‘Winners and losers’ as global warming forces plants uphill

Cerrado savanna in the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, Brazil.
Photo Credit Ana Christina

Some plant species will “win” and others will “lose” as global warming forces them to move uphill, new research shows.

Scientists examined the current range of more than 7,000 plant species in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna, and estimated shifts based on warming by 2040.

The fate of plant species will depend on where they live: lowland species can move uphill for cooler conditions, but mountain plants have nowhere to go.

The study was carried out by the universities of Exeter and Campinas, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and Trinity College Dublin.

“Every plant and animal species has a ‘geographical range’ – the area where conditions are suitable for it to live,” said Mateus Silva, from the University of Exeter.

“As the climate warms, plants’ ranges are shifting, with many species going uphill.

“This is the pattern we found in the Cerrado – suggesting lowland areas may become local extinction hotspots, while mountains will host new combinations of plant species.”

CBD products don’t ease pain and are potentially harmful – new study finds

CBD oil may be popular for treating pain but taking it appears to be a waste of money
Photo Credit: Julia Teichmann

There is no evidence that CBD products reduce chronic pain, and taking them is a waste of money and potentially harmful to health, according to new research led by the University of Bath.

CBD (short for cannabidiol) is one of many chemicals found naturally in the cannabis plant. It’s a popular alternative treatment for pain and is readily available in shops and online in the form of oils, tinctures, vapes, topical creams, edibles (such as gummy bears) and soft drinks.

However, consumers would do well to steer clear of these products, according to the new study.

“CBD presents consumers with a big problem,” said Professor Chris Eccleston, who led the research from the Centre for Pain Research at Bath. “It’s touted as a cure for all pain but there’s a complete lack of quality evidence that it has any positive effects.”

He added: “It’s almost as if chronic pain patients don’t matter, and that we’re happy for people to trade on hope and despair.”

For their study, published this week in The Journal of Pain, the team – which included researchers from the Universities of Bath, Oxford and Alberta in Canada – examined research relevant to using CBD to treat pain and published in scientific journals up to late 2023.

SwRI Develops More Effective Particle Conversion Surfaces for Space Instruments

SwRI space scientists are collaborating with materials specialists to create more effective particle detection surfaces for spacecraft instruments. Pictured is a conversion surface substrate developed specifically for the IMAP-Lo instrument.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of SwRI

Southwest Research Institute is investing internal funding to develop more effective conversion surfaces to allow future spacecraft instruments to collect and analyze low-energy particles. Conversion surfaces are ultra-smooth, ultra-thin surfaces covering a silicon wafer that converts neutral atoms into ions to more effectively detect particles from outer space.

Changing the charge of particles simplifies and enhances detection and analysis capabilities. Dr. Jianliang Lin of the Institute’s Mechanical Engineering Division and Dr. Justyna Sokół of SwRI’s Space Science Division lead the multidisciplinary project. The project builds on the successful creation of conversion surfaces for the IMAP-Lo instrument for the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) spacecraft. IMAP, which is set to launch in 2025, will help researchers better understand the boundary of our heliosphere, the region of space encompassing the solar system, where the solar wind has a significant influence.

“When low-energy atoms enter the instrument from outer space, they bounce off the conversion surface and either gain or lose an electron, making their electrical charge unbalanced. This makes it easier to increase their speed and analyze their mass and other properties,” Sokół said.

Honey bees at risk for colony collapse from longer, warmer fall seasons

WSU researchers and students collect samples and perform honey bee colony health assessments in orchards near Modesto, CA.
Photo Credit: Brandon Hopkins

The famous work ethic of honey bees might spell disaster for these busy crop pollinators as the climate warms, new research indicates.

Flying shortens the lives of bees, and worker honey bees will fly to find flowers whenever the weather is right, regardless of how much honey is already in the hive. Using climate and bee population models, researchers found that increasingly long autumns with good flying weather for bees raises the likelihood of colony collapse in the spring.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, focused on the Pacific Northwest but holds implications for hives across the U.S. The researchers also modeled a promising mitigation: putting colonies into indoor cold storage, so honey bees will cluster in their hive before too many workers wear out.

“This is a case where a small amount of warming, even in the near future, will make a big impact on honey bees,” said lead author Kirti Rajagopalan, a Washington State University climate researcher. “It’s not like this is something that can be expected 80 years from now. It is a more immediate impact that needs to be planned for.”

Persian plateau unveiled as crucial hub for early human migration out of Africa

Pebdeh Cave located in the southern Zagros Mountains. Pebdeh was occupied by hunter-gatherers as early as 42,000 years ago.
Photo Credit: Mohammad Javad Shoaee

A new study combining genetic, palaeoecological, and archaeological evidence has unveiled the Persian plateau as a pivotal geographic location serving as a hub for Homo sapiens during the early stages of their migration out of Africa.  

This study sheds new light on the complex journey of human populations, challenging previous understandings of our species’ expansion into Eurasia. 

The study, published in Nature Communications, highlights a period between 70,000 to 45,000 years ago when human populations did not uniformly spread across Eurasia, leaving a gap in our understanding of their whereabouts during this time frame. 

