Burrowing snakes have far worse eyesight than their ancestors

The prong-snouted blind snake (Anilios bituberculatus)
is common across southern Australia.
Credit: Tom Charlton

The ancestor of all living snakes probably had substantially better vision than present-day burrowing snakes, according to new research.

An international team of scientists – led by the Natural History Museum and the University of Plymouth – carried out the first detailed analysis of gene sequence data for any species of the so-called 'blindsnakes' (Scolecophidia), a group of small-eyed burrowers.

They found that seven of the 12 genes associated with bright-light vision in most snakes and lizards species are not present in scolecophidians.

This, they say, demonstrates extensive vision gene loss over tens of millions of years of evolutionary history, similar to that which has also been observed in burrowing mammals with reduced vision.

It also challenges the hypothesis that all snakes living across the world today evolved from extreme burrowers, because the vision genes lost in scolecophidians are present in most other living snakes. The researchers say it would be extremely unlikely for such genetic deficiencies to have been reversed through evolution.

Scolecophidians are dedicated burrowers and form one half of the oldest divergence in the snake tree.

They comprise around 460 of the approximately 3,850 currently recognized living snake species, and likely diverged from their closest living relatives (Alethinophidia, which includes all other living snakes) more than 65 million years ago.

ESO telescope images planet around most massive star pair to date

This image shows the most massive planet-hosting star pair to date, b Centauri, and its giant planet b Centauri b. This is the first time astronomers have directly observed a planet orbiting a star pair this massive and hot.   The star pair, which has a total mass of at least six times that of the Sun, is the bright object in the top left corner of the image, the bright and dark rings around it being optical artefacts. The planet, visible as a bright dot in the lower right of the frame, is ten times as massive as Jupiter and orbits the pair at 100 times the distance Jupiter orbits the Sun. The other bright dot in the image (top right) is a background star. By taking different images at different times, astronomers were able to distinguish the planet from the background stars.   The image was captured by the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope and using a coronagraph, which blocked the light from the massive star system and allowed astronomers to detect the faint planet. 
Credit: ESO/Janson et al.

The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) has captured an image of a planet orbiting b Centauri, a two-star system that can be seen with the naked eye. This is the hottest and most massive planet-hosting star system found to date, and the planet was spotted orbiting it at 100 times the distance Jupiter orbits the Sun. Some astronomers believed planets could not exist around stars this massive and this hot — until now.

“Finding a planet around b Centauri was very exciting since it completely changes the picture about massive stars as planet hosts,” explains Markus Janson, an astronomer at Stockholm University, Sweden and first author of the new study published online today in Nature.

A new algorithm increases the efficiency of quantum computers

Photo: Mikko Raskinen

Quantum computing is taking a new leap forward due to research that has proposed a scheme to reduce the number of calculations needed to read out data stored in the state of a quantum processor. This will make quantum computers more efficient, faster, and ultimately more sustainable.

Quantum computers have the potential to solve important problems that are beyond reach even for the most powerful supercomputers, but they require an entirely new way of programming and creating algorithms. Universities and major tech companies are spearheading research on how to develop these new algorithms.

In a recent collaboration between the University of Helsinki, Aalto University, the University of Turku, and IBM Research Europe-Zurich, a team of researchers developed a new method to speed up calculations on quantum computers. The results were published in the prestigious journal PRX Quantum of the American Physical Society.

‘Unlike classical computers, which use bits to store ones and zeros, information is stored in the qubits of a quantum processor in the form of a quantum state, or a wavefunction,’ says postdoctoral researcher Guillermo García-Pérez from the University of Helsinki, first author of the paper. Therefore, special procedures are required to read out data from quantum computers.

Ancient DNA found in soil samples reveals mammoths survived thousands of years longer than believed

Anthropology PhD student Tyler Murchie is a lead author on research
about a new DNA recovery technique that pulls genomes of thousands
of ancient species from less than a gram of soil.
Photo by Emil Karpinski/McMaster University

Mere spoonsful of soil pulled from Canada’s permafrost are opening vast windows into ancient life in the Yukon, revealing rich new information and rewriting previous beliefs about the extinction dynamics, dates and survival of megafauna like mammoths, horses and other long-lost life forms.

