It Turns Out Chihuahuas Are Actually Part Coyote

15 Sept. 2026, By J. Cockerill

https://www.sciencealert.com/it-turns-out-chihuahuas-are-actually-part-coyote

A family resemblance? (Mark Newman/The Image Bank/Getty Images & David Leahy/Compassionate Eye Foundation/Getty Images)

Chihuahuas are really weird dogs. We love them, but no doubt there's something a bit… quirky about those little guys.

A new investigation into the ancestry of dog genetics, reported in Nature Communications, could go some way to explaining why.

Chihuahuas, it turns out, share some genes with wild coyotes (Canis latrans).

DNA – the genetic blueprint recorded in every cell of a living organism's body – encodes the history of evolution.

Parents pass their DNA on to their offspring, and while mutations may sometimes reorganize the template slightly, it's DNA that allows scientists to trace ancestry back through time.

Embracing the coyote within… 

(P_PHOTO/iStock/Getty Images)



It's not an easy history to read, but modern computing is helping decipher this vast genetic database to help us make sense of it.

A team based at Stanford University was testing out a new pair of software programs, named Gnomix and Gnofix, which look at the genomes of many animals at once and estimate their relationship to each other, mapping out their evolutionary history.

This process – which is technically called local ancestry inference, or LAI – can help researchers figure out the ancestry of specific sections of DNA in an animal's genome.

Which is how they stumbled on a sizable quirk in the genome of the world's tiniest dog.

Chihuahuas, they realized, share multiple segments of their genome with wild coyotes.

There was already some evidence that well-known modern Mexican breeds – the Chihuahua and the hairless Xoloitzcuintli, often referred to as Xolo – were a mix of European and pre-Columbian canines.

The majority of domestic dog breeds today are of European descent, but these two have managed to hold on to some fragments of their 'New World' ancestry.

The Gnomix software has helped confirm the North American heritage of the Chihuahua and the Xolo, with coyote genes in the Chihuahua family tree, and Arctic dog ancestry making up more than 4 percent of the Xolo genome.

The study didn't reveal exactly when coyote genes might've entered the Chihuahua lineage, but research has suggested it occurred before Columbus arrived to the Americas.

We also don't know if the interbreeding was deliberate or accidental, or which traits Chihuahuas might've inherited from their indigenous ancestors – though there's something about their massive ears and expressive howls that are awfully reminiscent of coyotes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzoM70WknWA

Unlike some other lap dogs, Chihuahuas are known for their independent, proud, and self-assured natures, despite their size. We'd like to think it could be the wild coyote within, though it is difficult to say for sure.

"Wild coyotes and wolves have been found to hybridize naturally, especially in geographical areas where 'wolf-like' behavioral traits are beneficial," zoologist Jacqueline Boyd, who was not involved in the study, explained in an article for The Conversation.

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

Coyotes are much smaller than wolves, but they're still far from the diminutive dimensions of a Chihuahua.

The Chihuahua's miniature stature was probably more a result of artificial selection, with humans breeding for specific traits, than anything else.

"There is some evidence for the presence of diminutive dogs among pre-contact Mesoamerican cultures, but how these relate to Chihuahuas is unknown," Boyd wrote.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Earth May Be Harboring a Hidden Stash of Water, Up to 1,800 Miles Below The Surface

15 Sept. 2026, By S. Vartan

https://www.sciencealert.com/earth-may-be-harboring-a-hidden-stash-of-water-up-to-1800-miles-below-the-surface

(Olexsii Mach/Canva Pro)

The phrase "water is life" is true – water makes all known life on Earth possible.

It's also a key component in lubricating the super-slow movement of Earth's mantle layer, hydrating those rock layers enough for them to ooze and slide past each other.

This is important to the tectonic cycle, which in turn helps regulate climate over geological time. That water also allows for important recycling of rocks and volatile compounds through the mantle.

"Liquid water is the key component of Earth's habitability," geoscientist Alfred Wilson from the University of Leeds in the UK writes in a commentary accompanying a new study about Earth's interior waters.

How did that water get into the mantle?

One model suggests asteroids brought the water to Earth, and it stayed hydrated as the planet formed. Or maybe the water came later, hydrating a previously dry mantle.

Where exactly that water is currently located within the miles-deep mantle layer of the planet's interior hasn't previously been well understood.

The new research suggests the water is likely located near the boundary between the mantle and its liquid outer core, where seismic tests have shown there are mysterious "ultralow velocity zones."

The lower mantle extends from about 660 to 2,900 kilometers (373–1,802 miles) beneath the surface. Its most abundant minerals, including bridgmanite and ferropericlase, are thought to be largely dry.

Other minerals can hold water at depth, but many either need unusual compositions to remain stable or break down at the high temperatures found in the deepest mantle.

So the researchers went looking for another possibility.

They used laser-heated diamond anvil cells – devices that squeeze tiny samples between two diamond tips just a paper-thickness-width apart, while lasers blast them with heat – to recreate high temperatures and pressures.

Pressure–temperature conditions for the formation of iron oxyhydroxides.

 (Yuan et al., Nature Geoscience, 2026)



Under those conditions, the scientists have identified two previously unknown iron oxyhydroxides (Fe5O12Hx and Fe7O12Hx), that could lock away enormous amounts of water.

The experiments show that these phases can exist under deep-mantle conditions, but do not directly demonstrate that they are present inside Earth.

"Identifying these iron oxyhydroxides is important because they are seemingly stable, dense phases that capture and retain water across a wide range of lower-mantle conditions," writes Wilson in his commentary.

These minerals formed even when water was scarce. In some experiments, the starting material contained less than 0.1 percent water, yet even those trace hydrogen concentrations were enough to stabilize the new phases.

That's important because Earth's deep interior isn't like some giant underground ocean. Any water stored there would have to be incorporated into minerals, often under conditions where free water is essentially absent.

These new minerals appear unusually well suited to the job.

They are both stable at the extreme conditions of the lowermost mantle and substantially denser than surrounding mantle rock.

That means that when a primordial molten "basal magma ocean" cooled and crystallized early in Earth's history, these water-bearing minerals could have formed and then sunk toward the core-mantle boundary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dht2C1nMtCo

This hidden water may not necessarily stay hidden, because as water-bearing material is dragged upward by mantle circulation, decreasing pressure could destabilize the minerals, releasing their water into other mantle phases.

Eventually, some of that water could, and probably does, make its way back toward the surface through mantle plumes and volcanism.

