sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: High on Greenland's ice sheet, particle astrophysicists are this week drilling boreholes in a search for the cosmic accelerators responsible for the universe's most energetic particles. By placing hundreds of radio antennas on and below the surface, they hope to trap elusive particles known as neutrinos at higher energies than ever before. Detectors elsewhere on Earth occasionally register the arrival of ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic rays, atomic nuclei that slam into the atmosphere at colossal speed. Researchers want to pinpoint their sources, but because the nuclei are charged, magnetic fields in space bend their paths, obscuring their origins. But theorists believe that as UHE cosmic rays set out from their sources, they spawn so-called cosmogenic neutrinos in collisions with photons and, because neutrinos are not charged, they travel to Earth as straight as an arrow. The hard part is catching them.

According to Politico, "Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are [...] planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages." The White House is also planning to work with social media platforms and traditional media outlets to combat misinformation and ultimately improve vaccination rates. TmoNews reports: The White House could ask carriers like T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T to step in and stop the spread of these text messages. This is one way they hope they will be able to get their vaccination message across better and eliminate misinterpretation. There is no word yet on whether or not the White House has reached out to these carriers to help them screen anti-vax messages. But if it does, it will be interesting to see how this will be acted upon and which tools would be used. Then again, it could open a can of worms with potential issues that would violate customer privacy and an individual's right to free speech. "We are steadfastly committed to keeping politics out of the effort to get every American vaccinated so that we can save lives and help our economy further recover," White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz said. "When we see deliberate efforts to spread misinformation, we view that as an impediment to the country's public health and will not shy away from calling that out."

The molecules produced by stomach bacteria could give the human body a helping hand when it comes to the immune system, even going so far as to help fight tumors. ScienceAlert reports: "The results are an example of how metabolites of intestinal bacteria can change the metabolism and gene regulation of our cells and thus positively influence the efficiency of tumor therapies," says immunologist Maik Luu from University Hospital Wurzburg in Germany. Short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) are one of the helpful molecules produced when dietary fiber is fermented in the gut. Major SCFAs are acetate and butyrate, along with the less common pentanoate, found only in some bacteria. All of these SCFAs have a bunch of positive health effects in humans, such as the regulation of insulin resistance, cholesterol, and even appetite. Luu and colleagues have now found that butyrate and pentanoate also boost the anti-tumor activity of a type of killer T cell known as CD8, by reprogramming the way they work. For the first time, they have experimentally demonstrated this in mice.

Using lab mice, the team found that certain commensal bacteria produce pentanoate. For example, one relatively rare human gut bacterium, Megasphaera massiliensis, enhanced small proteins called cytokines in the killer T cells, leading to an increased ability to destroy tumor cells. As a control, the team experimented with other, non-pentanoate producing bacteria and found no effect on the cytokine levels. This finding could be particularly useful for therapies that leverage the immune system to fight cancer. Some tumor cells have proteins on their surfaces that can bind to proteins on T cells, resulting in an immune 'checkpoint' response which tells the killer cell to spare its target -- in this case, the cancer cell. Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy works by blocking these checkpoint proteins, allowing the T cells to do their job and destroy the tumor cells. [...] The team also looked at a genetically modified type of T cell called CAR-T cells which are used in immunotherapy, and found that the bacterial assistance worked the same way, particularly on solid tumors. The research has been published in Nature Communications.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: By making alterations to the plastic manufacturing process, scientists hope to produce forms of the ubiquitous material that can break down far more safely and quickly in the environment than current versions do. Researchers in China have now demonstrated a new example of this that degrades in just a week when exposed to sunlight and oxygen, which they believe could make for electronics that are easier to dispose of at the end of their lives. The new material came about when study author Liang Luo from China's Huazhong University of Science and Technology was working on an advanced type of chemical sensor, as reported by PNAS. The materials scientist was developing a novel polymer film that changed color in response to pH levels. This process was driven by the material's unique molecular structure, with the chains of monomers giving the film its deep red color, and taking it away when these bonds were broken.

