Scientists reveal unique role canine workers have in saving crucial species: 'Like we've never had before'
Bumblebees are important pollinators, supporting many of the region's native plants, which can't reproduce without pollination. However, as the world gets hotter and insecticide use pollutes the environment, these adorable insects are under threat. Their declining populations are a source of worry for many who care about the environment.
To help bumblebees, conservationists have to find them. There are many ways for the average person to help, but humans aren't good at finding bumblebee nests, which are hidden underground. To do that, researchers use dogs.
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Specifically, they use Jane and Gerty, two German shorthaired pointers trained by ecologist Jacqueline Staab.
"I wanted to help fill in these knowledge gaps about nesting and overwintering," Staab told the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. "I jumped at the opportunity and decided to make training and deploying detection (canines) to conserve and research bees my masters project, and, ultimately, my career and life's mission."
Staab started her program, Darwin's Bee Dogs, in North Carolina in 2019 when she began training her first bee dog, Darwin. While Darwin has since died, Jane and Gerty have taken over the task of sniffing for bees.
The TPWD has recruited Staab and her dogs for its Pollinators & Prairies program, which is designed to conserve the state's native prairie ecosystems. Finding bumblebee nests is the first step in studying and protecting them as part of the program.
The TPWD told the San Antonio Express-News that this collaboration will help count the populations "of several pollinator species of greatest conservation need in Texas to inform conservation planning efforts." These include American bumblebees and rare variable cuckoo bumblebees.
"These dogs give us and other collaborating scientists access to wild nests like we've never had before, allowing us to conduct groundbreaking research on these imperiled pollinators," Staab told the TPWD.
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Scientific American
2 hours ago
- Scientific American
's First Issue, the Solar System Grew by a Planet
In astronomy, 180 years is a very long time—maybe not for the goings-on in the universe but certainly for our understanding of it. When Scientific American published its very first issue 180 years ago this month, our view of the cosmos was substantively different. We had no idea of the scale of the universe or even if anything existed outside our Milky Way galaxy. We didn't know how stars were born, what powered them or where comets came from—or that supernovae were even a thing. Closer to home, astronomers were wildly guessing about how our solar system formed and how Earth's moon came to exist. Heck, we didn't even know how many planets were in the solar system! On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. To be fair, we still don't. But our understanding of our sun's family was still pretty sketchy in August 1845, and it was scarcely a year later that our solar system would grow by an entire planet. For all of antiquity, Saturn was the most distant planet known to humanity. It wasn't until 1781 that German-British astronomer William Herschel reported seeing a slowly moving 'comet' in the constellation Taurus as he scanned the skies with his telescope. It took two years before orbital calculations showed it was not a comet at all but instead a giant planet orbiting the sun beyond Saturn. Uranus, the first new planet ever discovered, was found by accident. Over the ensuing decades, though, astronomers saw that Uranus was misbehaving. Using the mathematical equations governing gravity and orbits, they calculated the shape of Uranus's orbit and used that to predict where the planet should be in the sky. Observations indicated that the actual position of Uranus significantly deviated from what was predicted, however. Sometimes it 'pulled ahead' of the calculated location, and sometimes it lagged behind. Many astronomers wondered these anomalies were caused by another planet lurking unseen beyond Uranus, which itself was, at best, barely visible to the naked eye; a planet farther out would be much dimmer and could have easily escaped detection. But where was it? The sky is huge when you're trying to search for a dim point of light over thousands of square degrees; remember, back then, skywatchers only had their telescopes and eyes. No cameras or detectors were available. Searching for a faint, distant world was like looking for a planetary needle in a cosmic haystack. The mathematics of orbital mechanics offered a shortcut, though. If you assumed a given orbit for the planet, then its position over time could be roughly calculated by its effect on Uranus. This sort of 'X marks the spot' calculation can be done in moments on today's computers, but in the mid-19th century it was done by hand, and the word 'tedious' hardly describes the scope of the work. Still, in