Science News: White egret orchid developed jagged shape to support hawkmoths - study

 

White egret orchid developed jagged shape to support hawkmoths - study

Researchers found that the orchids produced fewer healthy seeds when their fringes were removed.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF, Published: JULY 31, 2022 

https://www.jpost.com/science/article-713513

White egret flower (photo credit: sunoochi/CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)/VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

Most angiosperms – flowering plants whose seeds are in fruits – rely on certain organisms to pollinate them so that they can reproduce. Consequently, their flowers have evolved in specific ways to entice pollinators or make their role easier.

Floral petals can serve a variety of functions, such as releasing scent attractants, storing nectar, ensuring that pollen becomes attached to pollinators or serving as a landing pad for them.

A new peer-reviewed study, published in the scientific journal Ecology on Thursday, found that the white egret orchid developed its characteristic jagged shape in order to support hawkmoths, which pollinate the flower.

Hawkmoths and orchids

Researchers found that the orchids produced fewer healthy seeds when their fringes were removed.

Furthermore, they found that hawkmoths were often unable to balance themselves on the flowers without the fringes, which they typically use as a supporting platform while they drink the plant's nectar.

In order to determine how the fringe affects the orchid's reproduction, the researchers removed it.

Although hawkmoths are nocturnal, they use their vision to detect flowers, so large ones with a fringe are attractive to them. Scientists believe that certain flowers developed the fringe in order to attract the moths, as fringed flowers are capable of conserving more resources than fringeless ones.

Hawkmoth in Olympiaki Akti, Greece (credit: EDAL ANTON LEFTEROV/CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)/VIA WIKIMEDIA)

The findings suggest that the fringe on the white egret orchid evolved to support hawkmoths and is not simply a visual aid for the insects, as previously believed.

White egret orchid evolved frilly petal to support pollinator hawkmoth

Hawkmoths Emerge!

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Chuck Sunday photo corner, to the end of July 2022

Pics taken by Rachelle and I around the yard this week.

morning Sun on the golden weeping willow I planted as a stick once upon a time.

a lone holly hock living north side of the barn.

and one of it's flowers

the colour of the day.

this light is constantly moving, it's how the sun shows through my old window.

more day lilly colours

a kiss from the sky as Rachelle walks the pooch

great balls of fire, lol actually these are anemones.

Enjoy the day, as I will

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'Don't go near': Japan beachgoers warned over biting dolphin

JULY 27, 2022

https://phys.org/news/2022-07-dont-japan-beachgoers-dolphin.html

A single dolphin is believed to be behind at least 10 biting incidents near a beach in central Japan.

Beachgoers in the Japanese region of Fukui have been warned to stay away from a displeased dolphin accused of biting swimmers, with officials urging visitors to "watch from afar".

Beach attendants at the seafront in the central region on Wednesday set up a device that emits ultrasonic frequencies in a bid to repel the cantankerous creature, the city said.

A sign has been put up warning dolphin fans not to touch the animal.

Local media said at least 10 incidents involving dolphin bites have been recorded by attendants at the beach since it officially opened for the summer on July 9.

A local official told AFP that Fukui's fire department has been called over two incidents, both involving men in their 40s who were swimming near the local beach.

Injuries have been minor so far, but local authorities have warned of "potentially severe wounds".

"Dolphins tend to be considered cute, but if you approach wild dolphins carelessly, you might get bitten and injured," Fukui prefectural police cautioned in a Twitter post Monday.

"If you spot any, don't go near them," the police said, citing the case of a man who was bitten on the hand on Sunday.

The city believes the series of attacks are the work of single dolphin, which was first spotted near shore at a different beach in April, Masaki Yasui, an official from the tourism promotion department, told AFP.

"We understand that there are certain body parts where dolphins don't like to be touched, like the tip of its nose and its back fin," Yasui said.

He said videos posted on Twitter showed beachgoers had been trying to touch the dolphin in those areas.

"We encourage visitors to watch the dolphin from afar if they come across it," the official said.

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Study provides better insight into the vagus nerve's link to the brain

JULY 28, 2022, by CU Anschutz Medical Campus

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-insight-vagus-nerve-link-brain.html

Credit: Spencer Bowles et al, Neuron (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.06.017

Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have shown a direct link between vagus nerve stimulation and its connection to the learning centers of the brain. The discovery may lead to treatments that will improve cognitive retention in both healthy and injured nervous systems.

The study was published last week in the journal Neuron.

