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Electrical and computer engineers have developed a 'Super-Turing AI,' which operates more like the human brain. This new AI integrates certain processes instead of separating them and then migrating huge amounts of data like current systems do.

A novel method to improve the photoluminescent efficiency of metal clusters has been developed -- which could potentially be used in applications such as bioimaging or display technologies.

A novel method to improve the photoluminescent efficiency of metal clusters has been developed -- which could potentially be used in applications such as bioimaging or display technologies.

Quantum computers are able to solve complex calculations that would take traditional computers thousands of years in just a few minutes. What if that analytical power is turned inwards towards the computer itself?

Nature documentaries presented as 360 virtual reality videos have a stronger positive effect than other forms of media, including an indirect effect on donation intentions.

Nature documentaries presented as 360 virtual reality videos have a stronger positive effect than other forms of media, including an indirect effect on donation intentions.

A new study shows that people in Japan treat robots and AI agents more respectfully than people in Western societies.

A new study shows that people in Japan treat robots and AI agents more respectfully than people in Western societies.

Scientists have for the first time filmed the real-time growth and contraction of Palladium nanoparticles, opening new avenues for utilising and recycling precious metal catalysts.

Researchers have developed a molecular system for controlled release of iron. They integrated ferrocene, a molecular sandwich that encloses an iron atom, with a carbon 'nanohoop'. As a result, the system allows for the release of Fe2+ ions upon activation with benign green light.

New research has found that employers and policymakers might want to start paying attention to how workers are feeling, because employee happiness contains critical economic information.

Scientists have created a smart insoles prototype that can accurately measure the body's interaction with the ground, which has the potential to help athletes avoid injuries, or even assist doctors in monitoring recovery.

People with autism are typically diagnosed by clinical observation and assessment. To deconstruct the clinical decision process, which is often subjective and difficult to describe, researchers used a large language model (LLM) to synthesize the behaviors and observations that are most indicative of an autism diagnosis. Their results show that repetitive behaviors, special interests, and perception-based behaviors are most associated with an autism diagnosis. These findings have potential to improve diagnostic guidelines for autism by decreasing the focus on social factors -- which the established guidelines in the DSM-5 focus on but the model did not classify among the most relevant in diagnosing autism.

Researchers have developed a method to destroy fluorine-containing PFAS (sometimes labelled 'forever chemicals') while recovering their fluorine content for future use.

A galaxy inside a bubble may be evidence that the universe was starting to become transparent 330 million years after the big bang

Sometimes oceanic islands—islands formed de novo from beneath the sea, as with volcanic and coral islands—harbor endemic species that don’t seem like their ancestors could have gotten there. Birds, insects, and plants can easily disperse to distant islands from continents, but reptiles, amphibians, and mammals have a harder time, for they have no easy way to cross big expanses of salt water. The absence of the last three groups on oceanic islands, as compared to continental islands like Britain and Sri Lanka, was first noticed by Darwin, who used it as evidence for evolution in The Origin.

But sometimes you do find reptiles, amphibians, and mammals on isolated oceanic islands. The Galápagos Islands, for example, are famous for their marine and land iguanas, as well as other lizards that are found nowhere else. And although Madagascar was once connected to Africa, primates got there long after this separation had occurred, crossing the expanse of sea between the continent and the island. The geographic split occurred about 160 million years ago.  But after that, about 50 mya, a primate made it to the island and radiated into the many species of lemurs found nowhere else. How did this primate (and it must have been either one pregnant female or two or more individuals of different sex) get there? The likely explanation is “rafting”, explained in Wikipedia:

Once part of the supercontinent Gondwana, the island of Madagascar has been isolated since it broke away from eastern Africa (~160 mya), Antarctica (~80–130 mya), and India (~80–90 mya).  Since ancestral lemurs are thought to have originated in Africa around 62 to 65 mya, they must have crossed the Mozambique Channel, a deep channel between Africa and Madagascar with a minimum width of about 560 km (350 mi). In 1915, paleontologist William Diller Matthew noted that the mammalian biodiversity on Madagascar (including lemurs) can only be accounted for by random rafting events, where very small populations rafted from nearby Africa on tangled mats of vegetation, which get flushed out to sea from major rivers.

There can also be smaller rafts, like individual trees or small masses of plant material, and these can carry things like small amphibians or invertebrates.  But the new PNAS paper below documents what is now the longest known rafting event among all terrestrial vertebrates: the dispersal of a land iguana from North America to Fiji. That’s a distance of over 8,000 km, or about 5,000 miles. Click the screenshot below to read the paper, and you can find the pdf here.

