Good morning!
The first woman from Saudi Arabia is heading to space. Rayyana Barnawi will fly on a SpaceX Dragon to the ISS, accompanied by seasoned astronaut Peggy Whitson from the U.S., among others. While they get ready to lift off, read on about toothy pterosaurs, fertile mole rats, and cigarettes.
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Sea dragon parenting just got celebrated, thanks to this winning photo of a weedy sea dragon (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus) carrying a hefty clutch of fertilized eggs on his tail. Yes, “his” tail. In sea dragons — and their seahorse and pipefish relatives — females make the eggs, but males do the brooding. While sea dragons don’t have belly pouches like some relatives, they have spongy tails that double as egg crates. See the lead-up HERE.
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Drone-delivered self-burying seeds can drill themselves into the soil |
Just the name of the lab alone — Morphing Matter — tells you that something transformative is going to happen. In a new study, engineers have created devices from white oak veneer that when dropped from the air will respond to rain by drilling into the soil. They can be used to infuse soil with seeds, fertilizers, or even worms.
Says study author Lining Yao, inspired by her parents’ farm, "Seed burial has been heavily studied for decades in terms of mechanics, physics and materials science, but until now, no one has created an engineering equivalent.” The little whorled piece of wood is made from wood strips that are soaked, shaped, and tipped with fine hairs.
When dropped by drone or other means onto soil, they don’t look like much at first. But rain causes them to uncoil their corkscrew stalks, driving the tips into the ground and releasing whatever’s inside. See the process HERE. And, in case you’ve any doubt that engineering is inspired by nature, see the natural Erodium cicutarium seed.
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New species of pterosaur with over 400 teeth discovered in Germany |
Paleontologists were digging up a limestone quarry in Bavaria, expecting to find crocodile bones, when they instead discovered a toothy pterosaur. The new species had a spatula-shaped beak with 480 tiny teeth. Explains study author David Martill, “The jaws of this pterosaur are really long and lined with small fine, hooked teeth, with tiny spaces between them like a nit comb.”
This pterosaur likely waded along in lagoons or other shallow waters, scooping up water in its beak, then straining out tiny ocean plankton. The hooks on the tips of some teeth might have caught shrimp or copepods like a cocktail fork (minus the dipping sauce). Write the researchers, “the immense number of fine, slender teeth…precludes any mode of feeding other than filter feeding.”
Given the genus name Balaenognathus (roughly, “whale mouth”) and the species name maeuseri (honoring now-deceased paleontologist Matthias Mäuser), the Late Jurassic pterosaur joins other pterosaur species from this fossil-rich site in Bavaria that should have made the Top 10 list of attractions. |
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How naked mole rats keep having babies well into old age |
At birth, a human female has a limited supply of about one million eggs that are spent down gradually over her reproductive years. Thus, getting pregnant gets more difficult as a female ages. But female naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber) leave us in the dust, with fertility that never declines. And a new study shows that they continue to produce eggs after birth.
So, naked mole rats can get pregnant into their old age. Says study author Brieño-Enríquez, "Even though humans are living longer, menopause still happens at the same age. We hope to use what we are learning from the naked mole-rat to protect ovary function later in life and prolong fertility."
So what’s the catch? Like in an ant colony, a single dominant female in the naked mole rat colony gets to have babies. Unless this “queen” dies or becomes frail, the other females’ egg cells stay dormant. Once the queen is out of the picture, their egg cells divide and the females compete for new queen. Hhhmmm...there may be some drawbacks to this arrangement for humans. |
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To smoke or not to smoke, that is the dilemma billions of people face. The pros of smoking? They include relaxation, socialization, stress reduction, lowering your blood pressure, and appetite management. Research studies reporting benefits are rather sparse, but there has been evidence over the years of nicotine reducing the frequency of certain diseases — like Parkinson’s and endometrial cancer — summarized HERE.
But in the fine print are many caveats, rendering the benefits of smoking, well, hazy. This youth organization counters benefits with drawbacks such as taste loss, risk of miscarriage, infections or bone loss, bronchitis, etc., of smokers. And then there’s that cancer problem.
Say Australian experts, “We can derive theoretical estimates that smoking may prevent the loss of about 16 lives from endometrial cancer in Australia annually. However, the numbers of lives saved through the prevention of endometrial cancer among smokers are negligible compared with the number of deaths due to other diseases caused by tobacco use, including cancer of the uterine cervix.”
So, although smoking alleviates some disease risks, its benefits are overshadowed by other risks. Fortunately, smoking is on the decline in the U.S. among adults and youth, as shown in this pretty graph. And the same stats show that vaping is on the upswing in youth (increased by 1650 percent in middle schoolers from 2011-2019).
That’s good, right? The UK’s National Health Service writes about Vaping “as one of the most effective tools for quitting smoking.” But there’s that fine print again, warning young people that “it is not completely harmless.” And a recent study shows that DNA damage to cells happens equally in tobacco smoking and vaping. The most damage came from using vaping pods with sweet flavors. Damage to cells forebodes cancer and inflammatory diseases.
Another new study found that young people smoking or vaping tobacco are also at higher risk for severe COVID-19. “It was a quite interesting and novel finding that vaping changed the levels of key proteins that the virus uses to replicate,” explain the study authors. The blood they collected from young smokers or vapers had higher levels of an enzyme (protein) called furin, which cleaves the spikes on the SARS-CoV-2 virus, helping to activate it.
Researchers keep innovating to encourage us stay away from tobacco, and now a stop-smoking smart necklace is on the horizon that tracks heat emitted from cigarettes and monitors inhalations. The blue pendant sends data to researchers (stalkers) who use a deep learning model to detect parameters like timing, volume, and duration of puffs. An individual’s data can inform a customized plan for quitting smoking.
“These real-time measurements can really help us understand the depth a person is at in their smoking habits and treat the patient accordingly,” says an expert. The device — named “SmokeMon” — has been tested with study participants, but remains to be deployed. |
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Next time, we’ll get a Dr. Dolittle update and take a look at how AI is helping up talk to animals. |
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Written by Devin Reese, Edited by Jake Currie Copyright © 2021 Nerd Snacks, All rights reserved.
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