November 30, 2022 - In praise of research in fundamental biology

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From the archive: a shared motivation for scientists, and mirages All prices are NET prices. VAT will be added later in the checkout.Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout. An essential round-up of science news, opinion and analysis, delivered to your inbox every weekday. Continued here

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In praise of research in fundamental biology Microbes that live in extreme environments, known as extremophiles, have a range of uses in the laboratory.Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/SPL How did eukaryotic life — the domain that includes humans — evolve? A decade or so ago, this was the question occupying Thijs Ettema and his colleagues. They found the answer in the genomes of previously undiscovered microorganisms collected from deep in the Atlantic Ocean1. Lurking in those sequences were hallmarks of cells from two different types of organism — archaea and eukaryotes. The former describes a group of single-celled organisms that lack a nucleus; the latter, organisms whose cells contain a membrane-bounded nucleus and other organelles. Ettema, now at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, and his colleagues were surprised to find microbes that combined characteristics of both cell types. Continued here

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‘Prisoner’s dilemma’ pinpoints plants that cooperate Arabidopsis thaliana grows better in dense plots if it has a certain genetic variant, identified with the help of game theory. Credit: Pierre Brye/Alamy All prices are NET prices. VAT will be added later in the checkout.Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout. Continued here

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Moon flyby, European Mars rover and elites’ advantage The Orion spacecraft swooped just 130 kilometres above the lunar surface on 21 November — the closest a capsule designed to hold people has been to the Moon in half a century. In the lunar darkness, the capsule, which launched as part of NASA’s Artemis I mission on 16 November, flew directly over Tranquility Base: the landing site of Apollo 11 where, in July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the Moon. Orion, a joint venture of NASA and the European Space Agency, is on an uncrewed 26-day voyage around the Moon to see how its capsule holds up under the stresses of deep space. It launched on the first-ever flight of NASA’s powerful new Space Launch System rocket. Continued here

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Black Friday boomed online - The Hustle For a shopping holiday known for overnight campouts and irrational customer behavior, in-person retail was kinda mild. Although in-person visits increased 2.9% from last year, analysts told Retail Dive that the long queues of yore had vanished, while Business Insider shared photos of mostly empty Walmart stores. Continued here

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A new mission to see Titanic Four-hundred miles from St Johns, Newfoundland, in the choppy waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, a large industrial vessel swayed from side to side. Onboard, Stockton Rush expressed a vision for the future: "There will be a time when people will go to space for less cost and very regularly. I think the same thing is going to happen going under water." Continued here

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100 scholarships for Iranian women at online university To support Iranian women, including their rights to education and to choose whether to veil their faces in public, the online University of the People is offering 100 scholarships to enable them to continue to learn from the safety of their homes. All prices are NET prices. VAT will be added later in the checkout.Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout. Continued here

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Musk says he’s going ‘to war’ with Apple - The Hustle Yesterday, Elon Musk claimed that Apple recently “threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store.” About ten minutes later, Musk declared, through a meme, that he’s going “to war” with the company. Continued here

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The tensions that fan tricky in-law relationships In-law relationships hold the potential for mutual appreciation, joy and even love – in theory, people gain a whole new family and, with it, access to a wider support network. Most people don’t start off expecting to hate their in-laws; 2012 research from Purdue University, US, showed the vast majority of couples go into their marriages anticipating positive ties.  Yet a potent mix of patriarchal traditions, media tropes and characters in pop culture also popularise the idea that in-law relationships will be tense at best, toxic at worst – especially among women.  Continued here

