Identifying Better Ways to Save the World’s Reefs

Scientists work to restore damaged coral reefs by
growing health fragments to transplant.
Photo: University of Konstanz/Anna Rolk.

In the race to save the world’s fragile corals from climate change and disease, USF Department of Integrative Biology Assistant Professor John Parkinson is among an international group of scientists looking for better ways to restore damaged reefs. In new research published Tuesday in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, the team makes its case for nature-based approaches that give coral colonies a boost in their fight to survive warming seas.

Led by the University of Konstanz in Germany, the team calls for the use of new technologies to identify, propagate, and even strengthen naturally resilient coral colonies, which can then be transplanted to threatened reefs. The systematic review evaluates several emerging methods that have been used to improve coral heat tolerance, scoring them in terms of risk, cost, and scalability. The objective of the project is to provide guidance on which interventions might most effectively extend the natural adaptive capacity of corals, the researchers said.

The race to save the world’s coral reefs is a high priority for conservationists: 30 percent of all marine biodiversity depends on reef ecosystems and more than one billion people rely on the reefs for sustaining fishing stocks, tourism, and a healthy marine environment. Even a small rise in ocean temperatures can cause coral “bleaching” – when corals expel the algae living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white – leaving the organisms more susceptible to disease and death.

Flu season is coming and it could be ugly

Photo by Usman Yousaf on Unsplash

As COVID-19 restrictions ease, Canada is seeing a resurgence of many respiratory viruses—and many experts predict this year’s flu season could be severe.

Dr. Michael Curry (he/him), clinical associate professor with UBC faculty of medicine’s department of emergency medicine, reveals how this year’s flu season will be different from the last and weighs in on how to reduce your risk of getting sick.

How will this year’s flu season be different from last year?

Last flu season we essentially had no cases of influenza and relatively few cases of other respiratory viruses here in Canada. When someone was sick with a respiratory infection eight or nine months ago, it was very likely they had COVID-19.

This year, the big change I have seen is the re-emergence of our ‘usual suspect’ respiratory infections. Common cold viruses are back and circulating again. While we are still seeing COVID-19 in Canada, we are finding other respiratory viruses on a regular basis as well.

How might this year’s flu season interact with the fourth wave of COVID-19?

With the upsurge in other respiratory viruses, we can expect a resurgence of influenza this year.

A bad flu season can rapidly fill up emergency departments and hospital beds, and as we all know, COVID-19 is already doing a good job at that.

How many people get 'long COVID?'

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels

More than half of the 236 million people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 worldwide since December 2019 will experience post-COVID symptoms — more commonly known as “long COVID” — up to six months after recovering, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. The research team said that governments, health care organizations and public health professionals should prepare for the large number of COVID-19 survivors who will need care for a variety of psychological and physical symptoms.

During their illnesses, many patients with COVID-19 experience symptoms, such as tiredness, difficulty breathing, chest pain, sore joints and loss of taste or smell.

Until recently, few studies have evaluated patients’ health after recovering from the coronavirus. To better understand the short- and long-term health effects of the virus, the researchers examined worldwide studies involving unvaccinated patients who recovered from COVID-19. According to the findings, adults, as well as children, can experience several adverse health issues for six months or longer after recovering from COVID-19.

The researchers conducted a systematic review of 57 reports that included data from 250,351 unvaccinated adults and children who were diagnosed with COVID-19 from December 2019 through March 2021. Among those studied, 79% were hospitalized, and most patients (79%) lived in high-income countries. Patients’ median age was 54, and the majority of individuals (56%) were male.

The researchers analyzed patients’ health post-COVID during three intervals at one month (short-term), two to five months (intermediate-term) and six or more months (long-term).

According to the findings, survivors experienced an array of residual health issues associated with COVID-19. Generally, these complications affected a patient’s general well-being, their mobility or organ systems. Overall, one in two survivors experienced long-term COVID manifestations. The rates remained largely constant from one month through six or more months after their initial illness.

Did a black hole eating a star generate a neutrino?

Artist’s illustration of tidal disruption event AT2019dsg where a supermassive black hole spaghettifies and gobbles down a star. Some of the material is not consumed by the black hole and is flung back out into space.
Credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab

In October 2019, a high-energy neutrino slammed into Antarctica. The neutrino, which was remarkably hard to detect, piqued astronomers’ interest: what could generate such a powerful particle?

Researchers traced the neutrino back to a supermassive black hole that had just ripped apart and swallowed a star. Known as a tidal disruption event (TDE), AT2019dsg occurred just months earlier — in April 2019 — in the same region of the sky where the neutrino had come from. The monstrously violent event must have been the source of the powerful particle, astronomers said.