the 1840s, independently of each other, two men attempted exactly this. John Couch Adams, a British mathematician and astronomer at the University of Cambridge, worked on the calculations in his spare time starting in 1843. He reported his findings to James Challis, director of the Cambridge Observatory at the time, and to England's Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy, both of whom treated it chiefly as an interesting bit of math rather than a guide for finding a potential planet. In their defense, however, Adams's calculations were incomplete and not yet suitable to be put into action. At the same time, French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier was also working on calculating the presumptive planet's position. He announced his results at a public meeting of the French Academy of Sciences on June 1, 1846. I'll note that Le Verrier only disclosed his calculated locations for the planet on the sky, not his estimates for its mass or orbit. Still, this was enough to cause a minor panic across the Channel when Le Verrier's news reached Cambridge, with Airy realizing the similarity to what Adams was working on. Because discovering the first new planet in 65 years was a matter of great scientific and national pride, Challis went to the telescope and began an urgent, earnest search. Like the calculations themselves, this was a tedious undertaking that involved scanning the sky and comparing what was seen with hand-drawn, not entirely accurate star maps. Making matters even worse, Adams had been working on new solutions to the planet's location and his calculations were flawed, so Challis was looking in the wrong part of the sky. On August 31, 1846, Le Verrier made another presentation to the academy, this time also reporting the putative new world's calculated mass and orbit. Three weeks later, assistant astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle at the Berlin Observatory read of Le Verrier's work. Assisted by a student named Heinrich Louis d'Arrest, Galle took to the observatory's 24-centimeter telescope on the evening of September 23 to look for the planet. Using better star maps than the British had, they sighted the world in the early morning hours of September 24, less than a degree from the position Le Verrier had predicted. As the story is told, Galle read off the coordinates of stars he saw through the eyepiece, and at one point d'Arrest excitedly shouted, 'That star is not on the map!' Thus, Neptune was discovered. Le Verrier is credited for the discovery work, though Adams, upon insistence from the British at the time, is generally also given co-credit. This is controversial because it's not clear just how accurate Adams's results were— see the article 'The Case of the Pilfered Planet,' by science historians William Sheehan, Nicholas Kollerstrom and Craig B. Waff, in the December 2004 issue of Scientific American for details. Still, while Uranus was found by chance, Neptune was found by math (with a helping hand from happenstance). Ironically, that night in September 1846 was not the first time it had ever been observed. Galileo took copious notes when, centuries earlier, he first turned his crude telescope to the sky; we now know he saw Neptune in 1612 and 1613 but mistook it for a star. (Too bad; had he figured it out, he would've been famous.) Neptune had been spotted many other times before as well but passed over for the same reasons. In a very cruel irony, records reveal that Challis himself saw Neptune twice in August 1846 but failed to notice its true nature. I've observed Neptune many times through my own small telescope; it's a wan aqua dot, barely discernable from a faint background star. Still, seeing it myself—knowing those photons took many hours to fly across billions of kilometers of space only to fall into my telescope and onto my retina—has been a thrill. Of course, I've had a huge advantage over Galle, with modern star maps and software that have told me exactly where to look, but that has only shone a spotlight on what an achievement the discovery was almost 180 years ago. And what of the 18 decades since? The universe is vastly larger than we then imagined in 1846, and we can now find Neptune-like planets orbiting other stars by the hundreds. We've also discovered thousands more objects orbiting the sun beyond Neptune, including Pluto. It's almost routine. As for Neptune itself, we've observed it with an array of space telescopes and even sent a space probe, Voyager 2, to fly past the enigmatic giant planet, allowing us to see its array of bizarre moons and weather patterns up close. Scientific American has been there along the way, too, with its first issue in August 1845 nearly coinciding with the discovery of the last known major planet of the solar system. Researchers have taken immense steps in unlocking even deeper secrets of the cosmos over the past 180 years, and during that time, this magazine has played a major role in informing the public about their findings. I'm proud to be a part of this long-running adventure.