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How flexibility made managers miserable Vlada Randjelovic says his life at a Belgrade-based IT company became much harder when the firm introduced hybrid working. Randjelovic managed a sales team of 10 employees, half of whom chose to work in the office, while the other half worked from home. “I ended up having two worlds: one that existed in the office, the other remote,” he explains, “and they would only ever connect over Zoom meetings. I had to suddenly manage two separate teams doing the same work.”  As he implemented the day-to-day running of the new working model, Randjelovic had to address issues as they arose, both from those above him and those reporting to him. “The hardest aspect of middle management is that everything has to go through you,” he says. “Top management would bring issues to middle management in coming up with a flexible solution. Hybrid was chosen, but it was much easier to say than to do; it came down to middle managers to solve challenges on a daily basis.”  Continued here

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Did Netflix make the right move with Glass Onion? - The Hustle By any metric, Netflix’s Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion, did fantastic at the box office this past week. So well, in fact, the obvious question now is: Why the heck did Netflix put the movie in just ~700 theaters — and only for one week? Continued here

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The forgotten history of the US' African American coal towns The story of West Virginia's past often goes something like this: in the late 1800s, blue-collar workers came from Wales, Eastern Europe and other far-flung corners of the world to mine coal that ultimately built the cities that fired America to global superpower status. But that story leaves out an important element: the vibrant and sometimes tragic experiences of the region's African American communities, which were integral to the industry and to a burgeoning Appalachian culture.  Fleeing white-led violence and racial segregation laws (known as Jim Crow laws) in Southern states after the end of the US Civil War and the abolition of slavery in 1865, African Americans streamed north into the coal fields of West Virginia in search of jobs and a modicum of security. Continued here

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10 of the best TV shows to watch this December A super-rich family tussles over its patriarch's business empire – sound familiar? Except where the focus of Succession is on a bunch of white Americans, in this new series the focus is shifted to a black British clan. Sarah Niles (Ted Lasso) and Deborah Ayorinde (Them) are among the glammed-up ensemble, and from the looks of the trailer, it’s going to contain lots of great outfits and delicious melodrama. Riches premieres on 2 December on Amazon Prime in the US, and on 22 December on ITVX in the UK Continued here

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These monkeypox researchers warned that the disease would go global Adesola Yinka-Ogunleye led Nigeria’s investigation into a monkeypox outbreak in 2017. Credit: Alecsandra Dragoi for Nature In May, when monkeypox began to spread across Europe and beyond, many public-health specialists were taken by surprise. But for researchers who have tracked and studied the viral disease for years in Central and West Africa, the only shock was seeing how accurate their predictions were. Continued here

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Pretzels are having a moment - The Hustle But thanks to a recent wave of innovation, pretzels are one of the hottest and most inventive categories in snacks — pulling in $1.7B in the year ending Aug. 7, up 16% YoY, per Food Dive. Previously considered a “sleepy” category, pretzels are having a moment similar to craft beer and specialty coffee due to a combination of factors: Continued here

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Let’s talk about dabloons - The Hustle Doubloons were Spanish gold coins coveted by pirates. Dabloons are something else — an elaborate, entirely user-generated TikTok game surrounding a fake currency. In 2021, an image of a kitten’s paw with the caption “4 dabloons” went viral on Instagram, followed by one of a black cat and its toes. Continued here

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More support for chemists with disabilities In my discipline, chemistry, as in so many others, there are daunting barriers to being a researcher with a disability. Only 4.8 % of people who received a PhD in chemistry in the United States in 2019 identify as having a disability, for example, compared with 26% of the general population (see go.nature.com/3vhiuif). All prices are NET prices. VAT will be added later in the checkout.Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout. Continued here

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The Perfect Day to Throw Your Holiday Party December is busy. The last thing people want is an obligatory party. Continued here

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‘Good’ cholesterol readings can lead to bad results for Black people Low levels of ‘good’ cholesterol predict risk of heart disease in white but not in Black people in the United States1. All prices are NET prices. VAT will be added later in the checkout.Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout. Continued here