The discovery also sheds light on a previous mystery. A mineral known as the "H-phase," observed in earlier high-pressure experiments, appears to match one of the newly identified oxyhydroxides.

The researchers suggest that hydrogen contamination from trace moisture – rather than an entirely new dry mineral – may have helped produce the puzzling phase in earlier experiments.

"Apparently, even very small amounts of hydrogen are sufficient to stabilize these highly hydrated iron compounds," says mineral physicist and crystallographer Leonid Dubrovinsky from the University of Bayreuth.

There are still big unanswered questions, and the picture is "incomplete" according to Wilson.

Exactly how much water these minerals contain needs to be determined, and what happens when they reach the core-mantle boundary remains uncertain. It is also unclear how easily and over what time periods water stored in these deep minerals can ultimately return to the surface.

Still, the discovery suggests that Earth's water cycle may extend all the way to the edge of the core, and according to Wilson, these newly identified minerals "represent a breakthrough in the mystery of how the Earth obtained and retained its water."

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Scientists Discover Rain Can Damage Paint With Tiny Electrical “Lightning”

By Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Sept. 14, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-discover-rain-can-damage-paint-with-tiny-electrical-lightning/

Drops can become electrically charged as they slide across surfaces. If they then fall onto a coating—such as on a car—the coating can be corroded by the drop’s electrical discharge and permanently damaged. 

Credit: Katharina Maisenbacher / MPI-P

Charged raindrops may damage paint with tiny electrical discharges that act like microscopic lightning.

Weather gradually wears down painted and coated surfaces, something anyone who has had to repaint a fence has probably seen firsthand. The same problem affects far larger structures as well. Landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge require repeated repainting and maintenance to keep their protective coatings intact.

Scientists have traditionally blamed two major processes for this kind of deterioration. One is mechanical stress, where repeated impacts and friction from droplets slowly weaken a coating or cause pieces of it to flake away. The other is chemical damage, especially when water contains corrosive substances such as acids or salts.

A Hidden Electrical Source of Damage

Now, researchers have identified another factor that may contribute to coating failure: the electrical charge carried by water droplets.

The work was led by Hans-Jürgen Butt, director at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, together with researchers from the University of Bonn, South China University of Technology, MIT, and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

“A few years ago, we investigated the physics behind how water droplets become charged as they slide across surfaces. This is a kind of ‘friction electricity’ in droplets and is physically much more complex than previously assumed,” says Rüdiger Berger, group leader in the “Physics at Interfaces” department. “When such charged droplets strike a coating, they discharge locally and can puncture the layer in specific spots like a small flash of lightning—with consequences for the coating’s durability.”

In other words, droplets can pick up electrical charge while moving across certain materials. When they later strike a coated surface, that charge can be released at a very small point, creating localized electrical damage.

Testing Thousands of Water Droplets

To test the effect, the researchers first released droplets onto a surface covered evenly with Teflon, a material widely known for its use on frying pans.

When the droplets carried no electrical charge, the coating showed no visible changes under a microscope, even after 3,000 impacts.

The team then changed the experiment by allowing droplets to roll across common materials before they hit the Teflon surface. These included a houseplant leaf, PVC, and polystyrene, such as that found in plastic windows.

As the droplets traveled across those surfaces, they accumulated electrical charge. They were then allowed to fall onto the Teflon coating.

After 3,000 charged droplets had struck the surface, microscopic examination revealed clear changes both in the coating and in the metal underneath it.

Different Surfaces Produce Different Charges

How much charge a droplet collected varied substantially depending on the material it crossed.

“The charge a droplet acquires as it slides depends heavily on the specific surface—we measured differences of up to a factor of ten,” explains Zhongyuan Ni, the study’s first author. “Regardless of this, we were able to detect changes in the coating in all experiments.”

The results suggest that electrical effects from moving water may be another important piece of the puzzle in understanding how protective surfaces deteriorate over time.

Toward Longer Lasting Protective Coatings

The researchers hope the findings, published in the journal Nature, could eventually help engineers develop coatings that are more resistant to this newly identified form of damage.

Such improvements could have applications ranging from cultural heritage sites and major infrastructure to cars and ordinary painted surfaces around the home, including the familiar garden fence.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

New Mexico’s Largest Reservoir Was Nearly Full. Now It’s at 1.4%

By L. Doermann, NASA Earth Observ., Sept. 9, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/new-mexicos-largest-reservoir-was-nearly-full-now-its-at-1-4/

New Mexico’s Elephant Butte Reservoir was nearly full on June 2, 1994 (left), in contrast to very low levels during periods of drought on July 8, 2013 (center), and July 27, 2026 (right). The images were acquired with the TM (Thematic Mapper) on Landsat 5 and the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 and Landsat 9. 

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

New Mexico’s largest reservoir plunged to just 1.4 percent capacity in July 2026, revealing the dramatic impact of prolonged drought and record early snowmelt.

NASA is using satellite data to help water managers understand the shrinking supply and prepare for future shortages.

When astronaut John Glenn remarked on the landscape below him while orbiting Earth in 1962, one feature caught his attention: a green, irrigated valley northwest of El Paso, Texas, surrounded by desert. Human-made lakes along the Rio Grande have helped make agriculture possible in this otherwise dry region. Irrigation water supports fields of alfalfa, cotton, onions, pecans, and Hatch green chiles, one of the area’s best-known crops.

Drought Tightens Its Grip on the Rio Grande

That agricultural lifeline has come under growing pressure as unusually dry conditions have persisted across the Rio Grande basin. Extreme drought has affected the region for several years, reducing the water available to replenish rivers and reservoirs.

Conditions became even more difficult in 2026. At the Rio Grande’s headwaters in the southern Rocky Mountains, the earliest snowmelt on record further reduced the amount of water available later in the season.

New Mexico’s Largest Reservoir Falls to 1.4 Percent

Together, these conditions helped push Elephant Butte Reservoir, the largest reservoir in New Mexico, to its lowest level since 1971. When the image above was captured on July 27, 2026 (right), the reservoir held just 1.4 percent of its capacity.

The contrast with earlier decades is striking. Elephant Butte was nearly full on June 2, 1994 (left), and water levels remained relatively high through much of the period from 1985 to 2000. During another major drought, the reservoir reached its annual low of 2.9 percent capacity on July 8, 2013 (center).

