Horses migrated back and forth repeatedly between North America and Eurasia, during the Late Pleistocene. But when a warming environment flooded a land bridge, it cut off travel between the continents, leading to both the decline of the horses in North America and changes to the land caused by their absence, according to a report in the journal Science by an international team that includes 18 indigenous scientists.The team drew upon both tribal knowledge of environmental events as well as the cutting-edge scientific tools. The study both provides a glimpse of the horse’s history on two continents as well as ways to think about conservation in the future.Grazing and Roaming HorsesHorses, when unfenced, tend to graze in a flower petal pattern around a water source. When the food runs out, they move on to another area and repeat the process. Along the way, they do what horses do — fertilize the land. Horse droppings often contain seeds and attract bugs. Some seeds grow into plants. Some bugs attract animals. When the horse disappears from an area, this process stops.“In this way, the horse is not only responding to change, it is also actually part of the change,” says Yvette Running Horse Collin, a member of the Lakota Nation, a scientist at the University of Toulouse, France, and an author of the paper. “If provided the opportunity, you would find that horses today would also move great distances in response to changes in the environment. In doing so, they provide a great service to all life. Where the horse goes, other life follows.”Ancient Horse FossilsHorses were both agents and objects of change over the past 50,000 years. The scientific team analyzed genomes from 67 ancient horse fossils found across Beringia, Siberia, and continental North America, dated them with radiocarbon and isotopes, and compared the data to all known lineages.The study reveals a wider range of horse genetic diversity during the late Pleistocene period than we see today, as well as long, bi-directional transcontinental migration. For example, some lineages found in Siberian and Iberian fossils show genetic traces of North American horses.The study suggests that not only did the closing of the bridge between continents affect the North American horse population, but other effects of warming made an impact as well. As eras shifted from Pleistocene to Holocene, grasslands turned to wet, boggy tundra unsuitable for horses to graze and difficult for them to travel upon.Climate and Geological ChangeThe authors emphasize that the study shows the necessity of looking at whole systems, not just an individual species to understand the past impacts of climate and geological change. The same applies to future conservation efforts.“In order to have successful conservation efforts for the horse, you must also put in place successful conservation efforts for other forms of life," Collin says. “It is for this reason that one of the research outcomes of this study is to suggest the creation of corridors that would allow life to move — together — as needed."Some tribes involved in the study intend to put those concepts into practice in the Black Hills of South Dakota. They will provide scientific measures of those efforts and intend to share the results with the wider scientific community.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American. #ancient #horse #fossils #reveal #migration

GTA 6 delay is to give Rockstar ‘no limitations’ as Take-Two commits to new date Adam Starkey Published May 16, 2025 10:59am Updated May 16, 2025 10:59am GTA 6 looks set to dominate 2026Take-Two Interactive has tried to explain the delay of GTA 6, as it implies a Switch 2 port is out of the question. While the delay of GTA 6 to May 26 next year wasn’t exactly surprising, if you’re familiar with Rockstar’s history, it has still had a sizeable impact on the industry at large. According to reports, the announcement has sparked panic at rival publishers, as they try to avoid the game’s release date, but also worry about another potential delay beyond May 2026. Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two, has now commented on the prospect of that happening, as it attempts to provide some reassurance. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick addressed the game’s delay in an interview with IGN, where it was described as a necessary move to allow GTA 6 to fulfil its ‘creative vision with no limitations’. ‘As we get closer to completion of a title that’s seeking perfection, the needs or lack thereof, for continued polish become clear,’ Zelnick said. ‘In this case there was an opportunity with a small amount of incremental time, we thought, to make sure Rockstar Games achieves its creative vision with no limitations. And I supported of course that approach.’ Earlier this month, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier claimed the delay to next year ‘seemed inevitable’, due to a mix of ‘too much work, not enough time, and what appears to be a real desire from management to avoid brutal crunch’. Will there be another delay?As for whether Zelnick is confident GTA 6 will hit this new release date, he added: ‘I think historically when we set a specific date, generally speaking, we’ve been very good about reaching it.’ While this comment suggests GTA 6 will not be pushed back again, Zelnick doesn’t rule it out entirely. Rockstar is no stranger to delaying games multiple times either, as seen with Red Dead Redemption 2, so there’s still a chance this could happen with GTA 6. There’s also the fact that Zelnick repeatedly insisted that GTA 6 wasn’t going to be delayed at all… until it was. When it comes to things like that, his primary concern is placating investors, so his comments should be taken with a pinch of salt. Zelnick further addressed the game’s delay during Take-Two’s Q4 2025 earnings call, where he confirmed that GTA 6 began development ‘in earnest’ in 2020. ‘Rockstar expects to release GTA 6 on May 26, 2026, which is in our fiscal year 2027,’ Zelnick said. ‘I believe affording Rockstar additional time for such a groundbreaking project is a worthy investment. ‘The ambition and complexity of GTA 6 is greater than any previous Rockstar title, and the team is poised to release another astonishing entertainment experience that will exceed players’ expectations.’ In a Q&A with investors, Zelnick was asked about the publisher’s support of the Nintendo Switch 2, where he outlined how the company will bring titles to the console on a ‘case-by-case basis’. ‘We’re launching four titles with Nintendo Switch 2, and that’s I think a bigger array of releases than we’ve ever offered before with a new Nintendo platform,’ Zelnick said. Historically, being a third party in the Nintendo business has been a bit challenging. I think Nintendo has been very forthcoming in addressing that. And we’re stepping up too, because we have great optimism for the platform. More Trending ‘In terms of what we would bring to any platform, we address it on a case-by-case basis, we obviously want to be where the consumers are. But we would not necessarily bring every title to every platform. There are also great catalogue opportunities as well.’ While the technical requirements of GTA 6seem to rule out any potential Switch 2 port, the last sentence suggests we could see past games in the series on the console – maybe even the rumoured remaster of GTA 4. Elsewhere in the earnings report, Take-Two announced GTA 5 has sold over 215 million copies, a five million increase from February this year. Meanwhile, Red Dead Redemption 2 sold three million copies within the past three months, bringing its lifetime sales to 74 million. Considering GTA 5 came out over a decade ago in 2013, it’s astonishing that it’s still selling millions of copies all these years later. Coupled with Take-Two’s strong release slate for the rest of this year, it’s perhaps understandable why Take-Two is in no rush to get GTA 6 out the door. A remaster of GTA 4 is rumoured to be in the worksEmail gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy #gta #delay #give #rockstar #limitations

Among the persistent mysteries of the 2024 election is the roots of the modern political gender gap, particularly among young people. Though their final vote choices were a bit more nuanced than some pre-election polls suggested, young men and women, aged 18 to 29, had the largest divergence in their vote among the age groups. Gen Z men supported Donald Trump by 14 percentage points; Gen Z women supported Kamala Harris by 17 points, per one post-election analysis.Those dynamics, particularly the aggressive rightward shift of young men, have raised some interesting questions: What was driving this divide? Was something in particular moving young men to the right while pushing young women to the left? Could it be the manosphere, economics, or old-school sexism?Or could it be something else, like the apparent resurgence of organized religion?As I’ve reported, the rapid decline of religiosity within the United States has been slowing down over recent years. Particularly since the pandemic, data shows Gen Z is no longer continuing the rapid decline in religious affiliation, particularly Christianity, that started with previous generations. If anything, religious belief has seen a small revival with that youngest cohort.That shift suggests a curious dynamic at play among America’s youth. As Gen Z has been getting more politically polarized along gendered lines, so too has their religious affiliation. Those trends suggest that modern politics and religious beliefs may be having a bit of self-reinforcing effect on each other: As young men find faith and religious belonging, their politics are drifting to the right too, in turn reinforcing their existing beliefs.The opposite seems to be true with young women: Religious customs are not jibing with their political and social beliefs, pushing them out of churches, and reinforcing that drift away from some organized religions.Those religious trends matter. As religious and political beliefs of young men and women move away from each other, it stands to complicate not just electoral choices, but the future of family life, dating, and social belonging.The religious gender gap is changing The last 10 years have seen American Christianity bottom out. After a steady decline in Christian religiosity since the 1990s, Christian belief began to stabilize at around 60 percent of the American adult population — still a historic low point — sometime around the turn of the 2020s.A key contributor to this slow-down appears to be Gen Z. After years of successive generations losing their religion, Gen Z seemed to get as irreligious as it could be. Now, what we’ve seen since 2020 is a kind of dead cat bounce: a slightly higher level of Christian religious affiliation among the youngest adults. Among the youngest cohort of Gen Z, those born