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The Daily Drift

Welcome to today's issue of Carolina Naturally

'Nuff Said!

Today is February 1, 2023

Today is: International Face and Body Art Day

On This Day In History

In 1968CE: 

Saigon police chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executes Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém with a pistol shot to head. The execution is captured by photographer Eddie Adams and becomes an anti-war icon.

Ain't That The Truth

Oh, and while you're at it - check out our sister blog Come What May for off the cuff and off the wall seriousness. Heck, who are we kidding, it's just fun and hilarity.

Editorial Comment

Wow, February already?!

First day of a new month and the first day off and sunshine of the normal variety instead of the liquid kind - we are beside ourselves with glee.

We do want to give a shout out to our readers in Bulgaria and Germany and say thanks for stopping by to read Carolina Naturally.

Remember to have fun and enjoy life.

Editorial Staff

A Sticky Legal Case of Murder on Ice

An island named T-3, informally called called Fletcher's Ice Island, is an anomaly because it was never an island at all. It was an iceberg that had calved off an Arctic glacier in the 1950s. Since it was so big -11 kilometers long and five kilometers wide- the US Air Force put an airstrip and a research station on it. The station was manned by mostly civilian contractors, who lived in trailers and huts and whiled away the long Arctic winters by drinking and fighting. It was in this strange environment that Mario Escamilla shot station director Bennie Lightsy under stressful circumstances in 1970. Was it murder or manslaughter or an accident? Before that could be determined, the question of jurisdiction had to be settled.
The research station on T-3 was run by the Air Force, but the men involved were civilians. The place where it happened wasn't claimed by any nation, because it wasn't land. The Arctic Ocean isn't the property of any country. Canada didn't want the case. Escamilla was seized by going through the US airbase at Thule, in Greenland, which is owned by Denmark, who didn't want the case either. Would maritime laws apply? T-3 wasn't an island, but it wasn't a ship, either. 

Read about the many problems of jurisdiction for this case, and how it was eventually resolved, at Today I Found Out. 

Thousands of fake nursing diplomas in Florida

Twenty-five people have been charged in a Florida wire fraud scheme that created thousands of illegal licenses and employment shortcuts for aspiring nurses, according to the U.S. Department of Justice... 

“The bogus diplomas and transcripts qualified purchasers to sit for the national nursing board exam and, after passing it, to obtain licenses and jobs in various states as RNs and LPN/VNs,” USDOJ reported. 

“The overall scheme involved the distribution of more than 7,600 fake nursing diplomas issued by three South Florida-based nursing schools: Siena College in Broward County, Fla., Palm Beach School of Nursing in Palm Beach County, Fla., and Sacred Heart International Institute in Broward County.”  

Federal agents reported that the schools are now closed, with each defendant facing up to 20 years in prison. 

The USDOJ said that this type of crime “unfortunately continue[s] to spring up, especially” in South Florida... 

“What is disturbing about this investigation is that there are over 7,600 people around the country with fraudulent nursing credentials who are potentially in critical health care roles treating patients. Were it not for the diligence and hard work of the investigators on this case, the extent of this fraud may not have been discovered, “Yarbrough added. 

I hope they punish these people to the max. More information at The Hill.

A Brief History of Fettuccine Alfredo

Is there anyone who doesn't like fettuccine Alfredo? You may look at it as a fancy Italian version of macaroni and cheese, but it sure is tasty. Like spaghetti and meatballs, or carbonara, it's a dish better known in the US than in Italy. But is certainly originated in Italy, made by chef Alfredo di Lelio in 1908 for his wife. It was a simple combination of handmade fettuccine pasta, butter, and Parmesan cheese.
What made fettuccine Alfredo the popular dish it is today (in America) is the way Alfredo presented it at his restaurant in Rome. He would personally mix the cheese with the buttered pasta at the table until it was silky smooth, and foreign visitors would go home and rave about it. Since 1933, the dish has appeared in more than 800 American cookbooks. Yet it's still not all that well known in Italy. Italian food historian Luca Cesari explains how and why Alfredo developed his recipe and how it became a sensation everywhere except his native land, at Literary Hub.

Culinary Delites

I Am Begging You to Dip a Clementine in Cinnamon Sugar

The Best Cheeses for Your Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Marinate Your Chicken in Feta Cheese and Capers

9 Ways to Have Fun With Olives and Capers

Give Yourself A Hug ...

... because if you don't no one else will!

Valentine's Day Bouquets

Roses have always been expensive on Valentine's Day, even before we lived in the Age of Inflation. But thankfully, there are some creative alternatives to giving your lovey a bouquet of flowers. So, forget roses! Here are 9 unusual Valentine's Day Bouquets (which include the pizza bouquet shown) 

'Love hormone'?

