scientificamerican--2020-11-17--Stellar Smashups May Fuel Planetary Habitability, Study Suggests

In the search for alien life , Earth—as the only planet known to be inhabited—has always been a starting point .
“ We look for something that reminds us of home , ” says Natalie Batalha , an astronomer at the University of California , Santa Cruz .
That means a rocky planet at just the right distance from its star—a star similar to the sun—to soak up sufficient starlight to allow surface water to exist in liquid form .
But as astronomers have discovered thousands and thousands of planets , they have encountered a bewildering zoo of diverse worlds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far as today ’ s telescopes can tell—could turn out to be something quite different than our familiar world .
But how variable and unearthly could conditions on these rocky planets be ?
And could even extremely alien worlds harbor life ?
“ What are the physical processes that make them more diverse ?
” Batalha says .
“ That ’ s what we 're trying to understand.
” Many of those physical processes occur deep inside a planet .
In particular , a world ’ s inner inventory of radioactive elements could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by heating its interior .
A robust source of geophysical warmth , it is thought , is crucial for plate tectonics and the generation of a planet ’ s magnetic field , which in turn seems critical for life—on Earth , at least .
Powered by interior heat , the conveyor-belt-like action of tectonic plates sliding around Earth ’ s surface helps to stabilize the planet ’ s climate .
By recycling carbon over geologic time , plate tectonics regulates the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere .
Our planet ’ s magnetic field @ @ @ @ @ @ @ radiation , forms from electric currents raised in whirling layers of molten iron at Earth ’ s core .
This geologic “ dynamo ” depends on how much radiogenic heat is in the mantle .
Now a new study finds that a habitable world may indeed need just the right amount of these radionuclides .
Too much , and a planet could lack a churning dynamo to create a strong magnetic field—but it would perhaps boast a thick , inhospitable atmosphere baked off from the hot rock .
Too little , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so cold and inert that it would not be able to sustain much geologic activity at all—which might even slow the dynamo to a stop .
“ Even if you find a planet with the same mass and age as Earth , it could be radically different , ” says Francis Nimmo , a geophysicist at the University of California , Santa Cruz , and lead author of the study , which was published last week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters .
Got a Habitable Planet ?
Thank Your Lucky ( Neutron ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to probe how radionuclides might affect a planet 's interior .
But this paper “ explores , in more detail than I ’ ve ever seen , the geophysical and geodynamic consequences of different heat productions within terrestrial exoplanets , ” says Stephen Mojzsis , a geologist at the University of Colorado Boulder , who was not part of the new research .
Within our own planet , heat convection is what drives the dynamo : hot globs of molten iron rise from the depths to meet the colder mantle above , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the core .
This circulation delivers heat to the mantle , which then releases it through the surface via the action of plate tectonics .
Hot mantle material oozes up through cracks in the crust at plate boundaries and other tectonically active regions .
And cold surface rock thrusts down into the hot mantle , cooling it like ice added to a toasty beverage .
Leaving aside its aforementioned importance for regulating Earth ’ s climate , without plate tectonics , Nimmo says , the mantle could not be efficiently cooled , thus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That is , if Earth lacked plate tectonics , there would be no convection and thus no dynamo .
A rocky planet ’ s possession of a dynamo and plate tectonics is no foregone conclusion .
Of all the terrestrial worlds orbiting our sun , only Earth boasts both , largely because of the heat still locked in its interior .
Today , Mojzsis says , about half of Earth ’ s heat is left over from its birth—built up from the energetic impacts of countless rocks brought together by gravity across tens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rest of our planet ’ s inner warmth now comes from the radionuclides thorium 232 and uranium 238 .
These radionuclides , among others , are most likely forged in the cataclysmic collisions of neutron stars—superdense stellar corpses left behind after massive stars explode .
During these events , neutrons glom onto heavy nuclei to build even heavier nuclei , some of which then blast out into the wider cosmos .
Such collisions are rare , occurring in a large galaxy such as the Milky Way about once every 10,000 years .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of radionuclides that eventually find their way into vast clouds of gas and dust that occasionally collapse to form stars and planets .
Because the collisions are so sparse , the abundance of radionuclides in stars varies widely across the Milky Way , ranging from 30 to 300 percent of “ local ” levels in our solar system .
To see how such a wide range of radionuclide abundances might affect Earth-mass planets , the researchers relied on a computer model that simulates the flow of heat in a world ’ s interior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ amount of thorium and uranium heats the mantle so much that it acts as an insulating blanket , preventing heat from escaping the liquid core .
If the heat can not escape , there is no convection , which means no dynamo—and no magnetic field .
A hotter mantle also produces more gas-spewing volcanoes , which can create an oppressively dense , suffocating atmosphere .
But if the radionuclide abundance is too low , the mantle becomes so cold that it stiffens up .
Plate tectonics grows sluggish , and eventually , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Without plate tectonics to cool the mantle and pull heat from the core , the dynamo again shuts down .
Absent some other way to generate internal heat , then , a habitable planet might need a just-right portion of radionuclides , a bit like the middling temperature of the storied bowl of porridge in the fairy tale “ Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
” To find such a planet , astronomers can measure the radionuclides in its host star by observing that star ’ s spectrum—the way the starlight is broken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the chemical fingerprints of elements .
Because both star and planet are born out of the same cloud of gas and dust , their chemical compositions should be similar .
In practice , thorium and uranium are difficult to measure in this way , so in the new study , the researchers propose to instead look for europium—another element produced by neutron star collisions that sports a clearer spectroscopic signature .
That is the idea , anyway .
The model is simple and , for one , assumes from the start that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , says Craig O ’ Neill , a geophysicist at Macquarie University in Australia , who was not involved in the study.
“ Whether or not this is a valid assumption for exoplanets remains to be seen , ” he says .
“ These models will produce magnetic fields much more easily than models without plate tectonics.
” Indeed , no one is exactly sure of every ingredient necessary for plate tectonics , Nimmo says .
Water ’ s lubricating effects on the motions of rock , for instance , could be vital—although @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heat .
So how it depends on radionuclides is uncertain .
“ We don ’ t even understand how plate tectonics works in this solar system , ” he says .
Mojzsis says another big unknown is planet formation , a complicated process that can lead to variations in a world ’ s reservoirs of radiogenic elements and internal heat .
For example , do planets predominantly form via violent collisions of moon-sized rocks or a somewhat gentler accumulation of swarms of pebbles ?
“ Depending on which model you choose , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” he says .
Measuring radionuclides in a host star , then , will not necessarily reflect what lies within its planets .
But if the findings turn out to be true , a search for stellar europium could help astronomers find the planetary systems most likely to harbor habitable worlds .
That would be tremendously useful , says Batalha , who was not part of the research .
“ We will go out and measure the abundances in stars , ” she adds .
“ And maybe that will help us refine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a future space mission .
”

