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Scientists receive US$15 million to resurrect woolly mammoth – CTV News

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Bringing extinct creatures back to life is the lifeblood of science fiction. At its most tantalizing, think Jurassic Park and its stable of dinosaurs.

Advances in genetics, however, are making resurrecting lost animals a tangible prospect. Scientists have already cloned endangered animals and can sequence DNA extracted from the bones and carcasses of long-dead, extinct animals.

Geneticists, led by Harvard Medical School’s George Church, aim to bring the woolly mammoth, which disappeared 4,000 years ago, back to life, imagining a future where the tusked ice age giant is restored to its natural habitat.

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The efforts got a major boost on Monday with the announcement of a US$15 million investment.

Proponents say bringing back the mammoth in an altered form could help restore the fragile Arctic tundra ecosystem, combat the climate crisis, and preserve the endangered Asian elephant, to whom the woolly mammoth is most closely related. However, it’s a bold plan fraught with ethical issues.

The goal isn’t to clone a mammoth — the DNA that scientists have managed to extract from woolly mammoth remains frozen in permafrost is far too fragmented and degraded — but to create, through genetic engineering, a living, walking elephant-mammoth hybrid that would be visually indistinguishable from its extinct forerunner.

“Our goal is to have our first calves in the next four to six years,” said tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm, who with Church has cofounded Colossal, a bioscience and genetics company to back the project.

‘NOW WE CAN ACTUALLY DO IT’

The new investment and focus brought by Lamm and his investors marks a major step forward, said Church, the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

“Up until 2021, it has been kind of a backburner project, frankly. … but now we can actually do it,” Church said.

“This is going to change everything.”

Church has been at the cutting edge of genomics, including the use of CRISPR, the revolutionary gene editing tool that has been described as rewriting the code of life, to alter the characteristics of living species. His work creating pigs whose organs are compatible with the human body means a kidney for a patient in desperate need of a transplant might one day come from a swine.

“We had to make a lot of (genetic) changes, 42 so far to make them human compatible. And in that case we have very healthy pigs that are breeding and donating organs for preclinical trials at Massachusetts General Hospital,” he said.

“With the elephant, it’s a different goal but it’s a similar number of changes.”

The research team has analyzed the genomes of 23 living elephant species and extinct mammoths, Church said. The scientists believe they will need to simultaneously program “upward of 50 changes” to the genetic code of the Asian elephant to give it the traits necessary to survive and thrive in the Arctic.

These traits, Church said, include a 10-centimeter layer of insulating fat, five different kinds of shaggy hair including some that is up to a meter long, and smaller ears that will help the hybrid tolerate the cold. The team also plans to try to engineer the animal to not have any tusks so they won’t be a target for ivory poachers.

Once a cell with these and other traits has successfully been programmed, Church plans to use an artificial womb to make the step from embryo to baby — something that takes 22 months for living elephants. However, this technology is far from nailed down, and Church said they hadn’t ruled out using live elephants as surrogates.

“The editing, I think, is going to go smoothly. We’ve got a lot of experience with that, I think, making the artificial wombs is not guaranteed. It’s one of the few things that is not pure engineering, there’s maybe a tiny bit of science in there as well, which always increases uncertainty and delivery time,” he said.

SKEPTICISM

Love Dalén, professor of evolutionary genetics at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm who works on mammoth evolution, believes there is scientific value in the work being undertaken by Church and his team, particularly when it comes to conservation of endangered species that have genetic diseases or a lack of genetic variation as result of inbreeding.

“If endangered species have lost genes that are important to them … the ability to put them back in the endangered species, that might prove really important,” said Dalén, who is not involved in the project.

“I still wonder what the bigger point would be. First of all, you’re not going to get a mammoth. It’s a hairy elephant with some fat deposits.

“We, of course, have very little clue about what genes make a mammoth a mammoth. We know a little, bit but we certainly don’t know anywhere near enough.”

Others say it’s unethical to use living elephants as surrogates to give birth to a genetically engineered animal. Dalén described mammoths and Asian elephants as being as different as humans and chimpanzees.

“Let’s say it works, and there’s no horrible consequences. No surrogate elephant moms die,” said Tori Herridge, an evolutionary biologist and mammoth specialist at the Natural History Museum in London, who is not involved in the project.

“The idea that by bringing mammoths back and by placing them into the Arctic, you engineer the Arctic to become a better place for carbon storage. That aspect I have number of issues with.”