"We concluded that there is a direct connection between the vagus nerve, the cholinergic system (The cholinergic system regulates various aspects of brain function, including sensory processing (1), attention (2), sleep (3), and arousal (4), by modulating neural activity via acetylcholine receptors, added by Chuck) that regulates certain aspects of brain function, and motor cortex neurons that are essential in learning new skills," said Cristin Welle, Ph.D., senior author of the paper and the vice chair of research for the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "This could provide hope to patients with a variety of motor and cognitive impairments, and someday help healthy individuals learn new skills faster."

Researchers taught healthy mice a task that's normally difficult to see if it could help improve learning. They discovered that stimulating the vagus nerve during the process helped them learn the task much faster and achieve a higher performance level. This showed that vagus nerve stimulation can increase learning in a healthy nervous system.

The vagus nerve is critical because it regulates internal organ functions like digestion, heart rate and respiration. It also helps control reflex actions like coughing, swallowing and sneezing.

The study also revealed a direct connection between the vagus nerve and the cholinergic system that's essential for learning and attention. Each time the vagus nerve was stimulated, researchers could observe the neurons that control learning activated within the cholinergic system. Damage to this system has been linked to Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and other motor and cognitive conditions. Now that this connection has been established in healthy nervous systems, Welle said it could lead to better treatment options for those whose systems have been damaged.

"The idea of being able to move the brain into a state where it's able to learn new things is important for any disorders that have motor or cognitive impairments," she said. "Our hope is that vagus nerve stimulation can be paired with ongoing rehabilitation in disorders for patients who are recovering from a stroke, traumatic brain injury, PTSD or a number of other conditions."

In addition to the study, Welle and her team have applied for a grant that would allow them to use a non-invasive device to stimulate the vagus nerve to treat patients with multiple sclerosis who have developed movement deficits. She's also hoping this device could eventually help healthy people learn new skills faster.

"I think there's a huge untapped potential for using vagus nerve stimulation to help the brain heal itself," she said. "By continuing to investigate it, we can ultimately optimize patient recovery and open new doors for learning."

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Environmentalism is an Environmental Hazard

Wed Jul 27, 2022Daniel Greenfield
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/environmentalism-environmental-hazard-daniel-greenfield/

 Pic added by CC from google search

Solar panel lead in the groundwater and wind turbine fiberglass in your lungs.

20 years after voters rejected ‘toilet-to-tap’ water, Los Angeles Democrats brag that they will be the first city in the state to pipe toilet water to faucets for the sake of the environment.

As part of the city's version of the Green New Deal, a majority of Los Angeles water will be 'toilet-to-tap'. California Democrats, who refuse to build new dams or do anything to expand water resources, are set to spend at least $12 billion on what they describe as "locally sourced" water which certainly sounds nicer than toilet water. The environmentalist elites will go on drinking bottled water and it will be the city’s poor drinking out of the toilet.

Environmentalists insist that nothing can go wrong even though a 2019 NIH hosted survey noted that “there have been relatively few health-based studies evaluating the microbial risks associated with potable reuse” and that California wants to achieve "a benchmark level of public health protection of 1 infection in 10,000 people per year". That’s 1,000 people in Los Angeles County. The risks include “pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and protozoa” transmitted via a fecal-oral route” including Hepatitis A. A new reservoir might cost $4 billion, but environmentalists would rather spend three times as much on their toilet-to-tap plan.

‘Toilet-to-tap’ is just one of the multitude of ways that environmentalism creates an environmental hazard, threatening public health and undermining life in California.

No state has been as in love with solar power. With over 700 solar power plants and hundreds of thousands of residential solar panels, Californians enjoy an expensive and unreliable energy supply that leads to regular brown-outs. Solar panels generate their energy during the day, when most people aren’t home so that it goes to waste while being useless at night.

But in Hotel California, you can’t check out of subsidizing China’s exported solar industry.

As of 2020, California Democrats imposed a solar mandate requiring all new homes to have solar panels which added over $10,000 to the cost of a new home putting home ownership even further out of the reach of most people and making a mockery of talk of “affordable housing”.

The California Public Utilities Commission has admitted that the state has far more solar panels than it needs, but has argued that it should "dramatically overbuild solar" and then let it go to waste. Wasting a lot of energy has become the best way to stop waste and save the planet.

But that’s not all that’s going to waste.

