The alphabet holds a unique place in human history, and every new discovery about its origins can illuminate our past and challenge long-held beliefs. 



Its simplicity and adaptability transformed the way humans communicated, laying the foundation for countless languages and cultures. 



Each breakthrough brings us closer to understanding how early societies transitioned from complex symbols to accessible scripts.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-oldest-alphabet-ever-found">Oldest alphabet ever found</h2>



A recent phenomenal finding has done just that - it’s reshaping what we know about the beginnings of alphabetic writing.



Our story begins in Syria, where a team from <a href="https://www.jhu.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Johns Hopkins University</a> made an unexpected discovery.



The researchers unearthed finger-length clay cylinders from an ancient tomb, etched with what appears to be the oldest alphabet in known human history.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-alpha-of-alphabets">The alpha of alphabets</h2>



This incredible finding dates back to approximately 2400 BCE, which is a staggering 500 years older than any other known alphabetic scripts. 



This revelation is monumental as it overthrows previously held theories about the origins of alphabets, and how they were adopted by <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/ice-cores-show-that-early-societies-were-dominated-by-climate-events/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">early societies</a>, changing their lifestyle and course of civilization.



Glenn Schwartz is a professor of archaeology at Johns Hopkins University and one of the lead researchers who discovered the clay cylinders.



"Alphabets revolutionized writing by making it accessible to people beyond royalty and the socially elite," said Professor Schwartz. 



"Alphabetic writing changed the way people lived, how they thought, how they communicated. And this new discovery shows that people were experimenting with new <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/quantum-holograms-future-of-secure-messaging-encryption-internet/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">communication technologies</a> much earlier and in a different location than we had imagined before now."



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-digging-deeper-into-the-past">Digging deeper into the past</h2>



The story behind this discovery unfolds at Tell Umm-el Marra, an early urban center in Western Syria. A group of archaeologists, including experts from the University of Amsterdam, embarked on a 16-year excavation journey at this site.



The fruitful outcome of their dedication was the unearthing of tombs from the Early <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/bronze-age-teeth-discovery-highlight-the-evolution-of-the-human-diet/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bronze Age</a>. Among these tombs, one stood out - the final resting place of six individuals, adorned with gold and silver jewelry, cookware, a spearhead, and intact <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/baltic-pottery-reveals-ancient-culinary-traditions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pottery vessels</a>.



Interestingly, found next to the pottery were four lightly baked clay cylinders, etched with what seems to be alphabetic writing. 



"The cylinders were perforated, so I’m imagining a string tethering them to another object to act as a label. Maybe they detail the contents of a vessel, or maybe where the vessel came from, or who it belonged to. Without a means to translate the writing, we can only speculate," said Professor Schwartz. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-new-chapter-for-the-alphabet">A new chapter for the alphabet?</h2>



Thanks to advanced carbon-14 dating techniques, the researchers were able to confirm the ages of the tombs, the artifacts, and the writing. 



The discovery challenges existing theories about the birth of the alphabet. It shifts our understanding of the origins of alphabetic writing, hinting at an entirely different narrative, as Professor Schwartz explained.



"Previously, scholars thought the alphabet was invented in or around Egypt sometime after 1900 BCE,” said Schwartz. "But our <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/monkey-stone-tools-look-like-early-human-artifacts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">artifacts</a> are older and from a different area on the map, suggesting the alphabet may have an entirely different origin story than we previously thought.”



The research highlights the importance of continuous exploration in our endeavor to comprehend our past and understand its impact on our present and future.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-broader-impact-of-alphabetic-discoveries">Broader impact of alphabetic discoveries</h2>



The discovery of the oldest known alphabet in Syria does more than just challenge existing theories - it offers a deeper understanding of how early societies communicated and evolved.



Alphabetic writing, unlike the pictograms and logograms used in earlier writing systems, simplified communication, making it more accessible to wider populations. 



This democratization of writing could have been a pivotal factor in advancing trade, governance, and cultural exchanges among early civilizations.



The implications of the ancient alphabet extend beyond archaeology. Linguists, historians, and even technology researchers could gain insights into the roots of structured communication systems.



Understanding the origins of the alphabet also helps contextualize its influence on modern languages and scripts, illustrating its role as a building block for contemporary literacy and education.



Image Credit: Glenn Schwartz, Johns Hopkins University



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Oldest known alphabet discovered in Syria

The alphabet holds a unique place in human history, and every new discovery about its origins can illuminate our past and challenge long-held beliefs. Its simplicity and adaptability transformed the way humans communicated, laying the foundation for countless languages and cultures. Each breakthrough brings us closer to understanding how early societies transitioned from complex symbols to accessible scripts. Oldest alphabet ever found A recent phenomenal finding has done just that - it’s reshaping what we know about the beginnings of alphabetic writing. Our story begins in Syria,...

Rocks hold a record of the first day of extinction for the dinosaurs. Rocks found at the impact site of the asteroid that triggered the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/after-asteroid-killed-dinosaurs/">Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction</a>, the mass extinction event that wiped out all the dinosaurs, hold a record of the first days after the asteroid struck Earth. 

It was believed that when the asteroid hit, clouds of sulfur blocked out the sun, wildfires swept through forested areas, and a tsunami traveled as far inland as Illinois. 

In a new study, an international team of researchers led by the <a href="https://www.utexas.edu/">University of Texas at Austin</a> has found evidence of the first 24 hours post-asteroid impact which confirms these Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction scenarios. 

Charcoal and rocks unearthed and analyzed from the impact site are a part of a detailed rock record that tells the story of the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. 

“It’s an expanded record of events that we were able to recover from within ground zero,” said Sean Gulick, “It tells us about impact processes from an eyewitness location.”

Gulick was a co-leader of a drilling expedition in 2016, and the rocks were collected from the impact site near the Yucatan Peninsula. 

After the asteroid hit, the impact crater was quickly filled with rocks and debris carried in by seawater from the Gulf of Mexico. In one day, 425 feet of debris were deposited in the crater, a record-breaking rate of accumulation. 

The rocks in the crater hold clues as to what happened immediately after the asteroid hit and the environmental conditions post-impact that helped kill off 75% of all life on Earth. 

Researchers discovered charcoal inside the crater, which suggests that after the asteroid hit charred vegetation and debris were swept into the crater. 

While a lot can be deciphered from what is in the rock samples, the absence of sulfur-rich rocks from core samples taken from the crater also relays valuable information about the extinction event.  

Even though the area around the crater is abundant with sulfur-rich rocks, there is no sulfur in the crater, which helps support the theory that minerals carrying sulfur were vaporized when the asteroid made contact. 