The "love hormone" oxytocin has long been thought key to behaviors including pairing up with a partner and nurturing offspring, but a new study in prairie voles is raising doubts.
The research found that voles bred to lack functioning receptors for oxytocin were still able to form strong pairs, produce young and nurse -- all behaviors previously believed to depend on the hormone.
'Love hormone'? Not so fast, new study suggests.

Bare Skin On Bear Skin

Do You Have An Inner Monologue?

It's Rarer Than You Think
Have you ever thought about how you, well, think? It sounds confusing as a concept, but ponder it for a moment. When you move about the world every day, how do you process all that's happening around you? Do you repeat words, see images, interpret senses? Once you get past the self-aware circular thinking of it all, figuring out how it is you take in the endless amounts of information we receive can be rather interesting.
It can also lead to fascinating research, like that being done into the concept of an 'inner monologue'. 
Do You Have An Inner Monologue? It's Rarer Than You Think

Lifelong Marriage Lowers Risk Of Dementia

If you are married continuously for many years in mid-life, you have a lower risk of developing dementia in old age. This has been confirmed by a recently published study based on data from HUNT Study health surveys in Nord-Trøndelag.
“Being married can have an influence on risk factors for dementia,” says Vegard Skirbekk at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH/FHI).
The researchers looked at different types of marital status in people over a period of 24 years – from the age of 44 until 68 – and investigated whether this status was related to a clinical diagnosis of dementia or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) after the age of 70.
The results show that the group that was continuously married throughout the period had the lowest incidence of dementia.
The highest incidence was found in divorced and single people.
Children reduce risk
Asta Håberg is a doctor at St. Olav’s Hospital and a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), as well as a researcher at NIPH/FHI. She says the results of the survey contained surprises.
“Exactly what causes dementia is a mystery. This survey indicates that being married and a lower risk of dementia are linked, but we don’t know why,” says Håberg.
“One theory has been that people who are married live healthier lives, and that this explains differences in the risk of various diseases. In this survey, we found no support for health differences between married and unmarried people that would explain the difference in dementia risk.”
In the HUNT survey, approximately 150 000 people living in the former country of Nord-Trøndelag have given consent for their health information to be made available for research. The researchers used this data to check the incidence of dementia against health factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, physical inactivity, diabetes, psychological problems and having close friends.
“We thought that these factors would mean something, but they didn’t explain anything,” says Håberg.
However, the researchers found that having children had significance and reduced the risk of dementia by 60 per cent among the unmarried people in the study.
“Some people have theorized that if you have children, you stay more cognitively engaged. For example, you have to deal with people and participate in activities that you wouldn’t otherwise have to. This stimulates your brain so that it possibly works better. That way you build up a kind of cognitive reserve,” says Håberg.
Still a lot of unused data
This “reserve” in the brain is not structural. It doesn’t show up on an MRI scan or by opening the brain and looking inside. It is part of the “mystery of dementia”. But Håberg hopes to be able to uncover some of the mystery through this study.
“We don’t know whether it’s being married or having children that protects against dementia, or if it’s a case of pre-selection, for example. This would mean that people who have a lower probability of developing dementia also have a higher probability of finding a partner and having children. But the fact that we have the HUNT Study means that we have a lot of data available that we haven’t yet used to investigate this further,” Håberg says.
As a doctor, she is not convinced that dementia is an inevitable consequence of aging.
“It’s common to think that ‘if you live long enough, sooner or later you’ll develop dementia’. I’m not so sure I agree with that, given this theory that we may have cognitive reserves,” she said. “It could be that certain conditions might help to build up such reserves, which means that you start with more connections in the brain. For example, we’ve observed that education is a factor, and that the more education you have, the better the “reserves” that you build up.”
And yet, when a highly educated person gets Alzheimer’s, the disease progresses just as quickly as for anyone else. The reserves thus have a delaying effect – but only until the disease strikes.
Make it easier to have children
The study results are part of the research project REFAWOR (Cognitive reserve work and family) funded by the NIH in the USA, which is part of the program “Changing lives, changing brains” under the auspices of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
REFAWOR has a budget of almost three million euros and aims to study how changes in living and working conditions affect the risk of Alzheimer’s, dementia and cognitive impairment in older people. These diseases are expected to triple by 2050.
The researchers are now taking a closer look at the significance of having children for dementia risk, the types of work people have and how retirement age can affect the risk.
Dementia is a collective term for various diseases and injuries in the brain. Memory weakens, and the ability to think logically is affected. Eventually it becomes difficult to manage on your own and carry out everyday activities. No medical treatment for dementia is currently available.
“We’ve dreamt of finding a medicine for dementia for a long time, but we haven’t yet succeeded. So, we’re looking at social determinants. What can society do to reduce the risk? The state could facilitate having children, for example,” says Håberg.
Genes can make us more susceptible
One of the next steps is to look at genetic connections, says Skirbekk.
“We know that certain genes increase the risk of dementia, but people with these genes can still live to be 90 years old without experiencing cognitive problems,” he says.
“You could say that the increased risk inherent in the genes can be regarded as a vulnerability, where having a stable family life might possibly reduce this vulnerability.
He emphasizes that this study says nothing about the biological mechanisms behind dementia.
“But it shows that being married can have an influence on risk factors. You become more cognitively active, you cope better with adversity and are less subject to stress. The partner represents a security that provides a buffer.”
The study does not consider whether any difference exists between being an unmarried versus a married couple. Less than one per cent of unmarried people in the survey were cohabiting with a partner.
“There are very few cohabitants in this age group in HUNT,” says Håberg.
Vegard Skirbekk, Catharine E. Bowen, Asta Håberg, Steinar Krogstad et al: Marital Histories and Associations With Later-Life Dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment Risk in the HUNT4 70+ Study in Norway, Journal of Aging and Health.
https://doi.org/10.1177/08982643221131

