Table of contents for April 2019 in Discover

We tend to reflect on our sense of place by looking to the recent past. For example, as a kid living out West, I couldn’t escape the story and path of Lewis and Clark — we can picture them navigating the familiar Missouri River valleys and winding over Rocky Mountain passes, establishing the trail for many routes of today. It’s one thing to reach back a couple of centuries, but the mind’s eye has trouble when we’re talking about over 70 million years ago. Whole continents and seas look nothing like our topography now. Arid landscapes hide once-tropical environments. Mountain ranges that tower over us were mere foothills then. In this issue’s cover story, we take you to such a place. Discover Digital Editor Eric Betz accompanied paleontologists as they…

SEVENTY-THOUSAND TONS of liquid argon, trillions of particles moving at nearly the speed of light, an abandoned mine-turned-lab a mile underground, over 1,000 scientists and more than a billion dollars — all to catch what optimistic calculations suggest will be a single particle each day. It’s a staggering amount of effort, but a search for some of the most elusive particles in the universe may just be worth it. The objects in question are neutrinos, often called ghost particles. They’re far more present than the nickname suggests, though. Trillions pass through you every second — you just never notice. They’re so lightweight, their odds of interacting with other particles are enormously slim; it takes extraordinarily sensitive equipment to even detect them. But that evasiveness makes neutrinos a tempting quarry for…

To create this portrait of the North American least shrew, University of Kansas evolutionary biologist W. Leo Smith developed a novel imaging technique that better reveals detail in preserved specimens. Smith discovered that the dye Alizarin, long used by biologists as a staining agent, fluoresces under certain kinds of light, glowing, he says, like a Grateful Dead poster. By staining a specimen’s bones, shining a high-energy blue light and then filtering out everything except the dye’s fluorescence, researchers can examine minute skeletal details without the need for dissection. Smith also helped develop a way to pose the animals in a non-destructive gelatin mixture, allowing for more lifelike arrangements of skeletal and soft tissue — and better photos.…

Although the state flag suggests otherwise, nearly a century has passed since grizzlies roamed California. The last resident bear, reportedly spotted in 1924, was also the last of its subspecies: Ursus arctos californicus. These California grizzlies had reached an estimated population of 10,000 before Europeans arrived and triggered their steady demise. Peter Alagona, an associate professor of history and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is convinced that one day grizzlies can return to California. “Reintroduction is possible,” he says. “Absolutely possible.” In 2016, Alagona formed the California Grizzly Research Network, a multidisciplinary initiative made up of more than two dozen academics ranging from geneticists to historians, to respond, in part, to the public’s growing interest in grizzlies. The group started by asking some practical questions that…

STRETCHED ALONG A RIVER IN THE HEART OF THE NETHERLANDS, THE TOWN OF WAGENINGEN IS NOT POSTCARD-PRETTY. It doesn’t have Amsterdam’s historic canals or Rotterdam’s bold modern architecture. Wageningen’s only claim to fame, in fact, is its university, ranked as the world’s top agricultural research hub. Much of the institution focuses on how to feed humanity in the coming decades, and the work is badly needed: By 2050, Earth, now home to about 7.5 billion people, may have nearly 2 billion more. At the top of research priorities in Wageningen is protein, or rather, how to find more of it — and we’ll need to look beyond meat-based diets. Obtaining 1 pound of animal protein uses about 7.5 pounds of plant proteins, which are consumed by the animal as it…

I can’t stand TV sitcoms and Hollywood movies featuring monkeys and apes. Every time I see a dressed-up simian actor produce one of their silly grins, I cringe. People may think they’re hilarious, but I know their mood is the opposite of happy. It’s hard to get these animals to bare their teeth without scaring them — only punishment and domination can call forth these expressions. Behind the scenes, a trainer is waving his electric cattle prod or leather whip to make clear what will happen if the animals fail to obey. They are terrified. The bared-teeth grin is not to be confused with a wide-open mouth and intense staring eyes. That fierce face, which looks like an intention to bite, acts as a threat. In a grin, the mouth…

Zooniverse.org is the main gateway to the Zooniverse. The homepage provides extensive background about the platform and a full listing of all active and past projects. Through the website, you can contribute to any project — anytime and from anywhere with an internet connection. User registration on the site is free. The site also contains resources that include news, blogs, frequently asked questions, and resources available for use if you’re interested in writing or talking about the Zooniverse platform or any of its projects. But you don’t need a web browser to take part in citizen science. The Zooniverse app, available for both iOS and Android devices, lets you take many of the platform’s projects with you on the go. The app allows you to participate in projects just as…

