Tweets tell scientists how quickly we normalize unusual weather

Geocolor image from NOAA's GOES-16 satellite of powerful East Coast storm on Jan. 4, 2018.

What kinds of weather do people find remarkable, when does that change, and what does that say about the public's perception of climate change? A study led by the University of California, Davis, examined those questions through the lens of more than 2 billion U.S. Twitter posts.

The study, published Feb. 25 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicates that people have short memories when it comes to what they consider "normal" weather. On average, people base their idea of normal weather on what has happened in just the past two to eight years. This disconnect with the historical climate record may obscure the public's perception of climate change.

"There's a risk that we'll quickly normalize conditions we don't want to normalize," said lead author Frances C. Moore, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy. "We are experiencing conditions that are historically extreme, but they might not feel particularly unusual if we tend to forget what happened more than about five years ago."

TRENDING ON TWITTER

To reach their conclusions, the researchers quantified a timeless and universal pastime -- talking about the weather -- by analyzing posts on Twitter.

They sampled 2.18 billion geolocated tweets created between March 2014 and November 2016 to determine what kind of temperatures generated the most posts about weather. They found that people often tweet when temperatures are unusual for a particular place and time of year -- a particularly warm March or unexpectedly freezing winter, for example.

However, if the same weather persisted year after year, it generated less comment on Twitter, indicating that people began to view it as normal in a relatively short amount of time.

THE BOILING FROG

This phenomenon, note the authors, is a classic case of the boiling-frog metaphor: A frog jumps into a pot of boiling hot water and immediately hops out. If, instead, the frog in the pot is slowly warmed to a boiling temperature, it doesn't hop out and is eventually cooked. While scientifically inaccurate, this metaphor has long been used as a cautionary tale warning against normalizing the steadily changing conditions caused by climate change.

Sentiment analysis tools, which measure the positive or negative association of words, provided evidence for this "boiling-frog effect." After repeat exposures to historically-extreme temperatures, people tweeted less about the weather specifically, but they still expressed negative sentiments overall. Particularly cold or hot conditions still seemed to make people unhappy and grumpy.

"We saw that extreme temperatures still make people miserable, but they stop talking about it," Moore said. "This is a true boiling-frog effect. People seem to be getting used to changes they'd prefer to avoid. But just because they're not talking about it doesn't mean it's not making them worse off."

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Continued sea-level rise on East and Gulf coasts detailed

This is a screenshot of the 2050 projection of sea level in Norfolk, Virginia. VIMS' Sea-Level Report Cards provide similar interactive projections for 32 US coastal localities from Maine to Alaska. Credit Virginia Institute of Marine Science This is a screenshot of the 2050 projection of sea level in Norfolk, Virginia. VIMS' Sea-Level Report Cards provide similar interactive projections for 32 US coastal localities from Maine to Alaska.

Researchers at William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science have issued the first annual update of their sea level "report cards," marking 50 years of water-level observations from 1969 through 2018.

These web-based charts -- available online at https://www.vims.edu/research/products/slrc/index.php -- project sea level out to the year 2050 based on an ongoing analysis of tide-gauge records for 32 localities along the U.S. coastline from Maine to Alaska. Release of this year's cards was delayed by the 35-day government shutdown, which precluded compilation of and access to NOAA's latest tide-gauge records.

The lead on the project, VIMS emeritus professor John Boon, says the report cards add value by providing sea-level projections that are updated more frequently than those issued by NOAA or other agencies.

Boon and colleagues also use a statistical approach that includes evidence for recent acceleration in the rate of sea-level change at many U.S. tide-gauge stations, and stress their use of relative sea-level measurements -- changes in water level relative to the land surface on which people live and work. The relative sea-level rise in Virginia and other East and Gulf coast areas is due to both rising water and sinking land.

This year's report cards, updated using monthly summaries of daily tide gauge records from calendar year 2018, show that trends in sea-level change generally held steady across the 32 stations, although the processes that control sea level fluctuated slightly from region to region.