Vox
3 hours ago
- Vox
The fake news that helped put us on a path to Mars
The richest person in the world is obsessed with creating a city on Mars. Elon Musk would like to see a million people living in a self-sufficient Martian settlement by 2050, both as a plan B for Earth and because it gives us something cool to get excited about. Traveling to Mars has been a recurring theme of spacefaring fantasies for decades, from the German rocket innovator Wernher von Braun to science fiction writers Ray Bradbury and Kim Stanley Robinson. Human exploits on Mars have also been the subject of countless movies, TV shows, and comic books. There are many good reasons to explore Mars. The discovery of water deep below the surface and ice at its poles suggests that the conditions to sustain life may have existed on the Red Planet, and perhaps still do. Studying Mars could teach us about how life emerged on Earth. While rovers have made great strides in uncovering the planet's secrets, human explorers could accelerate the pace of discovery. Living on Mars would bring many challenges for humans, among them cosmic and solar radiation exposure, an asphyxiating atmosphere, lower-than-Earth gravity, extreme temperatures, toxic soil, and no ready supply of food, drinkable water, or breathable air. But our cultural and scientific fascination with Mars lives on. And if Musk's SpaceX or a competitor lands humans on Mars in the coming years, it will be the realization of an ancient dream. To think that it all started with an optical illusion that tricked some astronomers into believing that Mars was riven with canals flanked with vegetation and carved by wise, peace-loving extraterrestrials. Today, Explained co-host Sean Ramewaram spoke with David Baron, author of The Martians: The True Story of An Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America, about the belief in intelligent Martian life and the fixation on Mars that has gripped generations of scientists, science fiction writers, and tech billionaires. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. Why do we all care about Mars? As a culture, Mars has seeped into our collective psyche. There's this sense of mystery and romance. A little more than a century ago, the public believed that Mars was inhabited by intelligent beings. Before Martians were staples of science fiction, they were believed to be a scientific fact. You could open the New York Times in 1906 and read in all seriousness about the civilization on Mars, what the Martians might be like, how we might communicate with them, and what we might learn from them. In 1907, the Wall Street Journal said the biggest news of the year was proof of intelligent life on Mars. Where did the fact that there were Martians come from? It all started in 1877. In the 19th century, all we knew about Mars was what we could see through earthbound telescopes. But in 1877, when Mars came especially close to Earth, an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Schiaparelli decided he was going to make a detailed map of Mars. And so, night after night, he studied the planet and saw what he thought were oceans and continents. But he also saw this network of thin, exceptionally straight lines that he imagined were waterways. He called them 'canali,' which in Italian means channels, but when it was translated into English, it was mistranslated as canals. And so, as soon as 1877, people were joking about these canals on Mars and wondering what they were, but people didn't think they were artificially constructed. In 1894, Percival Lowell, an American astronomer, came along and said, yes, these were irrigation canals that Martians were using to survive on a planet that was running out of water. All of Mars's moisture was locked up in the polar ice caps at the north and south poles, and for the Martians to survive, they had created this global network of irrigation canals. That's what these lines supposedly were. They would come and go with the seasons. They tended to appear in the spring and summer, and they would fade in the fall and winter. Lowell theorized that vegetation along the irrigation canals would appear in the spring and summer, and fade in the fall and winter when the leaves presumably died off. This was also a time when people were looking for hope in outer space. In the late 19th century, at least in the West, there were a lot of reasons for despair. There was anarchism in Europe. There were heads of state being assassinated. President William McKinley