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Nullary Sources
Current events, kickin' rad tunes, moving pictures and visual art, '90s nostalgia, the struggle for a fair civilization, Andy Rooney, and whatever else our sick minds can dredge up from the depths of the internet.
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Tracing the lineage of North America's native Blackfoot Confederacy
Bob Yirka for Phys.org:
A team of researchers with varied backgrounds and affiliated with multiple organizations (including the Blackfoot Confederacy) in the U.S. and Canada has conducted a genetic study focused on tracing the lineage of North America's native Blackfoot Confederacy.
In their study, published in the journal Science Advances, the group collected tissue samples from several living members of the Blackfoot Confederacy, genetically sequenced them and then compared the data with the results from samples collected from the remains of Confederacy members exhumed from several ancient burial sites.
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In comparing the genetic evidence, the researchers found that modern Blackfoot people are descendants of a lineage that goes back approximately 18,000 years. They also found that the genetic data supports Blackfoot lore, passed down by word of mouth over generations, claiming that the Blackfoot people have been living in North America for at least 10,000 years.
Wonder how many times Native American lore will be proven correct before people stop reflexively doubting it
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Researchers discover new clues to how tardigrades can survive intense radiation
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill news release:
Sixty years ago, researchers discovered that tardigrades could survive radiation about 1,000 times more intense than humans are known to survive. Courtney Clark-Hachtel, a former postdoctoral scholar in the lab, joined the group to examine how tardigrades can survive intense radiation. She found that a species of tardigrade is not immune to DNA damage—irradiation does damage their DNA—but the tardigrades can repair extensive damage.
Clark-Hachtel and Goldstein were surprised to find that tardigrades can increase the volume of production from DNA repair genes. Unlike humans, tardigrades can ramp up the level of DNA repair genes' products to such an extreme extent that they become some of the most abundant gene products in animals.
I bet I could ramp up my level of DNA repair genes if I tried hard enough
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New song by Lemm! This was posted two months ago but I only actually noticed now because I didn't previously subscribe to his YouTube. Here's "Platform 5."
Cool video that he made himself too
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Mysterious Link Between Cats And Schizophrenia Is Real, Study Finds
Rebecca Dyer for ScienceAlert:
Having a cat as a pet could potentially double a person's risk of schizophrenia-related disorders, according to a recent study.
Australian researchers conducted an analysis of 17 studies published during the last 44 years, from 11 countries including the US and the UK.
"We found an association between broadly defined cat ownership and increased odds of developing schizophrenia-related disorders," explained psychiatrist John McGrath and fellow researchers, all from the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, in their study published last December.
Cats are doing it on purpose. I can tell
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German parliament votes to make it easier for people to legally change their name and gender
Geir Moulson for the AP:
German lawmakers on Friday approved legislation that will make it easier for transgender, intersex and nonbinary people to change their name and gender in official records.
The "self-determination law," one of several social reforms that Chancellor Olaf Scholz's liberal-leaning coalition government pledged when it took office in late 2021, is set to take effect on Nov. 1.
Germany, the European Union's most populous nation, follows several other countries in making the change. Parliament's lower house, the Bundestag, approved it by 374 votes to 251 with 11 abstentions.
The German legislation will allow adults to change their first name and legal gender at registry offices without further formalities. They will have to notify the office three months before making the change.
Good
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Pompeii: Breathtaking new paintings found at ancient city
Jonathan Amos, Rebecca Morelle and Alison Francis for BBC Science News:
Stunning artworks have been uncovered in a new excavation at Pompeii, the ancient Roman city buried in an eruption from Mount Vesuvius in AD79.
Archaeologists say the frescos are among the finest to be found in the ruins of the ancient site.
Mythical Greek figures such as Helen of Troy are depicted on the high black walls of a large banqueting hall.
Pretty cool, click through for photos
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Pacific castaways' 'HELP' sign sparks US rescue mission – and an unexpected family reunion
Brad Lendon, CNN:
A US Navy and Coast Guard operation on Tuesday rescued three mariners stranded on a tiny Pacific Ocean islet for more than a week after the trio spelled out "HELP" using palm fronds laid on a white-sand beach.
How is this not a cartoon
One of the first rescuers on the beach was Petty Officer 2nd Class Eugene Halishlius. The stranded men were surprised to see that Halishlius was Micronesian and spoke the local language.
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When he gave his name to the first of the stranded men to reach the rescue boat, the castaway was stunned: they were related.
"It's a crazy world, I actually found out I'm related to them!" Halishlius said.
"He couldn't believe I'm with the Coast Guard trying to rescue them."
The man was a third cousin, the others fourth cousins, he said.
Okay this is how like half of all Pacific Islander stories end
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Human rights violated by Swiss inaction on climate, ECHR rules in landmark case
Ajit Niranjan for The Guardian in an update of a story I posted in December:
Weak government climate policies violate fundamental human rights, the European court of human rights has ruled.
In a landmark decision on one of three major climate cases, the first such rulings by an international court, the ECHR raised judicial pressure on governments to stop filling the atmosphere with gases that make extreme weather more violent.
The court’s top bench ruled that Switzerland had violated the rights of a group of older Swiss women to family life, but threw out a French mayor’s case against France and that of a group of young Portuguese people against 32 European countries.
lmao it worked
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Climate-warming gases being smuggled into Europe, investigation says
David Stanway for Reuters:
Large amounts of climate-warming refrigerant gases from China and Turkey are being smuggled illegally into Europe, undermining a global pact to phase them out, a report by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) said on Monday.
