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Published on Leave a comment on The language of monk seals

From SciTechDaily: Scientists Stunned as Hawaiian Monk Seals Reveal Hidden Underwater Language.

"We were surprised by the sheer diversity and complexity of monk seal vocalizations,” notes Parnell. “The discovery of combinational calls, where seals link multiple call types together, suggests a previously unknown level of complexity in pinniped acoustic communication. Finding a new call type—the Whine—associated with foraging behavior was also unexpected and suggests that monk seals may use sound not only for mating or socializing, but possibly for foraging purposes as well.”

That'd be a fun language to learn.

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Published on 2 Comments on He made beer that’s also a vaccine

From Science News: He made beer that’s also a vaccine. Now controversy is brewing.

Chris Buck stands barefoot in his kitchen holding a glass bottle of unfiltered Lithuanian farmhouse ale. He swirls the bottle gently to stir up a fingerbreadth blanket of yeast and pours the turbulent beer into a glass mug.

Buck raises the mug and sips. “Cloudy beer. Delightful!”

He has just consumed what may be the world’s first vaccine delivered in a beer. It could be the first small sip toward making vaccines more palatable and accessible to people around the world. Or it could fuel concerns about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Or the idea may go nowhere. No matter the outcome, the story of Buck’s unconventional approach illustrates the legal, ethical, moral, scientific and social challenges involved in developing potentially life-saving vaccines.

Doin' the Lord's work, right there! Can I have all my vaccinations in beer, please?

Published on Leave a comment on In what season did Mount Vesuvius erupt?

From the Smithsonian Magazine: If Mount Vesuvius Erupted in August, Why Were Pompeii Victims Wearing Heavy Wool Garments?

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 C.E., it famously blanketed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in ash and volcanic debris. Based on historical records, researchers have long assumed the volcano erupted in late August—but new research is complicating that timeline.

At least four individuals who died in the natural disaster were wearing clothing made out of thick wool—a fabric often associated with winterwear.

Published on Leave a comment on How to save the internet from enshittification

I hope every internet user knows of Cory Doctorow's analysis of what has gone wrong with the internet, a process he calls enshittification. Now Cory proposes a solution.

Here's Jacobin's interview with Cory: How to save the internet from enshittification.

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From the Norwegian news site called News In English: Viking ship mounds proposed as new World Heritage sites.

Norway’s Directorate of Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren) announced on Monday that it is recommending seven burial mounds around the country for inclusion as Unesco World Heritage sites. All are confirmed as containing the remains of Viking ships.

The directorate delivered its recommendation to the government ministry in charge of climate and the environment on Monday. It’s hoping that Norway’s Viking heritage can become the country’s latest inclusion on the World Heritage list.

“The ship burial mounds in Norway are unparalleled in the world,” said Hanna Geiran, who leads the directorate charged with taking care of Norway’s cultural heritage. “The seven we have chosen are the most important from the Viking Age in Norway.”

One of the photos published with this article shows an excavation site, and houses nearby. Can you imagine what it would be like to have a Viking ship excavation site so near to your house?

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From Interesting Engineering: New fingerprint found on Hjortspring boat might help to solve century-old mystery.

New evidence has surfaced on the legendary Hjortspring boat, the oldest wooden plank boat in Scandinavia. Researchers are closer than ever to solving a century-long mystery. Who did the boat belong to?

One can imagine the dramatic crashing of the sea as the innocent Hjortspring forged forward 2,000 years ago. Except, they weren’t alone or benign. In an armada of four, these curve-ended boats, 65 feet long, carried about 80 warriors who had recently attacked the nearby island of Als. A counter-strike was gaining speed, intending to retaliate, and they would win.

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I'm suddenly interested in willow trees. From Reasons to be Cheerful: The beauty of lining a river with willow.

In the Stone Age, Neolithic folks used willow branches and mud to build roundhouses for their families. Jump forward several thousand years and European farmers were fashioning panels of stitched willow, called hurdles, to fence their farms or screen their gardens. Meanwhile, Native Americans constructed frames of black willow stakes and branches for the sweat lodges where their spirits were purified.

Today, dozens of species of willow are fitting into the toolkits of ecologists and conservationists, who find these trees fine specimens for preventing the decimation of the Ohio River Basin. By incorporating willow, their aim is to minimize erosion while keeping its seven major tributaries as free of pollutants as possible.

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Here's a long and excellent article from Current Affairs: AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself.

The real tragedy isn’t that students use ChatGPT to do their course work. It’s that universities are teaching everyone—students, faculty, administrators—to stop thinking. We’re outsourcing discernment. Students graduate fluent in prompting, but illiterate in judgment; faculty teach but aren’t allowed the freedom to educate; and universities, eager to appear innovative, dismantle the very practices that made them worthy of the name. We are approaching educational bankruptcy: degrees without learning, teaching without understanding, institutions without purpose.

