The Drift

Welcome to today's issue of Carolina Naturally

'Nuff Said!

Today is April 7, 2023

Today is: International Beaver Day

On This Day In History

In 1969CE: The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1.

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

Busy, busy, busy - the only apt descriptor for life at the moment.

Someday it will calm down but using O'Neil's Law (who said Murphy was an Optimist) that day will be after we cease to exist.

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

Remember to have fun and enjoy life.

Editorial Staff

Stairway to heaven

'All-hands-on-deck': COVID-19 'rule' expires possibly leaving 15 million without healthcare

Millions of people are at risk of losing healthcare as of Friday, when the Public Health Service Act expires, NBC reports.
According to NBC, legislators passed the "rule" in 2020, which "kept people automatically enrolled in" Medicaid, "even if they no longer met the requirements for coverage."
'All-hands-on-deck': COVID-19 'rule' expires possibly leaving 15 million without healthcare

Prescient

"... members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and post-modern professors will no longer be calling the shots...
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. . All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet."
That passage was written 25 years ago. Discussed at Harper's.

Beneath the Tower

Alan Turing's famous mathematical model was right all along

A mathematical model first proposed by Alan Turing 71 years ago may have finally been confirmed — by chia seeds sprouting in a lab.

Turing was a British mathematician perhaps best known for cracking the German Enigma code during World War II that helped lead to Allied victory over Nazi Germany.

In 1952 he suggested patterns arise in nature due to a chemical reaction between two homogeneous substances, which he described in his one and only published paper, penned while working at the University of Manchester, U.K. These patterns can be seen across numerous plant and animal species, from a zebra's black-and-white stripes to the ridges on a cactus.

Alan Turing's famous mathematical model was right all along, chia seed experiment reveals

New Spin on Famous Physics Experiment Shows Light Interfering With Its Own Past

In 1801, British scientist Thomas Young carried out a 'double slit' experiment that has gone down in physics history: By shining light through two slits in a material, he showed that light behaved like a wave, taking different paths simultaneously only to interfere in predictable ways once they recombine.
Since that pioneering moment, the experiment has been repeated to demonstrate electromagnetic radiation displays both wave-like and particle-like behaviors. To put it another way, light can act like marbles rolling down a slope and like ripples in a pond, depending on how they're measured.
It's not just photons that act this way, either. Scientists have used similar setups to show electrons, neutrons, and whole atoms behaving in the same fashion, establishing a core tenet of quantum physics as a theory based on probability.
Now scientists have recreated Young's experiment with a modern twist. Instead of a pair of slits separated in space, they used 'time slits' created by rapid adjustments in the reflectivity of a material, testing the ability for a wave of light to interfere with its own past and future.
New Spin on Famous Physics Experiment Shows Light Interfering With Its Own Past

Dream discovery

An Australian man passionate about finding gold in old abandoned deposits has made the discovery of a lifetime. A gold nugget worth 150,000 euros (240,000 A$, source 9news.com.au). Thanks to his cheap metal detector, the man found a rock of over 4.5 kg during the inspection of an area in the "Golden Triangle" of Victoria, between Ballarat, Bendigo and St Arnaud (Australia)
Dream discovery: Australian amateur finds 150,000 gold nugget

Wetland Pause

The Little-Known U.S. River Gorge That's Deeper than the Grand Canyon

A gorge deeper than the Grand Canyon? Yes, it actually exists! Between Idaho and Oregon in the United States lies a fissure so wide and so deep that it actually rivals its Arizonan cousin. This canyon is as rich in history as it is impressive in size.
But why is it called Hells Canyon? Who first discovered it, and were they really the first? Just how much deeper is it than the Grand Canyon? Discover all this and more as we delve into the fascinating story of this little-known river gorge!
The Little-Known U.S. River Gorge That's Deeper than the Grand Canyon

Scientists discover hyper-intelligent, fast-growing mushroom that could have a major impact on our planet

In the hunt for compelling alternatives to plastic, researchers in Finland may have just found a winner — and it’s already growing all over the sides of trees.
The substance in question is a type of mushroom known as Fomes fomentarius. It grows on the rotting bark of trees and has historically been used mainly as a fire starter, lending it the nickname “tinder fungus.” (It has also been called “hoof fungus” because its shape resembles a hoof.)
However, a research team at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland thinks that it could be much more than that. 
“F. fomentarius fruiting bodies are ingeniously lightweight biological designs, simple in composition but efficient in performance,” the team’s study, published recently in Science Advances, said. “Growing the material using simple ingredients is an alternative solution to overcome the cost, time, mass production, and sustainability of how we make and consume materials in the future.”
In short, instead of mass-producing plastic at an enormous cost to our planet, in the future, we could simply grow a mushroom with similar structural integrity to plastic at scale.
Scientists discover hyper-intelligent, fast-growing mushroom that could have a major impact on our planet

