Chuck's picture corner to Oct 25, 2026

It's been a sunny week with full moon frosty nights, the first of the season. I have been working on preserving the last of the harvest, and still have flowers that need to be dug, and roots cleaned enough to spend the winter in the cool room behind the kitchen. The long dark nights of winter are upon us.

The hot peppers that hung on the front porch for weeks, now in the dryer, now it day 3 and the air is starting to get to my eyes with drying spice.

getting ready.

the end of another day.

the decorative barberry

the calendula seed I planted just now coming to flower, I hope it survives the winter.

pampas grass

black walnut, the squirrels will take the outer spongy layer off, and dry the nut, then chew through the outer shell to finally get the nut.

cosmos seems ok with a little frost.

the last day of the daliah.

barberry fruit.

the changing colour of the forsythia 

the silver maple is getting thinner

In Oleans (Ottawa) while grandma Shawnah is at the chiropractors.

working on a last batch of chili

Enjoy the day

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Talking Inside Your Head Changes Your Pupils in a Totally Different Way to Talking Out Loud

25 Oct. 2026, By P. Dockrill

https://www.sciencealert.com/talking-inside-your-head-changes-your-pupils-in-a-totally-different-way-to-talking-out-loud

(Anastassiya Bezhekeneva/Moment RF/Getty Images)

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and in actuality, there's almost no end to what they reveal about you.

The fluctuating size of your pupils can offer clues about the information you perceive, indicate whether you're inhaling or exhaling, and even respond to things you're imagining.

Now, a new study in iScience by researchers in Japan has discovered an unusual link between the size of your pupils and the way you speak – and it turns out there's a different effect depending on whether you're speaking aloud or just silently inside your own head.

Most of us have some form of inner voice inside our heads, which helps us to organize our thoughts, memorize things, and formulate what we're going to say.

"Neuroimaging studies over the past two to three decades suggest that inner speech, or covert speech, draws on a fronto-temporal speech-production network that partly overlaps with, but is not identical to, the network engaged during overt speech," explains a team led by neuroscientist Ryuta Kuwamizu from the University of Tsukuba and developmental psychologist Ryoichi Watanabe from Ritsumeikan University.

But while much research has investigated how inner speech activates the brain's cortical networks, less is known about how it relates to the brain's arousal systems.

Speaking aloud versus using your inner voice appears to correspond to different levels of arousal in the brain. 

(Folco Masi/Unsplash)



To explore this, researchers conducted three experiments involving 80 healthy university students, with the participants performing simple counting exercises while having the sizes of their pupils monitored, which offers a non-invasive way to investigate changes in brain arousal.

In each experiment, participants would perform the counting exercise by either speaking aloud, or by counting silently in their heads, with the order being randomized each time.

In the first experiment, participants counted upward from 1, using consecutive integers (for example, 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.).

In the second experiment, to take things a bit further, participants counted upwards again, but this time they had to count objects each time, such as cats, balls, or books (for example one cat, two cats, three cats, etc.).

In the final experiment, participants had to do step counting, in randomized increments of 2, 3, or 4. For example, if the increment was 3, the sequence would be 1, 4, 7, 10, and so on.

In a surprise result that the researchers didn't expect, the team found inner and overt speech produced different responses in the participants' pupils, with overt speech consistently eliciting pupil dilation (with the pupil diameter increasing), but inner speech producing more mixed results.

"The presence of vocalization is an important factor shaping pupil-linked arousal."

 (Valerii Stoika/Canva)



As the tasks changed, the pupil response during inner speech also changed, with greater dilation emerging when the counting required more mental effort.

In the first and simplest counting experiment, the participants' pupil size actually constricted during inner speech, while there was no significant change in pupil size during the second test.

It was only in the third and most difficult task, the step-counting exercise, that inner speech triggered pupil dilation, potentially reflecting the mental effort required.

"The most robust finding across all three experiments was the consistent pupil dilation elicited by overt speech, suggesting that the presence of vocalization is an important factor shaping pupil-linked arousal," the researchers explain.

"This dilation likely reflects the integrated pupil-linked arousal recruitment associated with motor execution, respiratory variation, sensorimotor feedback, and attention, each of which is presumed to engage brainstem arousal systems and cortical network states, potentially contributing to efficient speech production."

By contrast, it seems running our inner monologue is generally much less arousing.

Even in the third step-counting experiment, the amount of pupil dilation seen during inner speech was reduced compared to when participants performed the same task aloud.

It's possible, the team thinks, that the extra effort required to convert inner thoughts into spoken words – involving numerous forms of motor control, including articulation, breathing, auditory monitoring, and more – is one of the reasons speaking aloud involves comparatively high arousal.

There may also be functional advantages in terms of attention and memory, with a previous study finding that changes in pupil dilation corresponded to how well words were remembered after they were spoken aloud.

Whatever the case, it appears speaking aloud is a highly arousing task.

The researchers note that the sustained pupil dilation they recorded in the speaking participants in experiment 3 – reaching approximately 0.4 mm for more than 10 seconds – is comparable to vigorous physical exertion, including levels previously seen during high-intensity cycling at roughly 80 percent of maximal oxygen uptake.

