COVID-19 Lessons From Colleges | Impostor Fossils
MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE s FEBRUARY 27, 2021
Solar Storms Scientists amp up efforts to protect Earth from what the sun throws at us
cover.indd 1 2/10/21 1:52 PM Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Daily Life
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_C2.indd 2 2/10/21 9:26 AM VOL. 199 | NO. 4
Features
16 Solar Storm Preparedness COVER STORY There’s got to be a better way to predict when the sun is going to send a burst of charged particles our way. Communication and transportation systems and the power grid depend on it. By Ramin Skibba
22 COVID-19 on Campus Many U.S. colleges opened for fall semester last year, throwing a mixed bag of testing, surveillance and social distancing at students and staff. Did it keep the 16 coronavirus at bay? By Betsy Ladyzhets
News 6 Earth’s early fossil record Naked mole-rat colonies 11 An upwelling of rock may be filled with have distinctive dialects beneath the Atlantic microbe mimics Ocean may be driving 9 Thumbs with humanlike continents apart 7 An antidepressant shows dexterity evolved by promise in preventing 2 million years ago 12 The Milky Way basks severe cases of COVID-19 10 The tuatara is the first in a glow of extremely 8 Ancient giant worms may vertebrate discovered energetic gamma rays 32 have burrowed into the to have two sets of Scientists bake seafloor to ambush prey mitochondrial DNA pulverized meteorites Departments to re-create exoplanet atmospheres 2 EDITOR’S NOTE
13 Some spiders have their 4 NOTEBOOK own version of a pulley to Knitting’s knotty math lift massive meals inspires a physicist; a plant-based robot 14 Skink-biting ticks may gets a grip help explain why Lyme disease is uncommon 29 REVIEWS & PREVIEWS Gross science deserves in the U.S. South your attention 15 News in Briefs 31 FEEDBACK An ancient Egyptian mummy wore a shell 32 SCIENCE VISUALIZED of mud Embroiderers stitch iconic images of brain cells Diamond doesn’t succumb to high pressure COVER A bright cloud of particles blew out from Gestational diabetes the sun in 2013. Activity in may increase a woman’s the current solar cycle is risk of having hardened expected to peak in 2025. 10 SDO/Goddard/NASA/Flickr
FROM TOP: NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER; FLIGHT CENTER; SPACE NASA GODDARD TOP: FROM NZ/FLICKR BERNARD SPRAGG. PROJECT; EMBROIDERY ASKEW/CAJAL KATIE arteries later in life
www.sciencenews.org | February 27, 2021 1
toc.indd 1 2/10/21 1:57 PM EDITOR’S NOTE
PUBLISHER Maya Ajmera When a naked mole-rat EDITOR IN CHIEF Nancy Shute EDITORIAL EDITOR, SPECIAL PROJECTS Elizabeth Quill meets a sneaky sea worm NEWS DIRECTOR Macon Morehouse DIGITAL DIRECTOR Kate Travis FEATURES EDITOR Cori Vanchieri What do naked mole-rats and ancient sea worms have in MANAGING EDITOR, MAGAZINE Erin Wayman DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR Emily DeMarco common? Quite a bit, which is why they’re sharing real ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR Ashley Yeager ASSOCIATE EDITOR Cassie Martin estate on Page 8 of this issue. ASSOCIATE DIGITAL EDITOR Helen Thompson AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT EDITOR Mike Denison One of my favorite parts of editing Science News is read- ASTRONOMY Lisa Grossman ing page proofs, one of the last steps in the long magazine BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES Bruce Bower BIOMEDICAL Aimee Cunningham production process. Even though I know what’s going into the magazine and EARTH AND CLIMATE Carolyn Gramling LIFE SCIENCES Susan Milius have read the articles before, it’s still like opening up a surprise gift to see the MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, SENIOR WRITER Tina Hesman Saey NEUROSCIENCE Laura Sanders pages come together. It’s the work of dozens of people, a process that starts PHYSICS Emily Conover SOCIAL SCIENCES Sujata Gupta when writers pitch ideas for news and feature articles. News stories get pub- STAFF WRITERS Erin Garcia de Jesus, Jonathan Lambert, Maria Temming lished first on the Science News website, and there are many more than we can EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Aina Abell CONTRIBUTING CORRESPONDENTS fit in a magazine. So it’s up to managing editor Erin Wayman to choose the ones Laura Beil, Tom Siegfried, Alexandra Witze that will go into print. She looks for the most important or intriguing science DESIGN CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER Stephen Egts of the previous two weeks, and aims for reporting across the fields of science, DESIGN DIRECTOR Erin Otwell ART DIRECTOR Tracee Tibbitts from artificial intelligence to zoology. ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR Chang Won Chang Articles that make the cut often either help answer a question that scientists SCIENCE NEWS FOR STUDENTS EDITOR Janet Raloff have worked to solve for a long time, or alert us to something that’s surprising MANAGING EDITOR Sarah Zielinski and counterintuitive. STAFF WRITER Bethany Brookshire WEB PRODUCER Lillian Steenblik Hwang For Page 8, Wayman picked a report on how naked mole-rats use distinctive SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE dialects to communicate with mole-rats within their social group. “It may seem PRESIDENT AND CEO Maya Ajmera CHIEF OF STAFF Rachel Goldman Alper surprising, but they’re highly social animals, so they would need a way to com- CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Kathlene Collins CHIEF PROGRAM OFFICER Michele Glidden municate,” she says. I was surprised and charmed by the notion of these mostly CHIEF, EVENTS AND OPERATIONS Cait Goldberg CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER Gayle Kansagor blind critters chirping away in their burrows. CHIEF ADVANCEMENT OFFICER Bruce B. Makous CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER James C. Moore Wayman then paired the chatty naked mole-rats with a story of fossils that CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Dan Reznikov suggest giant worms may have dug tunnels in the seafloor millions of years ago, BOARD OF TRUSTEES CHAIR Mary Sue Coleman springing forth from them to nab unsuspecting prey. While present-day VICE CHAIR Martin Chalfie TREASURER Hayley Bay Barna SECRETARY Paul J. Maddon AT LARGE Christine Burton hairless rodents and ancient predatory worms may not seem to have much in MEMBERS Craig R. Barrett, Adam Bly, Tessa M. Hill, Tom Leighton, Alan Leshner, W.E. Moerner, Dianne K. Newman, common, Wayman says she sees a pattern. “You’re looking at behavior today Thomas F. Rosenbaum, Gideon Yu, Feng Zhang, and in the past, which gives insights into animal behavior.” Maya Ajmera, ex officio ADVERTISING AND SUBSCRIBER SERVICES And for more connections between present and past, Page 9 features a story ADVERTISING Daryl Anderson SCIENCE NEWS IN HIGH SCHOOLS Anna Rhymes suggesting that hominids may have developed a specialized thumb muscle PERMISSIONS Maxine Baydush quite early on, one that helps give humans today our firm grip and uniquely Science News 1719 N Street NW, Washington, DC 20036 adaptable hands. “It’s amazing that the manual dexterity that we rely on has (202) 785-2255 been around for almost 2 million years, even before we were human,” Wayman Subscriber services: says. Perhaps we have that muscle to blame for humankind’s newly acquired E-mail [email protected] Phone (800) 552-4412 in the U.S. or talent for texting. 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ednote.indd 2 2/10/21 10:50 AM CTK Bio Canada Develops Bioplastic Resin Designed to Break Down in Soil and Seawater
CTK Bio Canada has developed a new bioplastic The Company’s materials are designed to overcome a resin designed to biodegrade by both industrial critical barrier in the bioplastics space — the ability to and home composting, as well as in unmanaged degrade in water. While increased use of bioplastics are environments like soil and seawater. The Company a positive sign for the environment, Shum and Park knew is now undertaking detailed experimental trials with that too much of it was still ending up in rivers and oceans academic partners to validate its technology ahead where they couldn’t easily biodegrade. CTK Bio Canada’s of anticipated commercial rollout in 2022. materials are designed to break down not only if disposed of in the green bin, but also if they end up discarded to Park and Shum developed their technology in the environment. The materials should degrade only to partnership with Profs. Zachary Hudson and nontoxic byproducts, while also remaining compatible with Emily Cranston, experts in plant-based materials equipment for manufacturing traditional plastics. technology at the University of British Columbia. Hudson holds the Canada Research Chair in Most importantly, the team believes they can achieve Sustainable Chemistry, and Cranston is currently these milestones in materials science while keeping the President’s Excellence Chair in Forest Bio- costs competitive with petroleum-based plastics. Initial Products. Once the formulation had been developed, prototyping has already been completed on a series prototyping began with the Polymer Materials of plastic parts and lms, with detailed testing planned and Manufacturing group at McMaster University; in 2021 to validate the material’s degradability. The Heera Marway, Vladimir Gritsichine, Profs. Michael Company has also released a white paper on its website Thompson and Li Xi. describing the formulation and design in more detail.
WANT TO LEARN MORE? Visit www.ctkcanada.com or contact Daniel Shum, Chief Operating Officer at [email protected]
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_p3.inddMAR_002_21_B.indd 3 1 1/29/20212/10/21 2:54:30 9:27 PM AM notebook.indd 4 whaling (SNOnline:7/29/14). the mammalsthancommercial now poseabiggerthreatto about 100,000.Shipcollisions finback whaleshave reached number around50,000and 450,000 individuals,seiwhales rebounded toanestimated species list.Spermwhaleshave species offtheU.S. endangered enough tomove thesethree populations recover, butnot The banshave helpedwhale continue tohunttheanimals. Japan, Norway andIceland some countriesincluding ban followedin1986 , though the UnitedStates.Aworldwide stop tocommercialwhaling in in the1970seffectively puta took action.Legislation passed losses, countrieseventually whales. Inresponsetothose an estimated2.9millionlarge 20th century, humanskilled 4 SCIENCE NEWS the mammalsthancommercial now poseabiggerthreatto about 100,000.Shipcollisions finback whaleshave reached number around50,000and 450,000 individuals,seiwhales rebounded toanestimated UPDATE: species list last year. placed ontheendangered whales. Thethreewere the finback, seiandsperm minate licensingforhunting result ofaproposal … to ter- will probablyendasthe Fishing Co. of San Francisco, whaling firm, theDelMonte remaining UnitedStates Whaling by thesingle rotection p Whale 50 YEARSAGO issue ofScienceNews March 6,1971 Excerpt fromthe NOTEBOOK SN Online:7/29/14 During the During the | February 27,2021 ). and 3-Dstructureofknittedfabrics. how stitchesaltertheelasticity, mechanicalstrength Researchers aretryingtounderstandthemathbehind A physicist is unraveling knitting’s math secrets THE SCIENCELIFE and 3-Dstructureofknittedfabrics. how stitchesaltertheelasticity, mechanicalstrength Researchers aretryingtounderstandthemathbehind ples thatdefine how knots form.These theory, aset ofmathematicalprinci- she says. could allbenefit fromadictionaryofknits, Knitters, scientists andmanufacturers tions andtheresultingfabricproperties. a catalogofstitch types, theircombina- properties tofabrics. Shehopestodevelop rules thatdictatehow stitches impartsuch Atlanta, isteasingoutthemathematical the yarnitselfbarelystretches. stretch by morethantwiceitslengthwhile ted, theyarngives risetofabricthatcan its own isn’t very elastic. Butwhenknit- resulting fabric.Yarn on and 3-Dstructure ofthe ticity, mechanicalstrength knitter canaltertheelas- tions withinpatterns, a varying stitch combina- terns, Matsumoto says. By into 100orsobasicpat- and theycanbecombined purl — and stitches —knit k nitting. study themathematicsof and, eventually, ledherto the geometry ofstitches That got herthinkingabout had never seen,” shesays. wall hangingwasin thereddragon oneI of differentstitch patterns, buttheone “Ihavered dragon. bookswiththousands knotty stitch whileknitting apattern fora Matsumoto cameacrossanunusually at theUniversity ofPennsylvania in2009, hobby asachild.Duringgraduateschool knitter andhasbeensincetakingupthe Physicist Elisabetta Matsumoto isanavid Matsumoto’s researchbuildsonknot Matsumoto, now atGeorgia Tech in There aretwotypesof Physicist ElisabettaM atsumoto m anipulate materialproperties. hopes to create a dictionary of hopes tocreateadictionaryof stitches that could be used to stitches thatcouldbeusedto — solve knotty problemsofeveryday life. clothing (SN:6/9/18, perhaps p. 18)—and growing humantissuetowearablesmart specific applications — from scaffoldsfor could someday helptailormaterialsfor final knitted structures. Thesepredictions properties, mathematicalstitch details and cal propertiesoffabrics, basedon yarn computer programtopredictthemechani- 2020 Conference Proceedings. Markande reportedinJuly intheBridges Matsumoto andgradstudent Shashank have varyingdegreesofstretchiness, nearly identical,theseknitted fabrics geometries aswelltheorderinwhich types ofstitches, thedifferencesintheir stitch entangleswithitsneighbors. “The using knot theorytounderstand how each istics (SN:9/15/18, p. 32 ). Matsumoto is it withphysical andchemicalcharacter- makeup anddistribution inspaceimpart folds andunfoldshow amolecule’s p rinciples have helpedexplainhow DNA Lakshmi Chandrasekaran Matsumoto’s teamisnow traininga flat. Anddespitelooking umns, andthefabriclays in alternatingrows orcol- two stitch typestogether edges. Butcombinethe purls tendstocurlatthe ric madeofsolelyknitsor textile. For instance, afab- on themechanicsof could have impact ahuge of crossingsinaknot, such asalteringacouple properties,” shesays. determine [thefabric’s] together intoatextile may you putthosestitches Making tiny changes, 2/10/21 12:45PM
FROM TOP: COURTESY OF E. MATSUMOTO; ROMIRI/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS
FROM TOP: © BAT CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL; W. LI ET AL/NATURE ELECTRONICS 2021 THE SCIENCE LIFE A newly discovered SCIENCE STATS bat species from A physicist is unraveling knitting’s math secrets Guinea’s Nimba COVID-19 worsened Mountains is a great p rinciples have helped explain how DNA reminder that there’s students’ mental health folds and unfolds and how a molecule’s flashy coloring in the The coronavirus pandemic has caused bat world. makeup and distribution in space impart the mental health of U.S. c ollege stu- it with physical and chemical character- dents to plummet, researchers report istics (SN: 9/15/18, p. 32). Matsumoto is INTRODUCING January 7 in PLOS ONE. Environmen- using knot theory to understand how each tal psychologist M atthew Browning of stitch entangles with its neighbors. “The A new bat species is always ready for Halloween Clemson University in South Carolina types of stitches, the differences in their Bats, better known for their mousy looks, can have a colorful side. A new and colleagues surveyed more than geometries as well as the order in which species, discovered when two bats were caught at an abandoned mining tunnel 2,500 students from seven public uni- you put those stitches in western Africa, sports showy orange and black swaths of fur. versities across the United States last together into a textile may The species , dubbed Myotis nimbaensis, is “just gorgeous,” says mammalogist spring. About 85 percent of those sur- determine [the fabric’s] Nancy Simmons of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. veyed experienced high to moderate properties,” she says. Orange fur on the bat’s back contrasts with black patches of wing membranes. levels of emotional distress arising from Making tiny changes, But bright fluff is not what sets this species apart: Three other Myotis species in the pandemic, the team found. Students such as altering a couple Africa are similarly flashy. Rather less visible traits, from details of its echoloca- most at risk of mental health chal- of crossings in a knot, tion calls to hidden striping in its fur, peg M. nimbaensis as unusual, S immons lenges included women, Asian people, could have a huge impact and colleagues report online January 13 in American Museum Novitates. students under age 25, students in poor on the mechanics of the Researchers discovered the new species the old-fashioned way — in a remote health, those who knew somebody with textile. For instance, a fab- forest at night with keen eyes studying real animals. When Simmons’ team COVID-19 and lower-income students. ric made of solely knits or c ollected the first bat, near the mouth of an abandoned tunnel for mineral explo- Spending eight or more hours in front purls tends to curl at the ration in Guinea’s section of the Nimba Mountains, the dramatic beast wasn’t of computer, smartphone or TV screens edges. But combine the obviously a new species. While most kinds of bats are various shades of brown also increased the risk. — Sujata Gupta two stitch types together and black, bats here and there around the world can be yellow, fluffball white or in alternating rows or col- coppery red. And there was the matter of Africa’s other orange Myotis species. umns, and the fabric lays M. nimbaensis, named for its mountainous habitat, differs genetically from ~ flat. And despite looking near kin about as much as humans differ from gorillas, Simmons says. Differ- 85 nearly identical, these knitted fabrics ences also show up in teeth and other anatomy. One way to tell the new species percent have varying degrees of stretchiness, apart, for instance, is from the proportions of secret stripes on the hairs in orange Proportion of U.S. college students surveyed who experienced moderate Matsumoto and grad student Shashank fur patches. The bottom third of each hair is black. Then comes a creamy white to high levels of emotional distress Markande reported in July in the Bridges middle third before the hair turns pumpkin at the tip. — Susan Milius early in the pandemic 2020 Conference Proceedings. Matsumoto’s team is now training a computer program to predict the mechani- HOW BIZARRE cal properties of fabrics, based on yarn A robot arm toting a Venus flytrap properties, mathematical stitch details and final knitted structures. These predictions has a gentle but firm grasp could someday help tailor materials for A new robotic grabber is ripped straight from the plant
specific applications — from scaffolds for 2021 ELECTRONICS NATURE world. The device, made with a severed piece of a Venus growing human tissue to wearable smart flytrap, can grasp tiny, delicate objects, researchers report clothing (SN: 6/9/18, p. 18) — and perhaps January 25 in Nature Electronics. solve knotty problems of everyday life. Normally, the carnivorous Dionaea muscipula scores a In laboratory experiments, a robotic grabber made with part of a Venus
— Lakshmi Chandrasekaran PLUS IMAGES ROMIRI/ISTOCK/GETTY OF E. MATSUMOTO; COURTESY TOP: FROM meal when an unsuspecting prey touches delicate hairs on flytrap grasped a slowly moving one-gram weight. one of the plant’s jawlike leaves, triggering the trap to snap shut. By sticking electrodes to the leaves and applying a be damaged by clunky, rigid graspers (SN: 4/13/19, p. 5), the small electric voltage, researchers designed a method to researchers say. So, Li’s team attached a piece of a flytrap to force Venus flytraps to close. Even when cut from the plant, a robotic arm and used a smartphone app to control the trap. the leaves retained the ability to shut upon command for up In experiments, the grabber clutched a piece of wire half a to a day, say materials scientist Wenlong Li and colleagues at millimeter in diameter. The dismembered plant also caught Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. a slowly moving one-gram weight. One drawback: The traps Integrating soft, flexible plant material into robotics take hours to reopen, so this bot had better make the catch
FROM TOP: © BAT CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL; W. LI ET AL / W. INTERNATIONAL; CONSERVATION © BAT TOP: FROM could aid in picking up fragile objects that would otherwise on the first try. — Emily Conover
Watch the robotic Venus flytrap grabber in action at bit.ly/SN_RoboFlytrap www.sciencenews.org | February 27, 2021 5
notebook.indd 5 2/10/21 12:45 PM News 2 µm
LIFE & EVOLUTION Crystalline objects Many early fossils known as biomorphs, such as these sphere- may be impostors shaped structures, are made nonbiologically through Abiotic objects that resemble chemical reactions and can microbes preserve more easily closely resemble microfossils.
BY CAROLYN GRAMLING mixing sulfides with organic matter, and a better chance of being pseudofossils, When it comes to finding fossils of we started forming these objects,” she rather than actual fossils, the team says. very ancient microbial life — whether says. “We thought they were formed by The idea that living creatures are on Earth or on other worlds, such as the bacteria, because they looked so bio- harder to preserve makes sense, says Mars — the odds are just not in our favor. logical. But then we realized they were Sean McMahon, an astrobiologist at the Microbial life-forms are much less forming in laboratory tubes that hap- University of Edinburgh. “Biomass does likely to become safely fossilized in rocks pened to have no bacteria in them at all.” tend to break down quite quickly.” In compared with nonbiological structures That led her to wonder about such pro- fact, scientists have known for centuries that happen to mimic their shapes. That cesses happening in the rocks themselves. that certain chemical reactions can act finding suggests that Earth’s earliest So she and others examined what would as “gardens” that “grow” mineral objects rocks may contain abundant fakers — happen if they tried to re-create the early that twist into tubes, sprout branches or minuscule objects masquerading as formation stages of chert, a compact, otherwise mimic life. “There’s a compla- fossilized evidence of life, researchers silica-rich rock common on the early cency about it, a misconception that we report online January 28 in Geology. Earth. “Microfossils are often found in kind of know all this and it’s already been The finding is “at the very least a cau- chert formations,” says study coauthor dealt with,” McMahon says. tionary tale,” says geomicrobiologist Julie Christine Nims, a geobiologist now at Strategies to deal with this conundrum Cosmidis of the University of Oxford. the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. have included looking for certain chemi- Tiny, often enigmatic structures found Chert forms when silica precipitates cal compounds in a potential fossil or for in rocks dating back more than 2.5 billion out of water and accumulates, eventu- structures, such as mound-shaped stro- years can offer hints of the planet’s ally hardening into rock. Cosmidis, Nims matolites, that are thought to be uniquely earliest life. The hunt for ever-more- and colleagues added sulfur-containing formed or modified by the presence of life ancient signs of life has sparked intense bacteria called Thiothrix to solidifying (SN: 11/10/18, p. 12). Those criteria are debate — in part because the farther back chert to see what might happen dur- the product of decades of field studies, in time you go, the harder it is to interpret ing actual fossilization. To other chert through which scientists have amassed a tiny squiggles, filaments and spheres in samples, they added sulfur-containing reference dataset of fossil structures to the rock (SN: 1/18/20, p. 5). One reason “biomorphs,” bacteria-shaped spheres compare new finds against. is that the movements of Earth’s tectonic and filaments made of tiny crystals. What’s lacking is a similarly rich data- plates over time can squeeze and cook the Nanoparticles of silica encrusted the set for how such structures might form in rocks, deforming and chemically altering bacteria and the biomorphs, Nims says. the absence of life, McMahon says. This tiny fossils, perhaps beyond recognition. But after a week or so, the bacteria started study highlights that attempts “to define But an even more pernicious problem to deform, their cells deflating from cyl- criteria for recognizing true fossils in very is that such filaments or spheres may not inders into flattened, unrecognizable ancient rocks are premature, because we be biological in origin at all. Increasingly, ribbons as the sulfur inside the cells dif- don’t yet know enough about how non- scientists have found that nonbiological fused out and reacted with the silica biological processes mimic true fossils.” chemical processes can create similar outside the cells, forming new minerals. It’s an increasingly urgent problem shapes, suggesting the possibility of “false The biomorphs, on the other hand, with rising stakes, as NASA’s Persever- positives” in the fossil record. “had this impressive resiliency,” she says. ance rover will search for traces of life in One such discovery led to the new They also lost sulfur to the surrounding ancient rocks on Mars, McMahon adds. study, Cosmidis says. A few years ago, she solution but kept their silica crust. That “Paleontologists and Mars exploration and others were trying to grow bacteria endurance suggests that enigmatic struc- scientists should take [this study] very
and make them produce sulfur. “We were tures found in the early rock record have seriously.” s C. NIMS
6 SCIENCE NEWS | February 27, 2021
fossils.indd 6 2/10/21 1:47 PM BODY & BRAIN workers and offered a 14-day course of the drug at no cost to those who could Antidepressant could treat COVID-19 safely take it. The group was predomi- Fluvoxamine prevents mild cases from worsening, data suggest nantly male and Latino, and 30 percent had chronic medical problems such as BY ESTHER LANDHUIS supported randomized trial in which diabetes or high blood pressure. The antidepressant fluvoxamine could none of 80 newly diagnosed COVID-19 Sixty-five people chose to take the prevent people from getting seriously patients assigned to a two-week course drug, and 48 declined. The treatment ill with COVID-19, curbing hospitaliza- of fluvoxamine became seriously ill. By group had a higher proportion of Latinos tions, new data show. comparison, six of 72 patients, or 8.3 per- and tended to be sicker — 62 percent The results come from real-world cent, who took a placebo worsened, and entered the study with COVID-19 symp- use of the drug to treat workers at the four needed hospitalization, researchers toms compared with 42 percent of the Golden Gate Fields horse racing track reported in November in JAMA. group that declined treatment. No one in Berkeley, Calif. Of those who opted to It wasn’t just the trial results that who took the drug suffered serious take fluvoxamine, none got sicker, and intrigued Seftel, however. “I immediately complications, and after 14 days, none within two weeks, symptoms cleared. In dove into the biochemistry,” he says. reported lingering symptoms. But six comparison, 12.5 percent of those who The drug’s biochemistry implied of 48 people who declined fluvoxamine turned down the drug wound up hos- it might be able to regulate cellular were hospitalized, and one died. What’s pitalized. Two people got responses to stress and more, 60 percent still reported experi- so sick they were put on infection. Fluvoxamine is a encing a variety of symptoms including ventilators to assist with selective serotonin reuptake shortness of breath and muscle and joint breathing, and one of them 0 inhibitor, or SSRI, typically pain two weeks after their diagnosis. died, researchers report percent prescribed for obsessive- Even though it wasn’t a randomized, online February 1 in Open Proportion of COVID-19 compulsive disorder. SSRIs controlled trial, the racetrack study adds Forum Infectious Diseases. patients in a new study prolong signaling of the to evidence that there may be a benefit The data need verifica- who took fluvoxamine chemical messenger sero- to giving fluvoxamine to patients with and were hospitalized tion from ongoing larger tonin in the brain. The COVID-19. “It wasn’t blinded. Overt clinical trials. Still, some drugs, most notably flu- and unconscious bias can occur when experts say that the new voxamine, also activate a you know who’s getting treatment or findings, along with cell, protein called sigma-1 not,” says Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious animal and human obser- 12.5 receptor that prevents disease physician at the University of percent vational data, suggest production of chemical Southern California in Los Angeles who Proportion of patients that a two-week course of who did not take the drug messengers that exacerbate was not involved with the research. But fluvoxamine, which costs and were hospitalized inflammatory reactions. “it definitely reduces the likelihood that about $10 and is already In a 2019 study, mice the [JAMA] study was just by chance.” approved by the U.S. Food and Drug that lacked sigma-1 receptor died Researchers at Washington University Administration, could be considered for from systemic inflammation known as School of Medicine in St. Louis are test- patients at high risk of suffering severe sepsis; fluvoxamine treatment protected ing fluvoxamine in a larger, randomized COVID-19 symptoms. animals from deterioration and death. nationwide trial financed by Kirsch’s Racetrack physician David Seftel and Lab dish experiments described in the fund and other philanthropic sources. David Boulware, an infectious disease Dec. 4 Science showed that knocking Participants get pills, either fluvoxamine physician-scientist at the University of down levels of sigma-1 receptor in cul- or placebo, shipped to their homes, along Minnesota Medical School in Minneapo- tured cells lowered infection rates with with a thermometer, pulse oximeter lis, led the real-world test after hundreds SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes and blood pressure monitor. Partici- of track workers became infected with the COVID-19. Fluvoxamine also blocks pants take the pills for 15 days and log coronavirus in November. That month, activation of platelets, blood components symptoms on a web-based platform. Seftel had heard about fluvoxamine dur- important for clotting. This anti-platelet As of February 4, the trial had enrolled ing a presentation by tech entrepreneur activity, together with the mouse and cell 200 people, says coinvestigator Angela Steve Kirsch, whose COVID-19 Early data, explain how fluvoxamine might Reiersen, a child psychiatrist. The team Treatment Fund supports research squelch out-of-control immune activ- hopes to collect data from 880 people. on existing drugs that could be repur- ity and prevent blood clots — both key Randomized trials in Korea, Brazil and posed to treat coronavirus infections features of severe COVID-19. Hungary are also investigating fluvox- (SN: 9/26/20, p. 8). Seftel shared the emerging data on amine as a possible treatment in patients Kirsch shared results from a fund- fluvoxamine with 113 infected racetrack with mild to moderate COVID-19. s
