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10/03/2025

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10/02/2025

A Helping Hand

It is not wise for humans to spend hours toasting under the scorching sun – prolonged exposure to UV rays can lead to sunburns and skin cancer – which is why many people don’t wear sunscreen.

However, an estimated 6,000 to 14,000 tons of commercial sunscreen end up in the ocean each year, with its chemicals harming ocean wildlife.

Now, scientists have created the first pollen-based sunscreen derived from Camellia flowers that would be safe for fish and other marine creatures.

“We know that pollen is naturally UV-resistant, as its shell needs to protect its inner contents from harsh environmental conditions, including sunlight,” explained Nam-Joon Cho, author of a new study on pollen-based sunscreen, in a statement. “Our research aimed to develop a way to process pollen grains into a gel-like form, so that they can be easily applied to human skin.”

Pollen is coated in a substance called sporopollenin – one of the toughest natural biopolymers found on the planet: This substance is so tough that traces have been found in fossils dating back millions of years.

Using a proprietary water-based method that avoids harsh chemicals and high temperatures, the team gathered pollen from both camellias and sunflowers, emptied the pollen shells, and transformed them into a microgel formulation, similar to those used in skincare.

In lab tests on corals, commercial sunscreen triggered coral bleaching in just two days, resulting in coral death in six days. The pollen-based sunscreen appeared to be harmless, and corals remained healthy for up to 60 days.

“It’s difficult to pinpoint how much harm each factor contributes to complex marine ecosystems, so any effort to reduce chemical pollution is welcome,” said Martin. “This pollen-based sunscreen is a promising step towards protecting both human health and marine life.”

Read the full story from today's GlobalPost, linked in the comments below.

09/26/2025

Former French President Sarkozy Sentenced to Five Years in Jail for Criminal Conspiracy

A Paris court on Thursday sentenced former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to five years in prison after finding him guilty of criminal conspiracy in a case centering on alleged illegal donations to his 2007 presidential campaign received from the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, POLITICO reported.

The prosecution alleged Sarkozy had promised Gaddafi he would help him combat his state’s reputation as a pariah with Western countries in exchange for the funds, the BBC News noted.

The court cleared him of other charges, including passive corruption and illegal campaign financing, and said he allowed his close aides to reach out to Libyan officials in an effort to secure financial support for his campaign.

The former president claims the case is politically motivated and, speaking to reporters after the hearing, said of the verdict, “This injustice is a scandal.”

Sarkozy, 70, had expected to avoid jail time by appealing the ruling, which would have delayed sentencing until after the appeal trial.

However, the presiding judge in the case, Nathalie Gavarino, ruled that the seriousness of the charges warranted his detention independent of any appeal. He was also ordered to pay a fine of about $117,000. Sarkozy, who served as president from 2007 to 2012, is likely to become the first modern French president to serve prison time.

The case dates back to 2011, when Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi’s son, first said Sarkozy had received millions of his father’s money for his campaign between 2005 and 2007. The investigation began in 2013 and, a year later, Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine claimed to have written proof that Sarkozy’s campaign bid was “abundantly” financed by Libya, and that the $58 million worth of funding continued during his term.

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09/24/2025

Cosmic Rock Fights

Jupiter formed 4.5 billion years ago, and as the planet grew, its powerful gravity pulled in nearby icy and rocky planetesimals, leading them to collide at very high speed.

The impacts were so strong that the rock and dust from the planetesimals melted on impact, generating tiny molten rock droplets – 0.1-2 millimeters (0.004-0.079 inches) – known as chondrules.

Some of these chondrules were then incorporated into asteroids as the solar system evolved. Over billions of years, pieces of the asteroids broke off and fell to Earth as meteorites.

For decades, scientists have wondered how these small spheres came to Earth and why they took on their round shape.

“Previous formation theories couldn’t explain chondrule characteristics without requiring very specific conditions,” Sin-iti Sirono, author of a new study, said in a statement. “(Our) model requires conditions that naturally occurred in the early solar system when Jupiter was born.”

