Science keeps moving on! It could give us the stars...( if we don't get idiocracy first.)

== Do humans need uplifting? ==

First off... some of my past sci fi has been more pertinent than I’d want! My Hugo-nominated story “The Giving Plague” deals with our complex relationships with viruses and such, including the several paths a parasite can go down, in “negotiating” with us hosts. Oh, there's sudden movie interest. I wonder why?

Alas, P.Z. Meyers speculates that my novel The Postman may be my most prophetic... re: a plague of selfish romanticism driving "preppers" at both society's low and high ends.

Or else maybe the Uplift Series? Because we badly need it? Oh, but see below. We're getting the tools!

== Uplifting animal news ==

Apparently chimps use Instagram and similar apps really well, swiping and touch-activating etc. Does this speak to their “pre-sapient” potential for uplift, as in my cosmology? Or to the really primitive level that these crude apps operate on?

And octopuses, along with some squid and cuttlefish, routinely edit their RNA (ribonucleic acid) sequences to adapt to their environment. When such an edit happens, it can change how the proteins work, allowing the organism to fine-tune its genetic information without actually undergoing any genetic mutations. "I wonder if it has to do with their extremely developed brains," asks geneticist Kazuko Nishikura. The theorized tradeoff: cephalopods may gain individual flexibility at the cost of slower genetic evolution.

More amazements from nature – scientists have found a species of insect that uses tooth gears to synchronize movement of the rear, hopping legs. 

Jumping jaws:  the trap-jaw ant uses its jaws - that open a full 180 degrees - not just to catch prey, but to jump as well, propelling them at a speed of 140 mph, with a force 300 times the insect's weight. 

Engineering new life forms. A generation ago, religious leaders called it a red line. A no-go zone, arrogating Heaven’s authority. Now? Silence, as the red lines keep getting moved. Scientists are sculpting and arraying frog stem cells into nano-robots that move tiny appendages and swim about, as designed.

Gosh what a fascinating time! Just a few years ago we learned about Denisovans, a human branch as widespread and important as Neanderthals. Both groups contributed partial inputs to our modern genomes... for non-Africans, that is.  

Only now it seems some African populations carry genes from the “ghost population” of yet a third mystery sub-species!  This  interbreeding happened about 50,000 years ago, roughly the same time that Neanderthals were breeding with modern humans elsewhere in the world. Are you jazzed that science keeps inventing time machines?

Toxic love. Yet sadly endearing. A baboon tries to groom and comfort a lion cub it stole, of course dooming the cub. Should pet owners take note?

== Recent research ==

In “strange metal” scientists have managed to get billions of electrons simultaneously entangled into a shared quantum state. We’ve long been able to do this with bosons (photons, phonons etc) in say lasers. But electrons are fussy fermions. Ooh. 

A fascinating method using “carboranes” to trap and extract particular elements from solution, even seawater. The first tested use was Uranium, but there may be others.

Another for the Predictions registry: “Teslasuit’s new VR gloves let you feel virtual objects.” See my story 'NatuLife,' from my collection Otherness.

== Mining the seas? ==

An eye-opening article about deep seafloor mining and resource extraction. Let’s bear in mind that most regions out there are ‘deserts’ featuring very sparse life. Still, we need critical foresight and a default attitude of ecological conservatism or conservationism. Both for posterity’s sake and … well… might the Galactic Club be waiting for some sign we’re starting to grow up?

Consider this paragraph: “Ships above will draw thousands of pounds of sediment through a hose to the surface, remove the metallic objects, known as polymetallic nodules, and then flush the rest back into the water. Some of that slurry will contain toxins such as mercury and lead, which could poison the surrounding ocean for hundreds of miles. The rest will drift in the current until it settles in nearby ecosystems.” 

Yes, the image is noxious. Though consider also that it is upwelling of ocean bottom sediments that is precisely where nearly all ocean life derives. The possibility of positive outcomes should not be blithely dismissed any more than negative ones. What’s needed is prudence and incremental approaches and above all, transparency combined with skepticism toward the truth-bending effects of greed.

Much will depend on a factor barely considered in the article… close proximity of test sites to fast or slow ocean currents. Having said all that (partly as a contrarian) let me add that this fine article should both inspire and warn you. We must to well by this Earth. Or we have our likely explanation for the Fermi Paradox.

== Saving the planet across a broad spectrum ==

Ever more it seems that some form of 'geo-engineering' is in the cards. While the biggest threat to the planet is right wing denialism, the left’s puritanism is also bad news, insisting that only draconian reductions in carbon emissions can do any good at all. This argument -- a version of "moral hazard" -- is flawed in several ways.

1) It’s not true. Even if we vastly clamped down on human activity and emissions (as we’re doing now, amid the covid/covfefe crisis) it would not be sufficient in the near term to prevent many climate related calamities and extinctions and a possible methane runaway-release. As sci fi legend Kim Stanley Robinson said just today(!) keynoting for a conference on extracting carbon from the air, "we're well past talking moral hazard and now have to get used to fighting this battle on many fronts."

(See KSR's novel about the consequences of warming in New York 2140, and of course I portrayed the dilemma in my own 1990 book Earth.)

2) Carbon fuel replacement by sustainables and e-vehicles already has huge momentum, driven by ever advancing technology, far more than by puritanism. Over the long run, we should be fine. If we can get across the next few decades.

