Friday, 4 September 2026

Aging Changes Memory in a Surprising Way, New Study Finds

By U. of East Anglia, Sept. 3, 2026

Older adults may remember the meaning of an experience even as its vivid details fade. A new study reveals that this shift becomes especially noticeable when the brain must rapidly move between different types of memory.
 Credit: Shutterstock

A new study finds that as people age, they remember fewer details from their past and have more difficulty switching between different types of memories.

As people grow older, the broad story of a past experience may remain even as the sights, sounds, and emotions tied to a particular moment become harder to retrieve. Research from the University of East Anglia suggests that aging changes not only how much people remember, but also the type of information their memories emphasize.

The study found that older adults recalled fewer details from their past and had more difficulty when they needed to switch between different kinds of memories. At the same time, their recollections contained more general knowledge and interpretation, suggesting that aging may gradually shift memory away from vivid, moment-specific experiences and toward a broader account of what happened.

This more complex pattern suggests that age-related memory change cannot be understood simply as forgetting. Instead, the findings offer a closer look at how memories are retrieved and expressed across the lifespan, with potential relevance for efforts to support healthy cognitive aging.

Aging shifts memory toward the big picture

Lead researcher Prof. Louis Renoult, from UEA’s School of Psychology, said: “As we get older, our memories tend to become less detailed and more general, focusing on the overall story rather than specific moments.

“This shift is linked to changes in how the brain recalls information, meaning older people often remember the big picture but with fewer vivid details.

“We wanted to better understand how young and older adults retrieve autobiographical memories – the personal experiences that form the story of our lives.

“These sorts of memories can range from specific one-time events, such as a birthday party, to more general or repeated experiences like commuting to work.

“We focused on how flexible people are when asked to shift between these types of memories, and what happens when that flexibility is put under pressure.”

To examine that flexibility, the researchers recruited 37 students and 37 older adults from the community. Participants responded to cue words such as ‘market’ by retrieving two forms of autobiographical memory.

“We wanted to elicit both specific memories and categoric memories – which are the general or repeated experiences,” said Prof Renoult.

Switching memories exposes an age gap

The researchers first had participants recall each type of memory separately, allowing them to concentrate on one form at a time. Participants were then required to switch back and forth between specific and categoric memories, increasing the demands placed on cognitive control.

The researchers assessed whether participants followed the requested memory type and also examined how much detail appeared in what they recalled.

Prof Renoult said: “We found that across all age groups, memory performance declined when participants had to switch between memory types.

“However, older adults were particularly affected in one area – they were less accurate at recalling more mundane repetitive memories like commuting to work under switching conditions.

“Interestingly, their ability to recall specific memories like a birthday party was less affected by the task-switching challenge.

“This suggests that certain types of memory retrieval may be more vulnerable to the effects of aging when multitasking or adapting to changing demands.”

Looking beyond whether participants successfully produced the requested memories revealed another important difference between the age groups. When researchers analyzed the content of specific memories, older adults included fewer details tied directly to an experience, such as sights, sounds, and emotions.

At the same time, their accounts contained more semantic details, meaning general knowledge or interpretations associated with an event. The researchers observed a similar pattern when participants retrieved categoric memories.

Memory change is not simply forgetting

Together, the results suggest that aging affects the way memories are accessed and communicated, rather than simply causing information to disappear. Older adults’ recollections became less rich in specific contextual details while relying more heavily on broader knowledge.

Prof Renoult said: “When older adults recall events, the richness of those memories may be reduced.

“This shift may reflect changes in underlying brain systems involved in memory, particularly those responsible for retrieving detailed contextual information and managing complex cognitive tasks.”

Those changes could become especially noticeable in situations that require people to adjust quickly between different forms of recall.

“This has practical implications for everyday life. Tasks that require people to quickly adapt their thinking or switch between different kinds of recall – such as storytelling, decision-making or problem-solving – may become more challenging with age.

“At the same time, the increased reliance on semantic knowledge may have benefits. Generalized memories can support wisdom, pattern recognition, and efficient communication, even if the finer details are lost.”

The researchers hope that understanding this shift in greater detail could ultimately help inform approaches aimed at supporting healthy cognitive aging.


The Life of Earth
https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Early Exercise May Permanently Change How Much Energy the Body Uses To Move

By A. Wagner, Penn State, Sept. 3, 2026

Physical demands during growth may leave a lasting mark on how efficiently the body moves. In an experiment with guinea fowl, birds that regularly carried extra weight while developing later walked with that load at virtually no added energy cost. 
Credit: Shutterstock

An active childhood may train the growing body to make movement less demanding for life.

A Penn State-led experiment found that birds raised while carrying extra weight became remarkably economical walkers. Once mature, they could transport the added load without using more energy than ordinary birds needed to walk unburdened.

The findings offer rare direct evidence that physical demands during development can shape the lifelong energy cost of movement. In the small animal study, activity during development led to more energy-efficient movement later in life.

Why Movement Efficiency Matters

Movement consumes energy that could otherwise support growth, reproduction, temperature control, immune defenses, or the search for food. Even modest improvements in efficiency could, therefore, influence an animal’s health, behavior, and chances of survival.

“Limb loading,” in which the arms or legs experience added mechanical stress through weight or exercise, may be one way the developing body learns to reduce that cost, according to senior author Jonas Rubenson, a professor of kinesiology at Penn State.

“This is one of the first studies to indicate that animals’ behaviors and environments in youth can affect how effortful moving is as adults,” Rubenson said.

Published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, the research challenges the idea that movement economy is largely fixed. Instead, the body may adjust during growth to meet the mechanical demands it encounters repeatedly.

Growing Up With Extra Weight

The experiment followed 12 guinea fowl from two weeks of age until they were nearly fully grown at 16 weeks. Guinea fowl are close relatives of chickens, and their two-legged walking makes them useful for investigating principles that may also apply to human locomotion.

Six birds wore lead bands on one leg weighing 4% of their body mass. The other six developed without an added load. Apart from the bands, all the birds were raised and exercised under identical conditions. Beginning at nine weeks, each was also trained to walk on a treadmill.


