Risky food-finding strategy could be the key to human success

A group of Hadza women share a meal of roasted tubers. Food sharing allows them to spend more energy to find food, knowing they won’t starve if they return to camp empty-handed. (
Credit: Herman Pontzer)

It’s a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon: would you rather be running after tasteless wild berries, or curled up on your couch with fuzzy socks and a good book?

You might not have had that choice if our ancestors had not taken a big gamble with their food.

A new study published in Science shows that early human foragers and farmers adopted an inefficient high-risk, high-reward strategy to find food. They spent more energy in pursuit of food than their great ape cousins, but brought home much more calorie-rich meals that could be shared with the rest of their group. This strategy allowed some to rest or tackle other tasks while food was being acquired.

“Hunting and gathering is risky and inefficient, but the rate of return is enormous,” said study co-leader, Herman Pontzer, an associate professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University. “We can share our food, and because we got so many calories before noon, we can hang out around each other in this new space, a free-time space.”

Humans spend a lot more energy than great apes. We have big brains that eat up a lot of calories, we live a long time, we can have long pregnancies that produce big babies, and these babies rely on adults for a long time.

A spray to protect against lung damage from Covid-19

Prof. Stefan Engelhardt and startup rnatics develop an RNA-based drug that can prevent inflammatory lung conditions associated with Covid-19.
Image Credit: Andreas Heddergott / TUM

rnatics, a startup at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), has created an RNA-based drug to prevent lung damage from infections as seen in serious Covid-19 cases. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is providing 7 million euros in funding to support the development of the drug. The team is using a substance that inhibits the inflammation-promoting microRNA. The therapy is expected to be efficacious in current and future mutations of SARS-CoV2.

Covid-19 infections can lead to serious inflammations of the lung and the formation of scar tissue (fibrosis). This can have a long-term impact on lung function and is one of the causes of “long covid”. A team working with Stefan Engelhardt, Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at TUM has developed a new RNA-based drug that can prevent these inflammatory lung conditions. When administered via the respiratory passages, it quickly targets immune cells in the alveoli (tiny air sacs in the lungs) and inhibits a microRNA molecule found in these cells.

In Covid patients, misguided immune cells called macrophages play a substantial role in severe inflammatory infections and lung damage. However, when the new drug blocked the microRNA molecule in macrophages in mice, there was a significant reduction in inflammation and lung damage and a considerable improvement in lung function. Stefan Engelhardt is confident that serious infections and thus the kind of lung damage associated with long covid can be prevented in human patients receiving the drug through an inhaler.

Earth’s interior is cooling faster than expected

The Earth's core gives off heat to the mantle (or­ange to dark red),
which con­trib­utes to the slow cool­ing of the Earth
Source: ETH Zurich

Re­search­ers at ETH Zurich have demon­strated in the lab how well a min­eral com­mon at the bound­ary between the Earth’s core and mantle con­ducts heat. This leads them to sus­pect that the Earth’s heat may dis­sip­ate sooner than pre­vi­ously thought.

The evol­u­tion of our Earth is the story of its cool­ing: 4.5 bil­lion years ago, ex­treme tem­per­at­ures pre­vailed on the sur­face of the young Earth, and it was covered by a deep ocean of magma. Over mil­lions of years, the planet’s sur­face cooled to form a brittle crust. How­ever, the enorm­ous thermal en­ergy em­an­at­ing from the Earth’s in­terior set dy­namic pro­cesses in mo­tion, such as mantle con­vec­tion, plate tec­ton­ics and vol­can­ism.

Still un­answered, though, are the ques­tions of how fast the Earth cooled and how long it might take for this on­go­ing cool­ing to bring the afore­men­tioned heat-​driven pro­cesses to a halt.

One pos­sible an­swer may lie in the thermal con­duct­iv­ity of the min­er­als that form the bound­ary between the Earth’s core and mantle.

