After intense pressure and criticism from many scientists, Chinese researchers last week released a trove of new genetic data that may offer fresh clues about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some scientists say the new evidence gives more credibility to the thesis that SARS-CoV-2 could have jumped into humans from raccoon dogs or other mammals illegally sold at a Wuhan market. Researchers mainly affiliated with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention collected 923 samples in or near the market in early 2020 and analyzed the genetic sequences in them. In a preprint posted 13 months ago, they said the abundance of human DNA in samples that contained SARS-CoV-2 “highly suggests” that people brought the coronavirus to the market. The preprint did not mention that some samples positive for the virus also contained genetic evidence that mammals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 were present. Last week, the team updated the preprint to acknowledge the genetic evidence of the mammals. But the revised manuscript says the samples don’t resolve whether infected animals, humans, or even contaminated food introduced the virus to the market, where the first cluster of COVID-19 cases surfaced in December 2019. Chinese authorities shuttered the market on 1 January 2020.
CLIMATE
Australia enacts emissions curbs
Following through on a campaign promise, Australia’s Labor government last week enacted the nation’s first major climate law in a decade. The new law requires some 200 major industrial facilities to reduce greenhouse emissions by roughly 5% per year, to support the country’s Paris agreement commitment to cut emissions 43% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. Climate activists welcomed the law, saying it will aid international efforts to curb global warming. But they fear it will allow Australia to continue to be one the world’s largest exporters of fossil fuels, primarily coal. A key bloc of Green Party lawmakers had pushed for the measure to bar new coal mines and oil and gas fields, but ultimately dropped that demand.
ARCHAEOLOGY
Benin metal traced to Germany
A Benin Bronze representing a king was among 21 repatriated by Germany to Nigeria in December 2022. FLORIAN GAERTNER/PHOTOTHEK/GETTY IMAGES
Germany’s Rhineland region was the source of the brass used to make many of the famous artworks called the Benin Bronzes, created in the West African kingdom of Benin, a study has found. Some museums, including several in Germany, have begun to return the bronzes to Nigeria, where they were looted by British soldiers in the late 19th century. Previous studies indicated the lead isotope signature in the Benin Bronzes was consistent across hundreds of works made from the 16th century onward, indicating a common source. Now, a team has found a matching signal in a subset of the brass rings called “manillas” that served as currency for trade between Europe, Africa, and North America from the 15th to the 19th centuries. The researchers found that the isotope signature found in the bronzes matches that of the brass in manillas that were made in the Rhineland and used by Portuguese traders—and not, as previously assumed, manillas made in Britain or Flanders. The consistent signature suggests the artisans who crafted the sculptures and plaques were selective about the metal they used, say authors of the study, published this week in PLOS ONE.
ASTRONOMY
Outsize black hole revealed
Researchers have used gravitational lensing—the bending of light by mass—to detect an otherwise invisible black hole that is among the largest ever found. Supermassive black holes sit at the heart of most galaxies, but astronomers had only been able to detect active ones—those that consume gas and dust, which glow as they approach the hole. A team reported a way to find inactive ones last week in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. They derived the method using images from the Hubble Space Telescope showing that the galaxy Abell 1201 bends light from more distant objects. The team used supercomputer simulations in which they assumed Abell 1201 contains a central black hole. They simulated different masses of the black hole to see which bent light in a way similar to the Hubble images. The best statistical fit was one with a gigantic black hole, weighing nearly 33 billion Suns, close to a theoretical limit.
Whole lines of thought get dropped when Black women walk away from physics and aren’t there to advocate for their contributions.
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Scientists call for AI pause
Academic and industry scientists have flocked to sign an open letter calling for a pause in the development of cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) applications until safeguards are installed. The signatories worry, for example, about the automated spread of misinformation and elimination of jobs. The letter was posted last week by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute; signatories include Yoshua Bengio, a Turing Prize winner at the University of Montreal, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The letter says the moratorium should apply only to “unpredictable black-box models” more powerful than GPT-4, the AI tool unveiled in March by OpenAI, a Microsoft subsidiary, that produces humanlike responses to questions. Tech companies are racing to develop such tools with little regard for economic and political consequences, the letter says. In recent months, several of the largest firms have laid off employees in “AI ethics” working to counteract potential harms. Other scientists say the letter is alarmist and overly pessimistic.