Molly Mitchell, the VIMS marine scientist who compiled and analyzed this year's tide-gauge data, highlights two features of the sea-level report cards for 2018.

First is the clear signal of September's Hurricane Florence as captured in the tide-gauge record for Wilmington, North Carolina. "Heavy rainfall in North Carolina contributed to high water levels at Wilmington throughout the fall," says Mitchell, "although this had only a minor impact on the long-term trend since it was a temporary increase." Florence dropped from 20 to more than 30 inches of rain across most of coastal North Carolina between September 14th and 18th.

Mitchell also notes a noticeable acceleration in sea-level rise at five of the eight monitored locations along the California, Oregon, and Washington coasts. "Although sea level has been rising very slowly along the West Coast, models have been predicting that it will start to rise faster," she says. "The report cards from the past two years support this idea." Scientists suggest that the speed-up is due to a shift in wind patterns associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, an El Niño-like pattern of climate variability.

Sea level along the Gulf Coast at Grand Isle, Louisiana and Galveston, Texas continued to rise at high rates in 2018 (7.75 millimeters per year at Grand Isle and 6.19 mm/year at Galveston), while showing no sign of significant acceleration at either location. Should the lack of acceleration continue, projected sea level through 2050 for these locations will roughly equal that for Norfolk, Virginia (about 0.49 meters [1.6 feet] above 1992 levels), even though their rise rates are presently much greater -- first and third highest of the 32 monitored locations.

A high rise rate (6.72 mm/year) is also found at Rockport, Texas south of Galveston but here the measured acceleration through 2018 is the highest of any location at 0.240 mm/year2, making its year 2050 projection correspondingly high at 0.78 meter (2.6 feet) above 1992 levels. Mitchell and Boon attribute the locally high rise rates and sharp contrast in acceleration among these Gulf Coast stations to their location within a sedimentary basin with a complex history of water and hydrocarbon extraction. Pumping of groundwater and oil can cause land subsidence, which contributes to relative sea-level rise.

The value of an annual, localized report card

Because long-term changes in sea level are typically on the order of a few millimeters per year, researchers have traditionally felt little need to issue frequent forecasts of sea-level changes. Moreover, many sea-level projections are global in scope, with a forecast horizon of 2100 -- far enough off to allow for readily discernible linear change. Thus the United Nation's oft-reported projection of 44 to 74 centimeters (1.4 to 2.4 feet) of absolute sea-level rise by the end of the century.

The VIMS team has purposefully taken a more localized and timely approach, one designed to add maximum value for coastal residents, businesses, and governments.

Says Boon, "Our report cards show what sea level has been doing recently, what's happening now at your locality. Numerous studies show that local rates of sea-level rise and acceleration differ substantially from the global rates published by the IPCC and NOAA -- a key result because local rates of relative sea-level rise give a direct indication of the extent to which homes, buildings, and roads are at risk of flooding."

The team's decision to use a subset of available tide-gauge data runs counter to the traditional approach taken by NOAA, the agency that operates the nation's official network of tidal stations. "NOAA should be commended for their care in ensuring the continuity, consistency, and availability of the nation's long-term tidal datasets," says Boon. "But at the same time, a longer record isn't always better, especially when there's evidence of recent non-linear changes in the rate of sea-level rise like we see along the U.S. East Coast."

An earlier analysis by Boon showed that this acceleration began in 1987, at the center of a 36-year sliding window beginning in 1969 -- thus setting the start date for the VIMS report cards. This is decades after many U.S. tide-gauge stations began operation but within a span where many more stations now have complete or nearly complete records. Given recent evidence of ongoing warming, it makes sense in a nation-wide, comparative study of sea-level change to analyze only those observations made over the same period of time.