This bound­ary layer is rel­ev­ant be­cause it is here that the vis­cous rock of the Earth’s mantle is in dir­ect con­tact with the hot iron-​nickel melt of the planet’s outer core. The tem­per­at­ure gradi­ent between the two lay­ers is very steep, so there is po­ten­tially a lot of heat flow­ing here. The bound­ary layer is formed mainly of the min­eral bridg­man­ite. How­ever, re­search­ers have a hard time es­tim­at­ing how much heat this min­eral con­ducts from the Earth’s core to the mantle be­cause ex­per­i­mental veri­fic­a­tion is very dif­fi­cult.

New Study Sheds Light on Origins of Life on Earth

A Rutgers-led team has discovered the structures of proteins that may be responsible for the origins of life in the primordial soup of ancient Earth.

Addressing one of the most profoundly unanswered questions in biology, a Rutgers-led team has discovered the structures of proteins that may be responsible for the origins of life in the primordial soup of ancient Earth.

The study appears in the journal Science Advances.

The researchers explored how primitive life may have originated on our planet from simple, non-living materials. They asked what properties define life as we know it and concluded that anything alive would have needed to collect and use energy, from sources such as the Sun or hydrothermal vents.

In molecular terms, this would mean that the ability to shuffle electrons was paramount to life. Since the best elements for electron transfer are metals (think standard electrical wires) and most biological activities are carried out by proteins, the researchers decided to explore the combination of the two — that is, proteins that bind metals.

They compared all existing protein structures that bind metals to establish any common features, based on the premise that these shared features were present in ancestral proteins and were diversified and passed down to create the range of proteins we see today.

New research may help scientists unravel the physics of the solar wind

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, provides insight into how solar wind is generated and accelerated.
Photo credits: Cynthia Cattell, NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

A new study led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers, using data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, provides insight into what generates and accelerates the solar wind, a stream of charged particles released from the sun’s corona. Understanding how the solar wind works can help scientists predict “space weather,” or the response to solar activity—such as solar flares—that can impact both astronauts in space and much of the technology people on Earth depend on.

The paper is published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, a scientific journal from the American Astronomical Society (AAS) that publishes high-impact astrophysical research.

The scientists used data gathered from Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018 with the goal to help scientists understand what heats the Sun’s corona (the outer atmosphere of the sun) and generates the solar wind. To answer these questions, scientists need to understand the ways in which energy flows from the sun. The latest round of data was obtained in August 2021 at a distance of 4.8 million miles from the sun—the closest a spacecraft has ever been to the star.

Earth on trajectory to Sixth Mass Extinction say biologists

Shells from recently extinct land snails from French Polynesia. 
Photo credit: O.Gargominy, A.Sartori.

Mass biodiversity extinction events caused by extreme natural phenomena have marked the history of life on Earth five times. Today, many experts warn that a Sixth Mass Extinction crisis is underway, this time entirely caused by human activities.

A comprehensive assessment of evidence of this ongoing extinction event was published in Biological Reviews by biologists from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France.

“Drastically increased rates of species extinctions and declining abundances of many animal and plant populations are well documented, yet some deny that these phenomena amount to mass extinction,” said Robert Cowie, lead author of the study and research professor at the UH Mānoa Pacific Biosciences Research Center in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. “This denial is based on a highly biased assessment of the crisis which focuses on mammals and birds and ignores invertebrates, which of course constitute the great majority of biodiversity.”

Scientists uncover ‘resistance gene’ in deadly E. coli

An artist's impression of E. coli, which infects
over 150 million people worldwide.

Scientists have pinpointed a gene that helps deadly E. coli bacteria evade antibiotics, potentially leading to better treatments for millions of people worldwide.

The University of Queensland-led study found a particular form of the bacteria – E. coli ST131 – had a previously unnoticed gene that made it highly resistant to commonly prescribed antibiotics.

Professor Mark Schembri, from UQ’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, said this ‘resistance gene’ can spread incredibly quickly.

“Unlike gene transfer in humans, where sex is required to transfer genes, bacteria have genetic structures in their cells – called plasmids – that are traded quickly and easily between each other,” Professor Schembri said.