Forest Rocks

We Might Soon Be Able to See Missing Ripples in Spacetime

Even in the vastness of space, sometimes things crash into each other. When two rocks do it, you can get a plethora of asteroids, or meteors. When a planet and an asteroid do it, you might form a new moon. But with something as big as a black hole merger, you get something remarkable: gravitational waves.
Gravitational waves are often referred to as “ripples in spacetime,” and they emanate from sources of immense energy like black hole mergers. First discovered in 1974—almost 60 years after Einstein first predicted them—they travel through the fabric of the universe at the speed of light, bringing with them information about where they came from and how exactly gravity works.
We Might Soon Be Able to See Missing Ripples in Spacetime

Hubble spotted a bizarre space object that defies classification

Meet Z 229-15, a celestial object that depending on how you feel, could be one of three different things – all at once. Shared as the European Space Agency’s “Picture of the Week” for the week of March 27, an image of Z 229-15 showcases what makes this bizarre space object so intriguing, and why it has left many astronomers in awe since its initial discovery. 
Located roughly 390 million light-years from Earth in the Lyra constellation, Z 229-15 is one of a few celestial objects that can be classified as multiple things. The ESA says that the object can be a quasar, and sometimes it can be defined as an active galactic nuclear (AGN). Other times it is defined as a Seyfert galaxy. Further, the ESA says that this bizarre space object is all of those things at once due to an overlap in the definition of those terms.  
Hubble spotted a bizarre space object that defies classification

Scientists Observe Flattest Explosion Ever Seen In Space

An explosion the size of our solar system has baffled scientists, as part of its shape – similar to that of an extremely flat disc – challenges everything we know about explosions in space.
The explosion observed was a bright Fast Blue Optical Transient (FBOT) – an extremely rare class of explosion which is much less common than other explosions, such as supernovas. The first bright FBOT was discovered in 2018 and given the nickname “the cow”.
Explosions of stars in the universe are almost always spherical in shape, as the stars themselves are spherical. However, this explosion, which occurred 180 million light years away, is the most aspherical ever seen in space, with a shape like a disc emerging a few days after it was discovered. This section of the explosion may have come from material shed by the star just before it exploded.
It’s still unclear how bright FBOT explosions occur, but it’s hoped that this observation, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, will bring us closer to understanding them.
Dr Justyn Maund, Lead Author of the study from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, said: “Very little is known about FBOT explosions – they just don’t behave like exploding stars should, they are too bright and they evolve too quickly. Put simply, they are weird, and this new observation makes them even weirder.
“Hopefully this new finding will help us shed a bit more light on them – we never thought that explosions could be this aspherical. There are a few potential explanations for it: the stars involved may have created a disc just before they died or these could be failed supernovas, where the core of the star collapses to a blackhole or neutron star which then eats the rest of the star.
“What we now know for sure is that the levels of asymmetry recorded are a key part of understanding these mysterious explosions, and it challenges our preconceptions of how stars might explode in the Universe.”
Scientists made the discovery after spotting a flash of polarized light completely by chance. They were able to measure the polarization of the blast – using the astronomical equivalent of polaroid sunglasses – with the Liverpool Telescope (owned by Liverpool John Moores University) located on La Palma.
By measuring the polarization, it allowed them to measure the shape of the explosion, effectively seeing something the size of our Solar System but in a galaxy 180 million light years away. They were then able to use the data to reconstruct the 3D shape of the explosion, and were able to map the edges of the blast – allowing them to see just how flat it was.
The mirror of the Liverpool Telescope is only 2.0m in diameter, but by studying the polarization the astronomers were able to reconstruct the shape of the explosion as if the telescope had a diameter of about 750km.
Researchers will now undertake a new survey with the international Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, which is expected to help discover more FBOTs and further understand them.