The exceptionally low water in 2026 exposed debris that had been hidden along the shoreline and left boat ramps at Elephant Butte Lake State Park coated with sediment. However, the reservoir appears to have reached its lowest point for the year in late July. Water releases for agriculture ended after July 28, according to state officials, allowing the reservoir to begin slowly gaining water again.

Water volume data from the Texas Water Development Board shows how the level of Elephant Butte Reservoir has varied from the lake’s creation in 1915 to summer 2026. 

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

Managing a Shrinking Water Supply

The prolonged drought has underscored the broader challenges facing the Rio Grande and the communities that depend on it. Water users in both New Mexico and Texas draw on surface water and groundwater throughout the valley. With supplies under increasing strain, managers must carefully plan how water is stored, allocated, and shared.

Several projects supported by NASA’s Western Water Action Office (WWAO) are designed to give water managers better information for making those decisions. The projects combine satellite observations with other measurements to provide a more detailed picture of changing water conditions across the region.
NASA Satellites Help Track the Rio Grande

In one effort, researchers developed a model that uses NASA satellite observations of factors including soil moisture and evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration measures water moving from the land into the atmosphere through evaporation and plant activity. The resulting near-real-time tool supplements the Elephant Butte Irrigation District’s existing system for allocating water.

Another project combined satellite measurements of water surface heights with observations collected by drones and instruments on the ground. Researchers used the combined data to examine how groundwater pumping changes the flow of the Rio Grande. The WWAO says this information can help water managers administer water rights.

NASA scientists are also participating in a federal study focused on the Upper Rio Grande. The effort seeks to better understand regional water needs, estimate how much water may be available in the future, and develop data-based tools that can help communities manage increasingly limited supplies.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Thawing Permafrost Is Releasing Carbon, but Something Unexpected Happens

BY ALFRED WEGENER INST., HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR POLAR AND MARINE RESEARCH, SEPT. 13, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/thawing-permafrost-is-releasing-carbon-but-something-unexpected-happens/

Permafrost in the Arctic stores large quantities of organic carbon. When the frozen ground thaws or coastal sections erode, this carbon can enter the sea, where microorganisms can break it down and convert it into climate-damaging greenhouse gases.

 Credit: Alfred-Wegener-Institut / Jaroslav Obu

Much of the ancient carbon released from thawing Arctic permafrost appears to end up trapped in seabed sediments rather than quickly returning to the atmosphere.

The Arctic’s frozen ground holds an enormous reservoir of organic carbon. As permafrost thaws and coastlines erode, some of that carbon is carried into the ocean, where microorganisms can break it down and potentially turn it into greenhouse gases.

Until now, scientists have had only a limited idea of how much of that carbon ultimately escapes into the atmosphere and how much remains trapped in the ocean. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute and MARUM – Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen have now investigated that question along the permafrost coast of Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island) in Canada.

By studying sediment cores from the seafloor, the team found that a substantial amount of carbon from land is being stored in seabed sediments. They also uncovered an unexpected biological preference: the microorganisms living there appear to favor fresh marine carbon over the much older carbon released from permafrost. The findings were published in Nature Geoscience.

A Vast Carbon Reservoir Is Starting to Thaw

Permafrost ecosystems across the Arctic contain roughly 1,300 gigatonnes of organic carbon, much of it derived from ancient plant remains. Another 400 gigatonnes are stored in sediments in oceans and river deltas.

That frozen carbon reservoir is becoming increasingly vulnerable as the Arctic warms faster than any other region on Earth. As permafrost thaws, rivers and collapsing coastlines can carry its carbon into the Arctic Ocean.

“Consequently, up to 0.02 gigatonnes are entering the sea each year, and according to forecasts, this outflow could rise by 70 to 150 percent by the year 2100,” says Dr Manuel Ruben, lead author of the study from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). “However, how much of this is released back into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas and how much is stored in the seabed has, until now, been largely unknown.”

Knowing what happens to this carbon is important because it helps scientists estimate how strongly thawing permafrost could influence future climate change.

Sediment Cores Reveal Where the Carbon Goes

To investigate, the researchers collected sediment cores at different distances from the coast of Herschel Island. Together, those cores preserve about 50 years of deposits.

The results showed that large amounts of organic carbon are indeed being swept away from the coast, but relatively little of it becomes part of the ocean’s active carbon cycle.

“Although the sea here carries away huge quantities of organic carbon from the coast, surprisingly little of it ends up in the ocean’s active carbon cycle,” says Manuel Ruben. “Microorganisms convert around ten percent of the organic carbon from the sediments into gases, which rise into the water and can then enter our atmosphere.”

Most of the remaining carbon stays stored in the seafloor.

Following Carbon With Isotopes

The scientists also examined how quickly permafrost material builds up on the seabed and what happens to it after burial.

They measured dissolved inorganic carbon inside tiny spaces between sediment particles – known as pore water. This allowed them to estimate how much CO2 microorganisms had produced after breaking down organic matter.

The team then studied the isotopic makeup of that carbon to determine where the microbes’ food came from.

”Carbon isotopes represent our atomic indicators that can identify the food source of the microorganisms,” says Prof. Gesine Mollenhauer, a geochemist at the AWI and co-spokesperson for the ‘The Ocean Floor – Earth’s Unexplored Interface’ cluster of Excellence. “The 13C isotope, for example, tells us whether they have consumed carbon from land or from the sea. By way of the 14C isotope, we were able to determine whether the single-celled organisms preferred old organic carbon from permafrost or fresh organic carbon from algae remains.”

“Gourmet” Bacteria Prefer Fresher Food

That analysis revealed a striking pattern. The microorganisms buried in the sediments seem to favor fresh carbon from marine sources, such as recently produced algae, rather than older carbon released from thawing permafrost.

“The sediment is home to ‘gourmet’ bacteria that apparently prefer fresh carbon stemming from, for example, more recent algal remains over the ‘old’ carbon from permafrost deposits,” explains Gesine Mollenhauer.

That preference suggests carbon carried into the sea from land may contribute less to atmospheric greenhouse gas levels than scientists had feared.

Still, the researchers caution that the picture is not complete.

“However, we do need further research here. This is because some of the organic carbon from the permafrost may already have been broken down before it reaches the seabed.”

Thawing Permafrost Also Changes Coastal Ecosystems

The movement of carbon from land into the sea could affect more than greenhouse gas emissions. It can also change the chemistry and biology of coastal waters that help support food sources for local communities.

