Brazilian Sharpnose Sharks (Rhizoprionodon Lalandii) are being analysed at a laboratory in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in this handout picture made available on July 23, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Sharks off the coast of Brazil’s party city Rio de Janeiro have tested positive for cocaine.

The predators were consuming the potent stimulant due to its continuous release from inadequate sewage treatment facilities and clandestine refining operations, scientists wrote in a study published in Science of The Total Environment.

Some may also have attacked bricks of cocaine which traffickers had lost at sea off the coast of Brazil, one of the world’s largest markets for the drug.

Of the 13 specimens of Brazilian sharpnose shark scientists tested over almost three years, all presented cocaine in their muscle and liver tissue, according to the study by the Oswaldo Foundation Cruz, an institute of science, technology and health.

“It is necessary to carry out specific studies to determine the exact consequences of this contamination on animals,” said Rachel Ann Hauser-Davis, a biologist from the IOC Environmental Health Assessment and Promotion Laboratory, in a statement.

“It is believed that there may be an impact on the growth, maturation and, potentially, the fecundity of sharks, since the liver plays a role in the development of embryos.”

The scientists collected the samples between September 2021 and August 2023 as they monitored environmental impacts of pollution on marine life.

Because sharks were predators, Hauser-Davis said they were central figures in the food chain and were considered “sentinel species” that could provide early warnings about environmental threats to humans.

The scientists did not list what effects cocaine and other recreational drugs might have on sharks, although other studies have shown brown trout can become addicted to methamphetamine.

Scientists elsewhere have documented that other pollutants like antidepressants, heavy metals, and birth control medications are also making their way into rivers, lakes and oceans.

A view of Sea urchins during an event to collect the urchins and ship them off to be used as fertiliser on local fields, in Zushi, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan July 21, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

In Japan, researchers are feeding vegetables to hungry sea urchins – a popular sushi ingredient – to try and stop them from eating dwindling stocks of ocean seaweed.

The country is struggling with a “desertification of the sea” or “isoyake” problem, where the coastline faces a stark decrease in seaweed forests that host a diverse array of marine life and support the livelihoods of local fishers.

In Sagami Bay off the coast of Kanagawa, just south of Tokyo, the seaweed bed areas have decreased 80% over the past three decades, according to Kanagawa Prefectural Fisheries Technology Center researcher Yutaka Harada.

Scientists think overgrazing by herbivore sea urchins is a factor behind the phenomenon, along with the possible effects of a rising sea temperature and stronger tidal waves. But controlling the animal’s population is not an easy task.

“There are a lot of sea urchins in the areas where seagrasses have disappeared,” said another Kanagawa researcher Shozo Takamura. “Divers and fishermen dive down in their bathing suits to collect and get rid of them, but their numbers have barely fallen.”

Unlike the urchins sold to luxury sushi bars, most sea urchins in coastal Kanagawa do not have many edible parts, making it less commercially viable for the fishers to keep catching them.

But researchers are studying ways to nurture the creature caught in Kanagawa.

“The urchins we’re raising here at the research centre, which are Pacific purple sea urchins, really love vegetables,” like surplus cabbages that are given to us and Japanese mustard spinach, said Harada.

Local sea urchins tend to have a paltry 2-3% edible parts, but the lab-fed ones are as much as 20% edible, with less bitter taste, he added.

The project’s findings mean the local urchins could become more valuable, creating a bigger economic incentive to catch them, and sparing the remaining ocean seaweed.

“We’re working towards raising even tastier sea urchins on land and selling them to support our efforts against ocean desertification,” Harada said.

Minghao Nie, a researcher of University of Tokyo shows a face mold covered in human skin tissue at his lab in Tokyo, July 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Japanese scientists have devised a way to attach living skin tissue to robotic faces and make them “smile,” in a breakthrough that holds out promise of applications in cosmetics and medicine.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo grew human skin cells in the shape of a face and pulled it into a wide grin, using embedded ligament-like attachments.

The result, though eerie, is an important step towards building more life-like robots, said lead researcher Shoji Takeuchi.

“By attaching these actuators and anchors, it became possible to manipulate living skin for the first time,” he added.

The smiling robot, featured in a study published online last month by Cell Reports Physical Science, is the fruit of a decade of research by Takeuchi and his lab on how best to combine biological and artificial machines.