3) The very notion that we can only do one thing, instead of attacking problems across a broad front, is a pure sign of zero sum fanaticism based upon sanctimonious emotion and not vigorous problem solving. It is proof that even the “good” side that is right about overall problems and goals can still be infested with self-righteous loons. (Though nowhere near as bad as the other side, which has no positive traits at all.)

We can and must do many things, in parallel. And experiments must go forward to see if methods like this - and ocean fertilization — can offer safe and effective amelioration for a problem to the planet and future generations… while the real solutions lose no momentum at all.

An interesting article about the world trade in “recyclables”… or otherwise known as “waste” … now that China is producing so much of its own that it no longer needs any from the West. Progress... I think?

Amazing - and sometimes deadly - animals

Oh, thank you science!  For offering alluring reasons why I can turn every weekend posting away from politics!

And this time, let's look at some of our fantastic fellow creatures on this globe. For example:

Russian researchers have teased out the separate sounds from two dolphins, demonstrating that they take turns and emit sequences of bursts that seem to be discursive… in other words – conversation.  Similarly, sperm whales have been found to form clans with distinct cultures... and regional dialects -- which consist of distinct click patterns. 

Which mammals are most likely to be killed by their own kind? A recent study - The phylogenetic roots of human lethal violence - tabulated cause-of-death comparing a wide variety of mammal species. For instance, 13% of lion deaths are inflicted by other lions. The researchers found that a likely baseline murder rate among humans would be around 2 percent.  That means that 2 out of every 100 human deaths would be a murder taking into account only our place on the evolutionary tree, and nothing about political pressures, technology or social norms.

In comparison, among mammals in general just 0.3 percent of deaths are murders. For the common ancestor of primates, the rate is 2.3 percent.

With 2 percent as a human baseline, we come across as both uncommonly peaceful for primates and uncommonly violent for mammals. A topic extensively explored by Steven Pinker in his best-selling book, Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

"Rates of homicide in modern societies that have police forces, legal systems, prisons and strong cultural attitudes that reject violence are, at less than 1 in 10,000 deaths (or 0.01%), about 200 times lower than the authors' predictions for our state of nature," comments biologist Mark Pagel.

The champion killers of their own kind?  Meerkats. Hakkuna Matata, man.

And even more dangerous animals are explored in the recently released popular science book, Venomous: How Earth's Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry. Biologist Christie Wilcox investigates how such a wide variety of animals - jellyfish, sea urchins, spiders, snakes, scorpions, as well as certain snails, fish and frogs - have adapted to manufacture poisonous chemical cocktails that can debilitate, paralyze or kill. The complex biochemistry of these toxins may hold clues for future medical treatments.

== Unusual adaptations ==

Consider some extreme survival strategies:

A microbe found deep in a South African gold mine feeds off energy from radioactive uranium in the rock of the mine. Along these lines, could it be possible that cosmic rays power life in alien environments?

And scientists have identified a gene in strange, aquatic creatures called tardigrades that helps them survive harsh conditions, even boiling, freezing and radiation. One called "Dsup" (short for "damage suppressor") seems to attach to and protect DNA from radiation. 

Mice sing like a jet engine: scientists find that mice make their high-pitched squeaks by expelling a "glottal jet" of air at supersonic speed. 

Hints of tool use, culture seen in bumble bees? Apparently even bumblebees can learn to pull a string to retrieve a reward. Surprisingly, they can learn this trick from other bees, even though they have no experience with such a task in nature. 

A study of 29 mammals yawning found that the length of their yawn correlates with brain size -- longest for primates.

Carl Safina's Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel a thoughtful look at the latest scientific insights into animal communication, emotions and the question of animal consciousness -- 

-- issues I explore in fiction in my Uplift novels.  See also my earlier posting: Will we uplift other animals to sapience?

According to a study in Science, three different species of great apes -- chimpanzee, bonobo and orangutan -- are able to distinguish when others hold false beliefs, and anticipate the perspective of another ape. 

Scientists have for the first time, documented evidence of wild chimpanzee mothers teaching their young to use primitive tools -- to probe for termites. See this charming video: monkey tries to teach a human how to crack a nut.

Sharp stone flakes may not be unique to our human ancestors. Capuchin monkeys have been observed to inadvertently produce jagged stone flakes as they pound stones together (for unknown reasons). Curiously the monkeys frequently lick the stones they've hammered (perhaps as mineral supplements?).

Consider... Five times evolution ran in reverse, a fascinating look at instances of regressive evolution -- in penguins, hagfish, snakes and aphids. 

== Complex thought and communication ==

No bird brains here: Trained pigeons were able to distinguish four-letter words from non-words, and to tell the difference between correctly spelled words and those with transposed characters.

Actually, pigeons have excellent visual acuity. This is hard to believe -- but pigeons can even be trained to identify breast cancer tumors, distinguishing between those that are malignant and benign. The success rate for trained pigeons was 85% accuracy. A career in radiology?

A research paper in Applied Animal Behavior finds that horses can learn to use abstract symbols to communicate their preferences. 

And apparently even fish 'chat' to each other! Cod are incredibly vocal -- displaying regional 'dialects' that differ in frequency and tone. These fish can generate a range of complex sounds by vibrating their swim bladder -- which they use to establish territories, attract mates or signal the presence of a nearby predator.

Are dolphins finally waking up to their identity... and potential? See The Great Mammal Conspiracy, one of the latest cartoons from the always amusing SMBC. 

We're just beginning to understand the complexities of animal communication. 

So... so long, and thanks for all the fish!