This is why billowing clouds of sulfur were emitted into the atmosphere, blocking out the sun and drastically cooling the planet. It’s estimated that around 325 billion tons of sulfur was released into the atmosphere after impact. 

The global cooling that occurred after the asteroid hit is thought to be the most significant contributor to the extinction of life on Earth during that time. 

“The real killer has got to be atmospheric,” Gulick said. “The only way you get a global mass extinction like this is an atmospheric effect.”

The study findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

--

By <a href="mailto:kayvandette@gmail.com">Kay Vandette</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer 

Image Credit: NASA/Don Davis

Rocks hold a record of the first day of extinction for the dinosaurs

Rocks hold a record of the first day of extinction...

If a driver is suspected of operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol, a quick breathalyzer test can measure blood alcohol concentration. But when it comes to driving under the influence of marijuana, testing for THC, a psychoactive compound in cannabis, is much more complicated.  

Researchers from the <a href="https://www.chem.pitt.edu/">University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Chemistry</a> and the <a href="https://www.engineering.pitt.edu/">Swanson School of Engineering</a> have developed a breathalyzer device that can accurately measure marijuana influence.  

If further testing and research prove successful, the device could aid law enforcement officials and help states come up with better laws for driving while under the influence of marijuana. 

Currently, <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/marijuana-use-increased/">recreational marijuana is legal</a> in eleven states and Washington DC, while medical marijuana is legal in 33 states. 

It is possible to test for marijuana with current drug testing methods using blood, urine, or hair, but these tests can’t be used by police officers in the field. 

The researchers used machine learning and carbon nanotubes which are 100,000 times smaller than a strand of human hair to create a breathalyzer device that measures THC levels in the breath. 

 When a person under the influence of marijuana breathes into the device, THC molecules bind to the surface of the nanotubes and sensors then detect and measure the levels of THC. 

“The semiconductor carbon nanotubes that we are using weren’t available even a few years ago,” said Sean Hwang, lead author on a paper about the research. “We used machine learning to ‘teach’ the breathalyzer to recognize the presence of THC based on the electrical currents recovery time, even when there are other substances, like alcohol, present in the breath.”

The device looks like a typical breathalyzer that measures alcohol with a mouthpiece for and a digital display. 

The researchers tested the device in a lab setting, and the breathalyzer successfully measured THC levels when mixed with other breath components like CO2, water, and methanol. 

“Creating a prototype that would work in the field was a crucial step in making this technology applicable,” said Dr. Ervin Sejdic, a collaborator on the project. “It took a cross-disciplinary team to turn this idea into a usable device that’s vital for keeping the roads safe.” 

The researchers published their findings in the journal ACS Sensors and patented the device.

--

By <a href="mailto:kayvandette@gmail.com">Kay Vandette,</a> <a href="https://www.earth.com/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Image Credit: Shutterstock/Craig F Scott

Developing a breathalyzer that can detect marijuana influence

If a driver is suspected of operating a vehicle while...

A year-long study of nine men hints at an intriguing possibility: someday, maybe even soon, there may be medications to slow or even reverse the aging process.

An international team of scientists set out to determine if they could affect study participants’ “biological age” by repairing the thymus, a lymphoid organ that plays a major role in the immune system.

They separated biological age – physical signs of aging on the human body – from chronological age – i.e., what you answer when asked how old you are. To do that, they used a set of epigenetic tests, including <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30669119">GrimAge</a>. Study participants took the tests at the start of the study and again at the end.

For the year of the study, the nine men between the ages of 51 and 65 took a drug cocktail that included recombinant human growth hormone and metformin, a drug used to treat diabetes and insulin resistance. Studies have shown that growth hormone can regenerate the thymus, but also trigger diabetes. 

At the end of the year, the nine men saw a major effect on the aging process. Their biological ages were now 1.5 years lower, on average, than when they had started. 

The drugs alone may not have been the only factor in the men’s better health.

“Perhaps just undergoing this trial somehow changed the behavior of these men towards a more healthy lifestyle,” Dr. João Pedro de Magalhães of the <a href="https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/">University of Liverpool</a> told the New Scientist. 

And the team admitted that, because they didn’t have a control group taking a placebo, the results will need to be studied more closely.

But it’s unlikely that the reversal of the aging process was spontaneous, lead author Dr. Greg Fahey of <a href="http://www.21cm.com/">21st Century Medicine</a> said.

“If placebo by itself caused such a strong effect, it would be expected that many prior interventions would have reported similar effects,” he said.

The researchers plan to continue looking into the drug cocktail and its effects on the aging process, as well as how better diet and exercise might have affected their current research.

“This study certainly opens exciting avenues for future work and doing a larger trial with proper controls is now warranted,” de Magalhães said.

The new research adds to a growing body of work focused on <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/anti-aging-drugs-human-trials/">medications</a> that may slow or reverse aging and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/shutting-down-genes-slow-aging/">genetic research</a> into the aging process.

The study has been published in the journal <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/acel.13028">Aging Cell</a>.

—

By Kyla Cathey, <a href="https://www.earth.com/">Earth.com</a> staff writer

Could drug cocktail reverse the aging process?

A year-long study of nine men hints at an intriguing...

It turns out that young people who avoid teen romance may not be socially immature at all. Instead, they just might be better adjusted and happier than their peers.

The new study from the <a href="https://www.uga.edu/">University of Georgia</a> shows that adults should promote being single as a better option for high schoolers, researchers said. 

"In the end, school health educators, mental health professionals, and teachers should affirm social norms that support adolescents' individual freedom to decide whether to date or not, indicating that both are acceptable and healthy options," lead author Brooke Douglas, a doctoral candidate, told the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/">Daily Mail</a>.

The scientists worked with nearly 600 high school sophomores to reach their conclusions about teen romance.

The team split students into four groups, based on their reported dating activity starting in the sixth grade. The groups were “low,” “increasing,” “high middle school” and “frequent.” Using ratings from their teachers and questionnaires filled out by the students themselves, the researchers compared the four groups.

They found that the students who avoided teen romance – those who didn’t date or become entangled in romantic relationships – had good social skills and low rates of depression. In fact, they often were better off in those departments than their peers.

"This high frequency has led some researchers to suggest that dating during teenage years is a normative behavior. That is, adolescents who have a romantic relationship are therefore considered 'on time' in their psychological development,” Douglas said in a press release.

The study turns that notion on its head.

It also means that educators, school administrators and other adults have a lot of work ahead to destroy the myth that dating is a vital part of the teen experience – especially given the significantly lower depression rates among teens who didn’t date.

"While the study refutes the notion of non-daters as social misfits, it also calls for health promotion interventions at schools and elsewhere to include non-dating as an option for normal, healthy development," Douglas said.