The researchers developed a computer program simulating Jupiter’s early formation to track how its gravitational pull would have led to high-speed collisions between rocky and water-rich planetesimals.

“We compared the characteristics and abundance of simulated chondrules to meteorite data and found that the model spontaneously generated realistic chondrules,” study author Diego Turrini said in the statement.

The research showed that the features of chondrules, especially their sizes and the rate at which they cooled in space, are determined by the water contained in the impacting planetesimals.

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09/22/2025

Trending Chimps

Fifteen years ago, researchers observing chimps in a sanctuary in Zambia noticed that a female chimp had taken on a new habit: She began sticking a blade of grass in her ear, leaving it there for no apparent reason.

Soon after, seven members of the group copied that behavior, which remained in fashion even after the female trendsetter died.

Now, researchers have published a study based on observations from more than a decade later, in which they document how chimps from another group at the same sanctuary also stuck blades of grass in their ears, even though they had no contact with the original group.

Meanwhile, the newly observed group took the trend one step further: Five of the eight chimpanzees stuck grass in their ears, while six of the eight also had a blade of grass dangling from their rears. The trend was not observed in other chimp groups at the same sanctuary, despite similar living conditions.

“Why they do exactly this particular thing, I’m not really concerned about,” study author Edwin van Leeuwen said in a statement. “But they’re copying the behavior from each other, that is the important insight.”

By tracking which animals showcased the behavior over time and tracing it back to when it started, the researchers found that it was likely that the animals copied the behavior from their caretakers rather than inventing it themselves.

“Both groups where chimps put blades of grass in their ears had the same caretakers. These caretakers reported that they sometimes put a blade of grass or a matchstick in their own ears to clean them,” said Van Leeuwen. “Caretakers in the other groups said they did not do this. The chimps in the one group then figured out to stick the blade of grass in another place as well.”

Similar trends with no apparent purpose have been observed in chimps in captivity, but not in the wild.

“In captivity, they have more free time than in the wild,” said Van Leeuwen. “They don’t have to stay as alert or spend as much time searching for food.”

However, the researchers doubt that the trend is truly “useless.”

“It could also serve a social purpose,” said Van Leeuwen. “By copying someone else’s behavior, you show that you notice and maybe even like that individual. It might help strengthen social bonds and create a sense of belonging within the group, just like it does in humans.”

Published in today's GlobalPost (9/22/2025)

09/17/2025

Artificial light from homes and streetlights helps people prolong their days.

For birds, however, it means working overtime.

That’s the conclusion of a new study that found that city birds are singing earlier in the morning and finishing up later in the evenings in areas with more artificial light.

“We were shocked by our findings,” study author Brent Pease told The Guardian. “Under the brightest night skies, a bird’s day is extended by nearly an hour.”

Researchers used recordings submitted by bird enthusiasts to a popular species identification and mapping website called BirdWeather, wrote Smithsonian Magazine.

They analyzed 2.6 million morning calls and 1.8 million evening calls from more than 500 bird species and compared the findings with the light pollution levels measured by satellites. They found that birds in places with higher light pollution started their days about 18 minutes earlier in the morning and stopped singing about 32 minutes later at night.

“For these birds, effectively their day is almost an hour longer,” study author Neil Gilbert told NPR. “They start vocalizing about 20 minutes earlier in the morning, and they stop vocalizing about 30 minutes later in the evening.”

The study also found that some species, especially those with larger eyes compared with their body size, are more impacted by light pollution than others.

“The American robin, Northern mockingbird, and European goldfinch all extended their day by more than average,” Pease told the Guardian. “Small-eyed species such as sparrows didn’t have as much of a response.”

So far, it is not clear how longer days impact birds.

“We know that sleep loss is not great for humans, but birds are different,” said Pease. “They have developed interesting strategies to cope with loss of sleep during migratory periods.”

While researchers were concerned about disruptions of natural behaviors, Pease noted that, in some species, artificial lighting can extend foraging and mating time and boost the survival rate of fledglings.