BIOLOGY
Largest known cave fish, lacking eyes, is discovered in India
Scientists say a colorless, cave-dwelling fish discovered in northeastern India is a new species that is the largest of the nearly 300 known fish species living underground. In 2019, cave explorers and scientists photographed and collected specimens in Krem Um Ladaw cave, the largest measuring 400 millimeters. Researchers named the species Neolissochilus pnar, after the Indigenous Pnar tribal community that lives nearby. Among the species’ distinguishing traits, adults have no visible external eyes. The researchers tentatively identified it as a close relative of the golden mahseer (Tor putitora), a fish that lives in above-ground lakes, rivers, and streams across the Himalayas. The newly discovered species’ size is striking because most subterranean fish have evolved a small body plan to cope with limited food and space in underground habitats, the team reported in February in Vertebrate Zoology. The authors call for more research on the region’s underground fauna, which they describe as little studied and vulnerable to harm from human activities, such as illegal mining.
ECOLOGY
Aboriginal knowledge links Australia’s ‘fairy circles’ to termites
Patches in Australia created partly by termites are seen in an aerial photograph (first image) and a 1976 painting (second image) by Aboriginal artist Kaapa Tjampitjinpa. F. WALSH ET AL., NAT. ECOL. EVOL., 10.1038/S41559-023-01994-1 (2023)
Researchers say Aboriginal people in Western Australia provided insights that may help settle a debate about the origin of mysterious small patches of barren earth known as “fairy circles.” Some ecologists think the patches, found in arid grasslands in Australia and Namibia, result from plants competing for water and nutrients. A study in this week’s issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution argues this explanation ignores an alternative backed by thousands of years of Aboriginal knowledge, depicted in paintings and stories: The circles stem in part from underground nests of flying harvester termites. Aboriginal people have gathered them for food and other uses. Dozens of Aboriginal elders and experts, listed as co-authors on the new paper, shared this traditional knowledge with partners at Australian research institutions. The scientists confirmed it by digging trenches in the patches, known locally in Western Australia as linyji, which revealed extensive termite tunnels. The authors say the results offer a lesson for scientists who ignore the traditional knowledge of Indigenous people.
COVID-19
Chinese team posts key DNA from market
After intense pressure and criticism from many scientists, Chinese researchers last week released a trove of new genetic data that may offer fresh clues about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some scientists say the new evidence gives more credibility to the thesis that SARS-CoV-2 could have jumped into humans from raccoon dogs or other mammals illegally sold at a Wuhan market. Researchers mainly affiliated with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention collected 923 samples in or near the market in early 2020 and analyzed the genetic sequences in them. In a preprint posted 13 months ago, they said the abundance of human DNA in samples that contained SARS-CoV-2 “highly suggests” that people brought the coronavirus to the market. The preprint did not mention that some samples positive for the virus also contained genetic evidence that mammals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 were present. Last week, the team updated the preprint to acknowledge the genetic evidence of the mammals. But the revised manuscript says the samples don’t resolve whether infected animals, humans, or even contaminated food introduced the virus to the market, where the first cluster of COVID-19 cases surfaced in December 2019. Chinese authorities shuttered the market on 1 January 2020.
CLIMATE
Australia enacts emissions curbs
Following through on a campaign promise, Australia’s Labor government last week enacted the nation’s first major climate law in a decade. The new law requires some 200 major industrial facilities to reduce greenhouse emissions by roughly 5% per year, to support the country’s Paris agreement commitment to cut emissions 43% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. Climate activists welcomed the law, saying it will aid international efforts to curb global warming. But they fear it will allow Australia to continue to be one the world’s largest exporters of fossil fuels, primarily coal. A key bloc of Green Party lawmakers had pushed for the measure to bar new coal mines and oil and gas fields, but ultimately dropped that demand.
