Possible Tectonic Impact of Biosphere

AUTHORS, Eugene Bagashov, LAST EDITED September 19, 2019

https://eartharxiv.org/bae7t

Key Points

1. Biochemical energy in the subsurface biomes is enough to produce the strongest Earthquakes.

2. The estimates of maximal depth where life can exist should be at least 75 km.

3. Ultra-deep subsurface micro-organisms might produce Earthquakes.

added by CC

Abstract

This paper explores the possibility of existence of ultra-deep biosphere (deeper than 10 km under the surface) and the biogenic earthquake hypothesis -- the idea that subsurface microorganisms might be directly related to earthquake activity. 

The importance of electroautotrophic type of metabolism is underlined, and the role of telluric currents in this process is explored in some detail, as well as the role of subsurface and atmospheric microorganisms in the global electric circuit. 

It seems that the existing estimates of the adaptability of biological organisms are inconsistent with empirical evidence, and theoretical concepts predict key biochemical processes to fail long before the onset of the temperatures and pressures, at which microorganisms are actually observed. This implies that life might exist much deeper beneath the surface than previously assumed.

At the same time the estimates of energy radiated during the strongest earthquakes are consistent with the biochemical energy available to the subsurface biosphere.

Some additional evidence is examined. It is proposed that the ultra-deep biosphere might represent an important factor in resolving the debate on the nature of hydrocarbons. At the same time the deep subsurface microorganisms might play a significant evolutionary role, not only providing seismically induced genetic variation and a "seed bank" for quick recovery after a mass extinction, but also by modulating longer climatic cycles through planetary-wide bio-geo-electrochemistry.

Plain Language Summary

The depths of the Earth's crust and layers beneath it are hostile to living organ-
isms due to high temperatures and pressures. Previous estimates have been suggesting that life (even tiny microorganisms) cannot exist in the Earth's crust deeper than about 10 km. Yet recent findings have shown that the limits of heat and pressure that microor-ganisms can withstand have been underestimated. It is logical to assume that life can exist at greater depths { up to 75 km at least.

The energies produced by microbes under the surface (combined) is enough to produce an earthquake (shaking of the ground). Perhaps it is this previously unrecognized deep microbial collective that is causing the earthquakes. 

Earthquakes might release the nutrients and other necessary chemical elements from the surrounding rocks, as well as cause exchange of genes between microbial cells, which might drive their evolution.

Most of the earthquakes occur at the edges of the Paci c Ocean at large trenches
in the Earth's crust. These trenches allow microorganisms to get deeper into the crust, where they might produce an earthquake. It might also explain the presence of hydro-carbons (oil and gas) deep beneath the surface { they might be produced by the same microorganisms

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Scientists Have Developed a Genius Method That Actually Regenerates Tooth Enamel

PETER DOCKRILL, 3 SEP 2019

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-develop-world-first-liquid-that-regenerates-damaged-tooth-enamel

(Zhejiang University)

It's the hardest substance in the human body, and it's irreplaceable. Around the world, billions are affected by tooth decay stemming from the loss of tooth enamel, but new research offers fresh hope to end this global problem.
Scientists in China have developed a liquid solution that can effectively grow back the external surface of damaged tooth enamel, using a material that mimics the natural mineralisation process of our teeth's protective outer layer.

Tooth enamel is formed in a biomineralisation process whereby cells called ameloblasts secrete proteins that eventually harden into that tough external coating of our teeth.

The problem is that ameloblasts are only present during tooth development, meaning our mature teeth have virtually no natural ability to self-repair after they've formed.

Scientists have tried a range of approaches to artificially coax enamel re-mineralisation, but according to researchers from Zhejiang University, previous attempts have mostly failed, because the complex, crystalline structure of enamel has never been successfully replicated in the lab.

At least, not before now, the team suggests in a new paper.

"We herein reveal that a rationally designed material composed of calcium phosphate ion clusters can be used to produce a precursor layer to induce the epitaxial crystal growth of enamel apatite, which mimics the biomineralisation crystalline-amorphous frontier of hard tissue development in nature," the researchers, co-led by biomimetics and materials scientist Zhaoming Liu, write in their study.

The achievement, which the team is billing as a world-first, required a new kind of calcium phosphate ion clusters (CPICs), measuring just 1.5 nanometres in diameter (about one billionth of a metre).

These tiny particles were then stabilised in an ethanol solution with a chemical called triethylamine, which prevents them from clumping together.

When their gel-like material was applied to human teeth donated by patients, the ultra-small clusters successfully fused to the fish-scale-like structure of native enamel, replicating the coating of the tooth with an indistinguishable and equally hard repair layer that developed to a thickness of up to 2.8 micrometres within 48 hours.

(Zhejiang University)

Above: Human tooth enamel after repairing for 6 hours, 12 hours, and 48 hours. Native enamel in blue, repaired enamel in green.