The study has been published in the <a href="http://www.ashaweb.org/resources/journal-of-school-health/">Journal of School Health</a>.

—

By Kyla Cathey, <a href="https://www.earth.com/">Earth.com</a> staff writer

Youngsters who avoid teen romance are happier, study says

It turns out that young people who avoid teen romance...

If you’re left-handed, you’re part of an exclusive club. Just 10% of the human population favors their left hand over their right.

That minority status has led to trouble for lefties throughout history. 

“In the Middle Ages, for instance, the left-hander lived in danger of being accused of practicing witchcraft,” <a href="https://time.com/3978951/lefties-history/">Time</a> magazine wrote in 1969. “The Devil himself was considered a southpaw, and he and other evil spirits were always conjured up by left-handed gestures.”

While lefties in most places face uncomfortable scissors, notebooks and other inconveniences rather than persecution today, that history of bias against left-handed people meant that few people would choose to be a leftie – even if it does give an <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/left-handed-advantage-sports/">advantage in sports</a>.

Now, researchers have found the genes connected to left-handedness. They used the UK Biobank, a collection of data – including genetic information – from more than 500,000 people. By studying the genomes, the team of researchers from the University of Oxford were able to pinpoint four specific loci on the human genome that play a role in handedness. The team studied the genomes of 400,000 people – including nearly 40,000 lefties – to reach their conclusions.

And it turns out, those loci might indicate hidden skills among lefties. For example, they might have better verbal skills than the other 90% of the human population.

"This raises the intriguing possibility for future research that left-handers might have an advantage when it comes to performing verbal tasks, but it must be remembered that these differences were only seen as averages over very large numbers of people and not all left-handers will be similar," co-author Dr. Akira Wiberg said in a press release.

Researchers also found a correlation between schizophrenia and left-handedness, though they said more research is needed to determine whether that’s more than just coincidence.

The study has been published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awz257">Brain</a>.

—

By Kyla Cathey, <a href="https://www.earth.com/">Earth.com</a> staff writer

Researchers find gene that makes people left-handed

If you’re left-handed, you’re part of an exclusive club. Just...

Satellites orbiting Earth have captured a stunning image: a string of four tropical cyclones, including Hurricane Dorian, as they wreak havoc down on the planet’s surface.

As of 1:10 p.m. Eastern time on September 4, Hurricane Dorian, Tropical Storm Ferdinand, Tropical Storm Gabrielle and Hurricane Juliette could be seen stretching in a loose chain across half the planet from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/">NASA’s</a> satellites.

One of those storms, <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/warming-waters-hurricane-dorian/">Hurricane Dorian</a>, devastated the Bahamas, slammed into the Carolinas, and swiped New England before making landfall in Canada. More than 40 people were killed in the Bahamas, with more than 70,000 homeless there. 

"It was like an atomic bomb went off," Sherrie Roberts told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/08/us/hurricane-dorian-bahamas-sunday-wxc/index.html">CNN</a> on Saturday. Roberts was on the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas when Dorian – then a Category 5 storm – lingered last week.

More than 1,400 evacuees were headed to Florida over the weekend.

Residents of the Bahamas described Hurricane Dorian as unlike anything they’d experienced before.

"The island of Abaco has been through and survived many hurricanes in the past. It didn't take long for us to rebound, but this is different from anything we've ever experienced. This hurricane will set us back for years to come," resident Ted Curry told CNN.

Another five people were killed in the United States when the hurricane made landfall in the Carolinas. Half a million people in Canada’s Maritimes were left without power on Saturday.

At the time NASA took the photo of the four tropical cyclones, Dorian and Juliette were both Category 2 storms. That puts their windspeeds at about 100 miles per hour.

To capture its image of the storms, NASA used the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite known as GOES-16.

NASA is continuing to monitor the tropical cyclones, along with Typhoon Faxai, which is on track to slam into Tokyo on Sunday. 

—

By Kyla Cathey, <a href="https://www.earth.com/">Earth.com</a> staff writer

Paid for by Earth.com.

Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory, Joshua Stevens; NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service

NASA satellites capture four tropical cyclones from space

Satellites orbiting Earth have captured a stunning image: a string...

When bacteria change in a way that reduces the effectiveness of drugs for curing or preventing infections, it is commonly assumed that the spread of this resistance is linked to <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/rivers-polluted-antibiotics/">antibiotics</a>. But now, a team of researchers led by <a href="https://ethz.ch/en.html">ETH Zurich</a> has identified a previously unknown source of intestinal bacteria resistance that is unrelated to the use of antibiotics.

"Restricting the use of antibiotics is important and indeed the right thing to do, but this measure alone is not sufficient to prevent the spread of resistance," said Professor Médéric Diard. "If you want to control the spread of resistance genes, you have to start with the resistant microorganisms themselves and prevent these from spreading through, say, more effective hygiene measures or vaccinations." 

The newly discovered resistance-spreading mechanism is caused by persistent bacteria, or persisters, that often survive antibiotic treatment. Persisters can temporarily transition into a dormant state with their metabolism reduced to a minimum. When the persistent bacteria are in this state, the antibiotics are unable to kill them. 

In the case of salmonella, for example, the persistent bacteria become dormant when they penetrate the body tissue from inside the gut. Once they have invaded the tissue, the persisters can go undetected for months. If the conditions are right for survival when the bacteria awaken from their dormant state, the infection can flare back up.

According to the researchers, the persisters can still cause problems even when they do not trigger a new infection because they carry small plasmids that contain transferrable resistance genes. Using a mouse model, the team demonstrated that dormant salmonella in the gut can pass their resistance genes on to other individual bacteria, such as E. coli. The experiments showed that persisters are very efficient at sharing their resistance genes as soon as they awaken and encounter other bacteria that are susceptible to gene transfer.

"By exploiting their persistent host bacterium, the resistance plasmids can survive for a prolonged period in one host before transferring into other bacteria. This speeds up their spread," explained Professor Wolf-Dietrich Hardt. Notably, this gene transfer takes place independently of antibiotics. 

Next, the researchers want to explore their findings further by studying livestock that frequently suffer from salmonella infections, such as pigs. The scientists also want to investigate whether it is possible to control the spread of resistance in livestock populations with probiotics or with a vaccination against salmonella.

The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/">Nature</a>.

--

By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Image Credit: Shutterstock/Kateryna Kon

Drug resistance can spread even without the use of antibiotics

When bacteria change in a way that reduces the effectiveness...

A nearly-complete duck-billed dinosaur fossil discovered in Japan. Archaeologists in Japan have unearthed a nearly-complete 72-million-year-old fossil of a crested dinosaur. The skeleton includes the skull, jawbone, spine, ribs, teeth, and both front and back legs, making it one of the most remarkable prehistoric fossils ever uncovered.