In a new paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from McMaster University, the University of Alberta, the American Museum of Natural History and the Yukon government present a 30,000-year DNA record of past environments, drawn from cored permafrost sediments extracted from the Klondike region of central Yukon.

Researchers used DNA capture-enrichment technology developed at McMaster to isolate and rebuild, in remarkable detail, the fluctuating animal and plant communities at different time points during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, an unstable climatic period 11,000-14,000 years ago when a number of large species such as mammoths, mastodons and sabre-toothed cats disappeared.

They reconstructed the ancient ecosystems using tiny soil samples which contain billions of microscopic genomic sequences from animal and plant species.

Optical cavities could be key to next generation interferometers

A new concept has been developed that has the potential to assist new instruments in the investigation of fundamental science topics such as gravitational waves and dark matter.

The concept is described in a paper written by UK Quantum Technology Hub Sensors and Timing researchers at the University of Birmingham and published in Communications Physics, and a related patent application filed by University of Birmingham Enterprise.

It proposes a new method of using optical cavities to enhance atom interferometers – highly sensitive devices that use light and atoms to make ultra-precise measurements.

Although itself challenging to implement, the concept presents a method of overcoming substantial technological challenges involved in the pursuit of atom interferometers operating at extreme momentum transfer – a technique which would allow atoms to be placed into a quantum superposition over large distances.

This is key to enabling the sensitivities required for these devices to investigate signals from dark matter and gravitational waves. The exploration of dark matter, and the detection of gravitational waves from the very early Universe is key to developing our collective knowledge of fundamental physics.

The new paper, written by Dr Rustin Nourshargh, Dr Samuel Lellouch and colleagues from the School of Physics and Astronomy, describes how synchronization of the input pulses, to realize a spatially resolved circulating pulse within the optical cavity, can facilitate a large momentum transfer without the need for drastic improvements in available laser power.

Azure-tailed lizard species rediscovered on Hawaiʻi Island

Azure-tailed skink
Photo credit: Gary Miller

When a former student sent William Mautz, a professor emeritus of biology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, a snapshot of a lizard once thought to be extinct in Hawaiʻi—he was instantly curious.

It was a recently snapped photograph of what appeared to be an azure-tailed skink, a lizard species once commonly found in the Hawaiian Islands and only known to dwell on a tiny 10-acre islet off Molokaʻi. UH Hilo Tropical Conservation Biology and Environmental Science alumnus Aaron Mickelson sent Mautz the photo to get his expert opinion.

“I said I know what it is, but it is not supposed to be here anymore,” Mautz explained. “The little brown skinks common in Hilo backyards are a different species called the delicate skink. They may have a slate-colored tail but it is not a true blue. The azure-tailed skink also has a stripe over the top of its head.”

To confirm its existence on Hawaiʻi Island, Mautz set off on a hike to the lizard population spotted within a small grove of pandanus trees at the edge of the ocean cliffs near Nīnole on the Hāmākua Coast. Mautz recently published an article about the species’ rediscovery in Herpetological Review.

Quetzalcoatlus, Earth’s largest flier ever

An artist’s rendition of Quetzalcoatlus northropi, a type of pterosaur and the largest flying animal that ever lived on Earth. Quetzalcoatlus stood about 12 feet tall and walked with a unique gait because of its enormous 20-foot wings, which touched the ground when folded.
Artwork courtesy of James Kuether

Look around any wetland today and you’re likely to see 3-foot-tall egrets or 4-foot-tall herons wading in the shallows in stealthy search of fish, insects or crustaceans.

But 70 million years ago, along the Rio Grande River in Texas, a more impressive and scarier creature stalked the marshes: the 12-foot-tall pterosaur known as Quetzalcoatlus. With a 37- to 40-foot wingspan, it was the largest flying animal that ever lived on Earth.

In six papers published today as a Memoir by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, scientists and an artist provide the most complete picture yet of this dinosaur relative, the largest example of which is represented by just a single set of fossilized bones collected in the late 1970s from Big Bend National Park. The papers describe the pterosaur’s geological and ecological setting during the Upper Cretaceous, its anatomy and taxonomic position, and how it moved on the ground and in the air.