Mitchell explains further, "If you cross a threshold in terms of something like sea-level rise, what came before -- say a tide-gauge record that began in 1900 -- is biased in terms of seeing where you're going. We think the ice sheets are melting faster today than they ever have, and if that's true then the previous 90 years of data won't accurately predict the future."

The difference between the linear rates used in NOAA's sea-level forecasts and the non-linear, accelerating rates used in VIMS' report cards can lead to sharply different forecasts of our sea-level future. Extending NOAA's linear sea-level projections to mid-century for the tide gauge in Norfolk, Virginia indicates that sea level here will be 0.3 meters (11.8 inches) higher by 2050, while the VIMS forecast -- using a non-linear, accelerating rate -- is 0.49 meters, or 19.3 inches. That extra 20 centimeters (8 inches) of sea-level rise would have major implications for the low-lying region.

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ALMA differentiates two birth cries from a single star

The protostar is located at the center and the gas streams are ejected to the east and west (left and right). The slow outflow is shown in orange and the fast jet is shown in blue. It is obvious that the axes of the outflow and jet are misaligned.

Astronomers have unveiled the enigmatic origins of two different gas streams from a baby star. Using ALMA, they found that the slow outflow and the high speed jet from a protostar have misaligned axes and that the former started to be ejected earlier than the latter. The origins of these two flows have been a mystery, but these observations provide telltale signs that these two streams were launched from different parts of the disk around the protostar.

Stars in the Universe have a wide range of masses, ranging from hundreds of times the mass of the Sun to less than a tenth of that of the Sun. To understand the origin of this variety, astronomers study the formation process of the stars, that is the aggregation of cosmic gas and dust.

Baby stars collect the gas with their gravitational pull, however, some of the material is ejected by the protostars. This ejected material forms a stellar birth cry which provides clues to understand the process of mass accumulation.

Yuko Matsushita, a graduate student at Kyushu University and her team used ALMA to observe the detailed structure of the birth cry from the baby star MMS5/OMC-3 and found two different gaseous flows: a slow outflow and a fast jet. There have been a handful of examples with two flows seen in radio waves, but MMS5/OMC-3 is exceptional.

"Measuring the Doppler shift of the radio waves, we can estimate the speed and lifetime of the gas flows," said Matsushita, the lead author of the research paper that appeared in the Astrophysical Journal. "We found that the jet and outflow were launched 500 years and 1300 years ago, respectively. These gas streams are quite young."

More interestingly, the team found that the axes of the two flows are misaligned by 17 degrees. The axis of the flows can be changed over long time periods due to the precession of the central star. But in this case, considering the extreme youth of the gas streams, researchers concluded that the misalignment is not due to precession but is related to the launching process.

There are two competing models for the formation mechanism of the protostellar outflows and jets. Some researchers assume that the two streams are formed independently in different parts of the gas disk around the central baby star, while others propose that the collocated jet is formed first, then it entrains the surrounding material to form the slower outflows. Despite extensive research, astronomers had not yet reached a conclusive answer.

A misalignment in the two flows could occur in the 'independent model,' but is difficult in the 'entrainment model.' Moreover, the team found that the outflow was ejected considerably earlier than the jet. This clearly backs the 'independent model.'

"The observation well matches the result of my simulation," said Masahiro Machida, a professor at Kyushu University. A decade ago, he performed pioneering simulation studies using a supercomputer operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. In the simulation, the wide-angle outflow is ejected from the outer area of the gaseous disk around a prototar, while the collimated jet is launched independently from the inner area of the disk. Machida continues, "An observed misalignment between the two gas streams may indicate that the disk around the protostar is warped."

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Neanderthals walked upright just like the humans of today

Virtual reconstruction of the skeleton found in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, based on high-resolution 3D surface scans of the spine and pelvis.

Neanderthals are often depicted as having straight spines and poor posture. However, these prehistoric humans were more similar to us than many assume. University of Zurich researchers have shown that Neanderthals walked upright just like modern humans -- thanks to a virtual reconstruction of the pelvis and spine of a very well-preserved Neanderthal skeleton found in France.