With a lifespan of 25 years, the early generations of solar panels have begun to clutter up the state's landfills. Ironically, only about 10% of the solar "green energy" solution are recycled and the rest represent a serious toxic waste hazard. Behind the illusion of clean energy is the grimy reality that solar panels break down and just turn into poisonous and dangerous trash.

Recycling, itself a scam, often just sends our waste abroad to poor countries. A New York Times article described how in Africa, laborers "break them open with machetes and drain the acid into the ground by hand" which "pollutes the soil and water with lead, which can lead to brain damage." Actual recycling of solar panels is unworkable because it costs more to recycle them than it does to make them. So it’s just more economical to bury solar panels in landfills.

Faced with a growing toxic solar panel problem, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control reclassified them. In a press release typical of the state’s environmentalist puffery which always boast about being the first to pursue some disastrous policy, DTSC boasted that it was the "first in the nation" to "add hazardous waste solar panels to its universal waste program."

Meredith Williams, DTSC's director, claimed that lowering hazardous waste restrictions on solar panels was "another great step forward in our state’s efforts to put environmental protection first – both for the health and safety of our people and natural resources.”

California Democrats were boasting of being the first in the nation to ignore the environmental risks of an environmental policy in the name of the environment. The planet was being destroyed to save the planet. And people were being exposed to toxic chemicals to prop up the solar panel industry, its woke investors who finance the Democrats, and Chinese manufacturers.

California solar has become too big to fail. With billions in state subsidies and massive amounts of money seized from homeowners to fund the solar scam, the threat of lead and cadmium leaching into groundwater can’t be permitted to stop the environmentalist solar disaster.

As each generation of solar panels ages into oblivion, the solar trash problem will boom. And it’s just getting started. The hundreds of thousands of rooftop solar panels will either end up in the trash or will require spending twice as much up front to subsidize their eventual disposal.

At least.

While California Democrats fight to shut down the state’s nuclear power, they double down on solar which as Michael Shellenberger has argued, "produced 300 times more toxic waste than high-level nuclear waste.”

California’s solar subsidies will not only put homeownership further out of reach but are set to cover the state in toxic trash. Solar panels are worthless as energy and they’re worthless as trash. Governments have to mandate and subsidize their installation and then their disposal.

The situation isn’t much better with the ubiquitous wind turbines whose blades can’t be recycled.

Much as solar panels are filling up landfills, so are wind turbine blades. And those blades which "can be longer than a Boeing 747 wing" will first have to be cut up with a "diamond-encrusted industrial saw" and then hauled away on tractor trailers to massive landfills.

Fiberglass blades aren't biodegradable and burning or crushing them releases toxic fibers that have been linked to everything from skin reactions to lung disease.

Inhaling fiberglass dust is potentially dangerous. Especially from something the size of a jet wing. That just leaves one option. The same option as for nuclear power. Bury them.

Wind turbines, which were supposed to save the environment, are piling up in rural areas in Wyoming, Iowa and South Dakota.

“The wind turbine blade will be there, ultimately, forever,” an energy company executive admitted.

So much for clean energy saving the planet.

Environmentalists agonize over the 85,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel in the United States when a single wind turbine blade can weigh 12 tons. It's estimated that by 2020, wind turbine blade waste will amount to over 2 million tons or 1% of landfill capacity.

The green agenda isn’t saving the planet, it’s destroying it and harming people.

Environmentalism is an environmental hazard that threatens both the ecosystem and public health. From the solar panel lead in the groundwater to the wind turbine fiberglass in your lungs to the toilet water in your sink, there’s nothing ‘clean’ about the environmental agenda.

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Costs of amphibian and reptile invasions exceeded US$17 billion between 1986 and 2020

JULY 28, 2022, by Nature Publishing Group

https://phys.org/news/2022-07-amphibian-reptile-invasions-exceeded-us17.html

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Invasions by amphibians and reptiles—when species spread beyond the regions they are native to—are estimated to have cost the global economy at least US$17.0 billion between 1986 and 2020, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The findings highlight the need for more effective policies to limit the spread of current and future amphibian and reptile invasions.

Species invasions can lead to damage including the displacement or extinction of native species, the spread of disease and crop losses. Ismael Soto and colleagues examined the worldwide costs of amphibian and reptile invasions using data from the InvaCost database, which compiles estimates of the economic costs of species invasions. Data was taken from peer-reviewed articles, documents on governmental, academic and non-governmental organization webpages and documents retrieved from biological invasion experts.

