News Feeds

Today Mark Sturtevant has returned with pictures of diverse critters, including insects, amphibians, and gastropods. Mark’s IDs, links, and narrative are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here are more pictures of various critters in my area, which is in eastern Michigan.

The first picture is a young treefrog, and it is about as big as your thumbnail. This will be one of two sister species in the area, either Cope’s Gray Treefrog, Dryophytes chrysoscelis, or the Gray Treefrog, D. versicolor. They are commonly green in green surroundings. If it is the latter species, then it is tetraploid and that is why it is a separate species from the former. Polyploidy is one way to quickly form a new species, and this is a classic example.

Next up are a couple of our local snails, the Brown-lipped snails, Cepaea nemoralis. I was not sure what to do with them, and so I did this. These snails were introduced from Europe, and are now widespread in the U.S.

The next several pictures are manual focus stacks that were staged on the ‘ol dining room table. First up is a young Flower Crab Spider. That name applies to many species of crab spiders that often lurk on flowers to capture prey. Based on its eye arrangement and prominent hairs, I am pretty sure this one is Mecaphasa sp.

The jumping spiders that follow are species that I’ve shown here many times. The first is a Dimorphic Jumping Spider, Maevia inclemens. This one was very fidgety and it needed something to eat to help settle down. The lights in the eyes of the first picture came from an LED modeling light to help me to focus. I liked the look and so I did not remove the highlighting in post-processing. In the second picture you can see reflections of my fingertips in the large frontal eyes.

Another common spider is the Bold Jumping Spider, Phidippus audax. This youngster was very easy to work with.

The weird creature shown in the next picture is one of our Harvestmen, I think Phalangium opilio. I don’t see this species very often even though it’s distributed all around me. I like them because males have really long pedipalps and horned chelicerae. In some populations, the chelicerae horns are much longer than what is seen here.

Next is a moth that flew inside the house one evening. I think it’s a new species for me – the Lunate Zale Moth, Zale lunata.

And finally, I spotted this large caterpillar one day when out with the cameras. This is a mature Polyphemus Moth larva, Antheraea polyphemus, and it will become maybe the 2nd or 3rd largest moth in the U.S. For the portrait picture, I was trying to get it to look all haughty and Offended, as caterpillars like this often look very offended when being handled. But instead, this one looked like it was Eevil and plotting something, Mwa ha ha haa.

Bioreactors housing methane-eating bacteria could offer a portable, off-grid solution for soaking up methane leaks from sites like landfills and coal mines

We may have a unique opportunity to make an infrastructure investment that can demonstrably save money over the long term – by burying power and broadband lines. This is always an option, of course, but since we are in the early phases of rolling out fiber optic service, and also trying to improve our grid infrastructure with reconductoring, now may be the perfect time to also upgrade our infrastructure by burying much of these lines.

This has long been a frustration of mine. I remember over 40 years ago seeing new housing developments (my father was in construction) with all the power lines buried. I hadn’t realized what a terrible eye sore all those telephone poles and wires were until they were gone. It was beautiful. I was lead to believe this was the new trend, especially for residential areas. I looked forward to a day without the ubiquitous telephone poles, much like the transition to cable eliminated the awful TV antennae on top of every home. But that day never came. Areas with buried lines remained, it seems, a privilege of upscale neighborhoods. I get further annoyed every time there is a power outage in my area because of a downed line.

The reason, ultimately, had to be cost. Sure, there are lots of variables that determine that cost, but at the end of the day developers, towns, utility companies were taking the cheaper option. But what price do we place on the aesthetics of the places we live, and the inconvenience of regular power outages? I also hate the fact that the utility companies have to come around every year or so and carve ugly paths through large beautiful trees.

So I was very happy to see this study which argues that – Benefits of aggressively co-undergrounding electric and broadband lines outweigh costs. First, they found that co-undergrounding (simply burying broadband and power lines at the same time) saves about 40% over doing each individually. This seems pretty obvious, but it’s good to put a number on it. But more importantly they found that the whole project can save money over the long term. They modeled one town in Mass and found:

“Over 40 years, the cost of an aggressive co-undergrounding strategy in Shrewsbury would be $45.4 million, but the benefit from avoiding outages is $55.1 million.”

The reduced cost comes mostly from avoiding power outages. This means that areas most prone to power outages would benefit the most. What they mean by “aggressive” is co-undergrounding even before existing power lines are at the end of their lifespan. They do not consider the benefits of reconductoring – meaning increasing the carrying capacity of power lines with more modern construction. The benefit here can be huge as well, especially in facilitating the move to less centralized power production. We can further include the economic benefits of upgrading to fiber optic broadband, or even high end cable service.