Material eroded from the coast can reduce the amount of sunlight penetrating the water in two ways. Freshly broken sediment makes the water cloudier, while dissolved organic carbon can darken it.

That matters because single-celled organisms such as algae depend on sunlight to produce biomass and oxygen. This process, known as primary production, provides the foundation of marine food webs that support fish, crustaceans and seals.

Researchers plan to study these connections further during the international ‘Arctic Pulse’ campaign scheduled for 2027. Using the Polarstern research icebreaker, AWI research aircraft and land-based measurements, scientists will investigate how rapid environmental change is reshaping Arctic ecosystems.

Improving Climate Predictions

The new results give scientists a clearer picture of what happens after carbon escapes from thawing Arctic permafrost and reaches the ocean.

“Our study shows, more precisely than ever before, how much carbon is safely stored in the seabed – and just how much of the decomposed material actually originates from the old permafrost,” says Manuel Ruben. “This provides an important foundation for climate models that can predict the consequences of permafrost thawing for the global climate.”

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Your Brain Cleans Itself While You Sleep – Scientists Just Discovered How Fast

By L. Auburn, U. of Rochester, Sept. 12, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/your-brain-cleans-itself-while-you-sleep-scientists-just-discovered-how-fast/

Scientists have used AI to measure the brain’s hidden waste-clearing flow, a process that becomes especially active during deep sleep. They found that fluid moves much faster around the brain’s open spaces than it does through deeper tissue, where it slows by about 50 times. 

Credit: Shutterstock

AI reveals a striking two-speed cleanup system that helps the sleeping brain clear away harmful waste.

During deep sleep, a waterlike fluid moves through and around the brain, helping remove metabolic waste associated with disorders including Alzheimer’s disease. This cleanup process is known as the glymphatic system. It was first described in 2012 by Maiken Nedergaard, a pioneering neuroscientist and co-director of the University of Rochester Center for Translational Neuromedicine.

Although scientists have learned a great deal about the glymphatic system, major questions remain about how it actually works. One of the biggest uncertainties is the speed at which fluid travels through different parts of the brain. Measuring such slow circulation in a living brain is especially challenging because researchers need to observe it without causing permanent damage.

The Challenge of Measuring Brain Fluid Flow

“You can put a microscope on a small patch of the brain and watch what’s happening there with a lot of detail, and we’ve worked with that type of data in the past, but it’s only a tiny view of the overall process,” says Professor Douglas Kelley from URochester’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. “If you want to image whole brains, an MRI is a great approach because it gives you a three-dimensional view. But an MRI has serious limitations too, the biggest of which is that it does not capture the fluid flow velocity, at least not for flows this slow.”

To overcome that limitation, Kelley and researchers from URochester, Brown University, and the University of Copenhagen turned to artificial intelligence. Their new study, published in Science Advances, describes a method that uses physics-informed artificial intelligence to extract fluid flow speeds from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data.

The researchers trained neural networks using videos that showed dye spreading through brain tissue over time. From those changes, the AI models could estimate both the speed of the fluid and the permeability of the surrounding brain tissue.

The Brain’s Cleanup System Has Two Speeds

The results revealed two major pathways by which the glymphatic system helps remove particles from the brain, including amyloid beta proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers found that these pathways operate at dramatically different speeds.

In more open areas around the brain, including the region between the skull and the brain’s surface, the waterlike fluid travels at a few microns per second. Deeper inside brain tissue, however, the fluid moves far more slowly, flowing at a rate roughly 50 times lower.

This large difference in speed gives researchers a clearer picture of how waste may be transported through different brain environments. Fluid can move relatively quickly through open spaces, while its movement through dense brain tissue is much more gradual.

From Animal Brains to Human Health

For now, the research team is working to establish baseline measurements of brain fluid flow in animals such as mice. Those measurements are helping researchers refine and improve the AI tools.

Eventually, they hope to compare glymphatic circulation in healthy and diseased brains, as well as in young and old brains. A major long-term goal is to extend the technique to humans.

“We’re working hard toward being able to measure the flow of waterlike fluids in and around human brains because then the clinical applications get a lot more important and exciting,” says Kelley. “We hope to someday be able to see whether an Alzheimer’s patient has poor circulation in their brain or even screen for poor circulation earlier in life to try to stave off Alzheimer’s. Or we could check when somebody has been concussed to see whether the fluid circulation in their brain is disrupted. This study gets us a step closer.”

If researchers can eventually measure these slow fluid movements reliably in people, the technique could offer a new way to investigate whether the brain’s natural waste-clearing circulation changes with Alzheimer’s disease, aging, or traumatic brain injury.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Scientists Can Now Watch 'Conversations' Between Cells Across The Body of a Living Animal

12 Sept. 2026. By J. Cockerill

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-can-now-watch-conversations-between-cells-across-the-body-of-a-living-animal

New techniques reveal previously unseen communication between living systems in the body of a zebrafish. And yes, that glowing node between its eyes is the pineal gland.

 (Ruetten et al., Nature, 2026)

Biology – the study of living things – can admittedly be a little reductive at times.

It's easy to miss important connections depending on how you look at an organism. Microscopes show us the fine details of a body, dissection has helped us identify different organs, and X-rays can show us the bigger picture of internal systems.

But until now, it's been tricky to see how living cells communicate across those systems, which traditionally have been studied in isolation, even though our bodies ultimately work as a whole.

Now, scientists have figured out how to watch cells from disparate parts of the body communicate with each other. Their research has been presented in the journal Nature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuuwV6LitjU

"This work bridges two fundamental scales of biology – the cell and the organism – such that we can now fill that observability gap," says computational neuroscientist Virginie Ruetten, who developed the technique along with a team based at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the US.

"There are some really basic properties that were just missing because it's been very difficult to look at cellular responses at scale."

The new imaging technique – dubbed WHOLISTIC (WHole-Organism Live-Imaging System for recording Tissue and IntraCellular activity) – captures cellular activity across the entire body, second by second.

So far, Ruetten and team have used this technique to image real-time signaling in naturally transparent animals: first with larval zebrafish, and then with another kind of freshwater fish, Danionella cerebrum, which remain transparent into adulthood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXk5KxhS5_c

Both of these fish are important model organisms in scientific research.

Being able to see how the cells in their bodies communicate across different organ systems could help scientists figure out how similar systems in our own bodies might be working, too.

