We also figured out—the hard way—that the ancients probably cut each layer of linen to the proper shape before gluing them together. For our first linothorax, we glued together 15 layers of linen to form a one centimeter-thick slab, and then tried to cut out the required shape. Large shears were defeated; bolt cutters failed. The only way we were ultimately able to cut the laminated linen slab was with an electric saw equipped with a blade for cutting metal. At least this confirmed our suspicion that linen armor would have been extremely tough. We also found out that linen stiffened with rabbit glue strikes dogs as in irresistibly tasty rabbit-flavored chew toy, and that our Labrador retriever should not be left alone with our research project.

It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.

SHARK SOUNDS

SHAAAAAAAAAARK SOOOOUUUUUUUNDS

ALT

I mean, yeah. There's a reason my degrees are in the humanities. (Didn't stop me from being a total nature nerd, though.)

An international study led by the University of Freiburg, published in Global Change Biology, has found that forests with many tree species can store significantly more carbon than those with only one species.

Researchers used data from the world's oldest tropical tree diversity experiment and found that forests planted with five tree species had substantially higher aboveground carbon stocks and greater fluxes between the carbon stores than monocultures. The results highlight the benefits of mixed-species forests for forest restoration initiatives that aim at mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration.

[...]

Remarkably, the positive tree diversity effect on aboveground carbon stocks strengthened over time, despite repeated climatic extreme events such as a severe El Niño-driven drought and a hurricane that hit the experiment.

"This is important, because in the face of climate change, the long-term carbon balance of forests will depend largely on their stability to disturbances. Diverse forests exhibit greater ecological stability and the risk that the stored carbon is released back to the atmosphere is lower than in monocultures," said Dr. Florian Schnabel, first author of the study, forest scientist at the University of Freiburg's Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, and head of the Sardinilla experiment.

25 February 2025

Astrology doesn't seem to work.

"A study looking at the bearers of artificial hearts found that a subset of them can regenerate heart muscle tissue—the first time such an observation has ever been made.

It may open the door to new ways to treat and perhaps someday cure heart failure, the deadliest non-communicable disease on Earth. The results were published in the journal Circulation.

A team of physician-scientists at the University of Arizona’s Heart Center in Tucson led a collaboration of international experts to investigate whether heart muscles can regenerate.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart failure affects nearly 7 million US adults and is responsible for 14% of deaths per year. There is no cure for heart failure, though medications can slow its progression. The only treatment for advanced heart failure, other than a transplant, is a pump replacement through an artificial heart, called a left ventricular assist device, which can help the heart pump blood.

“Skeletal muscle has a significant ability to regenerate after injury. If you’re playing soccer and you tear a muscle, you need to rest it, and it heals,” said Hesham Sadek, director of the University’s Sarver Heart Center.

It was previously thought that when a heart muscle is injured, it could never grow back.

“Irrefutable evidence of heart muscle regeneration has never been shown before in humans,” he said. “This study provided direct evidence.”

The project began with tissue from artificial heart patients provided by colleagues at the University of Utah Health and School of Medicine led by Stavros Drakos, MD, PhD, and a pioneer in left ventricular assist device-mediated recovery.

Teams in Sweden and Germany used their innovative method of carbon dating human heart tissue to track whether these samples contained newly generated cells. The investigators found that patients with artificial hearts regenerated muscle cells at more than six times the rate of healthy hearts.

“This is the strongest evidence we have, so far, that human heart muscle cells can actually regenerate, which really is exciting, because it solidifies the notion that there is an intrinsic capacity of the human heart to regenerate,” Sadek said.

“It also strongly supports the hypothesis that the inability of the heart muscle to ‘rest’ is a major driver of the heart’s lost ability to regenerate shortly after birth. It may be possible to target the molecular pathways involved in cell division to enhance the heart’s ability to regenerate.”

In 2011, Sadek published a paper in Science showing that while heart muscle cells actively divide in utero, they stop dividing shortly after birth to devote their energy to pumping blood through the body nonstop, with no time for breaks.

In 2014, he published evidence of cell division in patients with artificial hearts, hinting that their heart muscle cells might have been regenerating because they were able to rest.

These findings, combined with other research teams’ observations that some artificial heart patients could have their devices removed after experiencing a reversal of symptoms, led him to wonder if the artificial heart provides cardiac muscles the equivalent of bed rest like a person needs when recovering from injury.

“The pump pushes blood into the aorta, bypassing the heart,” he said. “The heart is essentially resting.”

Sadek’s previous studies indicated that this rest might be beneficial for the heart muscle cells, but he needed to design an experiment to determine whether patients with artificial hearts were actually regenerating muscles.

Next, Sadek wants to figure out why only about 25% of patients are “responders” to artificial hearts, meaning that their cardiac muscle regenerates.

“It’s not clear why some patients respond and some don’t, but it’s very clear that the ones who respond have the ability to regenerate heart muscle,” he said. “The exciting part now is to determine how we can make everyone a responder, because if you can, you can essentially cure heart failure.

“The beauty of this is that a mechanical heart is not a therapy we hope to deliver to our patients in the future—these devices are tried and true, and we’ve been using them for years.”"

-via Good News Network, December 31, 2024

every time I see some bigshot scientist revealed as a fraud my knee-jerk reaction is "hell yeah elisabeth bik got 'em good" AND IM RIGHT

SHE NEVER QUITS!!!!

ICONIC!!!!

The Terminator (1984) dir. James Cameron

some loser: humans are innately selfish creatures

my psych book:

here's another ant-mimicking jumping spider that I encountered in Singapore: Myrmaplata plataleoides, the weaver ant mimic.

while females look a great deal like their ant models, males (like this one) have massive, exaggerated fangs used in territorial and mating displays, which complicate the disguise. however, ants routinely carry their dead away from the nest, so it's thought that a male M. plataleoides mimics a worker holding another ant—his jaws even have false "eyes" on the ends!

his mimicry was clearly good enough to fool the ants; none of them seemed to take notice even as he repeatedly doubled back to guard his territory instead of heading further up the tree. although mimicry like this is often sensationalized as something insidious or spooky, Myrmaplata has no intention to eat the ants. rather, the spider hides among them for protection: weavers won't eat nestmates, and other predators know that weaver ants bite, spray acid, and attack in hordes. running with the ants might be risky, but he's always alert, watching their every move with his big eyes. what a life that must be, always living on the margins of a colony of hunters that would devour him, yet also keep him alive without ever knowing it

Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised. 

Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains that are most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming flu season. And every year, people line up to get their updated vaccine, hoping the researchers formulated the shot correctly.

The same is true of COVID vaccines, which have been reformulated to target sub-variants of the most prevalent strains circulating in the U.S.

This new strategy would eliminate the need to create all these different shots, because it targets a part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus. The vaccine, how it works, and a demonstration of its efficacy in mice is described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

“What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad,” said UCR virologist and paper author Rong Hai. “It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.”

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marine biology is so scary because it’s such a small field. i was giving a talk on cetaceans and afterward a woman approached me with her husband and she said, “you did very well. [husband’s name] actually pioneered the research and published the first paper on that. We were very impressed by you.”

Which is such a scientific interpretation/public education win I will cherish forever but also for the rest of my life any time I give a talk I will be haunted by the knowledge that the world’s leading expert who literally discovered/invented the topic might be in the room,

which is like, the opposite of what you’re supposed to do for stage fright. In fact I never used to experience stage fright but now I will.