In the search for alien life, Earth—as the only planet known to be inhabited—has always been a starting point. “We look for something that reminds us of home,” says Natalie Batalha, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. That means a rocky planet at just the right distance from its star—a star similar to the sun—to soak up sufficient starlight to allow surface water to exist in liquid form.
But as astronomers have discovered thousands and thousands of planets, they have encountered a bewildering zoo of diverse worlds. So a rocky planet—Earth-like, as far as today’s telescopes can tell—could turn out to be something quite different than our familiar world. But how variable and unearthly could conditions on these rocky planets be? And could even extremely alien worlds harbor life?
“What are the physical processes that make them more diverse?” Batalha says. “That’s what we're trying to understand.”
Many of those physical processes occur deep inside a planet. In particular, a world’s inner inventory of radioactive elements could have a huge impact on its habitability by heating its interior. A robust source of geophysical warmth, it is thought, is crucial for plate tectonics and the generation of a planet’s magnetic field, which in turn seems critical for life—on Earth, at least. Powered by interior heat, the conveyor-belt-like action of tectonic plates sliding around Earth’s surface helps to stabilize the planet’s climate. By recycling carbon over geologic time, plate tectonics regulates the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Our planet’s magnetic field, which helps protect against harsh cosmic radiation, forms from electric currents raised in whirling layers of molten iron at Earth’s core. This geologic “dynamo” depends on how much radiogenic heat is in the mantle.
Now a new study finds that a habitable world may indeed need just the right amount of these radionuclides. Too much, and a planet could lack a churning dynamo to create a strong magnetic field—but it would perhaps boast a thick, inhospitable atmosphere baked off from the hot rock. Too little, and the planet’s tepid interior could be so cold and inert that it would not be able to sustain much geologic activity at all—which might even slow the dynamo to a stop.
“Even if you find a planet with the same mass and age as Earth, it could be radically different,” says Francis Nimmo, a geophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lead author of the study, which was published last week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Got a Habitable Planet? Thank Your Lucky (Neutron) Stars
The researchers are not the first to probe how radionuclides might affect a planet's interior. But this paper “explores, in more detail than I’ve ever seen, the geophysical and geodynamic consequences of different heat productions within terrestrial exoplanets,” says Stephen Mojzsis, a geologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, who was not part of the new research.
Within our own planet, heat convection is what drives the dynamo: hot globs of molten iron rise from the depths to meet the colder mantle above, where they then cool and sink back toward the core. This circulation delivers heat to the mantle, which then releases it through the surface via the action of plate tectonics. Hot mantle material oozes up through cracks in the crust at plate boundaries and other tectonically active regions. And cold surface rock thrusts down into the hot mantle, cooling it like ice added to a toasty beverage. Leaving aside its aforementioned importance for regulating Earth’s climate, without plate tectonics, Nimmo says, the mantle could not be efficiently cooled, thus preventing heat from escaping the core. That is, if Earth lacked plate tectonics, there would be no convection and thus no dynamo.
A rocky planet’s possession of a dynamo and plate tectonics is no foregone conclusion. Of all the terrestrial worlds orbiting our sun, only Earth boasts both, largely because of the heat still locked in its interior. Today, Mojzsis says, about half of Earth’s heat is left over from its birth—built up from the energetic impacts of countless rocks brought together by gravity across tens of millions of years. Most of the rest of our planet’s inner warmth now comes from the radionuclides thorium 232 and uranium 238.
These radionuclides, among others, are most likely forged in the cataclysmic collisions of neutron stars—superdense stellar corpses left behind after massive stars explode. During these events, neutrons glom onto heavy nuclei to build even heavier nuclei, some of which then blast out into the wider cosmos. Such collisions are rare, occurring in a large galaxy such as the Milky Way about once every 100,000 years. Each time, the events manufacture bursts of radionuclides that eventually find their way into vast clouds of gas and dust that occasionally collapse to form stars and planets. Because the collisions are so sparse, the abundance of radionuclides in stars varies widely across the Milky Way, ranging from 30 to 300 percent of “local” levels in our solar system.
Three versions of a rocky planet with different amounts of radiogenic heating. The middle planet is Earth-like, with plate tectonics and a dynamo-generated magnetic field. The top planet, with more radiogenic heating, has extreme volcanism but no dynamo or magnetic field. The bottom planet, lacking volcanism due to less radiogenic heating, is geologically inert. Credit: Melissa Weiss UCSC
A “Goldilocks” Dynamo
To see how such a wide range of radionuclide abundances might affect Earth-mass planets, the researchers relied on a computer model that simulates the flow of heat in a world’s interior. They found that dialing up the amount of thorium and uranium heats the mantle so much that it acts as an insulating blanket, preventing heat from escaping the liquid core. If the heat cannot escape, there is no convection, which means no dynamo—and no magnetic field. A hotter mantle also produces more gas-spewing volcanoes, which can create an oppressively dense, suffocating atmosphere.
But if the radionuclide abundance is too low, the mantle becomes so cold that it stiffens up. Plate tectonics grows sluggish, and eventually, the researchers speculate, it may cease altogether. Without plate tectonics to cool the mantle and pull heat from the core, the dynamo again shuts down.
Absent some other way to generate internal heat, then, a habitable planet might need a just-right portion of radionuclides, a bit like the middling temperature of the storied bowl of porridge in the fairy tale “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”
To find such a planet, astronomers can measure the radionuclides in its host star by observing that star’s spectrum—the way the starlight is broken up into its constituent wavelengths, encoding the chemical fingerprints of elements. Because both star and planet are born out of the same cloud of gas and dust, their chemical compositions should be similar. In practice, thorium and uranium are difficult to measure in this way, so in the new study, the researchers propose to instead look for europium—another element produced by neutron star collisions that sports a clearer spectroscopic signature.
That is the idea, anyway. The model is simple and, for one, assumes from the start that the planet has plate tectonics like Earth does, says Craig O’Neill, a geophysicist at Macquarie University in Australia, who was not involved in the study.“Whether or not this is a valid assumption for exoplanets remains to be seen,” he says. “These models will produce magnetic fields much more easily than models without plate tectonics.”
Indeed, no one is exactly sure of every ingredient necessary for plate tectonics, Nimmo says. Water’s lubricating effects on the motions of rock, for instance, could be vital—although everyone agrees the recipe involves abundant internal heat. So how it depends on radionuclides is uncertain. “We don’t even understand how plate tectonics works in this solar system,” he says.
Mojzsis says another big unknown is planet formation, a complicated process that can lead to variations in a world’s reservoirs of radiogenic elements and internal heat. For example, do planets predominantly form via violent collisions of moon-sized rocks or a somewhat gentler accumulation of swarms of pebbles? “Depending on which model you choose, you may get different outcomes in composition,” he says. Measuring radionuclides in a host star, then, will not necessarily reflect what lies within its planets.
But if the findings turn out to be true, a search for stellar europium could help astronomers find the planetary systems most likely to harbor habitable worlds. That would be tremendously useful, says Batalha, who was not part of the research. “We will go out and measure the abundances in stars,” she adds. “And maybe that will help us refine our target selection for our initial observations with a future space mission.”


scientificamerican--2020-11-18--Science News Briefs from All Over

Science News Briefs from All Over

Hi , I ’ m Scott Hershberger , with Scientific American as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellow .
And here ’ s a short piece from the November 2020 issue of the magazine , in the section called Advances : Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science , Technology and Medicine .
The article is titled “ Quick Hits , ” and it ’ s a rundown of some stories from around the globe .
Panama : Vampire bats monitored at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute have fewer interactions with family and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But they do not seem to stay apart intentionally—instead sick bats are simply too lethargic to call out to or groom one another .
Canada : The last fully intact ice shelf in Canada collapsed into the Arctic Ocean this summer .
Located in the territory of Nunavut , the Milne Ice Shelf lost 80 square kilometers of ice—40 percent of its area—in just two days .
Chile : Living 6,700 meters above sea level , a yellow-rumped leafeared mouse found at the summit of the dormant volcano Llullaillaco is the highest-dwelling mammal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the animal survives the oxygen scarcity and freezing temperatures at this elevation .
Russia : An analysis of ancient woolly rhino DNA from Siberia revealed that the population size was stable for thousands of years before the mammal 's extinction 14,000 years ago , suggesting that a warming climate—not hunting by humans—most likely triggered its demise .
Ethiopia : Paleoanthropologists unearthed a 1.4-million-year old hand ax made from a hippo 's leg bone .
Together with recently discovered stone tools , the ax indicates that Homo erectus had a diverse tool kit several @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suspected .
Antarctica : Contrary to researchers ' expectations , methane-eating microbes failed to rapidly contain the first methane leak detected on the Antarctic seafloor .
The finding means more of the potent greenhouse gas may have been pouring into the atmosphere than previously thought .

Full Transcript
Hi, I’m Scott Hershberger, with Scientific American as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellow. And here’s a short piece from the November 2020 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and Medicine. The article is titled “Quick Hits,” and it’s a rundown of some stories from around the globe.
Panama: Vampire bats monitored at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute have fewer interactions with family and friends when ill, biologists say. But they do not seem to stay apart intentionally—instead sick bats are simply too lethargic to call out to or groom one another.
Canada: The last fully intact ice shelf in Canada collapsed into the Arctic Ocean this summer. Located in the territory of Nunavut, the Milne Ice Shelf lost 80 square kilometers of ice—40 percent of its area—in just two days.
Chile: Living 6,700 meters above sea level, a yellow-rumped leafeared mouse found at the summit of the dormant volcano Llullaillaco is the highest-dwelling mammal ever documented. It remains unclear how the animal survives the oxygen scarcity and freezing temperatures at this elevation.
Russia: An analysis of ancient woolly rhino DNA from Siberia revealed that the population size was stable for thousands of years before the mammal's extinction 14,000 years ago, suggesting that a warming climate—not hunting by humans—most likely triggered its demise.
Ethiopia: Paleoanthropologists unearthed a 1.4-million-year old hand ax made from a hippo's leg bone. Together with recently discovered stone tools, the ax indicates that Homo erectus had a diverse tool kit several hundred thousand years earlier than scientists had suspected.
Antarctica: Contrary to researchers' expectations, methane-eating microbes failed to rapidly contain the first methane leak detected on the Antarctic seafloor. The finding means more of the potent greenhouse gas may have been pouring into the atmosphere than previously thought.
That was “Quick Hits.” I’m Scott Hershberger.
(The above text is a transcript of this podcast)


scientificamerican--2020-11-17--With GOP Support, Arizona Mandates Cleaner Energy

