Curio Cabinet / Nerdy Curio

Yikes, this isn’t a face you’d hope to encounter while strolling on the beach! Yet one beachgoer in Southern California did indeed happen across this rarely-seen Pacific football fish washed up on shore. A type of deep sea anglerfish, Pacific footballfish usually live at depths of 3,000 feet or more, so finding one–even a dead one–in the light of day is unusual. Like all anglerfish, Pacific footballfish use built-in, bioluminescent lures on their heads to attract prey. Their long, needle-like teeth aren’t used to chew prey, but to trap it in the anglerfish’s cavernous mouth so that it can be swallowed whole. Pacific footballfish have some of the most extreme sexual dimorphism in the animal kingdom, meaning that males and females have very different appearances and life cycles. The specimen that recently washed up is an adult female, around 24 inches long. It’s was easy to identify her sex, since male footballfish only grow to be around an inch long. During mating, a male footballfish permanently fuses into the female’s body, losing all his organs and becoming a “sexual parasite”, which provides sperm while living off the female’s nutrients. As for why this particular female washed up in such good condition, researchers are still puzzling over the reason. For now, the footballfish has been frozen for preservation purposes by the California State Parks Service. The LA County Natural History Museum is reportedly eager to acquire the fish since they only have three specimens in their collection, and none in such pristine condition. Hopefully, this unusual fish will help educate people about its species for years to come. Who said it was all washed up?

[Image description: a black anglerfish, with tendrils around the lure on its head, lies washed up on the beach. ] Credit & copyright: Ben Estes
 

Written by: Maria C.

Do kitties love sitting in boxes even if the boxes aren't real? According to a new study published in Applied Animal Behavior Science, our feline friends show some preferences for sitting in four-sided spaces. Researchers exposed kitties to what is called the Kanizsa square illusion, which offers illusory contours of a given shape—in the case of the cats, a four-sided square space. Researchers initially designed white circles with 90 degree angles cut into them. They then gave citizen scientists the circles and advised them to create different visual arrangements on the floor: a regular square with edges, a perfect Kanisza square, and a misshapen Kanizsa square. The citizen scientists were then advised to allow their kitties into the room, and to not influence the cats, by wearing glasses to avoid eye contact, or simply ignoring the cats. About 500 cats were tested, with only 30 completed experiments. Of the 30, nine kitties consistently chose to sit in one of the shapes: the regular square was squatted on eight times, the perfect Kanizsa square seven, and the misshapen Kanizsa square only once. The research confirms feline susceptibility to visual illusions, although the cats would prefer no one bother them while they are surveilling their surroundings in their imaginary boxes!

[Image description: A gray cat sits in a Kanisza square, which is four Pac-Man-like white circles positioned to create four corners.
] Credit & copyright: Smith, et al. / Applied Animal Behavior Science
 

Written by: Esther P.

Hunger and malnourishment have plagued humanity for centuries, but modern science may be (literally) cooking up a solution. The idea: create a supplement that nourishes gut microbes, bacteria in the digestive system which help people digest and absorb nutrients from their food. In an article recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research In Bangladesh explained how they created and tested a microbe-boosting supplement. They focused their efforts on the slums of Bangladesh, where children often survive on low-nutrient foods, such as rice and chips.
 
Studies have shown that a lifetime of malnourishment can permanently damage gut microbes, meaning that people who grow up hungry may not be able to properly absorb nutrients from food. To see if their new supplement could combat this, researchers ran a three-month trial involving 123 malnourished children between the ages of 12 and 18 months. Half were given a standard nutritional supplement, while the other half were given the new microbe-boosting supplement, made from locally-sourced ingredients like chickpeas and soy. By the end of the trial, researchers found that children who had received the microbe-boosting supplement gained more weight than those who received the regular one. This was remarkable, since the microbe-boosting supplement contained 20% fewer calories. Children who received the microbe-boosting supplement also showed increases in proteins associated with healthy bone and brain development. “Our findings reveal that the effects of the developing microbiome extend well beyond the walls of the gut and that a healthy microbiome is linked to healthy growth,” Dr. Jeffery Gordon, one of the trial’s leading researchers, said in a statement. Here’s hoping the team’s findings can save as many children as possible from hunger’s debilitating effects.
 

