Curio Cabinet

Scientists are really shooting for the moon with these plants. Researchers at the University of Florida were recently able to grow plants on Lunar soil collected during the Apollo missions, according to a paper published in Communications Biology. The soil used is Lunar regolith, which is powdery and razor-sharp at the microscopic level. That’s challenging enough when cultivating crops, but the scientists also had a limited quantity of the soil. After several attempts to acquire Lunar regolith from NASA, the agency finally loaned them just 12 grams to be used in their experiments. To make the most of the soil, the scientists created thimble-sized wells filled with 1 gram each. They then planted arabidopsis, also known as thale cress, along with a mix of nutrients and water. Surprisingly, the plants were able to sprout in the alien soil, although they did appear to struggle compared to the control group. The sprouts in the Lunar regolith tended to grow slower and were smaller in size. Most importantly, the scientists were able to deduce how the plants reacted to the stressful environment at the genetic level. Lead author Anna-Lisa Paul told Science News, “By seeing what kind of genes are turned on and turned off in response to a stress, that shows you what tools plants are pulling out of their metabolic toolbox to deal with that stress.” This means that, if humanity ever does create livable colonies on the moon, plants might be able to be genetically engineered to grow better there. Such plants could provide oxygen and food to lunar explorers. Now that would be some out-of-this-world horticulture.

[Image description: Bean sprouts grow inside small cups.] Credit & copyright: KlausAires, Pixabay
 

This place is a hole. Literally! Cave explorers in China have found a massive sinkhole in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region that is home to an ancient forest. The area is known for large limestone formations, and caves and sinkholes in the region are common. Sinkholes are formed when water erodes away at the limestone, and in this case, the culprit is an underground river system. While sinkholes are a common occurrence, it’s rare to find one large enough to contain its own forest. In China, there are around 29 other known sinkholes like this, called Tiankeng, which means “heavenly pit” in Mandarin. This particular sinkhole appears to be about 500 feet wide, 1000 feet long and 630 feet deep. It’s so big that it took explorers hours to safely rappel down around 330 feet before trekking into the sunken forest.
 
Despite the size of the hole, there isn’t much sunlight at the bottom because of the limited angle at which light can enter from above. Nevertheless, the trees in the underground forest grow up to 130 feet, seemingly well-adapted to their unusual environment. On the forest floor are shade plants that fill every nook and cranny, potentially hiding future discoveries. Chen Lixin, the leader of the expedition that discovered the massive sinkhole, believes there might be undiscovered species lurking in the enclosed ecosystem. Lixin told the press, "I wouldn't be surprised to know that there are species found in these caves that have never been reported or described by science until now.” Lixin’s team was sent from the Institute of Karst Geology of the China Geological Survey. Its sister institute in the U.S. is the National Cave and Karst Research Institute (NCKRI). NCKRI’s executive director, George Veni, explained that China’s karsts, or limestone landscapes featuring heavily eroded areas, are different than those found in other parts of the world . "So in China you have this incredibly visually spectacular karst with enormous sinkholes and giant cave entrances and so forth. In other parts of the world you walk out on the karst and you really don't notice anything. Sinkholes might be quite subdued, only a meter or two in diameter. Cave entrances might be very small, so you have to squeeze your way into them." Sounds like China really is heavenly for sinkhole explorers.

 
[Image description: The Xiaozhai Tiankeng, the world's deepest sinkhole, in Chongqing Municipality, China.] Credit & copyright: Brookqi, Wikimedia Commons, image cropped for size, Public Domain

This is a big step toward helping little ones. Scientists might be moving closer to solving the mystery behind one of the most tragic syndromes known to man: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Australian researchers recently published a study in eBioMedicine claiming that they’ve found the first ever biomarker, or genetic indicator, for SIDS. The Mayo Clinic defines SIDS as the unexplained death of an infant under one year old, usually during sleep. Past studies have not shown any genetic links, although SIDS is more likely to affect an infant who has had closely related family members die of it. It is also more likely to affect infants who are born premature, born to mothers under 20, or who live in a household where someone smokes. Around 3,400 babies die from it every year in the U.S. alone, and parents have long been desperate for answers on how to prevent it.
 
In this new line of research, scientists examined blood samples from infants that had died from SIDS, specifically to measure the levels of Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), an enzyme in the cholinergic system, part of the body’s autonomic system that controls things like sleep, wakefulness, and blood pressure. They found that in the samples from infants that had died from SIDS, the BChE activity was lower than in healthy infants. This marks the very first measurable factor that can be tied to SIDS. In a press release by the Sydney Children's Hospitals Network, lead author of the study, Dr. Carmel Therese Harrington, stated, “Babies have a very powerful mechanism to let us know when they are not happy. Usually, if a baby is confronted with a life-threatening situation, such as difficulty breathing during sleep because they are on their tummies, they will arouse and cry out. What this research shows is that some babies don't have this same robust arousal response.” While this finding doesn’t yet point to a cure for SIDS, and there is currently no test available to search for low BChE in living infants, at least some light is finally being shed on this dark subject.

 
[Image description: An infant’s hand clutches and adult’s finger.] Credit & copyright: RitaE, Pixabay

It's Flashback Friday! In honor of Cher’s birthday, enjoy these curios about things that were going on in the 1960s and 70s, during the height of the pop star’s career.
 
It’s been quite a while since Apollo 11 delivered the first humans to the moon. Nobody was more excited by that accomplishment than Margaret Hamilton. She lead the software team that programmed the computers that ran the control systems that enabled the astronauts to find, land on, and return from the moon. Surprised such a critical technical position was held by a woman in the 1960s? That's because jobs like computer programming were considered “women’s work.” The process of programming was extremely labor intensive. First, series of instructions were hand written onto paper coding pads. These were then translated onto punched cards by “keypunch girls,” who sent them to the male machine operators who fed the code decks through card readers. But Margaret Hamilton was no keypunch girl. She led the team at MIT that programmed the two guidance computers--one on the command module and one on the lander module. The code was so complex and lengthy that, when printed out single spaced, it was taller than Margaret (see photo below). The equivalent of more than 20 phone books of hand written and compiled computer instructions! Margaret's code likely saved the entire Apollo 11 mission. Three minutes away from landing on the Moon, multiple false alarms were rapidly triggered by the rendezvous radar system. This flooded the computer's processor, which was trying to perform its normal landing functions. Thanks to Hamilton's design principles, which assumed the program would break and included graceful recovery procedures, the computer simply rebooted itself. It restarted almost instantaneously, with fresh memory, and completed the landing sequence without incident. Hamilton's approach to creating the Apollo software led to many best practices for programming that are still used today. In fact, she invented the term “software engineering” to describe her methodic and redundant approach to coding. I have a feeling if Margaret were Mark we would already know this story.
 
Credit & copyright: Draper Laboratory; restored by Adam Cuerden, Wikimedia Commons, image cropped for size, Public Domain.