TABBY’S STAR KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby’s star, is one of the most famous — and most intriguing — stars in our galaxy. The star’s strange behavior was first discovered by volunteers classifying data for the Zooniverse Planet Hunters project. When they couldn’t determine the cause of the star’s sudden and random dips in brightness, they contacted the project’s science team (including Tabetha Boyajian at Louisiana State University, for whom the star is named), and the object has been the subject of scientific speculation ever since. GREEN PEAS “Green pea” galaxies are so named for their compact appearance and greenish color, which arises from ionized oxygen emission. These galaxies were largely discovered by Galaxy Zoo volunteers, who had noted several of these strange-looking objects in the project’s discussion forum…

PRINT FEEDBACK Buggin’ Out (“A New Animal Farm,” July/August 2018) Loved your July/August issue, but one statement has me reeling. In “A New Animal Farm,” Carl Engelking states, “As Earth’s population increases by billions in the coming decades …” Egad! Are we humans really so clueless that we can’t eventually control our own dangerous population growth in order to save this unique planet and avoid eating bugs? Unbelievable and totally scary. Nancy SeftonPoulsbo, Wash. Fast Changes (“Alzheimer’s Under Attack,” December 2018) The suggestion that lifestyle changes can prevent, delay or treat Alzheimer’s is exciting. The sidebar titled “The Bredesen Protocol” provides startling commentary on North American culture and feels the need to prescribe fasting to someone — that’s to say, not eating for certain periods of time. Many of the…

Green-colored strands of Ebola virus swarm a blue Vero cell in this color-enhanced image from a scanning electron microscope. One of the most common mammalian cell lines used in virology research, Vero cells ultimately come from African green monkey kidney cells developed in 1962. Today, international research groups are using the cells to develop a vaccine against the virus. More than 11,000 people with Ebola died during the 2014–2016 outbreak in West Africa; a clinical vaccine trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo, announced in November, is underway.…

THE HUMAN TOUCH When Tony Antonelli was an Apollo-era kid, he wanted to be an astronaut. But not to be the first person on Mars: That person would surely land long before Antonelli grew up. Antonelli did become an astronaut, but he overestimated how fast humans would explore space. He retired from the corps, and NASA still hasn’t put anyone on Mars. Nevertheless, he wants to keep people in the launch recipe. “Robots don’t explore,” he says, “humans explore.” People react in real time, whereas robots require instructions, he says, which results in solid but slow progress. The martian rovers, for instance, have crawled 45 miles in 26 years, never deviating from NASA’s instructions. In contrast, Antonelli recalls Apollo 15’s “seatbelt rock.” Astronauts saw something interesting, asked to check it…

A few months ago, out of curiosity, I took a genetic test to trace my ancestry. The results mostly confirmed what I had already suspected: I was a blend of Eastern European and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. Then came an offer to see a medical analysis of my DNA — an opportunity to learn about the bits of my genome that increase my risk of developing disease. Again, I was curious, but as I started ticking a series of boxes informing me that I could discover something upsetting, I suddenly thought to myself, “You know what? Never mind. I don’t have to know this.” This decision was out of character. I always want to know things, preferably as soon as possible. After a job interview, I constantly refresh my inbox, impatient…

When you put the words Dutch and weed into one sentence, most people do not think of seaweed. The Dutch Weed Burger may change that. The company, founded in 2012, already sells its products in more than 200 restaurants across the Netherlands and neighboring regions. Co-founder Mark Kulsdom dreams big, though. He wants to be in 700 joints soon. I decided to see for myself what the future of protein might look like. I picked a corner table at Bagels & Beans cafe on Wageningen’s main shopping street and placed an order for what was advertised on the menu as a “juicy patty” made with “Royal Kombu, a tasty and healthy winter weed, sustainably cultivated in the Dutch region of Zeeland.” In other words: a type of seaweed that grows…

Many scientific pursuits are now generating streams of data so enormous that just finding the signals in a universe of noise has become challenging. To help close the gap, citizen scientists — millions of them — are lending a hand in an ever-growing number of fields, including astronomy. Read more about Zooniverse, a gateway to research projects that need your help, on the next page. Zooniverse’s efforts include (clockwise from upper left) the Galaxy Zoo, Gravity Spy, Planet Four: Terrains, and Supernova Hunters.…

