix and T. B. Iscan, The Conversation

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-canada-agricultural-policies-falling-short.html

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Oct. 16 marks World Food Day, a global initiative drawing attention to the "right to foods for a better life and a better future." However, Canada's food and agricultural policies are falling short of this objective.

Canada's current agricultural policies are not serving the well-being of the public. Canada's agricultural program payments and subsidies are not aligned with the government's dietary guidelines and health goals.

Very few agriculture investments go to the production of fruits and vegetables, even though Canadians under-consume them. Instead, financial support overwhelmingly goes to feed crops, agricultural export crops and foods high in saturated fat. This is particularly troubling, given the rise of food and lifestyle diseases in Canada, such as diabetes, obesity, coronary heart disease and high cholesterol.

The health-care costs of diet-related diseases from not meeting the dietary guidelines are at least two percent of all health-care costs in Canada, with some estimates putting it as high as 19 percent. Agricultural policy is not just about food; it influences health, the economy and the environment.

Climate change and agriculture

Trying to address greenhouse gas emissions without paying attention to agriculture is like heating your home while not ensuring doors and windows are closed. Agriculture is a big contributor to Canada's greenhouse gas emissions.

As climate change intensifies, bringing more frequent and severe wildfires, droughts, floods, and heat domes , agriculture is being impacted. Instability in weather patterns threatens regional and global social stability and may require Canada to rethink the dominant role of international trade in shaping its current agricultural policies.

Government policies that largely support input-intensive crops and animal agriculture contribute significantly to methane and nitrous oxide emissions and global warming.

Despite these concerns, Canada is not investing strategically or sufficiently in agriculture. Despite $12.5 billion dollars in annual agricultural supports, a surprising portion of Canadian farmers continue to financially struggle to survive. According to the National Farmers Union:

"Over the last three decades, the agribusiness corporations that supply fertilizers, chemicals, machinery, fuels, technologies, services, credit, and other materials and services have captured 95 percent of all farm revenues, leaving farmers just five percent."

In 2016, 66 percent of all farms in Canada were in the revenue class of $10,000 to $249,999. On average, these farms had expenses exceeding their revenue by a large margin.

While Canada spends a large share of its budget on addressing the negative outcomes of how we produce and consume food, there remain greater opportunities for investing in preventive measures that promote a healthier, more sustainable food system. Canada's 20th century agriculture policy regime is woefully insufficient for the challenges of the 21st century.
Solutions to the crisis

Transforming our food systems will help to avert devastating climate change and ecological devastation. Many Canadian farmers are already leading the way by incorporating principles of sustainability into their practices. And the good news is that healthy diets are also environmentally sustainable.

Food outlets and school cafeterias can play a role in reducing inefficiencies in the food system, like food waste, and improving sustainability by promoting healthy eating. To make this happen, schools need more resources and autonomy to counter misinformation about food and position Canadians for success by making healthy choices attractive.

Many Canadians support local, bioregional food systems as an alternative to anonymous, transnational food systems. However, these local initiatives are not enough on their own to meet our health, community vitality and environmental goals.

To truly make an impact, local food movements must be part of a larger, co-ordinated effort supported by policies that align agricultural production with healthy diets. A new approach to food policies that considers them from a holistic perspective, beyond GDP, and respects farmers while creating food systems based on the One Planet and One Health frameworks is needed.

It's important to recognize that farmers are not only just business operators; they are our neighbors, and are integral to our communities. Supporting them with better policies and giving everyone equitable access to nourishing and sustainable foods will ensure a healthier, more resilient future for all Canadians.

Canada needs to provide stronger support for family farms practicing agroecologically sound production methods. Government programs that support greater production and purchasing of grains, fruits and vegetables for direct human consumption are also needed. These initiatives would reduce Canada's reliance on imports of these critical foods.

In addition, federal and municipal governments should strengthen and broaden Canada's bioregional food systems while also fostering the growth of small- and medium-sized food businesses. It's also important to reduce the political and market power of oligopolies in Canada's food system.
A call for change

None of these changes can happen without moving beyond the current, outdated productionist model that views agriculture in isolation and relies on the belief that only global-industrial food systems can feed the world.