was assassinated in the United States early in the 20th century. There was a feeling that society was running down. There were wars, including the Spanish-American War in the late 19th century. The idea was that the Martians were these advanced beings who were what we hopefully would become in the future. The fact that they had this global network of irrigation canals meant that they had pulled together as a planet and evolved beyond war and divisive politics. Because it looked like they were cooperating across a planet. Exactly. So there was a real desire to believe in the Martians. Was there anyone out there saying, 'Guys, just because we see some canals, it doesn't mean there are Martians'? Absolutely. In fact, the astronomical community divided into the canalists and the anti-canalists. Lowell was a self-made astronomer. He was an extraordinarily wealthy and articulate human being from a very prominent family in Massachusetts. And so he was able to write articles for the Atlantic Monthly promoting his ideas. He was out there giving lectures about the Martians. And so he was able to convince the public, even if there were a lot of astronomers he couldn't convince. When was peak obsession with Mars in this era? That was 1908 and 1909. By 1908, the idea was so widespread, you had pastors in church sermonizing about the Martians and expressing to their congregations that we should emulate the Martians and look to our neighboring planet for the kind of society that we should be. Alexander Graham Bell, who of course invented the telephone, was convinced that the Martians were real. He saw no question that Mars was inhabited by intelligent beings. Nikola Tesla, a great inventor who came up with our modern system of generating and distributing electrical power, was convinced that he picked up radio signals from Mars. And when he announced that to the world at the beginning of 1901, it set off an absolute craze. Martians invaded popular culture. They showed up on the vaudeville and Broadway stages. There was a popular show called 'A Yankee Circus on Mars.' You had a Martian that became a comic character in the newspapers. They showed up in Tin Pan Alley songs. In fact, I have an original wax cylinder recording of a song called 'A Signal From Mars' from back then. The Martians were just everywhere in popular culture. How did it fall apart? Astronomers by the 1910s had pretty well convinced themselves that this whole canal theory was bunk. But the idea had so taken hold in the brains of the public that the idea of canals on Mars persisted until the 1950s and 60s. In 1938, there was the famous 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast by Orson Welles. And there were people who actually believed, listening to the radio, that the Martians were invading. I actually found a letter to Orson Welles that was written by one of those listeners who was fooled, who was angry about it. And what she wrote was, well, haven't astronomers found canals on Mars? Don't we know that there are Martians there? The idea persisted well into the 1960s when NASA sent its first Mariner spacecraft flying by Mars to take the first close-up pictures of the surface. And there was not only no sign of a civilization, there was no sign of straight lines. It just looked like a dead world. Thinking back to what you said earlier, when people were first enchanted by this idea of Martians in the early 20th century, it was this idea that we could all work together that really captured imaginations. And it's still a nice idea. Do you think there's still a chance that we could get together as a human race to unite in an effort to get to Mars? It doesn't look that likely. I think what will inspire the United States to get to Mars more than anything is competition, because the Chinese want to get there. But there is still this dream of Mars as this techno-utopia that will be better than Earth, that will be more egalitarian, where we can start over again. I think there are two lessons from the Mars craze. On the one hand, it's a cautionary tale. We tend to project onto Mars what we hope is there, not what's really there. A hundred years ago, we believed in Martians because we wanted to believe that there was a better world next door. Today, I think a lot of the talk about Mars is that we're going to create this utopia next door. That's going to be so difficult: technically difficult, and, as you said, getting humans together to make this possible, Lord knows if that's ever going to happen.