Some believe large that, before their extinction, grazing animals like mammoths, horses and bison maintained the grasslands in our planet’s northern reaches and kept the earth frozen underneath by tramping down the grass, knocking down trees and compacting snow. Reintroducing mammoths and other large mammals to these places will help revitalize these environments and slow down permafrost thaw and the release of carbon.

However, both Dalén and Herridige said there was no evidence to back up this hypothesis, and it was hard to imagine herds of cold-adapted elephants making any impact on an environment that’s grappling with wild fires, riddled with mires and warming faster than anywhere else in the world.

“There’s absolutely nothing that says that putting mammoths out there will have any, any effect on climate change whatsoever,” Dalén said.

Ultimately, the stated end goal of herds of roaming mammoths as ecosystem engineers may not matter, and neither Herridge nor Dalén knock Church and Lamm for embarking on the project. Many people might be happy to pay to get up close to a proxy mammoth.

“Maybe it’s fun to showcase them in the zoo. I don’t have a big problem with that if they want to put them in a park somewhere and, you know, make kids more interested in the past,” Dalén said.

There is “zero pressure” for the project to make money, Lamm said. He is banking on the endeavor resulting in innovations that have applications in biotechnology and health care. He compared it to how the Apollo project got people caring about space exploration but also resulted in a lot of incredible technology, including GPS.

“I am absolutely fascinated by this. I’m drawn to people who are technologically adventurous and it is possible it will make a positive difference,” Herridge, the mammoth expert, said.

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The total solar eclipse in North America could shed light on a persistent puzzle about the sun – Phys.org

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The total solar eclipse in North America could shed light on a persistent puzzle about the sun

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The path of eclipse totality passes through Mexico, the US and Canada. Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

A total solar eclipse takes place on April 8 across North America. These events occur when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, completely blocking the sun’s face. This plunges observers into a darkness similar to dawn or dusk.

During the upcoming eclipse, the path of totality, where observers experience the darkest part of the moon’s shadow (the umbra), crosses Mexico, arcing north-east through Texas, the Midwest and briefly entering Canada before ending in Maine.

Total solar eclipses occur roughly every 18 months at some location on Earth. The last that crossed the US took place on August 21 2017.

An international team of scientists, led by Aberystwyth University, will be conducting experiments from near Dallas, at a location in the path of totality. The team consists of Ph.D. students and researchers from Aberystwyth University, Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena.

There is valuable science to be done during eclipses that is comparable to or better than what we can achieve via space-based missions. Our experiments may also shed light on a longstanding puzzle about the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere—its corona.

The sun’s intense light is blocked by the moon during a total solar eclipse. This means that we can observe the sun’s faint corona with incredible clarity, from distances very close to the sun, out to several solar radii. One radius is the distance equivalent to half the sun’s diameter, about 696,000km (432,000 miles).

Measuring the corona is extremely difficult without an eclipse. It requires a special telescope called a coronagraph that is designed to block out direct light from the sun. This allows fainter light from the corona to be resolved. The clarity of eclipse measurements surpasses even coronagraphs based in space.

We can also observe the corona on a relatively small budget, compared to, for example, spacecraft missions. A persistent puzzle about the corona is the observation that it is much hotter than the photosphere (the visible surface of the sun). As we move away from a hot object, the surrounding temperature should decrease, not increase. How the corona is heated to such high temperatures is one question we will investigate.

We have two main scientific instruments. The first of these is Cip (coronal imaging polarimeter). Cip is also the Welsh word for “glance,” or “quick look.” The instrument takes images of the sun’s corona with a polariser.

The light we want to measure from the corona is highly polarized, which means it is made up of waves that vibrate in a single geometric plane. A polarizer is a filter that lets light with a particular polarization pass through it, while blocking light with other polarizations.

The Cip images will allow us to measure fundamental properties of the corona, such as its density. It will also shed light on phenomena such as the solar wind. This is a stream of sub-atomic particles in the form of plasma—superheated matter—flowing continuously outward from the sun. Cip could help us identify sources in the sun’s atmosphere for certain solar wind streams.

Direct measurements of the magnetic field in the sun’s atmosphere are difficult. But the eclipse data should allow us to study its fine-scale structure and trace the field’s direction. We’ll be able to see how far magnetic structures called large “closed” magnetic loops extend from the sun. This in turn will give us information about large-scale magnetic conditions in the corona.

The second instrument is Chils (coronal high-resolution line spectrometer). It collects high-resolution spectra, where light is separated into its component colors. Here, we are looking for a particular spectral signature of iron emitted from the corona.