“This resistance gene is in one such plasmid and is swiftly making E. coli ST131 extremely resistant to widely prescribed fluoroquinolone antibiotics.

“These antibiotics are used to treat a wide range of infections, including urinary tract infections (UTIs), bloodstream infections and pneumonia.

“Importantly, this gene works with other resistance genes to achieve resistance at a level greater than the highest antibiotic concentrations that we can achieve during treatment.

“So we’re going to have to rethink our treatment plan, and strive to create antibiotics that can tackle these infections in spite of this antibiotic resistance mechanism.”

A treasure map for the realm of electrocatalysts

A look at the sputter system at the RUB, with which the material libraries were manufactured.  Credit: Christian Nielinger

The number of options makes it difficult to find promising materials. A German-Danish team has developed an efficient method for this.

Efficient electrocatalysts are hidden in materials that are composed of five or more elements, which are used, for example, for the production of green hydrogen. A team from the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) and the University of Copenhagen has developed an efficient method to find the promising candidates in the countless possible materials. The researchers combined experiments and simulation. They report in the magazine "Advanced Energy Materials."

Millions of systems are conceivable

High entropy alloys, or HEAs for short, are chemically complex materials that consist of mixtures of five or more elements. The interesting thing about them is that they offer completely new opportunities for the development of electrocatalysts. These are urgently needed to make energy conversion processes more efficient, for example for the production and use of green hydrogen. "The problem with HEAs is that in principle millions of high entropy systems are possible and each system contains tens of thousands of different compositions," explains Prof. Dr. Alfred Ludwig, who heads the Materials Discovery and Interfaces chair at the RUB. This complexity can hardly be overcome with conventional methods and traditional high-throughput methods.

Researchers develop cancer immunotherapy treatment

Zhong-Yin Zhang of Purdue’s College of Pharmacy and his team of researchers have developed a cancer immunotherapy. The novel lead compound showed no in vivo side effects and leads to reduced Photo provided by Zhong-Yin Zhang

Researchers in Purdue University's College of Pharmacy are further developing a potential immunotherapy treatment for cancer, one focused on the mutation of an enzyme.

"While recent progress in cancer immunotherapy has led to revolutionary success in multiple cancer types, most cancer patients do not benefit from immunotherapy. Thus, there is an urgent need for additional strategies," said Zhong-Yin Zhang, Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Chair in Pharmacology, head of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, and director of the Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery.

Zhang said cancer immunotherapy relies on T-cells to recognize and attack foreign substances such as tumors in the body.

"There is an intricate signaling network within T-cells that determines their activity," he said. "Previous studies have revealed that an enzyme called PTPN22 regulates the critical signals that activate them. People with a mutation in the gene have a lower incidence of cancer than people without the mutation.

2021 was Northeast’s third-warmest year since 1895

Credit: Cornell University

You’re going to sweat just thinking about it: For the Northeast United States, the year 2021 was third warmest – at an average of 49.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which ties the year 2020 – since 1895, when consistent record-keeping started, according to the Cornell’s Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC).

The region’s warmest year was 2012, at an average 50.1 degrees, while the second-warmest year was 1998 at 49.8 degrees.

“Unfortunately, the climate events of 2021 – with above-normal and record-breaking temperatures, along with intense precipitation events – are a harbinger of future climate conditions, as they align with climate-model projections in a world with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations,” said Art DeGaetano, director of the climate center and professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

For five cities – Boston; Newark, New Jersey; Providence, Rhode Island; and Erie and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – the year 2021 was the warmest ever, according to NRCC climatologists Jessica Spaccio and Samantha Borisoff.

The Northeast region also endured three back-to-back tropical storms – Fred, Henri and Ida in late August and early September – and historic, record-breaking rains.

Boston; Portland and Caribou, Maine, shattered records for average June temperatures. That month, Boston was an average of 74.4 degrees (68 degrees, normal), while Portland averaged 68.9 degrees (64.3 degrees, normal) and Caribou – one of the region’s perennial cool spots – experienced 64.9 degrees (61.4, normal.)