Bob Burns didn ’ t always love renewables .
Shortly after he was elected to the Arizona Corporation Commission in 2012 , the conservative Republican voted to kill what remained of the state ’ s subsidy for rooftop solar installations .
But last week Burns managed something only a few blue-state climate hawks have pulled off : He helped pass a rule calling for the state to eliminate carbon emissions from its power grid by 2050 .
In doing so , Arizona becomes only the seventh state to pass a law requiring its utilities generate all their electricity from carbon-free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where such a charge has been led by Republicans .
Three Republicans joined the commission ’ s sole Democrat in voting for the rule , with one Republican commissioner in opposition .
The shift says as much about the growth of the renewables industry as it does a change in the political winds .
Wind and solar costs have fallen dramatically , and technologies like battery storage , which were once viewed as a future alternative , are now being deployed in the field .
That opened the door to support from Republicans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and will retire when his term ends on Jan. 4 .
“ When I came in , I was opposed to subsidies .
I was a creature of legislature who didn ’ t like subsidies , ” Burns said .
“ It wasn ’ t hard to vote against that.
” Burns ’ views began to shift as he attended conferences of utility regulators and learned about broader industry trends .
Particularly influential in his thinking was Colorado ’ s experience in 2018 , when the state ’ s largest utility , Xcel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new power generation and was flooded with plans for cheap renewables .
A provision in Arizona ’ s rule passed last week mirrors Colorado ’ s approach .
When Arizona utilities are contemplating plans for new power plants , they will need to put out a request for information on the cost of all new sources of electricity generation .
“ It ’ s been an evolutionary-type change of mine because of the additional information and technology advancements , ” Burns said .
Speaking of the new rule , he added , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to get that done .
I didn ’ t know if we could do it.
” The Arizona Corporation Commission , or ACC as it is often called , is unique among state utility boards .
Its members are elected , and its role in setting utility policy is spelled out in the state ’ s Constitution , meaning its rulings carry the force of law .
Even so , there are limitations to the commission ’ s new standard .
It only applies to the state ’ s investor-owned utilities , Arizona @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tucson Electric Power .
It notably does not include the Salt River Project , the large electric cooperative that operates several large coal plants serving the state .
The rule also does not call for an enhanced renewable portfolio standard , as initially contemplated .
Instead , it requires carbon dioxide emissions fall 50 % of average 2016-2018 levels by 2032 , 75 % by 2030 and 100 % by 2050 .
Commissioners voted to nix the renewables standard last week , as it became clear two Republicans opposed to the renewables mandate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The change has two important implications .
First , the standard will count electricity generated by nuclear , among other carbon-free sources , as well as renewables like wind and solar .
Second , it was needed to earn the support of Republican Commissioner Lea Márquez Peterson , who opposed the renewable requirement but backed the carbon-free standard .
Her support means a majority will continue to support the rule on the new commission .
The rule will now go out for public comment before it is finalized .
Amanda Ormond , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arizona Energy Office , said the state ’ s politics have tracked the economics .
“ I think the single biggest factor is clean energy cost reductions have completely flipped the economics of the utility such that the clean stuff is now the cheap stuff , ” she said .
“ I think there was a recognition two to three years ago that renewables are really , truly cheaper.
” The shifting regulatory environment comes amid a sea change in how Arizona generates electricity .
Where coal generated almost 40 % of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it accounted for 20 % of Arizona ’ s power production last year , according to federal figures .
Most of that gap has been made up by natural gas , which surged from 27 % to 41 % of the state ’ s power generation over that time .
But renewables are now coming on strong .
Solar barely registered in 2010 .
Last year , solar accounted for 5 % of the state ’ s power production .
Utilities , meanwhile , have plans to add much more .
Tucson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of its power from renewables in a bid to lower emissions 80 % by 2035 .
APS has targeted 45 % renewables by 2030 , as part of its plan to achieve net-zero emissions by midcentury ( Climatewire , Jan. 23 ) .
Those moves represent a marked shift for APS in particular .
The utility fiercely fought residential solar installers over the practice of net metering , and it spent $ 37.9 million to defeat a ballot measure in 2018 that sought to impose a 50 % renewable standard by 2030 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 12.9 million into a 2014 campaign to elect ACC members supportive of its agenda .
That disclosure came after years of campaigning from Burns to force the company to disclose its role in that election .
“ I had a high level of respect for APS .
When they did that , that is when things started to go south , ” Burns said .
The utility was singing a far different tune in the run-up to last week ’ s vote .
In an earnings call with financial analysts in late October @ @ @ @ @ @ @ planning to retire their coal plants earlier and invest heavily in renewables .
“ I think it ’ s consistent with what we were saying as our plan , ” said APS CEO Jeff Guldner .
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E & E News .
E & E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net .

Bob Burns didn’t always love renewables. Shortly after he was elected to the Arizona Corporation Commission in 2012, the conservative Republican voted to kill what remained of the state’s subsidy for rooftop solar installations.
But last week Burns managed something only a few blue-state climate hawks have pulled off: He helped pass a rule calling for the state to eliminate carbon emissions from its power grid by 2050.
In doing so, Arizona becomes only the seventh state to pass a law requiring its utilities generate all their electricity from carbon-free sources. It is the first state where such a charge has been led by Republicans. Three Republicans joined the commission’s sole Democrat in voting for the rule, with one Republican commissioner in opposition.
The shift says as much about the growth of the renewables industry as it does a change in the political winds. Wind and solar costs have fallen dramatically, and technologies like battery storage, which were once viewed as a future alternative, are now being deployed in the field. That opened the door to support from Republicans like Burns, who chairs the commission and will retire when his term ends on Jan. 4.
“When I came in, I was opposed to subsidies. I was a creature of legislature who didn’t like subsidies,” Burns said. “It wasn’t hard to vote against that.”
Burns’ views began to shift as he attended conferences of utility regulators and learned about broader industry trends. Particularly influential in his thinking was Colorado’s experience in 2018, when the state’s largest utility, Xcel Energy Inc., issued a request for new power generation and was flooded with plans for cheap renewables.
A provision in Arizona’s rule passed last week mirrors Colorado’s approach. When Arizona utilities are contemplating plans for new power plants, they will need to put out a request for information on the cost of all new sources of electricity generation.
“It’s been an evolutionary-type change of mine because of the additional information and technology advancements,” Burns said. Speaking of the new rule, he added, “I think it was a big deal to get that done. I didn’t know if we could do it.”
The Arizona Corporation Commission, or ACC as it is often called, is unique among state utility boards. Its members are elected, and its role in setting utility policy is spelled out in the state’s Constitution, meaning its rulings carry the force of law.
Even so, there are limitations to the commission’s new standard. It only applies to the state’s investor-owned utilities, Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) and Tucson Electric Power. It notably does not include the Salt River Project, the large electric cooperative that operates several large coal plants serving the state.
The rule also does not call for an enhanced renewable portfolio standard, as initially contemplated. Instead, it requires carbon dioxide emissions fall 50% of average 2016-2018 levels by 2032, 75% by 2030 and 100% by 2050.
Commissioners voted to nix the renewables standard last week, as it became clear two Republicans opposed to the renewables mandate would win election to the commission.
The change has two important implications.
First, the standard will count electricity generated by nuclear, among other carbon-free sources, as well as renewables like wind and solar.
Second, it was needed to earn the support of Republican Commissioner Lea Márquez Peterson, who opposed the renewable requirement but backed the carbon-free standard. Her support means a majority will continue to support the rule on the new commission.
The rule will now go out for public comment before it is finalized.
Amanda Ormond, a consultant who served as director of the Arizona Energy Office, said the state’s politics have tracked the economics.
“I think the single biggest factor is clean energy cost reductions have completely flipped the economics of the utility such that the clean stuff is now the cheap stuff,” she said. “I think there was a recognition two to three years ago that renewables are really, truly cheaper.”
The shifting regulatory environment comes amid a sea change in how Arizona generates electricity. Where coal generated almost 40% of the state’s power a decade ago, it accounted for 20% of Arizona’s power production last year, according to federal figures. Most of that gap has been made up by natural gas, which surged from 27% to 41% of the state’s power generation over that time.
But renewables are now coming on strong. Solar barely registered in 2010. Last year, solar accounted for 5% of the state’s power production. Utilities, meanwhile, have plans to add much more.
Tucson Electric Power aims to generate 70% of its power from renewables in a bid to lower emissions 80% by 2035. APS has targeted 45% renewables by 2030, as part of its plan to achieve net-zero emissions by midcentury (Climatewire, Jan. 23).
Those moves represent a marked shift for APS in particular. The utility fiercely fought residential solar installers over the practice of net metering, and it spent $37.9 million to defeat a ballot measure in 2018 that sought to impose a 50% renewable standard by 2030. APS admitted last year it poured $12.9 million into a 2014 campaign to elect ACC members supportive of its agenda. That disclosure came after years of campaigning from Burns to force the company to disclose its role in that election.
“I had a high level of respect for APS. When they did that, that is when things started to go south,” Burns said.
The utility was singing a far different tune in the run-up to last week’s vote. In an earnings call with financial analysts in late October, APS executives stressed they were already planning to retire their coal plants earlier and invest heavily in renewables.
“I think it’s consistent with what we were saying as our plan,” said APS CEO Jeff Guldner.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.