Or, in somewhat simpler terms, it's hard to make words.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Uranium Waste From This Aussie Mine Was Safely Locked Away, But Microbes Had Other Plans

25 Oct. 2026, By J Cockerill

https://www.sciencealert.com/uranium-waste-from-this-aussie-mine-was-safely-locked-away-but-microbes-had-other-plans

Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary is in South Australia.

 (Mike Annese/iStockphoto/Getty Images)

In 1944, rocks from the Mount Painter mine in the heart of Australia were sent to the US for experiments as part of the Manhattan Project.

The repercussions of those actions left deep scars across the world.

At Mount Painter, though, scientists believed the mine's uranium and rare earth elements were more or less safely locked away in the dry waste piles (a.k.a. tailings).

The site was eventually closed in 1965 and later incorporated into Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

But recent samples taken from the surface of tailings at Mount Painter's Number 6 Workings suggest the site may not be as safe as we thought.

These tailings have supposedly lain undisturbed for more than 80 years.

But something has been moving potentially dangerous minerals to the surface of the waste piles, where they have accumulated at unexpectedly high concentrations.

In a study recently published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, researchers suggest that microbes in the rubble are transporting these toxic substances to the top 10cm of the waste, in the form of polymetallic nanoparticles.

The researchers believe soil microbes are transporting and transforming uranium and rare earth elements.

 (Sanyal et al., Journal of Hazardous Materials, 2026)



"We have traditionally assumed that these toxic metals were securely locked away by nature in these arid environments, but these tiny organisms are proving us wrong," says geoscientist Joël Brugger.

"They are essentially acting as microscopic factories, breaking down stable minerals and mobilizing elements like uranium into the surrounding ecosystem."

Further studies will be needed to confirm that the microbes are actually responsible for the changes seen in these tailings.

But for now, it's the scientists' best guess, as there aren't many other good explanations.

In other parts of the world, researchers have also documented radiation-resistant microbes interacting with uranium waste.

The biggest concern is that these microbes appear to be converting the minerals from insoluble phosphates into colloidal forms that can easily travel through the environment.

Rain is rare in semi-arid Arkaroola, arriving in the form of sudden summer thunderstorms. Converted into colloids, minerals like uranium are readily suspended in rainwater, which could carry them much further from the mine site, especially during the flash flooding that sometimes occurs in Arkaroola.

Toxic and radioactive minerals like uranium and rare earth elements are not what you want sprinkled throughout the soil and waterways.

Uranium is highly radioactive, and exposure to it – for instance, by drinking contaminated water or inhaling tiny particles – can cause serious damage to humans and other living things.

The paper calls for a serious rethink of how we deal with mining waste.

While Arkaroola is protected from further mining, its radioactive legacy is clearly not over yet.

Mount Painter's Number 6 Workings is just one of many mines left abandoned after the proliferation of nuclear weapons during the 20th century.

But uranium production continues across the world. And there's never been such a great demand for metals and minerals.

"As a result of continuing global development, the transformation of the world's energy infrastructure away from fossil fuels, and the electrification of transport infrastructure, demand for base metals such as copper, critical minerals such as rare earth elements, and energy minerals such as uranium is increasing," Brugger and team write.

The volume of mining waste is expected to increase rapidly, especially as ore grades decrease. Even when uranium isn't the goal of a mine, many rare earth element deposits are tied up with uranium and thorium that go on to enter the mine's waste stream.

"As we rapidly scale up operations to meet the unprecedented demand for critical minerals, the volume of mining waste generated globally is going to rise significantly," says environmental microbiologist Santonu Sanyal.

"Understanding exactly how these native microbes interact with waste materials is absolutely vital if we want to prevent unseen, long-term environmental contamination and develop the sustainable mine of the future."

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Researchers Find an Unexpected Benefit of Putting Sheep on Solar Farms

By Cornell U., Oct. 23, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-find-an-unexpected-benefit-of-putting-sheep-on-solar-farms/

A solar farm in Lansing, New York.

 Credit: Sreang Hok/Cornell University

Solar grazing is helping sheep farmers expand their businesses, opening opportunities for rural jobs, new investment, and stronger agricultural supply chains.

Sheep can feed on the vegetation growing around solar panels while farmers get paid to keep it under control. Too few sheep may leave farmers with grass they still need to mow, while heavier grazing can reduce honeybee numbers.

Two new Cornell University studies examine the ecological and financial choices behind this growing practice, known as solar grazing. One tested how the number of sheep on the land affects beneficial insects. The other developed a tool to help farmers plan flock size, purchases, and sales.
More sheep, fewer honey bees

At two sheep per hectare, or roughly one per 1.2 acres, the combined abundance of wild bees, honey bees, and lady beetles was 38% higher than in a mowed control plot. Honey bee numbers were 83% higher, accounting for most of the overall increase.

Doubling the density to four sheep per hectare improved vegetation control, but beneficial insect abundance was similar to that in the mowed control. Eight sheep per hectare delivered the strongest vegetation control, and flock health remained high. At that density, however, honey bee abundance fell by 45%.

“We zeroed in on stocking rates because that’s a concrete number that sheep farmers understand and work with every day, and we want this research to be useful,” said Steve Grodsky, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of natural resources in Cornell’s Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment. “With solar grazing, people, energy, agricultural animals, plants, and insects are all part of this ecosystem. We’re trying to understand the connections between those pieces so that when solar developers, municipalities looking at solar development, or farmers are faced with a decision, they can have scientific information about potential trade-offs and synergies.”