Jonas Rubenson, professor of kinesiology at Penn State, crouches beside the treadmill and metabolic chamber used in a recent study. His team found that extra physical work by birds as they grew resulted in less effortful movement as an adult, which may provide evidence that activity in childhood affects adult capacity in animals in general—including humans. 
Credit: Jaydyn Isiminger / Penn State. Creative Commons



At 16 weeks, researchers measured the birds while they stood still, walked normally, and walked with the leg weight attached. A flow-through metabolic chamber recorded oxygen consumption along with carbon dioxide and water vapor production, allowing the team to calculate how much energy each activity required.

All 12 birds used similar amounts of energy while standing. Walking with the added weight, however, exposed a striking difference between the two groups.

A 23% Energy Penalty Disappeared

Birds encountering the leg weight for the first time needed 23% more energy to walk than they did without it. Those raised with the weight showed no comparable penalty.

In fact, the experienced birds used slightly less energy when walking with the band than when walking without it. On average, carrying the load cost them no more energy than ordinary guinea fowl typically expend while walking unweighted.

“The birds became so efficient that they were not using any more energy to carry the weight than they needed to walk without the weight,” Rubenson said.

The experiment did not determine exactly how the birds achieved this economy. Developmental changes in anatomy, muscle performance, posture, coordination, or walking mechanics could all potentially contribute. Identifying the underlying adaptations will require further research.

Could Childhood Activity Shape Adult Exercise?

The findings may eventually help researchers understand why movement feels easier for some people than for others. One influential hypothesis holds that humans tend to avoid activities perceived as physically costly. If early inactivity increases the effort required to move later, it could reinforce a cycle in which exercise feels harder and is therefore avoided more often.

Conversely, regular play and exercise during childhood might build lasting physical capacity, making movement less taxing in adulthood. That possibility could matter as children in the United States spend less time being physically active than earlier generations, Rubenson said.

“If people do not need to exert as much energy to move as adults, then exercise and all its health benefits will be more accessible to them,” he said. “This could have implications for many aspects of our nation’s well-being, from heart health to mental health.”


The Life of Earth
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A Billion Tons of Ice Are Hiding Under Utah, Study Finds

04 Sept. 2026, By P. Dockrill

A person standing on Mount Timpanogos, Utah. 
(Heber Davis/Unsplash)

When we picture glaciers, it's easy to imagine vast expanses of white ice gleaming under the sky.

But not all glaciers take that form.

The world is covered in a different kind, called rock glaciers – landforms in mountain regions where masses of ice and rock coexist, hidden under a hard surface of rock and boulders.

As a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface reveals, rock glaciers can hold a truly stunning amount of ice.

There are more than 51,000 documented rock glaciers globally – over 10,000 of which are located in the US.

Despite their prevalence, though, these blanketed formations of ice are effectively hidden from sight under their dense covers of rock, so many people may never even know they're there.


Mount Timpanogos rock glacier. 
(Bronson Cvijanovich/University of Utah)



"When we are high in the mountains and walking across loose rocks or rubble, you don't realize there could be 120 feet of ice buried beneath your feet," says glaciologist Leif Anderson from the University of Utah.

That natural rocky concealment helps preserve the ice in rock glaciers, insulating it from sunlight and heat at the surface, but it's also an obstacle for scientists.

One of the challenges of studying rock glaciers and learning more about them has been the difficulty of measuring the amount of water ice they contain, due to the rocky rubble that covers them.

In their new study, Anderson and fellow researchers figured out a new way to quantify the ice stores in rock glaciers, using Timpanogos Glacier at the base of Utah's Mount Timpanogos as their test subject.

While conventional imaging of glaciers can be done with ground-penetrating radar, the technique isn't effective for rock glaciers, as rocky debris mixed in with the ice scatters radio waves and degrades the image quality.

An alternative approach is to use a gravimeter, which can detect and map hidden masses underground.


Geology graduate student Bronson Cvijanovich from the University of Utah, the first author of the study, operates a gravimeter while taking measurements of the Mount Timpanogos rock glacier in 2024.
 (Bronson Cvijanovich/University of Utah)



"There is a large contrast in mass density between the rock that makes up Mount Timpanogos and the much lower-density ice that is in the rock glacier adjacent to it," says co-author and geophysicist Michael Thorne.

"When we measure the gravitational acceleration over the rock glacier, we see a larger decrease in that gravitational acceleration as we make measurements over areas with thicker ice."

With the data in hand from a survey of 232 measurements taken at different locations around Timpanogos Glacier, the researchers then developed a new method to image the ice in 3D within the rock glacier, using Bayesian statistics and modeling techniques to reconstruct the glacier's thickness, shape, and composition.

The results suggest that Timpanogos Glacier is made up of approximately 83 percent ice and 17 percent rocky debris by volume, with the ice occupying an average thickness of 18.8 meters (61.7 feet) across the rock glacier.

All up, the rock glacier contains approximately 1.5 million cubic meters of ice, roughly equivalent to the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza (or about 600 Olympic swimming pools).

In terms of metric tons, that means Timpanogos Glacier holds about 1.4 million tons (1.5 million US tons) of ice hidden under its rocky surface, but the researchers didn't stop there.

With data from previous studies of other rock glaciers' internal structures, the researchers used their findings on Timpanogos Glacier to develop a new method that can estimate ice volume in rock glaciers from measurements of their surface area.

According to their calculations, the state of Utah as a whole holds about 1 billion tons (1 gigaton) of ice across all its 836 documented rock glaciers.

The western US contains almost 12 billion tons, and globally there's about 48 billion tons of ice stored inside rock glaciers.

It's a pretty incredible new way to gauge the amount of ice hidden inside rock glaciers around the world, and as the researchers say, it's important we keep refining our measurements of these huge formations.

"The need to quantify the water stored in these features is only increasing as glaciers respond to climate change and have the potential to transition to debris-covered glaciers and ultimately rock glaciers," the team writes.

"During periods of warming, rock glaciers can become destabilized and pose a threat to downstream infrastructure. Modeling these landforms in 3D can help to quantify their water stores and image their internal structure, allowing their impacts on local hydrology, ecology, and hazards to be better constrained."


