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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 23, 2024 at 9:57am

Biologists discover male elephants use infrasonic rumbles to signal 'let's go'

Bull elephants gather in the evening coolness to drink. After a spell, a senior male lifts his head and turns from the waterhole. With ears flapping gently, he lets out a deep, resonant rumble.

One by one, the others respond, their voices overlapping in a sonorous, infrasonic chorus that whispers across the savanna. This elephant barbershop quartet conveys a clear message: It's time to move on.

Gradually, the elephants shift, their massive bodies swaying as they follow their rumbling leader to the next stop on their nocturnal wanderings.

For the first time, scientists  have documented male elephants using "let's go" rumbles to signal the start of group departures from the Mushara waterhole in Etosha National Park, Namibia. The vocalizations are initiated by the most socially integrated, and often the most dominant, males in close-knit social groups.

The findings, detailed in the open-access journal PeerJ, are surprising because this behavior was previously thought to be exclusive to female elephants in family groups.

Male elephants, typically considered to have loose social ties, engaging in such sophisticated vocal coordination to trigger action is surprising. 

The "let's go" rumbles observed in male elephants bear striking similarities to those previously recorded in female elephants. The researchers hypothesized that male elephants likely learn the behaviour when they are young.

In the case of both male and female elephants, the initiator's call is followed by the next individual's rumble, with each elephant waiting for the preceding call to nearly finish before adding their own voice. This creates a harmonious, turn-taking pattern akin to a barbershop quartet.

It's very synchronized and ritualized. When one goes high, the other goes low, and they have this vocal space where they're coordinating.

PeerJ (2024). doi.org/10.7717/peerj.17767

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 22, 2024 at 10:36am

A second study by researchers also found evidence of long-lasting ovary proteins in young mice, including proteins that were present before the mice were born. Certain long-lasting proteins, such as ZP3, were identified for future studies.

Some of these hardy proteins were present in the cell mitochondria, where a cell's energy is generated. Since mitochondria are inherited as part of the egg cell a mammal grows from, it could ensure these critical organelles can remain functional as they're passed from mother to offspring.

Eventually, even these proteins that live way beyond the norm fade away and die, the researchers report. That could be connected to the natural decline in a woman's ability to have children, the study suggests – and could ultimately point to ways to treat or at least better diagnose infertility.

The findings from these studies of mice still need to be replicated in humans, but if they are, it would represent a significant step forward in our understanding of fertility and how oocytes can be kept in a healthy state.

https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/93172

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41556-024-01442-7

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 22, 2024 at 10:34am

Ovarian Egg Cells Live an Unusually Long Time, And We Finally Know Why

Mammals are born with all the oocytes (or egg cells) they'll ever need, but how the cells remain alive and active for so long is something of a mystery. A pair of studies have now revealed it could all come down to the robustness of their proteins. The two investigations used traceable isotopes incorporated into growing mouse fetuses to measure the lifespans of proteins in their ovaries, finding many of them survived far longer than proteins in the rest of the body. The presence of these 'long life' molecules and the support they give oocytes and the surrounding cells seem to be crucial in maintaining fertility.
the first study analyzed oocytes in 8-week-old mice, when the animals were at their reproductive prime. Around 10 percent of the oocyte proteins produced while the animals were in utero were still present.

The researchers then looked at older mice to see how long it took for these persistent proteins to break down. The answer: not very quickly at all, relatively speaking. Some of the proteins remained in the ovaries of the mice for most of the animals' short lives.
The data establishes that many proteins in oocytes and the ovary are unusually stable, with half-lives well above those reported in other cell types and organs, including the liver, heart, cartilage, muscle and the brain.
The half-lives of many proteins are much higher in the ovary than in other organs, and many additional proteins are uniquely long-lived in the ovary.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 22, 2024 at 9:30am

NASA's Curiosity rover discovers yellow sulfur crystals in a Martian rock

On May 30th when a rock that NASA's Curiosity Mars rover drove over cracked open to reveal something never seen before on the Red Planet: yellow sulfur crystals.

Since October 2023, the rover has been exploring a region of Mars rich with sulfates, a kind of salt that contains sulfur and forms as water evaporates. But where past detections have been of sulfur-based minerals—in other words, a mix of sulfur and other materials—the rock Curiosity recently cracked open is made of elemental (pure) sulfur. It isn't clear what relationship, if any, the elemental sulfur has to other sulfur-based minerals in the area.

While people associate sulfur with the odor from rotten eggs (the result of hydrogen sulfide gas), elemental sulfur is odorless. It forms in only a narrow range of conditions that scientists haven't associated with the history of this location. And Curiosity found a lot of it—an entire field of bright rocks that look similar to the one the rover crushed.