The authors found that between 1986 and 2020 the total cost of reptile and amphibian invasions exceeded US$ 17.0 billion. Of this, amphibian invasions cost US$ 6.3 billion, reptile invasions cost US$ 10.4 billion and invasions involving both amphibians and reptiles cost US$ 0.3 billion. 96.3% (US$ 6.0 billion) of costs due to amphibians were attributed to a single species, the American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus), while 99.3% (US$ 10.3 billion) of costs due to reptiles were attributed solely to the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis). 99.7% (US$ 6.3 billion) of costs due to amphibians were associated with managing invasions, for example by eradicating invasive species. 96.6% (US$ 10.0 billion) of costs due to reptiles were associated with damages caused by invasions, such as crop yield losses. For amphibian invasions, 96.3% (US$ 6.0 billion) of economic costs were incurred by European countries while 99.6% (US$ 10.4 billion) of costs due to reptile invasions were incurred by Oceania and Pacific Island countries.

The authors suggest that the economic costs of amphibian and reptile invasions could be reduced by investing in measures to limit global transport of invasive species and to enable the early detection of invasions. This could reduce the need for long-term management of species invasions and the scale of damage incurred, they add.

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Early exposure to antibiotics can cause permanent asthma and allergies

JULY 28, 2022, by Andrew Smith, Rutgers University

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-early-exposure-antibiotics-permanent-asthma.html

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Early exposure to antibiotics kills healthy bacteria in the digestive tract and can cause asthma and allergies, a new study demonstrates.

The study, published in Mucosal Immunology, has provided the strongest evidence so far that the long-observed connection between antibiotic exposure in early childhood and later development of asthma and allergies is causal.

"The practical implication is simple: Avoid antibiotic use in young children whenever you can because it may elevate the risk of significant, long-term problems with allergy and/or asthma," said senior author Martin Blaser, director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers.

In the study, the researchers, who came from Rutgers, New York University and the University of Zurich, noted that antibiotics, "among the most used medications in children, affect gut microbiome communities and metabolic functions. These changes in microbiota structure can impact host immunity."

In the first part of the experiment, five-day-old mice received water, azithromycin or amoxicillin. After the mice matured, researchers exposed them to a common allergen derived from house dust mites. Mice that had received either of the antibiotics, especially azithromycin, exhibited elevated rates of immune responses—i.e., allergies.

The second and third parts of the experiment tested the hypothesis that early exposure to antibiotics (but not later exposure) causes allergies and asthma by killing some healthy gut bacteria that support proper immune system development.

Lead author Timothy Borbet first transferred bacteria-rich fecal samples from the first set of mice to a second set of adult mice with no previous exposure to any bacteria or germs. Some received samples from mice given azithromycin or amoxicillin in infancy. Others received normal samples from mice that had received water.

Mice that received antibiotic-altered samples were no more likely than other mice to develop immune responses to house dust mites, just as people who receive antibiotics in adulthood are no more likely to develop asthma or allergies than those who don't.

Things were different, however, for the next generation. Offspring of mice that received antibiotic-altered samples reacted more to house dust mites than those whose parents received samples unaltered by antibiotics, just as mice that originally received antibiotics as babies reacted more to the allergen than those that received water.

"This was a carefully controlled experiment," said Blaser. "The only variable in the first part was antibiotic exposure. The only variable in the second two parts was whether the mixture of gut bacteria had been affected by antibiotics. Everything else about the mice was identical.

Blaser added that "these experiments provide strong evidence that antibiotics cause unwanted immune responses to develop via their effect on gut bacteria, but only if gut bacteria are altered in early childhood.

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Archaeology News: Study refutes claim T. Rex was three separate species

 

Study refutes claim T. Rex was three separate species

"Based on all the fossil evidence we currently have, T. rex stands alone as the single giant apex predator from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs in North America.”

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF, Published: JULY 29, 2022

https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-713438

 A fossil of a dinosaur claw. (photo credit: DEAN MOUHTAROPOULOS/GETTY IMAGES) 

 In March 2022, a study published in Evolutionary Biology claimed that the tyrannosaurus rex should actually be classified as three different species. A July study in the same journal has now refuted that claim.

The new study came out of the American Museum of Natual History and Carthage College. “Tyrannosaurus rex remains the one true king of the dinosaurs,” said study co-author Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who conducted his Ph.D. work at the Museum.