The Life of Earth
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Thursday, 3 September 2026

A 100-Year-Old Mushroom Mystery Just Got Much More Complicated

By L. Mederos, U. of Florida, Sept. 3, 2026

In a mushroom farm in the southern United States, doctoral student Sameerika Mudiyanselage and her advisor Samuel Martins sample mushrooms for bacterial blotch symptoms. 
Credit: UF/IFAS Samuel Martins

Scientists found that bacterial blotch in white button mushrooms is caused by multiple bacteria, a discovery that could improve disease detection and lead to more sustainable treatments for growers.

A University of Florida study has uncovered an important new clue about a disease that has affected white button mushrooms for more than 100 years. The popular mushroom is widely valued for its nutritional benefits and versatility in everyday meals.

As a major specialty crop, white button mushrooms are often cited as an example of the “food is medicine” concept because they can help support healthy diets when included in common foods such as salads, appetizers, and other dishes.

But growers continue to face problems from bacterial blotch, a disease that lowers yields, shortens shelf life, and reduces the market value of mushrooms by causing brown or yellow discoloration. In some cases, symptoms do not appear until mushrooms are already in stores or in consumers’ homes.

Multiple Bacteria Linked to Bacterial Blotch

Researchers from the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) found that bacterial blotch is not caused by a single pathogen, as previously believed. Instead, the disease is linked to a complex mix of harmful bacterial species that thrive in the warm, humid indoor conditions used for mushroom production.

“For years, the industry has struggled with treatments that provide inconsistent results against bacterial blotch,” said Samuel Martins, co-author and assistant professor in the UF/IFAS Department of Plant Pathology. “As part of a separate $7 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant involving Penn State, the University of Delaware, and UF/IFAS, we are developing advanced diagnostics and sustainable solutions to strengthen mushroom farms nationwide.”

To conduct the study, the UF/IFAS team used DNA sequencing, chemical profiling, and traditional laboratory testing to analyze mushrooms infected with bacterial blotch. Samples were collected from several mushroom production sites across the southern United States. The researchers found that the involvement of multiple bacterial species makes the disease more difficult to detect, predict, and control using standard treatment methods.

Researchers Identify 17 Pathogenic Species

“We found more than 17 different species of pathogenic bacteria associated with the disease,” said Sameerika Mudiyanselage, the study’s lead author and a doctoral student of Martins and Romina Gazis at the UF/IFAS Tropical Research and Education Center. “While two well-known bacterial pathogens dominated the known disease profile, we also detected a surprisingly high level of another group of bacteria that has not previously been linked to the mushroom disease.”

The discovery suggests there are additional contributors to bacterial blotch that had previously gone unrecognized. Researchers say this may help explain why the disease has remained a costly and persistent problem despite ongoing treatment efforts.

“We hope that expanding our research will lead to the development of better diagnostics and more effective treatments to address the full group of disease-causing bacteria in white button mushrooms,” she said.

Sustainable Treatments and Eco-Friendly Solutions

In addition to identifying the bacteria involved, the researchers are also exploring more sustainable ways to manage the disease. Current follow-up studies are examining plant-based essential oils, beneficial microbes, and other biological products as possible alternatives to conventional chemical treatments.

“Ultimately, our goal is to provide growers with practical, science-based solutions that help strengthen mushroom farming systems,” said Martins. “By understanding the complexity of bacterial blotch and the role of microbial communities, we can develop better eco-friendly management practices that reduce losses while improving sustainability.”

New Findings Could Transform Mushroom Disease Management

UF researchers found that bacterial blotch in white button mushrooms is caused by multiple bacterial species rather than a single pathogen.

The disease creates major challenges for mushroom growers by reducing crop yields, shortening shelf life, and causing visible blemishes that make mushrooms difficult to sell.

The findings could improve disease detection and support the development of more effective and sustainable treatments for mushroom farms across the United States.


The Life of Earth
https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

The Human Family Tree May Need a Major Rewrite

By Monash U., Sept. 2, 2026

New Monash University research argues our Paranthropus (pictured) and Australopithecus ancestors who lived up to 5 million years ago should be included under the Homo group of species. 
Credit: Ian Towle, Monash University

Growing evidence that early human relatives do not fit neatly into traditional categories is prompting a proposal to expand the genus Homo.

The human family tree is becoming harder to fit into the categories scientists have used for decades. Research from Monash University argues that recent discoveries are blurring the boundaries between our ancestors and close fossil relatives, raising questions about how they should be named and classified.

The work, published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, proposes placing all human species and closely related fossil forms from the past 4-5 million years within the genus Homo.

Human evolution is often depicted as a sequence of clearly separated species, beginning with ape-like ancestors, passing through Australopithecus and early members of Homo, and eventually leading to Homo sapiens.

The fossil record, however, reveals a far less orderly history. New finds have repeatedly weakened the traits once used to draw firm lines between humans and their close relatives.
Fossil discoveries blur old genus boundaries

Lead researcher Dr. Ian Towle, a Research Fellow at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, said accumulating evidence is making the current classification system less useful and less accurate. That includes species assigned to Homo, as well as Australopithecus and Paranthropus, all of which lived within the past 5 million years.

“Recent fossil discoveries and advances in evolutionary and genetic analysis make this an ideal time to reconsider whether our traditional taxonomy still accurately reflects human evolution,” Dr Towle said.

“These groups do not necessarily represent distinct evolutionary branches, or ‘clades,’ and differences in behavior and ecology once used to distinguish them have also become increasingly difficult to maintain.

“I propose expanding Homo to include these other groups to provide a more accurate and stable way to represent the complex evolutionary relationships revealed by the growing fossil record.”

Modern taxonomy favors shared ancestry

Over the past 50 years, advances in evolutionary biology have changed how scientists organize the living world.

Modern taxonomy, the system used to name and classify organisms, increasingly seeks to reflect actual evolutionary relationships by grouping species according to common ancestry.

Human evolution has been slower to adopt that approach.

In recent decades, classification has increasingly focused on clades, groups that include a common ancestor and all of its descendants.