Medscape
a day ago
- Medscape
Simple, Noninvasive Eye Tracking May Flag Cognitive Decline
Naturalistic gaze patterns appear to be a simple, noninvasive, and reliable indicator of cognitive decline, new research suggested. Investigators found that gaze patterns during image viewing mirrored memory performance and distinguished healthy adults from those at risk for, or with, cognitive impairment. 'We are still in the early stages of establishing eye tracking as a marker of memory and cognitive status,' lead investigator Jordana S. Wynn, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, told Medscape Medical News . Although larger, more diverse, and longitudinal research validation is warranted, 'this work lays important groundwork by demonstrating that naturalistic eye movement patterns are meaningfully related to memory function,' she added. The study was published online on August 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Novel Research Because the fovea — a small, cone-dense region at the center of the retina — captures high-resolution detail only in the center of the visual field, the eyes must constantly move to sample the full environment. These movements provide a precise, noninvasive measure of how visual information is encoded and retrieved from memory. While prior research has linked certain gaze metrics to memory decline, it remains unclear how multivariate gaze patterns — considering multiple eye movement features together — relate to memory function. For the study, which researchers note is the first work to analyze how eye movements differ across a range of brain health and memory function levels, Wynn and colleagues assessed 106 individuals across five groups — young adults, healthy older adults, individuals at risk for significant cognitive decline, those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and those with amnesia. They hypothesized that changes in gaze patterns would correspond in a linear fashion to cognitive function from the healthiest participants to those with amnesia. The study included two experiments. In the first, participants viewed a series of 120 distinct images, each for 5 seconds, to assess 'idiosyncratic gaze similarity,' or the uniqueness of their viewing patterns. As expected, memory function declined across groups — from young adults to healthy older adults, then to the at-risk group, followed by individuals with MCI and those with amnesia, showing a 'meaningful linear relationship.' In the second experiment, investigators used the same set of images, presenting 60 images once and another 60 three times for 5 seconds each to measure 'repetitive gaze similarity.' This approach revealed whether participants consistently encoded the same image features each time on repeat viewings or if they updated their memory with different features, indicating stronger or more flexible memory encoding. The researchers found that the healthy young adult group encoded unique image features with each image presentation. In contrast, participants with decreased memory and/or hippocampal/medial temporal function tended to focus on the same features each time they saw the same image. These results confirm that memory decline is associated with reduced visual exploration, less effective updating of encoded representations over repeated exposures, and lower differentiation of the images. Exciting, but Not Surprising Wynn said she was not particularly surprised by the study findings. 'Our previous work in healthy populations provided evidence that the brain and cognitive systems supporting eye movements and memory are closely linked. In past experimental work, we found that certain gaze patterns were predictive of memory performance,' she said. Therefore, Wynn and colleagues postulated that memory decline from aging, disease, or injury would yield similar changes in eye movements. 'That our prediction was confirmed was certainly exciting, but not surprising,' she added. The investigators concluded that the results provide 'compelling evidence that naturalistic gaze patterns can serve as a sensitive marker of cognitive decline.' This research lays a foundation for future work using multivariate gaze metrics to diagnose and track memory and/or hippocampal/medial temporal lobe function, they added. It's too early to determine whether naturalistic eye movements could become a first-line screening tool for cognitive decline, Wynn said. 'The value of eye tracking compared to standard neuropsychological tests is that it is noninvasive, cost-effective, and perhaps most importantly, universal,' she noted. Nearly anyone — regardless of age, ability, or language — can view pictures on a screen, so creating a screening tool that doesn't rely on written or verbal responses would be particularly practical, Wynn said. It is still too early to know whether naturalistic eye movements could serve as a first-line screening tool for cognitive decline. Wynn noted that eye tracking is noninvasive, cost-effective, and broadly accessible — anyone, regardless of age, ability, or language, can view images on a screen. With further refinement, she said, these measures could provide a high-resolution way to monitor memory and brain function in clinical settings. Novel Insights Commenting on the research for Medscape Medical News , Mariam Aly, PhD, acting associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, said the study 'yields novel insights into how the way people move their eyes can contribute to, and reflect, memory impairments.' 'This elegant study uses sophisticated analyses to provide a comprehensive picture of how eye movement patterns differ across groups that span a continuum of memory abilities.' Importantly, these differences in eye movements were apparent even though participants had no explicit task, added Aly, who was not affiliated with the research. 'This means that assessment of eye movements during natural viewing of images has the potential to be developed into an important tool for detecting memory decline in clinical settings,' she said.