While that's hundreds of times thinner than a full layer of natural tooth enamel, the team thinks that repeated coatings with their CPIC solution could effectively thicken the artificial enamel, and that further refinements to the material could augment its thickness.

"Our newly regenerated enamel has the same structure and similar mechanical properties as native enamel," Liu told Sky News.

"We hope to realise tooth enamel regrowth without using fillings which contain totally different materials and we hope, if all goes smoothly, to start trials in people within one to two years."

To meet that timeframe, the team will need to demonstrate that their material is safe – especially since there are concerns about the toxicity of triethylamine, which is used as the stabilising compound.

The researchers say the chemical evaporates in ethanol during the process, so should not pose a risk, and are currently testing the substance in mice, in the lead-up to hoped-for clinical trials.

In the meantime, experts say it could be several years before this material finds its way into clinical use at your local dentist – provided future tests indicate it's both safe and effective.

Until such time, conventional advice on dental health remains as sound as ever.

"Prevention is the best approach," biomedical researcher Chen Haifeng from Peking University, who wasn't part of the study, told the South China Morning Post.

"We should never wait until the damage is done. Our teeth are a miracle of nature. Artificial replacement will never do the job as well."

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Health News - New blood test could detect 20 types of cancer

New blood test could detect 20 types of cancer

By Laura Italiano,  New York Post,  September 29,  2019

https://nypost.com/2019/09/29/new-blood-test-could-detect-20-types-of-cancer/

blood test, Shutterstock

A new blood test now under development can help detect 20 kinds of cancer, according to trials underway at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

In trials, the test correctly identified 32 percent of patients with stage-one disease and 76 percent of those with stage-two disease, the institute announced.

Breast, colorectal and lung cancers were among those detected in blood samples.

The test showed an extremely low misdiagnosis rate — only 0.6 percent of healthy blood samples came back as incorrectly indicating cancer.

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Health News - Hydrogen cyanide found in THC vaping cartridges: report

Hydrogen cyanide found in THC vaping cartridges: report

By Joshua Rhett Miller,  New York Post,  September 27, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/09/27/hydrogen-cyanide-found-in-thc-vaping-cartridges-report/

vaping cartridge, Getty Images/iStockphoto

Bootleg marijuana vaping cartridges sold on the black market have been found to contain hydrogen cyanide, according to a report.

A cannabis testing facility in California analyzed a sampling of 18 cartridges containing THC — the active ingredient in marijuana — from both legal dispensaries and unlicensed dealers, NBC News reports.

No heavy metals, pesticides or solvents such as vitamin E were found in the legal products. But all 10 of the black market cartridges tested positive for pesticides and myclobutanil, a fungicide that can transform into hydrogen cyanide when burned, the analysis found.

“You certainly don’t want to be smoking cyanide,” the vice president of operations at CannaSafe, Antonio Frazier, told NBC News. “I don’t think anyone would buy a cart that was labeled hydrogen cyanide on it.”

Fabian Castillo was in the hospital due to a bootleg marijuana vape in August. Instagram 

Dr. Melodi Pirzada, a pediatric pulmonologist at NYU Winthrop Hospital on Long Island, said the presence of the fungicide was “very disturbing” and would have an extremely toxic effect on any user.

Pirzada was also alarmed by the presence of vitamin E acetate, a viscous solution sometimes added to marijuana oils, that was found in some of the samples acquired from unlicensed dealers, NBC News reports.

Sales of marijuana vaping products are reportedly down as much as 60 percent in some states as public health officials try to find out what’s behind a mysterious ailment that has sickened and killed some e-cigarette users.

State health officials in Oregon announced Thursday that a second state resident had died from a vaping-related lung illness.

That brings the national tally to 13, compared to the 12 fatalities announced earlier in the day by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Oregonian reports. Another 805 confirmed and probable cases have been identified in 46 states, the CDC said.

Some 77 percent of people impacted by the outbreak have reported using products containing THC, the federal agency announced Friday. The exact cause of the illnesses remains unclear, but CDC officials advised people to stop using e-cigarette or vaping products, especially those that contain THC.

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Older male sparrows seem to father more chicks by getting more sperm to the egg

SEPTEMBER 27, 2019, by Hayley Dunning, Imperial College London

https://phys.org/news/2019-09-older-male-sparrows-father-chicks.html

A Lundy Island sparrow. Credit: Leticia Lopera-Doblas

Researchers are a step closer to solving the puzzle of why older male sparrows are more successful at mating and producing chicks.

Older male sparrows appear to father more chicks than their younger counterparts when their female mates are monogamously 'attached' to another male.

This, according to new Imperial College London research, appears to be because older males manage to get more sperm to female eggs, which increases the chance of fertilization.