Traditional Homo traits no longer hold

Members of Homo have traditionally been distinguished by traits such as larger brains, sophisticated tool use, and particular anatomical and behavioral characteristics.

Those boundaries have become harder to defend. Some accepted members of Homo had very small brains, while complex behaviors also appear to have been present in Paranthropus and Australopithecus.

Dr Towle argues that moving Australopithecus and Paranthropus species into Homo would provide a more consistent picture of human evolution and reduce the need to repeatedly redraw taxonomic boundaries as new fossils and evidence emerge.

“The more we learn about our ancestors and close fossil relatives, the more we realize how complex and non-linear our family tree is,” Dr Towle said.

“Expanding the Homo genus to also include species of Australopithecus and Paranthropus will allow us to account for differences without regularly reclassifying particular groups.”


The birth of modern Man
https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Everyone Assumes DNA Shapes Your Personality. It Turns Out Something Else Is Doing Most of The Work

03 Sept. 2026, By M. STARR

Identical twins share almost all their DNA, but genes are only part of what shapes personality. 
(lambada/E+/Getty Images)

One of the biggest existential questions an individual can ask is "What makes me, me?"

Identical twins have near-identical genetics, yet can still develop quite different personalities – about as perfect a demonstration as nature could offer that DNA isn't destiny.

Nevertheless, some part of who you are is written in A-T-C-G – the question is not whether DNA and personality are linked, but by how much.

Now, the largest genetic investigation of the Big Five personality traits to date has found more than a thousand genetic variants associated with the ways we tend to think, feel, and behave.

But that doesn't mean scientists can divine your personality from scraps of DNA like genetic tasseographers. The results don't work that way on an individual level; rather, genetics can reveal patterns in personality across populations.

"If we'd want to know someone's personality at an individual level, genetics isn't really a fruitful path; we can simply measure personality and get a very clear picture, genes wouldn't add anything there," genetic epidemiologist Michel Nivard of the University of Bristol in the UK, a senior author of the study, told ScienceAlert.

"What genes do offer us is a way to link personality, in the aggregate across groups of people, to all other outcomes we have ever previously studied with a genome-wide association study."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G4vNRuGRfE

The paper, led by psychologist Ted Schwaba of Michigan State University, has been published in Nature. Psychologist Elliot Tucker-Drob of the University of Texas at Austin is a co-senior author.

To better understand that genetic contribution, Nivard and his colleagues brought together personality and genetic data from 46 cohorts, with the largest analysis encompassing around 1.14 million people.

They focused on the Big Five – five broad dimensions psychologists use to describe personality: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience.

Then they conducted genome-wide association studies, or GWAS, looking across the genomes of huge numbers of people for genetic variants that consistently appeared alongside differences in those personality traits.

Crucially, they weren't expecting to find a single definitive "extraversion gene" or "neuroticism gene". Personality is far more genetically complex than that.

"In a way we knew that we'd find many variants, which also means that the individual variants have very, very small effects on personality," Nivard explained.

"There are definitely no genes with an effect that is perceptible at an individual level like [those that] exist for outcomes like Alzheimer's."

Sure enough, the analysis turned up a whopping 1,260 lead genetic variants associated with the Big Five personality traits, including 824 that hadn't previously been linked to them.

But even with so many genetic variants involved, DNA explains only a modest proportion of the differences in personality from one person to another, the researchers found.

Across the Big Five traits, the genetic variation captured by the study accounted for around 7.4 to 10.6 percent of those individual differences, Nivard told ScienceAlert.

And knowing someone's genetic variants wasn't particularly useful for predicting their personality. When the researchers used the genetic information to make their best predictions in separate groups, they could explain less than 4 percent of the variation in personality.

That suggests that genes do make some difference, but they're a long way from telling the whole story.

"Our genes clearly influence our personality predispositions," Nivard said. "We can account for a portion of those genetic effects, but there are clearly also substantial environmental causes of personality, which collectively explain the majority of individual differences."

And therein lies another difficulty. Humans are super complicated, and strongly shaped by environment, diet, and culture. How do you determine that personality is being influenced by genetics, rather than external factors?

One way is to look at families.

The researchers compared siblings and fraternal twins, who share much of their family environment but inherit different combinations of their parents' genes. If a genetic variant associated with, say, extraversion also predicts which sibling is more extraverted, then shared upbringing is a much less likely explanation.


Twins share both genes and environment, making them particularly useful for teasing apart the influences of each. (Holly Wilmeth/DigitalVision/Getty Images)



And that's pretty much what they found: genetic effects on personality within families were almost identical to those found between unrelated people.


But not all the analyses were quite so consistent and tidy. The genetic patterns associated with agreeableness varied considerably across the different groups studied.

"Agreeableness, the personality trait of being kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm, honest, straightforward, and considerate, as opposed to selfishness, insincerity, and zero-sum thinking, isn't measuring the exact same thing across cultures, cohorts, and age," Nivard said.

The differences could simply be down to questionnaires emphasizing different aspects of agreeableness, Nivard said. But they could also reflect genuine cultural differences in what shapes the trait – something that will take further research to untangle.

But the research may prove useful, the researchers say, in places where personality intersects with other parts of our lives.

For example, the researchers found genetic links between extraversion and COVID-19 infection risk in the early years of the pandemic, potentially reflecting the greater need for social contact among more extraverted people.

Personality itself has previously been linked to whether a person is likely to vote in elections. Scientists have even linked personality traits to longevity.

Ultimately, the genetics of personality offers researchers another tool for understanding how personality shapes our choices, behavior, and health – not a way to read who someone is from their DNA.

"I would hate for people to come away thinking that genetics set their personality in stone, or that their individual personality is measurable via their genome," Nivard said.

"If you want to know more about your personality relative to others, take one of the many free tests online, and you'll learn so much more!"


The birth of modern Man
https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, 2 September 2026

Scientists Discover a “Loose Cannon” Virus Enzyme That Rewires Nearly Every Protein in a Bacterial Cell

By European Molecular Biology Lab., Sept. 1, 2026

Illustration depicting how T7 kinase, a phage enzyme, modifies many proteins inside an infected bacterium, helping shut down its defense mechanisms. 
Credit: Daniela Velasco/EMBL

Scientists found that phages, viruses that infect bacteria, trigger widespread protein modifications inside host cells that help them evade bacterial immune defenses.