[Image description: A mother in Dhaka, Bangladesh, feeds her child a new food supplement designed to boost gut microbes.] Credit & copyright: Ishita Mostafa
 

Written by: Maria C.

These are some rare kitties! On April 30, three Amur tigers, or Siberian tigers, were born at the Toronto Zoo, making them the first Amur tigers born there since 2007. Their mother, Mazy, is now a second-time mom, having birthed her first litter at the Granby Zoo, in Quebec, in 2013. Amur tigers are one of the rarest tiger subspecies in the world, with only around 350-450 still living wild in the forests of Eastern Russia and Northeast China. After overhunting decimated their population in the 1930s, leaving only around 20-30 animals in the wild, captive breeding programs were established to boost their numbers. Zoos now play a vital role in the tigers’ survival, and around 650 live in captivity today.

Unfortunately, Amur tigers suffer from a lack of genetic diversity, caused by their population rebounding from such low numbers. Because of this, they are prone to what is known as a genetic bottleneck. In a genetic bottleneck, a lack of genetic variation from individual to individual causes harmful diseases and birth defects, which would normally be selected out of a gene pool, to persist. In 2009, researchers from the University of British Columbia noted that wild Amur tigers have an “effective population” of only around 27-35 individuals, meaning that the subspecies’ genetics are only as diverse as they would normally be at those very low numbers. Sadly, even the Toronto Zoo’s tigers are not immune from this problem. Just one week after birth, one of the zoo’s three tiger cubs died due to a genetic defect which made it impossible for it to properly digest milk. The other two cubs and their mother seem to be doing well, though. That’s great news, since this rare subspecies can use all the population help it can get!

[Image description: A tiger licks her fur as her three cubs nurse in their enclosure at the Toronto Zoo ] Credit & copyright: Toronto Zoo
 

Written by: Maria C.

Talk about a nice catch! Last month U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conservation officers caught a massive 100-year-old lake sturgeon in the Detroit River near Alpena, Michigan. The sturgeon weighed 240 pounds and was nearly seven feet long with a four foot circumference at its widest point. Scientists believe the fish was born around 1920 and has endured decades of overfishing and environmental destruction that has decimated the local sturgeon population. Lake sturgeons were initially thought to be nuisances for fishermen, though they eventually became hunted for their caviar, and their bladders were used to make oil for lamps. There remain only 7,000 of these local aquatic creatures, though recent conservation efforts have improved habitats. As for this particular specimen, she was weighed and microchipped before being sent back into the waters, where she’ll hopefully continue living a long and prosperous life!

[Image description: Jennifer Johnson, a member of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey crew, lays on the floor of a boat beside a massive lake sturgeon pulled from the Detroit River. ] Credit & copyright: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
 

Written by: Esther P.

Climate change affects everyone, so it stands to reason that everyone must cooperate to reduce its effects. Unfortunately, according to recent reports from the Government Accountability Office and House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, the Federal government hasn’t done the best job of recruiting or retaining scientists and technical workers who are women or people of color. For example, only 27 out of 257 engineers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are women, while at the Environmental Protection Agency there’s been a 20% decrease in Black technical employees over the past decade. In fact, of seven federal agencies examined by the House Science Committee, most employed around 2 to 3 times as many white scientists as scientists of color. Experts are now warning that a diverse array of scientists is essential to tackling environmental concerns.
 