ARCHAEOLOGY
Benin metal traced to Germany
A Benin Bronze representing a king was among 21 repatriated by Germany to Nigeria in December 2022. FLORIAN GAERTNER/PHOTOTHEK/GETTY IMAGES
Germany’s Rhineland region was the source of the brass used to make many of the famous artworks called the Benin Bronzes, created in the West African kingdom of Benin, a study has found. Some museums, including several in Germany, have begun to return the bronzes to Nigeria, where they were looted by British soldiers in the late 19th century. Previous studies indicated the lead isotope signature in the Benin Bronzes was consistent across hundreds of works made from the 16th century onward, indicating a common source. Now, a team has found a matching signal in a subset of the brass rings called “manillas” that served as currency for trade between Europe, Africa, and North America from the 15th to the 19th centuries. The researchers found that the isotope signature found in the bronzes matches that of the brass in manillas that were made in the Rhineland and used by Portuguese traders—and not, as previously assumed, manillas made in Britain or Flanders. The consistent signature suggests the artisans who crafted the sculptures and plaques were selective about the metal they used, say authors of the study, published this week in PLOS ONE.
ASTRONOMY
Outsize black hole revealed
Researchers have used gravitational lensing—the bending of light by mass—to detect an otherwise invisible black hole that is among the largest ever found. Supermassive black holes sit at the heart of most galaxies, but astronomers had only been able to detect active ones—those that consume gas and dust, which glow as they approach the hole. A team reported a way to find inactive ones last week in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. They derived the method using images from the Hubble Space Telescope showing that the galaxy Abell 1201 bends light from more distant objects. The team used supercomputer simulations in which they assumed Abell 1201 contains a central black hole. They simulated different masses of the black hole to see which bent light in a way similar to the Hubble images. The best statistical fit was one with a gigantic black hole, weighing nearly 33 billion Suns, close to a theoretical limit.
Whole lines of thought get dropped when Black women walk away from physics and aren’t there to advocate for their contributions.
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Scientists call for AI pause
Academic and industry scientists have flocked to sign an open letter calling for a pause in the development of cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) applications until safeguards are installed. The signatories worry, for example, about the automated spread of misinformation and elimination of jobs. The letter was posted last week by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute; signatories include Yoshua Bengio, a Turing Prize winner at the University of Montreal, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The letter says the moratorium should apply only to “unpredictable black-box models” more powerful than GPT-4, the AI tool unveiled in March by OpenAI, a Microsoft subsidiary, that produces humanlike responses to questions. Tech companies are racing to develop such tools with little regard for economic and political consequences, the letter says. In recent months, several of the largest firms have laid off employees in “AI ethics” working to counteract potential harms. Other scientists say the letter is alarmist and overly pessimistic.
BIOLOGY
Largest known cave fish, lacking eyes, is discovered in India
Scientists say a colorless, cave-dwelling fish discovered in northeastern India is a new species that is the largest of the nearly 300 known fish species living underground. In 2019, cave explorers and scientists photographed and collected specimens in Krem Um Ladaw cave, the largest measuring 400 millimeters. Researchers named the species Neolissochilus pnar, after the Indigenous Pnar tribal community that lives nearby. Among the species’ distinguishing traits, adults have no visible external eyes. The researchers tentatively identified it as a close relative of the golden mahseer (Tor putitora), a fish that lives in above-ground lakes, rivers, and streams across the Himalayas. The newly discovered species’ size is striking because most subterranean fish have evolved a small body plan to cope with limited food and space in underground habitats, the team reported in February in Vertebrate Zoology. The authors call for more research on the region’s underground fauna, which they describe as little studied and vulnerable to harm from human activities, such as illegal mining.
ECOLOGY
Aboriginal knowledge links Australia’s ‘fairy circles’ to termites
Patches in Australia created partly by termites are seen in an aerial photograph (first image) and a 1976 painting (second image) by Aboriginal artist Kaapa Tjampitjinpa. F. WALSH ET AL., NAT. ECOL. EVOL., 10.1038/S41559-023-01994-1 (2023)
Researchers say Aboriginal people in Western Australia provided insights that may help settle a debate about the origin of mysterious small patches of barren earth known as “fairy circles.” Some ecologists think the patches, found in arid grasslands in Australia and Namibia, result from plants competing for water and nutrients. A study in this week’s issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution argues this explanation ignores an alternative backed by thousands of years of Aboriginal knowledge, depicted in paintings and stories: The circles stem in part from underground nests of flying harvester termites. Aboriginal people have gathered them for food and other uses. Dozens of Aboriginal elders and experts, listed as co-authors on the new paper, shared this traditional knowledge with partners at Australian research institutions. The scientists confirmed it by digging trenches in the patches, known locally in Western Australia as linyji, which revealed extensive termite tunnels. The authors say the results offer a lesson for scientists who ignore the traditional knowledge of Indigenous people.
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