Furthermore, experts believe that this crested creature, named Kamuysaurus japonicus, is significant because it shows that Asia and the United States were joined by land at the time that this <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/increases-oxygen-levels-dinosaurs/">dinosaur</a> walked the earth.

“'It is rare and pretty astonishing to find an almost complete skeleton,” said corresponding author Professor Yoshitsugu Kobayashi. “There is no doubt that this is the best preserved large dinosaur skeleton from Japan.”

Kamuysaurus was a duck-billed plant eater, about 26 feet long, and weighed more than five tons. This creature walked on all fours and preferred to live near water. The bony crest on its head places it in the hadrosaur family, and within the species called Edmontosaurus, which lived during the Late Cretaceous period. 

Fossils of Edmontosaurus have been found in Montana, Nebraska, and New Jersey. Furthermore, genetic analysis showed that Kamuysaurus was also related to the Kerberosaurus from Russia and Laiyangosaurus from China.

However, after comparing Kamuysaurus to 70 other hadrosaurs, experts identified it as a completely new dinosaur.

“[This discovery] has global significance because this dinosaur shows us how the world has been connected through time,” said co-author Dr. Anthony Fiorillo, chief curator at the <a href="https://www.perotmuseum.org/">Perot Museum of Nature and Science</a> in Texas. “Kamuysaurus is closely related to the animal we study from Alaska, Edmontosaurus, a duck-billed dinosaur also found throughout much of western North America.”

“Because these dinosaurs are so closely related, they provide further evidence that long ago, Asia and North America were connected,” Dr. Fiorillo said.

It’s currently thought that Asia and North America were connected by the Bering Land Bridge, which ran between Siberia and Alaska. The Bering Land Bridge has been described as the “dinosaur migration highway.”

Though many of Kamuysaurus’s bones have yet to be identified, experts were still able to perform a total reconstruction.

--

By <a href="mailto:oliviagharvey24@gmail.com">Olivia Harvey</a>, <a href="http://earth.com">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Image Credit: Kobayashi Y., et al, Scientific Reports

A nearly-complete duck-billed dinosaur fossil discovered in Japan

A nearly-complete duck-billed dinosaur fossil discovered in Japan. Archaeologists in...

Your mood could be affected by your gut bacteria. Within the past two decades, scientists have realized that <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/regulating-gut-bacteria-anxiety/">gut bacteria</a> can actually affect a person’s mood. According to a report in <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332460-500-gut-feeling-how-a-healthy-microbiome-helps-beat-stress-and-lift-mood/">New Scientist</a>, the path to discovery began in 2004 when a researcher at <a href="http://www.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en/">Kyushu University</a> saw that mice who lacked microbes in their guts reacted abnormally to stress.

Unlike mice found in nature, these mice were raised in a sterile environment, and therefore lacked the valuable microbes found in the guts of wild mice. Without microbes, these lab-bred mice were left vulnerable to pathogens that would normally be fought off by the good bacteria in the gut. The team bred them to study the results of physical disease on microbe-lacking mice, however, they witnessed a surprising behavioral result as well.

The mice that lacked microbes spent less time with their fellow mice and had a more exaggerated response to stress in comparison to mice with the appropriate microbes. It almost looked as though the mice were depressed, as New Scientist reported. However, after researchers fed these mice a pathogen-free microbial mixture, the mice developed a normal stress response within mere days.

This connection between microbes and mood was then dubbed the gut-brain axis.

After this initial study, <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110830/full/news.2011.510.html">another study</a> led by John Cryan and Ted Dinan of <a href="https://www.ucc.ie/en/">University College Cork</a> discovered that the bacterium Lactobacillus rhamnosus has an anti-anxiety effect in mice.

“They became a lot more chilled out and relaxed. They behaved as if they were on Valium or Prozac,” Cryan said. “We looked at their brains and found widespread changes.”

To figure out how these findings related to humans, Cryan and Dinan gave normal mice a faecal transplant from a person with depression. The mice that received the transplant also developed depression-like symptoms, thus proving that the gut-brain axis discovered in mice translates to humans as well.

But it was still unclear how the gut-brain axis actually worked, according to New Scientist. Due to the blood-brain barrier, which prevents cells, particles, and some molecules from entering the brain, how could the neurotransmitters produced by microbes — which include dopamine and serotonin — affect the brain?

In 2017, scientists discovered a special set of cells in the gut lining, which detect neurotransmitters produced by microbes and create a pulse in the vagus nerve, which connects the gut to the brain. Furthermore, more evidence suggests that gut microbes and their molecules can actually adjust the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, and can even influence the development of the brain within the first three years of a person’s life.

Therefore, the amount of gut bacteria one has can actually affect the way a person processes emotions. And as <a href="https://insights.ovid.com/crossref?an=00006842-201710000-00010">another 2017 study</a> from the <a href="http://www.ucla.edu/">University of California, Los Angeles</a>, concluded, consuming probiotics can improve one’s emotional processing and may even curb some symptoms of depression and anxiety.

“I do believe the data supports a role for microbes modulating how we feel,” lead researcher Kirsten Tillisch told New Scientist, but she cautioned that these studies show correlation between gut microbes and mood, not causation. 

Therefore, it’s possible that mood is affecting the microbes rather than the other way around.

In order to bring new probiotic-based mental health treatment to the mainstream, researchers must discover which microbes actually reside in the gut. To do so, a new technique of microbial research has been developed. It’s dubbed whole-genome shotgun sequencing and it can reportedly locate species and subspecies by analyzing every gene in a sample taken from an environment.

Whole-genome sequencing has already been used by researchers at <a href="https://www.kuleuven.be/english/">KU Leuven in Belgium</a>, who were able to view <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30718848">the microbes in the guts of over 1,000 people</a>. By doing so, the team was able to report that people who were diagnosed with depression showed a reduced number of Coprococcus and Dialister bacteria.

“This new way of looking at brain health is literally turning things upside down,” Cryan told New Scientist.

--

By <a href="mailto:oliviagharvey24@gmail.com">Olivia Harvey</a>, <a href="http://earth.com">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Image Credit: Shutterstock/T. L. Furrer

Your mood could be affected by your gut bacteria

Your mood could be affected by your gut bacteria. Within...

The 2018 Kilauea Volcano eruption resulted in <a href="https://www.earth.com/image/kilauea-volcano-lava-flows-continue-to-reshape-hawaiis-big-island/">millions of cubic feet of molten lava</a> falling into the sea. 