It's one of several discoveries Curiosity has made while off-roading within Gediz Vallis channel, a groove that winds down part of the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) Mount Sharp, the base of which the rover has been ascending since 2014. Each layer of the mountain represents a different period of Martian history. Curiosity's mission is to study where and when the planet's ancient terrain could have provided the nutrients needed for microbial life, if any ever formed on Mars.

Source: NASA

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 21, 2024 at 12:21pm

The Rarest Eye Colors in the World - Eye Colors Explained

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 21, 2024 at 12:17pm

Fire on Earth vs. in space - Gravity has more of an impact than you might think!

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 21, 2024 at 12:12pm

Comparing individual patient blood samples to their biopsies, the team identified 158 genes that were differentially expressed across all four organs during cases of rejection. That's nearly 20 times higher than what was expected by chance.

This discovery is pivotal as it allows us to develop strategies to enhance the success rates of all transplants.
Some of these shared biomarkers are involved in the secretion of proteins that stimulate white blood cells, enzymes that induce cell death, receptors on cells that allow materials in and out, and bone marrow cells involved in the immune response.
These findings demonstrate a "unifying pan-organ molecular marker".
The research team has made an interactive website that allows scientists around the world to compare possible biomarkers of transplant rejection against other methods, providing a much-needed standardized evaluation. This atlas has led to the development of a proof of principle for a universal blood test that can predict the likelihood of transplant rejection before it occurs.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03030-6

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 21, 2024 at 12:09pm

Breakthrough Test Predicts Whether Organ Transplants Will Be Rejected

Scientists have figured out a non-invasive way to determine if a transplanted organ is failing to take in a patient – no matter if it's a kidney, liver, lung, or heart.

It's the first time that biomarkers of dysfunction have matched across multiple types of transplanted organs, and it hints at the possibility of a blood test that can diagnose early rejection in all transplant scenarios – a tool that doesn't yet exist.

If more research is done, the newly identified biomarkers could even be used to differentiate between various types of organ rejection, including immune issues, inadequate blood supply, or maladaptive repairs.

The survival of a transplant differs between organs, with a long-term success rate of 59 percent for the lungs, 80 percent for the liver, 82 percent for the kidney, and 73 percent for the heart. Rejection can occur at any time after the surgery, even years later, creating a lifelong threat for patients.

Usually, doctors suspect transplant rejection when there are signs that the organ in question is not working at full capacity. But sometimes, patients might not experience any symptoms before failure occurs, and an invasive biopsy is the only way to tell for sure what is going on.

In recent years, several studies have investigated whether there are signs of organ rejection flowing through a patient's blood or urine that can be accessed more easily than via surgery. But potential biomarkers that have been identified are not yet in clinical practice, and they aren't predictive of all organ rejections, usually just one type.

The current study is a meta-analysis that seeks to bridge that gap. Its authors, led by statistician Harry Robertson from the University of Sydney, have analyzed 54 datasets, including 40 kidney, 5 lung, 5 liver, and 4 heart transplant studies.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 21, 2024 at 12:01pm

 Eyelash Extension Dangers

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 20, 2024 at 11:43am

In the worst cases, the oxygen becomes so depleted that the microbes suffocate and die, often taking larger species with them. Populations of microbe that don't rely on oxygen then feed on the bounty of dead organic material, growing to a density that reduces light and limits photosynthesis to trap the entire water body in a vicious, suffocating cycle called eutrophication.
Aquatic deoxygenation is also driven by an increase in the density difference between layers in the water column. This increase can be attributed to surface waters warming faster than deeper waters and melting ice decreasing surface salinity in the oceans.

The more distinctly defined those layers are, the less movement there is between those layers of the water column, which the vertical strata of underwater life relies upon. These density fluctuations power the movement of oxygenated surface water into the deep, and without this temperature-powered freight, ventilation in the lower depths of aquatic environments grinds to a halt.

All this has wrought havoc on aquatic ecosystems, many of which our own species rely on for our own food, water, incomes, and wellbeing.

The paper's authors call for a concerted, global effort to monitor and research deoxygenation of the 'blue' parts of our planet, along with policy efforts to prevent rapid deoxygenation and the associated challenges we are already beginning to face.

"Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient runoff and organic carbon inputs (for example, raw sewage loading) would slow or potentially reverse deoxygenation," they write.

"The expansion of the planetary boundaries framework to include deoxygenation as a boundary [will help] to focus those efforts."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02448-y?utm_medium=affil...

Part 2

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