The researchers spent three years testing those stocking rates, the number of sheep grazing a given area, at the university-owned Cascadilla Community Solar Farm in Dryden, New York. Using Cornell’s teaching flock, the team brought together entomologists, ecologists, and animal and plant scientists from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). Their paper was published in Environmental Research Letters.

“Sheep grazing and beneficial insect habitat are two prominent conversation topics around solar development right now,” said Leana Zoller, the paper’s first author and a postdoctoral associate in natural resources in the Ashley School. “But what’s been missing is research that treats them as parts of the same system. When we talk about sustainable solar development, integrating these discussions into a single framework is really helpful to farmers and community decision makers.”

Grodsky also serves as assistant unit leader of the U.S. Geological Survey New York Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. Sarah Carson, director of Cornell’s Campus Sustainability Office, helped coordinate the researchers’ access to the site with the solar company responsible for managing it.

The study’s other CALS co-authors included sheep farmer and solar grazing consultant Nikola Kochendoerfer, Ph.D. ’20, Antonio DiTommaso, a professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science, and John Losey, a professor of entomology. Also contributing were Scott McArt, Ph.D. ’12, an associate professor of entomology, Paige Muñiz, formerly a technician in McArt’s lab, and Todd Ugine, Ph.D. ’04, a research associate in Losey’s lab.

Planning flock growth around grass and costs

For farmers deciding how many sheep to buy or sell, the second study offers a way to weigh the financial and practical demands together. Researchers led from the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business developed a spreadsheet-based model that uses target flock size, costs, anticipated revenue, and expected vegetation at individual solar sites to help optimize those decisions. They presented the tool in a separate study published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.

Solar developers can also use the model to understand what farmers need from a grazing agreement and design contracts that are more profitable and sustainable for everyone involved over the long term. United Agrivoltaics has already made the tool part of its onboarding process.

The project grew out of a chance meeting between the paper’s first author, Vincent Slaugh, an assistant professor at the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration, and Caleb Scott, an Ithaca-based sheep farmer who founded United Agrivoltaics. Afterward, Slaugh began working through the economics and logistics of grazing sheep at solar installations. He recruited Linwei Xin, an associate professor of operations research and information engineering, and Shane Henderson, the Charles W. Lake, Jr. Professor in Productivity, both in the Cornell Duffield College of Engineering.

Solar contracts help sheep farms expand

Kochendoerfer’s solar grazing operation includes 700 ewes at installations in New York and Vermont.

“I work with a lot of farms that are now scaling up because of solar,” Kochendoerfer said. “There is a new wave of sheep farmers who are capitalizing on this access to good land. With solar grazing, you get paid to graze as opposed to having to pay to graze. That leads to sustainable, meaningful economic income that these farmers can use to expand, build a barn, buy equipment or hire someone. It’s enabling a lot of folks to build sound, viable agricultural businesses.”

Slaugh sees the steady income and animal feed available through solar contracts as an opportunity for American shepherds to increase production. U.S. sheep production falls well short of domestic demand for meat and wool. About half of the lamb and mutton consumed in the United States is imported, mainly from New Zealand and Australia.

“If we grow the sheep industry, will the American diet eventually include more lamb? Could that be a side effect of the solar energy revolution? I think the answer is very likely yes,” Slaugh said. “And then when that happens, we’d expect processors and supporting industries to come back, for banks to be willing to give more loans, and for supply chains to follow. All of that grows the economy, and rural economies in particular.”

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Your Brain May Be Switching Between Two Versions of Reality 15 Times a Second

24 Oct. 2026, By M. Starr

https://www.sciencealert.com/your-brain-may-be-switching-between-two-versions-of-reality-15-times-a-second

(Ryan Bernotas/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

How grounded do you feel in the present moment? It may be a little less than you think.

Even as you fix your gaze on the screen in front of you to read these words, your brain may be flickering between what you're consciously taking in and other visual information that never quite reaches your awareness.

A new preprint study involving both macaque monkeys and humans suggests that the brain may be switching back and forth between conscious and unconscious information around 15 times a second – raising the strange possibility that something other than visual availability is guiding your conscious experience of the world.

"At any moment, only some of the brain's activity reaches conscious awareness, while the rest is processed without ever being experienced," writes a team led by neuroscientists Janis Hesse and Doris Tsao of the University of California, Berkeley.

"How this division arises is among the most basic unsolved problems in neuroscience."

There are many things our bodies just do automatically, and sensing is one of them. We move through the world under a constant barrage of sensory information, and we cannot turn off our ability to take it in.

What our brains can do is deprioritize some of that information. The famous example is your nose. It's always sitting bang in the middle of your field of view, but your brain mostly tunes it out. You know it's there; you don't need your eyes to keep confirming it.

This is obviously extremely useful. Without it, we'd be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of sensory input our brains receive.

But it also raises a huge question: How does the brain determine which information we consciously experience, and which information remains hidden from awareness?