An upright, well-balanced posture is one of the defining features of Homo sapiens. In contrast, the first reconstructions of Neanderthals made in the early 20th century depicted them as only walking partially upright. These reconstructions were based on the largely preserved skeleton of an elderly male Neanderthal unearthed in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France.

Changing perspectives

Since the 1950s, scientists have known that the image of the Neanderthal as a hunched over caveman is not an accurate one. Their similarities to ourselves -- both in evolutionary and behavioral terms -- have also long been known, but in recent years the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. "Focusing on the differences is back in fashion," says Martin Haeusler, UZH specialist in evolutionary medicine. For instance, recent studies have used a few isolated vertebrae to conclude that Neanderthals did not yet possess a well-developed double S-shaped spine.

However, a virtual reconstruction of the skeleton from La Chapelle-aux-Saints has now delivered evidence to the contrary. This computer-generated anatomical model was created by the research group led by Martin Haeusler from the University of Zurich and included Erik Trinkaus from Washington University in St. Louis. The researchers were able to show that both the individual in question as well as Neanderthals in general had a curved lumbar region and neck -- just like the humans of today.

Sacrum, vertebrae and signs of wear as evidence

When reconstructing the pelvis, the researchers discovered that the sacrum was positioned in the same way as in modern humans. This led them to conclude that Neanderthals possessed a lumbar region with a well-developed curvature. By putting together the individual lumbar and cervical vertebrae, they were able to discern that the spinal curvature was even more pronounced. The very close contact between the spinous processes -- the bony projections off the back of each vertebra -- became clear, as did the prominent wear marks that were in part caused by the curvature of the spine.

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Ancient rocks provide clues to Earth's early history

The 2.5 billion-year-old Mt. McRae Shale from Western Australia was analyzed for thallium and molybdenum isotope compositions, revealing a pattern that indicates manganese oxide minerals were being buried over large regions of the ancient sea floor. For this burial to occur, O2 needed to have been present all the way down to the sea floor 2.5 billion-years-ago.

Oxygen in the form of the oxygen molecule (O2), produced by plants and vital for animals, is thankfully abundant in Earth's atmosphere and oceans. Researchers studying the history of O2 on Earth, however, know that it was relatively scarce for much of our planet's 4.6 billion-year existence.

So when and where did O2 begin to build up on Earth?

By studying ancient rocks, researchers have determined that sometime between 2.5 and 2.3 billion years ago, Earth underwent what scientists call the "Great Oxidation Event" or "GOE" for short. O2 first accumulated in Earth's atmosphere at this time and has been present ever since.

Through numerous studies in this field of research, however, evidence has emerged that there were minor amounts of O2 in small areas of Earth's ancient shallow oceans before the GOE. And in a study published recently in the journal Nature Geoscience, a research team led by scientists at Arizona State University (ASU) has provided compelling evidence for significant ocean oxygenation before the GOE, on a larger scale and to greater depths than previously recognized.

For this study, the team targeted a set of 2.5 billion-year-old marine sedimentary rocks from Western Australia known as the Mt. McRae Shale. "These rocks were perfect for our study because they were shown previously to have been deposited during an anomalous oxygenation episode before the Great Oxidation Event," says lead author Chadlin Ostrander of ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration.

Shales are sedimentary rocks that were, at some time in Earth's past, deposited on the sea floor of ancient oceans. In some cases, these shales contain the chemical fingerprints of the ancient oceans they were deposited in.

For this research, Ostrander dissolved shale samples and separated elements of interest in a clean lab, then measured isotopic compositions on a mass spectrometer. This process was completed with the help of co-authors Sune Nielsen at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Massachusetts); Jeremy Owens at Florida State University; Brian Kendall at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada); scientists Gwyneth Gordon and Stephen Romaniello of ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration; and Ariel Anbar of ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration and School of Molecular Sciences. Data collection took over a year and utilized facilities at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Florida State University, and ASU.