But new research casts doubt on that claim.

In a study published this month in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers at Northwestern University and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, present extensive new radio observations and data on AT2019dsg, enabling the team to calculate the energy emitted by the event. The findings show AT2019dsg generated nowhere near the energy needed for the neutrino; in fact, what it spewed out was quite “ordinary,” the team concludes.

Observe the Moon

International Observe the Moon Night is Oct 16, 2021

In celebration of International Observe the Moon Night, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission created this music video featuring the song "A Million Dreams," performed by the musical artist P!NK and the Ndlovu Youth Choir from South Africa.

OBSERVE THE MOON NIGHT WEBSITE

MUSIC LICENSED AND USED WITH PERMISSION:
“A Million Dreams”
Performed by P!NK and the Ndlovu Youth Choir
P!NK appears courtesy of RCA Records
By arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment
Courtesy of UNICEF


Written by Benj Pasek [ASCAP], Justin Paul [ASCAP]
Published by Pick in a Pinch Music [ASCAP], Breathelike Music [ASCAP]
Admin by Kobalt Songs Music Publishing
Published by T C F Music Publishing, Inc. (ASCAP)
Production Credits:
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Produced and Edited by David Ladd (AIMM)
Moon visualizations by Ernie Wright (USRA)
Animations by NASA’s Conceptual Image Lab
Cinematography by David Ladd
Lowell Discovery Telescope footage by Stephen Tegler
Stock Footage provided by Pond5

Source/Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

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Scientists discuss climate-smart agriculture

 A bill under debate in Congress would pave the way to verifying and paying for farms’ carbon savings. Stanford scientists explore this and other opportunities for growing climate change solutions on U.S. farms.

Source/Credit: Stanford University

Research Team Unlocks Secret Path to a Quantum Future

Artist’s illustration of hydrodynamical behavior from an interacting
ensemble of quantum spin defects in diamond.
(Credit: Norman Yao/Berkeley Lab)

In 1998, researchers including Mark Kubinec of UC Berkeley performed one of the first simple quantum computations using individual molecules. They used pulses of radio waves to flip the spins of two nuclei in a molecule, with each spin’s “up” or “down” orientation storing information in the way that a “0” or “1” state stores information in a classical data bit. In those early days of quantum computers, the combined orientation of the two nuclei – that is, the molecule’s quantum state – could only be preserved for brief periods in specially tuned environments. In other words, the system quickly lost its coherence. Control over quantum coherence is the missing step to building scalable quantum computers.

Now, researchers are developing new pathways to create and protect quantum coherence. Doing so will enable exquisitely sensitive measurement and information processing devices that function at ambient or even extreme conditions. In 2018, Joel Moore, a senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and professor at UC Berkeley, secured funds from the Department of Energy to create and lead an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) – called the Center for Novel Pathways to Quantum Coherence in Materials (NPQC) – to further those efforts. “The EFRCs are an important tool for DOE to enable focused inter-institutional collaborations to make rapid progress on forefront science problems that are beyond the scope of individual investigators,” said Moore.

No apparent shortage of prey for southern resident killer whales

A young southern resident killer whale calf (J56) carrying a dead fish between her teeth while swimming next to her mother (J31) in the Salish Sea.
Credit: A.W. Trites/University of British Columbia

A popular belief that there are fewer Chinook salmon during the summer in Canadian waters for southern resident killer whales, compared to an abundance of fish for northern resident killer whales, has been debunked by a study led by scientists at the University of British Columbia.

In a paper published today in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, researchers report that the numbers of Chinook salmon in the Salish Sea in summertime are four to six times more abundant for southern resident killer whales than northern resident killer whales.

“People have been talking about a prey shortage as if it’s a fact, but this is the first study to quantify and compare the amount of their preferred prey, Chinook salmon, available to southern and northern resident killer whales,” said lead author Dr. Mei Sato (she/her), a research associate at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at UBC at the time of the study, and now an assistant scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Oil and gas wells increases air pollution exposure

Oil wells operating in Signal Hill, a city in Los Angeles County, California. Researchers found that drilling and operating wells emits harmful levels of pollution that may affect the health of nearby residents.
(Image credit: David Gonzalez)

In a 14-year analysis of air quality across California, Stanford researchers observed higher levels of air pollutants within 2.5 miles of oil and gas wells, likely worsening negative health outcomes for nearby residents.