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Is China ready to lead on protecting nature? At the upcoming UN biodiversity conference, it will preside and set the tone As the world parses what was achieved at the U.N. climate change conference in Egypt, negotiators are convening in Montreal to set goals for curbing Earth’s other crisis: loss of living species. Starting on Dec. 7, 2022, 196 nations that have ratified the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity will hold their 15th Conference of the Parties, or COP15. The convention, which was adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, is designed to promote sustainable development by protecting biodiversity – the variety of life on Earth, from genes up to entire ecosystems. Continued here

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Pakistan's lost city of 40,000 people A slight breeze cut through the balmy heat as I surveyed the ancient city around me. Millions of red bricks formed walkways and wells, with entire neighbourhoods sprawled out in a grid-like fashion. An ancient Buddhist stupa towered over the time-worn streets, with a large communal pool complete with a wide staircase below. Somehow, only a handful of other people were here – I practically had the place all to myself. I was about an hour outside of the dusty town of Larkana in southern Pakistan at the historical site of Mohenjo-daro. While today only ruins remain, 4,500 years ago this was not only one of the world's earliest cities, but a thriving metropolis featuring highly advanced infrastructures. Continued here

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Graphene is a proven supermaterial, but manufacturing the versatile form of carbon at usable scales remains a challenge I never know what to expect when I tell people I study graphene – some have never heard of it, while others have seen some version of these headlines and inevitably ask, “So what’s the holdup?” Graphene is a fascinating material, just as the sensational headlines suggest, but it is only just starting be used in real-world applications. The problem lies not in graphene’s properties, but in the fact that it is still incredibly difficult and expensive to manufacture at commercial scales. Continued here

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Still recovering from COVID-19, US public transit tries to get back on track U.S. commuters take approximately 10 billion trips on public transit every year. SciLine asked Kari Watkins, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Davis, what cities can do to increase public transportation ridership and how people can make better use of this environmentally friendly mode of transportation. Below are some highlights from the discussion. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. Continued here

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Field research stations are key to global conservation targets A theme is emerging in this year’s United Nations conferences on biodiversity (COP15), climate change (COP27) and the international wildlife trade (COP19): countries are struggling to meet key conservation targets. We argue that field research stations are an effective — but imperilled and overlooked — tool that can help policy frameworks to meet those targets. We write on behalf of 149 experts from 47 countries. All prices are NET prices. VAT will be added later in the checkout.Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout. Continued here

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'Y'all,' that most Southern of Southernisms, is going mainstream – and it's about time Southern Living magazine once described “y’all” as “the quintessential Southern pronoun.” It’s as iconically Southern as sweet tea and grits. While “y’all” is considered slang, it’s a useful word nonetheless. The English language doesn’t have a good second person plural pronoun; “you” can be both singular and plural, but it’s sometimes awkward to use as a plural. It’s almost like there’s a pronoun missing. “Y’all” fills that second person plural slot – as does “you guys,” “youse,” “you-uns” and a few others. Continued here

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A sampler of our most popular articles of 2022 We’ve created a special downloadable e-book of some of our most popular stories of the year – stories that sparked the curiosity of readers like you, covering topics ranging from super-earths to mosquito magnets, and from why we need to file tax returns to why we can’t just throw all our trash into volcanoes. We hope this is a special – albeit small – sample of the great work we’ve been able to accomplish this year with the support of the universities, academics and donors who are our partners in creating independent, fact-based, nonprofit journalism. Continued here

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'Situationships': Why Gen Z are embracing the grey area Long gone are the days when seeing a film or sharing a milkshake was all it took to solidify a couple as definitively together. Instead, modern dating has evolved into a delicate – at times complicated – series of ‘baby steps’ for young people. Research has shown that Gen Z’s attitudes towards dating and sex have evolved from the generations before them; they take an especially pragmatic approach to love and sex, and subsequently aren’t prioritising establishing committed romantic relationships the same way their older peers once did. Continued here

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Alabama’s execution problems are part of a long history of botched lethal injections Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has announced a pause in her state’s use of capital punishment. It follows a run of botched lethal injection executions in the state, including two where the procedure had to be abandoned before the inmates succumbed to the cocktail of death drugs. The last straw appears to have been the failed attempt to put Kenneth Smith to death on Nov. 17, 2022. The state had to call off the procedure after difficulty in securing an IV line. Continued here