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fluvoxamine.indd 7 2/10/21 9:52 AM thumb_mole_worm.indd 8 8 SCIENCE NEWS walls. Funneling atthetopofburrows slender andusedmucustoreinforce the mustthe digger have beenlongand Iron depositsalongtheinside suggest smoother liningsthanbivalve tunnels. pellets lining shrimp tunnels and had because theburrows lackthehallmark the burrows, theresearchersconclude, a featherinvertical crosssections. funnel structure atthetopthatlooks like paths intotheseafloor. Thepathshada tunnels, theanimalsdrilledL-shaped 2 to3centimeters wide.To make these burrows wereupto2meters longand 319 specimens. Theteamdetermined the Eventually, Naraandcolleagues found ted the fossilized burrows in 2013. Kochi University inJapan first spot- selves insand tosurpriseandstrike fish. (Eunice aphroditois), which bury them- been analogsoftoday’s bobbitworms may haveScientific Reports. The diggers Taiwan, researchers report January 21 in animals appearinrocksfromcoastal Star Wars toambushunsuspectingprey. floor andburst forthlike thespaceslugin worms may have burrowed intothesea- About 20millionyears ago, giant ocean BY HELENTHOMPSON in the seafloor before striking Ancient worms may have hid attacks ambush at hint lairs Fossil LIFE &EVOLUTION NEWS Some kind of giant worm likely dug Paleontologist Masakazu Naraof Underground lairsleftbehindby these | February 27,2021 seeing thesesandstones,” he says. than one would years imagine ago when onattheseafloor20million more going says. “There was obviously a whole lot plex thanpreviouslythought,Löwemark also make thelocalecosystem morecom- around. Bobbit worms’ presence would vertebrates — usually it’s theother way a rareexampleofinvertebrates hunting the seafloor back then, the burrows are is convincing. bobbit wormshidingintheseburrows Rudkin thinksthatthecaseforancient was not involved withthisstudy. Still, Royal OntarioMuseuminToronto, who an invertebrate paleontologist atthe cific trace makers,” says David Rudkin, tolinkfossiltracesspe- challenge the fossilrecord.“Itisalmost always a didn’t have skeletons toleave behindin ancient tunnelswereinvertebrates, they worms isunknown. or iftheburrow relatetobobbit diggers to around400millionyearsago, how oldest evidenceofbobbit wormsdates fish withscissorlike jaws. Whilethe forthtograbunsuspectingand surge ceal their3-meter-long bodies in sand with thoseofbobbitworms, whichcon- National Taiwan University inTaipei. Ludvig Löwemark, a geoscientist at into thesediment,” says study co author itspreydownworm repeatedlydragged ing thetopsectionsover andover again. its hideout,retreating andthenrebuild- also pointstothewormemergingfrom If ancient bobbit worms did terrorize If ancientbobbitwormsdidterrorize Because theanimalsthatlived inthese These hunting tactics are consistent “These [funnels]suggest thatthe ancient worms ancient worms bobbit worms, bobbit worms, attacking prey in wait before in waitbefore may have dug seafloor to lie seafloor tolie Like modern (illustrated). holes in the holes inthe Watch abobbitworm’s sneakattackatbit.ly/SN_BobbitWorm s chirps” — a common vocalization — from vocalization —from common chirps” —a learning toanalyzeover 30,000 “soft Center forMolecular Medicine inBerlin. tist AlisonBarker oftheMaxDelbrück influence oneanother,” says neuroscien- really looked intohow thesetwofeatures tive andincrediblyvocal, andnoonehas “Naked mole-rats are incrediblycoopera- the raucouschatter, fewhave studied it. attack intrudersfromother colonies. Africa. Food isscarce,andtherodents tunnels in search of tubers in eastern workers thatdigelaboratesubterranean the reproductionoftenstohundreds one breedingqueenwhosuppresses or termitecolonies. Every colony has belong inthoseranksaswell,Park says. mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) in thestudy. Thisworkshows naked who wasn’tIllinois at Chicago involved Park, abiologist attheUniversity of phins, elephants or birds,” says Thomas extreme social behavior, in humans, dol- highly cooperative groups. bonds that maintain cohesion in these discern whobelongs, strengthening the the mostly blind, xenophobic rodents Distinctive chirps that pups learn help researchers reportintheJan. 29Science. a hiddenorderwithinthiscacophony, grunts, squeaksandsqueals. rows resoundwithnear-constant chirps, mole-rats areachatty bunch.Theirbur- and you’ll notice something else — naked around oneoftheircoloniesforawhile, wrinkly, hairlessappearance. Buthang whether they’re friendsorfoes. ters another, theirchirps mightreveal When onenaked mole-ratencoun- BY JONATHAN LAMBERT recognize other members each ‘chirps’ Unique group help may dialects in squeak mole-rats Naked LIFE &EVOLUTION She andcolleaguesusedmachine While researchers have long noted Naked mole-rat groups resemble ant isreallyimportantfor“Language hasuncoveredA computeralgorithm These rodentsarefamousfortheir 2/10/21 10:38AM
Y-Y. PAN ET AL/SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 2021
FELIX PETERMANN/MAX DELBRÜCK CENTER LIFE & EVOLUTION seven lab colonies over two years. Each to new colonies. If dialect stems from London. Still, he says the results strongly colony had a unique sound, varying pri- genetics, these outsiders should still suggest that dialects of naked mole-rats Naked mole-rats marily in frequency and how much that sound like outsiders as they grow up. are learned, similar to those of humans, frequency changes within a single chirp. But if dialects are learned, transplanted cetaceans and some birds. squeak in dialects Naked mole-rats pick up on these dif- pups should sound like their new breth- While a colony’s sound is distinctive, Unique ‘chirps’ may help group ferences too, replying to the sounds of ren. The latter was true. it’s not fixed. In periods of anarchy — members recognize each other their own colony with frequent chirping “A sample size of three is small, but when a queen dies and is not yet but largely ignoring foreign dialects, the these are really difficult experiments to replaced — dialects start to dissolve, BY JONATHAN LAMBERT researchers found. The animals aren’t do,” says Chris Faulkes, an evolutionary becoming much more variable, the When one naked mole-rat encoun- just responding to voices they’ve heard ecologist at Queen Mary University of researchers found. Once a new queen ters another, their chirps might reveal before either, as artificially concocted emerges, the colony coheres again, sug- whether they’re friends or foes. calls matched to a specific dialect also gesting that in addition to suppressing These rodents are famous for their elicited a response. reproduction, queens also somehow wrinkly, hairless appearance. But hang A bit of luck allowed Barker’s team control a colony’s voice. around one of their colonies for a while, to test whether dialects are learned “We tend to think of this communica- and you’ll notice something else — naked or genetically encoded. Most colonies tion and cooperation as positive aspects mole-rats are a chatty bunch. Their bur- reject outsiders, but sometimes pups of naked mole-rat culture, but individu- rows resound with near-constant chirps, from other groups can get adopted. als are rigidly controlled in their behavior grunts, squeaks and squeals. Multiple lab populations produced new by the queen,” Barker says. “It gives Naked mole-rats from different colonies have A computer algorithm has uncovered litters around the same time, allowing distinctive dialects, which help maintain colony them a huge survival advantage, but it’s a a hidden order within this cacophony, the team to switch three youngsters cohesion, a new study suggests. bit like living in an oppressive regime.” s researchers report in the Jan. 29 Science. Distinctive chirps that pups learn help the mostly blind, xenophobic rodents HUMANS & SOCIETY be able to perform most [tool-related] discern who belongs, strengthening the hand movements, but not as efficiently bonds that maintain cohesion in these Humanlike grips go back 2 million years as humans or other Homo species we highly cooperative groups. Thumb dexterity gave some hominids an edge in toolmaking studied,” Harvati says. The tool-wielding “Language is really important for repertoire of Australopithecus fell closer extreme social behavior, in humans, dol- BY BRUCE BOWER humans and five chimpanzees. Surpris- to that of modern chimpanzees, which phins, elephants or birds,” says Thomas Thumb dexterity similar to that of ingly, Harvati says, a pair of roughly use twigs to collect termites and wield Park, a biologist at the University of people today already existed around 2-million-year-old thumb fossils from rocks to crack nuts, she suggests. Illinois at Chicago who wasn’t involved 2 million years ago, possibly in some of South Africa display agility and power on The new study goes beyond past efforts in the study. This work shows naked the earliest members of our own genus par with modern human thumbs. that focused only on the size and shape mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) Homo, a new study indicates. That find- Scientists disagree about whether the of ancient hominid hand bones. Using belong in those ranks as well, Park says. ing is the earliest evidence to date of an South African finds come from early data from humans and chimpanzees on Naked mole-rat groups resemble ant evolutionary transition to hands with Homo or Paranthropus robustus, a spe- how hand muscles and bones interact or termite colonies. Every colony has powerful grips comparable to those of cies on a dead-end branch of hominid while moving, the team constructed a one breeding queen who suppresses human toolmakers, who didn’t appear evolution. But the thumb dexterity in digital 3-D model to re-create how a key the reproduction of tens to hundreds of for roughly another 1.7 million years. those ancient fossils is comparable to thumb muscle — musculus opponens workers that dig elaborate subterranean Thumbs that enabled a forceful grip that found in members of Homo spe- pollicis — attached to a bone at the base tunnels in search of tubers in eastern and improved the ability to manipulate cies that appeared after around 335,000 of the thumb and operated to bend the Africa. Food is scarce, and the rodents objects gave ancient Homo or a closely years ago, the researchers report online digit’s joint toward the palm and fingers. attack intruders from other colonies. related hominid line an advantage over January 28 in Current Biology. That The new findings on how ancient While researchers have long noted hominid contemporaries, says a team includes Neandertals from Europe thumbs worked underscore the slow- the raucous chatter, few have studied it. led by Fotios Alexandros Karakostis and and the Middle East, as well as a South ness of hominid hand evolution, says “Naked mole-rats are incredibly coopera- Katerina Harvati. Australopithecus made African hominid dubbed Homo naledi. paleoanthropologist Matthew Tocheri tive and incredibly vocal, and no one has and used stone tools but lacked human- By comparison, the researchers con- of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, really looked into how these two features like thumb dexterity, thus limiting its clude, Homo or P. robustus possessed Canada. Australopithecus made stone influence one another,” says neuroscien- toolmaking capacity, the paleoanthro- thumbs that were more forceful than tools as early as about 3.4 million years tist Alison Barker of the Max Delbrück pologists, both from the University of those of three several-million-year-old ago (SN: 6/13/15, p. 6). “But we don’t see
Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin. 2021 SCIENTIFIC REPORTS Tübingen in Germany, found. Australopithecus species, two of which major changes to the thumb until around She and colleagues used machine The team digitally simulated how a key have previously been proposed to have 2 million years ago,” he says, “soon after learning to analyze over 30,000 “soft muscle influenced thumb movement in had humanlike hands (SN: 2/21/15, p. 9). which stone artifacts become far more
chirps” — a common vocalization — from ET AL / PAN Y-Y. CENTER FELIX PETERMANN/MAX DELBRÜCK 12 fossil hominids, five 19th century “Australopithecus would probably common across the African landscape.” s
Watch a bobbit worm’s sneak attack at bit.ly/SN_BobbitWorm Listen to naked mole-rat dialects at bit.ly/SN_NakedMole-Rats www.sciencenews.org | February 27, 2021 9
thumb_mole_worm.indd 9 2/10/21 10:38 AM NEWS
sequenced the tuatara’s mitochondrial genome in one fell swoop, showing its overall structure. The technique, called long-read sequencing, “is undoubtedly the future of gene sequencing, that we can sequence whole molecules in one pop,” Macey says. Dan Mulcahy, a molecular biologist at the Smithsonian’s Global Genome Initiative in Washington, D.C., and Macey were mulling over the data when Mulcahy recalls saying, “I think there Having two distinct may be two [mitochondrial] genomes!” mitochondrial genomes may help explain how the tuatara, The revelation came from compar- a reptile native to New ing both the chopped puzzle pieces and Zealand, tolerates the cold. the overall structure, and noticing that sections from the same part of the mito- GENES & CELLS chondrial DNA had striking differences in their gene sequences — like the way The tuatara hides an extra set of genes the notes of a song might be arranged It’s the only known vertebrate with two mitochondrial genomes differently by two different compos- ers. The variation raised eyebrows; BY DEVIN A. REESE of other animals could offer clues to the mitochondrial DNA is usually inherited New Zealand’s lizardlike tuatara already inner workings of human disease, the only from a mother’s egg, so the scien- was an oddball. Its superpowers include researchers say. tists expected to see a single copy of the a nearly century-long life span, resistance “The mitochondrial genome is much mitochondrial genome, not two copies to many diseases and a high tolerance (for more important than people realize, like they would see with nuclear DNA, a reptile) to the cold. Now, it turns out, given its association with aging and dis- which is inherited from both the mother a part of the tuatara’s genetic instruc- ease,” says Robert Macey, a genomicist and father. tion book is as weird as the animal’s life at the Peralta Genomics Institute in Together, the scientists painstak- history — and may help explain the tua- Oakland, Calif. “How that operates in an ingly assembled two fully functional tara’s ability to be active at temperatures animal that ages slowly in a cool environ- mitochondrial genomes. The genomes as low as about 6° Celsius. ment might tell us something significant differed by 10.4 percent. In comparison, Tuatara have two distinct copies of about how mitochondria work.” human and chimpanzee mitochondrial the genetic instruction manual for mak- Efforts to decode the tuatara’s genetic genomes differ by 8.9 percent. “The tua- ing mitochondria, researchers report makeup began in 2012, with the launch tara’s arrangement of genes is unlike any January 29 in Communications Biology. of the Tuatara Genome Project led by other vertebrate,” Mulcahy says. “It’s the first evidence of a full addi- Neil Gemmell, an evolutionary biologist When Lara Urban, a genomicist at tional copy of the mitochondrial genome at the University of Otago in Dunedin, the University of Otago, analyzed the in a vertebrate,” says Chris Schneider, a New Zealand. After getting the blessing two genomes, she noticed differences herpetologist at Boston University who of the Maori people to sample the rep- between genes related to metabolism. was not involved in the study. Some mol- tile’s blood (tuatara are a taonga, special Cell metabolism adjusts to help an ani- lusks are the only other animals ever treasure, to the Maori), the team found mal cope with environmental extremes. found to have two copies. the genome to be 50 percent larger than The double mitochondrial genome Mitochondria are tiny energy fac- the human genome. might give the tuatara flexibility in how tories found in cells, and their genetic This discovery led to deeper explo- its metabolism responds to the cold, the material is important in building the ration of the mitochondrial part of the scientists say. enzymes that keep the mitochondria genome. Most techniques that deci- “The tuatara has the most complicated running. Recent studies show that pher, or sequence, DNA chop it into mitochondrial genome I’ve ever seen,” mitochondrial DNA plays major roles small pieces, “read” the DNA and then Macey says. Finding the genetic basis for in aging and various human cancers, as reassemble the pieces. That provides a the animal’s metabolic feats could clarify well as metabolic, muscular and neuro- high-resolution look at individual puz- the mitochondrial genome’s function, degenerative diseases (SN: 11/17/12, p. 5). zle pieces. Piloting a new technique that helping to find treatments for human
Studying the mitochondrial genomes reads long DNA segments, Macey’s lab metabolic diseases. s NZ/FLICKR BERNARD SPRAGG.