And Ricki Played Guitar ...

Ancient Humans Had Same Sense Of Smell, But Different Sensitivities

If you had the grooming habits of a Neanderthal, perhaps it’s a good thing your nose wasn’t as sensitive to urine and sweat as a modern human’s.
And if you lived the hunting and gathering lifestyle of a Denisovan on the Asian steppes, your strong nose for energy-rich honey was almost certainly an advantage.
Though we can’t really know what these two extinct human species perceived or preferred to eat, a new study from Duke University scientists has figured out a bit more about what they might have been able to smell.
Using a technique they developed that allows researchers to test smell sensitivity on odor receptors grown in a lab dish, researchers Claire de March of CNRS Paris Saclay University and Hiroaki Matsunami of Duke University were able to compare the scents-abilities of three kinds of humans. Their work appeared Dec. 28 in the open access journal iScience.
Drawing from published databases of genomes, including ancient DNA collections amassed by 2022 Nobel Prize winner Svante Pääbo, the researchers were able to characterize the receptors of each of the three human species by looking at the relevant genes.
“It is very difficult to predict a behavior just from the genomic sequence,” said de March, who performed this work as a postdoctoral research associate at Duke. “We had the odorant receptor genomes from Neanderthal and Denisovan individuals and we could compare them with today’s humans and determine if they resulted in a different protein.”
So then they tested the responses of 30 lab-grown olfactory receptors from each hominin against a battery of smells to measure how sensitive each kind of receptor was to a particular fragrance.
The laboratory tests showed the modern and ancient human receptors were essentially detecting the same odors, but their sensitivities differed.
The Denisovans, who lived 30,000 to 50,000 years ago, were shown to be less sensitive to the odors that present-day humans perceive as floral, but four times better at sensing sulfur and three times better at balsamic. And they were very attuned to honey.
“We don’t know what Denisovans ate, but there some reasons why this receptor has to be sensitive,” said Matsunami, who is a professor of molecular genetics and microbiology in the Duke School of Medicine. Contemporary hunter-gatherers such as the Hadza of Tanzania are famous for their love of honey, an essential high-calorie fuel.
Neanderthals, who were still around up to 40,000 years ago and who apparently swapped a few genes with modern humans, were three times less responsive to green, floral and spicy scents, using pretty much the same receptors we have today. “They may exhibit different sensitivity, but the selectivity remains the same,” Matsunami said.
“The Neanderthal odorant receptors are mostly the same as contemporary humans, and the few that were different were no more responsive,” de March added.
Odor receptors have been linked to ecological and dietary needs in many species and presumably evolve as a species changes ranges and diets.
“Each species must evolve olfactory receptors to maximize their fitness for finding food,” Matsunami said. “In humans, it’s more complicated because we eat a lot of things. We’re not really specialized.”
The lab has also used their cell-based scent tester for seeing genetic variation among modern humans. “Some people can smell certain chemicals, but others can’t,” Matsunami said. “That can be explained by functional changes.”
“Genetic and Functional Odorant Receptor Variation in the Homo Lineage,” Claire A. De March, Hiroaki Matsunami, Masashi Abe, Matthew Cobb, Kara C. Hoover. iScience, Dec. 28, 2022, DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105908

Archaeological Briefs

Egyptian archaeologists said Tuesday they had discovered an 1,800-year-old "complete residential city from the Roman-era" in the heart of the southern city of Luxor.
Egypt archaeologists uncover 'complete' Roman city

An ancient moat surrounding the Old City of Jerusalem was recently uncovered by archaeological experts from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The discovery was made as a contracting company prepared for planned infrastructure work in the capital.