This is exactly the kind of thing that governments should be doing – thoughtful public investments that will improve our lives and save money in the long term. The up front costs are also within the means of utility companies and local governments. I would also like to see subsidies at the state and federal level to spread the costs out even more.

Infrastructure investments, at least in the abstract, tend to have broad bipartisan support. Even when they fight over such proposals, in the end both sides will take credit for them, because the public generally supports infrastructure that makes their lives better. For undergrounding there are the immediate benefits of improved aesthetics – our neighborhoods will look prettier. Then we will also benefit from improved broadband access, which can be connected to the rural broadband project which has stalled. Investments in the grid can help keep electricity costs down. For those of us living in areas at high risk of power outages, the lack of such outages will also make an impression over time. We will tell our kids and grandkids stories about the time an ice storm took down power lines, which were laying dangerously across the road, and we had no power for days. What did we do with ourselves, they will ask. You mean – there was no heat in the winter? Did people die? Why yes, yes they did. It will seem barbaric.

This may not make sense for every single location, and obviously some long distance lines are better above ground. But for residential neighborhoods, undergrounding power and broadband seems like a no-brainer. It seemed like one 40 years ago. I hope we don’t miss this opportunity. This could also be a political movement that everyone can get behind, which would be a good thing in itself.

 

The post Bury Broadband and Electricity first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are commonly found in the bodies of short-beaked common dolphins that get stranded on UK beaches, and are linked to the animals’ risk of infectious diseases

Culture editor Alison Flood rounds up the book club’s thoughts on our latest read, the weird and wild Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva. Warning: spoilers ahead  

The author of the award-winning classic science fiction novel, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, on the science behind his creation

In this extract from the classic science fiction novel, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, we meet Ringworld’s protagonist Louis Wu, as he travels a future Earth

The human perception of stars is that they are largely unchanging although of course in reality stars and their host galaxies do change over time, just very VERY slowly. When galaxies deplete their star forming materials, they traditionally become redder as short lived stars die while long lived dwarf stars persist for trillions of years. However, recent research challenges this understanding.

Diamonds formed in Earth’s lower mantle contain tiny flecks of minerals that are helping us understand the inner workings of our planet

Random flashes of radiation in the sky are not all that unusual. A few years ago, once such flash was detected coming from a star that at the time, was believed to be from a star consuming a planet! The exact mechanism was unsure though for example; was it the star bloating up as a red giant and engulfing the planet or did the planet spiral in toward the star? The answer was until now, a little elusive. Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope showed the environment around the star didn’t match a red giant so it must have been the planet crashing into the star!

If RFK Jr. is to blame for measles outbreaks and deaths, then I would be responsible for saying he would be a net positive for public health in the US.  Thank goodness that’s not the case.

The post Science Based Satire: Falling Vaccine Coverage Over The Years Is A Problem That Likely Increased Due To The Failed Covid-19 Policies That Jonathan Howard Championed. first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The two most prominent satellite galaxies of the Milky Way are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. A team of astronomers have recently tracked the movements of 7,000 stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and found that many of them are being pulled away towards the Large Magellanic Cloud! It seems the SMC is being pulled apart, perhaps leading to its eventual destruction as the tidal forces strip away its stars!

One of the things about astronomy that captivates me is that for every question we answer, we open up a whole bunch of other questions. Dark matter and dark energy are one such phenomenon that rather continues to confound us. There’s also the mystery of missing infrared light too but a team of astronomers think they may have found it! The team examined a region of sky using the Herschel Space Telescope and, by staking 141 images, found where individual dust-rich galaxies appeared blended together. The galaxies are absorbing starlight and re-emitting infrared radiation, and is this that may well account for the missing light.

Exploring the Moon with Biologically-Inspired Subsurface Robots

A team has revealed new insights into the motion of massive stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a small galaxy neighboring the Milky Way. Their findings suggest that the gravitational pull of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the SMC's larger companion, may be tearing the smaller one apart. This discovery reveals a new pattern in the motion of these stars that could transform our understanding of galaxy evolution and interactions.

Using artificial intelligence shortens the time to identify complex quantum phases in materials from months to minutes, finds a study. The breakthrough could significantly speed up research into quantum materials, particularly low-dimensional superconductors.

Using artificial intelligence shortens the time to identify complex quantum phases in materials from months to minutes, finds a study. The breakthrough could significantly speed up research into quantum materials, particularly low-dimensional superconductors.

DECOTA transforms open-ended survey responses into clear themes -- helping policymakers make better use of underutilised public feedback.

Wider hips may make childbirth easier, but increase the risk of other health issues

A fossil jawbone found by fishers in the Taiwan Strait has extended the known range of ancient Denisovan people thousands of kilometres to the east