“Recently, a bold theory was announced to much fanfare: what we call T. rex was actually multiple species. It is true that the fossils we have are somewhat variable in size and shape, but as we show in our new study, that variation is minor and cannot be used to neatly separate the fossils into easily defined clusters.

"Based on all the fossil evidence we currently have, T. rex stands alone as the single giant apex predator from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs in North America.”

“The boundaries of even living species are very hard to define: for instance, zoologists disagree over the number of living species of giraffe,”

 Study co-author Thomas Holtz, from the University of Maryland

 

 

An artist's reconstruction of the Cretaceous Period meat-eating dinosaur Meraxes gigas. (credit: Carlos Papolio/Handout via REUTERS)

The study from March, based on analyses of the leg bones and teeth of 38 T. rex specimens, claimed that the T. rex should be classified into:

• the standard T. rex;
• the bulkier T. imperator;
• the smaller T. regina. 

In contrast, the new study incorporated that data as well as data from 112 species of living dinosaurs - birds - and four non-avian theropods (birdlike) dinosaurs. 

“[The March 2022] study claimed that the variation in T. rex specimens was so high that they were probably from multiple closely related species of giant meat-eating dinosaur,” explained James Napoli, co-lead author of the rebuttal study and a graduating doctoral student in the Museum’s Richard Gilder Graduate School.

“But this claim was based on a very small comparative sample. When compared to data from hundreds of living birds, we actually found that T. rex is less variable than most living theropod dinosaurs. This line of evidence for proposed multiple species doesn’t hold up.”

What makes a species?

The original research claimed that the variation in size of a certain tooth and the shape of the femur indicated variation in species. However, the new study was unable to replicate the findings with expanded data.

“The boundaries of even living species are very hard to define: for instance, zoologists disagree over the number of living species of giraffe,” said co-author Thomas Holtz, from the University of Maryland and the National Museum of Natural History.

“It becomes much more difficult when the species involved are ancient and only known from a fairly small number of specimens. Other sources of variation—changes with growth, with region, with sex, and with good old-fashioned individual differences—have to be rejected before one accepts the hypothesis that two sets of specimens are in fact separate species. In our view, that hypothesis is not yet the best explanation.”

Neander-Troll says: Thems T-Rex's be mean & ugly creatures but they make nice T-bone steaks!

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Dietary Supplement Cuts Risk of Hereditary Cancer by 60%, Scientists Find

FIONA MACDONALD 27 JULY 2022

https://www.sciencealert.com/in-a-first-a-dietary-supplement-shown-to-cut-the-risk-of-hereditary-cancer-by-60

3D rendering of a cancer cell.

 (CIPhotos/Getty Images)

A trial spanning more than 20 years and almost 1,000 participants worldwide has found an important result – people with a condition that gives them a higher chance of developing certain cancers can reduce the risk of some of those cancers by more than 60 percent, simply by adding more resistant starch to their diets.

In fact, the results were so compelling when it came to cutting the risk of upper gastrointestinal (GI) cancers specifically that the researchers are now looking to replicate them to ensure they're not missing anything.

"We found that resistant starch reduces a range of cancers by over 60 percent. The effect was most obvious in the upper part of the gut," says lead researcher and nutritionist John Mathers from Newcastle University in the UK.

Upper GI cancers include esophageal, gastric, and pancreatic cancers.

"The results are exciting, but the magnitude of the protective effect in the upper GI tract was unexpected, so further research is required to replicate these findings," adds one of the researchers, Tim Bishop, a genetic epidemiologist from the University of Leeds.

Resistant starch is a type of starch that passes through the small intestine and then ferments in the large intestine, where it feeds beneficial gut bacteria. It can be bought as a fiber-like supplement, and is naturally in a range of foods, including slightly green bananas, oats, cooked and cooled pasta and rice, peas, and beans.

The double-blind trial was carried out between 1999 and 2005 and involved a group of 918 people with a condition known as Lynch syndrome. Lynch syndrome is one of the most common genetic predispositions to cancer that we know of, with around one in 300 people estimated to carry an associated gene.

Those who've inherited Lynch syndrome genes have a significantly increased risk of developing colorectal cancer, as well as gastric, endometrial, ovarian, pancreatic, prostate, urinary tract, kidney, bile duct, small bowel, and brain cancers.

To figure out how they could reduce this risk, participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups, with 463 unknowingly given a daily 30 gram dose of resistant starch in powdered form for two years – roughly the equivalent of eating a not-quite-ripe banana daily.