In 2019, a team of U.S. and Canadian researchers found that the most polluted parts of the U.S. in 1981 remained the most polluted up through 2016, and that poorer people tended to live there. Without federal scientists who accurately reflect the country’s demographics, some experts fear that future pollution and climate change policies may only deepen current health and economic disparities. At a recent House Science Committee hearing, Partnership for Public Service President Max Stier addressed the federal government’s science diversity problem. “We must focus on revitalizing the federal scientific workforce and preparing it for future challenges. Altering the status quo will not be easy but it will be critical to the nation's future,” he said. Recruiting scientists from historically Black universities and creating more mentorship programs between federal scientists and students may help bridge the current diversity gap. Hopefully, the climate of federal science agencies will soon be undergoing change!
 

[Image description: Scientist Marybeth Head sits at a desk onboard the NOAA research ship Nancy Foster, looking an orange-and-green graph on a large computer monitor. ] Credit & copyright: Robert F. Bukaty/AP
 

Marybeth Head, the vessel operations coordinator for the Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, works aboard the NOAA research ship Nancy Foster in 2019.
 

Written by: Maria C.

There's new information about a very, very old part of the world in Baltimore. Researchers are studying what seems to be an exposed part of Earth's mantle uncovered in Maryland. The scientists discovered the area by following trails of ultramafic rocks, or igneous rocks with high magnesium and iron content, around quarries in the Baltimore area. Samples of the rocks were tested by John Hopkins University geologists, making this the first time the mantle rocks in Boston have been confirmed by chemical analysis. The rocks were once part of the Iapetus Ocean, a 600 million-year old body of water that used to cover the region. Prior to massive tectonic shifts in the ocean floor some 480 million years ago, the Appalachian mountain range that runs through the northeastern U.S. was part of the Central Pangean Mountains, which extended from Morocco to Scotland. Part of the shift split apart the mountains, and threw up the pieces of mantle that reside in Baltimore today. Workers at a nearby golf course have said that tourists are already stopping to have picnics on one of the rarest spots of Earth they could ever come by!

[Image description: a textured image of the Earth's mantle found in Baltimore, Maryland. ] Credit & copyright: Brad Helmink
 

Written by: Esther P.

It’s usually not great when things fall apart en masse...unless we’re talking about plastic waste. Notoriously non-biodegradable, plastic makes up about 12 percent of the world’s solid waste each year, and scientists have long cautioned that we’re running out of places to put it all. Now, we may finally be glimpsing a solution. A team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley recently published a study in the journal Nature about their creation of a biodegradable plastic which breaks down in just a few days when exposed to heat or water.
 

Although biodegradable plastics have been around for a while—the first one, made from cellulose, was invented in 1862—their production hasn’t helped the world’s pollution problems much. That’s because most biodegradable plastics still take a very long time to break down, and most can’t be recycled. This new plastic is different. It contains enzymes, cellular proteins that create chemical reactions, which essentially digest the plastic when it’s exposed to moderate levels of moisture or heat, such as those found in home composters. “Enzymes are really just catalysts evolved by nature to carry out reactions. If you want to get a material to become a part of nature, we should go with what nature has already developed,” materials scientist and study co-author Ting Xu explained in a statement. Researchers were able to show that their enzyme-laced plastic broke down significantly after just three days in compost, and was entirely gone within two weeks, with no harmful microplastics left behind. Nature sure moves quickly!

[Image description: two cups of compost with new, enzyme-laced plastic on top. The right cup shows the progression of decomposition over three days, with just a few bits of plastic remaining. ] Credit & copyright: Adam Lau/Berkely Engineering
 

Written by: Maria C.

