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Boston Globe
07-05-2025
- Science
- Boston Globe
They're baaack! After 17 years underground, Brood XIV cicadas are suddenly emerging.
Advertisement Since I'm not an entomologist, I reached out to Christine Simon, a senior research scientist at the University of Connecticut's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, to help me understand these interesting bugs. She's been studying Magicicada, aka periodical cicadas, since 1974, and this will be her fourth time studying the emergence of this brood. Part of the order Hemiptera, these unique and sometimes misunderstood insects are part of a large group known as 'true bugs.' While you may refer to things crawling around your house as a bug, true bugs have, among other characteristics, two pairs of wings, and beak-like mouth parts made for sucking fluids from plants or animals. Advertisement Periodical cicadas that emerge every 17 years in about a dozen areas in the US. Gene Kritsky Also unlike other insects, all true bugs must go through what is called 'incomplete metamorphosis,' which means they hatch as nymphs from their egg on tree branches. Think of a nymph as a miniature version of the adult bug, a sort of 'mini-me.' True bugs include cicadas, grasshoppers, stink bugs, and bed bugs, to name a few. Mosquitoes may bug you, but they are not true bugs. The second largest group of periodic cicadas in the US, Brood XIV will really start to emerge the third week of May. They can emerge in the thousands, but these are not some biblical plague of locusts, despite all of the misinformation out there. As they head into the trees, they won't be swarming because they actually don't move very far from where they emerge. 'Honeybees swarm. These just happen to be in large numbers,' said Gene Kritsky, an author of cicada books and professor emeritus in biology at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati. 'They generally come out in the evening just after dark,' said Simon. 'The emergence can take place every night for a week, with males more common at the beginning of the week and females more common near the end of the week. If it's cold and rainy that week, the emergence can be drawn out.' Cicadas of Brood XIV from a previous year. Gene Kritsky A couple of other things about these bugs you should know: They are not menacing. They don't sting or bite humans. If you look at their bulging red eyes, they're actually kind of cute. They also are not dangerous to plants and trees. After they emerge, they will lay their eggs in trees, and there can be some minor damage, like any other insect does to foliage during the summer. The cicadas die three to four weeks later. Advertisement For those of you in areas where these cicadas are emerging, this is an opportunity to be a citizen scientist and provide valuable information to researchers. According to Simon, this year there will be various people out mapping throughout the range of Brood XIV. Kritsky developed the Observations and the study of the periodic cicada have a lengthy history. Kritsky said the Brood XIV cicadas were documented as far as back as 1770 in Cape Cod and in 1634 in Plymouth. In 1834, Gideon B. Smith is, according to the University of Maryland, credited with identifying the cycle of the 17-year cicada or brood, the very one emerging this year! He reportedly studied cicadas from 1817 until he died in 1867. He was friends with John James Audubon, the American ornithologist.. One of the images that I couldn't help get out of my head was the fact that, like the entire insect population of the world, these guys are under pressure, especially from humans. Seventeen years ago, these Magicicada cicadas hatched from eggs in trees and made their way down into the ground where they spent all these years maturing. One of the problems is that parking lots and buildings have replaced some of these trees and smothered the insects alive. I just couldn't help feeling bad for these little creatures. Advertisement Finally, if you are wondering how climate change might be affecting these periodical bugs, the answers are still a bit unclear. One hypothesis is that a warming climate can cause the various broods to emerge ahead of schedule due to a longer growing season, more feeding time in the ground, and a faster move through the various underground stages. What we do know is that after the cicadas have mated and laid their eggs, the next generation of Brood XIV is scheduled to emerge in 2042. Where might we all be when that happens?