Living tissue has numerous advantages over metals and plastics, Takeuchi said, ranging from the energy efficiency of brains and muscles to skin’s ability to repair itself.

Looking ahead, the researchers aim to add more elements to the lab-grown skin, including a circulatory system and nerves. That could lead to safer testing platforms for cosmetics and drugs absorbed through the skin.

It could also produce more realistic and functional coverings for robots. Still, there remains the challenge of ridding people of the strange or unnerving feelings evoked by machines that fall just short of being entirely convincing.

“There’s still a bit of that creepiness to it,” Takeuchi acknowledged about the robot. “I think that making robots out of the same materials as humans and having them show the same expressions might be one key to overcoming the uncanny valley.”

This artist’s concept envisions what hydrocarbon ice forming on a liquid hydrocarbon sea of Saturn’s moon Titan might look like in this NASA image released on January 8, 2013.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which explored Saturn and its icy moons, including the majestic Titan, ended its mission with a death plunge into the giant ringed planet in 2017. But some of the voluminous data gathered by Cassini during its 13 years of surveying the Saturnian system is only now being fully examined.

Cassini’s radar observations are providing intriguing new details about the seas of liquid hydrocarbons on the surface of Titan, our solar system’s second-largest moon and a place of interest in the search for life beyond Earth.

Titan, shrouded in a smog-like orange haze, is the only known world other than Earth exhibiting liquid seas on the surface, though they are not composed of water but rather nitrogen and the organic compounds methane and ethane, components of natural gas.

The study involved three seas near Titan’s north pole: Kraken Mare, the largest, covering an area comparable to Eurasia’s Caspian Sea; Ligeia Mare, the second-largest and comparable in area to North America’s Lake Superior; and Punga Mare, roughly equivalent to Africa’s Lake Victoria.

The chemical composition of these seas – methane-rich versus ethane-rich – was found to vary depending on their latitude. The study also documented the extent and distribution of sea surface ripples, indicating active tidal currents and increased roughness near estuaries – the mouths of rivers.

Titan, 3,200 miles (5,150 km) wide, is our solar system’s second-biggest moon behind Jupiter’s Ganymede and is larger than the planet Mercury. Titan and Earth are the only worlds in the solar system where liquids rain down from clouds, flow as rivers into seas and lakes on the surface and evaporate back up to the sky to begin the hydrological process again.

On Earth, water rains down from clouds. On Titan, clouds spew methane – which is a gas on Earth – in liquid form due to the frigid climate.

“Titan is really an Earth-like world with a diverse set of very familiar surface morphologies shaped by a methane-based hydrologic system operating in a dense nitrogen atmosphere,” said Cornell University engineer and a planetary scientist Valerio Poggiali, lead author of the study published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

“Seas and lakes of liquid hydrocarbons dot the surface in the polar regions, especially the northern one. Precipitation-fed channels flow into these seas creating estuaries, in some cases deltas,” Poggiali added.

The Cassini data indicated the rivers carry pure liquid methane that then mixes into the more ethane-rich liquids of the seas, much as freshwater in Earth’s rivers mixes into saltwater oceans.

“Titan’s seas are pulled by Saturn’s massive gravity, just like our seas, and the tidal range on some of its shorelines may be around a foot (30 cm). Because the tidal period – Titan’s day – is long, 16 Earth days, the tidal cycle is slow, so the tidal currents are generally weak,” said planetary scientist and study co-author Ralph Lorenz of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

The study used “bistatic” radar data collected during Cassini flybys of Titan, three in 2014 and one in 2016. Cassini aimed a radio beam at targets on Titan’s surface, which then reflected toward a receiving antenna on Earth. This provided richer information about the composition of the reflecting surface and its roughness than ordinary Cassini “monostatic” radar, which bounces a radio signal off a target and back to the point of origin.

“This is likely the last untouched dataset that the Cassini spacecraft left us,” Poggiali said.

Titan boasts environments with conditions considered potentially suitable for life. For instance, Titan appears to harbor a vast subsurface ocean of liquid water.

“Are the heavy organic molecules produced in Titan’s atmosphere prebiotic in nature?” Poggiali asked, referring to chemistry that could led to formation of life. “Has all this organic material ever been in contact with liquid water? We believe that similar interactions could have led to the origin of life on our planet, with the generation of molecules able to produce energy or store information.”

Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket takes off, in Kourou, French Guiana, July 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Space bosses hailed Europe’s return to space after the Ariane 6 rocket successfully carried out a series of trials in a debut flight on Tuesday, but the mission ended with the launcher coasting in orbit without releasing its final batch of payloads.

Watched by a Rafale fighter jet, Europe’s newest uncrewed rocket blasted off from French Guiana around 4 p.m. local time (1900 GMT), restoring the continent’s independent access to space after delays, political setbacks and debates over funding.

Although not a commercial mission, the flight deployed three sets of micro-satellites for research purposes, prompting European space officials to declare the maiden trip a success.

“Europe is back in space,” Philippe Baptiste, head of France’s CNES space agency, said via video link to the Paris headquarters of the European Space Agency (ESA), where employees and politicians cheered the lift-off.

In a keenly awaited milestone, the Vinci engine powering the rocket’s upper stage was restarted in space for the first time. It is designed to restart repeatedly, allowing operator Arianespace to place payloads into several different orbits.

However, a third firing had to be abandoned after a smaller power unit shut itself down for unspecified reasons, meaning the final batch of payloads – two small capsules designed to test the conditions for surviving re-entry – remained stuck onboard.

“We had an anomaly…We are probably not going to finish this part of the mission as we were hoping to,” said Tina Buchner da Costa, an Ariane 6 launch system architect.

The affected auxiliary power unit is a system crucial for the rocket’s ability to put payloads in their intended orbit.

Its failure, although late in the mission, is expected to spur an engineering investigation.

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said the agency was nonetheless on track to stage a second flight by year-end.

Ariane 6 was developed at an estimated cost of 4 billion euros ($4.33 billion) by ArianeGroup, co-owned by Airbus (AIR.PA), opens new tab and Safran (SAF.PA), opens new tab. Its first launch, originally due in 2020, has been repeatedly delayed.

Since the agency retired its workhorse Ariane 5 rocket more than a year ago, Europe has had no independent means of sending its satellites into space, while war in Ukraine has cut Western ties to Russian Soyuz rockets and Italy’s Vega C is grounded.

“Ariane 6 is fundamental for Europe’s space ambition,” Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA’s acting director of space transportation, told Reuters from the control room at Europe’s space port.

“It is about sovereign access to space for institutional and governmental missions … and this need has been even more emphasised in view of the geopolitical situation.”

Space competition

Europe’s temporary isolation in an increasingly global market was exposed last year when its agencies were forced to switch some payloads to U.S. rival SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

Ariane 6 owes its existence to a decision by ESA’s 22 nations in 2014 to develop a family of rockets in the face of fierce competition from Elon Musk’s private space venture.

The United States and dozens of other countries have come to rely heavily on Falcon 9 for reaching orbit as everyday life on Earth becomes increasingly reliant on satellite links and data.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, part of President Emmanuel Macron’s outgoing centrist and pro-European government that came third in Sunday’s elections, highlighted the Ariane programme’s role as a symbol of European unity.

“There are sometimes worries and doubts about Europe’s ability to play in the same league as China and the U.S. – with Ariane we are proving that through determination and collective will, we can operate at the same level,” he told ESA staff.

Even so, European officials said it will be some time before Ariane 6 pays its way economically after backer nations agreed a fresh round of financial support last year.

“Ariane 6 is not quite there yet in terms of competitiveness, but they want to get there,” said Ian Annett, former deputy CEO of the UK Space Agency.

In the latest setback, Europe’s weather satellite operator Eumetsat last month said it would launch its next satellite on a Falcon 9 instead of the initially planned Ariane 6.

The surprise decision angered European officials and broke with calls to back the local space industry, laying bare tensions that have simmered over Europe’s space ambitions.

ESA has launched an initiative to boost small-launcher projects that could pave the way for a future private player. Ariane 6 has 29 missions to launch over the next several years and aims for up to 12 flights a year. That includes 18 launches for Amazon’s Kuiper internet constellation.

SpaceX launched Falcon rockets 96 times in 2023 and nearly 70 times so far in 2024, though most of those were to deploy its in-house Starlink satellites. Still, analysts say that has shattered norms and spawned fierce competition from China, which had 67 launches in 2023.