Way back in a Daily Curio, we tried to figure out what was causing fairy circle patterns in Namibian grasslands. As it turns out, a new study in the Australian Journal of Botany may have an answer. Similar fairy circles have been found in the Australian outback that may be caused by microbes in the soil. Researchers at the University of New South Wales tested their theory by taking samples of soil from inside and outside of the spinifex grass. Some of the samples were sterilized while others were left unchanged and spinifex seeds were then planted. As it turns out, sterilized inner ring soil and non-sterilized exterior soil were both capable of easily growing grass. The findings point to the presence of microbial organisms in the grass that may be tolerable for adult plants, but intolerable for new seedlings, thereby causing the young plants to move to more hospitable living spaces. Researchers also found that sterilizing the outer ring soil killed off the grass growth and potential beneficial microbes. Even if the grass is greener on the other side of the fairy circle, that's no reason to kill off all the beneficial action happening underground!

[Image description: a fairy circle among spinifex grass in the Australian outback. ] Credit & copyright: MJ Photography / Alamy
 

Written by: Esther P.

Holy hybrids! Some bioethicists were shaken up, in April, after a team of international researchers created the world’s first embryos containing both human and monkey cells. The scientists published an explanation of their experiment in the science journal Cell, immediately grabbing international headlines. However, their purpose was not to create a new, chimeric lifeform. In fact, the embryos were not allowed to develop beyond an extremely early stage. The purpose of the experiment, helmed by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor at California’s Gene Expression Laboratory of the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, was to explore new possibilities for organ transplants. Currently, thousands of people in the U.S. die every year while waiting for organ transplants. Scientists around the world have experimented with the idea of using animals to grow human organs for transplant patients. However, experiments involving pigs have been unsuccessful, so Belmonte’s team decided to use cells from macaque monkeys, which are much more closely related to humans. First, they injected 25 human stem cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (ISP cells) into macaque embryos, then monitored their cellular behavior for the next 20 days. After the first day, results looked promising–the human cells were still growing in 132 of the injected embryos. By the end of the experiment, however, most of the embryos had died, and the survivors only retained around 4 to 7 percent of their human cells. Still, the experiment represents a big step forward in the field of transplant research. Hopefully, similar projects will lead to better medical technologies, rather than any Planet of the Apes scenarios.
 

[Image description: an edited photograph of the human-monkey hybrid embryo, a dark blue ball covered in white circles, stained with fluorescent antibodies in shades of green and red. ] Credit & copyright: Weizhi Ji/Kunming University of Science and Technology
 

Written by: Maria C.

For the Indian jumping ant, less is more when it comes to brains. In a recent study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, biologists have found female Harpegnathos saltator to be capable of shrinking their brains up to 20 percent. They can also unshrink their brains within a few weeks, though they are the first known insect to be capable of brain mass loss and regrowth. Scientists believe that female worker ants undergo physiological transformations to prepare them for the battle to take the place of a recently deceased queen ant. Some 70% of a colony's females become gamergates entering into a 40 day battle royale to determine the five or 10 future queens. Since the victors’ spoils are lazing around and reproducing, the brain losses occur mostly in the optical and central brain matter that would be more beneficial to a worker ant searching for food above ground. The new queens' ovaries also grow about five times their normal size when in gamergate mode! To the victor go the spoils, though in the case of the Indian jumping ant, life doesn't get much easier than becoming a queen ant!

[Image description: an Indian jumping ant reposes on a stalk of grass ] Credit & copyright: Clint Penick
 

Written by: Esther P.

COVID-19 vaccines aren’t the only shots making headlines lately! In April, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and The Scripps Research Institute announced that they had made promising strides toward the development of an HIV vaccine, during a clinical trial held in La Jolla, California. Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), a deadly condition which causes the immune system to malfunction. Because HIV mutates quickly and has many different subtypes, creating an effective vaccine against it has proven challenging. In fact, researchers have been trying to develop one for over 30 years. In their recent trial, IAVI and Scripps tested a vaccine which helps the body create broadly neutralizing antibodies that are effective against a wide range of HIV variants. During Phase 1, 48 healthy adult participants were given either two doses of the new vaccine, or two doses of a placebo. Incredibly, 97% of those who received the vaccine showed early evidence that their immune systems might be able to make broad neutralizing antibodies to combat HIV. “With our many collaborators on the study team, we showed that vaccines can be designed to stimulate rare immune cells with specific properties, and this targeted stimulation can be very efficient in humans,” Dr. William Schief, immunologist at Scripps Research and Executive Director of Vaccine Design at IAVI’s Neutralizing Antibody Center, explained in a statement. IAVI and Scripps are also collaborating with Moderna over the possibility of utilizing the mRNA technology in their COVID-19 vaccine, though at the moment it’s unclear whether an mRNA vaccine could work against HIV. With the scientific community coming together, who knows what new weapons against HIV may soon be developed!