Boston Globe
30-04-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
How Trump upended New England science and health research in 100 days
'I do think science will shrink,' said Brandon Ogbunu, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, during a Globe-hosted panel discussion last week. 'It's going to shrink substantially.' Advertisement Ogbunu tempered his remarks with a note of hope, saying pressuring a system can reveal where its weak points are. 'What that does, hopefully, is it allows us to think carefully about what this system is, the way it's engineered, and hopefully how to do it better,' he said. Related : Advertisement The federal cuts have an outsized impact in New England, with Massachusetts alone accounting for nearly 3 percent of targeted National Institutes of Health funding, according to a Globe analysis of terminated grants compiled by Scott Delaney, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Noam Ross of rOpenSci, a statistical analysis firm for the sciences. The size of the reductions themselves is unclear from the data, but in Massachusetts, the administration targeted NIH grants that collectively were valued at more than $100 million, and grants from the National Science Foundation worth $17.6 million. In some cases, while the Trump administration terminated only portions of these grants, it effectively brought entire projects to a premature halt, wasting money and years of work. The state ranked eighth in the number of NIH grants terminated and fourth in NSF grants lost — behind California, New York, and Texas. And those numbers don't include the Elsewhere in New England, the NIH canceled a portion of a grant to Maine worth almost $40 million — one of the largest grants affected nationwide. Dr. Clifford Rosen, a Tufts University professor who is a leader of the project through the MaineHealth hospital system, said his team will lose $1.4 million that supports research by young scientists into health issues in rural communities. 'We're just stunned by this,' Rosen said. 'This is really counter to what we're hearing from NIH, that the new leadership wants young investigators. That's the core of what we do.' Advertisement Rosen suspected the program was targeted because it had previously supported research into vaccine hesitancy. NIH cuts targeted grants worth more than $44 million to Connecticut, and almost $10 million to Rhode Island. New Hampshire also recorded multiple terminations, though the size of the affected grants is smaller. Among the avalanche of terminations are National Science Foundation grants to study misinformation. The foundation, announced that such research 'could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights' of Americans. But Mary Feeney, who until recently, directed the She noted there is no substitute for the collaboration among university researchers that federal funding engenders. 'It creates interdisciplinary and collaborative teams across the country, which creates more value for multiple states, multiple universities, multiple communities, people working in different places,' she said. 'It has more impact.' Experts also said private donors usually don't have enough money, and corporate sponsors don't have the incentive, to support long-term research. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, both part of HHS, said they would claw back about $11 billion in unspent public health funding nationally. Some of that money is still flowing, for now, to states that obtained a Advertisement The CDC grants originated as COVID-19-related funds but now support a range of public health initiatives. One with $2.2 million outstanding supports waste water monitoring in more than 30 Massachusetts communities conducted by Cambridge's Biobot Analytics, said Newsha Ghaeli, the company's president. Waste water testing gained prominence during the pandemic, and has since been used to track a variety of illnesses. 'We're currently using it to monitor for avian influenza as well as seasonal influenza. We use it to track measles,' Ghaeli said. 'This can be used for so many different applications beyond just COVID or respiratory diseases.' New Hampshire is particularly vulnerable to the public health cuts, said Karen Liot Hill, the sole Democrat on New Hampshire's executive council, which oversees some state functions. It has no income tax or sales tax and a powerful libertarian force in state government. 'We just have very, very limited resources,' she said. Liot Hill said New Hampshire has since paused programs related to community health, mental health care, public health labs, and immunizations. New Hampshire kindergartners have the The US Department of Health and Human Services didn't respond to a request for comment, though spokespeople for the department have previously said the changes are part of a Advertisement Delaney, the Harvard epidemiologist, began tracking NIH grant terminations in March to monitor and potentially oppose the government's actions. The terminations started with research focused on transgender health, then moved on to studies involving the LGBTQ community more broadly, DEI-related efforts, HIV prevention, vaccine hesitancy, and misinformation. What's surprised him is how inconsistent cuts seem to be. 