Calcium is a near-universal signal cells use to communicate with each other. It's involved in all manner of biological processes. It helps muscles to contract and synapses to fire; it's crucial at the start of life, when sex cells are fertilized, and at the end, when cells are programmed for death.

The WHOLISTIC technique uses genetic engineering to make nearly every cell in the body express fluorescent calcium sensors. These sensors literally light up when calcium levels in the cells shift.

A single fluorescence channel enables identification of organs and tissues via distinct visual textures. The areas with a yellow 'glow' show stronger fluorescence from the calcium sensor.

 (Ruetten et al., Nature, 2026)

"We know that evolution has produced functioning organisms, but evolution didn't care whether a decision was implemented in the brain's prefrontal cortex or in a connection between the brain stem and the bladder," says neuroscientist Misha Ahrens, whose lab hosted the research.

"This now allows all these fields – physiology, neuroscience, behavior, cell biology – to connect and study all of them in the same animal."

This whole-body imaging approach has already led to some unexpected findings.

For one, the scientists saw calcium sensors in a fish's chondrocytes (the main cells that form cartilage) flaring up in response to the cold.

They were also surprised to see the brain's protective tissue layers (meninges) – not just its neurons – responding to ketamine.

Zooming out, the body's rhythms were illuminated like never before.

"At the multi-organ scale, it revealed unknown muscle synergies and muscle–organ interactions," the authors report in their paper.

"At the whole-organism scale, the method captured brainstem-controlled redistribution of body-wide blood flow."

The team hopes that scientists around the world will be able to adopt this method for their own research, offering unprecedented insight into the body as a whole.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Children of Centenarians Have a 42% Lower Risk of Death, Study Finds

By Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Sept. 12, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/children-of-centenarians-have-a-42-lower-risk-of-death-study-finds/

Exceptional longevity may be accompanied by a longer stretch of healthier life. New findings suggest that some of this protection can extend to the next generation, though not equally across all age-related diseases. 

Credit: Shutterstock

Living to 100 may benefit more than one generation. Children of centenarians tend to live longer while delaying major threats to heart health.

A study published in JAMA Network Open found that adults with at least one parent who lived to 100 had substantially lower risks of death, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension than people whose parents had shorter lives. Several of these outcomes also occurred years later, suggesting that exceptional longevity may involve an extended period of healthier aging rather than survival alone.

Led by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Boston University, and Tufts Medical Center, the work strengthens evidence that unusually long and healthy lives cluster within families. Lifestyle remained important, but it did not fully account for the advantages observed among centenarians’ children.

“Centenarians—people who live to age 100 or older—offer crucial insights into what it looks like to age well,” said Sofiya Milman, M.D., M.S., professor of medicine and of genetics at Einstein, vice chair for research in the department of medicine, and senior author of the study. “We wanted to know whether they pass their good health and longevity down to their children—and, if so, whether those advantages can be explained by healthy habits or whether something more fundamental, like genetics, is at work.”

Three Studies Track Exceptional Longevity

The researchers combined evidence from three geographically diverse, long-running projects: the Einstein-led LonGenity study, the New England Centenarian Study (NECS) at Boston University, and the UK Biobank. Together, the analysis included 2,319 adults with at least one centenarian parent and 2,703 controls.

Control participants either had parents who lived to age 85 or younger or were spouses of centenarians’ offspring. Including spouses gave researchers another useful comparison group because couples often share environments and health habits but not the same inherited biology.

Sofiya Milman, M.D., M.S., professor of medicine and of genetics at Einstein, vice chair for research in the department of medicine, and senior author of the study. 

Credit: Albert Einstein College of Medicine



The available data covered 16 years in LonGenity and the UK Biobank and 29 years in NECS. Although the studies collected information independently, the team analyzed each group using the same approach. This allowed the researchers to determine whether associations with death and age-related disease appeared consistently across different populations.

Lower Risks and Later Disease

At any given age, people with a centenarian parent had a 42% lower risk of death than participants whose parents had shorter lifespans. Their risk of cardiovascular disease was 33% lower, while their risk of hypertension was 32% lower.

The timing of these outcomes was also notable. Centenarians’ offspring died approximately three years later on average and developed hypertension about five years later. Delaying a common condition such as high blood pressure could have wider health implications because hypertension contributes to heart, blood vessel, kidney, and brain disease.

The benefits remained largely consistent after the researchers accounted for smoking, alcohol consumption, exercise, diet, education, and socioeconomic status. The findings therefore suggest that familiar health behaviors and social circumstances do not completely explain why exceptional longevity runs in certain families.

Protection Has Clear Limits

Having a centenarian parent did not provide equally strong protection against every disease. Stroke risk was reduced only in the LonGenity and NECS studies, not consistently across all three groups. Cancer risk was no lower among centenarians’ offspring, a result that agrees with some earlier research.

“The overall consistency of these findings across these quite different studies was especially noteworthy and reinforces the idea that exceptional longevity runs in families,” said Eric Reed, Ph.D., staff scientist in medicine and lead author of the study. “This is not to say that lifestyle doesn’t count—healthy behaviors remain important for everyone. But some people from families with exceptional longevity appear to enjoy biological advantages that help them remain healthy despite the environmental and behavioral factors that affect us all.”

Turning Longevity Biology Into Treatments

“This study wasn’t designed to identify the specific inherited traits that benefit centenarians’ children,” Dr. Milman said. “However, studying families with exceptional longevity can provide a unique window into the biology of healthy aging. Our findings provide a strong rationale for studying centenarians and their families to uncover those biological factors that promote longevity and protect these individuals from age-related diseases.

“Ultimately,” Dr. Milman added, “discovering those factors could lead to treatments that mimic the effects of naturally occurring longevity mechanisms, potentially helping people who did not inherit exceptional longevity to live longer and healthier lives.”

“This study provides strong evidence that the offspring of centenarians share some of their parents’ advantages in healthy aging,” said study co-author Paola Sebastiani, Ph.D., director of the Center for Quantitative Methods and Data Science at Tufts Medical Center. “These findings bring us closer to understanding the biological factors that may help protect against age-related disease and promote longer, healthier lives.”

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Mulberry Shows Surprising Effects on Gut Bacteria and Metabolism

By Wroclaw Medical U., Sept. 11, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/mulberry-shows-surprising-effects-on-gut-bacteria-and-metabolism/

Mulberry compounds may reshape gut microbial activity in ways linked to metabolism and intestinal health, but their effects appear to depend strongly on how the plant is processed. 