Peruvian mountain police and mountain rescue workers gather around the remains of American climber William Stampfl who went missing in 2002 and is suspected to have died in an avalanche, in Huascaran, in this undated handout picture received by Reuters July 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Peruvian police and mountain rescue workers recovered the body of an American climber who went missing in 2002 as glaciers in Peru’s highest mountain and surrounding area continue to retreat.

The mummified, skeletal corpse still had well-preserved climbing boots, crampons and clothing, as well as a driver’s license and passport belonging to William Stampfl. Stampfl is suspected to have died in an avalanche more than 20 years ago.

In a statement, police say they recovered his body on July 5 at an altitude of 5,200 meters (17,060.37 ft), well below Huascaran’s 6,768-meter summit.

Glacial mass in the region has been retreating for about the last 10 years, said Edson Ramirez, a park ranger and risk assessor for the Huascaran National Park. “What was buried years ago is coming to the surface.”

Peru has an estimated 68% of the world’s tropical glaciers, which are among the most vulnerable ice packs in a warming planet. A November report by Peru’s government shows the country has lost 56% of its tropical glaciers in the last six decades.

Many of those glaciers lie in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, where the Huascaran and other iconic mountains draw thousands of climbers a year.

Steam emits from a crude oil refinery in Kochi, Kerala state, India, on Aug. 26, 2022.
| Photo Credit: Ap

A team of European carbon removal specialists launched an initiative on Tuesday to help Indian businesses develop projects that suck carbon dioxide out the atmosphere and mitigate global warming.

The Amsterdam-based group, called remove, has raised more than 220 million euros ($238 million) to support carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects throughout Europe, and will now accept applications from Indian start-ups.

Successful applicants will gain access to remove’s network of experts and international buyers, and could be eligible for additional funding.

“We have now found the model that works,” said Marian Krueger, remove’s co-founder. “We believe this is a global problem and there is tremendous potential in other geographies beyond Europe.”

CDR refers to a wide range of interventions that sequester CO2 that has already been emitted. It includes reforestation and filters that extract carbon directly from the air.

Indian projects are expected to focus on biochar – charcoal produced from burning organic matter – as well as “enhanced weathering”, where materials like basalt are spread across land to absorb CO2.

Around 7-9 billion metric tons of CO2 need to be removed annually to keep temperature rises below the key 1.5 degree Celsius threshold, up from 2 billion tons currently, researchers have said.

The value of the CDR market could rise from $2.27 billion in 2023 to around $100 billion by 2030 if barriers to growth are addressed, a consultancy also said last month.

CDR projects are more expensive than conventional CO2 reduction, and their viability will depend on carbon markets. Demand for CDR credits is currently limited to a few dozen mainly philanthropic buyers on the voluntary market, including the U.S. federal government, Microsoft and Google.

“We all know we will need carbon removal down the line – the pot of gold at the end is very big, but right now … it really is a matter of survival until we finally hit the point where the market finally materialises,” said Krueger.

The European Union is currently exploring options to include CDR credits in its emissions trading system.

“We are going to need this to become far more mainstream than it currently is,” said Steve Smith, a CDR expert at Oxford University.

“I think that is going to have to involve governments stepping in to create the conditions for it to become mainstream.”

A model of Chinese Mars rover Zhurong, part of China’s Tianwen-1 space mission, is seen displayed at the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, or Airshow China, in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, China September 28, 2021.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Scientists have identified a super resilient desert moss species in China’s western region of Xinjiang that could help sustain possible colonies on Mars, a study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences showed.

When subjected to conditions that simulate the environment on Mars, the moss – Syntrichia Caninervis – was found to be able to withstand extreme dryness, ultra-low temperatures and radiation, the academy said in a research paper published in The Innovation journal last week.

The moss could serve as the “basis for the establishment and maintenance of the ecosystem by contributing to oxygen production, carbon sequestration, and soil fertility”, the researched said in the study, published on July 1.

“(It) can help drive the atmospheric, geological, and ecological processes required for other higher plants and animals while facilitating the creation of new habitable environments conducive to long-term human settlement,” the paper added.

In the research, scientists found that even after losing more than 98% of its cellular water content, the moss was able to recover photosynthetic and physiological activities within seconds after it was hydrated.