There are four species of the large iguana Brachylophus on the Pacific islands composing Fiji, where they’re endemic (Tonga also had a giant iguana that’s now extinct).  Here is one of the species studied in this paper, Brachylophus bulabula (this is a male):

JSutton93, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

How did these reptiles get there and where did they come from? And when did this dispersal event take place? The first thing we need to know to answer this is what is the closest living (or fossil) relative to the Fijian species. It turns out that using DNA to gauge relationships also gives us an estimate of dispersal time using the calibrated “molecular clock,” in which DNA divergence, often calibrated with fossil data, can give us both genealogical relationships and divergence times.

The authors used more than 4,000 genes in each of 14 species of iguanas from eight of the nine known genera. It turned out, as the iguana family tree shows below, that the closest related genus to Brachylophus is the genus Dipsosaurus, which contains two living species, both found in North America:

• The Desert iguana Dipsosaurus dorsalis, found in Baja California and SW North America,
• Catalina desert iguana, Dipsosaurus catalinensis, found on Santa Catalina Island in the gulf between Mexico and Baja California.

Here’s the Desert Iguana:

Wilson44691, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

And here’s the DNA-based family tree. The two genera at the top) are clearly more closely related than Brachylophus is to any other species, and they branched off from other genera of iguanas early during the divergence of the entire group (click all figures to enlarge them):

(from the paper): Phylogenomic timetree of iguanas based on StarBeast3 analysis of 150 loci (50 AHE, UCE, RELEC) and three fossil calibrations (for brevity, only two calibrations labeled and outgroups removed), and time-stratified DEC+J analysis from BioGeoBEARS using areas allowed and manual dispersal matrices, and additional areas added to accommodate all alternative hypotheses for the origin of Fijian iguanas. Pie charts indicate the relative probability of the possible ancestral geographic ranges at nodes and at splits immediately after the corresponding cladogenetic event, and tip boxes indicate extant species ranges. Stars at nodes indicate fossil calibrations. The globe inset shows a representation of the transoceanic dispersal of iguanas from North America to Fiji that occurred at the divergence between Dipsosaurus and Brachylophus or along the Brachylophus branch.

Note that both of the North American regions are dry and these iguanas are adapted to a hot, low-water ecosystem.  The relationship between these two genera as sister taxa is very strong, and the divergence time between the two genera is estimated at about 34 million years. That fits nicely with the time that Fiji was created by volcanic activity—about 39 million years ago.  It is likely, given this tree, that the Fiji iguanas came from a North American ancestor, and that would mean rafting 8000 km.

Could it have come from somewhere else? Other hypotheses are possible.  Early biogeographers posited huge land bridges between Pacific islands and the continents, but there is no evidence that such bridges existed. They could have island-hopped from SE Asia or traveled from Gondwana before it broke up.  Other models are possible, but these can be tested using various models, and also looking to see if there are fossil iguanas in other places that are more related to Brachylophus.  Here’s a figure showing some of the models tested, but only one, with the lizard icon on it, was supported by the data. That’s a long trip, and given the size of these animals, it must have involved a fairly substantial raft.

 

But could an iguana really survive floating on a raft of vegetation over that immense distance? Well, for one thing there are currents that go that way, which would speed up the voyage, estimated by the authors to have taken between 80-120 days.

Can an iguana live that long without fresh water (there may have been food on the “raft”)?  The answer is “probably,” because during cold weather many lizards undergo a period of metabolic and activity dormancy called brumation, during which they do not eat (though they need water). Here’s what the authors say:

 Herbivorous iguanids forgo food for months at a time during brumation, and extant Dipsosaurus brumate from October–March. However, floating vegetation mats are a known substrate for oceanic dispersal, so iguanas rafting from North America to Fiji could have had a food source during their journey. Additionally, some iguanas have other traits that may augment their capacity to survive overwater dispersal, including resistance to heat and dehydration. For example, Dipsosaurus have the highest voluntary thermal maximum temperature among lizards and largely inhabit areas without permanent freshwater.

The only thing that concerns me with this hypothesis is this: where did the rafting iguanas get fresh water? The authors don’t really address this, but do mention iguanas’ resistance to dehydration. Also, there’s rain in the ocean, and any rain falling on a raft could be sucked up by the lizards aboard.