Through his team's experiments, Luo found that the deep red color of the film quickly faded away and the material broke apart after several days in the sunlight. Breaking apart these bonds is a common objective in research efforts to better recycle plastics, and in doing so Luo may have inadvertently conjured up a promising, environmentally friendly version of the material. The molecular makeup of the plastic means it wouldn't be suited for use in soda bottles or shopping bags, as it is only stable as a functional material in the dark and without oxygen. But exposed to sunlight and air, it disintegrates rapidly and completely decomposes within a week, leaving no environmentally damaging microplastic fragments behind. A byproduct of the process is naturally occurring succinic acid, however, which could potentially be upcycled for commercial use in pharmaceuticals or food.

David Nield shares the findings of a new study via ScienceAlert: Researchers tasked 42 adult volunteers with learning the Arabic alphabet from scratch: some through writing it out on paper, some through typing it out on a keyboard, and some through watching and responding to video instructions. Those in the handwriting group not only learned the unfamiliar letters more quickly, but they were also better able to apply their new knowledge in other areas -- by using the letters to make new words and to recognize words they hadn't seen before, for example. While writing, typing, and visual learning were effective at teaching participants to recognize Arabic letters -- learners made very few mistakes after six exercise sessions -- on average, the writing group needed fewer sessions to get to a good standard.

Researchers then tested the groups to see how the learning could be generalized. In every follow-up test, using skills they hadn't been trained on, the writing group performed the best: naming letters, writing letters, spelling words, and reading words. The research shows that the benefits of teaching through handwriting go beyond better penmanship: There are also advantages in other areas of language learning. It seems as though the knowledge gets more firmly embedded through writing. The research has been published in Psychological Science.

Jupiter's moon Europa contains a voluminous ocean of liquid water under its icy crust that could potentially host extraterrestrial organisms. "But as evidence builds that Europa could be habitable under its crust, a problem remains: the intense radiation that Jupiter emits likely annihilates any signs of life, known as biosignatures, that upwell onto the moon's surface, presenting a challenge to future missions that aim to detect life with Europa landers," reports Motherboard. "Now, a team of researchers led by Emily Costello, a postdoctoral researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, have shed new light on this obstacle by examining the role of "impact gardening" in the search for life on Europa." From the report: Impact gardening occurs when rocks collide with a planetary body without an atmosphere, causing a mechanical churn that continually exposes new layers of the surface, known as the "gardened zone," to all the erosive effects of space, according to a study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy. "Knowing the depth of the gardened zone is critical for the exploration of Europa as a potentially habitable world," the researchers added. "We will need to sample material below the gardened zone if we wish to discover biomolecules that have never been exposed to hazardous radiation at the surface."

Of course, that raises the question: just how deep is Europa's gardened zone? To provide an answer, the team produced the first comprehensive models of impact gardening on Europa, with the help of Moon rocks returned from the Apollo program that also show a distinct gardened zone. This approach yielded good news and bad news. The bad news is that the models suggest that impact gardening exposes the top 30 centimeters (12 inches) of Europa's global surface to radiation, on average. Contrary to previous studies that proposed the possible presence of juicy biosignatures only a few centimeters under the moon's surface, the new study finds that signs of life would be embedded much deeper in the ice.

That said, the good news is that pristine material from Europa's ocean could be sampled at shallower depths in rare circumstances, such as in the fallout of recent landslides or fresh meteorite impacts. These natural processes can excavate layers of ice from below the gardened zone and position them within centimeters of the surface. Looking for recent examples of such disturbances could reveal samples that have not experienced the damaging long-term effects of radiation yet. Fortunately, scientists will soon benefit from close-up observations of Europa from ESA's Jupiter Icy Worlds Explorer (JUICE) and NASA's Europa Clipper, both scheduled to launch in the 2020s. These spacecraft will conduct intimate flybys of Europa, and they may be able to spot regions with freshly excavated material on the surface that would be prime destinations for future lander missions.