In fact, smaller-scale agroecological farmers operating in bioregional food systems are key. Achieving our broader societal goals means thinking of food through agriculture, human health and environmental sustainability lenses.

Canada needs a new vision of agriculture that connects health and environment goals with sustainable diets and prosperous family farming. This vision must prioritize nutritious diets, human and environmental health, and the overall well-being of society beyond profits, market share and food exports. Also it must be formed collectively by decision-makers, farmers, food processors, community groups and the public.

In Canada, governments, organizations and citizens must work together to create a food system vision for Canada, much like Food Secure Canada's Resetting the Table process previously did.

Further collaboration among agriculture, environment and health professionals can arise from these efforts, as can be seen with Canada's National School Food program, which is aligning local farmers and suppliers of local options to meet Canada's Food Guide. This is also an opportunity for Canada's Food Policy Advisory Council to gain greater influence in shaping policy.

Just as calls for health-care reform often focus on improving services, Canadians have the right to expect better outcomes from agricultural subsidies. By prioritizing economic, environmental and public health sustainability, Canada can ensure its agricultural policy is fit for its 21st-century food system.

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Science News: The final frog-tier? Scientists find 7 new frog species, name them after Star Trek captains - study

 The final frog-tier? Scientists find 7 new frog species, name them after Star Trek captains - study

Those names may not mean anything to the layperson, but diehard fans will recognize them as being references to some of the most famous characters in science fiction.

By Aaron Reich, Jerusalem Post, October 16, 2024

https://www.jpost.com/science/article-824824

Tree frog on leaf, Gliding frog (Rhacophorus reinwardtii) sitting on leaves, Javan tree frog on branch, Indonesian tree frog (photo credit: SHUTTERSTOCK)

Madagascar. The final frog-tier.

That joke only makes sense when one hears the news that scientists have found seven new tree frog species in Madagascar, and all of them are named after iconic Star Trek captains, as noted in a recent study.

The findings of this study were published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Vertebrate Zoology.

The reason for the Star Trek comparisons was that, according to the scientists behind the study, the frogs - rather than croaking - make high-pitched whistles that sound like sounds heard in Star Trek, such as the boatswain whistle often heard on the starships or the tricorders used by Starfleet personnel for carrying out scientific scans.

These whistles aren’t just incidental, but are actually part of what makes this discovery so significant in the first place.

              Photo of Star Trek 60s TV series scene in old magazine (credit: SHUTTERSTOCK)

Madagascar is a huge island around the size of France, and it boasts around 9% of the entire world’s frog population.

Treefrogs from the Boophis genus are among the frogs. Treefrogs in general tend to look rather similar to one another, and it can be difficult for scientists to spot new species among them. 

Singling out the species 

But seven new species were singled out among the many frogs hopping around Madagascar thanks to their sounds.

While most frogs typically make croaking sounds, these seven frogs make high-pitched whistles. This, the researchers noted, is what is known as an “advertisement call,” named as such because the frogs are theorized to be sharing information about themselves to potential mates.

One possible reason for this is their habitat. Living among the streams of water in the mountainous areas of Madagascar, high-pitched whistles may be more audible than croaks.

That isn’t enough to determine if the frogs are new species. As such, the researchers backed their findings with DNA analysis. 

What they found was that genetically, there was enough information to conclude that the frogs were indeed separate species.

What names were the new species given?

There were eight new species in all, but only seven were named, given the scientific designations of B. kirki, B. picardi, B. siskoi, B. janewayae, B. archeri, B. pikei, and B. burnhamae.

Those names may not mean anything to the layperson, but diehard fans will recognize them as being references to some of the most famous characters in science fiction. Captain James T. Kirk from Star Trek: The Original Series and its associated movies; Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard, as well as several movies; Captain Benjamin Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space 9; Captain Katheryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager; Captain Jonathan Archer from Star Trek: Enterprise; Captain Christopher Pike from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; and Captain Michael Burnham from Star Trek: Discovery.

