This week in Nature: Avian blues – Protected areas show mixed results for waterbirds, but conservation management boosts prospects. Browse the full issue here: https://t.co/cjlVHmLiBppic.twitter.com/L4fhIEZGvZ
Conservation efforts for waterbirds, such as the Dalmatian pelicans (Pelecanus crispus) pictured on the cover, have centred on creating protected areas to maintain suitable habitats. But it has been unclear to what extent protected areas affect species’ population levels. In this week’s issue, Hannah Wauchope and her colleagues present an analysis that suggests protected areas have a mixed impact on waterbird populations. The researchers examined 1,506 protected areas to assess how they affected 27,055 waterbird populations across the globe. By assessing population levels before and after the implementation of protection, and comparing this change between protected and unprotected areas, the researchers identified the mixed impact, but also saw a strong indication that areas that were managed for waterbirds or their habitats were more likely to benefit populations. As a result, the team suggests that conservation strategies will require not only an increase in the number of protected areas, but active management of those areas to have the best chance of success.
Coral reefs face many serious threats from human activity.
Experiments in sea anemone and mushroom coral now show that the sunscreen component oxybenzone can be converted to a powerful phototoxin in their cells. Read that study and more in Science: https://t.co/U2kCVGhyitpic.twitter.com/7xIpQXyn2q
How a move to microbial protein could affect emissions. It’s well understood that the production of meat has large impacts on the environment.
This week, a team show that replacing 20% of future meat consumption with protein derived from microbes could reduce associated emissions and halve deforestation rates.
How saltwater crocodiles’ penchant for pigs is driving population recovery in Australia, and solving the mystery of some eighteenth-century porcelain’s iridescent lustre.
10:47 The neurons that help mosquitoes distinguish smell
Female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes strongly prefer human odours to those of animals, but how they distinguish between them is not well understood. Now, researchers have shown that human odours strongly activate a specific area in the brains of these insects, a finding that could have important implications for mosquito-control strategies.
We discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, how climate change could affect virus transmission between mammals, and how the link between a dog’s breed and its temperament may not be as close as previously thought.
May 2, 2022 – Our food system is a rich, complex blend of biology and culture. From the biodiversity in forests, oceans, and farms to the living weave of long-standing traditions and emerging trends, food touches every aspect of life on Earth. This diversity hasn’t always carried through to agricultural and culinary literatures, but fortunately this is changing. Fresh perspectives are emerging in the literary discussions of food, addressing a range of topics and cuisines. In 2022, Science will share this tapestry in a limited podcast series on science and food. Hosted by journalist Angela Saini, the series will highlight books from around the world that intersect with this theme. A different book and its author will appear monthly on the Science podcast, beginning on 26 May 2022.
Together, the books discussed in these segments expose an entanglement of biology, culinary science, and culture. In Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them, Dan Saladino addresses biodiversity loss and the future of food. Saladino covers vast swaths of time and space, taking us from wild honey gatherers in Africa to rare Orkney barley as he demonstrates that species loss is linked to cultural loss.
Food literatures also demand that we confront ourselves and our blind spots. T. Colin Campbell’s The Future of Nutrition: An Insider’s Look at the Science, Why We Keep Getting It Wrong, and How to Start Getting It Right explores the evidence of the health benefits of plant-based diets. Crucially, this book exposes the cultural and political inertia protecting animal protein from scrutiny, reminding us that scientific research is never detached from society.
On this week’s show: How physicists are using quantum sensors to suss out dark matter, how rabies thwarts canine vaccination campaigns, and a kickoff for our new series with authors of books on food, land management, and nutrition science
Dark matter hunters have turned to quantum sensors to find elusive subatomic particles that may exist outside physicists’ standard model. Adrian Cho, a staff writer for Science, joins host Sarah Crespi to give a tour of the latest dark matter particle candidates—and the traps that physicists are setting for them.
Next, we hear from Katie Hampson, a professor in the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health & Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow, about her work contact tracing rabies in Tanzania. Her group was able to track rabies in a population of 50,000 dogs over 14 years. The massive study gives new insight into how to stop a virus that circulates at superlow levels but keeps popping up, despite vaccine campaigns.
Finally, we launch our 2022 books series on food and agriculture. In six interviews, which will be released monthly for the rest of the year, host and science journalist Angela Saini will speak to authors of recent books on topics from Indigenous land management to foods that are going extinct. This month, Angela talks with Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, who helped select the books for the series.