Imagine how devastating this must be for professors who have dedicated their professional lives to teaching, really teaching, university students.

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Anybody who suffers from gout has probably been lectured about overindulgence. You eat too much! You drink too much! But what if that isn't it?

From ScienceAlert: Massive Study Reveals Where Gout Comes From, And It's Not What We Thought.

By comparing the genetic codes of people with the condition to those of people without, the team found 377 specific DNA regions where there were variations linked to gout – 149 of which hadn't been associated with the disease before.

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From resilience.org: Charting a course through bears' eyes.

In British Columbia, stewards from the Heiltsuk First Nation are using computational models and Indigenous knowledge to protect bears’ access to salmon.

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Amazing images and story from ScienceDaily.com: Scientists capture flu viruses surfing into human cells in real time.

Summary: Scientists have captured a never-before-seen, high-resolution look at influenza’s stealthy invasion of human cells, revealing that the cells aren’t just helpless victims. Using a groundbreaking imaging technique, researchers discovered that our cells actually reach out and “grab” the virus as it searches for the perfect entry point, surfing along the membrane.

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A guy I knew at work would tell everybody how magic mushrooms cured depression. This was years ago. I hope he's reading the news now! From MedicalXpress: Study maps how psilocybin reshapes brain circuits linked to depression.

An international collaboration led by Cornell researchers used a combination of psilocybin and the rabies virus to map how—and where—the psychedelic compound rewires the connections in the brain.

Specifically, they showed ...

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From the Guardian: Ancient Egyptian pleasure boat found by archaeologists off Alexandria coast.

An ancient Egyptian pleasure boat that matches a description by the first-century Greek historian Strabo has been discovered off the coast of Alexandria, to the excitement of archaeologists.

With its palaces, temples and the 130 metre-high Pharos lighthouse – one of the seven wonders of the ancient world – Alexandria had been one of the most magnificent cities in antiquity. The pleasure boat, which dates from the first half of the first century AD, was 35 metres long and constructed to hold a central pavilion with a luxuriously decorated cabin.

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I am so fond of beavers, so this Guardian article delighted me: First wild beaver spotted in Norfolk for 400 years.

A wild beaver has been spotted in Norfolk for the first time since beavers were hunted to extinction in England at the beginning of the 16th century.

It was filmed dragging logs and establishing a lodge in a “perfect beaver habitat” on the River Wensum at Pensthorpe, a nature reserve near Fakenham in Norfolk.

It is the first time a free-living beaver has been recorded in the county since the species began to re-establish itself in the English countryside in 2015, when a litter of wild kits was born in Devon.

How cool is that?

I hope this beaver will thrive and reproduce. I hope the same for the beavers in my neighbourhood, too!

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From SciTechDaily: Forgotten eruption could rewrite Black Death origin story.

New research suggests that volcanic eruptions may have triggered climate cooling and famine that pushed Italian city-states to import grain from the Black Sea—unknowingly bringing plague-infected fleas with it.

So maybe your history teacher was wrong, and so was that essay you had to write.

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From Popular Science: Pet dogs can help teens’ mental health.

“The most interesting finding from this study is that bacteria promoting prosociality, or empathy, were discovered in the microbiomes of adolescent children who keep dogs,” Kikusui said. “The implication is that the benefits of dog ownership include providing a sense of security through interaction, but I believe it also holds value in its potential to alter the symbiotic microbial community.”

I can imagine some canny teen using this as a way to convince mom and dad to get a dog.

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People who have had strokes sometimes have lasting problems, and one of them is aphasia. Can singing in a choir help stroke survivors find their words again? CBC reports: How singing in a choir might help people find their voices after a stroke.

I like learning about non-medical interventions that improve health, and this one seems so promising. Fun, too.

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From archaeologymag.com: 1,500-year-old reindeer hunting system emerges from melting ice in Norway.

A team of archaeologists working high on the Aurlandsfjellet mountain plateau in Vestland County, Norway, has made a fantastic discovery: a remarkably well-preserved 1,500-year-old reindeer trapping system revealed by retreating ice. The discovery, led by Vestland County Council and the University Museum of Bergen, is being hailed as one of Norway’s most significant archaeological finds of 2025. [continue]

There are photos, and details. Archaeology Magazine is fabulous.

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For a while I had a strange plant that curled up into a ball when it was utterly dry and out of water. But then, when given water, the brown and apparently dead thing would unfurl and come back to life.

I don't recall who gave it to me, or what happened to it in the end. Did I kill it completely one time?

Anyway, I suspect it was a resurrection plant. Perhaps you have one?

I think of it now and again. When the conditions were right, it did ok in the world, and popped back into fine shape.

There might be blogs with a similar kind of thing going on.