10 SCIENCE NEWS | February 27, 2021
tuatara.indd 10 2/10/21 9:53 AM EARTH & ENVIRONMENT of material far below the seafloor. In those signals, Agius’ team saw hints Upwellings may push continents apart of material from Earth’s lower mantle, Mid-ocean ridges may play an unexpected role in plate tectonics more than 600 kilometers below the seafloor, welling up toward the Mid- BY MARIA TEMMING sliding apart. Rather, deep rock push- Atlantic Ridge. “This was completely An upsurge of hot rock from deep ing toward the surface may be driving a unexpected,” Agius says, and it could be beneath the Atlantic Ocean may be driv- wedge between the plates, researchers a powerful force for pushing apart the ing the continents on either side apart. report in the Jan. 28 Nature. tectonic plates on either side of the rift. The Americas are moving away from A better understanding of plate tec- “It’s certainly an interesting observa- Europe and Africa by a few centimeters tonics, which causes earthquakes and tion,” says Jeroen Ritsema, a seismologist each year, as the tectonic plates underly- volcanic eruptions, could help people bet- at the University of Michigan in Ann ing those continents drift apart. Scientists ter prepare for these natural disasters. Arbor. But it’s hard to tell how much deep typically think tectonic plates separate Matthew Agius, a seismologist at Roma mantle upwelling contributes to Atlantic as the distant edges of those plates sink Tre University in Rome, and colleagues seafloor spreading based on observations down into Earth’s mantle, creating a gap glimpsed what’s happening beneath the from only one group of seismometers (SN: 1/16/21, p. 16). Material from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge using 39 seismome- near the equator, he says. It’s like “you’re upper mantle seeps up through the rift ters on the seafloor near a spot along the looking through a keyhole, and you’re try- between the plates to fill in the seafloor. ridge between South America and Africa. ing to see what’s in the living room and But new seismic data show that hot Those sensors monitored rumbles from the bedroom and the kitchen.” rock is welling up beneath a seafloor quakes around the world for about a year. Observations at other locations along rift called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge from Because the seismic waves from those the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, as well as at other hundreds of kilometers deep in Earth’s quakes traveled deep through Earth’s mid-ocean ridges, could help determine mantle. This suggests that material mantle on their way to the seismom- whether deep mantle material surging up rising up under the ridge is not just eters, the recorded tremors contained beneath these rifts really plays a major a passive response to tectonic plates clues about the location and movement role in seafloor spreading. s
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11_atlantic-ridge.indd 11 2/10/21 9:56 AM milkyway-spider-multiplanet.indd 12 believe suchaccelerators are asource of accelerators in the Milky Way. Physicists existence ofpowerful cosmicparticle known asapetaelectron volt orPeV. 12 SCIENCE NEWS American Astronomical Society. January 15atthevirtualmeeting ofthe versity ofCalifornia,SantaCruz,reported Thompson, anastrophysicist attheUni- have atmospheres full of water, Maggie rocks suggest that rockyplanets initially young exoplanets aremadeof. may learnwhattheatmospheresofsome By burningbitsofmeteorites, scientists BY LISAGROSSMAN young rocky exoplanets Water-rich steam may envelop atmospheres early at hint Meteorites ATOM &COSMOS nearly aquadrillion(10 throughout thegalaxy’s disk,andreached in reported inthestudy, tobepublished according toanewpaper. Gammarays thing physicists canproduceonEarth, haze, withenergiesvastly exceeding any The MilkyWay glows withagammaray BY EMILY CONOVER New find points to the existence of powerful cosmic accelerators Milky Way’s glow is highly energetic ATOM &COSMOS NEWS These diffuse gamma rays hint at the observing showersofparticlesproducedwhenagammaray hitsEarth’s atmosphere. The TibetAS-gammaexperiment (shown)inChinadetectshigh-energygammarays by Astronomers have discovered thou Experiments bakingpulverized space Physical ReviewLetters, camefrom | February 27,2021 15 ) electronvolts, - - probably formedfromsimilar stuff. planets inthesolarsystem. Exoplanets the youngsunandultimatelyformed the the diskofdust andgasthatsurrounded sent the first solids that condensed out of chondrite meteorites. Theserocksrepre - what kindofatmospheresarepossible. ining rocky planets’ building blocks to see are workingfromthegroundup, exam- themselves, Thompsonandcolleagues the worldscouldbehospitabletolife. out whatchemicalstheycontain,andif through exoplanet atmospherestofigure telescopes canpeekatstarlight filtering beneath thinatmospheres. Somespace system, many couldhave rocky surfaces Like the terrestrial planets in the solar sands ofplanets orbitingother stars. volts. Butphysicists haven’t definitively accelerates protons to6.5 trillionelectron particle acceleratorcraftedby humans, HadronCollider,the Large thepremier a PeV, scientists suspect. In comparison, rev up cosmic ray particles to more than rays, aformofhigh-energylight. stellar debris, they can produce gamma mainly consist ofprotons, slamintointer atmosphere. Whencosmicrays, which galaxy, sometimes crashingintoEarth’s particlesthatcareenthroughthe charged mysterious, highlyenergetic cosmicrays, The teamstudied threecarbonaceous Instead oflookingattheatmospheres Certain galacticenvironments could - the gasemitted onaverage. Thenext most water vapor, accounting for 62 percent of rocky exoplanets,” Thompson said. ofatmosphericcompositionsfor a range composition frommeteorites canprovide lets offgas. “Measuring theoutgassing planetary formation.Thewarmed rock planets, andwiththeleftover heatfrom ments, collisions with asteroids or other its rockwiththedecay ofradioactive ele- after solidifying.Ayoungplanet heats planets form their initial atmospheres escaped asthepowder warmed. trace amountsofdifferentgasesthat up toamassspectrometer tomeasure heated thepowder inafurnacehooked of themeteorites topowder, andthen gamma rays tounderstand thehighest- ate thegalaxy. Butittakes higher-energy ticles fill thegalaxy,” Liparisays. you informationabout how thesepar ant cosmicrays. Thenewstudy “gives revealing thewhereabouts oftheitiner gamma rays pointbacktotheirsources, they are not deflected by magnetic fields, not involved withtheresearch.Because for NuclearPhysics inRome,whowas Paolo LiparioftheNationalInstitute ble ofcosmicrays,” says astrophysicist its magnetic fields. “We live inabub- they roamthegalaxy, twisted aboutby their birthplaces, scientists believe who was not involved withthestudy. Hanna ofMcGill University inMontreal, fitting together,” says physicist David experiment found. “It’s nice to see things researchers with the Tibet AS-gamma of extreme energies. That’s just what producing adiffuseglow ofgammarays they emitwouldpermeatethegalaxy, ate cosmicrays tosuchenergies. stars, host shockwaves thatcanacceler nova remnants, theremainsofexploded PeVatrons. Onepossibilityisthatsuper tors capable of reaching a PeV, dubbed identified any natural cosmic accelera- All three meteorites mostly let off That setup tohow isanalogous rocky Thompson’s group ground samples Lower-energy gammarays alsoperme- After cosmic rays are spewed from If PeVatrons exist, the cosmic rays 2/10/21 1:49PM - - - -
INSTITUTE OF HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS OF THE CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES/XINHUA/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
EMANUELE OLIVETTI University inStillwater. Kat Gardner-Vandy ofOklahomaState they evolved,” says planetary scientist those planets mighthave looked like as compositional frameworkonwhat putaquantitative ful becauseit“has theatmosphere. activitychanges geologic would contributeother gases. Over time, can bemadeofother kindsofrocksthat complicated,” Thompsonsaid. Aplanet reality, the situation will be far more ets, atleast asafirst approximation. “In atmospheres around young rocky plan- mers should expect water-rich steam complex gasesthatweren’t identified. hydrogen sulfide andsomemoregen, and carbondioxide, followed by hydro- common gaseswerecarbonmonoxide research. “Hence, thedetection University, whowas not involved withthe astrophysicist ElenaOrlandoofStanford higher theenergyofcosmicrays,” says higher theenergyofgammarays, the energy cosmicrays. the “Ingeneral, cosmic accelerator. gamma rays whilecirculatingwithina different manner, by electrons radiating gamma rays areprobably producedina nova remnant(SN:8/3/19, p.). Those 11 Way, suchastheCrabNebula,asuper individual sourceswithintheMilky extremely energetic gammarays from to commentonthestudy. carried about957trillionelectronvolts. galaxy. Thehighest-energy gammaray cosmic rays that had wandered about the the idea that thegammarays came from electron volts, cameupempty, supporting energy gammarays, above 398trillion for possiblesourcesofthe38highest- by the disk of the Milky Way. A search coming fromtheregionofskycovered 100 trillionandaquadrillionelectronvolts rays withenergiesbetween about experiment inChina observed gamma gate inthegalacticdisk.” that PeV cosmicrays originateandpropa- But thissortofbasicresearchisuse- The resultsindicatethatastrono- Scientists have previouslyseen researchersdeclined Tibet AS-gamma Scientists withtheTibet AS-gamma s s … tells us tells us -
energy cosmic rays. “In general, the higher the energy of the gamma rays, the higher the energy of the cosmic rays,” says astrophysicist Elena Orlando of Stanford University, who was not involved with the research. “Hence, the detection … tells us that PeV cosmic rays originate and propa- gate in the galactic disk.” Scientists with the Tibet AS-gamma experiment in China observed gamma A small spider used its own version rays with energies between about of a pulleylike system to haul a lizard upward bit by bit. 100 trillion and a quadrillion electron volts coming from the region of the sky covered by the disk of the Milky Way. A search for possible sources of the 38 highest- LIFE & EVOLUTION energy gamma rays, above 398 trillion electron volts, came up empty, supporting Tiny spiders hoist heavy prey with silk the idea that the gamma rays came from Dropping the right lines can haul a big meal off the ground cosmic rays that had wandered about the galaxy. The highest-energy gamma ray BY SUSAN MILIUS and yanks the prey upward to flail help- carried about 957 trillion electron volts. Some spiders catch prey many times lessly in the air. Lunch! Tibet AS-gamma researchers declined their own weight by hitching silk lines What really interested Greco and to comment on the study. to their quarry and hoisting the meaty Pugno were occasional reports of these Scientists have previously seen prize up into the air. strands catching “giant” prey, including extremely energetic gamma rays from Tangle web spiders, in the Theridiidae a snake and a mouse. To give the food- individual sources within the Milky family, are masters of using silk to amplify catching silk an extreme workout, the Way, such as the Crab Nebula, a super- muscle power. Their webs are “a messy researchers used cockroaches. nova remnant (SN: 8/3/19, p. 11). Those tangle,” says Gabriele Greco, who stud- A single sticky-end strand can’t jerk gamma rays are probably produced in a ies biological materials at the University a big roach into the air, so when prey different manner, by electrons radiating of Trento in Italy. Silk strands slant and bumps the silk, the resident spider adds gamma rays while circulating within a crisscross in a cobwebby scribble. extra strands to its catch. In the lab tests, cosmic accelerator. s Filming how spiders hunt from such spiders had to add strand after strand snarls, Greco and Trento colleague before researchers saw the first upward Nicola Pugno focused on attacks on lurch. During the raising process, the common gases were carbon monoxide insects that weighed up to 50 times as hauling threads maintained some give and carbon dioxide, followed by hydro- much as the spiders themselves. The web instead of being stretched very tight. That gen, hydrogen sulfide and some more makers won their battles thanks to adroit makes sense, Greco concluded, because complex gases that weren’t identified. fighting, venom and lots of prey-wrapping these strands get tugged by struggling The results indicate that astrono- silk. Victorious spiders attached multiple prey. Supertight strands might break. mers should expect water-rich steam silk threads to their prey bundle to haul The study strikes Symone Alexander, a atmospheres around young rocky plan- the feast up to the web, Greco and Pugno chemical engineer at Auburn University ets, at least as a first approximation. “In report in the February Journal of the in Alabama who has studied spider webs, reality, the situation will be far more Royal Society Interface. as “very cool.” The rounded, spoked webs complicated,” Thompson said. A planet To analyze the spiders’ weight-hauling on Halloween décor may be the popular can be made of other kinds of rocks that moves, the researchers set up lab boxes notion of spider silk, but the animals would contribute other gases. Over time, to observe triangulate cobweb spiders have expanded the places and ways they geologic activity changes the atmosphere. (Steatoda triangulosa) and false black can live with a wide range of silky inno- But this sort of basic research is use- widows (S. paykulliana). vations. Spiders have evolved silky trap ful because it “has put a quantitative In the wild, both species stretch some doors, nets, lassos and ultrafast slingshots compositional framework on what strands from the tangle down to the (SN: 4/13/19, p. 5). those planets might have looked like as ground, anchoring each strand’s sticky “Even in a single web, there are differ- they evolved,” says planetary scientist end. When some small, edible crea- ent types of silk and glue used to make Kat Gardner-Vandy of Oklahoma State ture such as an ant bumbles against the frame lines, capture lines and anchor
INSTITUTE OF HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS OF THE CHINESE ACADEMY OF OF PHYSICS OF THE CHINESE ACADEMY INSTITUTE OF HIGH ENERGY PHOTO STOCK SCIENCES/XINHUA/ALAMY EMANUELE OLIVETTI University in Stillwater. s strand, it breaks loose from the ground lines,” she says. “Spiders are ingenious.” s
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BODY & BRAIN ticks in the South are more likely to stay under leaf litter, reducing the chance of Why Lyme disease is rare in the South such encounters, researchers reported Which animals ticks bite may impact the disease’s U.S. spread in Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases in 2019. Ticks may remain below the leaf litter in BY AIMEE CUNNINGHAM diagnosed with Lyme disease each the hotter South to avoid drying out. The paucity of Lyme disease cases in the year in the United States, according to This host-seeking behavior and the southern United States may be partly insurance data from 2010 to 2018. Most results of the new study help to explain due to what black-legged ticks in south- people recover with early antibiotic the North-South difference, Ginsberg ern locales bite. treatment. But if the diagnosis is missed, says. In 2011 and 2012, he and colleagues Although Ixodes scapularis ticks claim the infection can spread in the body and captured host animals and collected and much of the eastern half of the country cause arthritis and nerve pain. tested ticks at eight sites in the eastern as home, the Lyme disease they spread Scanning for and removing ticks after a United States. “We tried to catch every- is largely concentrated in the Northeast hike is one part of Lyme disease control. thing that crawled on the ground that and increasingly in the Upper Midwest. Understanding the ticks’ behavior and the tick might attach to,” he says. It’s well known that ticks in the North- their relationship to the environment In the North, the most common hosts east commonly latch onto white-footed can inform other prevention methods. were mice, while in the South, the ticks mice. This relationship turns out to be a Black-legged ticks need blood meals selectively attached to skinks, says boon for Lyme disease: When infected to progress through several develop- Ginsberg. At a site in Massachusetts, with the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, mental stages. The larvae that emerge for example, 75 percent of tick larvae which causes Lyme disease, these mice from eggs seek out a host for blood; this and 93 percent of the nymphs were efficiently spread it to the ticks, which is when ticks can first become infected removed from mice, which accounted for can then pass it on to people. with Lyme bacteria. The next blood meal 79 percent of the captured host animals. But ticks residing in the South are is at the nymph stage. Nymphs infected The team caught no skinks. different. They are more likely to bite as larvae can spread the bacteria to other But at a site in Florida, although about lizards called skinks, which are poor hosts, including people. 40 percent of the captured animals transmitters of the bacteria, research- There’s been a long debate about were mice, they had only 3 percent of ers report January 28 in PLOS Biology. the difference in Lyme disease cases the larvae and less than 1 percent of the This study “shows that there’s this between the North and the South, says nymphs. Meanwhile, skinks — which really interesting switch” from the North Howard Ginsberg, an ecologist at the made up 28 percent of the captured host to South in the predominant tick host, Patuxent Coastal Field Station at the animals — had 92 percent of the larvae says disease ecologist Shannon LaDeau University of Rhode Island in Kingston. and 98 percent of the nymphs. The team of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Stud- The ticks are in the South, so “why isn’t also found that ticks in the North were ies in Millbrook, N.Y., who was not part there much Lyme disease?” more likely to be infected with Lyme bac- of the research team. “It looks like that is One possible reason is that nymphal teria than ticks in the South. reducing the transmission” in the South ticks in the North seek hosts on top of Understanding the ecological context of the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. or above leaf litter, which puts them in of Lyme disease can help identify targets An estimated 476,000 people are the path of passing hikers. Nymphal to try to reduce human risk, LaDeau says. For example, the possibility of vac- cinating mice against Lyme bacteria may be more useful in the North. The observed differences also influ- ence predictions of how climate change may impact Lyme disease. Black-legged ticks have moved farther north, bringing Lyme disease to Canada, in part due to warming. Perhaps the behavior and bit- ing patterns in the South will expand to Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, reduc- ing Lyme disease cases there, Ginsberg says. It will take more research to learn how climate change will affect skink pop- In the northern United States, the ticks that spread Lyme disease bacteria tend to latch onto ulations and how warming might change