Another 455 people with Lynch syndrome took a daily placebo that looked like powdered starch but didn't contain active ingredients.

The two groups were then followed up 10 years later. The results of this follow-up are what the researchers have just published.

In the follow-up period, there had only been 5 new cases of upper gastrointestinal (GI) cancers among the 463 people who'd taken the resistant starch. This is in comparison with 21 cases of upper GI cancer among the 455 people in the placebo group – a pretty remarkable reduction.

"This is important as cancers of the upper GI tract are difficult to diagnose and often are not caught early on," says Mathers.

However, there was one area where the resistant starch didn't make much difference – in the rate of bowel cancers.

Further work is needed to figure out exactly what's going on here, but the team has some ideas.

"We think that resistant starch may reduce cancer development by changing the bacterial metabolism of bile acids and to reduce those types of bile acids that can damage our DNA and eventually cause cancer," says Mathers.

"However, this needs further research."

To be clear, this trial was carried out on people already genetically predisposed to developing cancer and doesn't necessarily apply to the broader public. But there could be a lot to learn by better understanding how resistive starch can help protect against cancer.

The original trial was called the CAPP2 study, and the team are now carrying out a follow-up called CaPP3, involving more than 1,800 people with Lynch syndrome.

While it may sound concerning that the rate of colorectal cancers didn't seem affected by the resistive starch, don't worry, the study had good news on that front, too.

The original trial also looked at whether taking aspirin daily could reduce cancer risk. Back in 2020, the team published results showing that aspirin reduced the risk of large bowel cancers in Lynch syndrome patients by 50 percent.

"Patients with Lynch syndrome are high risk as they are more likely to develop cancers, so finding that aspirin can reduce the risk of large bowel cancers and resistant starch other cancers by half is vitally important," says Newcastle University geneticist Sir John Burns who ran the trial with Mathers.

"Based on our trial, NICE [the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] now recommend Aspirin for people at high genetic risk of cancer, the benefits are clear – aspirin and resistant starch work."

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‘URBAN HEAT ISLANDS’–ACCORDING TO THE U.S. GOVERNMENT; + NEW STUDY FINDS 96% OF U.S. TEMPERATURE STATIONS ARE “CORRUPTED”

JULY 29, 2022 CAP ALLON

https://electroverse.co/urban-heat-islands-study-finds-96-of-u-s-temperature-stations-are-corrupted/

The U.S. government recently unveiled the website heat.gov with its vision of achieving “a nation free from heat-related illness and death”–which is a big ask for a website.

Surprisingly, the site tackles the topic of Urban Heat Islands, and it has this to say:

‘The term “urban heat island” refers to the fact that cities tend to get much warmer than their surrounding rural landscapes, particularly during the summer. This temperature difference occurs when cities’ unshaded roads and buildings gain heat during the day and radiate that heat into the surrounding air. As a result, highly developed urban areas can experience mid-afternoon temperatures that are 15°F to 20°F warmer than surrounding, vegetated areas.’

For decades now, scientists have queried the placement of U.S. thermometer stations given this skewed warming in built-up areas. It has even led to suggestions that the observed increase in U.S. temperatures between the 1980s and the 2000s is, at least partly, attributable to negligent weather station placement.

This contention is backed up by a recent nationwide study published by the Heartland Institute which asserts that “official NOAA temperature stations produce corrupted data due to purposeful placement in man-made hot spots”.

The new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds that approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what NOAA considers to be “acceptable” and uncorrupted placement by its own published standards.

The detailed report was compiled via satellite and in-person survey visits to NOAA weather stations that contribute to the “official” land temperature data in the United States.

The research shows that 96% of these stations are corrupted by localized effects of urbanization — producing heat-bias because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects.

Placing temperature stations in such locations violates NOAA’s own published standards (see section 3.1 here), and strongly undermines the legitimacy and the magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States.

“With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.,” said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, the director of the study. “Data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations.”

NOAA’s “Requirements and Standards for [National Weather Service] Climate Observations” instructs that temperature data instruments must be “over level terrain (earth or sod) typical of the area around the station and at least 100 feet from any extensive concrete or paved surface”, and also that “all attempts will be made to avoid areas where rough terrain or air drainage are proven to result in non-representative temperature data.”

The new report reveals the above instruction is routinely violated, and, according to H. Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environment Policy at The Heartland Institute, is evidence of two things: “First, the government is either inept or stubbornly refuses to learn from its mistakes for political reasons. Second, the government’s official temperature record can’t be trusted. It reflects a clear urban heat bias effect, not national temperature trends.”