scientificamerican--2020-11-17--NASA Celebrates Crew-1 Arrival at Space Station

The future that NASA dared to dream of for a decade has finally become reality .
Crew-1 , SpaceX ’ s first operational mission to the International Station Station ( ISS ) for NASA , arrived at the orbiting lab late Monday night ( Nov. 16 ) , 27 hours after launching from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket .
About two hours after the Crew Dragon capsule “ Resilience ” docked with the station , NASA astronauts Victor Glover , Mike Hopkins and Shannon Walker and Japan ’ s Soichi Noguchi floated from the private @ @ @ @ @ @ @ six-month stay on the orbiting lab .
That moment meant a lot to NASA , whose Commercial Crew Program began nurturing the development of private astronaut taxis way back in 2010 .
The goal was to fill the crew-carrying shoes of the agency ’ s space shuttle fleet , which was grounded in 2011 , leaving Russian Soyuz spacecraft as the only ride to and from orbit available to astronauts .
In 2014 , the Commercial Crew Program inked multibillion-dollar contracts with SpaceX and Boeing to finish work on their vehicles and fly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the station apiece .
Crew-1 is the first of those contracted flights to lift off , and its crewmembers have now made it safely onto the orbiting lab .
“ This mission was a dream , ” NASA human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders said during a news conference early Tuesday morning ( Nov. 17 ) .
`` It was a dream of us to be able to one day … have crew transportation services to the International Space Station .
And today that dream became a reality.
” “ It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Lueders added .
That era will include crewed missions by Boeing , but the aerospace giant ’ s CST-100 Starliner capsule isn ’ t ready to carry astronauts just yet .
Starliner must first refly an uncrewed test flight to the station , after failing to meet up with the ISS during a December 2019 attempt .
That second try is scheduled to launch early next year .
SpaceX now has two crewed flights to the ISS under its belt .
The first , the Demo-2 test mission , carried NASA astronauts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ station for a two-month stay this past summer .
Demo-2 ’ s success paved the way for Crew-1 and other operational flights .
“ Huge shoutouts to the NASA and SpaceX teams—excellent job ; many hard years of work , ” Ven Feng , deputy manager of NASA ’ s Commercial Crew Program , said during Tuesday morning ’ s news conference .
“ And we ’ re looking forward to making this a very successful first operational mission , and many more to follow.
” The Crew-1 astronauts joined three other spaceflyers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Ryzhikov , the latter of whom commands the station ’ s current Expedition 64 mission .
Copyright 2020 Space.com , a Future company .
All rights reserved .
This material may not be published , broadcast , rewritten or redistributed .

The future that NASA dared to dream of for a decade has finally become reality.
Crew-1, SpaceX’s first operational mission to the International Station Station (ISS) for NASA, arrived at the orbiting lab late Monday night (Nov. 16), 27 hours after launching from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket.
About two hours after the Crew Dragon capsule “Resilience” docked with the station, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins and Shannon Walker and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi floated from the private craft into the ISS, beginning their six-month stay on the orbiting lab.
That moment meant a lot to NASA, whose Commercial Crew Program began nurturing the development of private astronaut taxis way back in 2010. The goal was to fill the crew-carrying shoes of the agency’s space shuttle fleet, which was grounded in 2011, leaving Russian Soyuz spacecraft as the only ride to and from orbit available to astronauts.
In 2014, the Commercial Crew Program inked multibillion-dollar contracts with SpaceX and Boeing to finish work on their vehicles and fly at least six crewed missions to and from the station apiece. Crew-1 is the first of those contracted flights to lift off, and its crewmembers have now made it safely onto the orbiting lab.
“This mission was a dream,” NASA human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders said during a news conference early Tuesday morning (Nov. 17). "It was a dream of us to be able to one day … have crew transportation services to the International Space Station. And today that dream became a reality.”
“It’s the start of a new era,” Lueders added.
That era will include crewed missions by Boeing, but the aerospace giant’s CST-100 Starliner capsule isn’t ready to carry astronauts just yet. Starliner must first refly an uncrewed test flight to the station, after failing to meet up with the ISS during a December 2019 attempt. That second try is scheduled to launch early next year.
SpaceX now has two crewed flights to the ISS under its belt. The first, the Demo-2 test mission, carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the station for a two-month stay this past summer. Demo-2’s success paved the way for Crew-1 and other operational flights.
“Huge shoutouts to the NASA and SpaceX teams—excellent job; many hard years of work,” Ven Feng, deputy manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said during Tuesday morning’s news conference. “And we’re looking forward to making this a very successful first operational mission, and many more to follow.”
The Crew-1 astronauts joined three other spaceflyers already aboard the ISS—NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Ryzhikov, the latter of whom commands the station’s current Expedition 64 mission.
Copyright 2020 Space.com, a Future company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


scientificamerican--2020-11-18--What Does a Guilty Brain Look Like?

What Does a Guilty Brain Look Like?

When Herbert Weinstein stood trial for the murder of his wife in 1992 , his attorneys were struck by the measured calm with which he recounted her death and the events leading up to it .
He made no attempt to deny that he was culpable , and yet his stoicism in the face of his wildly uncharacteristic actions led his defense to suspect that he might not be .
Weinstein underwent neuroimaging tests , which confirmed what his attorneys had suspected : a cyst had impinged upon large parts of Weinstein ’ s frontal lobe , the seat of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these grounds , they reasoned he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity , despite Weinstein ’ s free admission of guilt .
Guilt is difficult to define , but it pervades every aspect of our lives , whether we ’ re chastising ourselves for skipping a workout , or serving on the jury of a criminal trial .
Humans seem to be hardwired for justice , but we ’ re also saddled with a curious compulsion to diagram our own emotional wiring .
This drive to assign a neurochemical method @ @ @ @ @ @ @ generation of vast catalogs of neuroimaging studies that detail the neural underpinnings of everything from anxiety to nostalgia .
In a recent study , researchers now claim to have moved us one step closer to knowing what a guilty brain looks like .
Since guilt carries different weight depending on context or culture , the authors of the study chose to define it operationally as the awareness of having harmed someone else .
A series of functional magnetic resonance imaging ( fMRI ) experiments across two separate cohorts , one Swiss and one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a “ guilt-related brain signature ” that persists across groups .
Since pervasive guilt is a common feature in severe depression and PTSD , the authors suggest that a neural biomarker for guilt could offer more precise insight into these conditions and , potentially , their treatment .
But brain-based biomarkers for complex human behaviors also lend themselves to the more ethically fraught discipline of neuroprediction , an emergent branch of behavioral science that combines neuroimaging data and machine learning to forecast how an individual is likely to act based on how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other groups .
Predictive algorithms have already been used for years in health care , advertising and , most notoriously , the criminal justice system .
Facial recognition and risk-assessment algorithms are criticized for their racial bias and tendency to be significantly less accurate when assigning offenders to “ high risk ” versus “ low risk ” categories .
One of the highest profile exposures of such bias in recent news was a 2018 ACLU report on Amazon ’ s Rekognition algorithm for facial identification and analysis , which erroneously identified 28 members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against a database of mugshots .
People of color made up almost 40 percent of the misidentified individuals , about double their portion of Congress .
Amazon took vocal public issue with the methodology employed by the study at the time .
However , just this summer they suspended the use of Rekognition by law enforcement for one year , amid a nationwide movement to dismantle the racially biased structures of policing and criminal justice that lead to the disproportionate death and incarceration of BIPOC .
Some researchers argue that neuroimaging data should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ predictive algorithms are trained on socioeconomic metrics and criminal records , based on the assumption that biological metrics are inherently more objective than other kinds of data .
In one study , fMRI data from incarcerated people seeking treatment for substance abuse was fed through machine learning algorithms in an attempt to correlate activity in an area of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex , or ACC , with the likelihood of completing a treatment program .
The algorithm was able to correctly predict treatment outcomes about 80 percent of the time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activity to violence , antisocial behavior and increased likelihood of rearrest in similar functional imaging studies .
Indeed , the quest for the neural center of guilt in the brain also led to the ACC .
One of the problems with fMRI , though , is that it doesn ’ t directly measure neural firing patterns .
Rather , it uses blood flow in the brain as a visual proxy for neural activity .
Complex behaviors and emotional states engage multiple , widely distributed parts of the brain , and the patterns of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than viewing snapshots of activity in individual regions .
So while it may be tempting for law enforcement to conclude that low ACC activity could be used as a biomarker for recidivism risk , altered ACC activation patterns are also hallmarks of schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders .
Rather than reducing bias by using presumably objective anatomical markers of neural activity , the use of behavioral biomarkers in a criminal justice context runs the risk of encouraging the criminalization of mental illness and neurodivergence .
There may be other limits to fMRI as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of numerous fMRI studies concluded that the variability of results , even at an individual level , is too high to meaningfully generalize them to larger groups , much less use them as the framework for predictive algorithms .
The very notion of a risk assessment algorithm itself is based in the deterministic presupposition that people don ’ t change .
Indeed , this determinism is characteristic of the retributive models of justice that these algorithms serve , which focus on punishing and incarcerating offenders , and not on addressing the conditions that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ place .
Indeed , such use of brain imaging as a predictive tool in human behavior overlooks what seems to be a fundamental fact of neuroscience : that brains , like people , are capable of change ; that they constantly remodel themselves , electrically and structurally , depending on experience .
Rather than simply representing a more technologically complex means of meting out punishment , neuroprediction has the power to identify those same signatures and instead offer paths to intervention .
Any algorithm , no matter how sophisticated , will always be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
We can ’ t begin to address these biases until we re-examine our basic approaches to criminality and justice .