white-footed mice (left). But in the South, the ticks typically target skinks (right), a new study finds. tick behavior, he says. s 3.0) BY-SA COMMONS (CC GORDON E. ROBERTSON/WIKIMEDIA D. BOTH:
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bonds that hold carbon atoms to- gether in diamond. Now, Lazicki says, “it looks like the same is true when you go to much higher pressure.” — Emily Conover
10 cm BODY & BRAIN Diabetes during pregnancy is tied Beneath the linen wrappings, this Egyptian mummy’s body is encased in a layer of mud. The to heart trouble later in life mud may have been used to repair damage to the body or to emulate royal burial customs. Diabetes brought on by pregnancy might set a woman up for heart problems later HUMANS & SOCIETY mummies from ancient Egypt may reveal on, even if her blood sugar levels snap An ancient Egyptian mummy how common mud shells were, who used back to normal. That finding, reported was wrapped in mud them and why. — Maria Temming online February 1 in Circulation, suggests A mud-wrapped mummy is leading that doctors should pay careful attention archaeologists to rethink how nonroyal MATTER & ENERGY to the hearts of people who previously Egyptians preserved their dead. Diamond holds up under pressure had gestational diabetes. CT scans of a mummy from about Diamond’s structure persists even The results come from data collected 1200 B.C. reveal that the body is sheathed when compressed to 2 trillion pascals, by the CARDIA Study, a project designed in a mud shell between its layers of linen more than five times the pressure in to track heart health in young adults. wrappings. Ancient Egyptians may have Earth’s core. Starting in 1985, CARDIA enrolled equal used this preservation technique, never That finding, reported in the Jan. 28 numbers of Black and white people, ages before seen in Egyptian archaeology, to Nature, suggests that diamond is meta- 18 to 30, from four U.S. cities. Following repair damage to the mummified body stable at high pressures: It retains its these people for 25 years, researchers and mimic royal burial customs, research- structure despite the fact that other, looked for coronary artery calcification, ers report February 3 in PLOS ONE. more stable structures are expected to or CAC, a hardening of blood vessels that While parts of the mummy’s legs are dominate under such conditions. Studying can signal future heart disease. caked with mud about 2.5 centimeters diamond’s quirks at extreme pressures More than 1,000 participants gave thick, the mud over the face is spread as could help reveal the inner workings of birth during the study. Of these women, thin as 1.5 millimeters. Chemical analy- carbon-rich exoplanets (SN: 8/9/14, p. 20). 139 had gestational diabetes, an often- ses of mud flakes from around the head Diamond is one of several varieties temporary condition in which blood sugar indicate that the mud layer is covered in a of carbon, each composed of a differ- levels spike. About a quarter of these white, possibly limestone-based pigment, ent arrangement of atoms. At everyday women, or 34, went on to have CAC, topped with a red mineral paint. pressures on Earth’s surface, carbon’s even when postpregnancy blood sugar Leg fractures and other damage to the most stable state is graphite. But given levels normalized. A smaller proportion mummy’s body hint that the mud wrap a forceful squeeze, diamond wins out. of women who hadn’t had gestational may have been used to restore the body That’s why diamonds form after carbon diabetes — 149 of 994, or about after it was desecrated, potentially by takes a plunge inside Earth. 15 percent — went on to have CAC. tomb robbers. Repairing the body would But at higher pressures than those The study doesn’t indicate whether have ensured that the deceased could found inside Earth, scientists had predict- some aspect of gestational diabetes continue existing in the afterlife. ed that new crystal structures would be causes CAC, only that the two are asso- The mud shell may also have been a more stable. So physicist Amy Lazicki of ciated. But it’s possible that changes in poor man’s version of the expensive resin Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory blood vessels that can accompany gesta- coatings seen on royal mummies of this in California and colleagues pummeled tional diabetes may play a role in heart era, the researchers suggest. “Status diamond with powerful lasers. X-ray health later, the researchers say. in Egyptian society was in large part measurements revealed that diamond “The majority of women with gesta- measured by proximity to the king,” says persisted, suggesting it is metastable tional diabetes do not develop coronary Karin Sowada, an archaeologist at under extreme pressure. artery calcification,” says Khadijah Macquarie University in Sydney. So imi- Diamond was already known to Breathett, a cardiologist at the University tating royal funerary practices may have be metastable at low pressures; your of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson 2021 (CC BY 4.0) ONE 2021 (CC PLOS been a display of social status. grandma’s diamond ring hasn’t morphed who was not involved with the study. Still, The identity and social standing of into graphite. Once formed, diamond’s the results highlight the importance of the mud-wrapped individual remains structure can persist even if the pressure keeping blood sugar under control, she
K. SOWADA ET AL / K. SOWADA a mystery. Analyzing other nonroyal drops, thanks to the strong chemical says. — Laura Sanders
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briefs.indd 15 2/10/21 1:44 PM space-weather.indd 16 preparedness Solar storm 16 SCIENCE NEWS By RaminSkibba The sun’s outburstscan have destructive consequences onEarth FEATURE | February 27,2021 2/9/21 3:19PM
NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER North America failed, and the electrified lines shocked some telegraph operators. It came to be known as the Carrington Event, named after British astronomer Richard Carrington, who witnessed intensely bright patches of light in the sky and recorded what he saw. The world has moved way beyond telegraph systems. A Carrington-level impact today would knock out satel- lites, disrupting GPS, mobile phone networks and internet connections. Banking systems, aviation, trains and traffic signals would take a hit as well. Damaged power grids would take months or more to repair. Especially now, during a pandemic that has many of us rely- ing on Zoom and other video-communications programs to work and attend school, it’s hard to imagine the widespread upheaval such an event would create. In a worst-case scenario conceived before the pandemic, researchers estimated the eco- nomic toll in the United States could reach trillions of dollars, according to a 2017 review in Risk Analysis. To avoid such destruction, in October then-President Donald Trump signed a bill that will support research to pro- duce better space weather forecasts and assess possible impacts, and enable better coordination among agencies like NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We understand a little bit about how these solar storms form, but we can’t predict [them] well,” says atmospheric and space scientist Aaron Ridley of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Just as scientists know how to map the likely path of tornadoes and hurricanes, Ridley hopes to see the same capabilities for predicting space weather. The ideal scenario is to get warnings well before a storm A burst of solar activity unleashed disables satellites or makes landfall, and possibly even before a huge coronal mass ejection that the sun sends charged particles in our direction. With advance just missed Earth in July 2012. warning, utilities and governments could power down the grids and move satellites out of harm’s way. ince December 2019, the sun has been moving into Ridley is part of a U.S. collaboration creating simulations a busier part of its cycle, when increasingly intense of solar storms to help scientists quickly and accurately fore- pulses of energy can shoot out in all directions. Some cast where the storms will go, how intense they will be and Sof these large bursts of charged particles head right when they might affect important satellites and power grids toward Earth. Without a good way to anticipate these solar on Earth. Considering the havoc an extreme solar storm could storms, we’re vulnerable. A big one could take out a swath of wreak, many scientists and governments want to develop our communication systems and power grids before we even better forecasts as soon as possible. knew what hit us. A recent near miss occurred in the summer of 2012. A giant Ebbs and flows solar storm hurled a radiation-packed blob in Earth’s direction When scientists talk about space weather, they’re usually refer- at more than 9 million kilometers per hour. The potentially ring to two things: the solar wind, a constant stream of charged debilitating burst quickly traversed the nearly 150 million particles flowing away from the sun, and coronal mass ejec- kilometers toward our planet, and would have hit Earth had it tions, huge outbursts of charged particles, or plasma, blown come just a week earlier. Scientists learned about it after the out from the sun’s outer layers (SN Online: 3/7/19). Some other fact, only because it struck a NASA satellite designed to watch phenomena, like high-energy particles called cosmic rays, also for this kind of space weather. count as space weather, but they don’t cause much concern. That 2012 storm was the most intense researchers have Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, the most threatening measured since 1859. When a powerful storm hit the North- kind of solar storms, aren’t always harmful — they generate ern Hemisphere in September of that year, people were not dazzling auroras near the poles, after all. But considering the
NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER SPACE NASA GODDARD so lucky. Many telegraph systems throughout Europe and risks of a storm shutting down key military and commercial
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Average monthly sunspot number 100 150 200 250 300 cycle 25beganinDecember2019andisexpected topeakin2025. that generates solarstorms,risesandfallsinan11-year cycle. Solar 18 SCIENCE NEWS SOURCE: SILSODATA/ROYAL OBSERVATORY OFBELGIUM 2021 Up anddown from themostperiodinaparticularlyactive solar vigorous netic fields withthem.Themost intenseCMEsusuallycome particlesbringingnewmag- rises tothesurface,withcharged swirls around.At thesame time,heatfrom thesun’s interior it’s not asolidsphere,itsmagnetic field constantly roilsand The sunrotates faster atitsequatorthanpoles, andsince between 2024 and2026. now becoming more frequent and intense, and should peak tury). Solar storms, CMEs, particularly the dangerous are (astronomers started inthe19thcen- numberingsolarcycles sun activitywhileheadingtoward 25 themaximumofcycle 2019, andwe’re emergingfromthenadirof The most endedinDecember recentsuncycle magnetic field completely flipsevery 11years. 11-year cycles. Thishappensbecausethesun’s such solar activity ebbs and flows during Samuel Heinrich Schwabe whorealizedthat chunk ofcoronaintointerplanetary space. can breaklike arubberbandandlaunchbig a physicist Thoselines atDartmouthCollege. twisted uplike taffyincertainregions,” says MaryHudson, layers. Thesekindsofsolareruptions CMEs. cangenerate thousands ofkilometers across erupt from the sun’s outer the sun also sometimes makes filaments or loops of plasma called solar flares. Thecomplex, shifting magnetic field of noticed thatsunspots oftenproducebursts ofradiation cursor tomoreintensesolaractivity. Hissuccessorslater surface withstrong magnetic fields thatareoftenapre- the first tospy sunspots, slightlycoolerareasonthesun’s ion for centuries. In the 17th century, Galileo was among understandable thatscientists andgovernments areconcerned. satellites orharmingthehealthofastronauts inorbit,it’s FEATURE 50 0 1740 Solar storms develop fromthesun’s complexmagnetic field. It was 19thcenturyGermanastronomer “The sun’s magnetic field linescanget complicatedand Astronomers have been peering at our solar compan- The sun’s 11-year cycle 1760 | SOLAR STORM PREPAREDNESS The numberofsunspots,andothersolaractivity | February 27,2021 1780 1800 1820 1840 Carrington Event 1859 September can protectusfrom space weatherand Earth’s magnetic space radiation, defense against 1860 only somuch. field, ourfirst 1880 Year power grid wires on Earth, overwhelming transformers and currents ofkiloamps rather than the usual amps through the electricalgridscouldbeworse. are temporaryeffects, typically lasting uptoaday, impactson as pilots losecontactwithairtraffic controllers. Whilethese replaced. Apowerful storm candisturb airplanesinflight,too, the storm blows over satellites and damaged are repaired or telecommunications might have to do without them until and power gridsatrisk. storm, it’s thesepotentially massive currentsthatputsatellites more infrastructure, Ridleysays. With anextremely powerful currents away fromthepolestoplaceswithmorepeopleand currents intheupperatmosphereandshiftingthesestronger have twoimportanteffects:producingmoreintenseelectric Earth’s magnetic field, however, wouldmost likely besafe. moon. AcrewonboardtheInternationalSpaceStation,inside side ofEarth’s protective magnetic field, includingany onthe orbits. Those particles could also harm any astronauts out- theelectronicsorsolarcellsofsatellites inhighcan damage arrive within20minutesofthelight.Suchenergetic particles that accelerateselectronstoextremely fast speeds, andthose moves atthespeedoflight.CMEsoftenproduceashockwave after itleaves thesun — is theelectromagnetic radiation,which tory toward Earth,thefirst thingtoarrive — just eightminutes from afairlymodest Hudsonpointsout. solarcycle, but there’scycle, a lot of variation. The1859CMEoriginated A massive CMEcouldsuddenlyandunexpectedlydrive Anyone whodependsonlong-distance radiosignalsor But a CME’s biggest threat — its giant cloud of plasma, which A CMEhasmultiplecomponents. IftheCMEisonatrajec- 1900 1920 tort themagnetic field. Thoseinteractionscan CME’s particles interactwithanddis- charged ground-based observationshave shown thata protect usfrom only so much. Satellites and against spaceweatherandradiation,can us. Earth’s magnetic field, our first defense pelled theshotgun blast ofparticlestoward planet, depending onhow fast the sun pro- takes between oneandthreedays toreachour can bemillionsofkilometers wide — typically blackout acrossQuebec Solar stormcauseda 1989 March 1940 1960 1980 2000 Earth storm justmissed Carrington-sized July 2012 2020 2/9/21 3:20PM
T. TIBBITTS
TOP: WMAP SCIENCE TEAM/NASA; BOTTOM FROM LEFT: ATG MEDIALAB/ESA; NASA; NOAA making them melt or explode. The entire province of Quebec, with nearly 7 million people, suffered a power blackout that lasted more than nine hours on March 13, 1989, thanks to such a CME during a particularly active solar cycle. The CME L4 affected New England and New York, too. Had electricity grid operators known what was coming, they could have reduced power flow on lines and interconnections in the power grid and set up backup generators where needed.