Checking back with heat.gov, the U.S. government fully acknowledges that the urban heat island effect is indeed a thing and also that it impacts metropolitan temperatures: ‘cities create their own microclimates because they greatly alter the local landscape.’

The website then goes on to list four of the largest influences that cause cities to be hotter than their surroundings:

1) ‘Low Albedo, Heat-Storing Materials’–dark surfaces absorb more energy from sunlight than lighter, more reflective surfaces;

2) ‘Lack of Trees and Other Vegetation’–vegetation, including soil, absorb and release moisture, which requires the use of heat

3) ‘Urban Canyons & Urban Geometry’–buildings create an urban canyon effect that blocks wind flow that would otherwise provide ventilation to streets below, cooling them as well as speeding up evaporation;

4) ‘Waste Heat’–urban areas concentrate heat-emitting devices, like cars and air conditioners, over small areas. All of this heat adds up and contributes to higher air temperatures in cities.

These images from the NIHHIS Urban Heat Island Mapping Campaign in Las Cruces, NM, show how the temperature can differ greatly (by 44.5 °F) between shaded grass and exposed pavement.

 [David DuBois/heat.gov].

The Heartland Institutes’ new study gives examples of what it calls ‘the bias problem’.

The chart below (found on page 17 of the report) shows 30 years of data from NOAA temperature stations loccted in the CONUS.

The blue lines show recorded temperatures and the trend from stations that comply with NOAA’s published standards; the yellow lines are temperatures taken from stations that are not compliant with those standards (i.e. near artificial hot spots); and the red lines are the “official” adjusted temperature released by NOAA.

“If you look at the unperturbed stations that adhere to NOAA’s published standard–ones that are correctly located and free of localized urban heat biases–they display about half the rate of warming compared to perturbed stations that have such biases,” explained Watts.

“Yet, NOAA continues to use the data from their warm-biased century-old surface temperature networks to produce monthly and yearly reports to the U.S. public on the state of the climate. The issue of localized heat-bias with these stations has been proven in a real-world experiment conducted by NOAA’s laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and published in a peer reviewed science journal,” Watts added.

“By contrast, NOAA operates a state-of-the-art surface temperature network called the U.S. Climate Reference Network. It is free of localized heat biases by design, but the data it produces is never mentioned in monthly or yearly climate reports published by NOAA for public consumption.”

CONCLUSION

The observed increase in U.S. temperatures between the 1980s to the 2000s could be attributable, at least partly, to urbanization and negligent weather station placement.

It is unanimously agreed upon that built-up areas –our towns and cities– run hotter than rural areas, and it has also been found that 96% of NOAA temperature stations produce corrupted data due to purposeful placement in said “hot spots”.

They did always tell us that global warming was ‘man-made’…

The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank founded in 1984, is one of the world’s leading organizations promoting the work of scientists who are skeptical that human activity is causing a climate crisis.

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Put down devices, let your mind wander, study suggests

JULY 28, 2022, by American Psychological Association
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-devices-mind.html

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

People consistently underestimate how much they would enjoy spending time alone with their own thoughts, without anything to distract them, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"Humans have a striking ability to immerse themselves in their own thinking," said study lead author Aya Hatano, Ph.D., of Kyoto University in Japan. "Our research suggests that individuals have difficulty appreciating just how engaging thinking can be. That could explain why people prefer keeping themselves busy with devices and other distractions, rather than taking a moment for reflection and imagination in daily life."

The research was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

In a series of six experiments with a total of 259 participants, the researchers compared people's predictions of how much they would enjoy simply sitting and thinking with their actual experience of doing so. In the first experiment, they asked people to predict how much they would enjoy sitting alone with their thoughts for 20 minutes, without being allowed to do anything distracting such as reading, walking around or looking at a smartphone. Afterward, participants reported how much they had enjoyed it.

The researchers found that people enjoyed spending time with their thoughts significantly more than they had predicted. This held true across variations of the experiment in which participants sat in a bare conference room or in a small, dark tented area with no visual stimulation; variations in which the thinking period lasted for three minutes or for 20 minutes; and one variation in which the researchers asked people to report on their enjoyment midway through the task instead of after it was over. In every case, participants enjoyed thinking more than they had expected to.