between 2000 and 2006, the share who identify as Christian has increased since 2023, from 45 percent to 51, per the Pew Research Center. And overall, Gen Z seems to be more Christian than past trend lines predicted they should be: at 46 percent compared to a projected 41 percent. At the heart of that halt and slight reversal is a dual dynamic: Young women are leaving religious congregations, while young men’s religious identification and practice rises. These changes come across in a few ways. First, the gender gap in religious participation has not just evaporated in recent years, but reversed. The religious researcher and data scientist Ryan Burge has found in his analysis of survey data from the Cooperative Election Study that while women used to attend religious services more regularly than men, the reverse is now happening. Among the cohort born in the 1990s and 2000, it’s men who are now outpacing women in weekly attendance.Looking at other reference points suggests something similar. Young women are more likely than young men to say they are religiously unaffiliated, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life research. Young women are now as likely as young men to say religion is “not that important” to them — a significant development since women have traditionally been more fervent believers. And the religious gender gap among the youngest cohort appears to be narrowing in other ways, too: Regardless of which religion they identify with, young women and young men report about the same rates of daily prayer. For older generations, women greatly outpace men in praying daily.Is religion making men more conservative? We could still stand to get better data about what is happening. It could be that young men simply remain as religious as older generations of men are, or that men are getting more religious in general, or that men are particularly loyal to organized religion. Some data suggest young women remain religious or spiritual but just don’t identify with organized churches in the same way men do. But the religious gender gap still appears to be changing among Gen Z.But is politics driving these changes in religious behavior and belief? Or is religion driving stronger political beliefs? The data is a little less definitive here, but two things seem to bear out: According to AEI’s Survey Center, young women who are leaving churches report doing so because their congregations’ beliefs are more conservative than the beliefs they hold. Churches are out of step with where most young women are. Additionally, young Christian women who remain in their churches are still more likely to be liberal and hold progressive beliefs than young Christian men. Even as they remain Christians, they are becoming more politically liberal.Underlying all of this is the fact that Gen Z women are more likely to identify as feminists, as LGBTQ, and as supportive of abortion rights. According to the Pew Religious Landscape Survey, young Christian women are 13 points more likely than young men to say that abortion should be legal. They are 18 points more likely to support gay marriage and 26 points more likely to accept LGBTQ people.As the researcher Daniel A. Cox of the AEI’s Survey Center points out, these are all shifts from what young Christians believed 10 years ago. “The gender gap in views of abortion has since quadrupled,” he notes in a recent analysis, but when it comes to views on homosexuality and gay marriage, it seems like young men have moved right. “Young Christian women have hardly changed their views over the last decade, while young men have become less supportive.”On a range of other views of government, political parties, and ideology in general, what’s happening with non-religious young people is also happening among believers. Young Christian women are much more liberal, and more likely to be Democrats, than young Christian men. Cox notes that it might not be religion making these political views so different but the degree to which young Christian women have more connections and exposure to diverse communities and are consuming different kinds of media. Religious young men seem to be stuck in more homogenous environments, both in the digital and in the real world, he suggests.Still, while we can confidently say young women are becoming more liberal and less religious in that process, we can’t say the same for men. Religion may or may not be making young men more conservative, but it does seem likely that their conservative religious and political beliefs are at least keeping young men in churches. It appears to be slowing down their drift away from organized religion.All of which stands to complicate the future of not just Gen Z’s social and cultural bonds to each other but also those of future generations. It’s the youngest cohort of Gen Z, those born between 2000 and 2006, that is narrowing religious gender gaps while widening political ones. That poses issues for their social, romantic, and familial futures. Gen Z already reports struggles with socializing, dating, maintaining healthy relationships, and combating loneliness. Marriage rates continue to fall. So as young men and women drift away from each other, it’s hard to see how prospective partners breach these divides. And these dynamics may very well end up having electoral effects.See More: #gen #men #are #becoming #more