'We've never figured out why one grant instead of another grant,' Delaney said. 'If you're a researcher and you want to do what the government is asking so your grant doesn't get canceled, it's impossible to do. It's very chaotic.' Mohammad Jalali, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, was surprised to learn the Food and Drug Administration terminated a two-year, $1 million research contract he oversaw at Massachusetts General Hospital. He thought his work, computer modeling to determine how factors such as treatment access, policy interventions, and drug supplies influence overdose rates, aligned with the administration's goals of taking ' was needed to address drug use. 'This feels more like the unintended consequences of a rushed process,' Jalali said. 'What just happened is a big, big waste of taxpayer money.' Dr. Michael Paasche-Orlow, a Tufts Medical Center researcher, expected to finish an interactive app to provide young people and their parents with accurate information about the vaccine for human papillomavirus, a common sexually transmitted infection associated with six kinds of cancer. He is driven, he said, by the real possibility widespread vaccination could virtually eliminate illnesses such as cervical cancer in the United States. Then he learned on April 1 that almost half of a $2 million NIH grant was terminated. Advertisement 'Science is really quite a fragile ecosystem, it can't just be turned on again,' Paasche-Orlow said. 'I'm afraid that some things are being broken right now that will take time to fix, to rebuild.' Jason Laughlin can be reached at
Forbes
19-04-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Alien Life On Saturn's Moon Titan May Fit Into A Small Dog, Study Says
Is there life on Saturn's giant moon, Titan? getty Is there life on Saturn's giant moon, Titan? The only world in the solar system other than Earth with weather and liquid on its surface, Titan has long been on a shortlist of places that could host some life. With NASA's exciting Dragonfly mission — which will see a drone-like craft tour of Titan — due to launch in July 2028, a new study has been published that attempts to paint a realistic picture of what it can expect. NASA's Cassini spacecraft discovered an underground ocean of water and ammonia on Titan in 2008. Although other icy moons in the solar system — notably Saturn and Jupiter — have oceans beneath their ice caps that could theoretically host life, Titan has something different. "In our study, we focus on what makes Titan unique compared to other icy moons: its plentiful organic content," said Antonin Affholder, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Arizona's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. As well as a nitrogen-rich atmosphere, rain, lakes and oceans of liquid methane, shorelines, valleys, mountain ridges, icy boulders, mesas and dunes, Titan also hosts weird prebiotic chemistry that could be the building blocks of life itself. On Titan's surface are complex organic compounds formed from methane and nitrogen in the moon's atmosphere. That could mean food — and life. Or maybe not. Titan could harbor simple, microscopic life, according to the study, published this month in The Planetary Science Journal. However, at best, it's likely only a few pounds of biomass overall. That's because the underground ocean on Titan — where life is most likely to exist — is over 300 miles deep and doesn't interact much with the surface, where the organic compounds are. "There has been this sense that because Titan has such abundant organics, there is no shortage of food sources that could sustain life," said Affholder. "Not all of these organic molecules may constitute food sources, the ocean is really big, and there's limited exchange between the ocean and the surface, where all those organics are." However, that doesn't mean that life doesn't exist — it just changes the likely mechanism. The researchers think that fermentation is the most likely scenario for life on Titan. Familiar on Earth as the process of producing bread, wine, beer and kimchi, the breakdown of a substance, fermentation needs only organic molecules but no "oxidant" such as oxygen. That's entirely different from respiration, a chemical reaction found in every cell in living things on Earth, from plants to animals. Like on Earth could have first emerged as feeding on organic molecules left over from Earth's formation, said Affholder, adding that fermentation "does not require us to open any door into unknown or speculative mechanisms that may or may not have happened on Titan." In their research, Affholder and colleagues focused on one organic molecule, glycine, that could synthesize in Titan's atmosphere, accumulate on its surface and make its way into Titan's subsurface ocean. Could microbes in that ocean feed off glycine? It wasn't an accidental choice — glycine exists in comets, asteroids, and gas clouds from which stars and planets are formed. It was abundant in the primordial solar system. However, the team's computer simulations revealed that only a small amount of glycine would reach the ocean. "This supply may only be sufficient to sustain a very small population of microbes weighing a total of only a few kilograms at most — equivalent to the mass of a small dog," said Affholder. "Such a tiny biosphere would average less than one cell per liter of water over Titan's entire vast ocean." NASA's Dragonfly mission is set to reach Titan in 2034 and will last for two years. During the mission, a rotorcraft will fly to a new location every Titan day (16 Earth days) to take samples of the organic compounds on its surface, search for chemical biosignatures and investigate the moon's active methane cycle. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Alien life could exist on Saturn's big moon Titan — but finding it will be tough
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. With rivers, lakes and even seas made of liquid methane and ethane, plus a hidden underground ocean of water, Saturn's moon Titan has long fascinated scientists as a place where alien life might exist. A new study backs up that idea — but with a twist. Yes, alien life could be there, researchers say, but probably not in the abundance we once hoped. "We focus on what makes Titan unique when compared to other icy moons: its plentiful organic content," study co-lead author Antonin Affholder, a postdoctoral research associate in the University of Arizona's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said in a statement. "There has been this sense that because Titan has such abundant organics, there is no shortage of food sources that could sustain life." NASA's Cassini mission flew past Titan over 100 times, and in 2005, the European ride-along probe Huygens landed on its surface. On its way down, Huygens collected valuable data on Titan's dense atmosphere, finding a host of photochemical reactions — light-driven chemical reactions that shape the moon's chemical environment and could play a role in making it potentially habitable. This is because such reactions can create complex organic molecules, including some that could be the building blocks for life. Related: Titan: Facts about Saturn's largest moon The idea is that these organic molecules eventually settle on Titan's surface and, through a mix of material exchange and possible geochemical processes, find their way down into the moon's hidden ocean — potentially making the dark waters below a habitable environment. But "potentially" is a key word here, according to the new study. "We point out that not all of these organic molecules may constitute food sources, the ocean is really big, and there's limited exchange between the ocean and the surface, where all those organics are, so we argue for a more nuanced approach," said Affholder. Using bioenergetic modeling — a method that uses mathematical simulations to quantify the energy needed to make and break chemical bonds in a biological system — the team attempted to identify a plausible scenario in which life could emerge on Titan. They landed on a simple and familiar process: fermentation. "Fermentation probably evolved early in the history of Earth's life and does not require us to open any door into unknown or speculative mechanisms that may or may not have happened on Titan," Affholder said. Fermentation is a simple metabolic process in which microorganisms, such as bacteria, break down organic molecules like sugars or carbohydrates into simpler compounds. The key part? It all happens without oxygen, which makes it especially relevant for a world like Titan, where oxygen is scarce or absent. "We asked, could similar microbes exist on Titan?" Affholder said. "If so, what potential does Titan's subsurface ocean have for a biosphere feeding off of the seemingly vast inventory of abiotic organic molecules synthesized in Titan's atmosphere, accumulating at its surface and present in the core?" Related stories: — Titan: Facts about Saturn's largest moon — The search for alien life — Largest sea on Saturn's mysterious moon Titan could be more than 1,000 feet deep Using the simplest of all known amino acids — glycine, which is relatively abundant throughout the solar system — the team's simulations found that conditions on Titan could, in theory, support microbial life through fermentation. However, only a tiny portion of Titan's organic material might actually reach the ocean, depending on how much glycine makes its way down from the surface. "This supply may only be sufficient to sustain a very small population of microbes weighing a total of only a few kilograms at most — equivalent to the mass of a small dog," Affholder said. "Such a tiny biosphere would average less than one cell per liter of water over Titan's entire vast ocean," he added. "We conclude that Titan's uniquely rich organic inventory may not in fact be available to play the role in the moon's habitability to the extent one might intuitively think." That means that, if life does exist on Titan, it could be extremely sparse, making it especially challenging for future missions to detect — like trying to find a needle in a haystack, the team concludes. The new study was published April 7 in The Planetary Science Journal.