The cover shows an artist’s impression of the pterosaur Tupandactylus imperator. Although feathered pterosaurs have been reported, these claims have been controversial and it has not been clear whether these leathery-winged flying reptiles had feathers of different colours like modern-day birds.
In this week’s issue, Aude Cincotta and her colleagues present evidence that not only did pterosaurs have feathers but that the feathers probably had varied coloration. The researchers analysed a partial skull of Tupandactylus, found in Brazil and dated to around 113 million years ago. They identified two types of feather along the base of the crest, one of which featured branched structures very similar to modern feathers. They also found pigment-producing organelles in both types of feather and the skin on the head crest. The team suggests that these coloured feathers would have been used in visual communication and that their presence in Tupandactylus indicates the ability to manipulate feather colour stretches back farther than was previously realized.
Andrew Robinson reviews five of the week’s best science picks.
Spark
Timothy J. Jorgensen Princeton Univ. Press (2022)
The use of electricity in medicine has long been controversial, notes health physicist Timothy Jorgensen. Eighteenth-century polymath Benjamin Franklin applied shocks to paralysed muscles with temporary success. In the 1930s, neurologist Ugo Cerletti pioneered painful but effective electroconvulsive therapy for schizophrenia and depression. Yet even today, “no one is sure exactly how ECT works”, says Jorgensen in his brilliant book. Now, business magnate Elon Musk plans to implant computer chips to treat brain disorders.
The New Fire
Ben Buchanan & Andrew Imbrie MIT Press (2022)
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not like electricity, but like fire, say Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie — academic specialists in emerging technology — in their authoritative, coruscating analysis of its current and future significance. Its potential impact ranges from illuminating to catastrophic, according to three rival and sometimes overlapping views from observers whom they label “evangelists, warriors and Cassandras”. “Three sparks ignite the new fire,” say the authors: data, algorithms and computing power.
Tomorrow’s People
Paul Morland Picador (2022)
“To most of us, the influence of demography on our future is far from obvious,” writes demographer Paul Morland. City dwellers tend to have low fertility, thereby creating an older population and eventually population decline, which could prompt migration and ethnic change, as in today’s United Kingdom — or might not, as in Japan. Morland’s careful book discusses ten indicators, one per chapter: infant mortality, population growth, urbanization, fertility, ageing, old age, population decline, ethnic change, education and food.
Restarting the Future
Jonathan Haskel & Stian Westlake Princeton Univ. Press (2022)
In the past few decades, growth has stagnated in advanced economies. This is odd, given low interest rates, high business profits and a wide belief that we live with “dizzying technological progress”, write economists Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake. They argue that the old economic model based on material production fails when it comes to intangible assets — such as software, data, design and business processes — that hinge on ideas, knowledge and relationships. Financial and state institutions must update to cope.
Inequality
Carles Lalueza-Fox MIT Press (2022)
Inequality and its origins will always preoccupy humans. In 2014, biologist Carles Lalueza-Fox led the retrieval of a genome from a European forager’s skeleton more than 7,000 years old; his later studies revealed genetic evidence of “inequality and discrimination in different times and periods”, as he describes in this significant book, written during the pandemic. He concludes by observing that COVID‑19 has had an enhanced impact on poor people, which he anticipates will feature in future genetic studies.
On this week’s show: Saving birds from city lights, and helping astronauts inhabit robots
First up, Science Contributing Correspondent Josh Sokol talks with host Sarah Crespi about the millions of migrating birds killed every year when they slam into buildings—attracted by brightly lit windows. New efforts are underway to predict bird migrations and dim lights along their path, using a bird-forecasting system called .
Next, we hear from Aaron Pereira, a researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and a guest researcher at the human robot interaction lab at the European Space Agency. He chats with Sarah about his Science Robotics paper on controlling a robot on Earth from the International Space Station and the best way for an astronaut to “immerse” themselves in a rover or make themselves feel like it is an extension of their body.
In a sponsored segment from Science and the AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing, interviews Alberto Pugliese, professor of medicine, microbiology, and immunology at the University of Miami, about a program he leads to advance research into type 1 diabetes. This segment is sponsored by the Helmsley Charitable Trust and nPod (the Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes).
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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