When a phage infects a bacterium, it must overcome the cell’s defenses before those defenses can destroy the invading virus. Researchers have now uncovered an unusual strategy used by T7 phage: a single enzyme triggers a massive wave of protein modifications inside the infected bacterium, helping disable its immune systems.

Phages, viruses that infect bacteria, are locked in a constant molecular arms race with their hosts. Bacteria evolve defenses against infection, while phages develop ways to evade or suppress those defenses. The new work shows for the first time how one phage protein can initiate a cascade of molecular changes capable of disarming multiple bacterial defense mechanisms.

The findings grew out of a long collaboration between two groups at EMBL Heidelberg: the Typas Group, which specializes in high-throughput research on bacterial interactions, and the Savitski Team, which develops and applies advanced proteomics technologies.

“Phage research has led to a lot of exciting developments, the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system among them,” said Mikhail Savitski, Senior Scientist and Head of Proteomics Core Facility at EMBL Heidelberg. “Using the sensitive technologies we had available in the lab, we wanted to understand in an unbiased way how phages affect bacterial proteins during infection.”

Phage infection modifies nearly every protein

The researchers turned to a familiar laboratory system involving E. coli, the rod-shaped bacterium found in the human gut, and T7 phage, which infects E. coli. They focused on phosphorylation, a rapid chemical modification that can change how a protein functions by activating or disabling it.

What they saw was striking. Within minutes of infection, almost every bacterial protein became phosphorylated in at least some portion of its population inside the cell.

The likely source was T7 kinase, a phage enzyme first identified in the 1970s. But the scale of its activity was unlike anything researchers had seen before. T7 kinase appeared to phosphorylate more targets than any other kinase currently known in nature, prompting the researchers to describe it as a ‘loose cannon’.

“We realized that we were seeing a quite unprecedented molecular event: a catastrophic phosphorylation across the entire proteome in a completely nonspecific manner,” said Savitski. “That had never been seen before, and it was fascinating that there was also no pattern to it.”

That result created a puzzle. Earlier studies had shown that removing T7 kinase from the phage genome has little apparent effect on the infection process.

“As puzzles go, it leaves you a bit flabbergasted,” said Savitski. “You have a kinase with apparently no phenotype that seems to phosphorylate everything in the proteome.”

The researchers confirmed that the kinase acts only briefly. As previously reported, T7 kinase shuts itself down within 5-6 minutes after infection.

Its structure provided another clue. A region known as the shutoff domain was unnecessary for phosphorylation itself, but it contained chemical features that suggested it might bind DNA. The researchers proposed that this domain could anchor the kinase to DNA, placing it near bacterial proteins that also bind DNA.

DNA-binding proteins emerged as key targets

“Methodologically, it is not easy to test such things, but we designed an elegant experiment that could measure exactly how much of a protein population is phosphorylated inside a cell,” said Tara Bartolec, postdoc at EMBL Heidelberg and one of the first authors of the paper.

Using that approach, the researchers found that T7 kinase preferentially phosphorylated bacterial proteins that bind DNA, presumably interfering with their function.

Those proteins are often central to bacterial defense systems because they help recognize and destroy phage DNA after it enters the cell. Consistent with that idea, the researchers found that T7 kinase could help the virus infect bacterial strains equipped with such defense mechanisms.

The mechanism could broaden phage therapies

Comparisons with kinases from other phages suggest that the researchers may have identified an evolutionarily conserved strategy used by certain phages to suppress bacterial immune systems.

The researchers now plan to investigate other types of protein modification and determine how they influence phage infection. The findings may also eventually support bioengineering strategies aimed at designing phages or predicting which phages are most likely to succeed as therapies.

”To be effective for therapy, phages should be capable of infecting diverse versions (strains) of the same pathogen,” said Typas. “Interestingly, pathogenic strains are exquisitely diverse in their immune repertoire, and can always pick up new systems. So engineering phages with broad anti-defense systems, such as the T7 kinase, might be key in this quest for effective phage therapies. We identified the first one here, but we are sure there are many more out there.”


The Life of Earth
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Humans Are Surprisingly Good at Predicting When They Will Die – With One Big Bias

02 Sept. 2026, By E. ÖZ

(Fursov Aleksey/Moment/Getty Images)

How old do you think you will live to be?

Your answer may be more revealing than you realize.

A study that tracked older adults in Japan for up to 28 years suggests people have a surprisingly accurate sense of their own longevity. Those who expected to live longer generally did.

But their predictions showed one striking bias: many underestimated how much time they had left. Among participants whose outcomes could be determined, the researchers report that approximately 59 percent outlived their expected lifespan.

Led by social scientist Shohei Okamoto of the University of Tsukuba, the team analyzed data from the Japanese Aging and Health Dynamics Study, a nationally representative survey of adults aged 60 and older across Japan.

In 1996, 2,447 participants were asked what age they expected to reach. Of those, 393 said they did not know. The remaining 2,054 gave an age ranging from 63 to 120.

Over the next 28 years, 1,514 of those who supplied an estimate died. Approximately 98 percent of the death dates came from official resident records or family reports, allowing the team to compare predicted and actual lifespans.


(Mediterranean/E+/Getty Images)



People who expected to have more years ahead generally survived longer. The association remained after the researchers accounted for age, sex, socioeconomic characteristics, and health-related factors.

So, can simply expecting a long life help you live longer?

The study, available as a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed, cannot answer that question. Because it was observational, it does not show that expecting a longer life extends a person's lifespan or that positive thinking keeps people alive.

Instead, people may know things about their health, habits, or family history that shape both their predictions and their longevity. Someone who feels healthy, for example, might expect to live longer and also be more likely to do so.

Although the researchers accounted for a range of health factors, unmeasured characteristics could still have affected both expected and actual lifespans.

The forecasts were also far from personalized countdowns. In the team's statistical model, each additional year of expected life was associated with only about 0.12 additional years of estimated survival.