Early warning But planners need more of a heads-up than they get today. L1 Perhaps within the next decade, improved computer model- L3 L2 ing and new space weather monitoring capabilities will enable scientists to predict solar storms and their likely impacts more accurately and earlier, says physicist Thomas Berger, execu- tive director of the Space Weather Technology, Research and Education Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. Space meteorologists classify solar storms, based on dis- turbances to the Earth’s magnetic field, on a five-level scale, L5 like hurricanes. But unlike those tropical storms, the likely arrival of a solar storm isn’t known with any precision using Image not to scale available satellites. For storms brewing on Earth, the National Weather Service has access to constantly updated data. But Sneak peek The European Space Agency’s upcoming Lagrange space weather data are too sparse to be very useful, with few mission will monitor the sun with spacecraft at “Lagrange points” L1 and storms to monitor and provide data. L5, two locations in orbit where the combined gravitational pull of the Earth and sun helps objects in space stay in position. Lagrange will be the Two U.S. satellites that monitor space weather are NASA’s first mission with a satellite (illustrated) at L5, to monitor the sun from ACE spacecraft, which dates from the 1990s and should the side to try and spot Earth-bound coronal mass ejections much earlier. continue to collect data for a few more years, and NOAA’s DSCOVR, which was designed at a similar time but not the European Space Agency in 1995, plus ACE and DSCOVR launched until 2015. Both orbit about 1.5 million kilometers monitor only a limited range of directions that don’t include above Earth — which seems far but is barely upstream of our the sun’s poles, leaving a big gap in observations, he says. planet from a solar storm’s perspective. The two satellites can Ideally, scientists want to be able to forecast a solar storm detect and measure a solar storm only when its impact is immi- before it’s blown out into space. That would give enough lead nent: 15 to 45 minutes away. That’s more akin to “nowcasting” time — more than a day — for power grid operators to protect than forecasting, offering little more than a warning to brace transformers from power surges, and satellites and astronauts for impact. could move out of harm’s way if possible. “That’s one of the grand challenges of space weather: to pre- That requires gathering more data, particularly from the dict the magnetic field of a CME long before it gets [here] so sun’s outer layers, plus better estimating when a CME will that you can prepare for the incoming storm,” Berger says. But burst forth and whether to expect it to arrive with a bang or aging satellites like SOHO, a satellite launched by NASA and a whimper. To aid such research, NOAA scientists will outfit their next space weather satellite, scheduled to launch in early July 2012 2025, with a coronagraph, an instrument used for studying Eyes on the sun Three main satellites have been monitoring Carrington-sized the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, while storm just missed space weather, starting as early as 1995, but can only pick up an Earth imminent impact. blocking most of the sun’s light, which would otherwise blind its view. SOHO ACE DSCOVR A second major improvement could come just two years Launched in 1995 Launched in 1997 Launched in 2015 later, in 2027, with the launch of ESA’s Lagrange mission. It will be the first space weather mission to launch one of its spacecraft to a unique spot: 60 degrees behind Earth in its orbit around the sun. Once in position, the spacecraft will be able to see the surface of the sun from the side before the face of the sun has rotated and pointed in Earth’s direction, says Juha-Pekka Luntama, head of ESA’s Space Weather Office.
T. TIBBITTS TIBBITTS T. MEDIALAB/ESA; NASA; NOAA ATG LEFT: FROM WMAP SCIENCE TEAM/NASA; BOTTOM TOP: That way, Lagrange will be able to monitor an active, flaring
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U.S. military tracks satellites and debris and predicts where Space weather hits home they’ll likely be in the future, but all those calculations are These Earth systems and industries are at risk worthless without knowing the effects of solar storms, says during a solar storm: Boris Krämer, an aerospace engineer at the University of s Power grids California, San Diego who collaborates with Ridley. “To put s Oil and gas industry satellites on trajectories so that they avoid collisions, you have s Communications: mobile to know space weather,” Krämer says. networks, fiber-optic networks, It takes time to create simulations estimating the drag on shipping and military a single satellite. Current models run on powerful super s Ground transportation computers. But if a satellite needs to use its onboard computer (railways) to make those computations on the fly, researchers need to s Satellites develop sufficiently accurate models that run much more GPS s quickly and with less energy. s Aviation New data and new models probably won’t be online in time for the upcoming solar storm season, but they should be in area of the sun days earlier than other spacecraft, getting a place for solar cycle 26 in the 2030s. Perhaps by then, scientists fix on a new solar storm’s speed and direction sooner to allow will be able to give earlier red alerts to warn of an incoming scientists to make a more precise forecast. With these new storm, giving more time to move satellites, buttress transform- satellites, there will be more spacecraft watching for incom- ers and stave off the worst. ing space weather from different spots, giving scientists more The goal of improving space weather forecasts has drawn data to make forecasts. broad federal government support and interest from indus- Meanwhile, Berger, Ridley and colleagues are focused on try, including Lockheed Martin, because of the threats to developing better computer simulations and models of the important satellites, including the 31 that constitute the behavior of the sun’s corona and the ramifications of CMEs on U.S. GPS network. Earth. Ridley and his team are creating a new software platform The growing interest in space weather led to the 2020 law, that allows researchers anywhere to quickly update models of known as the Promoting Research and Observations of Space the upper atmosphere affected by space weather. Ridley’s group Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow Act, or is also modeling how a CME shakes our planet’s magnetic field PROSWIFT. And the National Science Foundation and NASA and releases charged particles toward the land below. have thrown support behind space weather research programs Berger also collaborates with other researchers on model- like Berger’s and Ridley’s. For instance, Ridley, Krämer and ing and simulating Earth’s upper atmosphere to better predict their collaborators recently received $3.1 million in NSF grants how solar storms affect its density. When a storm hits, it com- to develop new space weather computer simulations and soft- presses the magnetic field, which can change the density of the ware, among other things. outer layers of Earth’s atmosphere and affect how much drag Our reliance on technology in space comes with increasing satellites have to battle to stay in orbit. vulnerabilities. Some space scientists speculate that we’ve failed to find alien civilizations because some of those civi- Satellite safety lizations were wiped out by the very active stars they orbit, There have been a few cases of satellites damaged by solar which could strip a once-habitable world’s atmosphere and storms. The Japanese ADEOS-II satellite stopped functioning expose life on the surface to harmful stellar radiation and in 2003, following a period of intense outbursts of energy from space weather. Our sun is not as dangerous as many other stars the sun. And the Solar Maximum Mission satellite appeared to that have more frequent and intense magnetic activity, but it have been dragged into lower orbit — and eventually burned up has the potential to be perilous to our way of life. in the atmosphere — following the same 1989 solar storm that “Globally, we have to take space weather seriously and pre- left Quebec in the dark. pare ourselves. We don’t want to wake up one day, and all our Satellites affected by solar storms could be at risk of crashing infrastructure is down,” ESA’s Luntama says. With key satel- into each other or space debris, too. With mega-constellations lites and power grids suddenly wrecked, we wouldn’t even be of satellites like SpaceX’s being launched by the hundreds able to use our phones to call for help. s (SN: 3/28/20, p. 24), and with tens of thousands of satellites and bits of space flotsam already in crowded orbits, the risks Explore more are real of something drifting into the path of something else. s Thomas E. Berger et al. “Flying through uncertainty.” Space Any space crash will surely create more space junk, too, tossing Weather. January 2020. out debris that also puts spacecraft at risk. These are all strong motivators for Ridley, Berger and Ramin Skibba is a freelance writer and journalist based
colleagues to study how storm-driven drag works. The in San Diego. TIBBITTS T.
20 SCIENCE NEWS | February 27, 2021
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_p21.inddMAR_068_20_F_pressReady.indd 21 2 12/16/202/10/21 9:273:36 AMPM FEATURE
COVID-19 on Campus Fall semester was the start of a big experiment By Betsy Ladyzhets
ne year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the three weeks before. Counties with large schools we know the SARS-CoV-2 virus that offered only remote learning saw a drop in spreads easily through large indoor cases of almost 18 percent, researchers from the Ogatherings and communal living U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spaces. A person can become infected, spread the reported on January 8 in Morbidity and Mortality At the University of virus to friends, family, teachers or coworkers, Weekly Report. Colorado Boulder, students pick up campus and then start exhibiting symptoms several days Universities that opened their campuses in maps and pandemic later — or never show any signs of infection. August and September faced an uncharted, protocols on August 18. With these kinds of risks, a college campus seems months-long experiment in infection control. Each school that opened for the fall semester had like one of the more dangerous places to spend They had no manual, no surefire way to keep its own patchwork of time. In fact, U.S. counties with large colleges or students and staff from getting sick. safety measures in place universities that offered in-person instruction Science News took a look at five universities that to try to keep students and staff safe from last fall saw a 56 percent rise in COVID-19 cases in opened in the fall. Each school cobbled together
COVID-19. the three weeks after classes began compared with some type of testing at various frequencies IMAGES MARK MAKELA/GETTY C. CHANG
22 SCIENCE NEWS | February 27, 2021
covid-colleges.indd 22 2/10/21 9:24 AM COVID-19 cases at five U.S. universities, fall 2020 Colorado Mesa University North Carolina A&T State
To compare infection rates Rice University 30 across large and small schools, University of Washington case numbers were adjusted by population by dividing weekly University of Wisconsin case counts by the approximate number of students living on or near campus. The University of Washington had two adjustments: 1,000 students before October 1 and 6,200 students after October 1. 20
10 New cases per 1,000 students
0 August 9 September 6 October 4 November 1 November 29 Date
coupled with uneven rules about wearing masks for symptom monitoring and contact tracing. Five experiences and public gatherings. Student engagement and leadership was also As students arrived on campuses for the For testing, all five schools used polymerase key to successful outbreak control, Sabeti says. fall semester, many chain reaction, or PCR, tests, which are the gold Several universities recruited students as health universities experienced standard for diagnosing COVID-19. Results can ambassadors to promote safe behavior; at one COVID-19 outbreaks, as did all but one of the five take days, however, when demand for tests is high school, a student panel meted out punishments schools profiled here. (SN Online: 8/31/20). One school also used a test to their peers who broke the rules. Some experienced late- called loop-mediated isothermal amplification, Four of the five schools profiled here faced at semester peaks from Halloween parties or or LAMP, which, like PCR, measures viral DNA least one outbreak during the fall, but none sent from a surge in a nearby to identify infections. LAMP is less sensitive than students home before Thanksgiving break. As city. SOURCE: DATA PROVIDED PCR, but results come in much more quickly since spring semester gets under way, and universities BY EACH UNIVERSITY there’s no need to send samples to a laboratory. bring even more students back to campus, the Antigen tests, which detect proteins from experiment continues. the virus and also give rapid results, helped one “Most schools have had very unsuccessful [fall] school move students quickly into quarantine, semesters,” Sabeti says. To do a better job in the even though those tests have a higher rate of false- spring, she suggests that schools double down negative results. One school additionally set up on public health measures and civic engagement wastewater sampling at dorms to pick up early with both students and broader communities. At signs of outbreaks. the schools profiled here, student involvement “Colleges are high risk, but also exactly where seemed to be an important part of control efforts. innovation can happen,” says Pardis Sabeti, a Several of the schools are adding new strategies as computational geneticist at the Broad Institute of case totals have been climbing around the country. Harvard and MIT, which worked with more than Pick a different handful of universities and 100 colleges and universities on their COVID-19 you’ll probably find a different mix of approaches mitigation strategies. and outcomes. Maybe by the end of spring semes- One example of such innovation, she says, ter, a book of best practices for keeping colleges
MARK MAKELA/GETTY IMAGES MARK MAKELA/GETTY C. CHANG is universal student use of phone-based apps safe during a pandemic can be written.