[Image description: a gloved hand grabs a blood sample from a blue container at a medical clinic. ] Credit & copyright: Getty Images
 

Written by: Maria C.

Hold the popsicles and cold brew coffee, there's a toothache ahead. A recently published study in Science Advances details new information about how cold sensations reach the inner nerves of the tooth. It turns out, certain cells in the body produce a protein called TRPC5, which is sensitive to temperature changes. Particularly when exposed to the cold, TRPC5 pops open to form a channel that allows ions to flow across a cell's membrane—in other words, TRPC5 in a tooth's odontoblast cells (outer surface of inner dental pulp) loosen up and allow sensations like extreme cold to reach inner tooth nerve endings. Researchers also found that lab mice who did not have the TRPC5 protein did not experience cold teeth pain like other mice did. While removing the protein might be out of the question in humans, knowing precisely how cold toothaches start can help those in oral medicine develop better treatments to address tooth pain. For instance, oil of cloves has been used as an herbal remedy for toothaches in the past. Now, researchers know it's because the compound eugenol, found in cloves, prevents TRPC5 from opening. Once they're done with tooth pain, we'd love to have researchers address the foot pain of stepping on Legos at night!
 

[Image description: a white woman eating an orange popsicle cringes from cold tooth pain.] Credit & copyright: Shutterstock
 

Written by: Esther P.

Robots can now see through walls! There’s no cause for alarm though, MIT’s newest bot, known as RF-GRASP, won’t be spying on humanity any time soon. Recently created by MIT Associate Professor Fadel Adib and his team, RF-GRASP uses radio waves to locate hidden objects. RF-GRASP may look like a standard robotic arm at first glance, but the impressive part of the bot’s technology lies in its “vision”. While most “seeing” robots use a combination of cameras and AI (which helps the robot interpret images) RF-GRASP adds radio frequency tags to the mix. Radio frequency tags are the same technology used to open secure doors with clearance cards: a tag within the card is embedded with information, which a “reader” in the door scans, using radio waves. In RF-GRASP’s case, radio tags are hidden behind walls that the robot’s cameras can’t see through. A radio frequency reader sits near the robot, plugged into its visual system. The reader sends out radio frequency pings, which are reflected by the tags, along with information about the tag’s location. When RF-GRASP senses these reflections, it prioritizes the reflected signals over the information from its camera feeds, giving it the ability to move directly to wear tags are hidden, even moving objects out of the way to reach them.
 

According to Tara Borougshaki, lead author of an upcoming paper about RF-GRASP, programming the bot’s decision-making was particularly difficult. “The robot has to decide, at each point in time, which of these streams is more important to think about,” she explained. “It’s not just eye-hand coordination, it’s RF-eye-hand coordination.” Researchers hope that RF-GRASP’s technology may soon create robots that could work in warehouses, moving specific objects while leaving others undisturbed. Talk about coordinated bots!

 
Below: a video of MIT’s robot in action.

[Image description: MIT’s RF-Grasp robot, which resembles a standard robotic arm, reaches toward a cardboard box in which an object has been hidden.] Credit & copyright: MIT
 

Written by: Maria C.