Large language models use a surprisingly simple mechanism to retrieve some stored knowledge

Caption:Researchers from MIT and elsewhere found that complex large language machine-learning models use a simple mechanism to retrieve stored knowledge when they respond to a user prompt. The researchers can leverage these simple mechanisms to see what the model knows about different subjects, and also possibly correct false information that it has stored.
Image Credit: Copilot / DALL-E 3 / AI generated from Scientific Frontline prompts

Large language models, such as those that power popular artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT, are incredibly complex. Even though these models are being used as tools in many areas, such as customer support, code generation, and language translation, scientists still don’t fully grasp how they work.

In an effort to better understand what is going on under the hood, researchers at MIT and elsewhere studied the mechanisms at work when these enormous machine-learning models retrieve stored knowledge.

They found a surprising result: Large language models (LLMs) often use a very simple linear function to recover and decode stored facts. Moreover, the model uses the same decoding function for similar types of facts. Linear functions, equations with only two variables and no exponents, capture the straightforward, straight-line relationship between two variables.

The researchers showed that, by identifying linear functions for different facts, they can probe the model to see what it knows about new subjects, and where within the model that knowledge is stored.

A self-cleaning wall paint

Qaisar Maqbool and Günther Rupprechter
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Technische Universität Wien

A breakthrough in catalysis research leads to a new wall paint that cleans itself when exposed to sunlight and chemically breaks down air pollutants.

Typically, beautiful white wall paint does not stay beautiful and white forever. Often, various substances from the air accumulate on its surface. This can be a desired effect because it makes the air cleaner for a while – but over time, the color changes and needs to be renewed.

A research team from TU Wien and the Università Politecnica delle Marche (Italy) has now succeeded in developing special titanium oxide nanoparticles that can be added to ordinary, commercially available wall paint to establish self-cleaning power: The nanoparticles are photocatalytically active, they can use sunlight not only to bind substances from the air, but also to decompose them afterwards. The wall makes the air cleaner – and cleans itself at the same time. Waste was used as the raw material for the new wall paint: metal scrap, which would otherwise have to be discarded, and dried fallen leaves.

New All-Liquid Iron Flow Battery for Grid Energy Storage

Lead author and battery researcher Gabriel Nambafu assembles a test flow battery apparatus.
Photo Credit:  Andrea Starr | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

A commonplace chemical used in water treatment facilities has been repurposed for large-scale energy storage in a new battery design by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The design provides a pathway to a safe, economical, water-based, flow battery made with Earth-abundant materials. It provides another pathway in the quest to incorporate intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar energy into the nation’s electric grid.

The researchers report in Nature Communications that their lab-scale, iron-based battery exhibited remarkable cycling stability over one thousand consecutive charging cycles, while maintaining 98.7 percent of its maximum capacity. For comparison, previous studies of similar iron-based batteries reported degradation of the charge capacity two orders of magnitude higher, over fewer charging cycles.

Iron-based flow batteries designed for large-scale energy storage have been around since the 1980s, and some are now commercially available. What makes this battery different is that it stores energy in a unique liquid chemical formula that combines charged iron with a neutral-pH phosphate-based liquid electrolyte, or energy carrier. Crucially, the chemical, called nitrogenous triphosphonate, nitrilotri-methylphosphonic acid or NTMPA, is commercially available in industrial quantities because it is typically used to inhibit corrosion in water treatment plants.

Thousands of tons of microplastics found in Moreton Bay

Dr Elvis Okoffo has tested samples of mud from Moreton Bay for microplastics.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of Queensland

University of Queensland researchers estimate there could be up to 7000 tons of microplastics polluting vital ecosystems in Brisbane’s Moreton Bay.

Dr Elvis Okoffo from UQ’s Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences said the team measured plastic stored within 50 surface sediment samples collected across Moreton Bay.

“The level of plastic contamination we found is equivalent to three Olympic swimming pools full of plastic or 1.5 million single use plastic bags,” Dr Okoffo said.

“The main types of plastic detected were polyethylene (PE) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).

“PE is used for single-use items such as plastic food wrapping, bags and bottles and PVC is used in pipes, building materials, electronics, and clothing.

Research uncovers a rare resin fossil find: A spider that aspires to be an ant

Ant-mimicking spider in fossilized resin
Photo Credit: George Poinar Jr / Oregon State University

Arachnophobia can make humans flee at the sight of a brown recluse, black widow or even a daddy long legs, but animal predators of spiders know no such fear.

That’s why paleobiologist George Poinar Jr. explains, some spider species have developed the defense of deception. They masquerade as a much less desirable prey – ants – and Poinar’s recent paper in Historical Biology presents an early record of an ant-mimicking spider in fossilized resin.

“Ants are particularly good creatures for spiders to pretend to be – many animals find ants distasteful or dangerous to eat,” said Poinar, who has a courtesy appointment in the Oregon State University College of Science. “Ants are aggressive in their own defense – they have a strong bite as well as stinging venom, and they can call in dozens of nestmates as allies. Spiders, meanwhile, have no chemical defenses and are loners, which makes them vulnerable to being hunted by larger spiders, wasps and birds – predators that would rather avoid ants. So, if a spider can be like an ant, it’s more likely to be unbothered.”

Spiders that disguise themselves as ants live in many locations around the globe but until now most had been able to avoid detection from fossil researchers as well as predators. The specimen that Poinar describes, which he named Myrmarachne colombiana, was entombed in a type of fossilized resin known as copal.