Environmental News

Those in youtube enabled regions might enjoy:

Decoding Deception: The Psychology of Combati | EurekAlert!

 

White truffles may be the most expensive food. Catch up on those, wannabees, including a subtle link to Nutella (TM):

White truffles, Italy's gold, menaced by climate change

 

Science during the next 4 years:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu4907
https://www.science.org/content/article/research-advocates-see-no-good-news-trump-s-economic-immigration-agenda

 

Disappearing Federal data was a topic in 2017 but I think 'they got it covered' this time. Mass storage has improved a lot during intervening years.

 

Saffron is mainly produced in Iran but there are limitations on export, leaving Spain as largest exporter. Global production is about 500 tons; a notably small amount.

So one grows Crocus sativus and a small part of flowers are removed by hand. Floral production is inconsistent. But it can be grown in many places, and if hands are available ...

 

Political dark side pulls but my home is here. Take a dip in Biology:

Genes of ancient animal relatives used to grow a mouse: Study reveals hidden history of stem cells

or the challenging article referenced:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54152-x

Some words to define. A stem cell is like all cells in early zygote that are all the same. Fibroblast cells are always present in differentiating organisms and 'fence off' organs that go in different ways. Pluripotency is stem cells being 'stemy', or reverting differentiated cells to that status. Pluripotency can be re-established by Sox and PLU genes.

The cited study used Sox and PLU genes from primitive and distantly-related organisms to make mouse fibroblast cells pluripotent, and used those to make a mouse de novo.

I regret lacking skills to communicate my wonderment at what this may mean! Biotechnology now has much less limitations on what can be done. Fences on both good a bad things have been taken down. Welcome to the future.

 

Go for the click, stay for the science:

Biologists Just Created Solar-Powered Hamster Cells

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The lecture Organelles are membrane-bound structures within cells that perform unique functions. Examples include chloroplasts (see above) and mitochondria. They are in eucaryotic cells (like ours) but not in procaryotic cells (like bacteria). They are probably procaryotic cells that got engulfed somehow into other procaryotic cells, and somehow developed stable beneficial situations.

Photosynthetic hamsters would be entertaining. These folks made it persist for 2 days. Other examples exist.

But here's the thing. Eucaryotic cells exist because this very odd thing occurred several/many times on earth. Without this, earth would be a bacteria-only planet. As others may be in this galaxy. This weird engulfing trick is one of many hypothetical pinch points constraining development of complicated (unto intelligent) biological beings.

If it is generally a strong barrier, galaxy has mostly bacterial-type bioplanets. If not, more complex options are feasible.

So, I don't really care about photohamsters. But I do care greatly, how nearly impossible it is for procaryotic cells to bumble into becoming eucaryotic cells.

 

A book report on a book about Linnaeus:

Every Living Thing: book report

Linnaeus is basically revered for inventing taxonomy. Well, binomial nomenclature. Here he gets taken down a notch.

 

This may or may not be a useful review of EV battery tech:

Powering the future: Overcoming key challenge | EurekAlert!
An Electric Vehicle Battery and Management Techniques: Comprehensive Review of Important Obstacles, New Advancements, and Recommendations - ScienceDirect

If anyone reads it. please let us know.

 

All I see of LI-secondary batteries seems to mirror Moore's (elsewhere) law. But this entire industry lags many-fold against carbon burning, that has enabled our large human enterprise. And that does now challenge the climatic optimum during which human agriculture/industry enterprise has fortuitously developed.

Reaching far out to expansions of the Drake Equation, civilizations anywhere may be filtered in getting to their later steps. Low-damage energy supply is important for us. In my musings, it is important for civilizations anywhere.

 

Education benefits from seeing beyond our eyes. Telescopes for the big are many, but most kids live in cities where skies are not clear/open. Microscopes for the small are less impeded:

Store - Foldscope Instruments, Inc.

 

I cannot let go of stellar globular clusters in our Milky Way galaxy. Readers are burdened with my thoughts.

Milky Way galaxy has 50 to 150 stellar globular clusters. Stars in them are 1000 times or more dense than near our sun. If nothing else, imagine looking up at such night skies. Also, far-field astronomy done by possible civilizations there would suffer much from clutter. It would be different for them.

Stellar globular clusters are OLD, as old as this galaxy. Their stars might host planets, although none in any have been detected. Planet searches so far have looked elsewhere.

Microbial biology -> complex biology -> civilizations might proceed on any suitable planets around suitable stars. The thing about globular clusters is that they are so frekking DENSE. Uniquely in them, civilizations could chat among themselves, less constrained by ‘speed of light’ and ‘one over R squared’ communications signal-strength loss that any would face across larger spaces.

Acting against all that is reality that globular clusters’ stars are so frekking DENSE. Their stars might get too close and disrupt planet orbits, and whack folks having nice chats.

In summary we don’t know much. I propose with no evidence for globular clusters as civilization multipliers. No one else has any evidence for any other galactic scenarios. Sadly we live now, decades or centuries too soon to know about it. But we are not too soon to realize that galaxies have diverse areas where interesting things can happen.

 

Back on earth I am happy to mention:

Yield growth patterns of food commodities: Insights and challenges | PLOS ONE

TL;DR Yields and yields per area are increasing for all examined crops in all areas. Other sources indicate that The Green Revolution had topped out. This study indicates otherwise through 2022.

If one really wanted to find gloom here, one might observe that agricultural area is also increasing. If that indicates loss of highly biodiverse landscapes, that would be bad. But I don't think about that right now.

 

Mis lead.

One of the studies trying to assess harm to humans from lead, the element:

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1065637

It also mentions water pipes, but not white house paint. As usual I have thoughts.

Leaded vehicle fuel is often the more efficient delivery mechanism to people. I suppose it relates to total fuel burn over time within a 100-km radius or so.

House paint ‘works’ best by chipping off followed by ingestion by toddlers or other people like them. Or unpleasantly, by sanding off old bad paint before a new coat.

Leaded pipes are where they are, but can only get you where water chemistry is (or changes to make it) water soluble. Latter happened in Flint, Michigan and probably elsewhere. The point here is that tap water ingestion is very efficient where water chemistry is wrong.

Other environmental sources of lead are more localized. To people involved with recycling lead-acid batteries, sorry. Lead-based solder gets to people manufacturing or recycling electronics. Lead-based ceramic glazes can’t get at people very well.

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Human exposure to lead is a big deal, and will be until that element gets used less. But which source is most effective varies in locally complicated ways.

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Cited link says that chelation is not effective against lead. I did not know that and frankly don’t understand why. Maybe, lead goes to bones as if calcium and hides there.