The errors varied among different groups. Women and people with more years of education were more likely to outlive their expectations, while those in poorer health were less likely to do so.

One possible explanation lies in a familiar number: 80.

Many participants chose 80 as the age they expected to reach. That was close to Japan's combined-sex life expectancy at birth in 1996, suggesting people may have anchored their predictions to a widely recognized population average.


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How Ancient Poop Changed the Course of Evolution

Anton Petrov, 27 Aug 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5IAqSmjTXc


The Life of Earth
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Tuesday, 1 September 2026

Earth Magnetic Field Shift And Geomagnetic Changes Reshaping Life And Technology On Our Planet

By R. Soliman Pub.: Mar 16 2026

Explore the earth magnetic field shift, what drives geomagnetic changes, and how wandering poles, anomalies, and field weakening impact navigation, satellites, and modern technology. 
Pixabay, Terranaut


Earth's magnetic field may be invisible, but its slow, steady changes shape everything from navigation systems to satellite safety. The ongoing earth magnetic field shift is not a sudden disaster scenario but part of a complex and long-running pattern of geomagnetic changes driven by processes deep inside the planet.

What Is Earth's Magnetic Field?

Earth's magnetic field behaves roughly like a giant, slightly tilted bar magnet centered near the planet's core. Instead of a solid magnet, though, the field is produced by the motion of molten, electrically conductive iron in the outer core.

As this metal moves, it generates electric currents that create and sustain the global magnetic field. This process is known as the geodynamo.

The field extends outward into space to form the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere deflects much of the charged particle radiation streaming from the Sun, helping protect the atmosphere and surface life from intense solar and cosmic radiation.

Is Earth's Magnetic Field Really Shifting?

The earth magnetic field shift is clearly measurable. One key sign is that the magnetic north pole does not stay fixed in one place but drifts across the Arctic over time.

Modern satellites, ships, and ground observatories track this motion with high precision. Over the last century or so, the speed of this drift has changed, at times becoming noticeably faster.

Field strength is also evolving. Measurements reveal that in some regions, particularly over the South Atlantic, the field has weakened. On a global scale, scientists see a modest but real decline in average strength.

When compared with the long record preserved in rocks, however, today's geomagnetic changes still fall within what is considered normal behavior for Earth.

What Drives the Earth Magnetic Field Shift?

The deeper cause of the earth's magnetic field shift lies in the outer core. There, molten iron and nickel circulate in complex, changing patterns.

These flows are powered by heat escaping from the core, the planet's rotation, and subtle variations in composition. Because the fluid is conductive, its motion generates and reshapes the magnetic field.

As the flow patterns gradually reorganize, the field they produce also changes. Scientists call this slow, long-term evolution of direction and strength "secular variation."

The system is inherently chaotic. That makes detailed long-term predictions of geomagnetic changes much more difficult than forecasts of, for example, planetary orbits.

Why Do Earth's Magnetic Poles Sometimes Flip?

Beyond simple wandering, Earth's magnetic poles have flipped polarity many times. A geomagnetic reversal happens when the field weakens, becomes more disordered, and then re-establishes itself with opposite polarity.

Evidence for these reversals comes from volcanic rocks and seafloor crust. As lava cools or sediments solidify, tiny magnetic minerals lock in the direction of the local field at that time.

These flips are irregular. On average, reversals occur every few hundred thousand years, but the spacing varies widely.

Some time intervals show frequent reversals. Others contain long "superchrons," lasting tens of millions of years, with no reversals at all.

Is the Current Shift a Sign of an Imminent Flip?

Because the field is weakening in some areas and the poles are drifting faster than before, there is frequent speculation about an impending reversal. However, there is no solid evidence that the current earth magnetic field shift guarantees a near-term flip.

In the paleomagnetic record, many episodes of reduced field strength and complex structure never developed into full reversals. They were simply part of the ongoing spectrum of geomagnetic changes.

One feature that draws special attention is the South Atlantic Anomaly. This region, stretching over South America and the South Atlantic Ocean, has an unusually weak magnetic field.

In this zone, more charged particles from space can penetrate closer to Earth. That raises radiation levels for satellites passing through, increasing the risk of electronic damage and data glitches.

While the anomaly likely reflects deeper reorganization in the core, its presence alone does not mean a global polarity reversal is imminent.

How Do Geomagnetic Changes Affect Life and Technology?

For everyday life at the surface, the earth magnetic field shift is subtle. Many animals, including migratory birds and sea turtles, rely on the magnetic field for orientation and navigation.

Available evidence suggests that they can adapt to gradual changes in the field. Their navigation systems appear flexible enough to cope with slowly drifting cues, although the limits of this adaptability are still being studied.

Technology is more directly affected. Magnetic compasses, aviation routes, and maritime navigation all depend on accurate knowledge of magnetic north.

Because the field evolves, global magnetic models are regularly updated. Pilots, ship captains, and even smartphone apps rely on these updates to keep headings accurate.

Satellites and spacecraft are especially sensitive to geomagnetic changes. Weaker or more irregular fields, combined with solar activity, can increase radiation exposure.

This can damage electronics, shorten mission lifetimes, and distort measurements. On the ground, strong geomagnetic storms can induce currents in power lines, stressing transformers and grid infrastructure.

How Do Scientists Study Earth's Magnetic Field Shift?

To understand the earth's magnetic field shift, scientists merge modern observations with records preserved in rocks. Today's field is monitored by ground-based observatories, instruments on ships and aircraft, and satellite missions that map the field around the globe.

These measurements feed into international magnetic field models, which are updated every few years. These models are essential for navigation, surveying, and research.

Paleomagnetism provides the long-term perspective. When lava cools or sedimentary layers form, magnetic minerals align with the existing field and preserve its direction and relative strength.

By sampling rocks of different ages from many locations, researchers reconstruct the history of geomagnetic changes, including reversals, excursions, and long-term trends. This record helps test theories about core dynamics and improve models of how the field may evolve.