This is not the first time a new scientific discovery has been made and named after Star Trek, which itself is unsurprising given how long Star Trek has been running and how much it influenced generations of scientists raised on the adventures of the crews of the USS Enterprise, Deep Space 9, and Voyager.

For example, in 2022, scientists discovered microorganisms that consume methane, which were named the Borg, after the Star Trek race of the same name. But while that naming choice was appropriate due to the function they served – the Borg aliens assimilated things into their collective just as the real-life Borg absorbed and contained methane – these paragons of space exploration and scientific discovery don’t seem at first to have anything to do with some frogs found in Madagascar. 

But aside from the high-pitched whistles, there is one other thing the frogs have in common with Star Trek characters, and that’s the word “trek.” This is because, due to the remote locations where these frogs live, scientists had to do quite a bit of trekking to find them.

But while we might not be getting any frog-themed Star Trek theories anytime soon, the same spirit of adventure and scientific progress will be pushing the researchers behind this study further as they explore the final frog-tier.

Their ongoing mission: To seek out new frogs. To boldly go where no scientist has gone before.

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El Niño Southern Oscillation caused spike in 2023 temperatures, study finds

OCT. 15, 2024, by A. Reisewitz, U. of Miami

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-el-nio-southern-oscillation-spike.html

El Niño and La Niña are the warm and cool phases of a natural climate pattern across the tropical Pacific known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or “ENSO” for short. 

The pattern shifts back and forth irregularly every two to seven years, bringing predictable changes in ocean temperature and disrupting the normal wind and rainfall patterns across the tropics. 

These changes in the seasonal climate of the world's biggest ocean have a cascade of global side effects. 

Credit: NASA

A study by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science identified El Niño–Southern Oscillation as the primary cause of the spike in global surface temperature in 2023, not human-induced climate change. The rapid rise in global surface temperature in 2023 led to concerns and speculation among the public and media as to the cause.

The study, titled "The 2023 global warming spike was driven by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation" was published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

"Given the pressing nature of the issue, we wanted to thoroughly investigate the primary cause of last year's spike in temperatures," said the study's lead author Shiv Priyam Raghuraman, who completed the work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Rosenstiel School. "Our experiments showed that when human influences were absent from climate simulations, global warming spikes were still produced."

The researchers analyzed models that allow the climate to evolve without any influence from human activity to show that there is a 10% chance that a spike in temperatures occurs when an El Niño event was preceded by a long La Niña, as happened in 2022–2023.

Furthermore, nearly all spikes were associated with an El Niño event. The results indicate that the 2023 warming spike was primarily caused by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, rather than human-induced global warming events.

In 2023, global temperatures reached unprecedented levels, with many regions experiencing extreme heat, which contributed to one of the hottest years on record.

The year saw remarkable temperature anomalies, particularly in Europe and parts of the Middle East, where heat waves brought record highs, often exceeding 40°C (104°F). The oceans also reached higher-than-normal temperatures, resulting in weather extremes such as intense storms and prolonged droughts in various parts of the world.

"This result does not take away from the fact that human emission of greenhouse gases is responsible for the long-term warming trend and that this warming will continue until the net emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is brought to zero," said Brian Soden, a co-author of the study and a professor of atmospheric sciences at the Rosenstiel School.

El Niño is a climate phenomenon characterized by the periodic warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. It significantly impacts global weather patterns and can lead to environmental and climatic changes.

Human-induced changes are a significant driver of long-term climate change through the release of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide and methane, into the atmosphere. Activities such as burning fossil fuels for energy, deforestation, and industrial processes have led to a dramatic increase in these gases, trapping heat and resulting in a warming planet.

This study notes that ENSO variability against a background human-induced warming trend can lead to year-on-year spikes that are also historical temperature records.

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Did child labor fuel the ancient pottery industry?

Oct. 15, 2024, by Tel-Aviv U.

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-child-labor-fuel-ancient-pottery.html

Goblets (top) and miniature vessels (bottom) from Hama Period J. 