When Herbert Weinstein stood trial for the murder of his wife in 1992, his attorneys were struck by the measured calm with which he recounted her death and the events leading up to it. He made no attempt to deny that he was culpable, and yet his stoicism in the face of his wildly uncharacteristic actions led his defense to suspect that he might not be. Weinstein underwent neuroimaging tests, which confirmed what his attorneys had suspected: a cyst had impinged upon large parts of Weinstein’s frontal lobe, the seat of impulse control in the brain. On these grounds, they reasoned he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, despite Weinstein’s free admission of guilt.
Guilt is difficult to define, but it pervades every aspect of our lives, whether we’re chastising ourselves for skipping a workout, or serving on the jury of a criminal trial. Humans seem to be hardwired for justice, but we’re also saddled with a curious compulsion to diagram our own emotional wiring. This drive to assign a neurochemical method to our madness has led to the generation of vast catalogs of neuroimaging studies that detail the neural underpinnings of everything from anxiety to nostalgia. In a recent study, researchers now claim to have moved us one step closer to knowing what a guilty brain looks like.
Since guilt carries different weight depending on context or culture, the authors of the study chose to define it operationally as the awareness of having harmed someone else. A series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments across two separate cohorts, one Swiss and one Chinese, revealed what they refer to as a “guilt-related brain signature” that persists across groups. Since pervasive guilt is a common feature in severe depression and PTSD, the authors suggest that a neural biomarker for guilt could offer more precise insight into these conditions and, potentially, their treatment. But brain-based biomarkers for complex human behaviors also lend themselves to the more ethically fraught discipline of neuroprediction, an emergent branch of behavioral science that combines neuroimaging data and machine learning to forecast how an individual is likely to act based on how their brain scans compare to those of other groups.
Predictive algorithms have already been used for years in health care, advertising and, most notoriously, the criminal justice system. Facial recognition and risk-assessment algorithms are criticized for their racial bias and tendency to be significantly less accurate when assigning offenders to “high risk” versus “low risk” categories. One of the highest profile exposures of such bias in recent news was a 2018 ACLU report on Amazon’s Rekognition algorithm for facial identification and analysis, which erroneously identified 28 members of Congress as criminal offenders when run against a database of mugshots. People of color made up almost 40 percent of the misidentified individuals, about double their portion of Congress. Amazon took vocal public issue with the methodology employed by the study at the time. However, just this summer they suspended the use of Rekognition by law enforcement for one year, amid a nationwide movement to dismantle the racially biased structures of policing and criminal justice that lead to the disproportionate death and incarceration of BIPOC.
Some researchers argue that neuroimaging data should theoretically eliminate the biases that emerge when predictive algorithms are trained on socioeconomic metrics and criminal records, based on the assumption that biological metrics are inherently more objective than other kinds of data. In one study, fMRI data from incarcerated people seeking treatment for substance abuse was fed through machine learning algorithms in an attempt to correlate activity in an area of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC, with the likelihood of completing a treatment program. The algorithm was able to correctly predict treatment outcomes about 80 percent of the time. Researchers have linked variations in ACC activity to violence, antisocial behavior and increased likelihood of rearrest in similar functional imaging studies. Indeed, the quest for the neural center of guilt in the brain also led to the ACC.
One of the problems with fMRI, though, is that it doesn’t directly measure neural firing patterns. Rather, it uses blood flow in the brain as a visual proxy for neural activity. Complex behaviors and emotional states engage multiple, widely distributed parts of the brain, and the patterns of activity within these networks provide more insight than viewing snapshots of activity in individual regions. So while it may be tempting for law enforcement to conclude that low ACC activity could be used as a biomarker for recidivism risk, altered ACC activation patterns are also hallmarks of schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders. Rather than reducing bias by using presumably objective anatomical markers of neural activity, the use of behavioral biomarkers in a criminal justice context runs the risk of encouraging the criminalization of mental illness and neurodivergence.
There may be other limits to fMRI as a methodology. A recent large-scale review of numerous fMRI studies concluded that the variability of results, even at an individual level, is too high to meaningfully generalize them to larger groups, much less use them as the framework for predictive algorithms. The very notion of a risk assessment algorithm itself is based in the deterministic presupposition that people don’t change. Indeed, this determinism is characteristic of the retributive models of justice that these algorithms serve, which focus on punishing and incarcerating offenders, and not on addressing the conditions that led to an arrest in the first place.
Indeed, such use of brain imaging as a predictive tool in human behavior overlooks what seems to be a fundamental fact of neuroscience: that brains, like people, are capable of change; that they constantly remodel themselves, electrically and structurally, depending on experience. Rather than simply representing a more technologically complex means of meting out punishment, neuroprediction has the power to identify those same signatures and instead offer paths to intervention. Any algorithm, no matter how sophisticated, will always be as biased as the people who use it. We can’t begin to address these biases until we re-examine our basic approaches to criminality and justice.


scientificamerican--2020-11-18--Otters Show How Predators Can Blunt Climate Damage

While scuba diving around the Aleutian Islands in 2014 , marine ecologist Doug Rasher saw little sign of the curtains of lush green kelp forests he would have had to push through decades earlier .
“ It feels like a ghost town , ” says Rasher , a researcher at the nonprofit Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences .
The eeriness did not end there : during a boat ride , one of Rasher ’ s colleagues pointed to a cove where he had seen hundreds of sea otters splashing in the frigid water in the 1970s .
Only a handful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As sea otters declined ( for reasons scientists are still trying to understand ) , their favorite prey—sea urchins—exploded in number .
The voracious echinoderms not only mowed down the kelp but are also tearing apart and devouring the massive , slow-forming limestone reefs on which this seaweed grows , Rasher and his colleagues recently reported in Science .
Rising ocean temperatures and acidification are compounding the damage .
Restoring otter populations could rein in the urchins and help protect the larger ecosystem , and ecologists are increasingly interested in applying this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ... highlights the power of trophic cascades in nature and the potential for large predators to ameliorate some of the effects of climate change in the near term , ” Rasher and his co-authors wrote .
( “ Trophic cascade ” refers to the compounding effects of removing an organism from an ecosystem . )
Many climate impact studies on species have not adequately acknowledged this kind of ecosystem complexity as a factor , according to Rasher and other scientists .
Incorporating it would offer a clearer picture of what a warmer future @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ re all coming to realize that there ’ s going to be a lot of synergies between species loss and climate change , ” says Hillary Young , an ecologist at the University of California , Santa Barbara , who was not involved in the new study .
“ So what you would expect to happen with the loss of a species in the absence of climate change is not what ’ s going to happen with the loss of that species in the presence of climate change ... .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ showing that interaction.
” The idea of restoring predators to blunt the impacts of warming has been simmering in ecology for decades .
Fifteen years ago Christopher Wilmers , a wildlife ecologist now at the University of California , Santa Cruz , published studies looking at how warmer winters in Yellowstone National Park meant fewer elk foundering in deep snow and dying .
The result was less early-winter carrion for the park ’ s many scavengers , such as grizzly bears and ravens , with dead elk bunching up at the end of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reintroduced in 1995 , though , they became the main cause of elk mortality and created a steadier carrion supply that helped sustain other animals throughout the cold months .
“ Wolves provide this kind of temporal subsidy , where they ’ re making food for scavengers that would be overabundant at one time of year and underabundant at another and smoothing it out , ” says Wilmers , who tracked Yellowstone wolf packs for four years .
Volker Rudolf , an ecologist at Rice University , also found that predators can alter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a 2018 study he considered how interactions among pond predators ( dragonfly larvae ) and their herbivorous prey ( the tadpoles of gray tree frogs and green frogs ) changed amid rising temperatures .
Rudolf created four habitats with pond water at present-day temperatures and four with heated pond water .
He raised some tadpoles separated by species , some with mixed species , and others with mixed species and the dragonfly larvae .
One species had lower survival rates in heated water when it was on its own—but when exposed to either @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heated and nonheated ponds were virtually equal .
It could be that warmer conditions slow the larvae ’ s metabolism , prompting the predators to eat less , Rudolf says .
Or the tadpoles might grow so fast in warmer water that it is harder for the larvae to capture them .
“ You might have reduced survival because of the direct effect of heat , ” he says , “ but [ changes caused by ] predation and competition can compensate for those direct losses .
It buffers it out a bit.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ say their work shows that future climate change research needs to factor in ecosystem complexity more effectively .
For instance , many scientists have studied how climate change will affect marine organisms ’ performance and survival .
They have mostly done so by exposing a single species to warmer temperatures and/or higher acidity and recording how it responds , however .
Such work is valuable but can miss the big picture if it ignores the community in which a species exists .
“ Everything we know about ecology is that as things get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rudolf says .
That perspective is echoed in a soon to be published paper by University of Colorado Boulder ecologist Laura Dee , who points to the many indirect effects warmer temperatures can have on a species .
These include increasing or decreasing prey , changing competitive abilities , shifting feeding rates and altering trophic cascades .
In the case of the Aleutian Islands ’ reefs , for example , if the scientists had simply exposed living reef samples to warmer and more acidic water in the lab , they might have incorrectly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ danger because those impacts alone only slightly softened their skeleton .
But because the researchers also included sea urchins in their tanks , they realized how the two forces interacted : sea urchin grazing increased significantly as warming and acidity increased , pushing the system “ beyond a critical tipping point , ” Rasher says .
In 2017 his team resurveyed the reefs ’ status across the Aleutian archipelago and discovered that some had shrunk precipitously in just three years .
Large areas that had been alive for centuries or millennia were crumbling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ killed them .
Such devastation underscores the urgency of restoring balance to the ecosystem by bringing the otters back .
And similar situations likely hold true for other ecosystems across the globe .
Scientists still need to understand the reasons behind the otters ’ disappearances , but Rasher Is hopeful .
“ Bringing the otters back would bring many ecological benefits , ” he says , “ and would also buy us time to get our act together on curbing carbon emissions .
”