Earth Magnetic Field Shift and the Future of Geomagnetic Changes

Earth's magnetic field is inherently dynamic, and the ongoing earth magnetic field shift is a natural expression of the restless outer core rather than an automatic sign of impending catastrophe.

The geomagnetic changes observed today, wandering poles, regional anomalies, and gradual strength variations, do pose challenges for satellites, power systems, and navigation, but they develop slowly enough for monitoring, modeling, and engineering solutions to keep pace.

As observing networks expand and core simulations improve, scientists will gain a clearer picture of how the magnetic field is likely to change, helping society better prepare for the next stages in Earth's evolving magnetic environment.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Can people feel Earth's magnetic field shift physically?

No. The earth's magnetic field shift happens very slowly and is far too weak to be felt directly by humans, so there are no physical sensations associated with it.

2. Does Earth's magnetic field shift affect GPS accuracy?

GPS mainly relies on satellite signals and precise timing, not the magnetic field. Geomagnetic changes affect compass-based navigation more than GPS, though both are often used together.

3. Could a pole flip instantly wipe out all electronics?

No. A geomagnetic reversal is thought to unfold over thousands of years. The main concern is increased space-weather impacts on satellites and grids, not an instant global electronics failure.

4. Do smartphones automatically adjust to geomagnetic changes?

Yes, to a degree. Smartphones use sensors plus regularly updated magnetic models from software and online services, so they can recalibrate as the earth magnetic field shift continues over time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Ggs7nUjxA



The Life of Earth
https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/


GPS Glitched Across The US by as Much as 33 Feet. Scientists Have Never Seen This Before.

01 Sept. 2026, By M. Starr

Modern agriculture increasingly relies on precision GPS navigation, which can be vulnerable to solar storms. 
(Alex Potemkin/E+/Getty Images)

In November 2025, Earth was buffeted by several massive eruptions of solar material that slammed into the magnetosphere.

For many, the result was wonder. Much of the world watched in awe as a solar superstorm lit up Earth's skies with dazzling auroras to rare low latitudes.

The sword, however, was double-edged. The same storm also wrought havoc on the technology we rely on here on the ground.

And now, scientists led by space physicist Endawoke Yizengaw of The Aerospace Corporation in the US have discovered that the disruption was stranger – and more widespread – than anyone realized.

In a new analysis of data collected during the storm, the researchers found widespread, coast-to-coast disturbances in the atmosphere across the continental US – a phenomenon that has never been seen before on this scale.

That may not seem like much, but the effects of this would have been profound – throwing GPS off by more than 10 meters (33 feet) in some places. That's significant enough to disrupt precision agriculture and autonomous vehicles, the researchers say.


Composite image of six X-class flares that erupted in November 2025, three of which accompanied the coronal mass ejections that triggered the solar superstorm. 
(NASA/SDO/Scott Wiessinger)

"The results underscore the importance of accurate understanding of various space weather phenomena to enhance our predictive capabilities through coordinated observations and physics‐based modeling and ultimately reducing disruptions to RF applications during space weather events," they write in a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The impact of solar outbursts on human technology is already well known. Solar flares, which unleash powerful bursts of X-rays and ultraviolet radiation, can slam into Earth's upper atmosphere, temporarily disrupting high-frequency radio communications.

Solar storms are a bigger problem. A coronal mass ejection belches out a cloud of high-speed charged electrons and protons across the Solar System; when it slams into Earth's magnetosphere, it can generate electrical currents that disrupt power grids, change the shape of our atmosphere, and interact with atmospheric particles to generate the auroral glow.

The effect Yizengaw and his colleagues investigated is produced in a similar way. During a geomagnetic storm, energetic particles can rain down into the ionosphere, a region GPS signals have to travel through.

This mixing and roiling can create density fluctuations in the upper atmosphere. Think of an antique window pane, where the glass is unevenly distributed. Light traveling through that glass can distort and magnify the image it carries, so you see a skewed representation of the world outside.

Similarly, radio signals traveling through the lumpy ionosphere can become distorted and diffracted, causing their strength to fluctuate rapidly by the time they reach a ground receiver. This effect is known as amplitude scintillation.

Ionospheric scintillation isn't unusual, particularly towards the poles and around the equator. The mid-latitudes, however, are generally considered relatively calm and safe when it comes to this particular space-weather hazard.

The November 2025 superstorm said PSYCH.

As the storm intensified, the auroral oval expanded towards the equator, bringing the atmospheric chicanery usually associated with higher latitudes along for the ride.


A NASA mosaic of the auroral oval over 24 hours on 12 November 2025.
 (NASA)



Yizengaw and his colleagues pieced together what happened using observations from multiple instruments across North America, including aurora cameras and a network of ground-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers.

They saw a huge band of enhanced electron density stretching east to west across the ionosphere. Along its edge, the electron density changed sharply, creating conditions perfect for the formation of smaller-scale irregularities.

And those irregularities were everywhere.

Strong amplitude scintillation appeared across a vast swathe of the continental US, from roughly 80 to 120 degrees west longitude.

Other measurements showed the disturbance extended even farther, producing a strip of enhanced electron density that reached almost from the West Coast to the East Coast.

The November 2025 superstorm disrupted Earth's ionosphere across North America. 
(Yizengaw et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 2026)

The timing lined up, too. The researchers saw that, as the aurora brightened, electron density and irregularities intensified. At the same time, satellite signals began to scintillate, and GPS accuracy deteriorated.

Amplitude scintillation has been detected at mid-latitudes before, but only in limited observations, mostly at individual locations. Strong amplitude scintillation spanning such a wide range of longitudes has never been seen before, the researchers say.

In some regions, the resulting horizontal positioning errors exceeded 10 meters. Even an error of just one or two meters can spell serious trouble for technologies that depend on precision positioning, including autonomous vehicles and agricultural machinery.

Indeed, the solar storm of May 2024 is estimated to have cost the US agricultural industry $500 million due to disruptions in precision navigation.

The November 2025 superstorm is unlikely to have cost anywhere near the same amount, which really highlights the sheer dumb luck of the draw. The 2024 storm happened during the farming season; the 2025 one did not.

Together, however, the two events indicate how vulnerable certain industries can be to the vagaries of the Sun at the peak of its 11-year activity cycle.