Using mass spectrometers, the team measured the thallium and molybdenum isotope compositions of the Mt. McRae Shale. This was the first time both isotope systems had been measured in the same set of shale samples. As hypothesized, a predictable thallium and molybdenum isotope pattern emerged, indicating that manganese oxide minerals were being buried in the sea floor over large regions of the ancient ocean. For this burial to occur, O2 needed to have been present all the way down to the sea floor 2.5 billion-years-ago.

These findings improve scientists' understanding of Earth's ocean oxygenation history. Accumulation of O2 was probably not restricted to small portions of the surface ocean prior to the GOE. More likely, O2 accumulation extended over large regions of the ocean and extended far into the ocean's depths. In some of these areas, O2 accumulation seems to have even extended all the way down to the sea floor.

"Our discovery forces us to re-think the initial oxygenation of Earth," states Ostrander. "Many lines of evidence suggest that O2 started to accumulate in Earth's atmosphere after about 2.5 billion years ago during the GOE. However, it is now apparent that Earth's initial oxygenation is a story rooted in the ocean. O2 probably accumulated in Earth's oceans -- to significant levels, according to our data -- well before doing so in the atmosphere."

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New chimpanzee culture discovered

Chimpanzee tool types in Northern DR Congo. From left to right: tool for the extraction of Epigaeic Dorylus ants, honey (ground), honey (tree), Ponerine ants, Dorylus kohli ants; South Uele tools.

Chimpanzees have a more elaborate and diversified material culture than any other nonhuman primate. Their behavior varies across tropical Africa in a way that does not always correspond to ecology: for instance, only West African chimpanzees, but no others, use stone and wooden hammers to crack nuts in a number of populations, despite the wide availability of hammers and appropriate nuts across the species' range. An understanding of the extent of this behavioral diversity is crucial to help researchers understand the likely incipient traditions of our own earliest hominin ancestors.

Previously, several large-scale behavioral patterns in chimpanzees have been documented, including the use of clubs to pound open beehives in Central Africa and long tools to scoop up algae across multiple sites in West Africa. A team of researchers from the MPI-EVA and the University of Warsaw now present a detailed description of a new 'behavioral realm' in Eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) of the Bili-Uéré region, Northern DR Congo. This set of behaviors covers a minimum of 50,000 km² and possibly extends across an even larger area. "Over a 12-year period, we documented chimpanzee tools and artefacts at 20 survey areas and gathered data on dung, feeding remains, and sleeping nests," says lead author Thurston C. Hicks, guest researcher at the MPI-EVA and associate professor at the Faculty of 'Artes Liberales', The University of Warsaw. "We describe a new chimpanzee tool kit: long probes used to harvest epigaeic driver ants (Dorylus spp.), short probes used to extract ponerine ants and the arboreal nests of stingless bees, thin wands to dip for D. kohli, and stout digging sticks used to access underground meliponine nests."

In addition, the researchers document an expanded percussive technology associated with food processing: in addition to pounding hard-shelled fruits against substrates (which is seen in other chimpanzee populations), the Bili-Uéré apes also pound open two kinds of termite mounds, Cubitermes sp. and Thoracotermes macrothorax, a resource that chimpanzees in most other regions ignore. These chimpanzees, on the other hand, appear not to exploit the common termite Macrotermes muelleri, for which chimpanzees fish at a number of other long-term research sites. "We have also documented tentative evidence of the pounding of African giant snails and tortoises against substrates, both novel food resources for chimpanzees. Finally, ground-nesting behavior is common across the area," adds Hicks.

Despite an overall similarity of behaviors across two sides of a major river (the Uele) and in two very different habitat types (savannah-tropical forest mosaic to the north and tropical moist forest to the south), the research team encountered some geographic variation in the chimpanzees' behaviour, including differing encounter rates for epigaeic driver ant tools, a lack of honey-digging tools to the south; and long driver ant probes and fruit-pounding sites only to the north of the Uele River.