Archaeologists stunned at ancient moat, handprints found in Jerusalem

Purple Daze

 

What Do You See in This Picture?

This is a photograph of a rock formation in the Hingol National Park in Pakistan. What does it look like to you? Take a minute and decide. Now, when you learn that this is sometimes called the Balochistan Sphinx, you will see its resemblance to the Great Sphinx of Giza. It has the face of a man, the body of lion with paws and everything, and a Nemes headdress worn by Egyptian pharaohs. This rock stands atop another formation that appears to have the columns of a Hindu temple. Who carved this?
Mother Nature carved it. There have been some articles and videos proposing a theory about an ancient civilization that for some reason carved a giant Egyptian sculpture and a Hindu temple in Pakistan so very long ago that it has been worn down by erosion. But that theory doesn't stand up at all, especially when you see the formation from different angles. This is an example of pareidolia, the tendency to see familiar shapes, particularly faces, in random objects. Read about the Balochistan Sphinx at Historic Mysteries.  -

There's a 'Lost City' Deep in The Ocean

Close to the summit of an underwater mountain west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a jagged landscape of towers rises from the gloom.
Their creamy carbonate walls and columns appear ghostly blue in the light of a remotely operated vehicle sent to explore.
They range in height from tiny stacks the size of toadstools to a grand monolith standing 60 meters (nearly 200 feet) tall. This is the Lost City.
There's a 'Lost City' Deep in The Ocean, And It's Unlike Anything We've Ever Seen

Volcano Red

Scientists Actually Did It: They Built a Real Working Tractor Beam

• Scientists built a working tractor beam—the first example of one that pulls objects visible to the naked eye.

• The tests were in highly controlled laboratory experiments.

• A tractor beam like this one could manipulate vehicles and aircraft on Mars.

Tractor beams have long been a staple of sci-fi, but you might not know that they’ve also existed in the real world for some time, albeit at a very small scale. Microscopic tractor beams, better known as optical tweezers, can pull atoms and nanoparticles for use in medicine and research. But we’ve never actually been able to see this happen.
Now we can.
In a new study published in the journal Optic Express, Chinese scientists created the first tractor beam strong enough to manipulate macroscopic objects. That means you can watch the thing work with the naked eye.
Sure, the initial experiment was done in a highly controlled lab, manipulating a specific type of Graphene composite and under a rarefied gaseous environment with a lower pressure than Earth’s atmosphere. But come on! They used a friggin’ laser to move an object!
Scientists Actually Did It: They Built a Real Working Tractor Beam

Two Spinning Tales and Time

Earth’s inner core stopped spinning. But don’t fret, it appears this happens from time to time, say every seven decades or so.
A new study published in Nature Geoscience by geophysicists Yi Yang and Xiadong Song of Peking University in Beijing explored the nature of movement of Earth’s inner core, largely made up of iron and molten liquids. They found the inner core’s movement recently reduced enough they consider it “paused,” all part of what “seems to be associated with a gradual turning back of the inner core as a part of an approximately seven-decade oscillation.”
The last turning point was in the early 1970s.
Uh, Earth’s Inner Core Just Stopped Spinning 

It may seem fantastical to say there is a planet within Earth, but conceptually it is true. Ever since the 1990s, geophysicists have known that Earth's inner core— a ball of iron with a radius of 746 miles (more than two-thirds the size of the moon) — spins in the center of our planet at a different pace than the rest of the globe. In a sense, this separation makes the inner core a bit like a planet of its own.
Earth's inner core is slowing down — and the length of a day may change as a result

Zookeepers Caught This Gorilla Carrying Around a Secret Object

If you have ever met or taken care of a giant gorilla, you know that most of them are friendly and gentle giants. They are fun animals to be around. Bobo, the 27-year-old gorilla, was one of the friendliest gorillas in his sanctuary. He used to play with his caretakers and show off by making funny faces. However, this all started changing after Bobo began to hide a secret item in his hands.
Worried caretakers at the Mefou Primate Sanctuary realized that Bobo’s behavior was not normal, and they were concerned about his sudden shift. They observed him carefully in an effort to find out whether there was something wrong with him or not. Bobo’s caretakers had no idea he was about to give them quite a surprise! Read on to find out what happened.
Zookeepers Caught This Gorilla Carrying Around a Secret Object