The gases are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a range of chemicals used mostly for cooling in industry and retail, which do not damage the ozone layer like other banned refrigerants, but as greenhouse gases can be several thousand times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Despite commitments to reduce HFC use, law enforcement agencies across the European Union are struggling to keep track of illicit shipments entering via Turkey, Russia or Ukraine, with smugglers resorting to increasingly sophisticated tactics to evade detection, the EIA said following a two-year undercover investigation.
I imagined a guy in a dark alley opening up a trenchcoat, revealing canisters of hydrofluorocarbons, and had a bit of a laughing fit
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Time for Pat Metheny Tuesday here on Nullary Sources. That's when it's Tuesday and I post Pat Metheny. Here's a video apparently from 1998 of him and his Group performing "The Roots of Coincidence," which is off their 1997 album Imaginary Day. Pretty unusual track for the band, with a mix of prog rock and drum 'n' bass.
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Vatican blasts gender-affirming surgery, surrogacy and gender theory as violations of human dignity
Nicole Winfield for the AP:
The Vatican on Monday declared gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy as grave violations of human dignity, putting them on par with abortion and euthanasia as practices that reject God's plan for human life.
The Vatican's doctrine office issued "Infinite Dignity," a 20-page declaration that has been in the works for five years. After substantial revision in recent months, it was approved March 25 by Pope Francis, who ordered its publication.
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The document is something of a repackaging of previously articulated Vatican positions, read now through the prism of human dignity. It restates well-known Catholic doctrine opposing abortion and euthanasia, and adds to the list some of Francis' main concerns as pope: the threats to human dignity posed by poverty, war, human trafficking and forced migration.
In a newly articulated position, it says surrogacy violates both the dignity of the surrogate mother and the child. While much attention about surrogacy has focused on possible exploitation of poor women as surrogates, the Vatican document focuses almost more on the resulting child.
Unhinged
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Chance sighting reveals new species of fluffy beetle
University of Queensland news release:
A researcher from The University of Queensland has discovered a remarkable new genus of fluffy longhorn beetle while camping within rainforest in the Gold Coast hinterland.
The freshly named Excastra albopilosa was found by School of the Environment PhD candidate James Tweed, who nearly mistook the beetle for bird droppings.
"I was walking through the campsite at Binna Burra Lodge one morning and something on a Lomandra leaf caught my eye," Mr Tweed said.
"To my amazement, I saw the most extraordinary and fluffiest longhorn beetle I had ever seen.
Fuzzy little guy
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Google Books Is Indexing AI-Generated Garbage
Emanuel Maiberg for 404 Media:
Google Books is indexing low quality, AI-generated books that will turn up in search results, and could possibly impact Google Ngram viewer, an important tool used by researchers to track language use throughout history.
I was able to find the AI-generated books with the same method we've previously used to find AI-generated Amazon product reviews, papers published in academic journals, and online articles. Searching Google Books for the term "As of my last knowledge update," which is associated with ChatGPT-generated answers, returns dozens of books that include that phrase. Some of the books are about ChatGPT, machine learning, AI, and other related subjects and include the phrase because they are discussing ChatGPT and its outputs. These books appear to be written by humans. However, most of the books in the first eight pages of results turned up by the search appear to be AI-generated and are not about AI.
Is that good
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Amphibians use scream inaudible to humans for self-defense against predators, study suggests
André Julião for Agência FAPESP:
A study reported in the journal Acta Ethologica recorded the use of ultrasound by amphibians for the first time in South America. It also describes the first documented case of the use of ultrasound for defense against predators, in a distress call of ear-piercing intensity to many animals, but inaudible to humans.
"Some potential predators of amphibians, such as bats, rodents and small primates, are able to emit and hear sounds at this frequency, which humans can't. One of our hypotheses is that the distress call is addressed to some of these, but it could also be the case that the broad frequency band is generalist in the sense that it's supposed to scare as many predators as possible," said Ubiratã Ferreira Souza, first author of the article. The study was part of his master's research at the State University of Campinas's Institute of Biology (IB-UNICAMP) in São Paulo state, Brazil, with a scholarship from FAPESP.
Another hypothesis is that the scream is meant to attract another animal to attack the predator which is threatening the amphibian, in this case, the Leaf litter frog (Haddadus binotatus), a species endemic to the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest.
Imagine how many things around you could be screaming right now and you wouldn't even know
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Lou Conter, last survivor of USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor attack, dies at 102
Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN:
Lou Conter, the final survivor of the USS Arizona, the Navy battleship that was sunk – with a loss of 1,177 lives – during the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, has died at age 102.
Conter was surrounded by family at his home in Grass Valley, California, and passed away peacefully on Monday, according to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and Pacific Historic Parks, citing Conter's daughter Louann Daley.
I didn't know we were only down to one prior to this
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After 10 years of work, landmark study reveals new 'tree of life' for all birds living today
Jacqueline Nguyen and Simon Ho for The Conversation:
The largest-ever study of bird genomes has produced a remarkably clear picture of the bird family tree. Published in the journal Nature today, our study shows that most of the modern groups of birds first appeared within 5 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
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By analysing the genomes of more than 360 bird species, our study has identified the fundamental relationships among the major groups of living birds.
The new family tree overturns some previous ideas about bird relationships, while also revealing some new groupings.
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Even with such a huge amount of genome data, one branch of the bird family tree remains a mystery. Our analysis could not confidently determine the relationships of one of the orphans, the hoatzin. Found in South America, the hoatzin is a highly distinctive bird and the sole survivor of its lineage.
What are birds? We just don't know
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It's April 2, 2024, so you know what that means: it's time to post some Györgi Ligeti. Here's his piece "Clocks and Clouds," as performed by Asko|Schönberg (orchestra) and Capella Amsterdam (choir).
I personally find the score with the repeated patterns very satisfying to watch with the music.
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