Scientists already knew that light pollution affects birds and other animals. For example, it can confuse sea turtle hatchlings trying to reach the ocean.

This study, however, is the first to analyze this phenomenon across hundreds of bird species on multiple continents and during different seasons, providing researchers with unprecedented insight into how artificial light affects the lives of birds worldwide.

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09/12/2025

The Butt of a Road

Researchers say that around 9 trillion cigarette butts will be tossed away worldwide in 2025, many of which will end up littering streets and other public places.

So scientists got creative.

Now, they want to put them to work because using them in the asphalt on roads helps to both clean streets and make them stronger, according to new research.

Scientists focused on cigarette butts from electronic ci******es, as these are longer than the traditional ones and contain more of the filtration material needed for the project. However, any type of cigarette butts could work, New Atlas explained.

The team started by removing the ashy residue from the ends of the used e-cig filters, leaving the bulk of the material, mostly made of cellulose and PLA (polylactic acid) fibers.

The remaining material was shredded and mixed with a synthetic hydrocarbon wax, which held the resulting mixture together.

The mixture was then pressed, heated, and cold-cut into pellet-shaped pieces.

The pellets, old asphalt from deteriorated roads, and bitumen were mixed, resulting in asphalts with 40 percent of their weight made up of recycled road material and cigarette butt pellets, according to a statement.

When the pellets came into contact with the hot bitumen, their synthetic wax melted, letting the cellulose and PLA fibers integrate into the asphalt.

“Overall, this study confirms the possible use of recycling agent-encapsulated fiber pellets derived from E-CBs (e-cigarette butts) in mixtures containing RAP (Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement), with the potential effects on improving fatigue resistance,” wrote the authors.

The firm but flexible fibers served as miniature reinforcing bars within the asphalt, reinforcing it and making it less likely to crack under load but also serving as a binder, making it more flexible than traditional asphalt.

This project also marks a step forward in sustainable road construction, as the pellets’ wax modified the viscosity of the bitumen, enabling the production of new asphalt at lower, more energy-efficient temperatures.

09/10/2025

Message, Intercepted

Starfish might seem harmless marine wallflowers.

However, these creatures are voracious predators, capable of swarming in huge numbers and stripping entire acres of coral bare within a few months.

Around for over 500 million years, preceding even dinosaurs, starfish, however, remain among the most mysterious and misunderstood creatures on the planet.

Now, a new study of crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci, or CoTS) has uncovered details about how they use their spines to communicate, potentially offering insight into how to protect the ocean reef from these alien-like marine predators, New Atlas explained.

“Through genomic and proteomic analysis, we found that the CoTS spines are used to both sense and secrete a wide range of peptides – not just defensive toxins,” study author Noriyuki Satoh said in a statement.

The messages are sent and received by the long spines that cover CoTS’ flat bodies.

This invisible communication system is a sort of marine mind control technique that allows brainless, bloodless CoTS to stay in touch and move and act together.

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09/08/2025

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09/04/2025

Potatoes are one of the world’s most important foods, a staple in the diet of billions of people.

The evolutionary history of the world’s third most important staple crop, however, has long been incomplete.

Now, a new study has found that potatoes exist because of a lucky accident: A natural interbreeding between two wild plants.

Nine million years ago, an ancient hybridization event between the ancestors of today’s tomatoes and a potato-style plant known as Etuberosum made potatoes possible.

A team of genomic experts, supported by taxonomy and evolutionary biology experts, analyzed 450 potato genomes, including domestic types, and 56 wild relatives.

“Wild potatoes are very difficult to sample, so this dataset represents the most comprehensive collection of wild potato genomic data ever analyzed,” said lead study author Zhiyang Zhang in a statement.

The goal was to discover why modern potato plants resemble wild species of the Etuberosum group – even if those don’t carry the tubers – while some parts of their genome reveal a closer evolutionary link to tomatoes.

The analysis confirmed that the potato carries a balanced genetic legacy from both ancestors, with key genes from each enabling tuber formation.

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08/27/2025

All human languages have one thing in common: The more frequently a sound is used, the shorter it tends to be.