While scuba diving around the Aleutian Islands in 2014, marine ecologist Doug Rasher saw little sign of the curtains of lush green kelp forests he would have had to push through decades earlier. “It feels like a ghost town,” says Rasher, a researcher at the nonprofit Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. The eeriness did not end there: during a boat ride, one of Rasher’s colleagues pointed to a cove where he had seen hundreds of sea otters splashing in the frigid water in the 1970s. Only a handful remained.
The two losses are connected. As sea otters declined (for reasons scientists are still trying to understand), their favorite prey—sea urchins—exploded in number. The voracious echinoderms not only mowed down the kelp but are also tearing apart and devouring the massive, slow-forming limestone reefs on which this seaweed grows, Rasher and his colleagues recently reported in Science. Rising ocean temperatures and acidification are compounding the damage.
Restoring otter populations could rein in the urchins and help protect the larger ecosystem, and ecologists are increasingly interested in applying this idea more broadly. “Our study ... highlights the power of trophic cascades in nature and the potential for large predators to ameliorate some of the effects of climate change in the near term,” Rasher and his co-authors wrote. (“Trophic cascade” refers to the compounding effects of removing an organism from an ecosystem.) Many climate impact studies on species have not adequately acknowledged this kind of ecosystem complexity as a factor, according to Rasher and other scientists. Incorporating it would offer a clearer picture of what a warmer future holds in store. “I think we’re all coming to realize that there’s going to be a lot of synergies between species loss and climate change,” says Hillary Young, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the new study. “So what you would expect to happen with the loss of a species in the absence of climate change is not what’s going to happen with the loss of that species in the presence of climate change .... And this paper is the holy grail of showing that interaction.”
The idea of restoring predators to blunt the impacts of warming has been simmering in ecology for decades. Fifteen years ago Christopher Wilmers, a wildlife ecologist now at the University of California, Santa Cruz, published studies looking at how warmer winters in Yellowstone National Park meant fewer elk foundering in deep snow and dying. The result was less early-winter carrion for the park’s many scavengers, such as grizzly bears and ravens, with dead elk bunching up at the end of relatively severe winters. After wolves were reintroduced in 1995, though, they became the main cause of elk mortality and created a steadier carrion supply that helped sustain other animals throughout the cold months. “Wolves provide this kind of temporal subsidy, where they’re making food for scavengers that would be overabundant at one time of year and underabundant at another and smoothing it out,” says Wilmers, who tracked Yellowstone wolf packs for four years.
Massive reefs, built slowly by C. nereostratum over centuries to millennia, are now rapidly eroding because of overgrazing by herbivores. Grazing has intensified markedly in recent years because of the combined indirect effects of predator loss and climate change. Credit: J. Tomoleoni USGS
Volker Rudolf, an ecologist at Rice University, also found that predators can alter the effects of climate change. In a 2018 study he considered how interactions among pond predators (dragonfly larvae) and their herbivorous prey (the tadpoles of gray tree frogs and green frogs) changed amid rising temperatures.
Rudolf created four habitats with pond water at present-day temperatures and four with heated pond water. He raised some tadpoles separated by species, some with mixed species, and others with mixed species and the dragonfly larvae. One species had lower survival rates in heated water when it was on its own—but when exposed to either competition or predation, the rates between heated and nonheated ponds were virtually equal. It could be that warmer conditions slow the larvae’s metabolism, prompting the predators to eat less, Rudolf says. Or the tadpoles might grow so fast in warmer water that it is harder for the larvae to capture them. “You might have reduced survival because of the direct effect of heat,” he says, “but [changes caused by] predation and competition can compensate for those direct losses. It buffers it out a bit.”
Rudolf, Wilmers and Rasher all say their work shows that future climate change research needs to factor in ecosystem complexity more effectively. For instance, many scientists have studied how climate change will affect marine organisms’ performance and survival. They have mostly done so by exposing a single species to warmer temperatures and/or higher acidity and recording how it responds, however. Such work is valuable but can miss the big picture if it ignores the community in which a species exists. “Everything we know about ecology is that as things get more complex, they change,” Rudolf says. That perspective is echoed in a soon to be published paper by University of Colorado Boulder ecologist Laura Dee, who points to the many indirect effects warmer temperatures can have on a species. These include increasing or decreasing prey, changing competitive abilities, shifting feeding rates and altering trophic cascades.
In the case of the Aleutian Islands’ reefs, for example, if the scientists had simply exposed living reef samples to warmer and more acidic water in the lab, they might have incorrectly concluded the reefs were in no great danger because those impacts alone only slightly softened their skeleton. But because the researchers also included sea urchins in their tanks, they realized how the two forces interacted: sea urchin grazing increased significantly as warming and acidity increased, pushing the system “beyond a critical tipping point,” Rasher says.
In 2017 his team resurveyed the reefs’ status across the Aleutian archipelago and discovered that some had shrunk precipitously in just three years. Large areas that had been alive for centuries or millennia were crumbling and bleached, indicating urchins had recently killed them. Such devastation underscores the urgency of restoring balance to the ecosystem by bringing the otters back. And similar situations likely hold true for other ecosystems across the globe. Scientists still need to understand the reasons behind the otters’ disappearances, but Rasher Is hopeful. “Bringing the otters back would bring many ecological benefits,” he says, “and would also buy us time to get our act together on curbing carbon emissions.”


scientificamerican--2020-11-18--For Billion-Dollar COVID Vaccines, Basic Government-Funded Science Laid the Groundwork

