Sabine
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A Bold Bird, Cotton on the Moon, & Super-Silk
🕑 Added 2023-11-08 23:38:45 +0000 UTCBold Bird Survives Five Rounds with Typhoon Faxai
Streaked Shearwater Seabird, Japan. Source: lin-sun-fong/iNaturalist/
A graduate student biologist at Tohoku University in Japan who fitted a streaked shearwater seabird with a tracking device found a surprise in the data. The bird had taken a ride in typhoon Faxai in September 2019 and went around five times. On its ride, the bird covered a distance of more than 1,000 km (about 621.3 miles) in 11 hours. While the streaked shearwater seabird usually flies at a max of 60 km/h at altitudes under 100 metres, our wonder bird clocked in at a speed of 170 km/h and a height of 4,700 metres. More here, paper here.
Chinese Moon Farm Produces Cotton
Photo Reconstruction of Cotton Plants on the Moon. Credit: Chonquing University.
The Chinese moon lander Chang’e-4 successfully sprouted the first known Earth plant to ever grow on another world. The Chinese lunar lander left behind a micro-ecosystem to see how plants react to the moon’s low gravity and intense radiation. The temperature-controlled container let in light through a small guide tube, allowing plants to sprout and photosynthesize despite challenges. Cotton, canola, potato, and mustard sprouts grew undisturbed by their odd environment, with cotton sprouts thriving the best. More here, papers here and here.
Silkworms Fed Rare Earth Minerals Make Super-Strong Silk
Silkworms eating.
A team of chemists at the Tsinghua University in Beijing, China has developed a special diet for silkworms that helps them extra-strong “super silk”. Their secret is to supplement the usual silkworm diet of mulberry leaves with the rare earth mineral ions La3+ (Lanthanum) and Eu3+ (Europium). The worms then incorporate the rare earth minerals into their silk production, resulting in more narrow and dense fibres of silk with tensile strength and toughness approaching that of spider silk. The team confirmed that the rare earth minerals were integrated into the typical silk nanocrystal structures via X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis. The scientists suggest that their new super silk has potential engineering applications in aerospace materials production and the design of bulletproof armour. Press release here, paper here.
Comments
It is common for some indigenous persons to thank the spirit of whatever they hunt, buffalo to salmon. and for spirit(s) that allow for berries and roots. Ravens are common spirit animals on the 60th as well as the long flight commuters. And ... btw...what are all the physics of murmurings?
Sabine on german TV today, here the link to the mediathek: https://www.3sat.de/wissen/scobel/scobel---der-urknall-100.html
On the topic of notable birds' facts brought up by Sabine in her present installment I have to mention this one: Among the flying dinosaurs of our day (a.k.a. birds, as discussed in Sabine's previous installment replies) there is one not great at flying, but that has other good characteristics to compensate for this. Who? the badly misunderstood chicken: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-startling-intelligence-of-the-common-chicken1/ Excerpts: "Mounting evidence indicates that the common chicken is much smarter than it has been given credit for. The birds are cunning, devious and capable of empathy. And they have sophisticated communication skills. That chickens are so brainy hints that such intelligence is more common in the animal kingdom than once thought. This emerging picture of the chicken mind also has ethical implications for how society treats farmed birds." "In the animal kingdom, some creatures are smarter than others. Birds, in particular, exhibit many remarkable skills once thought to be restricted to humans: Magpies recognize their reflection in a mirror. New Caledonian crows construct tools and learn these skills from their elders. African grey parrots can count, categorize objects by color and shape, and learn to understand human words. And a sulfur-crested cockatoo named Snowball can dance to a beat." "Few people think about the chicken as intelligent, however. In recent years, though, scientists have learned that this bird can be deceptive and cunning, that it possesses communication skills on par with those of some primates and that it uses sophisticated signals to convey its intentions. When making decisions, the chicken takes into account its own prior experience and knowledge surrounding the situation. It can solve complex problems and empathizes with individuals that are in danger." See also: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/201701/the-world-according-intelligent-and-emotional-chickens https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5306232/ So spare a thought for the chicken you are about to eat.