To seek answers, neuroscientists have spent decades studying which parts of the brain become active when stimuli are being consciously perceived. Over time, however, a problem emerged. The same parts of the brain can respond to unconscious stimuli, too.

Hesse and his colleagues asked a new question. What if those searches were focused on the wrong dimension?

What if the answer lay not in space, but time?

In other words, they thought the way brain activity changed over time might yield clues about how the brain handles conscious and unconscious visual information.

Their research focused on macaques. Macaques wearing anaglyph glasses.

An illustration of the experimental setup, showing a macaque viewing competing images through red-and-cyan glasses while electrodes record its brain activity. 

(Hesse et al., bioRxiv, 2026)



You're probably familiar with the glasses that have one red lens and one cyan lens, used to trick your eyes into thinking you are seeing a 3D image.

The same system can be exploited to show your eyes two different images. The eye looking through a cyan lens can see a red image but not a cyan one, and the eye looking through a red lens can see a cyan image but not a red one.

The researchers used this trick to show the macaques two different faces. First, they presented one face to one eye. Then, while that image remained in place, they suddenly introduced a second face to the other eye.

Here's where things get weird. Rather than seeing both faces at once, the brain tends to prioritize the newly introduced face, suppressing the first from conscious awareness.

The first face hasn't gone anywhere. The eye is still receiving it. But the brain is no longer bringing it into conscious perception.

This phenomenon is called binocular flash suppression; it's a very useful tool that neuroscientists studying conscious and unconscious visual processing have been using for decades.

Now, the macaques couldn't tell the researchers which of the two images they were consciously perceiving, so humans were recruited to test the technique and confirm that it was the second image that dominated conscious perception.

Once the researchers had confirmed that the technique worked as expected, they turned their attention to the macaques' brains.

Using tiny electrodes inserted into regions involved in visual processing, they recorded the electrical activity of hundreds of neurons simultaneously as the monkeys watched the competing images.

They were particularly interested in regions that specialize in recognizing faces. Here, they identified two distinct patterns of brain activity: one linked to the first face and the other to the second face.

Interestingly, a pattern emerged in time, too.

Even though the second face was expected to remain dominant in conscious perception, the neurons didn't continuously represent that face. Instead, their activity rapidly alternated between the consciously perceived face and the one suppressed from awareness.

This switching occurred around 15 times every second.

So, even though the second face was expected to dominate the macaques' perception, the first face kept flickering through their brains.

And the researchers found something else intriguing. During conscious moments, neurons responded more sharply to the features of the perceived face than to features of the suppressed face during the suppressed moments, suggesting that the brain may have a way of distinguishing between the two, even as it alternates between them.

The findings do not explain how the brain decides which information reaches consciousness, but the researchers speculate that the process allows the brain to sort through alternative visual information without altering current behavior. Such a process might allow us to continue navigating the world while our brains unobtrusively consider other interpretations of what we're seeing.

There are also some important limitations. The study involved only two macaques, and they couldn't report what they were seeing, so their conscious perception had to be inferred from the human experiments. Additionally, the researchers only investigated specific regions involved in visual processing, not the entire brain.

Nevertheless, the results raise a fascinating possibility – that our apparently seamless experience of the world is facilitated by furious, complex neural activity taking place behind the closed doors of our conscious experience.

"Identifying the mechanisms that orchestrate these transitions, and determining why only some temporal segments become available to awareness, will be essential for understanding how temporal population dynamics give rise to conscious perception," the researchers write.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Tiny Genetic Tweak From An Ancient Virus Might've Prevented Chimpanzees From Developing Brains Like Ours

24 Oct. 2026, By J. Cockerill

https://www.sciencealert.com/tiny-genetic-tweak-from-an-ancient-virus-mightve-prevented-chimpanzees-from-developing-brains-like-ours

Young chimpanzees enjoy some fruit.

 (Martin Harvey/The Image Bank RF/Getty Images)

Humans and chimpanzees are remarkably similar, despite the major differences in how our societies have panned out.

After about 5-6 million years of evolution from a common ancestor, only 1.2 percent of our DNA is different.

A virus that infected chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) – but not humans – about 4 million years ago is partly responsible.

This ancient retrovirus made a tiny tweak to chimp DNA that has led to some major differences in how our brains develop, according to a new study published in Science Advances today.

"We wanted to understand how human and chimpanzee brains could have evolved differently when so many of their protein-making genes are similar," lead author Patricia Gerdes told ScienceAlert.

Gerdes is a molecular neurogeneticist at Lund University in Sweden.

"We knew that ancient viruses can leave DNA behind in the genome, and those remnants can affect nearby genes," she said.

"PTERV1 (Pan troglodytes endogenous retrovirus-1) was a particularly interesting candidate because it is found in chimpanzees and other African apes but not in humans."

Brain development is a known point of difference between chimpanzees and humans: For instance, our brains are about three times larger.

Perhaps the ancient virus could have even played a role in the parting of our species.

It is unclear why humans never contracted PTERV1 when so many of our ape relatives did, but there are a few theories.

Perhaps a unique antiviral protein, TRIM5α, protected us against it. Perhaps chimp and human ancestors lived in different places when the viral pandemic hit.

The new study doesn't seek to answer that question, but it does reveal a specific effect the infection had on chimp brain development.

