Category: Science / Medical Information

“Scuba-diving” lizards use bubble to breathe underwater

I thought this would be cute to post for a science article, and now that I’m getting it done, I’m thinking Scottie posted video about these little guys, a few months or so back. I hope this isn’t a boring duplicate. Earlier it didn’t hit me, but now at bedtime, the photo is ringing a vague bell. Still, it’s really cute for a Friday morning, so enjoy the side eye from the anole being called a chicken nugget.

September 18, 2024, Ariel Marcy

Researchers have found a type of lizard – referred to as the chicken nugget of the forest – that can hide underwater thanks to a special bubble they produce around their nostrils.

Details of the scuba-diving lizards are published in Biology Letters.

Image of blue-gray lizard standing underwater with large bubble emerging from its nostrils.
A water anole produces a special bubble over its nostrils to breathe underwater. Credit: Lindsey Swierk.

For animals that have adapted to live on land, air-based breathing limits the amount of time they can survive underwater.

Many invertebrates, including species of beetles and spiders, are known to use bubbles of air to extend the amount of time they can spend underwater. These bubbles allow air-breathing animals to inhale previously exhaled air and take in additional oxygen. This behaviour is called rebreathing, inspired by the scuba technology of the same name.

Until recently, there were no known examples of vertebrates using bubbles to rebreathe underwater. In 2021, Lindsey Swierk, an assistant research professor at Binghamton University in New York in the USA, and her colleagues documented rebreathing in several species of Anolis lizards.

One such species, the water anole (Anolis aquaticus), is a semi-aquatic lizard that lives near streams in the forests of southern Costa Rica.

“Anoles are kind of like the chicken nuggets of the forest. Birds eat them, snakes eat them. So, by jumping in the water, they can escape a lot of their predators,” says Swierk. “We know that they can stay underwater at least about 20 minutes, but probably longer.”

The question remains whether the bubble over the water anole’s nostril functionally extended the amount of time these lizards could hide underwater.

To test this, Swierk and coauthors applied a bubble-impairing substance to the skin of one group of lizards. 

“Lizard skin is hydrophobic. Typically, that allows air to stick very tightly to the skin and permits this bubble to form,” said Swierk. “But when you cover the skin with an emollient, air no longer sticks to the skin surface, so the bubbles can’t form.”

Swierk’s team then measured how long the control group stayed underwater compared to the bubble-impaired group. They found that the control group stayed underwater 32% longer on average.

“This is significant because this is the first experiment that truly shows adaptive significance of bubbles. Rebreathing bubbles allow lizards to stay underwater longer. Before, we suspected it – we saw a pattern – but we didn’t actually test if it served a functional role.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/animals/scuba-diving-lizards-breathe-bubble/

Some Decent News from Kentucky

By  BRUCE SCHREINERUpdated 2:32 PM CDT, September 18, 2024Share

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear banned the use of “conversion therapy” on minors in Kentucky on Wednesday, calling his executive order a necessary step to protect children from a widely discredited practice that tries to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through counseling.

The governor used his executive powers after Republicans who control the state legislature repeatedly blocked efforts to enact a state law banning the practice. Beshear said he would no longer wait for others to “do what’s right.”

“My faith teaches me that all children are children of God,” Beshear said during the signing ceremony at the Kentucky Capitol. “And where practices are endangering and even harming those children, we must act. The practice of so-called ‘conversion therapy’ hurts our children.”

It was the latest action in a national debate over conversion therapy and the rights of LGBTQ+ children and their families. (snip-MORE)

https://apnews.com/article/kentucky-conversion-therapy-andy-beshear-93a07354cd0ed2e7fc09c15f204f75c0

Van Gogh painting mirrors real atmospheric physics

September 18, 2024 Ellen Phiddian

(One of the teachers with whom I worked had a beautiful tattoo of this painting on her inner wrist. She said it gave her strength. I need to send this to her, as she tutors STEAM aside from classroom work, and this is her top favorite painting.)

Van gogh's the starry night
Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh. The painting is currently held in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, USA.