Credit: Stephen Lumsden, National Museum of Denmark.

Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University and the National Museum in Copenhagen have analyzed 450 pottery vessels made in Tel Hama, a town at the edge of the Ebla Kingdom, one of the most important Syrian kingdoms in the Early Bronze Age (about 4,500 years ago).

They found that two-thirds of the pottery vessels were made by children—starting at the ages of 7 and 8. Along with children's use for the kingdom's needs, they also found evidence of the children's independent creations outside the industrial framework, illustrating the spark of childhood even in early urban societies.

The research was led by Dr. Akiva Sanders, a Dan David Fellow at the Entin Faculty of Humanities, Tel Aviv University. The findings were published in the journal Childhood in the Past.

Dr. Sanders states, "Our research allows us a rare glimpse into the lives of children who lived in the area of the Ebla Kingdom, one of the oldest kingdoms in the world. We discovered that at its peak, roughly from 2400 to 2000 BCE, the cities associated with the kingdom began to rely on child labor for the industrial production of pottery.

"The children worked in workshops starting at the age of 7, and were specially trained to create cups as uniformly as possible—which were used in the kingdom in everyday life and at royal banquets."

As is well known, a person's fingerprints do not change throughout their life. For this reason, the size of the palm can be roughly deduced by measuring the density of the margins of the fingerprint—and from the size of the palm, the age and sex of the person can be estimated.

Pottery vessel made in Tel Hama. 

Credit: Tel-Aviv University




The pottery from Tel Hama, on the southern border of the Kingdom of Ebla, was excavated in the 1930s, and since then has been kept in the National Museum in Denmark. From the analysis of the fingerprints in the pottery, it appears that most of them were made by children. In the city of Hama city, two-thirds of the pottery was made by children. The other third was created by older men.

"At the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, some of the world's first city-kingdoms arose in the Levant and Mesopotamia," says Dr. Sanders. "We wanted to use the fingerprints on the pottery to understand how processes such as urbanization and the centralization of government functions affected the demographics of the ceramic industry.

"In the town of Hama, an ancient center for the production of ceramics, we initially see potters around the age of 12 and 13, with half the potters being under 18, and with boys and girls in equal proportions.

"This statistic changed with the formation of the Kingdom of Ebla when we saw that potters started to produce more goblets for banquets. And since more and more alcohol-fueled feasts were held, the cups were frequently broken—and therefore more cups needed to be made.

"Not only did the Kingdom begin to rely more and more on child labor, but the children were trained to make the cups as similar as possible. This is a phenomenon we also see in the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America: It is very easy to control children and teach them specific movements to create standardization in handicrafts."

However, there was one bright spot in the children's lives: making tiny figurines and miniature vessels for themselves. "These children taught each other to make miniature figurines and vessels, without the involvement of the adults," says Dr. Sanders.

"It is safe to say that they were created by children—and probably including those skilled children from the cup-making workshops. It seems that in these figurines the children expressed their creativity and their imagination."

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NASA Confirms Solar Maximum: Brace for Massive Flares and Epic Geomagnetic Storms

BY A. INTERRANTE, NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER, OCT. 16, 2024

https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-confirms-solar-maximum-brace-for-massive-flares-and-epic-geomagnetic-storms/

Images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory highlight the appearance of the Sun at solar minimum (left, December 2019) versus solar maximum (right, May 2024). 

These images are in the 171-angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light, which reveals the active regions on the Sun that are more common during solar maximum. 

Credit: NASA/SDO

NASA and NOAA have declared the Sun’s solar maximum, noting increased sunspot activity and heightened solar events that influence Earth’s space weather.

This period is linked to significant geomagnetic storms and aurora displays, with potential disruptions to satellites and communication systems.

Solar Maximum Announced by NASA and NOAA

During a teleconference on Tuesday, officials from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the international Solar Cycle Prediction Panel declared that the Sun has entered its solar maximum period. This phase, characterized by heightened magnetic activity, could continue for the next year.

