Before commencing a rundown of amazing bio-wonder news, let's get back to the core matter at hand... waking up to the need to prevent a planetary collapse.
The Ocean Acidification crisis deepens. Writing in Science, experts say the oceans are heating, losing oxygen and becoming more acidic because of CO2. If our future is more regions (the Caribbean and Mediterranean) becoming like the Black Sea, then we won't have to wait for sea levels to rise, before the oceans kill us in deserved revenge.
Denialist cultists out always scurry away and hide, or point and yell “squirrel!” whenever ocean acidification comes up. Because there are zero fox-narratives to evade this one.
The ocean has absorbed nearly 30% of the carbon dioxide we have produced since 1750 and, as CO2 is a mildly acidic gas, it is making seawater more acidic. It has also buffered climate change by absorbing over 90% of the additional heat created by industrial society since 1970. The extra heat makes it harder for the ocean to hold oxygen. Ocean acidification also causes shifts in the population of phytoplankton, which form the base of the marine food chain...some will die out, others flourish.
FURTHER: that temperature rise could do what I fear most, cause a tipping point release of methanic hydrate ices along the ocean floor, turning the greenhouse into a runaway, possibly leading to a Green Sky.
To see where this will lead, try fishing in today’s Black Sea… once-fertile waters that are now almost utterly dead.
So. Is the Anthropocene about to cause Earth’s Sixth Great Extinction? “Using fossil records, scientists calculated a "natural" rate of extinction. For every 10,000 species, two go extinct every 100 years. In the past century, nearly 500 species have died off since 1900, rather than the nine that would be expected at natural rates. Those include 69 mammals, 80 birds, 24 reptiles, 146 amphibians and 158 fish, and those figures are "highly conservative," a new report states.
Yes, be concerned! Be passionate about this! I wrote about it back in 1988, in EARTH. And yet…
...and yet we are not quite at that tipping point. All signs suggest that there is still some time.
But we must act!
The Ocean Acidification crisis deepens. Writing in Science, experts say the oceans are heating, losing oxygen and becoming more acidic because of CO2. If our future is more regions (the Caribbean and Mediterranean) becoming like the Black Sea, then we won't have to wait for sea levels to rise, before the oceans kill us in deserved revenge.Denialist cultists out always scurry away and hide, or point and yell “squirrel!” whenever ocean acidification comes up. Because there are zero fox-narratives to evade this one.
The ocean has absorbed nearly 30% of the carbon dioxide we have produced since 1750 and, as CO2 is a mildly acidic gas, it is making seawater more acidic. It has also buffered climate change by absorbing over 90% of the additional heat created by industrial society since 1970. The extra heat makes it harder for the ocean to hold oxygen. Ocean acidification also causes shifts in the population of phytoplankton, which form the base of the marine food chain...some will die out, others flourish.
FURTHER: that temperature rise could do what I fear most, cause a tipping point release of methanic hydrate ices along the ocean floor, turning the greenhouse into a runaway, possibly leading to a Green Sky. To see where this will lead, try fishing in today’s Black Sea… once-fertile waters that are now almost utterly dead.
So. Is the Anthropocene about to cause Earth’s Sixth Great Extinction? “Using fossil records, scientists calculated a "natural" rate of extinction. For every 10,000 species, two go extinct every 100 years. In the past century, nearly 500 species have died off since 1900, rather than the nine that would be expected at natural rates. Those include 69 mammals, 80 birds, 24 reptiles, 146 amphibians and 158 fish, and those figures are "highly conservative," a new report states.
Yes, be concerned! Be passionate about this! I wrote about it back in 1988, in EARTH. And yet…
...and yet we are not quite at that tipping point. All signs suggest that there is still some time.
But we must act!
== Bioscience Updates ==
Bacteria as in situ cancer-detectors? Researchers have genetically modified E. coli bacteria into living sensors that can identify signs of diabetes and cancer -- capable of surviving inside a mouse's body for as long as a month.
Bacteria as in situ cancer-detectors? Researchers have genetically modified E. coli bacteria into living sensors that can identify signs of diabetes and cancer -- capable of surviving inside a mouse's body for as long as a month.
Fascinating… if in desperate need of open-supervision… research now enables scientists to turn on-off specific clusters of neurons, making a mouse hungry or not, active or not. An early result under President Barack Obama's 2013 BRAIN Initiative, which aims to advance neuroscience and develop therapies for brain disorders. The approach reflects a shift away from linking such illnesses to "chemical imbalances" in the brain, instead tracing them to miswiring and misfiring in neuronal circuits.