No need to lose our heads: the above sea slug is perfectly alive and well. A recent publication by Japanese biologists Sayaka Mitoh and Yoichi Yusa in Current Biology details the Elysia marginata's self-amputation and regeneration process. Mitoh's interest in the behavior began one night when she thought the sea slug had unfortunately been decapitated: what she discovered instead was that the head was moving around freely and munching on algae. It turns out the sea slug has a "breakage plane" along its neck where tissue can dissolve, allowing the head to free itself in what's known as autonomy or self-amputation. While other animals have similar abilities and often use them to avoid predators, none have previously been observed ditching their entire bodies. The Elysia marginata likely performs the action when its body has been overrun by parasites. Its neck wounds heal in a day, and within three weeks it has grown a whole new body. In the meantime, it survives on chloroplasts from algae in a photosynthesis-like process called kleptoplasty. Looks like this escargot can easily say escar-bye to a sick body whenever it needs to!

[Image description: a brown-and-orange sea slug's head moves around freely from its self-amputated body.] Credit & copyright: Annie Roth
 
Below: a video from The Guardian about the sea slug's autonomy process.

Written by: Esther P.

A new future for energy may be just around the corner! At least, the many research teams and organizations that make up the international nuclear fusion megaproject International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) hope so. The project’s goal, when it began in 2006, was to prove the feasibility of fusion energy for peaceful uses, such as powering large cities. To do this, they planned to build an experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor over the course of 10 years, and run it for around 20 years, if possible. Construction of the reactor took longer than expected, but now ITER is one step closer to becoming the world’s first truly functional nuclear fusion reactor. While other fusion reactors, such as South Korea’s record-breaking KSTAR reactor, do exist, ITER is different. If all goes according to plan, experiments this summer will show that ITER is capable of generating more energy than it consumes. ITER’s potential success depends upon its unique power source: even quantities of tritium and deuterium, two radioactive hydrogen isotopes. As the isotopes fuse into helium, ITER will confine enough heat, from the reaction, to power future fusion reactions, thereby producing more energy than was contained in the original tritium and deuterium.
 

The first experiments concerning ITER, which are set to begin this June, won’t actually take place at the ITER sight in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, France. Instead, they’ll be conducted with Joint European Torus (JET), a smaller reactor run by researchers at EUROfusion in Oxfordshire, England. JET is one-tenth the size of ITER, and is specifically used to conduct proof-of-concept experiments for the larger reactor. Experiments at the actual ITER site are slated to begin in 2025, and if they are successful, then energy produced by nuclear fusion may become feasible for the first time outside of science fiction!

[Image description: A 3D computer illustration of the ITER tokamak and integrated plant systems, showcasing a large central chamber in front of various compartments filled with technical components.] Credit & copyright: ITER/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
 

Written by: Maria C.

Looks like Iceland's Fagradalsfjall finally blew its cover. The volcano, located in the Geldinga Valley at the southwestern Reykjanes Peninsula, erupted on March 19th for the first time in over 700 years. The event capped off some 50,000 earthquakes in Iceland over the past three weeks, including a few dozen over a 4 on the Richter scale. Fagradalsfjall's eruption was considered a "minor" one in that there was no sign of ash or dust likely to disrupt aviation—unlike the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokull which stranded over 100,000 flights between North America and Europe over fears of how the volcanic materials could harm jet engines. Iceland itself is a hotbed of geological activity due to its location at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge boundary separating Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. No one was harmed in Fagradalsfjall's eruption, thankfully, and access to the lava valley is a difficult several hour hike from the nearest road. So no toasting marshmallows or throwing the One Ring into this majestic fire pit!

[Image description: A red coastguard helicopter flies over an erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland. ] Credit & copyright: Getty Images
 

Written by: Esther P.