The solar cycle is an approximately 11-year period during which the Sun oscillates between periods of low and high magnetic activity. At the cycle’s peak, the Sun undergoes a magnetic flip where its magnetic poles reverse positions—akin to Earth’s North and South poles switching places every decade. This transition marks the shift from a quieter phase to one of intense activity and frequent solar storms.

Visible light images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory highlight the appearance of the Sun at solar minimum (left, Dec. 2019) versus solar maximum (right, May 2024). 

During solar minimum, the Sun is often spotless. Sunspots are associated with solar activity and are used to track solar cycle progress. 

Credit: NASA/SDO

Sunspot Monitoring and Solar Activity

To monitor and forecast the stages of the solar cycle, and ultimately, solar activity, NASA and NOAA track sunspots, which are cooler areas on the Sun’s surface. These spots arise from concentrated magnetic fields and are key indicators of the Sun’s more active regions. These regions of intense and complex magnetic fields are not only visually striking but are also the origins of powerful solar eruptions.

“During solar maximum, the number of sunspots, and therefore, the amount of solar activity, increases,” said Jamie Favors, director, Space Weather Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This increase in activity provides an exciting opportunity to learn about our closest star — but also causes real effects at Earth and throughout our solar system.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMs7MOBF5ec&t=1s

The solar cycle is the natural cycle of the Sun as it transitions between low and high activity. During the most active part of the cycle, known as solar maximum, the Sun can unleash immense explosions of light, energy, and solar radiation — all of which create conditions known as space weather. Space weather can affect satellites and astronauts in space, as well as communications systems — such as radio and GPS — and power grids on Earth. 

Credit: Beth Anthony/NASA

Effects of Solar Activity on Earth

Solar activity strongly influences conditions in space known as space weather. This can affect satellites and astronauts in space, as well as communications and navigation systems — such as radio and GPS — and power grids on Earth. When the Sun is most active, space weather events become more frequent. Solar activity has led to increased aurora visibility and impacts on satellites and infrastructure in recent months.

During May 2024, a barrage of large solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) launched clouds of charged particles and magnetic fields toward Earth, creating the strongest geomagnetic storm at Earth in two decades — and possibly among the strongest displays of auroras on record in the past 500 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOfFNFgzJ9I

From May 3 through May 9, 2024, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory observed 82 notable solar flares. The flares came mainly from two active regions on the Sun called AR 13663 and AR 13664. 

This video highlights all flares classified at M5 or higher with nine categorized as X-class solar flares. 

Credit NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Solar Maximum’s Duration and Peak

“This announcement doesn’t mean that this is the peak of solar activity we’ll see this solar cycle,” said Elsayed Talaat, director of space weather operations at NOAA. “While the Sun has reached the solar maximum period, the month that solar activity peaks on the Sun will not be identified for months or years.”

Scientists will not be able to determine the exact peak of this solar maximum period for many months because it’s only identifiable after they’ve tracked a consistent decline in solar activity after that peak. However, scientists have identified that the last two years on the Sun have been part of this active phase of the solar cycle, due to the consistently high number of sunspots during this period. Scientists anticipate that the maximum phase will last another year or so before the Sun enters the declining phase, which leads back to solar minimum. Since 1989, the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel — an international panel of experts sponsored by NASA and NOAA — has worked together to make their prediction for the next solar cycle.

Sunspot number over the previous 24 solar cycles. Scientists use sunspots to track solar cycle progress; the dark spots are associated with solar activity, often as the origins for giant explosions — such as solar flares or coronal mass ejections — which can spew light, energy, and solar material out into space. Credit: NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center

Historical Perspective on Solar Cycles

Solar cycles have been tracked by astronomers since Galileo first observed sunspots in the 1600s. Each solar cycle is different — some cycles peak for larger and shorter amounts of time, and others have smaller peaks that last longer.

“Solar Cycle 25 sunspot activity has slightly exceeded expectations,” said Lisa Upton, co-chair of the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel and lead scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. “However, despite seeing a few large storms, they aren’t larger than what we might expect during the maximum phase of the cycle.”

The most powerful flare of the solar cycle so far was an X9.0 on October 3 (X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength).