www.sciencenews.org | February 27, 2021 23
covid-colleges.indd 23 2/10/21 9:24 AM FEATURE | COVID-19 ON CAMPUS
Data are from the University of Wisconsin’s University of Wisconsin — COVID-19 cases public COVID-19 dashboard: 140 covidresponse.wisc.edu/dashboard/. Case and test numbers are rolling seven-day averages. 120 All nonessential 432 students in isolation and 100 in-person activity suspended for two 100 in quarantine 80 weeks
60
New daily cases 40 Classes start
(7-day rolling average) (7-day 20
0 August 7, 2020 September 7 October 7 November 7 December 7 December 30 Date University of Wisconsin — testing 2,000 1,800 Classes move to 1,600 all virtual instruction 1,400 1,200 1,000 800 Over 1,000 tests done per New daily tests 600 day; students now tested
(7-day rolling average) (7-day 400 weekly 200 0 August 7, 2020 September 7 October 7 November 7 December 7 December 30 Date
Students: 6,400 in University of Wisconsin–Madison floor of each residence hall, every day,” Baggott dorms; 31,650 enrolled In September, Wisconsin had one of the high- says. A staggered schedule was set based on liv- Testing: Mandatory, est per capita rates of COVID-19 in the country. ing arrangements: If one student was tested on a weekly PCR testing The University of Wisconsin–Madison was at the Monday, the roommate was tested Tuesday, the for students and staff in university housing; center of concern: Hundreds of students tested next-door neighbor tested Wednesday and so on. random sampling of positive when campus opened in late August. This staggering helped administrators identify faculty, staff and students Some students on campus gathered in large outbreak sites more quickly, as new data were living off campus who opt groups without masks despite university restric- available each day at a hyperlocal level. in to testing tions, according to the Badger Herald, a student Students who tested positive were put into Safety measures: newspaper. At the peak of the outbreak in early two-week isolation and anyone known to be Masks required indoors and outdoors; September, 911 students and staff tested positive exposed to an infected person or exhibiting contact tracing; event in a single week. symptoms went into quarantine. All nonessential restrictions following The university partnered with a local bio- in-person activity was suspended for undergradu- CDC guidelines technology company that had developed a ates for two weeks, starting on September 7. On Spring semester plans: PCR COVID-19 test. As a research university, September 20, a record 432 students were in isola- Undergrads tested twice a week; faculty and UW–Madison had the infrastructure to quickly tion and 100 were in quarantine. staff need a negative analyze test samples on campus. By late September, new daily cases had dropped test within eight days The initial plan had been to test all students liv- below 20, and test positivity — the share of tests of coming to campus; ing in residence halls every other week, says Jake returning positive results — remained below mandatory symptom monitoring and contact Baggott, associate vice chancellor and executive 5 percent, a threshold recommended by the World tracing via a phone app director of University Health Services. But when Health Organization before a community should for all students in the cases spiked in September, the school moved to think about reopening. The university used simi- Madison area; up-to- date testing required for weekly testing. lar tactics to crack down on a smaller outbreak
building access “We sampled each residence hall, and each that began in late October. C. CHANG C. CHANG
24 SCIENCE NEWS | February 27, 2021
covid-colleges.indd 24 2/10/21 9:24 AM North Carolina Agricultural and Technical are more definitive. The PCR testing identified Students: 8,000 living on State University, Greensboro 61 cases in students who had negative antigen or near campus When campus first reopened, North Carolina results, but the rapid tests still allowed the school Testing: PCR testing Agricultural and Technical State University, to send 160 students into immediate isolation. alone until September 28, when antigen testing was NC A&T for short, had the capacity to test only Young people who worked at the Student added; testing offered to symptomatic students. And turnaround was slow: Health Center were instrumental to the testing symptomatic students, Results took five to six days, sometimes longer. effort, says Yolanda Nicholson, director of health or during a spike in cases, or for those who request The COVID-19 strategy shifted in late September, education and wellness. The students ran social a test when the school received antigen tests through a media campaigns, created educational videos Safety measures: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and stood outside the center to advertise testing Masks required indoors; grant for testing at historically Black colleges and hours. Nicholson and student staff encouraged contact tracing; limited universities. The trade-off for the antigen test’s those who came in for testing to tell their friends capacity and social distancing in dining quick results is a higher likelihood of false negatives about the experience. Some students went live on halls; size restrictions (as many as 1 in 5 in asymptomatic people). But for Instagram while they got tested, showing their for nonclass gatherings; administrators, the speed was worth it. peers what the experience looked like. updated HVAC systems “We decided to test everywhere we could,” says While upperclassmen criticized some freshmen Spring semester plans: Robert Doolittle, medical director of the Student for gathering without masks in August, as noted in Wastewater testing; students tested before Health Center — at the health center and pop-up the student paper, the A&T Register, students, for returning to campus; sites around campus. the most part, Nicholson says, “took it seriously.” testing incentives, such When an outbreak started after a Halloween In an infomercial Nicholson shared with Science as free T-shirts party, which violated campus rules, the univer- News, students expressed their reasons for get- sity restricted in-person socializing and tested ting tested: “for my family, for my loved ones, for about 1,000 students in a week with both antigen us.” NC A&T students understand that U.S. Black and PCR tests. Health center staff educated stu- residents have been hit hard by the pandemic, dents about how to interpret the results of each Nicholson says. Demand for testing rose toward test type: antigen test results are preliminary and the end of the semester, as students were keen to may give false negatives, while PCR test results avoid bringing the virus home to their families.
North Carolina A&T State University — COVID-19 cases
120 Campus closed Data were provided by university to students 100 staff. Cases and tests are reported on a weekly basis. 80 Halloween party sparks outbreak 60
New cases 40 Classes start
(reported weekly) 20 10 August 31, 2020 September 20 October 10 October 30 November 19 Date
North Carolina A&T State University — testing
2,500 PCR test Every student who opts for testing gets antigen and PCR tests 2,000 Antigen test 1,500 Antigen tests heavily promoted to students
New tests 1,000
(reported weekly) 500 0 August 31, 2020 September 20 October 10 October 30 November 19 Date C. CHANG C. CHANG
www.sciencenews.org | February 27, 2021 25
covid-colleges.indd 25 2/10/21 9:24 AM FEATURE | COVID-19 ON CAMPUS
Students: 1,000 living University of Washington, Seattle the importance of quarantines and other safety on or near campus Fraternity and sorority houses — where students guidelines. The summer outbreak was brought to during summer quarter; 6,200 during fall quarter live and gather for parties — became sources heel in about two weeks, with the last case of the (typical enrollment is of COVID-19 outbreaks at many schools. The outbreak identified on August 8. 30,000) University of Washington experienced a summer Both the university and student leaders used Testing: Weekly fraternity outbreak and applied lessons learned. that summer experience to prepare for the fall. targeted random “It was late June, I was in the car, and I get a Genevieve Pritchard, 2020 president of the sampling with PCR tests call from a [fraternity] chapter president that he UW Panhellenic Association, which oversees Safety measures: has three members living in his facility that are sororities, joined weekly meetings with teams Masks required indoors and outdoors; symptomatic,” says Erik Johnson, Interfraternity from the local public health department and the contact tracing; event Council president at the time. “We went into university’s environmental health and safety restrictions varied emergency lockdown mode.” office before sorority houses opened. Students Spring semester plans: All 25 fraternity houses went into quarantine could attend webinars to ask questions. Students must get that same day. Within 48 hours, a testing site was When an outbreak hit sororities at the start of tested before returning to campus set up to test every resident. fall quarter, infected students were quickly identi- Johnson describes a major team effort: The fied and isolated. The university reported 200 new university set up testing; the county public health cases the week ending October 4, 76 new cases the department, which had responded to the first next week and 42 new cases the week after that. known U.S. COVID-19 outbreak, handled contact Only about a fifth of the usual student population tracing; and fraternity leadership communicated had come to campus.
University of Washington — COVID-19 cases 30 Summer fraternity Data are from the University of outbreak peaks Washington’s COVID-19 dashboard: 25 About bit.ly/UWcovidtracking. 5,000 more Case and test numbers are rolling 20 students arrive seven-day averages. as classes begin
15
New daily cases 10 (7-day rolling average) (7-day 5
0 June 1, July 1 August 1 September 1 October 1 November 1 December 1 January 1, 2020 2021 Date
University of Washington — testing Fall quarter ends 500
400
300
200 University-run
New daily tests testing begins
(7-day rolling average) (7-day 100
0 June 1, July 1 August 1 September 1 October 1 November 1 December 1 January 1, 2020 2021
Date C. CHANG C. CHANG
26 SCIENCE NEWS | February 27, 2021
covid-colleges.indd 26 2/10/21 9:25 AM C. CHANG covid-colleges.indd 27
C. CHANG spring. Student leaders encouraged safetyspring. Student leaders encouraged among virtualtown hallsstarting inthe weekly COVID-19 the university’s Physician Assistant Program,held Services, andAmy Bronson,programdirectorof sampling ofresidencehalls. to have beenexposedto thevirusandwastewater LAMP rapidtests, PCRtests foranyone known arrived, theyparticipatedinrandomtesting with ative beforereturning tocampus, andoncethey COVIDCheck Colorado. Studentshadtotest neg- surveillance, says Eric Parrie,COVID-19 CEO of students many ofwhomarefirst-generation, low-income community buildingtobringitsundergraduates relied on other screening methods and deliberate to 24-hour results for PCR tests. So the school ries, ColoradoMesa University didnot have access testingAs aschoollocatedfarfromlarge laborato- Colorado MesaUniversity, Grand Junction John Marshall,vicepresidentforStudent approach”to The schooluseda“kitchen-sink New tests (reported weekly) New cases (reported weekly) 1,000 2,000 3,000 100 200 300 — backtocampus. 0 0 Colorado MesaUniversity Colorado Mesa University —testing Mesa Colorado August 1,2020 August 1,2020 negative beforearrival students musttest test kitshomeas The university sends university staff. Casesandtests are reportedonaweeklybasis. Data wereprovided by Classes start September 1 September 1 — COVID-19 cases — —
school’s originalplanforthefall. of remote classes and exams the schoolfinished itssemester withtwoweeks Students weresenthomefor Thanksgiving, and contact tracingrampedupduringthistime. university students work.Campustesting and munity spreadinGrandJunction, wheremany which MarshallandBronsonattribute tocom- the student paper, theCriterion. sports teamstocontinuepracticing,according communal livingareas. Theapproachallowed feet in publicspacesandremove masksintheir allowed toeattogether, congregatecloserthansix 20 students onasportsteam.Mavilies were pods couldbefourstudents inanapartmentor “mavilies.” Set upbasedonhousingandactivities, cot, students weregroupedintosmallpodscalled as theschool’s “CMU is back”musicvideo. their peersthroughsocial media campaigns such The university faced a November outbreak, With anodtotheMaverick, theuniversity mas- October 1 October 1 Date Date spreads totheuniversity Grand Junction A surgeincases November outbreak students infectedduring Testing spikes toidentify November 1 November 1
—
adhering to the www.sciencenews.org December 1 December 1
remote classes go break; all Thanksgiving test toattend a negative COVID-19 ceremony requires Small graduation with contacttracing Improved monitoringapp plans: semester Spring entrances checks atbuilding campus areas;temperature occupancy ofhigh-traffic podding; dashboardshows distancing andenforced travel reporting;social tracking andinternational monitoring, COVID-19 test mandatory symptom testing ofdorms; indoors; wastewater arriving; masksrequired COVID-19 coursebefore must completefive-module Safety measures:Students LAMP results PCR testsconfirmpositive sampling LAMPtests; Testing: Weekly random on ornearcampus 10,000living Students: | February 27,2021 27 2/10/21 9:25AM FEATURE | COVID-19 ON CAMPUS
Rice University — COVID-19 cases 15
10 First week of Classes start COVID-19 court
5 Last day of classes 0 New cases (reported weekly) August 1, 2020 September 1 October 1 November 1 December 1 Date
Rice University — testing Data were provided by university staff. Cases and tests are reported 5,000 on a weekly basis.