The finding goes some way to answering the question of why older males are more successful than younger ones in sex occurring outside of monogamous relationships, known as 'extra-pair' matings.

Lead researcher Dr. Antje Girndt, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "Older males are known to father more 'illegitimate' children, but exactly how has remained a mystery. It might be because they are considered more genetically fit, as they have proven their ability to survive longer– but older sparrows were also thought to produce lower quality sperm as they age.

"Our new study goes a long way to solving this paradox, showing older males' sperm might be able to outcompete their younger rivals.""

Not based on behavior
Sparrows are socially monogamous but sexually promiscuous, staying with one partner for the security of raising chicks, but with the males not necessarily raising their own chicks.

The research team had previously tested if certain behaviors were responsible for older fathers siring more extra-pair chicks.

A Lundy Island sparrow, where the team studied a wild sparrow population. Credit: Alfredo Sanchez-Tojar

These included the "male manipulation" hypothesis—that older males are better at coercing females into "cheating," and the "female choice" hypothesis—that females solicit more sex from older males than from younger males.

However, when these hypotheses were put to the test with both captive and wild sparrow populations, neither proved to be the reason older males are more successful.

For the new study, published today in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, the researchers instead investigated mechanisms that occur after sparrows had decided to mate outside their partnership, by looking at the sperm of both captive and wild sparrows of all ages.

Sperm differences
Many animals produce lower quality sperm as they age, so the researchers expected there may be a trade-off—for example that the older sparrows produced more sperm to make up for poorer quality.

However, they found no significant differences in sperm shape and size for the older males compared to younger ones, and both produced around the same volume of sperm.

They did find that the sperm from older males reached the female egg in greater numbers, as measured by the number of sperm embedded in the outer layers of the egg.

While the initial numbers of sperm produced by older and younger males may have been the same, as much as three times the amount of sperm from older sparrows reached the egg than that of younger sparrows.
This tactic does, however, come with risks: if more than one sperm enters the same egg and fuses with the female's nucleus, the resulting embryo will not be viable and will die.

The researchers hope further research will untangle the relationship between older males and chicks, and whether there is a cost to females of older males being more successful.

"Male age and its association with reproductive traits in captive and wild house sparrows" is published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

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Study suggests gut bacteria helped shape mammalian evolution

SEPTEMBER 27, 2019, by Scott Schrage, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

https://phys.org/news/2019-09-gut-bacteria-mammalian-evolution.html

Nebraska's Amanda Ramer-Tait and colleagues have shown that foreign gut bacteria can substantially slow the growth of young house mice, suggesting that the species' evolution was partly steered by its own bacteria. Credit: Scott Schrage | University Communication / Shutterstock

The call to evolve could be coming from inside the house mouse.

Recent research from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and University of California, Berkeley suggests that bacteria residing in the digestive tracts of mouse species have partly directed their evolution and divergence over the past few million years.

The study included four species of mice: Mus musculus domesticus, commonly known as the house mouse, and three other species from the same genus. The guts of each mouse species contained between 1,200 and 1,400 species of bacteria, some of which differed among the mouse species, as expected.

When the team examined the genetic makeup of bacterial species common to all four mouse species, it found that those bacteria began genetically branching apart around the same time as their respective mouse species—implying that the bacterial and mouse species evolved in tandem.

But the researchers suspected they could demonstrate a stronger, even causal, link between the evolution of gut bacteria and mice. To manage it, Amanda Ramer-Tait and her Nebraska colleagues first had to rear germ-free M. domesticus pups in a facility, among just a few of its kind in the United States, that could prevent bacteria from colonizing the rodents' guts at birth.

When those germ-free M. domesticus pups turned 10 days old, the Nebraska team implanted them with gut bacteria taken from one of three species—their own, the closely related Mus spretus or the more evolutionarily distant Mus pahari—or kept them germ-free.

Ramer-Tait's team then fed the four groups the same diet and amount of food, tracking their weight from four to 10 weeks of age. Weight gain during early development is often essential to survival in the wild, making it a simple but reasonable proxy for evolutionary fitness.

On average, the pups implanted with their species' native gut bacteria gained substantially more weight than pups with bacteria from either of the other two mouse species. And the weight-gain disparity between pups with bacteria from M. domesticus vs. M. pahari, which diverged roughly 6 million years ago, was greater than the difference between M. domesticus and M. spretus, which diverged only about 3 million years ago. Even the germ-free house mice—those with no gut bacteria at all—grew faster than those implanted with the M. pahari bacteria.

Those results suggest that the house mouse evolved not only with, but probably also in response to, the unique bacterial cocktail stewing in its gut, the researchers said.

"Anytime we observe a notable impact on host physiology by the microbiome, it's profound," said Ramer-Tait, associate professor of food science and technology. "This is an elegant experimental system that allows us to test how concepts in ecology and evolution apply to microbiome science."