The best hypothesis, then, seems to be rafting, and the authors concatenate all the evidence supporting it:

The combination of evidence supporting oceanic rafting from North America to Fiji is 1) phylogenomic analyses that support a sister taxon relationship between Brachylophus and Dipsosaurus, 2) the distribution of fossil iguanids, extant Dipsosaurus, and most other extant iguanids in North America, 3) statistical biogeographic analyses that favor long-distance dispersal from North America over alternative hypotheses, including dispersal via Eurasia, South America, Antarctica, and/or Oceania, and 4) the late Paleogene divergence time between Brachylophus and Dipsosaurus.

Finally, just for fun, here’s are two bar graphs from the paper showing the greatest distances between islands harboring iguanids and the nearest mainland (first graph) and the same graph for diofferent groups of terrestrial vertebrates.  The captions for the two graphs include this: “A) Distances between island and mainland for extant iguanid lizards and (B) distances for other proposed long-distance, overwater dispersal events in terrestrial vertebrates.”

Among iguanas, Brachylophus is The King, by far!:

Looking at all vertebrates, Brachylophuis still the king!

The asterisks in this graph indicate that stepping-stone dispersal is possible, with the distances for that scenario given by the white line across the two bars. The second longest dispersal, leaving out the asterisked animals involve Cadeidae, otherwise known as Cuban keel-headed worm lizards. They are found on Cuba but are said to have dispersed some 6000 km. This genus comprises two Cuban species and is enigmatic, but is thought to have rafted from the Mediterranean!

And so we have many instances of “founder-event speciation”: ancestors making it to distant islands and forming new species (in this case, four) after they land on islands or archipelagos.  Note that this differs from the old and largely discredited theory of “founder-EFFECT speciation,” which posited that weird genetic stuff happens on small founding populations that speeds up formation of new groups. That theory was promoted by, among others, Stephen Jay Gould.

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “whip,” came with the note, “You shouldn’t flip tables, Jesus.” It’s about as scathing an indictment of Islamism that I’ve seen in this strip. Mo, of course, is as clueless as ever.

Got clear skies this weekend? If clouds cooperate, observers in the North Atlantic and surrounding regions may witness a rare spectacle: a partial solar eclipse. This is the second eclipse of 2025, and bookends the first eclipse season of the year. The season started with March 14th total lunar eclipse. Depending where you are observing from, this is a shallow to a deep partial, ‘almost’ total solar eclipse.

Reader Mark Otten sent in some lovely photos taken by his wife Dianne. Mark’s (or Dianne’s) IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

These photos were taken by Dianne over the last 3 years in various locations in the greater Cincinnati, Ohio area.

Great blue heron (Ardea herodias) in a rock divide between two constructed ponds.

Female northern flicker (Colaptes auratus) showing the brightly-colored underside of the tail feathers typical of the eastern “yellow-shafted” form:

Spotted sandpiper (Actitis macularius):

Yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus):

In July, 2023 a limpkin (Aramus guarauna), normally resident in Florida, the Caribbean, and Central and South America, showed up at a county park in the northern suburbs of Cincinnati.  It stayed around for about 2 weeks causing quite a stir among local birders.  Limpkins feed mostly on freshwater snails and mussels:

This female killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) and her mate used an existing ring of rocks along the margin of a walking path to make their nest.  Her four eggs are visible directly below her:

A killdeer chick a few days after hatching:

Male American kestrel (Falco sparverius):

The same kestrel a few minutes later with a grasshopper meal:

In 1979 there were only 4 confirmed nesting pairs of bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) in Ohio, all of them along Lake Erie. Eagles have since become a familiar sight in many locations.  A 2020 survey by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources recorded more than 700 eagle nests throughout the state.  This one, and its mate, have been nesting in a county park (about 11 miles north of downtown Cincinnati) for the last several years:

A family of red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) denned under the porch of a nearby church in 2022.  We were able to observe and photograph the adults and pups over several evenings.

One of the adult foxes with a light snack.  I’m not sure of the species, maybe a mockingbird:

There were at least 4 pups.  These 3 were playing in the lawn in front of the church:

We first observed this piebald white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fawn in June, 2023 but were not able to get a good photo until late July.  The fawn was observed off and on until November, 2023.  We have not seen it since:

Piebald white-tailed deer fawn and (presumably) its sibling”

The focus is all on the Moon at the moment as we strive to establish a permanent lunar base. At the south polar region there are permanently shadowed craters protecting pockets of water ice. Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) has been capturing images of these craters using its ShadowCam instrument. Now, using that data, planetary scientists are using a machine learning algorithm to identify over a billion impact craters in the region, deep inside the shadowed craters and each is at least 16 metres in diameter.