Credit: Shutterstock

Mulberry’s potential benefits may begin with gut microbes, but the way it is prepared could make all the difference.

Researchers are examining whether bioactive compounds in mulberry can alter the gut microbiota in ways that influence glucose regulation, fat metabolism, and intestinal health.

A review involving scientists from Wroclaw Medical University found encouraging evidence from laboratory and animal studies, although research in humans remains limited.
Why Mulberry Preparations Differ

The gut microbiota helps digest food, maintain the intestinal environment, and produce substances that can affect the rest of the body. Anna Prescha, PhD, DSc, a professor in the Department of Dietetics and Bromatology at Wroclaw Medical University, says mulberry is especially interesting because it contains polyphenols and polysaccharides that may interact with these microorganisms.

Most research has examined white mulberry (Morus alba), but black mulberry (Morus nigra), particularly its fruit, has also shown potential. Mulberry leaves contain polyphenols, polysaccharides, and 1-deoxynojirimycin (DNJ), which is known to influence carbohydrate metabolism. Black mulberry fruit supplies abundant anthocyanins and other phenolic compounds, as well as polysaccharides.

The final product depends heavily on how the plant material is handled. Drying, fermentation, and extraction can change both the quantity and balance of its active compounds. Two preparations made from the same leaves or fruit may therefore have different compositions and produce different biological responses.

Gut Bacteria Turn Mulberry Into Metabolites

Studies reviewed by the researchers suggest that preparations made from mulberry leaves and fruit can alter the abundance and activity of certain gut bacteria. Some experiments reported increases in beneficial microbes and greater production of acetate, propionate, and butyrate.

These short-chain fatty acids are created when gut bacteria ferment dietary material. They help support the intestinal lining and contribute to the chemical communication connecting the gut with metabolism elsewhere in the body. Several studies linked mulberry-related microbial changes with improvements in measures of glucose and lipid metabolism.

The effects, however, varied considerably among preparations. Polysaccharides extracted from black mulberry fruit differed in structure and in how effectively gut microbes used them. Fractions obtained through water extraction and treatment with pectate lyase displayed the greatest prebiotic potential.

Structure Shapes the Microbial Response

Leaf polysaccharides showed the same sensitivity to chemical structure. Features such as molecular weight and monosaccharide composition appeared to influence which bacteria could consume them and which short-chain fatty acids those microbes produced. This helps explain why simply listing the compounds in a product may not be enough to predict its effects.

Infographic highlighting how mulberry species, plant parts, and preparation methods can influence their chemical composition and potential effects on the gut microbiota. 

Credit: Wroclaw Medical University

Some of the strongest results came from mixtures rather than isolated components. In mice fed a high-fat diet, a white mulberry fruit fraction containing both polyphenols and polysaccharides produced more favorable changes in the gut microbiota than either fraction given separately. The combined treatment also improved some indicators of metabolic syndrome and intestinal health.

Researchers then transferred microbiota from mice treated with the combined fraction into other animals. The recipient mice also experienced improvements in certain metabolic disturbances, strengthening the possibility that the altered microbial community helped transmit some of the treatment’s effects.

Finding the Right Mulberry Formula

The findings suggest that mulberry’s biological activity may emerge from interactions among multiple compounds rather than from one dominant ingredient. Prescha emphasizes that researchers must consider the species, plant part, chemical proportions, and processing method when trying to produce a specific effect. A universal mulberry supplement is therefore less realistic than carefully designed preparations intended for particular purposes.

The review began with the Nutri-Sfera Student Research Group in the Department of Dietetics and Bromatology at Wroclaw Medical University. The topic was proposed by two students who have since graduated: Marta Miszczak from the Dietetics program and Karolina Kłosowska-Buryło from the Pharmacy program. Their involvement brought nutritional and pharmaceutical perspectives together, allowing the team to examine mulberry as both a complex plant material and a possible influence on the microbiota and metabolism.

Human Evidence Is Still Missing

Despite the encouraging results, most evidence comes from animal models and in vitro experiments. Human studies directly measuring how mulberry preparations affect the gut microbiota remain scarce. Comparisons are also difficult because relatively few studies provide a detailed chemical analysis of the products they test.

Prescha cautions that researchers cannot yet assume the relationships observed among mulberry, gut microbes, and metabolism will work the same way in people. Changes found in mice or laboratory cultures may not translate into meaningful human health benefits.

Clinical trials will need to test standardized preparations whose chemical composition has been thoroughly documented. These studies could determine which mulberry products alter the human gut microbiota, how large and consistent those changes are, and whether they lead to measurable improvements in metabolic or intestinal health.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Experiment Tested Out-of-Body Experiences. Two Reported Seeing Things Scientists Can't Explain.

12 Sept. 2026, By M. Starr

https://www.sciencealert.com/experiment-tested-out-of-body-experiences-two-reported-seeing-things-scientists-cant-explain

(Lindy Pfaff/Cavan Images/Getty Images)

There are people who say they can leave their own bodies.

Not "I was beside myself!" or "I jumped out of my skin!" but literally peeling their consciousness from their flesh and bones to observe the world from entirely different places.

You've probably heard of it – the out-of-body experience, a strange phenomenon steeped in spiritual and esoteric traditions, oft-reported but never scientifically verified.

But it raises some interesting questions – not least of which is: how can you see when you've left your eyes asleep in another room?

And what exactly is it that you are seeing, anyway?

These are questions that researchers have been trying to answer experimentally for decades.

Now, a team led by neuroscientist Marina Weiler of the University of Virginia has put the phenomenon to the test again – with a carefully blinded experiment, 21 experienced out-of-body practitioners, and a hidden image waiting in another room.

Not a single participant succeeded at the task they were given.

But two of them reported seeing something else that should have been impossible – and the researchers can't quite explain it.

"I hope this study encourages researchers to think creatively about how we test these experiences," Weiler says.

"The unexpected findings give us a potentially useful new direction, but they also need to be tested prospectively and under rigorous conditions before we can know what they mean."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD7NzrBgXwM

Scientists have tried to test claims of perception during out-of-body experiences for decades, and the phenomenon lends itself to a deceptively simple experimental protocol: conceal something from a person's physical senses and ask them to describe it.

One particularly famous – and hotly debated – 1968 study involved a subject known only as Miss Z, who – supposedly – correctly recited a randomly generated five-digit number that had been hidden from view.