The scientists analyzed local air quality measurements in combination with atmospheric data and found that oil and gas wells are emitting toxic particulate matter (PM2.5), carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, ozone and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The findings, which appear in the journal Science of the Total Environment, will help researchers determine how proximity to oil and gas wells may increase the risk of adverse health outcomes, including preterm birth, asthma and heart disease.

“In California, Black and Latinx communities face some of the highest pollution from oil and gas wells. If we care about environmental justice and making sure every kid has a chance to be healthy, we should care about this,” said lead author David Gonzalez, who conducted research for the study while a PhD student in Stanford’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER). “What’s novel about our study is that we’ve done this at a population, state-wide scale using the same methods as public health studies.”

The findings align with other smaller-scale studies that have measured emissions from a handful of wells. At least two million Californians live within one mile of an active oil or gas well.

42 Asteroids in our Solar System

This poster shows 42 of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter (orbits not to scale). The images in the outermost circle of this infographic have been captured with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The asteroid sample features 39 objects larger than 100 kilometers in diameter, including 20 larger than 200 kilometers. The poster highlights a few of the objects, including Ceres (the largest asteroid in the belt), Urania (the smallest one imaged), Kalliope (the densest imaged) and Lutetia, which was visited by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission. 
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/Vernazza et al./MISTRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS)
Click Here For Hi-Res Zoomable Image

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile, astronomers have imaged 42 of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. Never before had such a large group of asteroids been imaged so sharply. The observations reveal a wide range of peculiar shapes, from spherical to dog-bone, and are helping astronomers trace the origins of the asteroids in our Solar System.

The detailed images of these 42 objects are a leap forward in exploring asteroids, made possible thanks to ground-based telescopes, and contribute to answering the ultimate question of life, the Universe, and everything.

“Only three large main belt asteroids, Ceres, Vesta and Lutetia, have been imaged with a high level of detail so far, as they were visited by the space missions Dawn and Rosetta of NASA and the European Space Agency, respectively,” explains Pierre Vernazza, from the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille in France, who led the asteroid study published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics. "Our ESO observations have provided sharp images for many more targets, 42 in total."

The previously small number of detailed observations of asteroids meant that, until now, key characteristics such as their 3D shape or density had remained largely unknown. Between 2017 and 2019, Vernazza and his team set out to fill this gap by conducting a thorough survey of the major bodies in the asteroid belt.

Most of the 42 objects in their sample are larger than 100 km in size; in particular, the team imaged nearly all of the belt asteroids larger than 200 kilometers, 20 out of 23. The two biggest objects the team probed were Ceres and Vesta, which are around 940 and 520 kilometers in diameter, whereas the two smallest asteroids are Urania and Ausonia, each only about 90 kilometers.

By reconstructing the objects’ shapes, the team realized that the observed asteroids are mainly divided into two families. Some are almost perfectly spherical, such as Hygiea and Ceres, while others have a more peculiar, “elongated” shape, their undisputed queen being the “dog-bone” asteroid Kleopatra.

By combining the asteroids’ shapes with information on their masses, the team found that the densities change significantly across the sample. The four least dense asteroids studied, including Lamberta and Sylvia, have densities of about 1.3 grams per cubic centimeter, approximately the density of coal. The highest, Psyche and Kalliope, have densities of 3.9 and 4.4 grams per cubic centimeter, respectively, which is higher than the density of diamond (3.5 grams per cubic centimeter).

This large difference in density suggests the asteroids’ composition varies significantly, giving astronomers important clues about their origin. “Our observations provide strong support for substantial migration of these bodies since their formation. In short, such tremendous variety in their composition can only be understood if the bodies originated across distinct regions in the Solar System,” explains Josef Hanuš of the Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, one of the authors of the study. In particular, the results support the theory that the least dense asteroids formed in the remote regions beyond the orbit of Neptune and migrated to their current location.

These findings were made possible thanks to the sensitivity of the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument mounted on ESO’s VLT. “With the improved capabilities of SPHERE, along with the fact that little was known regarding the shape of the largest main belt asteroids, we were able to make substantial progress in this field,” says co-author Laurent Jorda, also of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille.

Astronomers will be able to image even more asteroids in fine detail with ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in Chile and set to start operations later this decade. “ELT observations of main-belt asteroids will allow us to study objects with diameters down to 35 to 80 kilometers, depending on their location in the belt, and craters down to approximately 10 to 25 kilometers in size,” says Vernazza. “Having a SPHERE-like instrument at the ELT would even allow us to image a similar sample of objects in the distant Kuiper Belt. This means we’ll be able to characterize the geological history of a much larger sample of small bodies from the ground.”

Source/Credit: ESO (European Southern Observatory)

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