Great! Only let’s do all this in the open, right? And it does make me wonder if the Goldman-Sachs AI overlords already have the ability to alter what I typ#&4,xosw2jpz88%$ gee I’m hungry. What was I saying? Never mind I gotta go to the fridge now…
Okay I'm back... and now...
Where was I before that sudden craving hit?
"Quantum Biology?" I used that phrase when I was twenty, as a joke in a very early sci fi novel. It got chuckles. Not anymore. Researchers now see suspended, quantum bi-states in certain proteins involved in photosynthesis, possibly explaining nature's efficiency. Researchers now seek ways to incorporate the quantum lessons of photosynthesis into organic photovoltaic solar cells. Read further, how quantum effects may also be involved in the sense of smell... even consciousness!
Very interesting. At least one aspect of aging might be the deterioration of bundles of DNA known as heterochromatin, which “spool up” portions of chromosomal DNA between uses, and a WRN protein that keeps these spools healthy. I'll wager we'll find these are already improved/more-effective in humans.
Also fascinating. Active neurons seem to meddle in their own DNA. “Scientists say they have discovered another mechanism used by neurons to maintain relatively consistent levels of synaptic activity so that neurons can remain responsive to the signaling around them.”
A strange virus that can survive being boiled in acid could reveal how proteins and DNA can be put together in a way that's absolutely stable under the harshest conditions imaginable.
Promising...VirScan reveals your viral infection history in a single drop of blood.
We’ve long known that DNA is made up of four nucleotides: A, T, C, and G -- adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. (A fifth – Uracil – replaces Thymine in RNA.) Now a fifth DNA nucleotide may have been discovered. It is a deviant of cytosine called 5-formylcytosine (5fC). And has been showed to persist in low levels in the tissues of mice, suggesting it plays a small but significant role… probably in the regulatory portions of the genome (not protein expression.) From the Futurism site.
A strange virus that can survive being boiled in acid could reveal how proteins and DNA can be put together in a way that's absolutely stable under the harshest conditions imaginable.
Promising...VirScan reveals your viral infection history in a single drop of blood.
We’ve long known that DNA is made up of four nucleotides: A, T, C, and G -- adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. (A fifth – Uracil – replaces Thymine in RNA.) Now a fifth DNA nucleotide may have been discovered. It is a deviant of cytosine called 5-formylcytosine (5fC). And has been showed to persist in low levels in the tissues of mice, suggesting it plays a small but significant role… probably in the regulatory portions of the genome (not protein expression.) From the Futurism site.Oh, and the first wholly new antibiotic to be discovered in nearly 30 years “has been hailed as a ‘paradigm shift’ in the fight against the growing resistance to drugs. Teixobactin has been found to treat many common bacterial infections such as tuberculosis, septicaemia and C. diff, and could be available within five years. But more importantly it could pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics because of the way it was discovered.” … using an electronic chip to grow the microbes in the soil and then isolate their antibiotic chemical compounds.
A single-celled marine plankton has evolved a miniature version of an eye to help see its prey better. “It contains a collection of sub-cellular organelles that look very much like the lens, cornea, iris and retina of multicellular eyes found in humans and other larger animals." Weird!
Intracellular processing of memory? I’ve argued with Ray Kurzweil over whether the synapse is the only seat of memory and computation in the brain… or if some kinds of information processing takes place within neurons and possibly glial cells. If so then “singularity” crossover – when digital computers will have the same number of elements as a human brain – gets pushed back many more Moore’s Law doublings. Now come signs not only of intracellular computation, but that at least one variety may be mediated by “prion-like” molecules inside our cells.
== Keeping up with our AI Overlords? ==
Or else... will we find ways to keep up organically? Wow… here’s one for the Predictions Registry. In EXISTENCE I portray new computer methodologies freeing and empowering folks along the Autistic Spectrum to do valuable work… and this article tells how the Israeli Intelligence Services have carefully nurtured and developed this approach, employing spectrum folks for their meticulous attention to certain types of detail and pattern recognition. Of course another variant on the theme can be found in Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky.
Finally...
Looking back: See what your street in New York City looked like a hundred years ago in this interactive feature on Old NYC.