When the lava made its way into the nutrient-poor waters off Big Island, it led to massive phytoplankton blooms, and now researchers from the <a href="https://manoa.hawaii.edu/">University of Hawai’i (UH) at Mānoa</a> and <a href="https://www.usc.edu/">University of Southern California</a> know why. 

When Kilauea injected tons of lava into the water, nutrient levels spiked resulting in microbe blooms that were so big they could be seen from space.  

What’s surprising is that the phytoplankton blooms depended on nitrate but there is very little nitrogen in basaltic lava and not nearly enough to explain the sudden blooms.  

The researchers discovered that when the lava fell into the ocean, it quickly warmed up nutrient-rich deep water which rose to the surface, providing a rich feast for microbes.  

For the study, the researchers conducted an expedition during the peak of Kilauea’s eruption. The team monitored the lava’s entry into the water 24/7 and tested the water chemistry. 

At first, the researchers hypothesized that lava and volcanic dust were helping microorganisms that need phosphate and iron, both of which are found in lava. 

However, these nutrients were unavailable to microbes, but heated deep water was rising to the surface, bringing with it nitrate concentrations. 

“The expedition in July 2018 provided a unique opportunity to see first-hand how a massive input of external nutrients alters marine ecosystems that are finely attuned to low-nutrient conditions,” said Sam Wilson, a co-lead author of the study. 

The very same interactions observed in this study may have been responsible for past ocean fertilization events linked to the formation of Hawaii’s islands. 

“Ecosystem responses to such a substantial addition of nutrients are rarely observed or sampled in real time,” said Wilson. “UH has a strong tradition of not only volcanic research, but also looking at its impacts on the surrounding environment such as the ocean, groundwater, atmosphere. This latest piece of research improves our understanding of lava-seawater interactions within the much broader context of land-ocean connections.”

The researchers published their findings in the journal<a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aax4767"> Science.</a> 

--

By <a href="mailto:kayvandette@gmail.com">Kay Vandette</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer 

Image Credit: Karin Bjorkman, UH

Why lava from Kilauea helped drive phytoplankton blooms

The 2018 Kilauea Volcano eruption resulted in millions of cubic...

Ancient DNA study spans millions of years of Central and South Asian history. The largest-ever study of ancient human DNA sheds light on the early history and migrations of people in Central and South Asia from the Mesolithic Era to the Iron Age. 

A team of archaeologists, geneticists and anthropologists analyzed and sequenced the genomes of 524 ancient individuals from Central and <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=south+asia&amp;cvid=054854f3d8ff480d9d9ad22327ba1d3a&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">South Asia</a>, increasing the number of total ancient studied and published genomes worldwide by 25 percent. 

The researchers sequenced ancient human genomes, compared the DNA data to other previously sequenced genomes and reviewed key archeological and linguistic records from the region. 

The expansive research was published in two papers in the journals Science and Cell and has helped put several debates about the early origins of language and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/dna-first-farmers-east-africa/">farming</a> to rest. 

“These studies speak to two of the most profound cultural transformations in ancient Eurasia--the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and the spread of Indo-European languages, which are spoken today from the British Isles to South Asia--along with the movement of people,” said Vagheesh Narasimhan, a co-first author of both papers.

One of the biggest takeaways of the study is that it helps confirm the theory that Indo-European languages spread and first arrived in Europe via the Eurasian Steppe. 

More than 400 languages including Hindu, Bengali, Persian, Russian, Spanish, and English are considered Indo-European, and as the largest language family on Earth, it’s long been wondered how the roots of these languages spread. 

It’s long been thought that Indo-European languages either arrived in Europe from herders traveling through the Steppe or by farmers migrating from Anatolia, which is present-day Turkey. 

This recent study helps confirm the Steppe theory because people living in South Asia share little common ancestry with ancient Anatolian farmers. Ancient DNA study spans millions of years of Central and South Asian history

“We can rule out a large-scale spread of farmers with Anatolian roots into South Asia, the centerpiece of the ‘Anatolian hypothesis’ that such movement brought farming and Indo-European languages into the region,” said David Reich, a co-senior author of the papers. “Since no substantial movements of people occurred, this is checkmate for the Anatolian hypothesis.”

The researchers linked present-day speakers of certain branches of Indo-European languages to a subgroup of ancient Steppe pastoralists that spread into Europe 5,000 years ago before returning to Central and South Asia. 

Another important mystery solved by the study is how ancient populations shifted from hunting and gathering to farming. Did settlements switch to farming as populations migrated into new areas or did they copy other communities?

The researchers found that the practice of farming in Iran and Turan coincides with the arrival of Anatolian ancestry. 

“This confirms that the spread of agriculture entailed not only a westward route from Anatolia to Europe but also an eastward route from Anatolia into regions of Asia previously only inhabited by hunter-gatherer groups,” said Ron Pinhasi, a co-senior author of the Science article.

However, the history of farming in Central and South Asia is not clean-cut and the researchers found that by 5,000 years ago, a two-way pattern of ancestry and farming technology split north and south along the “Bronze Age Silk Road.” 

In South Asia, the researchers didn’t find any common ancestry to Anatolian people who helped spread farming west, rather South Asians are related to an Iranian lineage that separated from early farmers and hunters and gathers. 

For South Asia, farming was a practice adopted by local foragers rather than through the spread of farming cultures. 

“The study directly ties present-day South Asians to the ancient peoples of South Asia’s first civilization,” said Narasimhan.

--

By <a href="mailto:kayvandette@gmail.com">Kay Vandette</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer 

Image Credit: Vasant Shinde/Cell

Ancient DNA study spans millions of years of Central and South Asian history

Ancient DNA study spans millions of years of Central and...

New AI software can recognize and track chimpanzees in the wild. Using more than 10 million images from <a href="https://www.pri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/">Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute</a> (PRI), scientists at the <a href="http://www.ox.ac.uk/">University of Oxford</a> have just developed new artificial intelligence software that can recognize and track the faces of chimpanzees in the wild. 

These images from a video archive of wild <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/chimpanzees-hunting-eating-crabs/">chimpanzees</a> in Guinea, West Africa were used to develop what is now the first software to continuously track and recognize individuals in a wide range of poses. The AI is even able to do this in difficult conditions such as low lighting, poor image quality, and motion blur.

“For species like chimpanzees, which have complex social lives and live for many years, getting snapshots of their behavior from short-term field research can only tell us so much,” explains Dan Schofield, a researcher and DPhil student at Oxford University's Primate Models Lab, School of Anthropology. “By harnessing the power of machine learning to unlock large video archives, it makes it feasible to measure behavior over the long term, for example observing how the social interactions of a group change over several generations.”

This new software will help wildlife conservationists save time and resources currently spent analyzing video footage. 