The team found other evidence of the gut bacteria's evolutionary sway. Male house mice grew more muscle mass, and females put on more fat, when implanted with their native gut bacteria. Foreign gut bacteria also seemed to enlarge livers and stimulate a rise of inflammatory proteins in both male and female pups, indicating that the mismatched bacteria might impair the M. domesticus immune system.

Though the researchers acknowledged the need to verify the influence of gut bacteria by changing up which mouse species donate and receive them, they said the findings make a strong case for the microbiome's role in mammalian evolution.

Ramer-Tait said the study also reinforces the importance of considering evolutionary perspectives when trying to modify the human microbiome, which recent research suggests can both maintain health and drive disease in people.

"If we want to develop microbiome-based therapies in order to treat diseases, then we need to understand some of the ecological and evolutionary principles that govern the microbiome ecosystem—how it's established, how it's maintained, how it can be altered," she said. "Understanding how the host and microbiome have evolved together is an important component of developing those treatments.

"Our studies provide insight into how easy or difficult it may be to shape our own microbiome. If we want to change the abundance of a specific microbial member—maybe one that's causally linked to a disease—then we need to think about the consequences of making those changes if we have adapted along with our bacterial community. Can we do it? Should we do it? It's possible that the microbe we want to target has other effects on the host that we've not accounted for. Evolutionary perspectives are critical to consider when manipulating microbiomes."

The researchers published their findings in the journal mSphere.

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Image of the Day: Clustered Memories

Aug 5, 2019, NICOLETTA LANESE

https://www.the-scientist.com/image-of-the-day/image-of-the-day--clustered-memories--66228

The signaling protein Fyn captured using super-resolution microscopy in a mouse hippocampal neuron

MEUNIER LAB/UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

The characteristic tau protein tangles seen in Alzheimer’s disease may cause clumping in a key protein for memory formation, researchers reported June 25 in eLife. Using super-resolution single molecule imaging, the scientists observed the inner workings of living mouse brain cells and found that tau controls the physical organization of the memory-related protein, Fyn.

“When Tau is mutated, Fyn makes aberrantly large clusters, thereby altering nerve signals and contributing to dysfunction of the synapse-junctions between nerve cells,” says coauthor Frédéric Meunier, a neuroscientist at the Queensland Brain Institute, in an announcement. The researchers went on to see how Fyn interacts with a tau mutant found in individuals at high risk of developing frontotemporal dementia. In mouse models, the mutant drives Fyn to cluster along the dendrites stretching from each neuron, which could promote toxic cellular activity and disrupt learning over the animals’ lifespan.

P. Padmanabhan et al., “Frontotemporal dementia mutant Tau promotes aberrant Fyn nanoclustering in hippocampal dendritic spines,” doi:10.7554/eLife.45040, eLife, 2019.

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Retraction Note: Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric O2 and CO2 composition

Published: 25 September 2019
 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1585-5

 The original article was published on 31 October 2018

Author Affiliations

Affiliations

1. Department of Geosciences and Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

   • L. Resplandy

2. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

   • R. F. Keeling
   • , Y. Eddebbar
   •  & M. K. Brooks

3. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

   • R. Wang

4. LMD/IPSL, ENS, PSL Research University, École Polytechnique, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Paris, France

   • L. Bopp

5. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA

   • M. C. Long

6. NOAA, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, USA

   • J. P. Dunne

7. GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Kiel, Germany

   • W. Koeve
   •  & A. Oschlies

Retraction to: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0651-8,
published online 31 October 2018.


Shortly after publication, arising from comments from Nicholas Lewis, we realized that our reported uncertainties were underestimated owing to our treatment of certain systematic errors as random errors.

In addition, we became aware of several smaller issues in our analysis of uncertainty. Although correcting these issues did not substantially change the central estimate of ocean warming, it led to a roughly fourfold increase in uncertainties, significantly weakening implications for an upward revision of ocean warming and climate sensitivity.
Because of these weaker implications, the Nature editors asked for a Retraction, which we accept.
Despite the revised uncertainties, our method remains valid and provides an estimate of ocean warming that is independent of the ocean data underpinning other approaches. The revised paper, with corrected uncertainties, will be submitted to another journal. The Retraction will contain a link to the new publication, if and when it is published.



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Ancient Wooden Pots from China Contain Cannabis Residue

Jun 12, 2019, CHIA-YI HOU

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/ancient-wooden-pots-from-china-contain-cannabis-residue-66001

A brazier and charred stones, thought to be part of burial ceremonies, preserve signs that people used the drug thousands of years ago.

A chemical analysis of ancient pots found in China shows they contain cannabis residue, scientists report in a study published in Science Advances today (June 12). The wooden braziers with charred stones are from the Jirzankal Cemetery in the plateaus of northwestern China and date back about 2,500 years. They are thought to have been used during burial ceremonies and may represent some of the earliest evidence of ritualistic smoking or burning of cannabis.