"Nowadays we may feel like we have already discovered all there is to discover. What a nice surprise, then, to find a new chimpanzee behavioral realm! This just goes to show that not everything has yet been mapped out, and we have so much more to learn about the natural world," says co-author Hjalmar Kühl, an ecologist at the MPI-EVA and the research center iDiv.

"In today's overdeveloped world, opportunities such as this, to study a large intact nonhuman great ape culture interconnected across tens of thousands of kilometres of forest, are vanishingly rare," says Hicks. "We need such natural laboratories in order to understand the way in which material culture spreads among healthy, thriving populations of hominids. Without this, it may be difficult to envisage the innovations made by our own ancestors in the woodlands of Africa millions of years ago."

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Old stars live longer than we thought

Thanks to new observations from the ALMA telescope in Chile, it became clear that the stellar wind of this red giant forms a spiral. This is an indirect indication that the star is not alone, but part of a binary star.

Towards the end of their lives some 95% of stars evolve into red giants which lose their mass via a "stellar wind." Eventually they end up as planetary nebulae, ionized gas with a central hot star, a white dwarf.

Researchers form 14 European scientific institutions, among them the IAC, have detected the existence of a binary interaction which had not been noticed by the scientific community. This new research offers an alternative explanation to the high rates of mass loss which it was thought were present towards the end of the lives of the most massive giant stars.

The study, which is published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, show that these stars lose mass at a much slower rate than previously thought. The stellar wind is not stronger than usual, but it is affected by a companion star which had not been noticed until now, a second star orbiting around the red giant. The fact that this process is slower than expected has a major impact on our understanding of how stars end their lives. As a consequence of this discovery we find that the most massive giant star need a longer time to expel their chemically rich interiors into their environment, which affects the enrichment of the interstellar medium, and therefore the chemical evolution of galaxies.

The only observatory which could provide detailed information about the disconcerting superwind in the last phase of the lives of the most massive stars is ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array), in the Atacama desert (Chile)."The data show a spiral structure which show that these stars are not individual have a binary companion" explains Anibal García Hernández, a researcher at the IAC and at the ULL, a co-author of the article. He adds "The interaction with its companion gives rise to a rather complex morphology, in the form of an incomplete spiral. Previous data lacked the spatial resolution and the sensitivity given by ALMA and did not allow astronomers to find the characteristics associated with a binary star"

The interpretation of the ALMA observations has shown in a convincing way that the last evolutionary phase of these old stars is not characterized by a short-lived "extreme superwind" but rather by a "normal wind" which lasts much longer. In other words "old stars take longer to die" or as a slogan "old stars live longer."

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New NASA mission could find more than 1,000 planets

A NASA telescope that will give humans the largest, deepest, clearest picture of the universe since the Hubble Space Telescope could find as many as 1,400 new planets outside Earth's solar system, new research suggests.

The new telescope paves the way for a more accurate, more focused search for extraterrestrial life, according to researchers.

The study, by a team of astronomers at The Ohio State University, provides the most detailed estimates to date of the potential reach of the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope mission (nicknamed WFIRST.) It was designed by NASA and astronomers throughout the country to find new planets and research dark energy, the mysterious force that pervades otherwise empty space and that could hold the keys to understanding how the universe expands. Their work was published Feb. 25 in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

"We want to know what kind of planetary systems there are," said Matthew Penny, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher in the Ohio State Department of Astronomy. "To do that, you need to not just look where the obvious, easy things are. You need to look at everything."

The planets WFIRST is likely to find will be further from their stars than most planets found to date, Penny said. The mission will build on the work of Kepler, a deep-space telescope that found more than 2,600 planets outside our solar system. The Kepler mission ended Oct. 30, 2018.

"Kepler began the search by looking for planets that orbit their stars closer than the Earth is to our Sun," Penny said. "WFIRST will complete it by finding planets with larger orbits."

