The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology

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QUANTA MAGAZINE

Invisibly to us, insects and other tiny creatures use static electricity to travel, avoid predators, collect pollen and more. New experiments explore how evolution may have influenced this phenomenon.

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a honeybee. In many ways, your world is small. Your four delicate wings, each less than a centimeter long, transport your half-gram body through looming landscapes full of giant animals and plants. In other ways, your world is expansive, even grand. Your five eyes see colors and patterns that humans can’t, and your multisensory antennae detect odors from distant flowers.

For years, biologists have wondered whether bees have another grand sense that we lack. The static electricity they accumulate by flying — similar to the charge generated when you shuffle across carpet in thick socks — could be potent enough for them to sense and influence surrounding objects through the air.

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With ‘Digital Twins,’ The Doctor Will See You Now

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Quanta Magazine

By creating a digital twin of your circulatory system, Amanda Randles wants to bring unprecedented precision to medical forecasts.

Amanda Randles wants to copy your body. If the computer scientist had her way, she’d have enough data — and processing power — to effectively clone you on her computer, run the clock forward, and see what your coronary arteries or red blood cells might do in a week. Fully personalized medical simulations, or “digital twins,” are still beyond our abilities, but Randles has pioneered computer models of blood flow over long durations that are already helping doctors noninvasively diagnose and treat diseases.

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The drugs of the future are in the animals of the past

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SEQUENCER

The genomes of extinct creatures like mammoths and giant sloths code for natural antibiotics we’ve never seen. So, now what?

César de la Fuente’s lab has a knack for finding antibiotics in usual places. He doesn’t trudge through swamps or remote forests like a pharmacological Indiana Jones. His lab instead combs through genetic data collected from creatures across all time.  

In just the last few years, they’ve documented unreported antimicrobial compounds hidden in the genomes of Neanderthals, the world’s microbes, and within ourselves. Now, their latest feat carries the torch thanks to a brand new machine learning algorithm they call APEX: antibiotic peptide de-extinction. 

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A scientific case for an Earth alive

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Sequencer

“Becoming Earth” author Ferris Jabr on his new book and how life emerged as an extension of the planet’s surface.

Ferris Jabr’s sense of the world changed when he learned about rain in the Amazon. It’s no surprise that rain and the world’s most voluminous river feeds the world’s largest tropical rainforest. But Jabr, a science journalist, was struck by how this sorta … missed the point.

It’s backwards. Rather than a jungle springing up in a wet climate, the Amazon generates the rain itself. This is so-called “evapotranspiration” where trees and plants silently pump excess water into the atmosphere — up to 20 billion tons per day. But Jabr’s real surprise came in learning that even evapotranspiration wasn’t the whole story. All the Amazon’s lifeforms were involved.

“The pollen, the fungi, the microbes, all these tiny particles, and gasses and volatile compounds,” contribute to the conditions for rain, Jabr said. “That sparked this curiosity in me: how else is life dramatically changing its environment?”

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An emotional public hearing on MDMA: ‘Today you will vote on whether my friends live or die’

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Sequencer

The FDA may approve psychedelic-assisted therapy for PTSD, but at a recent public hearing it was the therapy — not the drug — that burned in the hot seat.

Yesterday, June 4th, an advisory committee convened to discuss whether to recommend that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approve MDMA psychedelic-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when the agency renders a decision this summer. The drug application’s sponsor, Lykos Therapeutics, a biopharma company focusing on mental health treatments, had led two Phase 3 clinical trials combining MDMA with a therapy philosophy allegedly rooted in controversial New Age ideas. The advisory committee invited members of the public to speak. More than 30 individuals shared their testimony in favor or against approval. 

Rather than a straightforward, dusty bureaucratic session, the hearing was eye-opening, puzzling, fascinating, and profoundly sad. 

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The biggest threat to biodiversity you’ve never heard of

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Sequencer

As a fungus pushes dozens of amphibians into extinction, researchers search for whatever hope they can grab.

Erin Lundy hasn’t always loved frogs. The Hawaiʻi-born biologist and animal care expert had more of a soft spot for marine mammals and in 2018 began working with otters and seals at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California. “They’re very cute, charismatic, and smart,” Lundy told me. Frogs may be cute, she added, but they’re not known for their smarts. 

A couple years into her work in Long Beach, the aquarium needed help with amphibian conservation. A coworker asked if Lundy liked frogs. She replied: “Yeah, enough.”

Against all odds, she came around on amphibians. At first glance, a palm-sized tattoo of an otter inside Lundy’s forearm backs up her professed love of mammals. But there’s a surprise in the tattooed otter’s grasp: a tiny, colorful mountain yellow-legged frog. “It turns out I really like frogs,” she said. 

Lundy became captivated by how in tune frogs are with their habitat. Amphibians have porous, permeable skin that sensitizes them to all the chemicals and conditions of their environment. “They like stability — they don’t like super hot, super cold,” Lundy said. “They’re incredible indicator species of what the health of our environment actually looks like.” 

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Saunas Are the Next Frontier in Fighting Depression

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WIRED

The preliminary results of a clinical trial of using heat exposure to combat depression are in—and are fueling cautious optimism that sauna practice could become an accepted treatment.

Depression runs hot. In the 1980s, psychiatrists began noticing that patients with depressive symptoms had higher body temperatures compared to people without, and that their body temperatures didn’t ebb and flow as much throughout the day. The more severe a patient’s depression, the higher their temperature tended to be.

Researchers have since noticed that when someone’s depression improves, their body temperature regularizes, “no matter how their depression got better—electroconvulsive therapy, psychotherapy, antidepressants, whatever,” says Ashley Mason, a clinical psychologist at the UC San Francisco Osher Center for Integrative Health. This got Mason thinking: If the two are linked, what happens to a depressed person’s symptoms if you provoke a change in their temperature?

Read the full story in WIRED