The authors extracted organic material from the wooden brazier fragments and burned stones and analyzed it with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. They report the presence of cannabinol (CBN) in the internal charred layer of one of the wooden pots. The psychoactive component in cannabis is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which decomposes and oxidizes into CBN when exposed to air, the authors write in their study.

A typical wooden brazier with burnt stones from the excavation site in northwestern China

XINHUA WU

Cannabis was used as an oil-seed crop in ancient China. Early cultivated varieties of marijuana and most wild strains have low levels of THC and other cannabinoids, according to the authors. The residue found at Jirzankal Cemetery may have come from strains of cannabis with higher levels of THC. “Our study implies that knowledge of cannabis smoking and specific high-THC varieties of the cannabis plant were among the cultural traditions that spread along Silk Road exchange routes,” says coauthor Robert Spengler in a June 11 news conference, according to Science News.

“The methods are convincing, and the data are unambiguous regarding early use of cannabis as a psychoactive substance,” Tengwen Long of the University of Nottingham who was not involved with the study tells Science.

Cannabis drug use may have started even earlier in regions from Syria to China, and new analytical techniques like those used in this study may help provide evidence, Michael Frachetti of Washington University in St. Louis who was not involved in the work tells Science.

“This kind of evidence is rare due to there being few opportunities for long-term preservation of the remains of activities involving drug use—which is very ephemeral, and doesn’t necessarily leave a lot in the way of physical evidence,” coauthor Nicole Boivin of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History tells Newsweek.

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ANOTHER CLIMATE SCIENTIST WITH IMPECCABLE CREDENTIALS BREAKS RANKS: “OUR MODELS ARE MICKEY-MOUSE MOCKERIES OF THE REAL WORLD”

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019,  CAP ALLON

https://electroverse.net/another-climate-scientist-with-impeccable-credentials-breaks-ranks/

Dr. Mototaka Nakamura received a Doctorate of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and for nearly 25 years specialized in abnormal weather and climate change at prestigious institutions that included MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, JAMSTEC and Duke University.

In his book The Global Warming Hypothesis is an Unproven Hypothesis, Dr. Nakamura explains why the data foundation underpinning global warming science is “untrustworthy” and cannot be relied on:

“Global mean temperatures before 1980 are based on untrustworthy data,” writes Nakamura. “Before full planet surface observation by satellite began in 1980, only a small part of the Earth had been observed for temperatures with only a certain amount of accuracy and frequency. Across the globe, only North America and Western Europe have trustworthy temperature data dating back to the 19th century.”

From 1990 to 2014, Nakamura worked on cloud dynamics and forces mixing atmospheric and ocean flows on medium to planetary scales. His bases were MIT (for a Doctor of Science in meteorology), Georgia Institute of Technology, Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Duke and Hawaii Universities and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

He’s published 20+ climate papers on fluid dynamics.

There is no questioning his credibility or knowledge.

Today’s ‘global warming science’ is akin to an upside down pyramid which is built on the work of a few climate modelers. These AGW pioneers claim to have demonstrated human-derived CO2 emissions as the cause of recently rising temperatures and have then simply projected that warming forward. Every climate researcher thereafter has taken the results of these original models as a given, and we’re even at the stage now where merely testing their validity is regarded as heresy.

Here in Nakamura, we have a highly qualified and experienced climate modeler with impeccable credentials rejecting the unscientific bases of the climate crisis claims. But he’s up against it — activists are winning at the moment, and they’re fronted by scared, crying children; an unstoppable combination, one that’s tricky to discredit without looking like a heartless bastard (I’ve tried).

Climate scientist Dr. Mototaka Nakamura’s recent book blasts global warming data as “untrustworthy” and “falsified”.

DATA FALSIFICATION

When arguing against global warming, the hardest thing I find is convincing people of data falsification, namely temperature fudging. If you don’t pick your words carefully, forget some of the facts, or get your tone wrong then it’s very easy to sound like a conspiracy crank (I’ve been there, too).

But now we have Nakamura.
The good doctor has accused the orthodox scientists of “data falsification” in the form adjusting historical temperature data down to inflate today’s subtle warming trend — something Tony Heller has been proving for years on his website realclimatescience.com.

Nakamura writes: “The global surface mean temperature-change data no longer have any scientific value and are nothing except a propaganda tool to the public.”

The climate models are useful tools for academic studies, he admits. However: “The models just become useless pieces of junk or worse (as they can produce gravely misleading output) when they are used for climate forecasting.”

Climate forecasting is simply not possible, Nakamura concludes, and the impacts of human-caused CO2 can’t be judged with the knowledge and technology we currently possess.

The models grossly simplify the way the climate works.