All those years ago, PTERV1 inserted DNA sequences into the chimpanzee genome that are still active today.

Both humans and chimpanzees have a molecule made from DNA called LINC00662, which provides our cells with instructions for building a particular protein.

"We found it active during early human brain development, and our experiments suggest it helps [human] brain cells mature and grow extensions," Gerdes explained.

(Fiordaliso/Moment/Getty Images)



Chimpanzees have it too, and that's exactly where the virus left its mark.

The virus's DNA insertion switches off the chimpanzee's LINC00662.

In experiments with human brain organoids (tiny clusters of cells grown in a lab as a research model), when the team switched off LINC00662, neurons and their extensions (the dendrites and axons that transmit information across the brain) did not mature and grow as prolifically as they do with LINC00662 intact.

"We do not yet know all of LINC00662's roles in the human body, or what the loss of its activity means for chimpanzees as a whole," Gerdes said.

An organoid experiment like this is a great way for scientists to get a quick preview of what might happen if, for example, PTERV1 one day made its way into the human genome to make a similar edit.

"If humans had the same insertion, it probably would have switched off LINC00662 and altered the development of brain cells," Gerdes explained.

"But we cannot predict that this would produce a particular brain shape, ability, or behavior. The effect could also depend on the surrounding human DNA and other genes."

And what if chimpanzees were freed from the ancient viral DNA that's holding back the full potential of their version of LINC00662?

"In our experiment, removing the insertion from chimpanzee stem cells restored LINC00662 activity. That shows the insertion contributes to switching off this gene. It does not show that removing it would transform brain development," Gerdes said.

"Brain differences arise from many genetic and developmental influences, and removing the insertion from an adult brain would not undo the brain's earlier development."

So, it seems there's no risk of a sudden Planet of the Apes scenario.

But it does drive home just how influential viruses can be in the evolution of life on Earth, adding further evidence that retroviral insertions contributed to differences between humans and chimps.

Weird to think how different things could have been…

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Scientists Discover Ancient Human DNA Hidden in Cave Walls for Thousands of Years

By Max Planck Inst. for Evolutionary Anthropology, Oct. 23, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-discover-ancient-human-dna-hidden-in-cave-walls-for-thousands-of-years/

Pigment sampling at a claviform rock art figure in Tebellín, Spain.

 Credit: Alberto Martínez Villa

Ancient DNA from cave walls offers clues to prehistoric visitors’ sex and ancestry, potentially allowing scientists to investigate who used these spaces without disturbing archaeological deposits.

A cave wall can hold traces of prehistoric visitors even when it has no paintings or other visible signs of human activity. Scientists have recovered ancient human DNA from cave walls for the first time, showing that genetic material can survive on these surfaces for thousands of years. Several positive results came from unpainted areas that researchers had sampled as negative controls.

The search began with an interest in the people who made prehistoric art. The interdisciplinary First Art project aims to date the earliest cave art and characterize its chemical composition. Led by researchers from Spain and Portugal, it involves institutions across those countries, the UK, China, and Germany. Collaboration with researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology extended that work to DNA analysis, taking the search for ancient genetic material beyond bones, sediments, and, more recently, bone artifacts.

“We know that some of the art was applied to cave walls by blowing or rubbing pigment onto the surface. Given the enormous sensitivity of current ancient DNA analysis techniques, we were eager to see if this type of contact could leave traces of DNA in the rock art, potentially allowing us to obtain genetic profiles from the makers of the art,” says Hipólito Collado Giraldo, an archaeologist and rock art specialist from the Extremadura Government in Spain, who brought together the First Art team.

Polychrome ceiling of Altamira from which pigment samples were analyzed. 

Credit: Matthias Meyer

Unpainted walls hold ancient human DNA

The researchers examined 24 rock art panels from 11 caves, including simple marks and hand stencils, along with pigment that had naturally fallen from figurative paintings in the famous Cave of Altamira. Using advanced DNA extraction and sequencing methods, they analyzed pigmented and unpigmented cave wall fragments, sediments, bones, and a rare prehistoric bird bone airbrush used to blow red ochre onto cave walls.

Of the 54 samples collected, only five yielded authentic ancient human mitochondrial DNA, genetic material found in the energy-producing structures inside cells. One came from a calcite crust with pigment underneath it on Panel 11 in Escoural Cave, Portugal. Two came from unpigmented walls in a deeper gallery of the same cave, and two others came from unpigmented surfaces beside rock art in Covarón Cave in northern Spain. The unpigmented areas had initially been sampled as negative controls, making their positive results unexpected.

Two of the five samples contained no detectable mitochondrial DNA from other animals. That rare pattern strongly suggests that humans deposited the DNA directly, through saliva or other bodily fluids. The other three positive samples, all from unpigmented walls, contained both human and animal DNA. This mixture suggests an indirect route, likely involving sediment transfer or water movement carrying genetic material onto the surfaces.

“Although we cannot directly connect the traces of ancient human DNA we have found to the creation of rock art, this is the first evidence for human DNA preservation on cave walls for thousands of years,” says first author Alba Bossoms Mesa, a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. “It is exciting to think that we may have uncovered a new way to study prehistoric human presence.”