When intact, the plant can also tolerate ultra-low temperatures and regenerate after being stored in a freezer at minus 80 degree Celsius (minus 112 Fahrenheit) for five years or in liquid nitrogen for a month.

The moss is found in Xinjiang, Tibet, a Californian desert, the Middle East and polar regions.

The race to place a larger footprint in space has spurred China and the United States to launch exploration plans in recent years.

Chinese missions include launching near-Earth asteroid probe Tianwen-2 next year, and Tianwen-3 around 2030 to bring samples back from Mars. China last month retrieved samples from the far side of the moon.

In the United States, NASA has formulated a 20-year plan for Mars, seeking answers to whether the red planet is habitable for humans.

An artist’s concept of the planet HD 189733 b located 64 light-years from Earth.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The planet known as HD 189733b, discovered in 2005, already had a reputation as a rather extreme place, a scorching hot gas giant a bit larger than Jupiter that is a striking cobalt blue colour and has molten glass rain that blows sideways in its fierce atmospheric winds. So how can you top that?

Add hydrogen sulfide, the chemical compound behind the stench of rotten eggs. Researchers said on Monday new data from the James Webb Space Telescope is giving a fuller picture of HD 189733b, already among the most thoroughly studied exoplanets, as planets beyond our solar system are called. A trace amount of hydrogen sulfide was detected in its atmosphere, a first for any exoplanet.

“Yes, the stinky smell would certainly add to its already infamous reputation. This is not a planet we humans want to visit, but a valuable target for furthering our understanding of planetary science,” said astrophysicist Guangwei Fu of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

It is a type called a “hot Jupiter” – gas giants similar to the largest planet in our solar system, only much hotter owing to their close proximity to their host stars. This planet orbits 170 times closer to its host star than Jupiter does to the sun. It completes one orbit every two days as opposed to the 12 years Jupiter takes for one orbit of the sun.

In fact, its orbit is 13 times nearer to its host star than our innermost planet Mercury is to the sun, leaving the temperature on the side of the planet facing the star at about 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (930 degrees Celsius).

“They are quite rare,” Fu said of hot Jupiters. “About less than one in 100 star systems have them.”

This planet is located 64 light-years from Earth, considered in our neighbourhood within the Milky Way galaxy, in the constellation Vulpecula. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

“The close distance makes it bright and easy for detailed studies. For example, the hydrogen sulfide detection reported here would be much more challenging to make on other faraway planets,” Fu said.

The star it orbits is smaller and cooler than the sun, and only about a third as luminous. That star is part of a binary system, meaning it is gravitationally bound to another star.

Webb, which became operational in 2022, observes a wider wavelength range than earlier space telescopes, allowing for more thorough examinations of exoplanet atmospheres.

“Our research finds that HD 189733b is more similar to Jupiter than previously known,” Arizona State University astrophysicist and study co-author Luis Welbanks said. “This planet is very much like Jupiter, but just hotter.”

Jupiter, too, has trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide in its atmosphere. This planet is about 10% larger than Jupiter in diameter and mass.

In addition to detecting hydrogen sulfide, a sulfur-containing molecule, Webb observations showed that this planet has water and carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, as earlier data also indicated.

“With these three molecules, we are able to count the amount of oxygen, carbon and sulfur the planet has, giving us an opportunity to understand how the planet may have formed and whether it is different or not to the planets in our solar system,” Welbanks said.

The Webb observations also ruled out the presence of methane in the planet’s atmosphere.

“Understanding the composition of this and other exoplanets allows us to understand how unique our own solar system is and helps us place our existence in context,” Welbanks added.

“While we are not searching for life on HD 189733b – it is too hot, made up mostly of hydrogen and helium, it’s not like Earth, et cetera – understanding its atmosphere allows us to understand how physics and chemistry behave under different environments and to begin to put together the ‘recipe’ for forming planets.”

Image for Representation.
| Photo Credit: AP

A large clinical trial in South Africa and Uganda has shown that a twice-yearly injection of a new pre-exposure prophylaxis drug gives young women total protection from HIV infection.

The trial tested whether the six-month injection of lenacapavir would provide better protection against HIV infection than two other drugs, both daily pills. All three medications are pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) drugs.

Physician-scientist Linda-Gail Bekker, principal investigator for the South African part of the study, tells Nadine Dreyer what makes this breakthough so significant and what to expect next.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.