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The Lemon Grove Mummies: Ancient Corpses from Mexican Cave Found in California Garage

On an ordinary day in 1980, a Californian mom decided to spend the afternoon cleaning out her garage – a long neglected chore. She found a lot of trash and plenty of knick-knacks; some forgotten memories arose but nothing unusual. That is until she came to a carton buried in the back. Inside, she found the corpse of a young girl and an infant. Horrified that something so ghastly was lurking in her garage, the mom called the police at once. The Lemon Grove PD arrived ready to investigate a murder. Instead, they stumbled upon a mystery. The two bodies found in that California garage may have been victims but their deaths had taken place centuries earlier.

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Happy Valentine’s Day my marine bio lovelies! I give you, all the above! Shark Love! Instead of something cheesy to give your admirer, why not make a donation to your favourite conservation group? Show them you care not only about them, but the marine environment too!

7 types of fog you didn’t know had names

Fog comes in several distinct varieties that are influenced by nearby bodies of water, landscape features and other local factors. Here are some of the most impressive forms of it on the planet.

Viking men were also heavily tattooed but their most striking and fearsome fashion statement was their gnashers.

They would file horizontal lines into the enamel on their front teeth and paint in red resin. Gareth Williams (curator of the exhibition, Vikings: life and legend) says: “That’s like your punk sticking a safety pin through his nose. It would have been very uncomfortable and it’s quite deliberately saying ‘If I’m prepared to do this to myself, what am I going to do to you?’.” (Source)

Microfilter allows non-invasive diagnosis of fetal abnormalities

A new method could allow physicians to diagnose fetal genetic abnormalities during pregnancy without the risks involved in current techniques.

A team of scientists at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Institute of Microelectronics (IME) has fabricated a microchip that can filter fetal red blood cells from the mother’s circulation. Retrieving these isolated fetal cells could allow the early diagnosis of fetal genetic abnormalities.

The technique, which would require drawing only a few millilitres of blood from an expecting mother, could be used from the eighth week of pregnancy; earlier than current prenatal diagnostic procedures.

the only good news to come out of 2016

Mildred Dresselhaus, the Queen of Carbon, Dies at 86

Dr. Dresselhaus, who helped transform carbon into the superstar of modern materials science, was renowned for her efforts to promote the cause of women in science.

Mildred Dresselhaus, a professor emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose research into the fundamental properties of carbon helped transform it into the superstar of modern materials science and the nanotechnology industry, died on Monday in Cambridge, Mass. She was 86.

Her death, at Mount Auburn Hospital, was confirmed by her granddaughter Leora Cooper. No cause was given.

Nicknamed the Queen of Carbon in scientific circles, Dr. Dresselhaus was renowned for her efforts to promote the cause of women in science. She was the first woman to secure a full professorship at M.I.T., in 1968, and she worked vigorously to ensure that she would not be the last.

In 1971, she and a colleague organized the first Women’s Forum at M.I.T. to explore the roles of women in science. Two years later she won a Carnegie Foundation grant to further that cause.

“I met Millie on my interview for a faculty job in 1984,” said Lorna Gibson, now a professor of materials science and engineering. “M.I.T. was quite intimidating then for a new female, but Millie made it all seem possible, even effortless. I knew it wouldn’t be, but she was such an approachable intellectual powerhouse, she made it seem that way.”

[…]

Dr. Dresselhaus used resonant magnetic fields and lasers to map out the electronic energy structure of carbon. She investigated the traits that emerge when carbon is interwoven with other materials: Stitch in some alkali metals, for example, and carbon can become a superconductor, in which an electric current meets virtually no resistance.

Dr. Dresselhaus was a pioneer in research on fullerenes, also called buckyballs: soccer-ball-shaped cages of carbon atoms that can be used as drug delivery devices, lubricants, filters and catalysts.

She conceived the idea of rolling a single-layer sheet of carbon atoms into a hollow tube, a notion eventually realized as the nanotube — a versatile structure with the strength of steel but just one ten-thousandth the width of a human hair.

She worked on carbon ribbons, semiconductors, nonplanar monolayers of molybdenum sulfide, and the scattering and vibrational effects of tiny particles introduced into ultrathin wires.