To find new planets, WFIRST will use gravitational microlensing, a technique that relies on the gravity of stars and planets to bend and magnify the light coming from stars that pass behind them from the telescope's viewpoint.

This microlensing effect, which is connected to Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, allows a telescope to find planets orbiting stars thousands of light-years away from Earth -- much farther than other planet-detecting techniques. But because microlensing works only when the gravity of a planet or star bends the light from another star, the effect from any given planet or star is only visible for a few hours once every few million years. WFIRST will spend long stretches of time continuously monitoring 100 million stars at the center of the galaxy.

Penny's study predicted that about 100 of those not-yet-discovered planets could have the same or lower mass as Earth.

The new telescope will be able to map the Milky Way and other galaxies 100 times faster than the famous Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched in 1990.

The WFIRST mission, with a budget of around $3.2 billion, will scan a small piece of the universe -- about 2 square degrees -- at a resolution higher than any similar mission in the past. That resolution, Penny said, will allow WFIRST to see more stars and planets than any previous organized search.

"Although it's a small fraction of the sky, it's huge compared to what other space telescopes can do," Penny said. "It's WFIRST's unique combination -- both a wide field of view and a high resolution -- that make it so powerful for microlensing planet searches. Previous space telescopes, including Hubble and James Webb, have had to choose one or the other."

WFIRST, Penny said, should give astronomers, astrophysicists and others who study space significantly more information about more planets outside of our solar system.

"WFIRST will allow us to find types of planets that we haven't seen before now," Penny said. "From WFIRST's microlensing survey, we will learn how frequently different types of planets are formed, and how unique our solar system is."

So far, scientists have discovered about almost 700 planetary systems -- also known as solar systems -- containing more than one planet. And they have discovered some 4,000 planets. But even though humans have searched galaxies near and far for signs of life, the search mostly has found planets that are closer to their stars than Earth is to our Sun.

The "infrared" piece of the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope is also important, Penny said.

"Infrared light allows WFIRST to see through dust that lies in the plane of the Milky Way in between us and the galactic center, something optical telescopes on the ground cannot do," he said. "This gives WFIRST access to parts of the sky that are more densely packed with stars."

Ohio State has played an important role in WFIRST, from the project's inception to the design of research programs the telescope will execute.

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Diabetes linked to back pain

People with diabetes have a 35 percent higher risk of experiencing low back pain and 24 percent higher risk of having neck pain than those without diabetes, a review by University of Sydney researchers has found.

Their findings, based on meta-analyses of studies that assess the links between diabetes and back or neck pain outcomes, were published today in PLOS ONE.

Most adults experience low back pain during their lives and almost half suffer neck pain at some stage. Diabetes is an increasingly prevalent chronic condition; an estimated 382 million people live with type 2 diabetes, the most common form of this metabolic disease.

There was insufficient evidence in the review to establish a causal relationship between diabetes and back or neck pain, the paper's senior author Associate Professor Manuela Ferreira from the University's Institute of Bone and Joint Research said. But the findings warrant further investigation of the association.

"Diabetes and low back pain and neck pain seem to be somehow connected. We can't say how but these findings suggest further research into the link is warranted," Associate Professor Ferreira said.

"Type 2 diabetes and low back pain both have a strong relationship with obesity and lack of physical activity, so a logical progression of this research might be to examine these factors in more detail. Our analysis adds to the evidence that weight control and physical activity play fundamental roles in health maintenance."

The paper also found diabetes medication could influence pain, possibly via its effect on blood glucose levels, and this connection should also be investigated. It also recommended health care professionals should consider screening for unknown diabetes in patients seeking care for neck pain or low back pain.

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A tasty Florida butterfly turns sour

A spider feeding on a viceroy butterfly.