Subsequent attempts to demonstrate the same kind of extrasensory perception have also produced mixed, contested, and often inconclusive results.

Weiler and her colleagues did not want to leave anything up for interpretation – and the study they designed could more accurately be described as an out-of-body obstacle course spread across three rooms.

The first room was where each participant was placed while attempting to demonstrate their abilities. They were hooked up to an EEG machine to record their brain activity, but otherwise were free to make themselves comfortable, whether on a bed or armchair, with their preferred lighting and temperature conditions.

The researchers occupied the second room, with the door closed.

Finally, the third room contained the target: a laptop displaying one randomly selected image from a pool of 100 objects – with the screen turned toward a wall to prevent any inadvertent glimpses.

Not even the researchers knew which image was displayed – one of them would initiate the randomization program, turn the laptop toward the wall, and leave before the image appeared. It remained unknown to everyone involved until the analysis phase months later.

At that point, the participant remained in the room for 60 to 90 minutes, to show they could see an image on a computer screen facing a wall in a closed room 7 meters (23 feet) down a hallway.

After all that, just 13 of the 21 participants reported impressions they believed were related to the hidden target.

And only 8 of those 13 said they had actually experienced an out-of-body experience.

An illustration titled Leaving the Body, dated 1965 and associated with the writings of Lobsang Rampa.

 (Unknown author/Wikimedia Commons, CC0)



The other five described something more like an internal "mental screen" or "inner vision", seeing clues to the target without feeling as though they had left their bodies.

The researchers asked the participants to describe their impressions of the target – for example, if the object was an apple, you might expect someone who perceived it to report something red and round.

To remove subjective human judgment from the equation, the researchers then used AI to compare each participant's description against descriptions of all 100 possible target images, ranking them according to how closely they matched.

The real target should have ranked unusually highly if the participant had accurately perceived it; instead, the correct images ranked anywhere from 16th to 92nd, with the results overall no better than guessing.

As a control, when the same system was given accurate descriptions of the images, it had little trouble picking out the correct targets.

So, whatever the participants thought they had perceived, there's no evidence that it was the object displayed on the laptop.

Case closed; we can all go home, right? Well. Not quite.

Because here's where it gets a little… spooky. Although none of the participants showed evidence of accurately perceiving the target in Room 3, the experiment involved another room.

Two of the participants reported impressions of what the researchers were doing in Room 2.

Participant 7 described one researcher sitting to the left, focused on a computer screen, while the other sat farther back in a corner, reading a book – a configuration that hadn't occurred during previous sessions.

And that's exactly where they were during 7's attempt.

Participant 13 separately reported seeing one researcher on the right, taking notes, and the other on the left at the computer.

Again, the description matched what the researchers were actually doing during that participant's session – and again, their positions were different from their usual arrangement.

Which is actually pretty weird.

But weird isn't proof. These observations were spontaneous, rather than part of the experiment's predetermined targets, and weren't subjected to statistical analysis. The researchers therefore describe them as anecdotal – interesting, but inconclusive.

Intriguingly, the researchers note that something similar happened during an experiment with famed out-of-body practitioner Robert Monroe in the 1960s.

Monroe failed to perceive the hidden target, but reported seeing a technician with an unfamiliar man outside the room where he expected to find her. The man was indeed there – he was the technician's husband, whom Monroe had not previously met.

The original researcher, psychologist Charles Tart, nevertheless considered the evidence weak, noting that Monroe could have heard the visitor during a break.

Still, it raises the interesting possibility that the targets used in out-of-body-experience studies may be part of the problem. Perhaps a static screen or list of numbers simply isn't salient enough to attract attention during the experience.

"I hope these findings encourage us to think more deeply about what they might mean for our understanding of consciousness and, ultimately, the nature of reality," Weiler says.

"At its deepest level, this research is not only asking whether out-of-body experiences are real. It is asking what we mean by 'real' in the first place, and whether our current understanding of reality is broad enough to account for everything human consciousness can experience."

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Scientists Buried 2,000 Pairs of Underwear. What Happened Next Revealed a Hidden World

By U. of Zurich, Sept. 11, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-buried-2000-pairs-of-underwear-what-happened-next-revealed-a-hidden-world/

After being buried in the ground for two months and broken down by soil organisms, a new pair of cotton underwear (left) shows clear signs of decomposition (right). 

Credit: Nicolas Zonvi

By burying thousands of pairs of cotton underwear across Switzerland, scientists uncovered striking differences in biological activity from one type of land to another.

The results showed that gardens had especially active soils, while lawns were much quieter underground.

Soil supports the global food system while also storing water, carbon, and essential nutrients. It is also one of the planet’s richest habitats. Scientists estimate that more than half of Earth’s biodiversity lives below the surface. But as biodiversity declines worldwide, soil health is also deteriorating, creating risks for agriculture, food security, and the stability of entire ecosystems.

In 2021, researchers at the University of Zurich (UZH) and Agroscope, the Swiss federal center of excellence for agricultural research, launched a citizen science project called Proof by Underpants (Beweisstück Unterhose). The goal was to make the hidden world beneath our feet more visible while gathering scientific data at a large scale.

Using the same standardized method, 1,000 volunteers buried more than 2,000 pairs of cotton underwear and 12,000 tea bags at roughly 1,000 locations across Switzerland. After two months, participants dug them back up, photographed them, and sent them to a laboratory along with soil samples for additional analysis.

Decomposition Reveals Soil Activity

The findings, which produced a map of biological activity in Swiss soils, have now been published in Plants, People, Planet. Researchers found that the underwear broke down at very different rates depending on where it had been buried.

That variation offered a useful measure of biological activity. Where soil organisms were more active, they decomposed the cotton more quickly.

Private gardens had the fastest rates of decomposition. These soils also contained the highest amounts of organic matter, creating favorable conditions for earthworms, fungi, bacteria, and other organisms that live underground. Lawns showed the lowest biological activity, while meadows and agricultural fields generally fell between the two extremes.

Slightly or heavily decomposed? The more active the soil organisms, the faster the cotton material decomposes. 

Credit: Priska Koller, Agroscope



Land Use Strongly Shapes Soil Health

“Our results show that how soil is managed can significantly affect both soil life and soil quality,” says co-study leader Marcel van der Heijden, UZH professor of agroecology. “Healthy, biologically active soil is crucial for fertility, nutrient cycling and many other ecosystem services.”

Practices that can support soil life include keeping the ground permanently covered, adding compost, using more diverse crop rotations and reducing the use of mineral fertilizers and pesticides.