Don’t panic! Despite appearances, you don't need to add "flying sharks" to your 2021 bingo card. In fact, the eagle shark, first discovered in 2012, hasn’t been seen on earth for millions of years. However, a study published in the online journal Science, in March, has given new insights into how this odd prehistoric animal may have lived. The shark’s scientific name, Aquilolamna milarcae oreagle shark of the Milarca Museum, honors the Mexican museum where it will be displayed. A quarryman in Nuevo León, Mexico discovered the shark’s fossil in 2012, in a slab of limestone. Imprints of its soft tissues gave scientists an immediate impression of its strange looks. The shark was wider than it was long, with pectoral fins spanning around 6.2 feet, and an overall length of around 5.4 feet. Although it may look similar to modern animals like manta rays, researchers believe that this is an example of convergent evolution, in which several species independently evolve similar features. In fact, the eagle shark existed around 93 million years ago, 30 million years before manta rays existed.
 

According to lead researcher Romain Vullo, a vertebrate paleontologist with the National Center for Scientific Research, in France, the eagle shark’s wide mouth and short head means that it was probably a plankton-eating filter-feeder, just like manta rays. It likely lived in the Western Interior Seaway, a body of water between the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean which used to cover the area where it was unearthed. Too bad we can’t watch this prehistoric oddity in action today...though, depending on how you feel about sharks, you may be relieved!

[Image description: an illustration of a brown and white shark with long, limb-like pectoral fins stretching out from its sides.] Credit & copyright: Oscar Sanisidro
 

Written by: Maria C.

Hey, who left the chicken in the barbecuer...since the Cretaceous age? The image on the left is actually the newly discovered remains of an oviraptorosaur perched atop its nest of 24 eggs, which was located in Ganzhou City, China. Oviraptorosaurs were a type of theropod dinosaur. Theropods lived over 70 million years ago and were identified by their bipedal movement, short forelimbs, and carnivorous diet—traits which helped scientists identify them as ancestors to modern birds. This particular fossil is unique for being the evidence of a non-avian dinosaur brooding on eggs with preserved embryonic material, proving the species had to care for their young even before hatching. The mother oviraptorosaur also had stones in its abdomen, which may indicate that gastrolith (digestive stones) helped break down meals in the body. We're just glad these carnivorous dinos ate stones instead of writers like us for breakfast.
 

[Image description: left, the bones and fossilized nest of an oviraptorosaur. Right, an illustration of two blue-and-brown oviraptorosaurs nesting. ] Credit & copyright: Shundong Bi, Zhao Chuang
 

Written by: Esther P.

Earth is facing some unprecedented challenges, but researchers won’t let their hopes be eclipsed! After all, the moon is a mere 238,855 miles away. Why not use all that empty space to store seed, sperm and egg samples in case of an earthly catastrophe? One researcher from the University of Arizona, along with a team of his students, recently presented a proposal for just such a “Lunar arc” at the IEEE Aerospace Conference, in early March. Jekan Thanga, a Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, created detailed plans for a moon-based facility that could store biological samples from around 6.7 million Earth species. Similar to Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault ("doomsday vault”), which holds over a million seeds in case of a catastrophe, Thanga’s lunar arc is more likely to be left untouched by disaster. The moon is even equipped with the perfect infrastructure for the arc. Lava tubes, naturally occurring tunnels beneath the moon’s surface formed by lava billions of years ago, would provide adequate protection from solar radiation and temperature changes.

 
Samples would have to be stored at incredibly cold temperatures, some as low as minus 320 degrees. This would be accomplished via special floating shelves made of a cryo-cooled superconductor material. It would utilize quantum levitation, a process in which superconductive objects are levitated over a magnetic source, similar to the way that some high-speed trains work. “When you get to cryogenic temperatures, strange things happen. Some of it just looks like magic but is based on tried and laboratory-tested physics principles at the edge of our understanding,” Thanga explained, in an interview with CBS News. It’s safe to say that Thanga’s proposed lunar arc is cool in more ways than one. Let’s just hope that we never have need of it!

[Image description: vials of sperm samples with differently-colored caps inside a circular, metal cooling container.] Credit & copyright: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
 

Written by: Maria C.