As well as ignoring the sun, they also drastically simplify large and small-scale ocean dynamics, aerosol changes that generate clouds (cloud cover is one of the key factors determining whether we have global warming or global cooling), the drivers of ice-albedo: “Without a reasonably accurate representation, it is impossible to make any meaningful predictions of climate variations and changes in the middle and high latitudes and thus the entire planet,” and water vapor.

The climate forecasts also suffer from arbitrary “tunings” of key parameters that are simply not understood.

NAKAMURA ON CO2

He writes:
“The real or realistically-simulated climate system is far more complex than an absurdly simple system simulated by the toys that have been used for climate predictions to date, and will be insurmountably difficult for those naive climate researchers who have zero or very limited understanding of geophysical fluid dynamics. The dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans are absolutely critical facets of the climate system if one hopes to ever make any meaningful prediction of climate variation.”

Solar input is modeled as a “never changing quantity,” which is absurd.
“It has only been several decades since we acquired an ability to accurately monitor the incoming solar energy. In these several decades only, it has varied by one to two watts per square meter. Is it reasonable to assume that it will not vary any more than that in the next hundred years or longer for forecasting purposes? I would say, No.”

Read Mototaka Nakamura’s book for free on Kindle — arm yourself with the facts, and spread them.

Facts such as these little nuggets (all lifted/paraphrased from the book):

“[The models have] no understanding of cloud formation/forcing.”

“Assumptions are made, then adjustments are made to support a narrative.”

“Our models are mickey-mouse mockeries of the real world.”

SOLAR FORCING

Solar output isn’t constant, IPCC. And the modulation of cloud nucleation is a key consequence. During solar minima, like the one we’re entering now, the sun’s magnetic field weakens and the outward pressure of the solar wind decreases. This allows more Cosmic Rays from deep space to penetrate our planet’s atmosphere. These CRs have been found to nucleate clouds (Svensmark et al). And clouds are a crucial player earth’s climate.

As Roy Spencer, PhD. eloquently writes:
“Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.”

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New research reveals soil microbes play a key role in plant disease resistance

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019, by University of York

https://phys.org/news/2019-09-reveals-soil-microbes-key-role.html

Diseased (left) and healthy (right) tomato seedlings infected by Ralstonia solanacearum. Credit: Ville Friman

Scientists have discovered that soil microbes can make plants more resistant to an aggressive disease—opening new possibilities for sustainable food production.

Bacterial wilt disease caused by Ralstonia solanacearum infects several plants including tomatoes and potatoes. It causes huge economic losses around the world especially in China, Indonesia and Africa.

Researchers from the University of York working with colleagues from China and the Netherlands, investigated the effect of the soil microbiome on the plant-pathogen interaction. Infections are often 'patchy' in the field not affecting the whole crop and the cause for this is unknown.

Dr. Ville Friman from the Department of Biology said: "Even though we have discovered that the pathogen is present everywhere in tomato fields, it is not capable of infecting all the plants. We wanted to understand if this spatial variation could be explained by differences in soil bacterial communities."

To study the effect of soil microbiome for disease development, the scientists used a newly developed experimental system that allowed repeated sampling of individual plants in a non-destructive manner. This allowed scientists to go back in time and compare healthy and diseased plant microbiomes long before visible disease symptoms.

Diseased and healthy tomato plants in the greenhouse. Credit: Wei Zhong

The sampling method allowed them to compare the micro-organisms that were present in the soils of those plants that remained healthy or became infected. Their analysis showed that the microbiomes of surviving plants were associated with certain rare taxa and pathogen-suppressing Pseudomonas and Bacillus bacteria.

Dr. Friman added: "We found that improved disease resistance could be transferred to the next plant generation along with the soil transplants analogous to faecal transplants used in medicine.

"Our results show that it is important to focus not only the pathogen but also the naturally-occurring beneficial micro-organisms present in the rhizosphere. While the beneficial role of microbes for humans and plants have been acknowledged for a long time, it has been difficult to disentangle the cause and effect and important bacterial taxa based on comparative data."

The team are currently developing and testing different microbial inoculants for crop production. The research has opened up the possibility in the future that bacteria could be used as 'soil probiotics' to protect plants from pathogens.

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Cellular aging is linked to structural changes in the brain

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019, by Bettina Hennebach, Max Planck Society

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-09-cellular-aging-linked-brain.html

To determine the role of telomer length on brain structure scientists measured their length with the DNA of leukocytes from the blood using a polymerase chain reaction. Additionally, they calculated the thickness of the cerebral cortex with MRI scans of study participants. Credit: MPI CBS

Telomeres are the protective caps of our chromosomes and play a central role in the aging process. Shorter telomeres are associated with chronic diseases and high stress levels can contribute to their shortening. A new study now shows that if telomeres change in their length, that change is also reflected in our brain structure. This association was identified by a team of scientists including Lara Puhlmann and Pascal Vrtička from the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive Brain Sciences in Leipzig together with Elissa Epel from the University of California and Tania Singer from the Social Neuroscience Lab in Berlin as part of Singer's ReSource Project.