It comprises three , where light is emitted or absorbed in a narrow frequency range. These are each generated at a different range of temperatures (in the millions of degrees), so their relative brightness tells us about the coronal temperature in different regions.

Mapping the ‘s temperature informs advanced, computer-based models of its behavior. These models must include mechanisms for how the coronal plasma is heated to such high temperatures. Such mechanisms might include the conversion of magnetic waves to thermal plasma energy, for example. If we show that some regions are hotter than others, this can be replicated in models.

This year’s eclipse also occurs during a time of heightened solar activity, so we could observe a coronal mass ejection (CME). These are huge clouds of magnetized plasma that are ejected from the sun’s atmosphere into space. They can affect infrastructure near Earth, causing problems for vital satellites.

Many aspects of CMEs are poorly understood, including their early evolution near the sun. Spectral information on CMEs will allow us to gain information on their thermodynamics, and their velocity and expansion near the sun.

Our eclipse instruments have recently been proposed for a space mission called moon-enabled solar occultation mission (Mesom). The plan is to orbit the moon to gain more frequent and extended eclipse observations. It is being planned as a UK Space Agency mission involving several countries, but led by University College London, the University of Surrey and Aberystwyth University.

We will also have an advanced commercial 360-degree camera to collect video of the April 8 eclipse and the observing site. The video is valuable for public outreach events, where we highlight the work we do, and helps to generate public interest in our local star, the sun.

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Citation:
The total solar eclipse in North America could shed light on a persistent puzzle about the sun (2024, March 28)
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How the 2024 total solar eclipse is different than the 2017 eclipse



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Mar 30: An Australian Atlantis and other lost landscapes, and more… – CBC.ca

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Quirks and Quarks54:00An Australian Atlantis and other lost landscapes, and more…


On this week’s episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald: 

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Archaeologists identify a medieval war-horse graveyard near Buckingham Palace 

Quirks and Quarks9:04Archaeologists identify a medieval war-horse graveyard near Buckingham Palace

We know knights in shining armour rode powerful horses, but remains of those horses are rare. Now, researchers studying equine remains from a site near Buckingham Palace have built a case, based on evidence from their bones, that these animals were likely used in jousting tournaments and battle. Archaeologist Katherine Kanne says the bone analysis also revealed a complex, continent-crossing medieval horse trading network that supplied the British elite with sturdy stallions. This paper was published in Science Advances.

University of Exeter researchers analyzed horse skeletons found near Buckingham Palace and conducted isotope tests on teeth to find out more about the animals’ origins. (University of Exeter)

In an ice-free Arctic, polar bears are dining on duck eggs — and gulls are taking advantage

Quirks and Quarks9:22In an ice-free Arctic, Polar bears are dining on duck eggs — and gulls are taking advantage

Researchers using drones to study ground-nesting birds in the Arctic have observed entire colonies being devastated by marauding polar bears that would normally be out on the ice hunting seals, except the ice isn’t there. What’s more, now they’re enabling a second predator — hungry gulls that raid the nests in the bears’ wake. Andrew Barnas made the observations of this “gull tornado” by following around polar bears in East Bay Island in Nunavut. The research was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Aerial video of a polar bear on grassy, rocky terrain with white birds circling nearby.
A polar bear storms eider duck nests on East Bay island in Nunavut, while herring gulls follow closely behind to snack on any remaining eggs. (Submitted by Andrew Barnas)

A NASA mission might have the tools to detect life on Europa from space

Quirks and Quarks8:05A NASA mission might have the tools to detect life on Europa from space

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, due to launch this fall, is set to explore the jewel of our solar system: Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The mission’s focus is to determine if the icy moon, thought to harbour an ocean with more water than all of the water on Earth, is amenable to life. However, postdoctoral researcher Fabian Klenner, now at the University of Washington, demonstrated how the spacecraft may be able to detect fragments of bacterial life in a single grain of ice ejected from the surface of the moon. The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

The silhouette of the spacecraft is flying over a brightly pink, blue and orange tinted moon with lots of darker coloured veins underneath with a slightly eclipsed Jupiter looming in the backdrop.
Scientists think under Europa’s icy shell, there is a global, saltwater ocean with twice the volume of Earth’s oceans combined. (NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech)

Pollution is preventing pollinators from recognizing floral plants by scent

Quirks and Quarks7:50Pollution is preventing pollinators from finding plants by scent

Our polluted air is transforming floral scents so pollinators that spread their pollen can no longer recognize them. In a new study in the journal Science, researchers found that a certain compound in air pollution reacts with the flower’s scent molecules so pollinators — like the hummingbird hawk-moths that pollinate at night — fail to recognize them. Jeremy Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Naples, said the change in scent made the flowers smell “less fruity and less fresh.”