In another experiment, the researchers compared one group of participants' predictions of how much they would enjoy thinking with another group's predictions of how much they would enjoy checking the news on the internet. Again, the researchers found that people underestimated their enjoyment of thinking. The thinking group expected to enjoy the task significantly less than the news-checking group, but afterward, the two groups reported similar enjoyment levels.

These results are especially important in our modern era of information overload and constant access to distractions, according to study co-author Kou Murayama, Ph.D., of the University of Tübingen in Germany. "It's now extremely easy to 'kill time.' On the bus on your way to work, you can check your phone rather than immerse yourself in your internal free-floating thinking, because you predict thinking will be boring," he said. "However, if that prediction is inaccurate, you are missing an opportunity to positively engage yourself without relying on such stimulation."

That missed opportunity comes at a cost because previous studies have shown that spending time letting your mind wander has some benefits, according to the researchers. It can help people solve problems, enhance their creativity and even help them find meaning in life. "By actively avoiding thinking activities, people may miss these important benefits," Murayama said.

It is important to note that participants did not rate thinking as an extremely enjoyable task, but simply as more enjoyable than they thought it would be, according to Murayama. On average, participants' enjoyment level was around 3 to 4 on a 7-point scale. Future research should delve into which types of thinking are most enjoyable and motivating, according to Murayama. "Not all thinking is intrinsically rewarding, and in fact some people are prone to vicious cycles of negative thinking," he said.

Future research should also explore the reasons why people underestimate how much they will enjoy thinking, according to the researchers. The results also need to be replicated in more diverse populations than the current study, in which all participants were college students in Japan or the U.K.

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Archaeology News: Humans were cause of rapid animal homogenization in North America - study

 

Humans were cause of rapid animal homogenization in North America - study

Human populations caused homogenization in North America through hunting, farming, attracting certain species and cultivated boundaries.

By ARIELLA MARSDEN, Jerusalem Post,  JULY 28th 2022

https://www.jpost.com/science/article-713315

Mammals from the Pleistocene period. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

Humans are the cause of biotic homogenization (a process in which different ecosystems become more similar over time) among mammals in North America, according to a new study published earlier in July.

The study, which was published in the peer-reviewed Nature journal, analyzed 8,831 fossils from 365 mammal species in North America.

This is the first study of this kind that analyzed homogenization as a human-generated process. Previous studies have either focused on climate millions of years ago or on human effect in the last century. This study, however, covered the last 30,000 years, encompassing the time before humans were in North America, their migration there and the shift from hunter-gatherers to farmers.

Humans: The biggest cause of homogenization

The researcher concluded that humans are the biggest cause of homogenization in North America with modern-day mammal communities twice as homogenous as they were 10,000 years ago. 

 

North American mammals. (credit: FLICKR)

Another sign of human involvement is that homogenization began to accelerate about 12,000 years ago when humans were hunting mammoths, saber-toothed felines, dire wolves and other large mammals to extinction.

Another acceleration was marked in the past 5,000 years when there was a surge in the human population in North America as well as the emergence of farming, particularly in the east and center of the continent.

“It happened much later in North America than on other continents,” said Kate Lyons who led the study. “But that’s really when humans in North America went from being hunter-gatherers to being more settled and dependent on agriculture.”

The homogenization process was caused by a number of human-related causes. Human settlements attracted animals like coyotes, raccoons and rodents who took advantage of the byproducts of human activity, converted habitats for agriculture chased away the animals in those habitats and human-made boundaries like roads and fields also acted as boundaries for animals.

The extinction of keystone species in the last 500 years has only made the homogenization process more rapid.

“A lot of what we’re finding is that when we lose species — particularly when we lose large species that tend to be what we call ecosystem engineers — there’s a dramatic change in the ecosystem that’s left,” explained Lyons.

“Large mammals do all kinds of stuff in ecosystems."

Kate Lyons

“Elephants eat a lot, they move around a lot, and they poop a lot, so they actually move nutrients around ecosystems a lot. What we’re finding, then, is that nutrients essentially get lost from ecosystems (in their absence).”

As far as the effects of climate on the homogenization process, the researchers found little evidence to support that theory.

“What we find when we look at the climate patterns is that all of that happened very early on before we see this dramatic homogenization,” said Lyons. 

Neander-Troll says: I confess it was me who hunted all the Sabre Tooth Tigers  to extinction just to make matching shoes & bags for my Missus & her sisters & to feed my hungry family we hunted down all the Mammoths to make barbecued ribs & hamburgers for the kiddies! 

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