Telomeres are protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that become shorter with each cell division. If they become so short that the genes they protect could be damaged, the cell stops dividing and renewing. Consequently, the cell is increasingly unable to perform its functions. This mechanism is one of the ways in which we age.

Telomere length is therefore regarded as a marker for the biological age of a person—in contrast to their chronological age. For two people of the same chronological age, the person with shorter telomeres has an increased risk of developing age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's or cancer, and even a shorter life expectancy.

Telomere lengthening?

One key to staying younger longer therefore seems to be related to the question: How do we slow down, stop, or even reverse the shortening of telomeres? Genetics and unhealthy lifestyle are important contributors to telomere shortening, along with psychological stress. Based on this knowledge, researchers have examined how much lifestyle can influence telomere length. Recent studies suggest that telomeres can change faster than previously thought, possibly taking just one to six months of mental or physical training to elongate. The exciting premise is that telomere lengthening may represent a reversal of biological aging processes. However, it remains unclear if telomere elongation actually reflects any improvement in a person's overall health and aging trajectory.

"To explore whether a short-term change in telomere length, after only a few months, might actually be associated with changes in a person's biological age, we linked it to another biomarker of aging and health: brain structure," explains Lara Puhlmann, now a member of the Research Group "Social Stress and Family Health' led by Veronika Engert at the Leipzig Max Planck Institute. The project had been initiated by Tania Singer as part of the ReSource Project.

Participants of the researchers' study underwent four MRI examinations, each spaced three months apart, and provided blood samples on the same dates. Using the DNA of leukocytes from the blood, the scientists were able to determine telomere length using a polymerase chain reaction. The MRI scans were used to calculate the thickness of the cerebral cortex of each participant. This outer layer of gray matter becomes thinner with age. It is also known that some neurological and age-related diseases are associated with faster cortical thinning in certain brain regions.

Fast changes in biological aging
The result: "Across systems, our biological aging appears to change more quickly than we thought. Indices of aging can vary together significantly in just three months," says Puhlmann. If the telomeres changed in length, this was associated with structural changes in the brain. In a period when participants' telomeres lengthened during the study, it was also more likely that their cortex had thickened at the same time. On the other hand, telomere shortening was associated with reductions of gray matter. This association occurred specifically in a brain region called the precuneus, which is a central metabolic and connectional hub.

The above results suggest that even short-term changes in telomere length over just three months might reflect general fluctuations in the body's health- and aging status. Many other questions, however, remain open. "We do not know, for example, which biological mechanism underlies the short-term changes in telomere length," explains the scientist, "or whether the short-term changes really have a longer-term effect on health."

Mental training
At the same time, the team of researchers investigated whether telomere length could be altered by nine months of mindfulness- and empathy-based mental training, and whether such systematic change in telomere length would also be reflected in cortical thickening or thinning. Previous data from the ReSource Project, which was supported by the European Research Council (ERC), had already shown that certain regions of the cortex can be thickened by training, depending on the respective mental training contents of three distinct modules, each lasting for three months. The physiological stress response could also be reduced by mental training with social aspects.

In contrast to their earlier work and previous findings from other groups, the team did not find any training effects on telomeres. Future studies will need to continue to address the question of which measures or behaviors most effectively stop or even reverse telomere shortening, and the biological aging process.

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Health News - First cannabis friendly cafe opens in Israel

First cannabis friendly cafe opens in Israel

Since legalizing medical use of marijuana in the early 1990's,  Israel has the most lenient cannabis laws in the Middle East. 

By Leon Sverdlov, The Jerusalem Post, September 22, 2019
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/First-cannabis-friendly-cafe-opens-in-Israel-602445

A worker touches a cannabis plant at a growing facility for the Tikun Olam company near the northern city of Safed. (photo credit: REUTERS/NIR ELIAS)

Israel's first "coffeeshop" that allows medical marijuana users to smoke inside opened last week in the southern city of Beersheba, Mako reported on Thursday.

The shop opened in Beersheba on Thursday, making Israel the first Middle Eastern state with a specialized cannabis-consumption establishment.

Since legalizing medical use of marijuana in the early 1990s, Israel has had the most lenient cannabis laws in the Middle East. In 2018, a bill decriminalizing the personal use of cannabis was passed in the Knesset by a 41-1 majority.

As Israeli law only allows personal and medical use of cannabis on private property, the cafe, founded by Legalization Now, has a designated area in which licensed medical marijuana users are able to consume the drug. According to Mako, the shop will not sell cannabis products, but it will provide smoking devices.