Foxconn and TSMC have agreed to buy 10 million COVID-19 vaccine doses for the island of Taiwan. "The two companies will be paying up to $35 a dose of the BioNTech vaccine and donating them to the government; each company has pledged to spend $175 million," reports The Verge. From the report: BioNTech is partnered with Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Co. to distribute its mRNA-based vaccine, which was co-developed with Pfizer, within China. Taiwan claims that the Chinese government blocked an attempt to secure a supply of vaccines from BioNTech, and later refused an offer of vaccine donations from the mainland. With the new arrangement, however, BioNTech and Fosun are being allowed to deal with private companies rather than the Taiwanese government, which Beijing views as illegitimate.

"Since we proposed the vaccine donation and started negotiating for the purchase, there had been no guidance or interference from Beijing over the acquisition," Foxconn founder Terry Gou wrote on Facebook, in remarks translated by Nikkei. "We appreciate that the negotiation was allowed to go through as a business matter." [...] TSMC and Foxconn say the newly secured BioNTech doses will be shipped from its factories in Germany and should start to arrive in Taiwan from late September.

An unprecedented heat wave and ongoing drought in the U.S. Pacific Northwest is damaging white wheat coveted by Asian buyers and forcing fruit farm workers to harvest in the middle of the night to salvage crops and avoid deadly heat. From a report: The extreme weather is another blow to farmers who have struggled with labor shortages and higher transportation costs during the pandemic and may further fuel global food inflation. Cordell Kress, who farms in southeastern Idaho, expects his winter white wheat to produce about half as many bushels per acre as it does in a normal year when he begins to harvest next week, and he has already destroyed some of his withered canola and safflower oilseed crops.

The Pacific Northwest is the only part of the United States that grows soft white wheat used to make sponge cakes and noodles, and farmers were hoping to capitalize on high grain prices. Other countries including Australia and Canada grow white wheat, but the U.S. variety is especially prized by Asian buyers. "The general mood among farmers in my area is as dire as I've ever seen it," Kress said. "Something about a drought like this just wears on you. You see your blood, sweat and tears just slowly wither away and die."

The combination of extreme heat and drought that has scorched the Western United States and Canada over the past two weeks has killed hundreds of millions of mussels, clams and other marine animals, the New York Times reports. From a report: An estimated 1 billion small sea creatures died during the heat wave in the Salish Sea at the end of June, according to marine biologist Chris Harley, per the Washington Post. The sea creatures' deaths coincide with the heat wave that hit the Pacific Northwest last week, which led to more than a hundred human deaths. A study by an international team of climate researchers said the heat wave would have been "virtually impossible without human-caused climate change." Mussels attach themselves to rocks and other surfaces, but they generally can't survive temperatures over 100 degrees for extended periods of time, CNN reports.

Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot quotes LiveScience's exploration of the math: To start out 'small,' there are around 7 octillion, or 7x10^27 (7 followed by 27 zeros), atoms in an average human body, according to The Guardian. Given this vast sum of atoms in one person alone, you might think it would be impossible to determine how many atoms are in the entire universe. And you'd be right: Because we have no idea how large the entire universe really is, we can't find out how many atoms are within it.

However, it is possible to work out roughly how many atoms are in the observable universe — the part of the universe that we can see and study — using some cosmological assumptions and a bit of math.

[...]

Doing the math

To work out the number of atoms in the observable universe, we need to know its mass, which means we have to find out how many stars there are. There are around 10^11 to 10^12 galaxies in the observable universe, and each galaxy contains between 10^11 and 10^12 stars, according to the European Space Agency. This gives us somewhere between 10^22 and 10^24 stars. For the purposes of this calculation, we can say that there are 10^23 stars in the observable universe. Of course, this is just a best guess; galaxies can range in size and number of stars, but because we can't count them individually, this will have to do for now.