DNA links cave visitors to hunter-gatherers

The recovered DNA nevertheless provided information about some of the people who had been in the caves. Human DNA in three samples came mostly from females, while one sample contained DNA mostly from males. The fifth remained undetermined. Further analysis of the two unpigmented samples from Covarón showed that their DNA came from modern humans, or Homo sapiens. Nuclear DNA, the genetic material housed in cell nuclei, placed them within the Western hunter-gatherer genetic cluster, consistent with findings for other ancient Iberian populations.

Calcite fragment with pigment underneath from Escoural, Portugal, stored in a membrane box. 

Credit: Alba Bossoms Mesa



“This study fundamentally changes how we think about where ancient DNA can be found,” says senior author Matthias Meyer, a paleogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology who co-led the work with Collado Giraldo. “We were surprised to see that ancient DNA can be recovered not only from pigmented samples, but also from cave walls that show no visible evidence of past human activity. We can now ask new questions: Who touched this wall? Was it a man or a woman? Which population did they belong to? How far did ancient humans venture into deep cave systems?”

Sampling cave walls could offer a way to investigate prehistoric human behavior without disturbing archaeological deposits. Genetic evidence from these surfaces could help researchers establish the biological sex and ancestry of people who used caves, even where their activities left no recognizable images or objects.

“This is not just about rock art,” says Collado Giraldo. “It’s about understanding how people used caves and where they left their marks.”

The cave artists remain unidentified

Recovering that evidence remains difficult, even from an object expected to have been in contact with saliva. The bird bone airbrush from Altamira yielded no ancient human DNA. The most likely explanation was extremely high contamination by present-day human DNA, combined with the minimal amount of material sampled. The result highlights the difficulty of recovering ancient genetic traces from material that has been heavily handled over decades of study.

Despite favorable preservation conditions at many sites, ancient DNA was detected in only one of the 24 rock art panels examined and in two additional locations adjacent to other panels. That rarity suggests pigment surfaces seldom retain enough DNA to survive for thousands of years, particularly without protection from mineral crusts or sealed environments.

“The preservation of human DNA on cave walls is highly variable,” says Bossoms Mesa. “But when it does survive, it tells a powerful story. And while these first results are promising, I think our priority now should be to refine the methods and to understand under what conditions we can expect a higher success rate.”

Identifying the makers of particular artworks remains a possibility for future research, rather than something this study has achieved.

“This is just the beginning,” adds Meyer. “We now know that cave walls are archives of past human presence. The next step is to test more sites, art styles and techniques, especially hand stencils and figurative art in caves with good molecular preservation, as far as minimally invasive sampling allows.”

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Scientists Discover a Hidden Oxygen Source Deep Inside Earth That Could Rewrite Our Planet’s History

By Science China Press, Oct. 23, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-discover-a-hidden-oxygen-source-deep-inside-earth-that-could-rewrite-our-planets-history/

Scientists have uncovered an unexpected way magma stores oxygen within its structure. The discovery could reshape our understanding of ancient volcanic activity and planetary atmospheres. 

Credit: Shutterstock

Ancient eruptions may have helped shape the air we breathe, with laboratory experiments revealing magma’s unexpected ability to store extra oxygen.

Molten rock deep inside Earth can take up an extra supply of oxygen under pressure, according to a new study. That finding raises the possibility that rising magma could release oxygen on its way to the surface, a process that may have contributed to increases in atmospheric oxygen billions of years ago.

Oxygen makes up more than half the atoms in Earth’s silicate interior, but its abundance does not necessarily mean it is available to escape into the atmosphere. Much of it is chemically bound to other elements. Geoscientists have generally assumed that the quantities and electrical charge states of elements such as silicon, magnesium, and iron determine how much oxygen magma contains. Knowing those ingredients should let them calculate the oxygen needed to balance the chemistry. Whether molten rock could absorb additional oxygen as a separate volatile component, as it does water and carbon dioxide, has remained largely unexplored.

The study, published in National Science Review, was led by Dr. Yanhao Lin and Dr. Ho-kwang Mao of the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research (HPSTAR). They worked with Prof. Haiyang Niu of Northwestern Polytechnical University and Prof. Wim van Westrenen of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Pressure boosts magma’s oxygen uptake

To test whether magma could take up oxygen beyond that calculated amount, the researchers needed to give it an additional oxygen supply. They added platinum oxide (PtO₂) to create an oxygen-rich environment for synthetic mid-ocean ridge basalt, a laboratory-made version of volcanic rock from the ocean floor. Using piston-cylinder and cubic presses, they melted the basalt at temperatures of 1,200 to 1,800 °C (about 2,190 to 3,270 °F) and pressures ranging from 1 atmosphere to 7 gigapascals. At the upper end, that pressure is roughly 1 million pounds per square inch.

The team also ran experiments at the same pressures and temperatures without platinum oxide. Comparing the two sets would help reveal whether making extra oxygen available changed how much the molten rock retained.

Excess oxygen in silicate glass increases with pressure. 

Circles and diamonds show experiments on basalt that was fully molten or partly molten, respectively; open symbols mark control runs without an added oxygen source; squares show molecular dynamics results for MgSiO3 melt.

 Colors indicate temperature. The dashed line marks the starting composition.