‘Brightest of all time’ light burst blinds Earth’s satellites

The brightest gamma-ray burst in human history was recently detected, scientists with the American Astronomical Society (AAS) announced Tuesday.
Nicknamed the BOAT, for the Brightest of All Time, it temporarily blinded Earth’s satellites, NASA said in a press release.
The burst was initially detected on Oct. 8th, 2022, by Voyager 1.
According to a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the gamma-ray swept through our solar system 19 hours after it was initially detected. NASA said the burst was so bright that satellites were unable to “directly record the real intensity of the emission.” 
‘Brightest of all time’ light burst blinds Earth’s satellites

Saturn is doing something never seen before in our solar system

Saturn's rings are heating its atmosphere, according to a new study.
Scientists announced the finding on March 30, which they say has never been seen before in our solar system.
A NASA spokesperson said: "The secret has been hiding in plain view for 40 years. But it took the insight of a veteran astronomer to pull it all together within a year, using observations of Saturn from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and retired Cassini probe, in addition to the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft and the retired International Ultraviolet Explorer mission.
Saturn is doing something never seen before in our solar system

Astronomers discovered two black holes close to Earth unlike anything we’ve seen

Black holes are found throughout our universe. However, astronomers have discovered two new black holes close to Earth that have raised some eyebrows. While discovering black holes near Earth isn’t unusual, these two holes are much further from their stars than expected.
This has presented some questions for astronomers because it differs from how these binary systems are usually set up. Normally, when a black hole and a star share a system, they are known as binary systems, and the black hole usually eats away at the star.
Astronomers discovered two black holes close to Earth unlike anything we’ve seen

City Roof

Rats! Rodents Seem To Make The Same Logical Errors Humans Do

Animals, like humans, appear to be troubled by a Linda problem.
The famous “Linda problem” was designed by psychologists to illustrate how people fall prey to what is known as the conjunction fallacy: the incorrect reasoning that if two events sometimes occur in conjunction, they are more likely to occur together than either event is to occur alone.
Now, for the first time, UCLA psychology researchers have shown that this type of logical error isn’t the sole province of humans — surprisingly, rats seem to make the same mistakes. Their study is published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
“The classical research has all been done with humans, so the usual explanation for the effect attributes it to a departure from rationality distinct to humans,” said Valeria González, a postdoctoral psychology researcher at UCLA and first author of the study. “Our work shows that maybe there is a more general mechanism shared between humans and rats.”
If rats do, as the research findings suggests, succumb to the conjunction fallacy, they could potentially serve as good research models for studying psychopathological conditions characterized by false beliefs or the perception of nonexistent events, like schizophrenia and certain anxiety disorders, the authors said.
But back to Linda. In the 1980s, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tvesrky showed that in a variety of scenarios, humans tend to believe, irrationally, that the intersection of two events is more probable than a single event. They asked participants to answer a question based on the following scenario.
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
Which is more probable?

1. Linda is a bank teller.

1. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

The great majority of participants chose No. 2, although logically it is less probable than Linda being a bank teller alone. After all, No. 1 would not preclude Linda from also being an active feminist, but given the description of Linda, No. 2 may be easier for respondents to imagine.
The Linda problem and numerous similar studies seem to indicate that humans estimate the likelihood of an event using mental shortcuts, assessing how similar the event is to a model they already have in their minds. The formation of these models, known as representativeness heuristics, relies on a combination of memory, imagination and reasoning universal in humans but thought to be rare or nonexistent in other animals.
Sound, light and the conjunction fallacy in rats
Some have argued that the conjunction fallacy, rather than being a true logical error, may hinge on language, particularly people’s uncertainty about the meaning of words like “likely” and “probability.” Others have pointed out that Linda’s detailed backstory might have biased respondents. But previous research has suggested that humans also are prone to conjunction fallacies when performing physical tasks.
To determine whether the fallacy necessarily involves language and whether it is unique to humans, González engaged rats in a physical, not social, task. With psychology professor Aaron Blaisdell, she designed two experiments that required the rats to judge the likelihood of just a sound being present or both a light and sound being present in order to receive a food reward.
Rats were trained in two scenarios:

• Tone + light = reward. In the first, they received sugar pellets if they pressed a lever when a tone played and a steady light was on; they received no food if they pressed they lever when the tone played but the light was off.

• Noise alone = reward. In the second scenario, they received pellets if they pressed a lever while a white noise played and a flashing light was off; they received nothing if they pressed the lever when the noise played and the flashing light was on.

The researchers then played the different sounds, a tone or white noise, while the light bulb was unobscured but turned off. The rats reacted accordingly, tending to avoid pressing the lever in response to the tone and pressing it in response to the white noise.
But when researchers obscured the light bulb with a piece of metal and played the sounds, the rats were forced predict whether it was on or off in hopes of receiving the food reward. Interestingly, the rats were much more likely to predict that the obscured light was on. This was true regardless of whether the light had previously signaled the presence or absence of food when accompanying the sound.
The tendency to overestimate the likelihood that both sound and light were present, even if it meant no reward, demonstrates that, like humans, rats can show a conjunction fallacy, the authors said.
“Until now, researchers said this is unique to human cognition only because we haven’t looked for it in animals,” Blaisdell said. “If humans and other animals consider alternative states of the world during ambiguous situations to help decision-making, we might expect systematic biases such as the conjunction fallacy to show a broader distribution in the animal kingdom.”