She published more than 1,700 scientific papers, co-wrote eight books and gathered a stack of accolades as fat as a nanotube is fine.

Dr. Dresselhaus was awarded the National Medal of Science, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (bestowed by President Barack Obama), the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, the Enrico Fermi prize and dozens of honorary doctorates. She also served as president of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and worked in the Department of Energy in the Clinton administration.

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First U.S. Climate Refugees Forced to Leave Their Vanishing Island Home

Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana is vanishing into the sea and its residents must relocate. 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded $48 million to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe who lives on this sinking island 80 miles southwest of New Orleans so that they may reestablish community further north. 

Their home — or what was once a 22,000-acre island — has been reduced to a 320-acre strip where only 25 houses remain. 

This makes members of the Louisiana tribe the first official climate refugees in the United States as rising sea levels have swallowed 98% of their land. 

Find out more in this Huffington Post piece. 

(Map via Google Maps. Sinking house photo by Karen Apricot via Flickr.) 

Observation of the Week, 3/9/16

This Zombie Ant Fungus seen by jonathan_kolby in Cusuco National Park, Honduras is our Observation of the Week.

“I was walking down the trail, in pursuit of a frog, when this alien-like creature suddenly grabbed my attention out of the corner of my eye,” says National Geographic Explorer Jonathan Kolby. “This was the first time I had ever seen cordyceps fungus and didn’t know what it was at the time.” What he photographed (identified by Prof. David Hughes of Penn State), is likely the incredible fungus known as the Zombie Ant Fungus, which parasitizes its insect host and basically controls its brain. The host is often compelled to climb up the stem of a plant and uses its mandibles to latch onto it (known as the “death grip”). Fruiting bodies of the fungus eventually grow out of the host and release spores back into the forest. “After seeing this in person, I don’t think anyone would argue that nature is more amazing than the best sci-fi movie,” he says. “I now keep my eyes peeled every time I return to the forest to see if I can find another zombie insect! Just a few weeks ago, I found another one, this time of a moth (see below).”

(By the way, the BBC has incredible footage of an ant afflicted by Zombie Ant Fungus, you should definitely check it out.)

It is, however, another fungus which brings Jonathan to the rainforests of Honduras - Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, commonly known as chytrid. It and the newly discovered B. salamandrivorans cause the disease chytridiomycosis, which is devastating amphibian populations around the world. The fungus does its damage by affecting the keratin-producing layer of skin in amphibians, disrupting electrolyte balance and chemical flow, “and ultimately kills the amphibian by causing a little froggy heart attack,” says Jonathan. For the past 10 years, Jonathan has specifically been working to combat the global amphibian extinction crisis and recently established the Honduras Amphibian Research & Conservation Center (http://www.FrogRescue.com), where they are working to protect three endangered species of frogs from chytrid. He’ll be finishing up his PhD at James Cook University in Australia and “now wants to help develop policies to protect biodiversity from emerging infectious diseases, reduce the spread of invasive species, and combat the illegal wildlife trade.” 

Believing  that photography and social media are important for raising awareness about these issues, Jonathan is active on many social media outlets (see below) one of which is iNaturalist. In addition to adding his own observations, he created an iNaturalist Project called Saving Salamanders with Citizen Science, where he’s asking folks to upload any photos they have of dead salamanders. “A new chytrid fungus disease [B. salamandrivorans] is beginning to spread around the world killing salamanders and we’re having a hard time tracking where it’s going,” he says. “With so many people outside looking at nature, anyone who snaps a picture of a dead salamander can provide valuable scientific data that might help us pinpoint where an outbreak is happening, so we can respond as quickly and efficiently as possible.” He invites anyone who’s interested in the issue to join, as he’ll be providing updates via the project; “iNaturalist has provided me with a way to communicate this message and raise awareness with a large audience of people who want to help protect nature.”

- by Tony Iwane

- You can follow Jonathan on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram, and check out his photos on SmugMug. Proceeds from SmugMug sales go to supporting his frog rescue operation at the Honduras Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Center.

- Here are links to two other cordyceps observations Jonathan has uploaded.

- Cordyceps fungus have even inspired video games! The acclaimed survival horror video game The Last of Us posits a world where a mutant strain of cordyceps affects humans, turning them into cannibalistic monsters.