But if scientists can better understand and predict how extreme solar activity affects the ionosphere, we may be better prepared to mitigate the disruption when the next big storm arrives.

"If the November superstorm onset had occurred during farming season in the American sector, it could have led to significant losses for the American farming and transportation industries," they write in their paper.

"Hence, understanding the storm time high‐ and mid‐latitude irregularities – and characterizing their impact on radio-frequency applications – requires knowledge of physical processes that control and describe the dynamics of auroral features, such as energy flux, expansion velocity, and precipitation scale sizes present in the auroral arc, all of which contribute to generating density irregularities that can cause scintillation."


The Life of Earth
https://chuckincardinal.blogspot.com/

Thousands of Giant Whales Are Suddenly Flooding Into an Arctic “Feeding Frenzy”

By Frontiers, Aug. 31, 2026

Humpback whale in the water. Humpbacks are baleen whales that feed by filtering small fish and plankton from seawater using keratin plates rather than teeth. 
Credit:Shutterstock

Thousands of enormous whales are turning the waters off East Greenland into an immense feeding ground that barely existed a generation ago.

Fin whales, humpback whales, and common minke whales now gather along a coastline where all three were once rarely seen. Researchers say warmer water, retreating sea ice, and a major relocation of their prey have allowed the whales to expand deep into the Greenland Sea, including waters north of the Arctic Circle.

The spectacle is one of the more dramatic examples of how climate change can reorganize an ecosystem. Although warming is devastating many Arctic species, it can also open new habitats for animals that previously avoided ice-covered waters.


Satellite tagging a fin whale.
 Credit: Fernando Ugarte



Whales Push Deeper Into the Arctic

“Here we show that rising ocean temperatures and declining sea ice cover have facilitated the widespread occurrence of baleen whales along the East Greenland coast, as far north as 70°N,” said Professor Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. “This has led to regular mixed ‘feeding frenzies’ of fin whales, humpback whales, and common minke whales, species which historically were only rarely observed in coastal East Greenland.”

Heide-Jørgensen and colleagues from Greenland, Denmark, and Iceland documented the transformation in Frontiers in Marine Science. Their findings suggest the arrival of so many large predators could eventually alter relationships across the regional food web.


Fin whale in Greenland Sea.
 Credit: Fernando Ugarte



The shift is unfolding in one of the planet’s fastest-warming areas. Except for a puzzling pocket of cooler water south of Greenland known as the “cold blob,” much of the Arctic and North Atlantic is heating rapidly. Sea surface temperatures east of Greenland have risen by about 2°C (3.6°F) since the 1990s.

After the mid-2000s, the summer ice edge also retreated sharply northward. Pack ice that once occupied much of the East Greenland coast became far less extensive, opening waters that baleen whales generally avoided in the past.

Three Decades of Whale Evidence

To determine how dramatically the region had changed, the researchers combined several kinds of evidence spanning nearly four decades. They conducted the first systematic aerial surveys of baleen whales within 50 kilometers (31 miles) of the East Greenland coast in August 2015 and again in 2024.

The team added airborne observations from summer 2022, reports from Inuit hunters collected between 2023 and 2025, and ship records from North Atlantic Sighting Surveys dating to 1987. Movement data from 15 satellite tagged baleen whales tracked at intervals between 2019 and 2025 provided another view of how the animals used the region.


Fin whale in Greenland Sea. 
Credit: Fernando Ugarte



Researchers then built a mathematical model to identify patterns across the combined records. Historical measurements of sea surface temperature, salinity, and pack ice concentration helped them investigate which environmental changes best explained the whales’ growing presence.

Together, the data produced an unusually detailed record of how baleen whale abundance in the Greenland Sea has changed over approximately three decades.

Sightings Rise From Zero to Hundreds

Every major source of evidence pointed in the same direction. Between 1987 and 2024, baleen whales became far more common along the East Greenland coast north of 60°N and west of 29°W.

Ship surveys recorded no humpback whales before 2006. Seven were seen in 2007, followed by 26 by 2015 and more than 150 by 2024. Minke whale encounters remained uncommon until 1995, but vessels regularly recorded between 10 and 20 each year after 2001. Fin whale sightings also climbed sharply over the survey period.


Humpback whale in Greenland Sea. Credit: Fernando Ugarte



By August 2025, one ship crew encountered extraordinary groups containing as many as 50 baleen whales at once near 69°N, north of the Arctic Circle. Aerial surveys in 2015 and 2024 found all three species spread almost continuously between 60°N and 70°N.

The researchers estimate that at least 4,000 humpback whales, 6,000 fin whales, and 6,000 minke whales entered the Greenland Sea during summer 2024.

Capelin Fuel: An Arctic Feeding Boom

“There is little doubt that the three baleen whale species summering in East Greenland coastal waters do so primarily to feed,” the authors observed.

The main attraction appears to be capelin, a small, cold-adapted fish that forms a crucial link between plankton and large marine predators. Capelin are important prey not only for whales but also for seabirds, seals, and larger fish, meaning a change in their distribution can influence much of the surrounding ecosystem.


Fin whale in Greenland Sea. Credit: Fernando Ugarte



Since the mid-2000s, capelin have shifted their feeding grounds away from the comparatively warmer waters north of Iceland and into the Greenland Sea. The whales appear to have tracked that movement, following a major food source into areas that became more accessible as the ice retreated.

The region has never supported a commercial capelin fishery, so the expanding whale populations are not currently competing with people for the same catch.

A Marine Ecosystem in Transition

The whales’ arrival may be a feeding success story for now, but it also signals a deeper Arctic transformation. Animals adapted to open water are moving into habitats historically dominated by species closely tied to sea ice.

“East Greenland is undergoing a major ecological regime shift. Ice-associated species such as narwhals are increasingly sharing their habitat with, or being displaced by, temperate baleen whales that generally avoid ice-covered waters,” Heide-Jørgensen concluded. “This marked change in species composition demonstrates how climate-driven changes are reorganizing the East Greenland marine ecosystem, potentially with long-lasting consequences.”


The Life of Earth
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