On average, a star weighs around 2.2x10^32 pounds (10^32 kilograms), according to Science ABC, which means that the mass of the universe is around 2.2x10^55 pounds (10^55 kilograms). Now that we know the mass, or amount of matter, we need to see how many atoms fit into it. On average, each gram of matter has around 10^24 protons, according to Fermilab, a national laboratory for particle physics in Illinois. That means it is the same as the number of hydrogen atoms, because each hydrogen atom has only one proton (hence why we made the earlier assumption about hydrogen atoms).

This gives us 10^82 atoms in the observable universe. To put that into context, that is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms.

This number is only a rough guess, based on a number of approximations and assumptions. But given our current understanding of the observable universe, it is unlikely to be too far off the mark.

From the Washington Post: When we are young, our skills tend to improve with age and experience. But once we are well into adulthood, it may start to feel as if it's all downhill. With every advancing year, we become slightly more forgetful, somewhat slower to respond, a little less energetic.

Yet there is at least one important exception: In the emotional realm, older people rule supreme.

For the past 20 years, Susan Turk Charles, a psychologist at the University of California at Irvine, has been monitoring the shifting moods, the sense of satisfaction, the moments of contemplation and the occasional outbursts of anger, sadness and despair of people of all ages — with a special interest in how we handle and experience emotions as we grow older. She and her colleagues have found that, on average, older people have fewer but more satisfying social contacts and report higher emotional well-being.... "I took a class from Laura Carstensen at Stanford, and she was the first to say that there was more development after age 18. She was finding that unlike physical fitness or cognition, where you may see slowing or declines, emotional regulation and experience are often as good, if not better, as we age... Some neuroscientists believe that because we're processing information a little slower with age, that makes us think before we act. We do see a decline with age in overall mass of the brain's frontal lobe, the part that is responsible for emotion regulation, complex reasoning and speed of processing. But researchers also find that older adults often exhibit greater prefrontal cortex activity than younger adults when processing emotions.

"A lot of work has found that older people have a positive bias, even without realizing they're doing this. Their default mode is 'Don't sweat the small stuff.' Older people more often let go of a situation they experience as negative, especially with friends and family. So it is picking their battles that we think older adults are better at..."

Q: Centenarians report overall high levels of emotional well-being. Some may wonder whether it might just be that people who have more positive attitudes, or encounter less adversity, live longer.

"It is true that people with satisfying relationships and positive emotions live longer. Researchers have looked at what could explain this, and they find that psychological well-being is related to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and better cardiovascular health."
Asked for suggestions, the researcher proposes an inner strategy that "takes you away from focusing on the future and reminds you that the present moment is the most important."

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares new from SciTechDaily: For the first time, University of Basel researchers have equipped an ultrathin semiconductor with superconducting contacts. These extremely thin materials with novel electronic and optical properties could pave the way for previously unimagined applications. Combined with superconductors, they are expected to give rise to new quantum phenomena and find use in quantum technology....

With a view to future applications in electronics and quantum technology, researchers are focusing on the development of new components that consist of a single layer (monolayer) of a semiconducting material. Some naturally occurring materials with semiconducting properties feature monolayers of this kind, stacked to form a three-dimensional crystal. In the laboratory, researchers can separate these layers — which are no thicker than a single molecule — and use them to build electronic components. These ultrathin semiconductors promise to deliver unique characteristics that are otherwise very difficult to control, such as the use of electric fields to influence the magnetic moments of the electrons. In addition, complex quantum mechanical phenomena take place in these semiconducting monolayers that may have applications in quantum technology...

A team of physicists, led by Dr. Andreas Baumgartner in the research group of Professor Christian Schönenberger at the Swiss Nanoscience Institute and the Department of Physics of the University of Basel, has now fitted a monolayer of the semiconductor molybdenum disulfide with superconducting contacts for the first time...