The viceroy butterfly is a mimic, modeling its orange-and-black colors after the queen butterfly, a bug that tastes so disgusting predators have learned not to eat it or anything that looks like it, including viceroys. The apparent dependence of mimics on their models made biologists wonder if the fates of the two species are forever intertwined. If so, then what happens when the mimic and the model part ways?

A study recently published in Communications Biology and led by Katy Prudic, an assistant professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Arizona, has found an interesting answer. Viceroy butterflies living in northern Florida, far away from the southern-dwelling queen butterflies, are not only more abundant than their southern kin, but they have also developed their own foul flavor.

"In classical mimicry theory, we wouldn't predict that the viceroy butterfly would be able to stay or be in northern Florida. It should be limited to southern Florida, where the queens live," Prudic said.

The classical theory, called Batesian mimicry, posits that one animal, known as the mimic, looks like another animal -- the model that predators recognize as "unpalatable." An unpleasant experience trying to munch on the model species convinces predators to avoid both species, since they cannot reliably tell the difference between the two.

If the butterflies followed Batesian mimicry, populations of viceroys living in regions where predators had never met the unpalatable queens would not recognize the orange color of the butterfly as something awful; it would look like a delicious, easy-to-find snack, and predators would pick off the viceroy.

Yet Prudic's study found that the viceroy thrives where the queen is not found, because it has evolved the ability to taste bad.

"Have you ever chewed aspirin?" Prudic said. "It will not kill you, but you may want to die because it will be really, really unpleasant."

Prudic's study began more than 15 years ago, as part of her doctoral dissertation. Prudic and her co-author, UA data science specialist Jeff Oliver, counted viceroy and queen butterflies and their host plants at eight sites across Florida.

All over Florida, the viceroy caterpillar feeds on the same kind of plant: the Carolina willow. The tree arms itself against pests with phenolic glycosides, chemical relatives of aspirin.

To pests, the aspirin-related toxins may be deadly, but caterpillars have evolved ways to avoid being poisoned by the plants. By possibly storing them in fatty bodies, viceroy caterpillars keep the chemicals out of their metabolic processes, and they live unharmed.

When the viceroy lives alongside its model species, it likely discards the toxins when it metamorphoses from caterpillar to butterfly. But Prudic and her team found that when the mimic lives independently from the queen butterfly, it keeps the toxins, making the viceroy unpalatable to predators.

In a pharmacology lab, UA Regents' Professor Barbara Timmerman helped Prudic investigate how much of the aspirin-related chemical could be found in the viceroy butterflies. These results were then compared to the abundance of queens at the capture sites.

The second experiment was to test the viceroys' chemical defenses against predators. The butterflies were fed to praying mantids that had been hand-reared in the lab, and Prudic studied how they reacted to the butterflies. The mantids had a much stronger response to viceroys originating from those places where there were not any queens.

"They learned to avoid these viceroys faster, and remembered to avoid them for longer," Prudic said.

Years of rigorous statistical analysis followed, so that Prudic and her team could be certain about the relationship between the unpalatability of viceroy butterflies and the abundance of queen butterflies.

A mimicry continuum

This discovery changes the way biologists must think about mimicry.

The relationship between viceroy and queen butterflies once fell into the Batesian mimicry category, but when one of Prudic's co-authors, David Ritland, first discovered that viceroys had the ability to be nasty, the butterflies' relationship was recategorized as "Mullerian." There are no models in this mimicry theory, only "co-mimics:" two different animals that look the same and are both unpalatable.

But Prudic's study proves that the viceroy butterfly does not fit neatly into either mimicry category.

"Both these categories that we thought about in mimicry are now coming together, and we are thinking more about a continuum between Batesian and Mullerian," Prudic said.

She expects that such a continuum is not limited to just the viceroy-queen system; however, studies that deeply investigate mimicry relationships are unusual because they are time-consuming, labor-intensive and difficult to execute.

Aside from proving that mimicry in the animal world cannot be sorted into a simple binary, this study may be helpful for conservation and management of species in the changing world.

Read more at Science Daily