“Our method differs from previous primate face recognition software in that it can be applied to raw video footage with limited manual intervention or pre-processing, saving hours of time and resources,” says Arsha Nagrani, co-author of the study and DPhil student at the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford.

Detailed in a paper published in <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/">Science Advances</a>, this new technology – while it focuses on chimpanzees – can potentially be applied to monitoring other species as well. 

“All our software is available open-source for the research community,” says Nagrani. “We hope that this will help researchers across other parts of the world apply the same cutting-edge techniques to their unique animal data sets.”

As climate change and human interference threaten many species around the world, technology-driven conservation is a much-needed development in the fight to save these ecosystems. 

“With an increasing biodiversity crisis and many of the world’s ecosystems under threat, the ability to closely monitor different species and populations using automated systems will be crucial for conservation efforts, as well as animal behavior research,” says Schofield. “Interdisciplinary collaborations like this have huge potential to make an impact, by finding novel solutions for old problems, and asking biological questions which were previously not feasible on a large scale.”

--

By <a href="mailto:certz@earth.com">Connor Ertz</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Image Credit: Shutterstock/Sergey Uryadnikov

New AI software can recognize and track chimpanzees in the wild

New AI software can recognize and track chimpanzees in the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Nushagak Bay, a large estuary in southwest Alaska. Nushagak runs mainly north to south and exits in Bristol Bay, a large body of water in the Bering Sea.



"The bay is primarily fed by the Nushagak River, which begins in the Alaska Range and flows southwest approximately 450 km. The bay is also fed by several additional rivers including the Wood, Igushik, Snake and Weary rivers," says ESA.



"The dark colors of the Nushagak River are most likely due to tannins or lignins (chemical substances found in plants). Tannins and lignins from roots, leaves, seeds, bark and soil can leach into the water and give it a brown or even black colour. The sediments then flow southwards where it is mixed with the bluer waters of the bay."



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Nushagak Bay in southwest Alaska

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> (ACS) reveals that proteins on flu viruses are actually flexible, tilting and waving in a “breath-like” motion. According to the experts, these proteins could be used to better defend against the flu.



"The main antigenic targets of influenza virus are two surface glycoproteins, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). Whereas the structural and dynamical properties of both glycoproteins have been studied previously, the understanding of their plasticity in the whole-virion context is fragmented," wrote the researchers.



To investigate, the team conducted detailed simulations of the influenza A H1N1 virion, or the swine flu. The experts concluded that the visualizations show many new vulnerable states of flu viruses, which could improve future vaccines and antiviral drugs.



Video/ Image Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Flu viruses are more flexible than expected

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Lake Trasimeno, which is located west of Perugia in central Italy. It is the fourth largest lake in the country. While Trasimeno’s water level varies, it has a maximum depth of approximately six meters.&nbsp;



"In this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, captured on 6 August 2022, the lake’s emerald green colour is likely due to the presence of phytoplankton. Streaks in the water, particularly visible in the west, indicate the presence of soil and sediments which have been stirred up by winds. Dark colored waters in the southern part of the lake indicate a presence of submerged and floating macrophytes (aquatic plants) as well as algae," says ESA.



"Surrounded by hills on three sides, Trasimeno is subject to heavy storms created by winds, especially from the north and west. There are three islets in the lake: Maggiore, Minore and Polvese (the largest). The lake’s shores are sparsely inhabited with only two popular villages: Castiglione del Lago and Passignano sul Trasimeno."



"Italy is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years which has affected drinking water supplies, hydroelectric power and agricultural production. High temperatures, hot winds and lack of rainfall are the main causes of drought in the Umbrian region which saw Lake Trasimeno’s drop 1.3 m, reaching the limit of the hydrometric zero in July 2022."



Video/Image Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Lake Trasimeno in Central Italy

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes a new self-powered nanosensor that can instantly detect mercury contamination with the tap of a finger.&nbsp;



The oxidized form of mercury can be harmful when it is ingested through contaminated water or food. This makes it necessary for experts to develop sensors that can quickly and accurately detect the presence of mercury.&nbsp;



Zong-Hong Lin and colleagues have now created a triboelectric nanosensor (TENS) that can detect mercury by simply by touching a sample. According to the researchers, their TENS could serve as the basis for similar devices to safely and remotely monitor other pollutants.



Video Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Detecting mercury contamination with the tap of a finger

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Kainji Lake, a reservoir on the Niger River.



In 1968, Kainji Lake was created by the construction of the Kainji Dam. The Niger River, the third longest in Africa, enters the lake in the north.&nbsp;



According to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/rivers-in-the-american-west-are-a-lifesaving-resource-for-birds/">ESA</a>, the creation of the lake submerged Foge Island and the town of Bussa and permanently flooded other riverine settlements, leaving around 50,000 people displaced.&nbsp;



Large parts of Foge Island are temporarily exposed during low water tides, and the land is often used by migrating fishermen. Kainji Dam is a dam across the Niger River in Niger State of Central Nigeria. 



Wild mammals occur at relatively low densities due to illegal hunting. Lake Kainji has suffered a dramatic decline as a fishery due to the high numbers of artisanal and subsistence fisherfolk using the lake. It has been suggested that a period of closure, together with controlled fishing rights may help improve fish stocks.



Kainji Lake National Park is the oldest of its kind in Nigeria. The park contains three distinct areas: a part of the Kainji Lake, the Borgu Game Reserve to the west of the lake, and the Zugurma Game Reserve to the southeast. The park is home to around 65 mammal species, 350 bird species, and 30 species of reptiles and amphibians. 



Video/ Image Credit: European Space Agency&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Kainji Lake in north central Nigeria

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.igb.illinois.edu/">Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology</a> reveals how scientists can modify common crops like soybean, rice, and wheat to protect them from heat stress.



“We need to double crop production by 2050 to feed a growing global population, and not only are we not on track to do that, but climate change is further complicating things,” said Amanda Cavanagh, a lecturer at the University of Essex. 



The study is part of Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE), an international research project that aims to develop food crops that turn the sun’s energy into food more efficiently.



“Using an engineering approach we designed multiple alternative metabolic pathways to photorespiration. Testing them in the field showed increases in productivity which led Amanda to significantly move the project forward by showing our engineered plants can withstand pretty extreme temperature stress,” said study co-author and RIPE researcher Paul South.&nbsp;



“As the climate changes and temperature stresses increase the pressure on our global food supply, farmers will need every tool available including engineering approaches like the synthetic biology used here to maintain safe and productive harvests.”



The experts tested plants modified to have more efficient photorespiration to see if they were better adapted to warmer temperatures.&nbsp;



The team found that the engineered plants produced 26 percent more biomass than the wild-type plants exposed to the same temperatures, and had 15 percent less yield loss under the higher temperatures.