The founders of the shop told Mako that they are "trying to fight for designated areas that would be accessible for [medical] marijuana users, hoping that it will get to every café." According to Amit Moreno, one of the shop's founders, the group "will hold educational events to [show the public] that cannabis is a medicine."

"It is healthy and people shouldn't look upon it the way they do," Moreno told Mako, adding that "everything [we do] is legal."

"It is a public project," he said. "We have no budget and we are asking anyone who can help us extend this venture. We believe it is the path to [full] legalization."

 
Oren Oppenheim contributed to this report.

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Smoke-Filled Satellite Images Reveal the Disturbing Extent of Wildfires in Indonesia

George Dvorsky, 9/18/19

https://earther.gizmodo.com/smoke-filled-satellite-images-reveal-the-disturbing-ext-1838216490

A blanket of smoke over Borneo on September 15.Image: MODIS/NASA

As wildfires continue to rage in the Amazon, Indonesians and their neighbors are are struggling to cope with excessive smoke caused by burning forests and peatlands. New satellite images show the extent of the blazes, with Borneo barely visible under a thick blanket of noxious smoke.

This incredible image, taken on September 15, 2019, was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, according to a NASA Earth Observatory press release. As of late last week, over 4,000 hot spots have been identified in Indonesia, with most of them concentrated in Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo) and Sumatra. The smoke produced by these fires has resulted in numerous school closures, disruptions at airports, air quality alerts, and health warnings, both in Indonesia and the surrounding area.

An annotated version of the image.Image: MODIS/NASA

Kalimantan, where many of the fires are currently active, is known for its extensive peat deposits, filled with decaying plant material. Once alight, these peat fires are notoriously difficult to extinguish. Slowly smoldering beneath the surface, these subterranean blazes linger for months until the arrival of the rainy season.

CNN reports that 185 individuals were recently arrested in Indonesia under suspicions they were involved in activities responsible for the fires. Peat fires are common in Kalimantan at this time of year, but “farmers burn off agricultural and logging debris to clear the way for crops and livestock,” especially plants required for the production of palm oil and acacia pulp, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Fires burning in several oil palm areas in southern Borneo.Image: OLI/Landsat8

An image taken on September 15, 2019 (above) by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite shows fires burning in multiple oil palm areas in southern Borneo. Images taken in shortwave-infrared and in natural color were blended together to show where active fires are burning.

The smoke has gotten so bad that the government of Malaysia, which is located hundreds of miles away, sent a letter to the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, demanding that it take urgent action to extinguish the fires, reports the Guardian. Malaysian officials are so desperate to rid their skies of smoke that they’ve seeded clouds, dispersing chemicals from a plane in the hopes of triggering rain. The country’s air force seeded clouds in three states over the weekend, with more attempts expected this week, according to Reuters. Unfortunately, the efficacy of this technique has yet to be proven.

Firefighters stand amid burning trees in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, on September 18, 2019.Image: AP
Wildfires in Indonesian forests and peatlands were first detected in August, but they’ve escalated in recent weeks.

“They are really in the thick of another major event now. It is reminiscent of 2015, though the buildup of smoke started a few weeks later this year because of rains in mid-August,” Robert Field, a scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in the Earth Observatory press release. “The fire counts from... satellites have not been quite as high as they were in 2015 because of the late start, but the day-to-day increases in activity are now comparable to 2015,” he said, adding that it’s “worth keeping in mind that many of these fires are burning underground or in areas with such thick smoke that satellites can’t detect them.”

Adding injury to injury, these fires release copious amounts of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, along with fine particulate matter linked to negative health effects. Known as black carbon, these aerosols are tiny enough to enter the lungs, bloodstream, and even the placenta. Excessive exposure can lead to respiratory diseases, cardiovascular problems, and premature deaths. Since the fires began, Indonesian health authorities have had to treat more than 40,000 people for acute respiratory infections, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Concentrations of organic carbon plumes over Indonesia.Image: GEOS

Another upsetting image provided by the Earth Observatory shows the amount of atmospheric organic carbon in the skies above Indonesia. The image was compiled by the GEOS forward processing (GEOS-FP) model, which combines data from satellites, aircraft, and ground-based stations. By applying meteorological parameters such as air temperature, moisture, and wind, scientists can visualize and predict the movement the organic carbon plumes produced by the fires. In the image above, the smoke is largely stationary, lingering above the source of the fire due to gentle winds.

Climate factors are certainly a contributor to these fires. Back in 1997 and 2015, the drought-like conditions that exacerbated these blazes were attributed to El Niño conditions. With no El Niño this year, Field has implicated a different but related phenomenon: the Indian Ocean Dipole. But human factors are also at play. Like in Brazil and the deliberate setting of fires in the Amazon, the blazes in Indonesia have a definite human origin.

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