"In a superconductor, the electrons arrange themselves into pairs, like partners in a dance — with weird and wonderful consequences, such as the flow of the electrical current without a resistance," explains Baumgartner, the project manager of the study. "In the semiconductor molybdenum disulfide, on the other hand, the electrons perform a completely different dance, a strange solo routine that also incorporates their magnetic moments. Now we would like to find out which new and exotic dances the electrons agree upon if we combine these materials."
Mehdi Ramezani, lead author of the study, says that "In principle, the vertical contacts we've developed for the semiconductor layers can be applied to a large number of semiconductors."

UPDATE: Branson's done it. "In a live broadcast during the vehicle's descent, Branson called the trip, 'an experience of a lifetime,'" reports NBC News: Branson's flight took off Sunday morning at around 10:30 a.m. ET, although the launch time was delayed by around 90 minutes because of overnight weather conditions at Spaceport America...

Branson was joined on his flight by pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci and three mission specialists, all of whom are employees of Virgin Galactic: Chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses, lead operations engineer Colin Bennett and government affairs vice president Sirisha Bandla.

Virgin Galactic is expected to conduct several additional test flights before beginning commercial operations with private customers next year. The company has said the suborbital joyrides will likely cost more than $250,000 each, but final pricing has not yet been announced...

"It's taken 17 years to get to this flight, and of course a lot of personal wealth has been poured into it, but it also shows that this takes tenacity," said Greg Autry, a space policy expert at Arizona State University.
Earlier in the day, Virgin Galactic's Twitter feed shared a nice clip of the astronauts arriving on the launch site.

CBS News streamed their own live coverage at the top of this web page (as well as in their CBSN app), but also reported on the other options: With typical Branson fanfare, Sunday's flight will be broadcast live across Virgin Galactic's social media platforms, featuring appearances by Stephen Colbert and retired Canadian space station astronaut Chris Hadfield, along with the performance of a new song by singer-songwriter Khalid. Even SpaceX founder Elon Musk plans to be watching. "Will see you there to wish you the best," he tweeted Saturday.
And what did Jeff Bezos have to say before Branson launched his history-making flight? "Wishing you and the whole team a successful and safe flight tomorrow. Best of luck!"

Saturday CBS News offered this description of Branson's hopes: Richard Branson, the globe-trotting media mogul and founder of Virgin Galactic, plans to rocket into space Sunday morning on a flight that would make him the first owner of a private space company to launch aboard one of his own spacecraft. If all goes well, he will beat rival Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin, who is set to launch on July 20. Branson, two company pilots and three Virgin Galactic crewmates are launching from Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, on what's expected to be at least an hour-long flight, reaching altitudes a little over 50 miles above the Earth.

In two hours, Richard Branson (and five other Virgin Galactic employees) will attempt a historic flight to the edge of outer space. Bloomberg points out it will be followed 9 days later by Jeff Bezos's rocket trip with Blue Origin on July 20.

"Yeah, there's a little bit of competition in the who's going first or when things are happening," Virgin President Mike Moses, a former space shuttle manager at NASA, told CBS News. "But it's really not a race. It's not a competition. I know that sounds maybe a little shallow or disingenuous, but it's not. "It's a small community. I know dozens of people who work at Blue Origin, I know dozens and dozens of people at SpaceX, and we all used to work together at NASA. And I wish every single one of them the best.... Because all of us together is what's going to get humans into space and our culture to recognize that space travel is the foundation for the future for everyone..."

"This has been a long journey for him," Mike Moses said of Branson. "He's like a kid in a candy store here in training this week. He's bouncing around, he's happy, excited. ... But that excitement is really infectious. And so the whole crew is feeling it."
CNN points out that Branson has "narrowly avoided being killed numerous times in his nearly 71 years," including dangerous stunts like bunjee jumping that left him bloody and injured, as well as accidents during long-distance balloon flights while attempting to set records.

Here's how Branson describes some of them in his second autobiography, "Finding My Virginity," which includes an appendix called "75 Close Shaves": 1972: Survived a fishing boat sinking on honeymoon with my first wife, Kristen, off Mexico. We decided to jump off the boat and swim for shore, while the others stayed put -- we were the only survivors.