NOAA anticipates additional solar and geomagnetic storms during the current solar maximum period, leading to opportunities to spot auroras over the next several months, as well as potential technology impacts. Additionally, though less frequent, scientists often see fairly significant storms during the declining phase of the solar cycle.

The Solar Cycle 25 forecast, as produced by the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel. Sunspot number is an indicator of solar cycle strength — the higher the sunspot number, the stronger the cycle. 

Credit: NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center

Future of Space Weather Research and Predictions

NASA and NOAA are preparing for the future of space weather research and prediction. In December 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission will make its closest-ever approach to the Sun, beating its own record of closest human-made object to the Sun. This will be the first of three planned approaches for Parker at this distance, helping researchers to understand space weather right at the source.

NASA is launching several missions over the next year that will help us better understand space weather and its impacts across the solar system.

This graphic shows the Heliophysics Division fleet as of July 2024. 

Green indicates missions in operation, blue indicates missions in the extended operation, and yellow indicates future missions. 

Numbers in parentheses indicate how many spacecraft the mission currently includes. 

Credit: NASA

Space Weather Research Supporting Artemis Campaign

Space weather predictions are critical for supporting the spacecraft and astronauts of NASA’s Artemis campaign. Surveying this space environment is a vital part of understanding and mitigating astronaut exposure to space radiation.

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Humans can distinguish odors with millisecond precision, study shows

OCT. 14, 2024, by Chinese Academy of Sciences

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-humans-distinguish-odors-millisecond-precision.html

Airborne chemical compounds are drawn into the nose with each sniff we take. Our olfactory apparatus resolves their fine dynamics within each sniff, forming a temporal code that gives rise to our varying odor perceptions over time. 

Credit: Mr. Wu Yuli & Dr. Zhou Wen

When we inhale, airborne chemicals enter our nose, creating the "odor" we detect. These chemicals are then expelled when we exhale. Each breath lasts 3–5 seconds, which seems to limit how quickly we can perceive odors. Chemical changes that occur within a single breath appear to be combined into one odor. Because of this, our sense of smell, or olfaction, is often considered a slow sense.

Now, however, researchers led by Dr. Zhou Wen from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have challenged this view. Their study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, shows that human olfactory perception can detect fine chemical changes within the duration of a single sniff.

Dr. Zhou's team developed a unique sniff-triggered device that controls odor delivery with a precision of 18 milliseconds—about the duration of a frame on a regular LCD display (60 Hz). Using this device, the team created temporal odor mixtures, presenting two odors one after the other with precisely measured delays. They tested 229 participants across five experiments to see if they could distinguish these mixtures.

The researchers found that when two odor compounds, A and B, were presented in different orders (A before B and B before A), participants could tell the difference when the delay between the compounds was just 60 milliseconds—about a third of the time it takes to blink. For comparison, the frequency at which flickering green and red lights appear continuous is around 10–20 Hz (50–100 ms resolution).

Participants' ability to distinguish the odors improved with longer delays between the compounds and did not depend on knowing the correct order. They could distinguish "A before B" from "B before A" by smell, even if they couldn't identify the order. This ability was not influenced by factors like odor intensity, pleasantness, pungency, or the total amount of odorant molecules in a sniff.

These findings support the existence of a temporal code for odor identity. By providing precise control over odor delivery that aligns with natural sniffing dynamics, this research opens new avenues for studying the temporal aspects of olfactory perception and developing olfactory displays.

"A sniff of odors is not a long exposure shot of the chemical environment that averages out temporal variations. Rather, it incorporates a temporal sensitivity on par with that for color perception," said Dr. Zhou, the study's corresponding author.

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Study suggests that 'Jedi' rodents remotely move matter using sound to enhance their sense of smell

OCT. 14, 2024, by Bert Gambini, U. at Buffalo

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-jedi-rodents-remotely.html

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Scientists have debated the purpose of the ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) produced by rodents since the discovery of these sounds in the 1950s. There's a wide research consensus suggesting USVs are a form of social communication, a courtship display, which though inaudible to humans, might otherwise be compared to the calls of certain birds.