Video Credit: Amanda Nguyen/University of Illinois



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Designing crops that can beat the heat

[sendtonews key="QGPzYnXEtN-1712599-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from Carl...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> explores the ability of salt to transform the way that foods and beverages taste. Salt is known to cover up undesirable flavors, such as bitterness in coffee or beer, but how exactly does sodium chloride change the taste of other compounds?



One previous study showed that, not only does salt suppress bitterness, but also enhances sweetness and sourness. Another study revealed that bitterness reduction by salt seems to be happening at the tongue receptor level as well as in the brain.&nbsp;



While it is known that salt taste is mediated by the presence of sodium channels in the form of taste buds, experts believe that there is also an unknown receptor responsible for how we taste salt that has not yet been identified.&nbsp;



Video Credit: ACS Reactions



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

How does salt makes things taste better?

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Santiago, the capital city of Chile. The city is located in the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, which has a population of about eight million people.&nbsp;



'The weather of Santiago resembles the Mediterranean climate with dry and warm summers with temperatures reaching up to 35°C (from October to March) and cool and humid winters that can drop to 0°C (from April to September)."



"The city lies in the centre of the country’s central valley around 80 km from the Pacific Ocean to the west and borders Argentina to the east. A tiny part of Argentina is visible in the top-right corner of the image where the mountain crest of the Andes Mountains acts as a divider between the two countries," says ESA.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Santiago, Chile in South America

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Spiral,Galaxy,,Illustration,Of,Milky,Way

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Astronomers at <a href="https://www.jhu.edu/">Johns Hopkins University</a> have created an interactive map of the universe, including the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies. The map allows the public to access data that was previously only available to scientists.



The map was developed using data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For over two decades, a telescope in New Mexico was aimed at slightly different locations to capture the night sky.&nbsp;



"Growing up I was very inspired by astronomy pictures, stars, nebulae and galaxies, and now it's our time to create a new type of picture to inspire people," said map creator Brice Ménard, a professor at Johns Hopkins. "Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, leading to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries. But nobody took the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to people who are not scientists. Our goal here is to show everybody what the universe really looks like."



"In this map, we are just a speck at the very bottom, just one pixel. And when I say we, I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way which has billions of stars and planets. We are used to seeing astronomical pictures showing one galaxy here, one galaxy there or perhaps a group of galaxies. But what this map shows is a very, very different scale."



"From this speck at the bottom, we are able to map out galaxies across the entire universe, and that says something about the power of science."



The <a href="https://mapoftheuniverse.net/">interactive map</a> is available online, where it can be downloaded for free.



Video Credit: Johns Hopkins&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Interactive map of the universe includes 200,000 galaxies

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes the first comprehensive estimate of carbon density in the Saharan, Sahel, and Sudanian zones of Africa. In an effort to measure the amount of carbon stored across these drylands, a team of scientists used high-resolution satellite images and artificial intelligence to map nearly 10 billion individual trees. 



"The high spatial resolution (50 cm) combined with AI and field measurements used in this study is key to improving tree inventories in drylands," said Pierre Hiernaux, a French researcher working for NASA. "The ever-increasing availability of very high-resolution satellite imagery will make it possible to assess carbon pools and their dynamics at the individual tree level on a global scale."



"This study is exceptional because it is pioneering a type of approach that will revolutionize the monitoring of trees and forests on a global scale: in the short term, it will be possible to map the world's trees from the centre of the Amazon to our schoolyards," said <a href="https://www.inrae.fr/en">INRAE</a> researcher Jean-Pierre Wigneron.



"Many fields of application will become much more efficient and accurate, such as tracking carbon stocks, biodiversity, monitoring logging and protection against illegal forest degradation, in near real time.”



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Remote sensing will revolutionize the way we monitor trees

[sendtonews key="EjmSP20gQK-2593093-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Dublin, the capital and largest city of Ireland. Beyond its pub culture, Dublin is known as a modern culinary destination and a UNESCO City of Literature.



"Dublin is located near the midpoint of Ireland’s east coast in the province of Leinster. The city, which covers an area of around 115 square kilometers, is bordered by the Dublin Mountains, a low mountain range to the south, and is surrounded by flat farmland to the north and west," says ESA.



"The city straddles the River Liffey, which rises in the Wicklow Mountains and flows around 80 kilometers eastwards through the city of Dublin, in which it is canalised and bordered with quays. It then empties into Dublin Bay, an arm of the Irish Sea."



Dublin has an abundance of green spaces, including one of the largest enclosed public parks in any European capital city. Phoenix Park, which was originally formed as a royal hunting park in the 1660s, includes 707 hectares of green space.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The city of Dublin on Ireland's east coast

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain. The image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.



"Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, Zaragoza formed the old kingdom of Aragon. Its capital, also called Zaragoza (not visible in this image) is home to around half of Aragon’s population," says ESA.



"The Ebro River can be seen winding its way through the province from west to east in this image. Between its source in the Cantabrian Mountains in the northwest and its delta on the Mediterranean coast, the Ebro River is fed by more than 200 tributaries as it flows 910 km across much of northern Spain."



Since rainfall is very scarce in this region, irrigation in the Ebro basin is critically important. In the valleys surrounding the Ebro River, many fields are used for growing crops such as corn, wheat, and barley.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> features a visual dataset of.methane emissions from wetlands across the globe. Atmospheric methane levels have reached record highs in recent years, and wetlands are a major source of these emissions.&nbsp;



"Methane is an important greenhouse gas that contributes substantially to global warming. On a molecule by molecule basis, methane is much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, the main driver of warming," says NASA.



"Though human activities, including agriculture, oil and natural gas production and use, and waste disposal, collectively contribute the majority of methane to the atmosphere, about a third of total methane emissions comes from wetlands."&nbsp;



According to NASA, understanding methane emissions from wetlands and other natural sources is critically important for scientists and policymakers who are working to combat climate change by reducing emissions from human activities.



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Wetlands are a major source of methane emissions

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> reveals the evolution of the Columbia Glacier in southeastern Alaska. Columbia is among the fastest shrinking glaciers in the world, and the video documents its rapid retreat over the years.&nbsp;



Columbia Glacier is a large, multi-branched calving glacier that flows out of the Chugach Mountains to the Prince William Sound.&nbsp;



According to USGS, Columbia had a long history of stability prior to 1980, with a length 41 miles, and small, short-lived advances or retreats.



In the years since 1980, however, satellite images have captured Columbia’s alarming retreat. By using false-color images, scientists can distinguish between snow and ice, open water, vegetation, and rocky debris on the glacier’s surface.



The series of false-color images featured in today's video were acquired over the span of 35 years. You can see that by 2021, the glacier’s main branch had retreated about 15 miles from its initial position.