Deer Blood Kills Bacteria That Causes Lyme Disease

As tick season kicks in across the country, the executive director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst-based New England Center of Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases (NEWVEC) and his team have completed research that offers a promising lead in the fight against Lyme disease.
The study, published recently in the journal Vector-borne and Zoonotic Diseases, demonstrates that the blood of the white-tailed deer kills the corkscrew-shaped bacterium that causes Lyme disease, a potentially debilitating illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that each year some 476,000 people are diagnosed with and treated for Lyme, the most common vector-borne disease in the U.S.
“Deer are vitally important to the survival of deer ticks, but they are not involved with transmitting the Lyme bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi,” explains senior author Stephen Rich, professor of microbiology. “We’ve known for some time that ticks taken from white-tailed deer are not infected, and we speculated that something about the deer prevented those ticks from becoming infected. But until publication of our paper, no one had done the experiment to show that deer blood – specifically the serum component of white-tailed deer blood – kills Lyme.”
The results of the study may one day lead to new strategies and approaches for Lyme disease prevention and treatment, says lead author Patrick Pearson, a Ph.D. student in NEWVEC, whose upcoming doctoral examination focuses in part on this research.
“In these experiments we determined that white-tailed deer serum kills the Lyme bacterium. The next important question will be to understand exactly how deer blood kills Lyme bacteria,” Pearson says.
 The research is one project of NEWVEC, which was funded by the CDC last year with a $10 million award to prevent and reduce tick- and mosquito-borne diseases in New England. NEWVEC aims to bring together academic communities, public health practitioners, residents and visitors across the Northeast, where Lyme infections are concentrated.
The Lyme disease bacterium is passed to juvenile blacklegged (Ixodes scapularis) deer ticks from mice the arthropods feed on. The infected ticks then pass the bacterium on to humans when they feed on people.
“We are the accidental host,” Rich says. “The ticks that bite us are actually looking for a deer because that’s where they breed. Without the deer, you don’t have ticks. But if you had only deer, you wouldn’t have any Lyme.”
To carry out their experiment, the researchers obtained blood serum from a semi-captive white-tailed deer herd at Auburn University in Alabama. The deer were believed to have no exposure to ticks and the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
The researchers then grew the Lyme disease germ in test tubes and added the deer serum. “And lo and behold, it killed the bacteria,” Rich says. “Whatever it is in the deer that’s killing the germ is part of the innate immune system, a part of the immune system that precedes antibodies.”
Pearson adds, “The Lyme bacterium has proteins on its surface that protect it from the human innate immune system. Deer blood is somehow different such that Lyme bacteria are apparently unable to protect themselves from the innate immune system of white-tailed deer.”
The next research step is to determine the precise mechanisms in deer blood that kill the bacteria.
“We’d like to determine if it’s something we can induce in humans,” Rich says. “Or maybe we could use this somehow to our advantage to reduce the incidence of Lyme disease in the wild.”

Scientist living underwater for 100 days discovers ‘brand new species’

A scientist who has been living underwater for the last 30 days claims to have discovered a new species.
Former naval officer Dr Joseph Dituri is attempting to break a world record by spending 100 days in a habitat 30 feet (9 metres) below a Florida lagoon, testing how the body reacts to long-term exposure to extreme pressure. But one month into the experiment his team may have unexpectedly made a different scientific finding.
Scientist living underwater for 100 days discovers ‘brand new species’

Megamouth Sharks' Social Lives

In early September 2022, curious fishermen took a video of two megamouth sharks swimming together off the coast of San Diego. Little did they know that they were very fortunate to spot the shark species and how significant their footage is in the study of megamouth sharks.
Megamouth sharks are a very elusive species. Since its discovery some five decades ago, there have only been 273 sightings of the species, most of them spotted because they were caught in fishing gear. Of these sightings, only five are sightings of megamouth sharks swimming freely, so this new footage is a truly rare opportunity.
The footage in question was analyzed by a team of scientists led by Zachary Skelton, who described the video as humanity's only knowledge of the social lives of megamouth sharks.
Analysis of the footage suggests that one of the sharks was male and the other female, implying that the two were "engaging in courtship or mating behaviors." Furthermore, neither shark was seen attempting to feed, strengthening the claim that this was indeed a mating ritual. However, Skelton admits they heavily relied on other studies and species to make sense of the short footage.
This only shows how much we still don't know about megamouth sharks. As the director of the Shark Research & Conservation Program at the University of Miami — Neil Hammerschlag — puts it, the topic is a "black box to scientists."

Animal Pictures