ICYMI: Nature News Headlines
Each month, we speak to our colleagues at the Journal Nature to hear about the stories they are following. This month we talk with Nature's Anna Nagle about these headlines:
Million-dollar Kavli prize recognizes scientist scooped on CRISPR
The award goes to biochemists Virginijus Siksnys, whose lab independently developed the gene-editing tool, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna.
AI recreates activity patterns that brain cells use in navigation
Deep-learning algorithm spontaneously mimicked the activity of specialized neurons that tell us where we are in space.
Antarctic seals recruited to measure effects of climate change
Deep-diving animals collected data that could be used to sharpen projections of rising seas.
Muons: the little-known particles helping to probe the impenetrable
The ubiquitous particles are helping to map the innards of pyramids and volcanoes, and spot missing nuclear waste.
Hawaii volcano eruption holds clues to predicting similar events elsewhere
Scientists scramble to analyze data from Kilauea, which shot ash 9 kilometers into the atmosphere.
Non-stick Products Make Life Easier, But Their Chemicals Are Showing Up In Drinking Water
Residents of Cape Cod are no strangers to chemical contaminants in their drinking water. The military base here has been a Superfund site since 1989 due to jet fuel and other contaminants in the groundwater. But a new class of chemicals came onto the scene a few years ago, not only on Cape Cod, but around the country. They’re known as PFASs and they come from things like firefighting foam, flame retardants, and non-stick coatings.
They’ve been found in drinking water in many places in the U.S. and they’ve become a very hot topic in recent weeks.
In May, federal EPA officials blocked the release of a report about the prevalence of these chemicals in water supplies. Then, they removed or blocked reporters from a public meeting about these same PFAS chemicals.
Alyson McCann is the Water Quality Program Coordinator for University of Rhode Island’s Cooperative Extension and she co-leads community engagement efforts for a new Superfund research collaborative focused on PFASs called STEEP.
The goal of the group is to help discern the presence and sources of PFAS chemicals, and they’re using Cape Cod as a lab to try to figure out what the sources are, and how the chemicals move through groundwater and surface water.
The cause for concern is a growing number of studies that link these chemicals to negative health effects like low birth weight, some cancers, liver damage, and thyroid problems.
McCann explained that there is a health advisory level for PFOA and PFAS in drinking water, but the chemicals are not listed on the EPA’s list of contaminants that public works managers must test for in drinking water.
"They regulate 90-plus chemicals, but the PFOA and PFAS do not have enforceable levels, and are not tested on a regular basis," McCann said.
However, the EPA announced that they’ll be doing regional meetings on setting standards. The first meeting is in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in late June.
STEEP will have an information Science Day on June 7 in Hyannis, Massachusetts.
Author: Meat Grown In A Lab Is Safer & Better For The Environment
Soon, you may be able to eat hamburger that was grown in a Petri dish rather than on a cow.
In his book, Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, author Paul Shapiro details how startups like Memphis Meats and Finless Foods are growing animal cells in the lab that are safe to eat.
“Clean meat is real meat that is grown from animal cells rather than animal slaughter,” Shapiro told Living Lab Radio.
The process is done by taking a cell from an animal and putting it inside a cultivator that tricks it into growing as if it is still inside the animal. Soon, the cells grow into muscle tissue that can be eaten.
“I have now eaten clean duck, beef, fish, chorizo, even foie gras, all grown without animals,” he said. “And they tasted good to me. They tasted just like meat.”
Shapiro acknowledged that as a vegan for more than 20 years, he may not be the best judge of what meat should taste like. But other people have also vouched for the taste of the experimental meat.
So far, the most successful offerings have been products that use ground meat — chicken nuggets, hamburgers, hot dogs, sausages, meatballs, fish sticks and crab cakes.
Besides avoiding the slaughter of animals, the technique was found by one Oxford University study to use 99 percent less land, more than 90 percent less water, and emit 90 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional animal farming.
The first hamburger produced using this method cost more than $300,000, but Shapiro said there is a well-trod path for new technologies to become cheaper.
“In the same way that the first iPhone cost over a billion dollars and now a lot of us are walking around with them in our pockets, you can see the trajectory that clean meat producers have to bring their [costs down].”
This Album Is A Journey Under The Ocean
Three Cape Cod-based composers will mark this World Oceans Day on Friday, June 8, by releasing a new album of original music developed in collaboration with ocean scientists. It’s called Black Inscription, and two of the composers — the husband and wife team Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi — spoke with Living Lab Radio about it.
The composers promote the album as, “A multimedia song cycle that uses music, sound and imagery to plunge us into our oceans and fill us with wonder, outrage, and hope.”
It was inspired by their personal connection with the ocean, and took on another layer of meaning when Bossi’s father died in 2017.
He was an “absolute lover of the ocean,” who was known informally as the “Mayor of Corporation Beach,” Bossi and Kihlstedt told Living Lab Radio. They dedicated a piece on the album to him.
Kihlstedt and Bossi also credit their unique surroundings as inspiration for the music. They live in Woods Hole, a town known for its proximity to water and its ocean science organizations, like Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Marine Biological Laboratory, and Woods Hole Research Center. Bossi says it’s a great feeling to know that, “your town is actively trying to save planet earth.”
One of the central pieces on the album imagines the final dive of renowned free-diver Natalia Molchanova. It comes across as a seven-minute-long guided meditation.
“She went on a very casual, unplanned dive and never returned,” Kihlstedt explained. The piece features a Falmouth voice-actor and ethereal sounds that make it seem like you’re in the water.
Another piece is inspired by a friend of Kihlstedt and Bossi who works in ocean science and was documenting trash that was found off the coast of Massachusetts.
Kihlstedt is hoping people will come away from the album "being more curious about their own relationship to the ocean.”
All of the proceeds from the purchase of the album on their bandcamp website on World Oceans Day will be donated to ocean conservation research.
Matthias Bossi composed the theme song of Living Lab Radio.