4,000
3,000
2,000 Weekly testing begins 1,000 New tests (reported weekly) 0 August 1, 2020 September 1 October 1 November 1 December 1 Date
Students: 3,000 living on Rice University, Houston a three-page essay on whether you think masks or near campus A foundation of Rice University’s reopening plan are good ideas or not,” he says. Students wrote Testing: Weekly PCR was weekly COVID-19 testing for undergraduates, their essays after watching videos and reading testing for undergrads says Yousif Shamoo, vice provost for research. articles about public health and safety concerns in dorms or who attend in-person classes; After seeing Texas residents wait days for test around COVID-19. Another common penalty was intermittent testing for results in the summer, the school lined up two community service hours, in which students cre- staff, faculty and grad Houston-based testing partners, Baylor Genetics ated and posted flyers on campus buildings about students every two to three weeks and Houston Methodist Hospital, for 24-hour COVID-19 precautions. turnaround on test results. During the fall semester, about 130 student vio- Safety measures: Masks and social distancing Starting in the summer, student leaders helped lations were reported, half on campus and half off required indoors and the university prepare educational materials on campus. The university’s staff judicial office inves- outdoors; contact COVID-19 and set up a system to discipline those tigated the off-campus violations. tracing (priority is to first reach those exposed who broke the rules and reward those who fol- Rice also trained over 100 student health to more contagious lowed the rules, says Emily Garza, director of ambassadors to serve as resources for their students, based on Student Judicial Programs. peers who have questions about COVID-19 but viral load on PCR test); international travel Inspired by Rice’s student-run Honor Council, don’t want to ask administrators. Case numbers logged in a Rice registry the COVID-19 Community Court includes rep- remained low at Rice, with no single day seeing Spring semester plans: resentatives from all 11 residential colleges who more than six reported cases. Over 75,000 tests Due to high case are selected by student leadership and trained by were conducted during the fall semester and only numbers in Houston, student Judicial Programs. Students on the court 135 cases were confirmed. s all classes online and campus closed to try their peers who break COVID-19 protocols on students until February campus; students, staff and community members Explore more 15; LAMP testing can report misconduct through an online portal. s U.S. Centers for Disease Control and surveillance added to detect superspreader The court has been criticized as an outlet for Prevention. “COVID-19. Colleges, universities events students to police each other. But Shamoo sees it and higher learning.” December 29, 2020. as a means for education, reminding students that bit.ly/CDC-COVIDcollege their actions have consequences. As punishment for being caught without a Betsy Ladyzhets is a freelance science writer and
mask, for example: “We’re gonna make you write data journalist based in Brooklyn, N.Y. C. CHANG
28 SCIENCE NEWS | February 27, 2021
covid-colleges.indd 28 2/10/21 9:25 AM REVIEWS & PREVIEWS
BOOKSHELF person to convince people that they’re Embrace the science of the taboo right and not crazy. So the person gets deeper and deeper into [the delusion], We tend to turn I think actually we all are interested and it becomes harder and harder to away, physically in a wide variety of gross things. It’s a get them to accept treatment. or metaphori- matter of how you frame it. We may There are antipsychotic drugs that cally, from things love watching murder mysteries and can help people let go of the idea and we find unsavory: true crime and CSI-type shows. We treatments that can solve underlying leggy insects, don’t necessarily think of ourselves as problems — skin problems, for exam- bodily fluids, con- being morbid because of it. But when it ple, or nerve problems that can cause Gory Details Erika Engelhaupt versations about comes to things like biology, anatomy the sensations. [Treatment with anti- NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, death. But just and subjects that are taboo involving psychotics] makes it all sound very scary. $26 because some- sex or death, we hold ourselves to a dif- That’s one reason this problem goes so thing is disgusting, morbid or taboo ferent standard. I want people to read unrecognized and untreated — because shouldn’t keep us from learning about this book and walk away feeling like, of the stigma around mental illness and it — and could even be a cue that we you know what? It’s OK to be curious because it seems like people must be should, posits science journalist about things that we have considered crazy. Our squeamishness and fear of Erika Engelhaupt. off-limits for polite conversation. people who are experiencing this, our In Gory Details, Engelhaupt takes deep discomfort with it, has really cre- on a range of such topics, everything You went to a conference on edible ated a trap for people. from which mammals are most likely insects. This seemed like it was right at to murder members of their own spe- your limit of what you were willing to do You write about a lot of new scientific cies and the spotty history of research in the name of Gory Details. research. Any standout papers where on female genitalia to how fecal trans- It was. I felt the need to go where all of you thought, I have to write about this? plants work and the psychology of why the scientists would be and really learn A study where scientists fed different we find clowns creepy. She often uses why they think we’re all going to be human bodily fluids to blowflies to science, history or both to break down eating more insects in 20 years. It was see which ones the flies found tasti- what gives a particular topic its taboo a challenge for me. There’s a little bit of est. [The scientists] were looking at or ick status. How else are you going a thrill in doing something like eating how flies might transfer human DNA to stop chills from running up your that first mealworm. You know it’s not picked up from bodily fluids to dif- spine while reading about a woman actually going to hurt you, but it’s gross ferent parts of a crime scene. [DNA who pulled 14 tiny worms out of her eye and it’s new and it is exciting. The big- analysis] techniques are now so sensi- other than by learning the story of par- gest challenge was the silkworm pupa, tive that we’re picking up DNA from fly asitic survival that landed them there? which was large and segmented and poop. If the flies have previously eaten Regular Science News readers might just looked so … insecty. human blood or semen or saliva, there recognize Engelhaupt’s name: She can be DNA from that person that was an editor at the magazine from You write about “delusions of infesta- gets pooped out by the fly. That [DNA] 2009 to 2014. While here, Gory Details tion,” where people believe their bodies might get interpreted as blood spatter was born as a blog and later moved are teeming with insects. I was struck by or get picked up incidentally at a crime to National Geographic. The book the stories of people with this condition, scene and really confuse the situation . includes updated and expanded ver- and that they seemed to have no other Who would have thought that you need sions of some blog posts, as well as mental illness. to study fly poop to analyze DNA at a plenty of new material. A delusion is just a fixed idea that’s crime scene? Science News caught up with incorrect. When you hear that some- Engelhaupt to talk about the book. The one is delusional, you might think I was sure you were going to say the following conversation has been edited they’re schizophrenic or psychotic. paper on the calorie count of a human, for clarity and brevity. — Kate Travis There can be cases where there’s over- from the chapter on cannibalism. lap with mental illness, but a lot of That’s one where it was a question I You’ve mentioned that when people cases start off in a normal way. A per- didn’t know I had until I saw that a learn your book title is Gory Details, they son feels an itch, there’s a real physical scientist had answered it. And those assume you write for kids. sensation. It’s not too hard to imagine are some of the kinds of things that I Yes. At some point, people are expected they’d think something is crawling on wanted to fill this book with: You didn’t to grow up and not be interested in them and that it could be insects. It know you wanted to know this, but I’m gross things anymore, and I reject that. becomes extremely important to the hoping that now you’re glad you do. s
www.sciencenews.org | February 27, 2021 29
reviews.indd 29 2/10/21 9:46 AM SN_004_21_D.indd 30 hotter every day every hotter Our feverish universe is getting Read more: www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/cosmic-warning — Christopher Crockett — Christopher all. at nothing well, like, feel would It says. she hot, feel wouldn’t it So apart. far very be to tend molecules space, deep in Toronto. But of University the at astrophysicist an Lokken, Martine explains something,” touch we when energy thermal of transfer the “by heat experience People idea.) a bad It’s space. in disrobe Don’t tip: (Pro suit. space your off took you if it like feel wouldn’t it but hot, pretty sounds which C, degrees 2million roughly it’s Now Fahrenheit). (360,000° Celsius 200,000° ago. Back then, the average temperature of deep space was around years 10 was billion it than today warmer 10 is times universe the study, anew to According warming. cosmic meet warming, Global SOCIETY UPDATESOCIETY — Kathryn Hulick — Kathryn don’t. we actually that show statistics them of evidence compelling “see” we think often we why That’s patterns. cause-and-effect for look to primed are brains to debunk this and other suspicious coincidences. Our statistics using are researchers Now curse.” “mummy’s the of idea the to rise gave soon rumors Such blame. to be might spirit evil an suggested Doyle Conan Arthur Sir chamber. burial Tut’s King entering after weeks six just 56, age at unexpectedly died He long. for riches the enjoy to get not did Carnarvon But king. boy mummified the Tutankhamun, of tomb the with associated treasures found that Egypt in team a led and financed Carnarvon 1922, Lord late In brain your about What the mummy’s curse reveals Read more: www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/honeybees-defense Jones — Asher hive. the on trespassing from hornets keeps doorway dirty a that suggests This entrances. hive filthy at chewing time less percent 94 spent also They spots. dung few with those at than smears dung heavy to moderate with hives at time less far spent hornets the tests, In dung. animal with entrances hive their smearing predators: these off fend to way stinky one found have bees Asian But hours. afew just in bees of thousands out wiping hive, honeybee entire an off kill quickly can Asia from hornets Giant by decorating hives with poop hornets deadly off fend Honeybees Read more: minds of every age minds of every inquiring for disciplines scientific across developments new and research on daily reports that magazine online free award-winning, an is Students for News Science www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/mummys-curse
— from middle school on up. on school middle from — even when when even 2/10/21 10:36AM
FROM TOP: FERGREGORY/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS; NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. JEE/ UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS, A. MAHDAVI/SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV.; H. MATTILA FEEDBACK
Shaking up memories vertebrate paleontologist and biology A post–World War II data boom clinched professor, but always enjoy science the unifying theory of plate tectonics writing that combines geology and after decades of debate over whether biology.” Earth’s crust was static or mobile, Carolyn Wilson wrote that he plans to Gramling reported in “Shaking up Earth” i ncorporate Gramling’s story in his (SN: 1/16/21, p. 16). teaching. “I have enjoyed [her] s cience The story reminded some readers writing for several years and have about their experiences around the gathered a number of her articles as time of the theory’s birth in the 1960s. resources for my students. They are Reader Jane Smiley recounted her always clearly written, interesting and experience as a student at Harvard thought-provoking ,” he wrote. “When University when plate tectonics was I next teach my course, the students being hotly debated. “My professor will have several writing assignments, was Bernhard Kummel … and we had and one of them will be to produce a JANUARY 16, 2021 to use his textbook. I was present at s cience news essay, hopefully interest- a great symposium on plate tecton- ing, like Gramling’s work.” SOCIAL MEDIA ics, which was attended by geologists Sun spotting from around the world,” Smiley wrote. What stinks? Earth’s largest solar telescope “There was a cacophony of vocifer- Wild giant pandas that coat themselves has captured the sharpest ous arguments fl ying back and forth in horse manure may be seeking out two image ever of a sunspot (below), about the validity of plate tectonics. chemical compounds in the poop that Christopher Crockett reported Everyone brought their papers using inhibit a cold-sensing protein, Jonathan in “A sunspot’s moment in the overhead projector and some of the Lambert reported in “Pandas may roll in the spotlight” (SN: 1/16/21, Europeans discussed Alfred Wegener’s poop to stay warm” (SN: 1/16/21, p. 14). p. 32). While many people on theory [of continental drift], and they “Fresh horse dung has a signature Facebook commented on the got rebuffed by my professor as well as aroma to it, very tangy,” reader sunspot’s resemblance to the many others in the fi eld ,” she wrote. “I Pat Rapp wrote. “Are those two Eye of Sauron from The Lord was a ‘drifter,’ but I sat quietly while I volatiles … responsible for that edge of the Rings, reader DeWayne listened attentively to the arguments. to the aroma?” he asked. Rapp also Williams mused about connec- Professor Kummel was not a drifter wondered if the compounds are pres- tions between the macroscopic and when I had to write papers in his ent in the dung of other species such and microscopic worlds. “You class, I had to swallow my beliefs and as donkeys and zebras. “If memory ever think the universe looks write what he wanted to hear. It was a serves, donkey dung doesn’t broadcast like what you might see under a very exciting time to be a student there, itself with anything like the strength microscope, ” he wrote. and I learned to be an independent of horse dung.” thinker in many disciplines.” The compounds might contribute Reader Mark Wilson recalled to horse manure’s strong odor, says attending a lecture in the late 1960s Lambert, but he doesn’t think they by geophysicist J. Tuzo Wilson who, are solely responsible for the stench. Gramling reported, compared the “The researchers are currently inves- impact of the theory of plate tecton- tigating whether these compounds are ics to that of Einstein’s general theory present in the dung of similar species,” of relativity. The geophysicist shared he says. “his ideas concerning oceanic hot spot Join the conversation island chains such as Hawaii, and what Correction E-MAIL [email protected] he called transform faults in the ocean “Suspended education” (SN: 1/16/21, MAIL Attn: Feedback 1719 N St., NW fl oor,” Wilson wrote. “I also worked p. 24) reported that a study looking Washington, DC 20036 for the summer of 1968 aboard a at a color-blind approach to reducing Canadian geophysical research ship on the discipline gap between white and Connect with us the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, surveying the Black students showed that the gap ocean fl oor stripes of magnetism and grew from a threefold difference to gravity measurements, and conducting more than fi vefold. This is incorrect.
NSO/NSF AND AURA AND AURA NSO/NSF seismic tests. I ended up becoming a The gap grew to almost fi vefold.
www.sciencenews.org | February 27, 2021 31
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Iconic brain cell sketches, embroidered In the late 1800s, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spanish brain tapestry, a project described in the December issue of Lancet scientist, spent long hours in his attic drawing elaborate Neurology. cells. His careful, solitary work helped reveal individual The panels, each about 23 centimeters on a side, re-create a cells of the brain that together create wider networks. For variety of brain cells. For instance, nerve cells called Purkinje those insights, Cajal received a Nobel Prize in physiology or cells (top row, middle) collect incoming signals with their lush medicine in 1906. Now, a group of embroiderers has traced tendrils before sending along their own quieting signals. those iconic cell images with thread, paying tribute to the Cajal’s drawings are still relevant, says neuroscientist and pioneering drawings that helped us see the brain clearly. project cofounder Catherine Abbott . Even with powerful The Cajal Embroidery Project was launched in March microscopes, our views of nerve cells look pretty much the 2020 by scientists at the University of Edinburgh. More than same today . And that thread ties the embroiderers to Cajal’s 100 volunteers — scientists, artists and embroiderers — sewed work, she says. “We are looking at the same thing and feeling
panels (nine shown) that will ultimately be stitched into a the same sense of wonder.” — Laura Sanders CAROL PHILP; MIDDLE ROW: JANET ASKEW, RIGHT): LIZ RIBCHESTER, KATIE (LEFT TO ROW TOP PROJECT, EMBROIDERY CAJAL ALISON TODD MELANIE STEFAN, NIKI STYPIDOU, ROW: EMMA PERKINS; BOTTOM HALEY, COLEMAN, JANE
32 SCIENCE NEWS | February 27, 2021
sci vis.indd 32 2/10/21 9:49 AM Regeneron and Society for Science salute the amazing young scientists selected from nearly 1,800 entrants as finalists in the 2021 Regeneron Science Talent Search.
Laalitya Acharya Akhilesh Balasingam Sarah Chen Yunseo Choi Sam Christian Tali Finger Jessie Gan Noah Getz Mason, OH San Jose, CA Houston, TX Exeter, NH Austin, TX Miami, FL San Diego, CA New York, NY
C Gopal Goel Hannah Goldenberg Michael Gomez Amy Guan Wenjun Hou Jared Ilan Vedanth Iyer Eshani Jha Portland, OR Old Greenwich, CT Fairview, NJ Plano, TX Portland, OR Pleasantville, NY Portland, OR San Jose, CA M
Y
CM
MY
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CMY
K Marvin Li James Licato Andrei Mandelshtam Rebecca Monge Michael Pavelchek Timothy Qian Anushka Sanyal Alay Shah Salisbury, MD Arlington, VA Irvine, CA Carmel, NY Ossining, NY Rockville, MD Los Altos, CA Plano, TX
Justin Shen Fareed Sheriff Eleanor Sigrest Edgar Sosa Claire Tang Dasia Taylor Katherine Tung Parisa Vaziri Glen Head, NY Glen Allen, VA Woodbridge, VA Greenwich, CT San Jose, CA North Liberty, IA Menlo Park, CA Richardson, TX
Vetri Vel Jeffrey Wang Justin Xu Vivian Yee Lucy Zha Jason Zhang Jessica Zhang Amy Zhou Veazie, ME San Diego, CA Hockessin, DE Beverly Hills, MI Albertson, NY Bowling Green, KY Foster City, CA Sugar Land, TX
About the Regeneron Science Talent Search The Regeneron Science Talent Search is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors. The competition is designed to engage and inspire the next generation of scientific leaders. www.regeneron.com/sts | https://www.societyforscience.org/regeneron-sts/
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