1976: Flew a microlight aircraft by mistake. It was the first time I'd sat in it, I had no idea how to fly it and accidentally took off. I was pulling wires out desperately. I cut the engine and managed to crash-land into a field. My instructor died in an accident the next day...

1986: On my first time skydiving, there was one cord that opened the parachute and one that got rid of it. I pulled the wrong cord by mistake. I was falling through the air before an instructor managed to yank my spare ripcord...

1989: I decided to make an entrance to my wedding with Joan, dangling from a helicopter in an all-white suit. I dropped into the shallow end of the pool by mistake, smashed my legs, and spent the whole wedding hobbling.

Cho Jae-weon, an urban and environmental engineering professor at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), has designed an eco-friendly toilet connected to a laboratory that uses excrement to produce biogas and manure. Reuters reports: The BeeVi toilet -- a portmanteau of the words bee and vision -- uses a vacuum pump to send feces into an underground tank, reducing water use. There, microorganisms break down the waste to methane, which becomes a source of energy for the building, powering a gas stove, hot-water boiler and solid oxide fuel cell. An average person defecates about 500g a day, which can be converted to 50 liters of methane gas, the environmental engineer said. This gas can generate 0.5kWh of electricity or be used to drive a car for about 1.2km (0.75 miles).

Cho has devised a virtual currency called Ggool, which means honey in Korean. Each person using the eco-friendly toilet earns 10 Ggool a day. Students can use the currency to buy goods on campus, from freshly brewed coffee to instant cup noodles, fruits and books. The students can pick up the products they want at a shop and scan a QR code to pay with Ggool.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Stat News: Death rates are declining for more than half of the most common forms of cancer in the U.S., according to a sweeping annual analysis released Thursday. The new report -- released by the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other collaborators -- found that between 2014 and 2018, death rates dropped for 11 out of 19 of the most common cancers among men and 14 of the 20 most prevalent cancers among women.

Accelerating declines in lung cancer deaths may account for much of the overall progress seen in recent years, the authors of the report said. Over the past two decades, the death rate for lung cancer has declined even faster than the rate at which patients are diagnosed with the disease. And while part of the early success in preventing lung cancer can be attributed to the massive drop in smoking rates, the authors note the most recent downward trends seem to correspond with the approval of new treatments for non-small cell lung cancer that improved the likelihood of survival. Death rates from melanoma also saw an accelerated decline in the past decade, despite a growing number of diagnoses. Like in lung cancer, authors point to the introduction of novel treatments around the same time as the turnaround on the death rate. New targeted and immune checkpoint inhibitors were approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2011, one year before major declines in death rates were seen in women and two years before they were seen in men.

While the report showed improved survival rates for many patients over recent years, others, such as prostate, colorectal, or female breast cancers, have seen progress stalled or stopped. Breast cancer continues to be one of the three deadliest cancers for women of all races, and the most frequently fatal cancer for Hispanic women. While the rates of death from breast cancer are declining, the pace of the decline has slowed over the past two decades, according to the report. And across the board, racial health disparities persist. Black women and white women are diagnosed with breast cancer at similar rates, but the mortality rate for Black women is 40% higher. Overall, cancer is more common among white individuals than Black individuals, but Black people die from cancer at higher rates. [The report] emphasized the importance of preventive measures for certain cancers, noting that while cancers related to smoking have continued to decrease, those related to excess body weight have increased. Early and consistent access to screenings has also been critical, as demonstrated by the apparent effect of adapted screening guidelines for colorectal cancer.

Yesterday, Moderna announced that the first set of volunteers in a clinical trial have received its mRNA-based seasonal flu vaccine. The Verge reports: Before the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA vaccines were still largely experimental, even as they were heralded as the future of vaccine development. People who get an mRNA vaccine are injected with tiny snippets of genetic material from the target virus. Their cells use that genetic information to build bits of the virus, which the body's immune system learns to fight against. The high efficacy of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech was a major endorsement for this type of vaccine. Now, pharmaceutical companies plan to use this technology to fight other types of infectious diseases, including flu.