Fossils Show Near-Primates Were Cool With Colder Climate

Two sister species of near primate, called “primatomorphans,” dating back about 52 million years have been identified by researchers at the University of Kansas as the oldest to have dwelled north of the Arctic Circle. The findings appear in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE.
According to lead author Kristen Miller, doctoral student with KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, both species — Ignacius mckennai and I. dawsonae — descended from a common northbound ancestor who possessed a spirit “to boldly go where no primate has gone before.”
The specimens were discovered on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada, in layers of sediment linked with the early Eocene, an epoch of warmer temperatures that could foretell how ecosystems will fare in coming years due to human-driven climate change.
“No primate relative has ever been found at such extreme latitudes,” Miller said. “They’re more usually found around the equator in tropical regions. I was able to do a phylogenetic analysis, which helped me understand how the fossils from Ellesmere Island are related to species found in midlatitudes of North America — places like New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. Even down in Texas we have some fossils that belong to this family as well.”
The Arctic Circle was much warmer when these close evolutionary cousins of primates lived — a boreal ecosystem that hosted a plethora of early Cenozoic vertebrates, including ancient crocodiles — but like today was still mostly dark for half of the year. This darkness, according to Miller, may have triggered both species to evolve more robust teeth and jaws compared with other primate relatives of the time.
“A lot of what we do in paleontology is look at teeth — they preserve the best,” said Miller, who analyzed high-resolution microtomography of the fossil teeth described in the paper. “Their teeth are just super weird compared to their closest relatives. So, what I’ve been doing the past couple of years is trying to understand what they were eating, and if they were eating different materials than their middle-latitude counterparts.”
Miller and her co-authors believe food was much tougher to find during dim winter months when the Artic primate relatives likely were forced to consume harder material.
“That, we think, is probably the biggest physical challenge of the ancient environment for these animals,” said corresponding author Chris Beard, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Biodiversity Institute and Foundation Distinguished Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary biology at KU. “How do you make it through six months of winter darkness, even if it’s reasonably warm? The teeth and even the jaw muscles of these animals changed compared to their close relatives from midlatitudes. To survive those long Arctic winters, when preferred foods like fruits were not available, they had to rely on ‘fallback foods’ like nuts and seeds.”
Miller and Beard’s other co-author is Kristen Tietjen, a scientific illustrator at the Biodiversity Institute.
Additionally, the researchers found both species were slightly larger than their closest relatives farther to the south — a group of primate cousins dubbed “plesiadapiforms.”
“But they’re still pretty small,” Miller said. “Some plesiadapiforms from the midlatitudes of North America are really, really tiny. Of course, none of these species are related to squirrels, but I think that’s the closest critter that we have that helps us visualize what they might have been like. They were most likely very arboreal — so, living in the trees most of the time.”
The researchers think adaptations displayed by both Arctic species during a time of global warming show how some animals likely could evolve new traits in response to climate change driven by human activity today.
“It does show how something like a primate or a primate relative that’s specialized to one environment can change based off of climate change,” Miller said. “I think probably what it says is primates’ range could expand with climate change or move at least towards the poles rather than the equator. Life starts to get too hot there, perhaps we’ll have a lot of taxa moving north and south, rather than the intense biodiversity we see at the equator today.”
Because both fossil species are new to science, the investigators bestowed them with scientific names honoring a pair of paleontologists who worked on Ellesmere Island decades ago. One of these namesake paleontologists was a KU alumna and pioneer for women in the field of paleontology.
“Mary Dawson was an amazing person,” Beard said. “She earned her doctorate at KU back in the ’50s and was among the first, if not the first, American women to get a Ph.D. in paleontology — and one of the first women to make a name for herself as a paleontologist in the United States. I worked closely with Mary for more than 20 years in my former career at the Carnegie Museum, where she spent her whole career. Mary was the leader of a big project on Ellesmere Island. Of course, we were going to name one of the species after her. The other species is named after Malcolm McKenna, a contemporary, close friend and colleague of Mary Dawson and a former mentor of mine.”
Indeed, the fossil species Ignacius mckennai and I. dawsonae were part of a collection of fossils left behind by Dawson and McKenna for further analysis.
“Mary and Malcolm bequeathed me with those fossils and asked me to study them,” Beard said. “I said, ‘Yes, of course — I’m happy to do that.’ They just sat like a fine wine and got better and better through time until Kristen showed up — and it was clear that Kristen had everything that it took to carry the ball over the finish line.”

Animal Pictures