Among all the factors examined, land use had the strongest influence on how quickly the underwear decomposed. Whether a location was a garden, meadow, cultivated field, or lawn explained the differences better than most of the soil properties the researchers measured. Chemical characteristics, including nutrient levels, also had an important effect.

Faster Breakdown Can Also Signal Excess Nutrients

Rapid decomposition was often associated with fertile soil and a strong supply of nutrients, which can be especially valuable in agriculture. But faster decomposition is not always desirable.

“However, maximum decomposition is not desirable in every ecosystem,” says co-project leader Franz Bender, head of the agroecological assessments team at Agroscope.

“In near-natural habitats such as forests, very high nutrient levels can indicate disruptions to the natural balance of nutrients. In gardens, too, rapid decomposition of the underwear may point to an oversupply of nutrients,” says Bender.

In those situations, reducing fertilizer use may be worth considering. Temperature and moisture also strongly influence soil organisms. When soils become too cold or too dry, biological activity drops sharply.

An “Underwear Index” for Soil Health

The study suggests that burying cotton underwear could provide a simple and meaningful way to highlight differences in soil fertility and biological activity.

Researchers therefore propose an “underwear index” as an easy way to visualize what is happening underground and help the public better understand why protecting healthy soils matters.

Citizen Scientists Make Large-Scale Research Possible

The “Proof by Underpants” project also highlights the value of citizen science. A study covering around 1,000 locations would have been difficult to carry out without the participation of volunteers.

The resulting data span every region of Switzerland and make up one of the country’s most comprehensive datasets on soil life. The scale of public involvement is also reflected in the study’s authorship, with around 240 citizen scientists listed as co-authors.

In return, participants received individualized feedback from the researchers, including soil analysis results, assessment tools, and recommendations for more sustainable soil management.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

There's Enough Rare Earth Metal in US Coal Waste to Cut China Out of The Supply Chain, Study Finds

04 Sept. 2026, By I. Farkas

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-us-could-have-a-100-billion-stash-of-rare-earth-elements-hiding-in-coal-waste

(RHJ/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

The world runs on metals.

Our modern technologies, industries, and infrastructure would not be possible without 17 invaluable metals known as rare earth elements (REEs), which are used in computers, planes, cars, and more.

Unfaithful to their name, REEs aren't that rare, but expensive and difficult to extract in useful forms.

But as scientists are discovering, piles of discarded waste material left over from spent fossil fuels contain vast quantities of REEs that could be a homegrown source of these metals.

REEs are unevenly distributed across Earth, with Chinese mines producing around 70 percent of REEs and accounting for about 90 percent of global heavy rare earth processing, creating a monopoly.

REEs are vital for the clean energy transition, needed in solar panels, batteries, and wind turbine motors, as well as for medical and defense technologies – one F-35 fighter jet contains around 400 kilograms (900 pounds) of REEs, for example.

A microscopic view of a typical rock rich in REEs. 

(University of Cambridge)

Many countries see acquiring an independent REE supply chain as integral to national security, technological sustainability, economic stability, and energy independence. It would also help bring about a more circular materials economy.

Fortunately, there appear to be lots of REEs just 'sitting around', locked away in spent fossil fuel waste.

In fact, a 2024 study led by geoscientists at the University of Texas at Austin calculated that coal ash from coal-fired power stations in the US may contain nearly US$100 billion in feasibly extractable REEs.

Currently, imports from China comprise about 70 percent of the US' REE supply. The US has only one major operational REE mine in California, which produces 16 percent of the global rare earth supply, and it lacks national processing capabilities.

Production of rare earth oxides, which are REEs mixed with oxygen, per country since 1985.

  (Agrawal & Ragauskas, J. Environ. Manage., 2025)

Intriguingly, the chalky coal ash is a potential powerhouse: a byproduct of burning coal, itself made possible only by hundreds of millions of years of extreme heat and pressure squeezing long-dead ancient plants within Earth.

Once most of coal's mass and combustible elements have been burned off, the REE concentration in the resulting ash is up to 10 times higher than in unburned coal, offering an already-unearthed source of critical materials.

The estimated 11 million US tons of REEs in accessible coal ash is almost eight times the amount that the US has in domestic reserves.

So a global race is on to develop practical extraction methods.

At Monash University in Australia, engineers are using environmentally benign acids to remove REEs from coal ash, reporting 90 percent recovery of all 17 elements in pilot demonstrations.

"The significance of this work lies in its dual impact: reducing environmental waste while securing domestic supply of critical minerals," explains Monash chemical engineer Sankar Bhattacharya.

This work is also versatile. The Monash researchers say their method, if scaled and commercialized, could be used on other common waste streams, including electronic waste as well as tailings, the material left over after valuable metals have been removed from mined ore.

"We don't have to dig up new mines. We can use something that's already processed and just sitting in landfill," Bennet Thomas, a sustainable resource recovery engineer at Monash, told AAP, adding that increased REE self-reliance can therefore address a "national risk".

Coal ash operations in a landfill in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. (Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection)



A paper published in 2025 in the Journal of Environmental Management similarly highlights the untapped potential of coal ash.

Engineers Ruchi Agrawal and Arthur Ragauskas calculated that globally, coal ash could yield more than 300,000 US tons (272,000 metric tons) of REEs each year, "far exceeding global demand".

Yet conventional extraction methods have many drawbacks, including low yields and toxic post-processing waste.

Researchers at Northeastern University are working on the problem, boosting yields from conventional extraction methods three-fold by pretreating coal tailings.

Scientists are exploring other options, too.

These include 'green' leaching solutions using various substances like acids; electrochemical extraction methods; and nature-based solutions like microbe-made metabolites that precipitate the REEs from waste in an eco-friendly fashion.

Additionally, phytomining could use "hyperaccumulator plants" that collect REEs in their tissues, putting these natural wonders to work for us – because other than sequestering carbon, producing oxygen, cleaning the air, cooling cities, beautifying our world, and providing food and building materials, what have plants done for us lately?

A graphical summary of a phytomining process. 

(Agrawal & Ragauskas, J. Environ. Manage., 2025)

However, each method has its pros and cons, primarily related to environmental sustainability, resource requirements, scalability, and complexity.

Extraction will need to hit a sweet spot to yield high-quality REEs in a cost-effective, energy-efficient way.

Time will tell if any of these methods will be successful at scale.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/