When he started researching a troublesome childhood infection nearly four decades ago , virologist Dr. Barney Graham , then at Vanderbilt University , had no inkling his federally funded work might be key to deliverance from a global pandemic .
Yet nearly all the vaccines advancing toward possible FDA approval this fall or winter are based on a design developed by Graham and his colleagues , a concept that emerged from a scientific quest to understand a disastrous 1966 vaccine trial .
Basic research conducted by Graham and others at the National Institutes of Health ( NIH ) , Defense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been the essential ingredient in the rapid development of vaccines in response to COVID-19 .
The government has poured an additional $ 10.5 billion into vaccine companies since the pandemic began to accelerate the delivery of their products .
The Moderna vaccine , whose remarkable effectiveness in a late-stage trial was announced Monday morning , emerged directly out of a partnership between Moderna and Graham ’ s NIH laboratory .
Coronavirus vaccines are likely to be worth billions to the drug industry if they prove safe and effective .
As many as 14 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ everyone in the world against COVID-19 .
If , as many scientists anticipate , vaccine-produced immunity wanes , billions more doses could be sold as booster shots in years to come .
And the technology and production laboratories seeded with the help of all this federal largesse could give rise to other profitable vaccines and drugs .
The vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna , which are likely to be the first to win FDA approval , in particular rely heavily on two fundamental discoveries that emerged from federally funded research : the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ colleagues , and the concept of RNA modification , first developed by Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania .
In fact , Moderna ’ s founders in 2010 named the company after this concept : “ Modified ” + “ RNA ” = Moderna , according to co-founder Robert Langer .
“ This is the people ’ s vaccine , ” said corporate critic Peter Maybarduk , director of Public Citizen ’ s Access to Medicines program .
“ Federal scientists helped invent it and taxpayers are funding its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ humanity.
” Moderna , through spokesperson Ray Jordan , acknowledged the company ’ s partnership with NIH throughout the COVID-19 development process and earlier .
Pfizer spokesperson Jerica Pitts noted the company had not received development and manufacturing support from the U.S. government , unlike Moderna and other companies .
The idea of creating a vaccine with messenger RNA , or mRNA—the substance that converts DNA into proteins—goes back decades .
Early efforts to create mRNA vaccines failed , however , because the raw RNA was destroyed before it could generate the desired @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to kill RNA strands because that ’ s what many viruses are .
Karikó came up with the idea of modifying the elements of RNA to enable it to slip past the immune system undetected .
The modifications she and Weissman developed allowed RNA to become a promising delivery system for both vaccines and drugs .
To be sure , their work was enhanced by scientists at Moderna , BioNTech and other laboratories over the past decade .
Another key element in the mRNA vaccine is the lipid nanoparticle—a tiny , ingeniously designed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a sort of invisibility cloak , ferrying it safely through the blood and into cells and then dissolving , thereby allowing the RNA to do its work of coding a protein that will serve as the vaccine ’ s main active ingredient .
The idea of enclosing drugs or vaccines in lipid nanoparticles arose first in the 1960s and was developed by Langer and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and various academic and industry laboratories .
Karikó began investigating RNA in 1978 in her native Hungary and wrote her first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a therapeutic in 1989 .
She and Weissman achieved successes starting in 2004 , but the path to recognition was often discouraging .
“ I keep writing and doing experiments , things are getting better and better , but I never get any money for the work , ” she recalled in an interview .
“ The critics said it will never be a drug .
When I did these discoveries , my salary was lower than the technicians working next to me.
” Eventually , the University of Pennsylvania sublicensed the patent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wisconsin , much to the dismay of Weissman and Karikó , who had started their own company to try to commercialize the discovery .
Moderna and BioNTech later would each pay $ 75 million to Cellscript for the RNA modification patent , Karikó said .
Though unhappy with her treatment at Penn , she remained there until 2013—partly because her daughter , Susan Francia , was making a name for herself on the school ’ s rowing team .
Francia would go on to win two Olympic gold medals in the sport .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ BioNTech .
In addition to RNA modification and the lipid nanoparticle , the third key contribution to the mRNA vaccines—as well as those made by Novavax , Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson —- is the bioengineered protein developed by Graham and his collaborators .
It has proved in tests so far to elicit an immune response that could prevent the virus from causing infections and disease .
The protein design was based on the observation that so-called fusion proteins—the pieces of the virus that enable it to invade a cell—are shape-shifters , presenting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus fuses with and infects cells .
Graham and his colleagues learned that antibodies against the post-fusion protein are far less effective at stopping an infection .
The discovery arose in part through Graham ’ s studies of a 54-year-old tragedy—the failed 1966 trial of an NIH vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus , or RSV .
In a clinical trial , not only did that vaccine fail to protect against the common childhood disease , but most of the 21 children who received it were hospitalized with acute allergic reactions , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Graham , now deputy director of NIH ’ s Vaccine Research Center , took a new stab at the RSV problem with a postdoctoral fellow , Jason McLellan .
After isolating and obtaining three-dimensional models of the RSV ’ s fusion protein , they worked with Chinese scientists to identify an appropriate neutralizing antibody against it .
“ We were sitting in Xiamen , China , when Jason got the first image up on his laptop , and I was like , oh my God , it ’ s coming together , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they discovered were 16 times more potent than the post-fusion form contained in the faulty 1960s vaccine .
Two 2013 papers the team published in Science earned them a runner-up prize in the prestigious journal ’ s Breakthrough of the Year award .
Their papers , which showed it was possible to plan and create a vaccine at the microscopic structural level , set the NIH ’ s Vaccine Research Center on a path toward creating a generalizable , rapid way to design vaccines against emerging pandemic viruses , Graham said .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scientists , including Andrew Ward at the Scripps Research Institute , advanced their concept further by publishing the prefusion structure of a coronavirus that causes the common cold and a patent was filed for its design by NIH , Scripps and Dartmouth—where McLellan had set up his own lab .
NIH and the University of Texas—where McLellan now works—filed an additional patent this year for a similar design change in the virus that causes COVID-19 .
Graham ’ s NIH lab , meanwhile , had started working with Moderna in 2017 to design @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In January , they were preparing a demonstration project , a clinical trial to test whether Graham ’ s protein design and Moderna ’ s mRNA platform could be used to create a vaccine against Nipah , a deadly virus spread by bats in Asia .
Their plans changed rapidly when they learned on Jan. 7 that the epidemic of respiratory disease in China was being caused by a coronavirus .
“ We agreed immediately that the demonstration project would focus on this virus ” instead of Nipah , Graham said .
Moderna @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The first patient was vaccinated in an NIH-led clinical study on March 16 ; early results from Moderna ’ s 30,000-volunteer late-stage trial showed it was nearly 95 % effective at preventing COVID-19 .
Although other scientists have advanced proposals for what may be even more potent vaccine antigens , Graham is confident that carefully designed vaccines using nucleic acids like RNA reflect the future of new vaccines .
Already , two major drug companies are doing advanced clinical trials for RSV vaccines based on the designs his lab discovered , he said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic could be the event that paves the way for better , perhaps cheaper and more plentiful vaccines .
“ It ’ s a silver lining , but I think we are definitely pushing forward the way everyone is thinking about vaccines , ” said Michael Farzan , chair of the department of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research ’ s Florida campus .
“ Certain techniques that have been waiting in the wings , under development but never achieving the kind of funding they needed for major tests , will finally get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1980 law , the NIH will obtain no money from the coronavirus vaccine patent .
How much money will eventually go to the discoverers or their institutions isn ’ t clear .
Any existing licensing agreements haven ’ t been publicized ; patent disputes among some of the companies will likely last years .
HHS ’ big contracts with the vaccine companies are not transparent , and Freedom of Information Act requests have been slow-walked and heavily redacted , said Duke University law professor Arti Rai .
Some basic scientists involved in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ financial rewards .
“ Having public-private partnerships is how things get done , ” Graham said .
“ During this crisis , everything is focused on how can we do the best we can as fast as we can for the public health .
All this other stuff is going to have to be figured out later.
” “ It ’ s not a good look to become extremely wealthy off a pandemic , ” McLellan said , noting the big stock sales by some vaccine company executives after they received hundreds of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Still , “ the companies should be able to make some money.
” For Graham , the lesson of the coronavirus vaccine response is that a few billion dollars a year spent on additional basic research could prevent a thousand times as much loss in death , illness and economic destruction .
At a news conference Monday , Graham ’ s boss at NIH , Anthony Fauci , highlighted the spike protein work .
“ We shouldn ’ t underestimate the value of basic biology research , ” Fauci said .
KHN ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ news service covering health issues .
It is an editorially independent program of KFF ( Kaiser Family Foundation ) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente .

When he started researching a troublesome childhood infection nearly four decades ago, virologist Dr. Barney Graham, then at Vanderbilt University, had no inkling his federally funded work might be key to deliverance from a global pandemic.
Yet nearly all the vaccines advancing toward possible FDA approval this fall or winter are based on a design developed by Graham and his colleagues, a concept that emerged from a scientific quest to understand a disastrous 1966 vaccine trial.
Basic research conducted by Graham and others at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Defense Department and federally funded academic laboratories has been the essential ingredient in the rapid development of vaccines in response to COVID-19. The government has poured an additional $10.5 billion into vaccine companies since the pandemic began to accelerate the delivery of their products.
The Moderna vaccine, whose remarkable effectiveness in a late-stage trial was announced Monday morning, emerged directly out of a partnership between Moderna and Graham’s NIH laboratory.
Coronavirus vaccines are likely to be worth billions to the drug industry if they prove safe and effective. As many as 14 billion vaccines would be required to immunize everyone in the world against COVID-19. If, as many scientists anticipate, vaccine-produced immunity wanes, billions more doses could be sold as booster shots in years to come. And the technology and production laboratories seeded with the help of all this federal largesse could give rise to other profitable vaccines and drugs.
The vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, which are likely to be the first to win FDA approval, in particular rely heavily on two fundamental discoveries that emerged from federally funded research: the viral protein designed by Graham and his colleagues, and the concept of RNA modification, first developed by Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania. In fact, Moderna’s founders in 2010 named the company after this concept: “Modified” + “RNA” = Moderna, according to co-founder Robert Langer.
“This is the people’s vaccine,” said corporate critic Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program. “Federal scientists helped invent it and taxpayers are funding its development. … It should belong to humanity.”
Moderna, through spokesperson Ray Jordan, acknowledged the company’s partnership with NIH throughout the COVID-19 development process and earlier. Pfizer spokesperson Jerica Pitts noted the company had not received development and manufacturing support from the U.S. government, unlike Moderna and other companies.
The idea of creating a vaccine with messenger RNA, or mRNA—the substance that converts DNA into proteins—goes back decades. Early efforts to create mRNA vaccines failed, however, because the raw RNA was destroyed before it could generate the desired response. Our innate immune systems evolved to kill RNA strands because that’s what many viruses are.
Karikó came up with the idea of modifying the elements of RNA to enable it to slip past the immune system undetected. The modifications she and Weissman developed allowed RNA to become a promising delivery system for both vaccines and drugs. To be sure, their work was enhanced by scientists at Moderna, BioNTech and other laboratories over the past decade.
Another key element in the mRNA vaccine is the lipid nanoparticle—a tiny, ingeniously designed bit of fat that encloses the RNA in a sort of invisibility cloak, ferrying it safely through the blood and into cells and then dissolving, thereby allowing the RNA to do its work of coding a protein that will serve as the vaccine’s main active ingredient. The idea of enclosing drugs or vaccines in lipid nanoparticles arose first in the 1960s and was developed by Langer and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and various academic and industry laboratories.
Karikó began investigating RNA in 1978 in her native Hungary and wrote her first NIH grant proposal to use mRNA as a therapeutic in 1989. She and Weissman achieved successes starting in 2004, but the path to recognition was often discouraging.
“I keep writing and doing experiments, things are getting better and better, but I never get any money for the work,” she recalled in an interview. “The critics said it will never be a drug. When I did these discoveries, my salary was lower than the technicians working next to me.”
Eventually, the University of Pennsylvania sublicensed the patent to Cellscript, a biotech company in Wisconsin, much to the dismay of Weissman and Karikó, who had started their own company to try to commercialize the discovery. Moderna and BioNTech later would each pay $75 million to Cellscript for the RNA modification patent, Karikó said. Though unhappy with her treatment at Penn, she remained there until 2013—partly because her daughter, Susan Francia, was making a name for herself on the school’s rowing team. Francia would go on to win two Olympic gold medals in the sport. Karikó is now a senior officer at BioNTech.
In addition to RNA modification and the lipid nanoparticle, the third key contribution to the mRNA vaccines—as well as those made by Novavax, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson —- is the bioengineered protein developed by Graham and his collaborators. It has proved in tests so far to elicit an immune response that could prevent the virus from causing infections and disease.
The protein design was based on the observation that so-called fusion proteins—the pieces of the virus that enable it to invade a cell—are shape-shifters, presenting different surfaces to the immune system after the virus fuses with and infects cells. Graham and his colleagues learned that antibodies against the post-fusion protein are far less effective at stopping an infection.
The discovery arose in part through Graham’s studies of a 54-year-old tragedy—the failed 1966 trial of an NIH vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. In a clinical trial, not only did that vaccine fail to protect against the common childhood disease, but most of the 21 children who received it were hospitalized with acute allergic reactions, and two died.
About a decade ago, Graham, now deputy director of NIH’s Vaccine Research Center, took a new stab at the RSV problem with a postdoctoral fellow, Jason McLellan. After isolating and obtaining three-dimensional models of the RSV’s fusion protein, they worked with Chinese scientists to identify an appropriate neutralizing antibody against it.
“We were sitting in Xiamen, China, when Jason got the first image up on his laptop, and I was like, oh my God, it’s coming together,” Graham recalled. The prefusion antibodies they discovered were 16 times more potent than the post-fusion form contained in the faulty 1960s vaccine.
Two 2013 papers the team published in Science earned them a runner-up prize in the prestigious journal’s Breakthrough of the Year award. Their papers, which showed it was possible to plan and create a vaccine at the microscopic structural level, set the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center on a path toward creating a generalizable, rapid way to design vaccines against emerging pandemic viruses, Graham said.
In 2016, Graham, McLellan and other scientists, including Andrew Ward at the Scripps Research Institute, advanced their concept further by publishing the prefusion structure of a coronavirus that causes the common cold and a patent was filed for its design by NIH, Scripps and Dartmouth—where McLellan had set up his own lab. NIH and the University of Texas—where McLellan now works—filed an additional patent this year for a similar design change in the virus that causes COVID-19.
Graham’s NIH lab, meanwhile, had started working with Moderna in 2017 to design a rapid manufacturing system for vaccines. In January, they were preparing a demonstration project, a clinical trial to test whether Graham’s protein design and Moderna’s mRNA platform could be used to create a vaccine against Nipah, a deadly virus spread by bats in Asia.
Their plans changed rapidly when they learned on Jan. 7 that the epidemic of respiratory disease in China was being caused by a coronavirus.
“We agreed immediately that the demonstration project would focus on this virus” instead of Nipah, Graham said. Moderna produced a vaccine within six weeks. The first patient was vaccinated in an NIH-led clinical study on March 16; early results from Moderna’s 30,000-volunteer late-stage trial showed it was nearly 95% effective at preventing COVID-19.
Although other scientists have advanced proposals for what may be even more potent vaccine antigens, Graham is confident that carefully designed vaccines using nucleic acids like RNA reflect the future of new vaccines. Already, two major drug companies are doing advanced clinical trials for RSV vaccines based on the designs his lab discovered, he said.
In a larger sense, the pandemic could be the event that paves the way for better, perhaps cheaper and more plentiful vaccines.
“It’s a silver lining, but I think we are definitely pushing forward the way everyone is thinking about vaccines,” said Michael Farzan, chair of the department of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research’s Florida campus. “Certain techniques that have been waiting in the wings, under development but never achieving the kind of funding they needed for major tests, will finally get their chance to shine.”
Under a 1980 law, the NIH will obtain no money from the coronavirus vaccine patent. How much money will eventually go to the discoverers or their institutions isn’t clear. Any existing licensing agreements haven’t been publicized; patent disputes among some of the companies will likely last years. HHS’ big contracts with the vaccine companies are not transparent, and Freedom of Information Act requests have been slow-walked and heavily redacted, said Duke University law professor Arti Rai.
Some basic scientists involved in the enterprise seem to accept the potentially lopsided financial rewards.
“Having public-private partnerships is how things get done,” Graham said. “During this crisis, everything is focused on how can we do the best we can as fast as we can for the public health. All this other stuff is going to have to be figured out later.”
“It’s not a good look to become extremely wealthy off a pandemic,” McLellan said, noting the big stock sales by some vaccine company executives after they received hundreds of millions of dollars in government assistance. Still, “the companies should be able to make some money.”
For Graham, the lesson of the coronavirus vaccine response is that a few billion dollars a year spent on additional basic research could prevent a thousand times as much loss in death, illness and economic destruction. At a news conference Monday, Graham’s boss at NIH, Anthony Fauci, highlighted the spike protein work.
“We shouldn’t underestimate the value of basic biology research,” Fauci said.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF(Kaiser Family Foundation) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.


scientificamerican--2020-11-19--Early Mammals Had Social Lives, Too

Early Mammals Had Social Lives, Too

Seventy-six million years ago , a group of small mammals huddled in a burrow , in what 's now Montana .
They were good diggers—most likely furry—and petite .
`` They could sit comfortably in the palm of your hand .
These things if you saw them running around today , you 'd think it 's a small rodent .
A chipmunk or mouse . ''
Lucas Weaver is a mammal paleobiologist at University of Washington .
These little creatures did n't belong to any of the three main mammal groups on the planet today—which are the placental mammals , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ platypus ; and marsupials , like koalas and kangaroos .
Instead , they belonged to another , now extinct , group called the `` multituberculates . ''
`` They have these really bizarre molars with multiple bumps .
Which is where they get their name , multituberculate .
Just means 'many bumps . '
'' Weaver and his colleagues have studied the fossilized skulls and skeletons of these animals , dug up in Montana , and they 've given them a name—Filikomys primaevus .
Friendly or neighborly mouse .
The details are in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ Lucas N. Weaver et al , Early mammalian social behaviour revealed by multituberculates from a dinosaur nesting site ] Weaver says drought or climate change may have killed the animals , though it 's hard to be sure .
But the critters were fossilized together in ways that suggest they sought out each others ' company .
That 's a big deal , because it 's commonly thought that social behavior did n't arise in mammals until after the death of the dinosaurs , 10 million years after these small critters hung @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decades is mammals living during time of dinos were mostly solitary rat-like creatures scuttling in the night under dinos .
And so the fact we 're finding these multituberculate mammals—a totally unrelated group of mammals—exhibiting social behavior means this was probably not uncommon under these early mesozoic mammals .
And it changes the narrative that sociality as somehow unique to placental mammals . ''
Even today , social behavior is relatively rare among mammals .
But these findings suggest the need for company in some mammalian species is an ancient evolutionary invention .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this podcast . ]

Full Transcript
Seventy-six million years ago, a group of small mammals huddled in a burrow in what’s now Montana. They were good diggers—most likely furry—and petite.
“They could sit comfortably in the palm of your hand. These things, if you saw them running around today, you’d think it’s a small rodent—a chipmunk or mouse.”
Lucas Weaver is a mammal paleobiologist at University of Washington.
These little creatures didn’t belong to any of the three main mammal groups on the planet today—which are the placental mammals (like us), monotremes (like the platypus) and marsupials (like koalas and kangaroos).
Instead they belonged to another, now extinct group called the “multituberculates.”
“They have these really bizarre molars with multiple bumps, which is where they get their name. Multituberculate. just means ‘many bumps.’”
Weaver and his colleagues have studied the fossilized skulls and skeletons of these animals, dug up in Montana, and they’ve given them a name: Filikomys primaevus (friendly or neighborly mouse).
The details are in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. [Lucas N. Weaver et al., Early mammalian social behaviour revealed by multituberculates from a dinosaur nesting site]
Weaver says drought or climate change may have killed the animals, though it’s hard to be sure. But the critters were fossilized together in ways that suggest they sought out each others’ company. That’s a big deal because it’s commonly thought that social behavior didn’t arise in mammals until after the death of the dinosaurs, 10 million years after these small critters hung out together.
“The narrative, for decades, has been that mammals living during the time of dinosaurs were mostly solitary ratlike creatures scuttling in the night under dinosaurs. And so the fact we’re finding these multituberculate mammals—a totally unrelated group of mammals—exhibiting social behavior means this was probably not uncommon among these early Mesozoic mammals. And it changes the narrative that sociality is somehow unique to placental mammals.”
Even today, social behavior is relatively rare among mammals. But these findings suggest the need for company in some mammalian species is an ancient evolutionary invention.
—Christopher Intagliata
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]