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Singles want partners who vote - The Hustle Tinder dropped its “Year in Swipe” this week, revealing an interest in political engagement among its users: A lot happened this year. The war in Ukraine pushed the nation’s flag among Tinder’s top 10 emoji used in bios, as users flocked to show support. Continued here

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White landowners in Hawaii imported Russian workers in the early 1900s, to dilute the labor power of Asians in the islands On Feb. 19, 1906, the mail steamer China pulled into the harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. It had made the voyage from San Pedro, California, many times before, but this trip made front-page news. Local newspapers heralded the arrival of “one hundred and ten white men, women and children, the vanguard of what promises to be an influx of settlers for the Hawaiian Islands.” A reporter from the Hawaiian Gazette recorded that they “looked to be a healthy, moral, God-fearing people.” By contrast, in 1856, some of the first Chinese contract laborers to work in Hawaii had been described as a “turbulent, stubborn, reckless class” in need of “influences tending to their improvement and conversion to Christianity” so that there might be “a blessing in store for the Chinese in the Sandwich islands,” a former name for Hawaii. Continued here

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Saint Malo: The first Asian settlement in the US Just five miles downriver from the ornate, iron-lace balconies of New Orleans' French Quarter, bright stucco buildings and raucous bars give way to a more serene landscape stroked in wild marsh grasses and thick mud. Fishermen sell fresh shrimp along the roads that cut through St Bernard Parish as their boats bob in the bayous nearby. The quiet, 200-year-old suburb is famous for its fishing industry and unique geography, appearing to rise up on a map from Louisiana's eastern coast like a cresting wave before spitting dozens of islands and marshes into the Gulf of Mexico. Here, on Lake Borgne, where laughing gulls dive for speckled trout and sudden squalls regularly batter boats, is where Saint Malo once stood, the first permanent Filipino settlement in the United States and the country's oldest-known permanent Asian settlement. Continued here

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Why music can give you chills or goosebumps Frisson is the French word meaning "shiver", but in this case, we're not shivering because we're cold, we're shivering because we're stimulated by music. When we hear a certain piece of music or view a particular work of art, there may be an intense psychological and physiological reaction. "You have this sudden rush of dopamine," explains psychologist Dr Rebecca Johnson-Osei. "It's a similar pathway that gets activated with sex and other things that are rewarding to our brains."  Continued here

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Zimbabwe's stunning 80km safari train We rattled out of Dete Station towards the north-eastern boundary of Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, an eager dozen – nine tourists, two engineers and one safari guide – en route from Victoria Falls to the Ngamo Plains, an elephant-laden grassland where dwindling acacia forests meet the arid sprawl of the Kalahari sands. I squinted into the midday sun and sipped a gin and tonic, balancing on one foot and leaning out of the side of our purpose-built, private railcar, hoping for a better view of a vibrant bird perched atop a wire. A fellow passenger had his camera zoomed in all the way. We caught glimpses of electric blue, a longish beak, a large head, but the light made certain identification difficult. Continued here

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A quintessentially Irish way to travel Cycling The Bog Road through Roundstone Bog in Connemara, County Galway, I met more sheep than cars as the free-range animals wandered across both the road and the spongy landscape. I stopped and stepped off the road to take a photo, and mud oozed around my foot. In Ireland's peat bogs, land is not separate from water. Pedalling further into the bog, I saw turves (long skinny bricks cut from peat) stacked into a temple-like dome to dry in the wind – a man-made monument that echoed the distant peaks. Continuing through villages, houses along the roadside stored turves in open-fronted sheds in their gardens. After less than an hour of cycling through Roundstone Bog, it was clear that peat cutting is not a past tradition but still very much part of Irish culture today.  Continued here