 Credit: Science China Press



After rapidly cooling, or quenching, the melts into glass, the researchers measured the oxygen remaining in each sample. Not all of it counted as extra. Some was needed to balance the other elements, and some was contained in water and carbon dioxide. By measuring the glass’s elemental composition and its water and carbon dioxide contents, the team could subtract those accounted-for amounts from the total oxygen. They called the remainder “excess oxygen.”

With platinum oxide added, excess oxygen was close to zero at 1 atmosphere but exceeded 5% of the sample’s weight at 7 gigapascals. The control experiments without platinum oxide yielded only 0.2% to 0.5% excess oxygen by weight. High pressure therefore appeared to help the melt take advantage of the additional oxygen supply. Some oxygen may have escaped during quenching, so the measured amounts likely underestimate how much the molten samples originally held.

Oxygen becomes part of the glass

There was another distinction to resolve: had the oxygen become part of the material, or was it simply trapped inside gas bubbles? Raman spectroscopy, which uses scattered light to probe a material’s structure, detected no signature of oxygen gas in the glass. That indicated the excess oxygen had been incorporated into the glass structure.

Simulations led by Niu examined how the melt could accommodate this extra oxygen at the atomic level. The team used deep neural network (DNN) interatomic potentials, computational models that describe how atoms interact, with the accuracy of ab initio calculations based on fundamental physical principles. In the simulations, oxygen entered the melt until equilibrium was reached, meaning there was no further net uptake.

Schematic cross-section of Earth’s mantle. Magma formed in a deep, oxygen-rich region of the mantle carries excess oxygen upward. As the magma rises and pressure drops, excess oxygen is released (blue dots), which could oxidize the shallow mantle, the crust, and the atmosphere. LIP: large igneous province; ULVZ: ultra-low velocity zone. 

Credit: Science China Press



As more oxygen dissolved, the electrical charges on oxygen atoms spread across a wider range, and a small fraction of those atoms formed peroxide-like bonds with one another. These changes offered clues to how the melt’s chemistry could accommodate oxygen beyond the amount predicted by the conventional accounting. The simulations used a simplified magnesium-silicon-oxygen system and produced lower oxygen contents than the basalt experiments, but they reproduced the same increase with pressure.

That pressure dependence resembles the behavior of water and carbon dioxide, which dissolve more readily in magma at higher pressures. The authors therefore suggest that oxygen should also be treated as a separate component of silicate melts. Doing so could change how researchers assess the evolution of magma oceans, the release of volatile substances, and the development of planetary atmospheres, with implications for long-term habitability on other terrestrial planets.

Magma may have supplied atmospheric oxygen

Within Earth, magma formed in oxidized regions of the mantle could collect substantial excess oxygen while under pressure. As it rises, the falling pressure could reduce how much oxygen it can retain, causing a gradual release. The oxygen could then drive oxidation reactions in the shallow mantle, crust, and atmosphere, allowing magma to transport oxidizing power from deep underground toward the surface.

The researchers propose that this process may help explain a timing overlap in Earth’s history. Major increases in atmospheric oxygen roughly 2.5 to 2.0 billion years ago coincided with the formation of some of the largest large igneous provinces (LIPs), vast accumulations of rock produced by volcanic activity. Their rough estimate suggests that if magma erupted during that period released just 0.27% of its weight as excess oxygen, it could have supplied as much oxygen as today’s atmosphere contains.

The Life of Earth

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

New Fossil Confirms a Human Ancestor Appeared 200,000 Years Earlier Than Expected

22 Oct. 2026, By D. Nield

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-fossil-confirms-a-human-ancestor-appeared-200000-years-earlier-than-expected

A replica of a Homo erectus skull. 

(Attie Gerber/iStockphoto/Getty Images)

The fossil record shows that our Homo erectus ancestors were the first hominins to show signs of adapting to life on the ground, with longer legs and shorter arms emerging (the name translates to 'upright human').

It's therefore important that anthropologists can date the species correctly – and a new fossil analysis from an international team of researchers, published in the Annals of Human Biology, pushes back the emergence of these proto-people by about 200,000 years.

Imagine archaeologists of the distant future digging up the first iPhone and finding it wasn't invented in 2007, as previously assumed, but appeared in the time of Neanderthals and woolly mammoths. That's the sort of timescale we're talking about.

The discovery comes from the Drimolen Main Quarry near Johannesburg in South Africa, a hugely significant site for early humans known as the 'Cradle of Humankind'. What's more, the study includes additional findings for a more distant ancient human relative.

"This paper publishes a new adult fossil attributed to Homo erectus, DNH 127, providing further confirmation that this species first appeared in southern Africa 2 million years ago," says archaeologist Jesse Martin, from La Trobe University in Australia.

The adjusted timeline isn't completely new, because a skull fragment designated as DNH 134 had already been dated to the same period.

However, DNH 134 belonged to a young child, making comparisons with adults tricky.

Researchers have found over 100 fossil fragments at the Drimolen Main Quarry site. 

(Martin et al., Ann. Hum. Biol., 2026)



A total of 18 fossils were analyzed in this latest research, with the physical characteristics of the bones used to identify each species, and geological techniques, including radioactive dating, used to determine the age of the fossils.