A huge insect that looks like a hummingbird hovers over a vibrant pink flower with its long antenna inside one of the blooms.
Scientists found that a hummingbird hawk-moth’s ability to recognize the smell of flowers is hampered by air pollution. (Thomas Kienzle/AFP/Getty Images)

An Australian Atlantis and underwater archeological remains in the Baltic 

Quirks and Quarks17:14An Australian Atlantis and underwater archeological remains in the Baltic

During the last ice age, sea levels were more than 100 metres lower than they are today, which means vast tracts of what are currently coastal seafloor were dry land back then. Geologists and archaeologists are searching for these lost landscapes to identify places prehistoric humans might have occupied. These included a country-sized area of Australia that could have been home to half a million people. Archaeologist Kasih Norman and her colleagues published their study of this now-drowned landscape in Quaternary Science Reviews

Another example is an undersea wall off the coast of Northern Germany that preserves an underwater reindeer hunting ground, described in research led by Jacob Geersen, published in the journal PNAS.

a black-and-white depiction of a small group of caribou walking between a low stone wall and an ocean coastline.
An artist’s representation of caribou being directed by a hunters’ stone wall, as it would have appeared 8-11,000 years ago, before rising sea levels left it 20m below the surface of the Baltic Sea. (Michał Grabowski)

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Solar eclipse April 8 – South Grey News

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March 28, 2024

Graphic: Appalachian Mtn Club

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Grey Bruce Public Health is urging residents to resist the temptation to look directly at the sun during the upcoming solar eclipse and take steps to safeguard their visual health during this relatively rare celestial event.

On April 8, 2024, parts of southern and eastern Ontario will experience a total solar eclipse for the first time since 1925. Grey-Bruce will be outside of the so-called Path of Totality — a narrow area where the moon will completely block out the sun — but will still experience a partial eclipse.

The eclipse is expected to begin at about 2 pm and continue until 4:30 pm The eclipse will peak around 3:20 pm.

It is never safe to stare directly at the sun, but it may be tempting to do so during a solar eclipse.

Looking directly at the sun during an eclipse can cause retinal burns, blurred vision, and/or temporary or permanent loss of visual function, according to the Ontario Association of Optometrists. Damage to the eyes can occur without any sensation of pain.

Grey Bruce Public Health advises the following:

  • Do not look directly at the sun without proper eye protection during the solar eclipse. Looking at even a small sliver of the sun before or after the eclipse without proper eye protection can harm vision.
  • Keep a close eye on children and other vulnerable family members during the eclipse to ensure they do not inadvertently look up at the sun without proper eye protection.
  • To safely view the eclipse, ISO-certified eclipse glasses that meet the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard must be worn. Ensure these glasses are in good condition, without any wrinkles or scratches, and that they fully cover the entire field of vision. Put on the glasses when looking away from the sun, then look at the eclipse. Look away from the sun before taking the glasses off.
  • Regular sunglasses or homemade filters will not protect the eyes.
  • It is not safe to view the eclipse through a camera/phone lens, telescope, binoculars, or any other optical device.

Other ways to safely experience the solar eclipse include watching a livestream of the event or creating and using an eclipse box or pinhole projector.

Anyone experiencing temporary vision loss or blurred vision during or after the eclipse should speak with their eye care professional or healthcare provider as soon as possible.

Anyone experiencing blindness (immediate or delayed) after viewing the eclipse must seek emergency care immediately.

More information on the upcoming eclipse is available on the GBPH website.


At South Grey News, we endeavour to bring you truthful and factual, up-to-date local community news in a quick and easy-to-digest format that’s free of political bias. We believe this service is more important today than ever before, as social media has given rise to misinformation, largely unchecked by big corporations who put profits ahead of their responsibilities.

South Grey News does not have the resources of a big corporation. We are a small, locally owned-and-operated organization. Research, analysis and physical attendance at public meetings and community events requires considerable effort. But contributions from readers and advertisers, however big or small, go a long way to helping us deliver positive, open and honest journalism for this community.

Please consider supporting South Grey News with a donation in lieu of a subscription fee and let us know that our efforts are appreciated. Thank you.

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