Space Warps is a search for gravitational lenses — galaxies whose gravity bends the light from distant objects, magnifying it and allowing astronomers to study objects otherwise too distant and too dim to see. The human brain is much better at identifying the strange shapes created by gravitational lenses than any existing computer program, so Space Warps volunteers hunt through images to find gravitational lenses that computer algorithms may have missed. On April 27, 2018, Zooniverse and Science Friday (sciencefriday.com) announced the weeklong Space Warps 1 Million Classification Challenge. Between April 27 and May 4, the site challenged volunteers to provide 1 million classifications on over 70,000 images obtained with the Hyper Suprime-Cam instrument on the 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. Within minutes of the initial announcement, the project had…

Backyard Worlds What lurks in our own backyard? The outer solar system still hides many objects, and Backyard Worlds aims to uncover them in data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission. From the theorized Planet Nine to brown dwarfs and other lowmass stars, you could discover a celestial neighbor we never knew we had. backyardworlds.org Disk Detective The Disk Detective project puts you at the forefront of planet formation studies by asking volunteers to identify young stars surrounded by the dusty, gas-filled debris disks that birth planets, comets, and asteroids. You’ll click through images taken by NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, which has mapped the entire sky at infrared wavelengths — the perfect regime in which to search for young, forming planetary systems. diskdetective.org Galaxy Builder Have you ever wanted…

AS A CELL BIOLOGIST, Sundar Balasubramanian never forgot his rural southern Indian roots, or the traditional practices his uncle, the village healer, exposed him to. Today, as a researcher and assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, Balasubramanian has turned his focus back to those roots — specifically, to pranayama, a deep-breathing relaxation technique. He’s showing that this ancient yoga practice is about more than relaxing — it can change us at the cellular level. Q What made you examine this technique through a cellular biology lens? A In 2005, I noticed while I was practicing pranayama, I was producing so much saliva that I was almost drooling. I wondered why and what the overall impact of that was. This led me and my team to study whether…

ROBOTIC EFFICIENCY The new space race is like the tortoise and the hare, contends Howard McCurdy. “The rabbit decides to take a nap, and the turtle just keeps coming,” says the American University public policy professor and co-author of Robots in Space. At the start of the space race, humans were more capable than robots. They could think, survive and see better. Then those humans developed technology that slowly but steadily upped the robot game, making uncrewed missions more attractive. For instance, compared with the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed in 2004, the Curiosity rover, which touched down just eight years later, is more than three times larger and 10 percent faster, gets three times as much power from the sun, and has twice as many science instruments. And…

The teen shuffled past the nurse’s station, grumbling and moaning. His mother lagged a few feet behind, rolling her eyes. He made it to his room, curling up on the bed and yelling at his mother to turn off the lights. “He’s back,” the triage nurse quipped. “I think he’s just a whiny kid. Even his mom is fed up with him.” Colin had visited our emergency room a few days before with complaints of a sore throat, headache, throwing up and belly pain. After a negative strep throat test, he was diagnosed with a minor viral infection — something his immune system could fight with help from a few days of rest and chicken soup. But now the 19-year-old was back — and he felt no better. A TOUCH…

Astronomy is entering a new regime of “big data.” The volumes of information being collected are staggering, and future projects promise data sets of ever-increasing size. The total data volume of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s Data Release 14 tops out at over 156 terabytes (TB). By the end of 2018, the Dark Energy Survey, which took up to 2.5 TB of data per night, mapped 5,000 degrees of the Southern Hemisphere sky, including 300 million galaxies, to ultimately produce about one petabyte (1,000 TB) of data. When the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope begins full science operations in 2022, its 3,200-megapixel camera will be able to collect 15 to 30 TB of data every night. With such huge volumes of data comes the need for an increased ability to handle…

The efforts of volunteers don’t simply disappear after they’ve closed the browser or app. Zooniverse classifications have resulted in more than 150 scientific posters and publications, including peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Icarus, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and The Astrophysical Journal. Many of these articles list Zooniverse volunteers as co-authors. The Zooniverse projects with the most associated publications to date are Galaxy Zoo (58 publications), Planet Hunters (12 publications), and Supernova Hunters and Solar Stormwatch (seven publications each). In addition to research performed with Zooniverse results, the platform has also spawned more than 30 meta studies on the Zooniverse itself, exploring topics that range from how museums and other public institutions can better engage with the public to the tools that researchers can use to assess…