Besides the single DNH 127 fossil for H. erectus, the team also linked 14 fossils to another hominin, Paranthropus robustus. This ancient relative is farther from us than H. erectus on the family tree, and had heavy jaws and big teeth for processing food that was hard and tough.

At the same time as H. erectus was evolving larger brains and smaller teeth, the teeth of P. robustus were getting bigger, and their chewing muscles were getting stronger (shown by jaw shapes).

Ultimately, it would be the H. erectus lineage that survived.

"These two human species shared the same landscape and are both preserved in the Drimolen cave," says Martin.

"While we know that Homo erectus and the lineage leading to us was ultimately the successful one, 2 million years ago P. robustus outnumbered Homo erectus at Drimolen by more than 10 to one."

The P. robustus discoveries back up the idea that the species was evolving over time. Other fossils from the same species found in other locations suggested larger, stronger hominins, a sign of the species changing.

Overall, the new P. robustus fossils revealed some characteristics in jaw structure that hadn't been seen before, and several areas of variation.

"The large number of fossils from Drimolen, some of which are published in this paper, allow an unprecedented insight into the micro-evolutionary changes that shaped human ancestors," says Martin.

The DNH 127 fragment from different angles. 

(Martin et al., Ann. Hum. Biol., 2026)



We already knew ancient human ancestry was complicated, with multiple species overlapping in different places rather than following along one after another. This latest study adds some clarity for two species in the Drimolen region.

It's worth bearing in mind that the fossils here are relatively small fragments, and further investigation will be required to confirm the presence of H. erectus and P. robustus this far back in time. The good news is there are a lot of discovered fossils to study at this site, and most likely more to be dug up.

There may well be more to find here to help understand why the P. robustus evolutionary line eventually died out, and ultimately, H. erectus likely led to modern-day humans.

"During this time period it was our [H. erectus] ancestors that looked like the outside long-odds chance to survive," says Martin.

The birth of Modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

One-Quarter of Data Centers Are Located in Water-Stressed Areas, Study Shows

22 Oct. 2026, By D. Nield

https://www.sciencealert.com/one-quarter-of-data-centers-are-located-in-water-stressed-areas-study-shows

(jose sanchez/500px/Getty Images)

Data centers need water to stay cool and functional, and lots of it: The larger facilities can consume as much water a day as a town of 50,000 people, and because much of the cooling involves evaporation, freshwater is often preferred.

That raises serious questions about the environmental impact of the cloud compute we use to run AI queries, host photos and videos, stream music, and all the rest. Researchers are trying to get a handle on what the impacts on water usage actually are.

In a new study published in Environmental Science & Technology, researchers led by a team from the Carnegie Institution for Science in the US mapped the location of the 9,347 currently identified data centers worldwide.

When the local water conditions of all these sites were analyzed, the team found that around 25 percent of data centers are in areas where there's a water gap during at least one month of the year – that's when water demand outstrips supply.

2,315 of 9,347 data centers are in water-stressed areas. 

(Rosa et al., Environ. Sci. Technol., 2026)



Based on climate models and 3 °C (5.4 °F) of average global temperature rise from 1900 levels, the number of water-stressed data center locations would rise to 33 percent within as little as 10 years, the researchers found.

"These facilities are not landing in empty landscapes," says environmental scientist Lorenzo Rosa, from the Carnegie Institution for Science. "They are landing on top of the water supply of cities and farms."

While electricity can be spread across long distances through a power grid, the same can't be said for water. It typically needs to be sourced locally, which means the local conditions at sites chosen for data centers really do matter.

Water typically gets pulled from lakes, rivers, and aquifers – which can all vary seasonally in terms of the water they supply.

"The energy footprint of data centers has been quantified in detail because electricity is metered and reported," says Rosa. "Water scarcity is measured locally, inconsistently, and often not at all."

"So, we built the map because it did not exist."

The researchers plotted all of the world's data centers on a map. 

(Rosa et al., Environ. Sci. Technol., 2026)

The map showed that 41 percent of global data centers are competing directly with cities and municipalities for their water, while for another 28 percent of sites the primary water use is for agriculture.

For 523 facilities – that's a little over 5 percent of the total – there are already water gaps for at least 9 months of the year.

There were differences in terms of climate change impact too. Most data centers pushed beyond the water gap threshold by temperature rises would be in the US, the modeling showed, while in countries such as the UK and Germany there wouldn't be much change.

"Data centers typically have the financial capacity and institutional priority to secure water supplies whenever water is available," write the researchers in their published paper.

"As a result, the primary risk may not be to data center operations themselves but to other water users within the same basins."

The researchers note that information on data center water usage remains limited – the giant tech companies involved are reticent to share the exact level of demand these facilities are putting on our natural resources.

More accountable reporting would definitely help, which might require intervention from regulators and governments.

There is some positivity from the researchers at the end of their paper, though, pointing to efforts to use wastewater and treated seawater in place of freshwater, as well as improvements in data center heat management. What's clear is that changes are needed before the data center water drain gets worse.

"The extent to which water-stress exposure translates into operational impacts for data centers themselves or into measurable consequences for other water users remains an open question to address," write the researchers.

"Ensuring data center long-term viability will require siting and governance choices that account for local hydrological limits."

The birth of modern Man

https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/