But a University at Buffalo expert in bioacoustics proposes in an article published in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews that rodents aren't vocalizing to whisper sweet nothings, but rather to shake up their surroundings in ways that influence how inhaled particles enter their noses, suggesting that rodents use sound to enhance their sense of smell.

"This phenomenon has never been observed before, or I believe even suspected, in any animal," says Eduardo Mercado III, Ph.D., a professor of psychology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. "They're creating new pathways of information by manipulating their environment and controlling the molecular interactions of particles around them."

They're not flirting; they're surveying their surroundings, he says. It's a radically different process and the findings could have far-reaching implications ranging from the development of treatments for psychological disorders; to better understanding the evolutionary drivers of many cognitive processes; to technological advancement.

"It's so far off the scale of what we know that it's like we're observing 'Jedi' rats," says Mercado. "It almost seems like magic."

But why did Mercado start looking for something that had never been assumed possible?

His background studying humpback whale song led to an invitation to a meeting on USVs. Reviewing existing research, Mercado found inconsistencies in rodents' vocal behaviors that didn't fit with the idea that USVs help males entice females.

Rodents explore their environment by stroking surfaces with their whiskers, visually scanning, and incessantly sniffing. Mercado discovered that studies on vocalizations that also monitored sniffing showed that rodents immediately sniffed after producing each USV.

"That could be a coincidence, or it might suggest the two are functionally related," he says. "I knew that techniques for using ultrasound to manipulate particles are used in the field of vibroacoustics and thought immediately that might also work for animals."

Vibroacoustics, or artificially produced ultrasonic vibrations, cause airborne particles to cluster, leading Mercado to suggest that rodents are using USVs to create odor clusters enhancing the reception of pheromones (chemical signals), thus making it easier for the vocalizer to detect and identify friends, strangers, and competitors.

Researchers use rodent vocalizations, particularly those of rats and mice, as a model for studying a variety of human disorders, especially those related to communication, social behavior, and emotional processing, including anxiety and depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, and autism. If tests confirm Mercado's hypothesis, researchers will have to reevaluate findings from these studies.

"Rodents are at the forefront of biological research," says Jessica Zhou, a student researcher at Harvard University, and the paper's co-author. "Rodents, especially rats and mice, are the unsung heroes of the scientific world."

From an evolutionary perspective, there is evidence suggesting the sense of smell used in exploration drove the evolution of more sophisticated cognitive processes, including attention and memory.

"Understanding this system might help us discover how it all started," says Mercado.

And that understanding can also lead to new technologies, just as understanding vision in nocturnal animals contributed to the development of night vision goggles.

"The fact that we were oblivious to anything like this being possible means we don't have the understanding yet for how nanoparticles might be sonically manipulated for complex uses," says Mercado. "But we might have a pretty big head start if we confirm that nature has already solved the problem for us."

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Modern mass extinction in an Ecuadorean cloud forest found to be a mirage

Oct. 15, 2024, by Harvard U.

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-modern-mass-extinction-ecuadorean-cloud.html

Aerial image of farmland for dairy cattle next to a surviving forest patch.

 Credit: Dawson White

One of the most notorious mass extinction events in modern times occurred on a hilltop in coastal Ecuador in the 1980s. Ninety species of plants known from nowhere else on Earth—many of them new to science and not yet given a name—went extinct when the last cloud forests of the Centinela range were cleared for agriculture. The cautionary tale of Centinela has long been a driving force in the fight to save the world's rainforests. But did it really happen?

In a new study published in Nature Plants, an international team of botanists reveals that, indeed, it did not happen. The researchers—who spent years of scouring natural history museums, biodiversity databases, and the slopes of Centinela—found no proof of any extinctions, but abundant evidence that Centinela's flora lives on in the scattered remaining fragments of coastal Ecuador's forests.

"It's a miracle," said lead author Dawson White, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. "Many of Centinela's plants are still on the brink of extinction, but fortunately the reports of their demise were exaggerated. There's still time to save them and turn this story around."

