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Today we have a batch of photos from UC Davis ecologist Susan Harrison. Susan’s comment are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Don’t miss the baby possum (last photo)!

Backyard Visitations

Recently I was fortunate to have a large mob of brightly colored birds visit my back yard.  A flock of over 100 Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) had been zipping around the neighborhood in their tight flying formation, constantly conversing in their high-pitched whistles.   These wonderful birds are like parrots of the temperate zone in that they are colorful, social fruit-eaters, flocks of which will quickly denude a berry-covered bush before swooping off to another one.  They descended upon my backyard pond the for a boisterous communal drink, as I sat at my computer/cat-cuddling/birdwatching station.

The photo sequence below illustrates the Cedar Waxwing’s always-changing body shapes, lively social behaviors, and unusual coloration: “a silky, shiny collection of brown, gray, and lemon-yellow, accented with a subdued crest, rakish black mask, and brilliant-red wax droplets on the wing feathers” (per AllAboutBirds.org). [JAC: I always thought that if an Adidas sneaker could fly, it would look like a cedar waxwing.]

Amidst the more routine winter visitors like Yellow-Rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata) and White-Crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys), other recent notables have included Purple Finch (Haemorhous purpureus) and, in our Oregon yard, a presumably amorous pair of Red-shouldered Hawks (Buteo lineatus).

Purple Finch:

Red-shouldered Hawks:

A friend in Davis has been so fortunate as to have Barn Owls (Tyto alba) take up residence in her yard.   Actually, it’s not a matter of fortune, but of putting up several well-placed owl nest boxes.

Barn Owl:

Owl nest boxes:

This same friend has just released, in her yard, nine baby Virginia Opossums (Didelphus virginiana) that became effectively orphaned when their mother was trapped and relocated.   May her possums not become dinner for her owls; there are plenty of rats around for the owls to eat!

Baby Opossum (with me for scale):

Modern medicine is facing many challenges. As the science of medicine advances, it gets harder and harder. We have, in a way, picked all the low hanging fruit. People are living longer, and their medical conditions are getting more challenging to understand and to treat. In order to continue making medical progress we need more advanced technology. This technology – like stem […]

The post Will AI Save Medicine first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Blackholes are a fascinating class of object to study. We have learned significant amounts over the years but one of the outstanding mysteries remains; how there were supermassive black holes with millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun present in the first billion years after the Big Bang. Our current models of stellar mass black hole evolution and mergers cannot explain their existence. A new paper suggests that ultralight dark matter particles, like axions may have done the trick and provides a mass range for expected particles.

Squeezing exercise into one or two days a week seems to have similar health benefits as doing the same amount of physical activity spread out throughout the week

As humans continue to make tentative progress out into the cosmos, the impact of space exploration on our fragile bodies is only beginning to be understood. We know that space travel decreases muscle and bone mass but a team of researchers have discovered which bones suffer the most! Using a group of mice that became astro-rodents for 37 days, they discovered that bone degeneration effective the femur most but not the vertebrae. They concluded that it’s our weight-bearing bones that suffer the most.

Travellers to Mars Need to Avoid the Dust

A termination letter obtained by New Scientist reveals that the Trump administration has gutted the office that runs the country’s only nationwide survey on drug use and mental health

Researchers report their insights on the emerging field of complex frequencies excitations, a recently introduced scheme to control light, sound and other wave phenomena beyond conventional limits. Based on this approach, they outline opportunities that advance fundamental understanding of wave-matter interactions and usher wave-based technologies into a new era.

Researchers report their insights on the emerging field of complex frequencies excitations, a recently introduced scheme to control light, sound and other wave phenomena beyond conventional limits. Based on this approach, they outline opportunities that advance fundamental understanding of wave-matter interactions and usher wave-based technologies into a new era.

Researchers have created a bilayer metasurface made of two stacked layers of titanium dioxide nanostructures, opening new possibilities for structuring light.

The concept of nothing once sparked a 1000-year-long war, today it might explain dark energy and nothingness even has the potential to destroy the universe, explains physicist Antonio Padilla

Many health problems are faced by astronauts who spend significant amounts of time in space. But perhaps one of the most insidious is the danger to their mental health. In particular, a prolonged sense of loneliness that could crop up as part of a long-term deep space mission could have dire consequences. A recent paper from Matthieu Guitton, the editor-in-chief of the journal Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans and a researcher at the CERVO Brain Research Center in Quebec, proposes one potential solution to that risk - social robots.

Under pressure from Elon Musk’s DOGE task force, NASA is cancelling grants and contracts for everything from lunar dust research to educational programmes

One of the common misconceptions about black holes is that they devour not only matter, but also the history of that matter. So when a black hole forms, you can only guess how it came to be. That isn't entirely true. Informational history is only lost when matter crosses the event horizon, and perhaps not even then. The material surrounding a black hole still has a rich history. In a recent study, astronomers have used that history to uncover the origins of a black hole system.

Though wildly different in so many ways, Earth and Saturn's moon Titan have something important in common. Among all the objects in the Solar System, they're the only two with liquids on their surfaces. There are parallels in how the liquids move in cycles on both worlds and a new mission proposal outlines how we can understand Titan better by studying these parallel processes.

A team of chemists found a way to see into battery interfaces -- tight, tricky spots buried deep inside the cell have long frustrated battery designers.

While the threat that microplastics pose to human and ecological health has been richly documented and is well known, nanoplastics, which are smaller than one micrometer (1/50th the thickness of an average human hair), are far more reactive, far more mobile and vastly more capable of crossing biological membranes. Yet, because they are so tiny and so mobile, researchers don't yet have an accurate understanding of just how toxic these particles are.

Self-healing coatings are advanced materials that can repair damage, such as scratches and cracks on their own. Researchers have developed an efficient method for preparing self-healing films consisting of alternating layers of highly cross-linked organosiloxane and linear polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Their film is more durable than conventional self-healing PDMS materials, offering superior hardness and greater thermal stability while self-healing at mild temperatures, paving the way for stronger, more reliable, and easier-maintained self-healing materials.

Self-healing coatings are advanced materials that can repair damage, such as scratches and cracks on their own. Researchers have developed an efficient method for preparing self-healing films consisting of alternating layers of highly cross-linked organosiloxane and linear polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Their film is more durable than conventional self-healing PDMS materials, offering superior hardness and greater thermal stability while self-healing at mild temperatures, paving the way for stronger, more reliable, and easier-maintained self-healing materials.

Researchers present gum tragacanth as a plant-based alternative to gelatin for creating edible films. The team developed films containing different concentrations of gelatin and gum tragacanth and monitored their survivability in water and saline solutions. They found the optimal combination of gum tragacanth and gelatin for maintaining the gelatin's gel-like behavior was a 3-to-1 ratio of the two, respectively. However, gum tragacanth's inclusion leads to a more porous film, making it prone to penetration by water or saline solutions. Though gum tragacanth cannot replace gelatin completely just yet, even a partial replacement is a step forward.