The Columbia Glacier has also lost more than 50 percent of its volume, mostly due to calving. <a href="https://www.earth.com/video/nasa-reveals-3d-visual-of-an-atmospheric-river/">NASA</a> reports that while climate change likely started the retreat, mechanical processes kept the disintegration going.



The NASA images are provided by Jesse Allen, Robert Simmon, Joshua Stevens, and Lauren Dauphin using data from Landsat satellites, from the U.S. Geological Survey, and data from MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite. The structure of Columbia’s moraine played a large role in the stability of the glacier before 1980. 



Like other tidewater glaciers, the Columbia built up a moraine over time, and the mixture of ice and rock functioned like a dam keeping out the sea. It was supported on one end by the shoreline and by the underwater terminal moraine at the other.



Video Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/&nbsp; NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the Pyrenees Mountains, which form a natural boundary between France and Spain in southwest Europe.



The mountain range is 430 kilometers in length. It stretches from the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Atlantic Ocean on the west.



At an elevation of 3404 meters, Pico de Aneto is the highest mountain peak in the Pyrenees, and the third-highest peak in Spain. Pico de Aneto is located in the Posets-Maladeta Natural Park, which spans more than 82,000 acres.&nbsp;



"Geological studies have revealed that the Pyrenees Mountains have been around for longer than the Alps, with their sediments first deposited in coastal basins during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras," reports ESA.



"The entire mountain range formed due to the upwelling of large sedimentary rocks by the collision of the Iberian and the Eurasian plate around 100 to 150 million years ago, followed by intense erosion from ice and water."



The western Pyrenees receive more precipitation due to moisture blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. The mountain range contains many lakes, several small glaciers, and some of the highest waterfalls in Europe.



Video &amp; Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The Pyrenees Mountains in southwest Europe

[sendtonews key="6HyfrAJTBI-1831843-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.stowers.org/">Stowers Institute for Medical Research</a> describes why experts are studying zebrafish to gain a better understanding of how the immune system responds to injury. Zebrafish have the ability to repair and regenerate organs.



“Organ regeneration offers an exciting opportunity for studying the immune system and to inquire why some species can regenerate organs like the heart or missing limbs while others like humans cannot,” explained Dr. Tatjana Piotrowski.



Zebrafish sensory organ hair cells are an ideal system to investigate the pathways and cell types involved in regeneration since they are easily destroyed with antibiotics and begin regenerating within five hours. This enabled the researchers to identify the exact timing and genetic programs for each anti-inflammatory macrophage activation state.&nbsp;



“Our hypothesis is that human macrophages do not receive the proper chemical activation 'cocktail' to instruct pro-regenerative processes,” said Dr. Nicolas Denans. “Identifying the molecular recipe of macrophage activation in zebrafish may one day enable us to design regenerative immunotherapies in humans.”&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The new evidence is a valuable resource for comparative studies on the genetic programs involved in macrophage-mediated repair and regeneration. In other words, different types of injuries may induce different kinds of inflammatory responses. We want to decipher whether this 'language' is universal or if there are a variety of dialects."



Video Credit: Stowers Institute for Medical Research&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

How the immune system responds to injury

[sendtonews key="0dEcERCq61-2283382-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from Stowers...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes how record-breaking heat expressed itself around the world in 2022.



Scientists have determined that 2022 was the 5th warmest year since 1880. Furthermore, the last nine consecutive years have been the warmest on record.



From devastating floods and wildfires to natural disasters like Hurricane Ian, 2022 showed us yet again how a warming climate affects people across the globe.&nbsp;



"As we look back at 20:22 and years past, we see that each year we better understand the challenges we face and how important it is to meet them," says NASA.



Video/ Image Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

2022 illustrated the consequences of a warming climate

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes two exoplanets that are orbiting a star 218 light-years away. A team of researchers led by the University of Montreal has found evidence that these planets are "water worlds."



The experts used data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. They discovered that exoplanets Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 could be composed largely of water.



"We previously thought that planets that were a bit larger than Earth were big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-up versions of Earth, and that's why we called them super-Earths," explained study co-author Björn Benneke.&nbsp;



"However, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138 c and d, are quite different in nature and that a big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water. It is the best evidence yet for water worlds, a type of planet that was theorized by astronomers to exist for a long time."



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and Leah Hustak (STScI)



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Two distant planets may be "water worlds"

[sendtonews key="QIoVYJqRBi-2434608-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes Earth’s interconnected systems, and how this network is affected by rising temperatures.&nbsp;



During 2020, average global temperatures matched the hottest year on record. The hurricane season was also record-breaking, with many of the storms intensifying at extraordinary speeds. Hot water in the ocean is fuel for hurricanes. The satellite data shows that it's all one interconnected system showing how Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected.



According to NASA, dust swept up from Northern Africa plays a major role in the formation of hurricanes, and is also a key source of fertilization in the Amazon rainforest. As a result of<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/seagrass-wasting-disease-is-fueled-by-climate-change/"> climate</a> change, dust plumes are expected to decline, which will have an effect on vegetation far away.&nbsp;



Images from Earth-observing satellites show how the world’s plant life is affected by natural disasters, fires, and deforestation. Satellites also reveal how widespread changes in vegetation impact waterways,&nbsp; the climate, air quality. Satellites communicate by using radio waves to send signals to the antennas on the Earth. "Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. 



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected

[sendtonews key="JbW4VsY53O-1632195-12187" type="single"] Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected...

Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://welcome.miami.edu/">University of Miami</a> Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science explores how changes in water temperatures have affected tiger shark habitats and movements in the North Atlantic Ocean. The study reveals that rising temperatures have caused the sharks to shift toward the poles over the past 40 years.



“Tiger shark annual migrations have expanded poleward, paralleling rising water temperatures,” explained study lead author Neil Hammerschlag. “These results have consequences for tiger shark conservation, since shifts in their movements outside of marine protected areas may leave them more vulnerable to commercial fishing.”



The researchers analyzed nine years of tracking data from satellite-tagged tiger sharks, combined with four decades of conventional tag and recapture data provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Cooperative Shark Tagging Program.



The experts found that during the last decade of record heat, for every one-degree Celsius increase in water temperatures, tiger sharks migrated further poleward by over 400 kilometers. They also migrated two weeks earlier than usual to waters off the northeastern coast of the United States.



“Given their role as apex predators, these changes to tiger shark movements may alter predator-prey interactions, leading to ecological imbalances, and more frequent encounters with humans,” concluded Professor Hammerschlag.



Video Credit: University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Tiger sharks are shifting poleward as temperatures rise

Today’s Video of the Day from the University of Miami...