The study revealed that one reason earlier researchers overstated the likelihood of extinction at Centinela was due to the fact that those researchers were collecting a bounty of new and undescribed species, with limited information on which plant species grow where in the world's most diverse forests. In the decades since, those early collections have provided more than 50 new species.

As well, as botanists began to collect more widely and natural history museums digitized their specimens, plants previously thought to have gone extinct at Centinela have turned up at other sites in South America, while others were relocated in situ by the team. Of the 90 species originally presumed extinct, only one has not yet been rediscovered or confirmed to grow elsewhere.

"Understanding which plants are growing in a given Andean cloud forest is a monumental task because you will undoubtedly find new species," said White.

"What our investigation highlights is that it takes decades of work from taxonomic experts to describe new species in such forests. And only once we have names for these species that are then noted in our scientific networks can we begin to understand where else these plants grow and their risk of extinction."

The extant wildflower Gasteranthus extinctus. 

Credit: Thomas Couvreur

Ecuador, though small, is incredibly diverse, offering a good illustration of how challenging it is for scientists to monitor and protect tropical biodiversity. It contains more than 20,000 plant species, 4,000 of which occur nowhere else on Earth, hundreds of which lack names, and none of which have been fully mapped. Given these challenges, the study highlights the vital role of herbaria collections.

"Herbaria gives us the fundamental 'what' and 'where' of plant biodiversity," said co-author Juan Guevara, Universidad de Las Américas in Quito. "They are what made it possible to solve this mystery. They're the basis of everything we know about which plants are threatened with extinction."

The authors also found that Centinela's forests are more resilient than originally thought. Recent field work has pinpointed a number of fragments of original forest that were previously overlooked due to their tiny sizes and remote locations. The team found these postage-sized remnants, often less than an acre in size, to harbor many species thought to have gone extinct—including Gasteranthus extinctus, a wildflower named after its own extinction that was rediscovered by the team in 2021.

"Over the last two years we've surveyed a dozen fragments in the region," said co-author Andrea Fernández, Northwestern University and the Chicago Botanic Garden. "They're tiny islands lost in a sea of plantations, but they're still full of astonishing plants."

Not only were the researchers surprised to find much of the old Centinela flora intact, they were doubly surprised to discover a bounty of new and previously undescribed plants as well. Over the past five years, researchers have described or discovered eight new species ranging in size from miniscule wildflowers to towering canopy trees.

Dawn mist at sunrise under one of the dozen surviving forest fragments in the Centinela region of Ecuador. 

Credit: Nigel Pitman

"One of our most astonishing discoveries is a totally new species of canopy tree in the Cotton family," said Fernández.

"It's one of the tallest trees we have encountered, but it's extremely rare; there could be only 15 individuals alive in Centinela. It's now being actively targeted by local loggers, so we are rushing to describe this new tree species and get its seeds growing in botanic gardens."

Once given a wide berth because of its gloomy past, Centinela is now buzzing with scientists who see in its decimated forests abundant opportunities for research and conservation. In Ecuador, botanical gardens are establishing collections of the region's rarest, most threatened plants, while conservationists collect seeds for future reforestation efforts and look for long-term solutions to keep the remaining fragments standing.

At the global scale, the resurrection at Centinela has inspired the launch of a new conservation initiative by Earth imaging company Planet Labs, which promises to boost conservation projects with high-quality satellite imagery.

While the new study corrects the record on one mass extinction event, it does not cast doubt on the biodiversity crisis underway around the world. According to the IUCN Red List, more than 45,000 species on Earth are currently threatened with extinction, including nearly half of all amphibians, a third of all corals, and a quarter of all mammals. Scientists at Kew Botanical Gardens curated a list of the more than 800 plant species presumed to have gone extinct to date.

"Plants in coastal Ecuador and a lot of other hard-hit places in the tropics are finding a way to hang on in the last nooks and crannies," said co-author Nigel Pitman, the Field Museum of Natural History. "They won't survive for long under those conditions, but we've still got time to act before they're gone forever."

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