The flu shots available each year in the United States are usually between 40 and 60 percent effective. The most common shots are made by growing the influenza virus in cells or chicken eggs, and then killing the virus so it's no longer dangerous. It takes a long time to grow the virus, so companies have to start making the shots around six months ahead of time, based on predictions around which strain of the flu will be circulating that year. Pharmaceutical companies hope that mRNA-based flu vaccines can be more effective than the traditional shots. Because they'd be faster to make, production wouldn't have to start so far in advance, and they could theoretically be more closely matched with the type of flu spreading each season.

To stay warm in frigid seas, the marine mammals rely on an unexpected use of the powerhouses of their cells. From a report: Sea otters run hot. It's not just a manner of speaking: Scientists have found that the furry mammals' metabolisms work at a rate three times what might normally be expected from a creature their size, burning swiftly through calories. They seem to be using much of that energy to generate heat, keeping themselves at a toasty 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the frigid ocean, where staying warm is a matter of life and death. But the details of their conversion of food and oxygen into vast reserves of heat have been obscure. Now researchers studying sea otters' muscles report that the feat involves using the mitochondria in their muscle cells in an unexpected way. Their study was published Thursday in the journal Science.

Unlike whales and polar bears, sea otters don't have a thick insulating layer of blubber, and their celebrated fur -- the thickest in the world, with up to 2.6 million hairs per square inch -- is not enough on its own to keep them alive in an ocean that can hover on the edge of freezing. Muscles generate heat as they contract, but scientists have known for some time there is another way that muscles can help animals keep warm, a cellular process with the delightful name of proton leak. Inside almost all animal cells, little pill-shaped organelles called mitochondria break down sugar molecules to extract energy. (Mitochondria are often called the powerhouses of the cell.) During the final stage of this process, protons pop through a membrane. In biology textbooks, the protons helpfully trickle through tiny spinning pores, driving them like water wheels to make adenosine triphosphate, a compound that serves as the molecular battery powering cellular processes.

The risk of pathogens spilling over from wildlife trade and farmed animals into humans should be key considerations in efforts to prevent the next pandemic, research suggests. From a report: Researchers have been assessing the risks of the different ways that disease-causing organisms jump from animals to humans in an effort to characterise and address the risk of the next pandemic. In a study published in the journal Biological Reviews, University of Cambridge scientists found that while the risk of another pandemic cannot be eliminated, systemic changes in the way we interact with animals, in general, could substantially minimise the probability.

The risks are not just linked to exotic wild animals, they caution. "There's a natural tendency, particularly in the western world, to imagine that this has nothing to do with us. It's something remote and exotic ⦠something that someone else has been doing," said the study's lead author Dr Silviu Petrovan, a veterinarian and wildlife expert at Cambridge. "I suppose what most people have in their minds is not the venison that they buy in Waitrose -- which, of course, is wildlife -- but rather something altogether more exotic."

Indian scientists have discovered a new plant species in Antarctica. From a report: Polar biologists stumbled upon a species of moss during an expedition to the ice-covered continent in 2017. Identification is laborious, and it took the scientists five years to confirm that the species had been discovered for the first time. The peer-reviewed paper describing this discovery has been accepted in the leading international journal, Journal of Asia-Pacific Biodiversity. The biologists, based in the Central University of Punjab, have named the specie Bryum Bharatiensis. Bharati is the Hindu goddess of learning and the name of one of India's Antarctic research stations. Prof Felix Bast, a biologist who was part of the six-month-long expedition to the continent - the 36th by Indian scientists - discovered the dark green specie at Larsemann Hills, overlooking the Southern Ocean, in January 2017. This is located near Bharati, one of the remotest research stations in the world.