Scientists have peered at Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night painting and discovered it displays a startling resemblance to real atmospheric turbulence.

To see stars, one needs clear skies. But just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean there aren’t intricate patterns of air movement above us on a clear night.

A paper published in Physics of Fluids, suggests that van Gogh had an “intuitive” understanding of this while making his famous painting in 1889.

A Chinese and French team analysed the brush strokes in The Starry Night, aiming to see how similar they were to real atmospheric movements.

The masterpiece has been the subject of several atmospheric studies before, with contradictory conclusions, but the researchers say they’re the first to look at all of the painting’s whirls and eddies.

They looked at the 14 main swirls in the painting, and compared these with theories on energy and turbulent flows in the atmosphere.

“The scale of the paint strokes played a crucial role,” says author Associate Professor Yongxiang Huang, a researcher in fluid dynamics at Xiamen University, China.

“With a high-resolution digital picture, we were able to measure precisely the typical size of the brushstrokes and compare these to the scales expected from turbulence theories.”

Cropped and annotated sections of van gogh's the starry night
The authors measured the whirling brush strokes in van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” along with variances in brightness of the paint colours, to see how closely they reflected real atmospheric physics. There were several matches between the painting and fluid dynamics, suggesting van Gogh had an “intuitive” understanding of these concepts. Credit: Yinxiang Ma

As well as brush stroke size, the researchers also examined the “relative luminance” of paint colours used in the painting’s swirls.

They found that the picture aligned with a theory of turbulence called Kolmogorov’s Law, which predicts atmospheric movement based on measured inertia.

The changes in brightness reflect a process called Batchelor’s scaling, which describes how fluids diffuse at smaller scales.

“It reveals a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena,” says Huang.

“Van Gogh’s precise representation of turbulence might be from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere or an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/physics/van-gogh-starry-night-atmosphere/

This is cool-

Before Tesla …

Earth will have new “mini moon”, length of a bus, for 2 months

September 16, 2024 Evrim Yazgin Cosmos science journalist

An asteroid is approaching, but it won’t crash into Earth. Instead, it’ll be our planet’s little companion for 2 months before continuing on its merry way.

Asteroid approaching earth, computer artwork
Asteroid approaching Earth, computer artwork. Credit: SCIEPRO / Science Photo Library / Getty Images Plus.

2024 PT5 is about 11m wide. The asteroid was discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in South Africa on 7 August.

In a study published in the journal Research Notes of the AAS, a pair of asteroid dynamics researchers calculated the asteroid’s size, speed and path. The researchers determined the asteroid would complete a single orbit around Earth over 53 days before being flung back into outer space.

The asteroid will start its orbit of Earth on 29 September. The bus-sized “mini moon” is scheduled to depart on 25 November.

Many asteroids follow a similar journey, falling into partial or full elliptical orbits around our planet as they pass by. One such “quasi-moon” is an asteroid discovered last year which astronomers believe has been orbiting Earth for more than 2,000 years.

Other quasi-moons make much briefer visits, like the 5m 2006 RH120 which orbited Earth for about a year and 2020 CD3 which was a mini companion of our planet for several years before leaving us in May 2020.

The researchers also believe they know from where 2024 PT5 is joining us based on its trajectory.

“Such orbital elements are consistent with those of the Arjunas, a sparsely resonant population of small NEOs [near-Earth objects] in a secondary asteroid belt found surrounding the path followed by the Earth–Moon system,” they write.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/mini-moon-asteroid-2-months/

One more-

Well, for now, anyway.

Reblog from Octoberfarm:

Germany Laughs at Trump With the Rest of The World

Germany is denying an assertion made by former President Donald Trump during the presidential debate Tuesday about the country’s renewable energy industry.

“You believe in things like we’re not going to frack, we’re not going to take fossil fuel, we’re not going to do things that are going to be strong, whether you like it or not,” Trump said in his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “Germany tried that, and within one year, they were back to building normal energy plants.”

But on Wednesday, Germany’s Federal Foreign Office decided to issue a rebuttal, echoing the former president’s language.

“Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables,” the Federal Foreign Office shared on X. “And we are shutting down – not building – coal & nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest.”

The German Foreign Office also poked at Trump for another comment he made during the debate.

“PS: We also don’t eat cats and dogs,”

https://octoberfarm.blogspot.com/2024/09/germany-laughs-at-trump-with-rest-of.html

Hey, Any Good Environmental News Lately? There IS?

Thanks Joe Biden.

DOKTOR ZOOM SEP 14, 2024

The presidential election has turned into a contest between a capable, smart woman who emphasizes what Americans can achieve when they work together for the common good, and a sundowning old racist creep who would be pathetic if he weren’t so dangerously close to returning to power.

In case you’re wondering what the difference looks like, compare the hate and division the old racist creep is spreading with some recent announcements from President Joe Biden’s administration, nearly all of them about programs funded by one or another of Biden’s big legislative packages. Just a little reminder of why elections matter, and of the legacy that Kamala Harris is committed to building on. For, y’know, the people.

Lots of news-go read! 🌞

https://open.substack.com/pub/wonkette/p/hey-any-good-environmental-news-lately?r=1pk2l&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Parkinson’s Petrel-ABC’s Bird of the Week

Parkinson's Petrel

Peace & Justice History for 9/14:

September 14, 1918
Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for opposing U.S. entry into World War I. Debs had been an elected official in Indiana, a labor organizer, writer and editor, had founded the first industrial union in the U.S., the American Railway Union, and had run for President four times on the Socialist Party ticket.
He ran again for president from prison in 1920 with the slogan “From Atlanta Prison to the White House,” and received nearly one million.
Learn more about Eugene V. Debs  
September 14, 1940
Congress passed the Selective Service Act, providing for the first peacetime draft (though Japan had already invaded China in 1937 and Germany had invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1939) in U.S. history.
September 14, 1948
A groundbreaking ceremony took place in New York City at the site of the United Nations’ world headquarters.
The site selected for the permanent
headquarters of the United Nations as it was in 1946.
The 39-story building on 18 acres of Manhattan’s Turtle Bay neighborhood (donated by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) on the East River. It is a major expression of the International Style with its simple geometric form and glass curtain wall, designed principally by Le Corbusier.
The UN building today
Background and more examples of the minimalist, utilitarian International style 
September 14, 1963
The ABC television network invited singer, songwriter, banjo player and activist Pete Seeger to appear on its Saturday night folk and acoustic music show, Hootenanny, despite the fact that he had been blacklisted.

But the invitation stood only if he’d sign an oath of loyalty to the U.S. He described his reaction: “This is ridiculous. I’d sign ’em, if you sign ’em, and everybody who’s born will sign ’em, then we’d all be clean.” 
In the 1940s Seeger traveled throughout the country with Woody Guthrie, performing at union meetings, strikes and demonstrations. After World War II, he and Lee Hays co-founded the Weavers, the legendary folk group that gained commercial success despite being blacklisted.
A Pete Seeger Biography More about Hootenanny 
September 14, 1964

The Free Speech Movement began at the University of California-Berkeley when its Dean Katherine Towle (pronounced toll) announced that existing University regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or candidates, signing of members, and collection of funds by student organizations at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph, would henceforth be ”strictly enforced.”
Read more
September 14, 1982
Wisconsin became the first to approve a statewide referendum calling for a freeze on all testing of nuclear weapons.
September 14, 1990
The Pentagon announced a $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (Saudi Arabia’s eastern neighbor) had invaded Kuwait six weeks earlier.
Saud royal family
September 14, 1991
The South African government, the African National Congress, the Inkatha Freedom Party, a total of forty organizations, signed the National Peace Accord. It led to the country’s first multi-racial elections and the end of South Africa’s racially separatist apartheid (literally separateness in the Afrikaans language) political, economic and social system by 1994.
“ Bearing in mind the values which we hold, be these religious or humanitarian, we pledge ourselves with integrity of purpose to make this land a prosperous one where we can all live, work and play together in peace and harmony.”
Background of the conflict 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september14