Curio Cabinet

These mountains look cool, but they can be real hotheads. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison have presented a study at the Goldschmidt Conference in Prague suggesting that dormant volcanoes around the world may become more active as a result of melting glaciers. First, some clarification: there are three main volcano classifications depending on their level of activity. “Active” means that the volcano has erupted during the Holocene epoch (the last 11,650 years or so) and has the potential to erupt again in the future. “Extinct” means that, as far as anyone can tell, the volcano is unlikely to ever erupt again (though it happens from time to time). “Dormant”, on the other hand, means “potentially active,” as in, it’s an active volcano (the first classification) that’s just not erupting presently, as opposed to “actively erupting,” which means magma is currently coming out of the ground.
 
A lot of factors contribute to a volcano’s dormancy, and scientists have found that glaciers are one of them. Researchers tracked volcanic activity by measuring the radioactive decay of argon in crystals formed in magmatic rock. They then compared that to the level of ice cover during the peak of the last ice age. What the data seems to suggest is that the ice cover acted as a lid, inhibiting eruptions. As the ice melted, volcanoes became more active. Currently, there are an estimated 245 dormant volcanoes buried under three miles of ice, and many of them are in Antarctica. Once these begin to erupt due to the reduction in ice cover, it may create a feedback loop as the eruptions themselves further melt the ice. It seems there will be an icy reception before things really heat up.

 
[Image description: A portion of the Andes mountain range between Chile and Argentina, photographed from far above.] Credit & copyright: Jorge Morales Piderit, Wikimedia Commons. The copyright holder of this work has released it into the public domain. This applies worldwide.
 

These critters are as American as apple pie, but a whole lot bigger! North American bison, also called buffalo, are the largest land animals in North America and some of the most historically significant. Yet, we almost lost them altogether. Overhunted throughout the 19th century, there were fewer than 600 bison left in the U.S. by 1889. Today, their numbers have recovered drastically, but these gentle giants still have a long way to go.
 
There are two species of bison: The North American bison and the European bison. North American bison are often called buffalo, but they aren’t actually buffalo at all. Real buffalo, like cape buffalo and anoa, live in Africa and Asia. However, bison are closely related to buffalo and share many traits with them, since they’re all bovines—members of the family Bovidae’s subfamily, Bovinae. As such, they share many attributes with buffalo, including their large size, horns, and hooves, as well as behavioral traits like living in herds. Bison are famous for their fluffy winter coats, which help them survive harsh, blizzardy winters in places like the Northern Great Plains. That’s not to say that bison are sweet and cuddly, though. They are massive, powerful animals; males can stand up to six feet tall and weigh up to 2,000 pounds. Like any wild animal, they can become aggressive if approached, especially during mating and calving season. It’s a fact that tourists sometimes learn the hard way when they don’t obey rules in places like Yellowstone National Park, where the largest bison population in North America roams free.
 
Bison first appeared in North America during the late Middle Pleistocene epoch, between 195,000 and 135,000 years ago. Before European colonists began settling in North America en masse in the late 15th century, there were around 30 million bison roaming in what is now the United States. Many native tribes relied on bison meat and hides, with some, like the Plains Indians, focusing many parts of their lives around the movements of bison herds. However, as colonist aggression toward native tribes increased and native peoples lost control of more and more land, the bison population dwindled. During the American Indian Wars of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, bison were deliberately killed by colonists as a means of harming native peoples and to feed colonial soldiers. By the 1880s, there were as few as 300 bison left in what is now the United States. The species was on the brink of extinction.
 
Luckily, private organizations and ranchers stepped in to save North American buffalo, keeping herds on private land where they couldn’t be hunted. In 1902, 21 bison from private owners were placed in a designated area at Yellowstone National Park. Eventually, they were reintroduced to the wild, and began breeding with Yellowstone’s existing wild population. In 1905, the American Bison Society started a bison breeding program that also helped spread awareness about the importance of wild bison. Theodore Roosevelt aligned himself closely with the organization and even served as its honorary president for a time. Today, thanks to over a century of conservation efforts, there are roughly 31,000 wild bison in the United States. It’s a far cry from the millions that once roamed here, but it’s a whole lot better than extinction, and that’s no bison hockey!

 
[Image description: An adult and baby bison standing on a shrubby plain.] Credit & copyright: Anna Weyers Blades/USFWS. Public Domain.

The Earth is teeming with life and, apparantly, with “not-life” as well. Scientists have discovered a new type of organism that appears to defy the standard definition of “life.” All living things are organisms, but not all organisms are living. Take viruses, for instance. While viruses are capable of reproducing, they can’t do so on their own. They require a host organism to perform the biological functions necessary to reproduce. Viruses also can’t produce energy on their own or grow, unlike even simple living things, like bacteria. Now, there’s the matter of Sukunaarchaeum mirabile. The organism was discovered by accident by a team of Canadian and Japanese researchers who were looking into the DNA of Citharistes regius, a species of plankton. When they noticed a loop of DNA that didn’t belong to the plankton, they took a closer look and found Sukunaarchaeum. In some ways, this new organism resembles a virus. It can’t grow, produce energy, or reproduce on its own, but it has one distinct feature that sets it apart: it can produce its own ribosomes, messenger RNA, and transfer RNA. That latter part makes it more like a bacterium than a virus.
 
Then there’s the matter of its genetics. Sukunaarchaeum, it seems, is a genetic lightweight with only 238,000 base pairs of DNA. Compare that to a typical virus, which can range from 735,000 to 2.5 million base pairs, and the low number really stands out. Nearly all of Sukunaarchaeum’s genes are made to work toward the singular goal of replicating the organism. In a way, Sukunaarchaeum appears to be somewhere between a virus and a bacteria in terms of how “alive” it is, indicating that life itself exists on a spectrum. In science, nothing is as simple as it first appears.

Don’t hold your breath for moon dust. Long thought to be toxic, new research shows that moon dust may be relatively harmless compared to what’s already here on Earth. While the dusty surface of the moon looks beautiful and its name sounds like a whimsical ingredient in a fairy tale potion, it was a thorn in the side of lunar explorers during the Apollo missions. NASA astronauts who traversed the moon’s dusty surface reported symptoms like nasal congestion and sneezing, which they began calling “lunar hay fever.” They also reported that moon dust smelled like burnt gunpowder, and while an unpleasant smell isn’t necessarily bad for one’s health, it couldn’t have been comforting. These symptoms were likely caused by the abrasive nature of moon dust particles, which are never smoothed out by wind or water the way they would be on Earth. The particles are also small, so they’re very hard to keep out of spacesuits and away from equipment. Then there’s the matter of the moon’s low gravity, which allows moon dust to float around for longer than it would on Earth, making it more likely to penetrate spacesuit’s seals and be inhaled into the lungs. There, like asbestos, the dust can cause tiny cuts that can lead to respiratory problems and even cancer…at least, that’s what everyone thought until recently. Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) just published a paper claiming that moon dust might not be so dangerous after all. They believe that the dust will likely cause short-term symptoms without leading to long-term damage. Using simulated moon dust and real human lungs, they found that moon dust was less dangerous than many air pollutants found on Earth. For instance, silica (typically found on construction sites) is much more dangerous, as it can cause silicosis by lingering in the lungs, leading to scarring and lesions. Astronauts headed to the moon in the future can breathe a sigh of relief—but it may be safer to wait until they get there.

 
[Image description: A moon surrounded by orange-ish hazy clouds against a black sky.] Credit & copyright: Cbaile19, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.