This concept, called Zipf’s Law of Abbreviation (ZLA), is one based on the “principle of least effort.”

Birds employ it, too, researchers now say.

“In human language, if we say something a lot, we tend to shorten it – like saying ‘TV’ instead of ‘television’,” said Tucker Gilman, author of a new study, in a statement. “It turns out that the same pattern exists in birdsong.”

While previous research suggested that animal communication might follow ZLA, scientists struggled to find clear evidence of it in birdsong because most birds only produce a few dozen distinct sounds compared with the thousands of words used by humans.

“Studying ZLA in birdsong is far more complex than in human language,” study author Rebecca Lewis said in the statement. “Birds often have very few note types, individuals even within the same species can vary widely in their repertoires, and classifying notes is tricky, too.”

As a result, researchers studied birdsongs by focusing on how often a single bird uses certain note types and how long those notes lasted. This allowed the team to study communication from an individual point of view rather than that of a population.

They applied this system using an open-source tool called ZLAvian, which identifies the presence of ZLA by checking whether real-world patterns match or differ from simulated patterns.

Through ZLAvian, researchers were able to analyze more than 600 songs from 11 bird populations across seven different species.

The results showed that while individual populations didn’t always show clear signs of ZLA, a clearer pattern appeared when data were assembled: More frequently used bird song phrases were shorter on average.

“We know that birds and humans share similarities in the genes and brain structures involved in learning to communicate, but this is the first time we’ve been able to detect a consistent pattern of ZLA across multiple bird species,” Gilman said. “There’s still a lot more work to be done, but this is an exciting development.”

Story from today's GlobalPost, linked in the comments.

08/15/2025

European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed US President Donald Trump this week to safeguard Kyiv’s interests ahead of his high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, voicing concern that the hastily arranged summit could sideline them and lead to concessions favoring Moscow, the BBC reported.

On Wednesday, Trump, European leaders, and Zelenskyy held a virtual meeting that included European Union Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

During the call, Trump told the Europeans that his goal was to secure a ceasefire deal with Putin, adding that any territorial issues should only be decided with Zelenskyy’s involvement. He also said security guarantees must be part of any deal.

The US leader also warned Russia of “very severe consequences” if it doesn’t halt its war against Ukraine, although he did not clarify what those would be, according to Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty.

The virtual meeting came two days ahead of a summit between Trump and Putin at Elmendorf-Richardson Air Force Base near Anchorage. The upcoming summit excludes Kyiv and its European allies, prompting fears of an agreement that would mainly benefit Russia.

Following the meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron said the call “clarified” Trump’s intentions: He noted that Trump told Europe’s leaders that while NATO would not be part of any security guarantees, the US president agreed that “the United States and all the parties involved should take part,” CBS News noted.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer stressed that “international borders must not be changed by force,” adding that any deal must include “robust and credible” security guarantees.

On Thursday, Starmer met Zelenskyy in London to discuss summit expectations and long-term security arrangements. The Ukrainian leader insisted that peace would only be sustainable if the US succeeded in pressuring Russia to “stop the killings and engage in real, meaningful diplomacy.”

European leaders have insisted that Ukraine must be directly involved in any peace process, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warning that if Russia refuses concessions, “the United States and we Europeans should and must increase the pressure.”

Meanwhile, Putin held preparatory meetings in Russia, saying Washington was making “energetic and sincere efforts” to end the war.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Friday’s talks would open with a one-on-one session between Trump and Putin before delegation meetings and a joint press conference. The main focus will be on Ukraine, but economic cooperation is also on the agenda.

Even so, skepticism remains high among Ukraine and its allies over worries that Kyiv would have to concede territory to Russia. Since announcing the summit, Trump has spoken of potential “land-swapping” between Kyiv and Moscow.

Russia insists on Kyiv withdrawing from four partially occupied regions in eastern Ukraine and abandoning its NATO ambitions – terms Kyiv and European allies reject.

Zelenskyy has warned that Russia would use any retained territory as a base for future attacks.