One of the papers, co-authored by University of California, Berkeley, paleontologist Kevin Padian, emeritus professor of integrative biology and emeritus curator in the UC Museum of Paleontology, answers some of the mysteries surrounding the flying and walking behavior of this unique animal, about which little has been published since its discovery more than 45 years ago. How can an animal walk with wings so long that they touch the ground when folded? What did it eat, and how did it feed? How strong a flier was it? And how does an animal whose wings span 40 feet, yet whose legs are only 6 feet high at the hip, launch itself into the air?

Early warning signals could help monitor disease outbreaks

New research suggests early warning signals (EWSs) could help in the monitoring of disease outbreaks, such as COVID-19. The study, led by the University of Bristol, found warnings could be detected weeks earlier than any rapid increase in cases. The findings could help governments and policy makers improve the accuracy of their decisions and allow timely interventions if needed.

Using a novel, sequential analysis combined with daily COVID-19 case data across 24 countries, the research, published today [8 December] in Biology Letters, suggests EWSs can predict COVID-19 waves. The researchers found that warnings were regularly detectable prior to exponential cases changes. but the reliability of these signals depended on the amount of time between successive waves of infection and the mathematical likelihood of a critical transition, Consequently, EWSs showed highest accuracy for waves that experienced a suppressed R number over a long period before the outbreak.

As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shown, being able to identify rapid increases in cases before they occur is important for people to modify their behaviors, and to inform government actions.

Duncan O’Brien in Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences said: “We’ve always been aware that any technique that’s able to predict the appearance of disease would be useful in protecting human health. This has never been more apparent with the global COVID-19 pandemic and the many discussions around when governments should put interventions in place.

“Our research found that hotly debated early warning signals were most reliable before the second COVID-19 wave that was experienced by many, and whilst these signals performed less well for the first and third waves, any rapid increase in cases could be identified well in advance.

Regular exercise reduces the risk of and death from pneumonia

People who exercise regularly can reduce their risk of developing and dying from pneumonia, new research has found. The study, led by the University of Bristol and published in GeroScience, analyzed, for the first time, ten population cohort studies with over one million participants.

The benefits of regular exercise are well-known and can reduce the risk, length or severity of infectious diseases. Previous research has suggested that regular exercise might be associated with a reduced risk of pneumonia, but the studies have had mixed findings with some reporting evidence of a relationship and others no evidence.

The researchers carried out a pooled analysis of all published studies to re-evaluate the relationship between regular exercise and the risk of developing pneumonia.

The questions the study aimed to answer included:

• Is there an association between regular physical activity and future risk of pneumonia?
• If there is an association, what is the strength and nature of the association?
• If there is an association, is it stronger or weaker in specific groups of people?

The study found people who exercise regularly have a lower risk of developing pneumonia and pneumonia-related death compared to those who were the least or not physically active. The relationship was shown for pneumonias that did not result in death and those that resulted in death. The results did not change on taking into account known factors that can affect pneumonia such as age, sex, body mass index, socioeconomic status, alcohol consumption, smoking, and pre-existing diseases. The strength of the association did not vary by age or sex.

You can help scientists study the Sun

In this new citizen science project, participants will help identify bursts of plasma coming off the Sun, called solar jets, in thousands of images captured over the last 11 years by NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory.
Image credit: NASA, Zooniverse

If you ever wanted to be an astronomer, now is your chance. A new citizen science project, led by researchers at the University of Minnesota with support from NASA, allows volunteers to play an important role in learning more about the Sun by using their personal computers.

Participants will help identify bursts of plasma coming off the Sun, called solar jets, in thousands of images captured over the last 11 years by NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory.

The project, called Solar Jet Hunter, is the newest citizen science project under the Zooniverse platform originated at the University of Minnesota. Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular people-powered online research platform with more than two million volunteers from around the world. These volunteers act as armchair scientists and archivists helping academic research teams with their projects from the comfort of their own homes.