To bolster its cellular Starlink service, SpaceX is reviving a regulatory battle for access to the 2GHz radio spectrum, long held by EchoStar, the parent company of Dish Network and Boost Mobile.On Wednesday, SpaceX filed a new application with the Federal Communications Commission to use the 2GHz spectrum, a year after the agency denied an earlier request for access. What’s changed? New FCC Chair Brendan Carr has signaled he wants to free up more radio spectrum for the commercial sector, including satellite services. Carr also sent a letter to EchoStar co-founder Charles Ergen last week, questioning the company’s control over a "large number of FCC spectrum licenses."On Monday, the FCC asked for public comment about whether EchoStar is effectively using the 2GHz band, which the company has exclusive control over for mobile satellite services. That prompted SpaceX to swoop in and request access to the 2GHz band for its cellular Starlink system, which is launching through T-Mobile in July. The company's application says the 2GHz spectrum “will provide a significant boost” to how SpaceX’s cellular Starlink system can connect users in cellular dead zones. "Granting this application will enable SpaceX to augment its MSScapabilities and leverage its next generation satellite constellation to provide increased capacity, reduced latency, and broader service coverage for mobile users across the United States, including those users underserved or unserved by existing networks,” SpaceX wrote.In the US, the cellular Starlink service currently uses T-Mobile's 1.91 to 1.995GHz bands.Recommended by Our EditorsThe same application also criticizes EchoStar over its control of the 2GHz spectrum for mobile satellite services. SpaceX even went as far as to use its own Starlink satellites to measure radioactivity in the 2GHz spectrum, finding “EchoStar’s activity level is 1% to 5% in the 2000-2020MHz range and 1% to 3% in the 2180- 2200MHz range.”The application also claims that EchoStar has no intention of using the 2GHz for a mobile satellite service, citing a comment from EchoStar CEO Hamid Akhavan during an earnings call last week that suggests. "If I had a satellite today, I would not launch it today," he said. "I would not because the satellite has a life of several years in the LEO system. And if the satellite goes up there, but there are no devices to talk to, what is the point?"As a result, SpaceX tells the FCC: “EchoStar’s inaction is not only a fundamental waste of valuable MSS spectrum, but also an opportunity for other more motivated and capable next-generation satellite system operators to more intensively use the spectrum to provide mobile services to Americans in underserved and unserved areas.”SpaceX's goal is to share the 2GHz spectrum, saying it can do so without generating radio interference. To gain faster access, the application also asks the FCC to waive its normal rules concerning spectrum approval. EchoStar didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But in response to the FCC’s inquiry, the company is pushing back on concerns about its spectrum use, telling investors it’s still developing a “direct-to-device” satellite system for phones."We are now testing new S-bandservices in both North America and Europe, and this year we launched an LEO satellite with several more planned in the coming months,” the company wrote in an SEC filing. In the past, EchoStar has also lobbied the FCC to reject SpaceX’s efforts to “pirate” access to the 2GHz band. “SpaceX’s attack is defamatory and anti-competitive. It is a transparently bad faith attempt to usurp the spectrum rights of a competitor, and the Commission should dismiss it as such,” the company wrote in a separate filing last month. #spacex #revives #battle #with #echostar

On Thursday, Windsurf, a startup that develops popular AI tools for software engineers, announced the launch of its first family of AI software engineering models, or SWE-1 for short. The startup says it trained its new family of AI models — SWE-1, SWE-1-lite, and SWE-1-mini — to be optimized for the “entire software engineering process,” not just coding. The launch of Windsurf’s in-house AI models may come as a shock to some, given that OpenAI has reportedly closed a billion deal to acquire Windsurf. However, this model launch suggests Windsurf is trying to expand beyond just developing applications to also developing the models that power them. According to Windsurf, SWE-1, the largest and most capable AI model of the bunch, performs competitively with Claude 3.5 Sonnet, GPT-4.1, and Gemini 2.5 Pro on internal programming benchmarks. However, SWE-1 appears to fall short of frontier AI models, such as Claude 3.7 Sonnet, on software engineering tasks. Windsurf says its SWE-1-lite and SWE-1-mini models will be available for all users on its platform, free or paid. Meanwhile, SWE-1 will only be available to paid users. Windsurf did not immediately announce pricing for its SWE-1 models but claims it’s cheaper to serve than Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Windsurf is best known for tools that allow software engineers to write and edit code through conversations with an AI chatbot, a practice known as “vibe coding.” Other popular vibe-coding startups include Cursor, the largest in the space, as well as Lovable. Most of these startups, including Windsurf, have traditionally relied on AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to power their applications. In a video announcing the SWE models, comments made by Windsurf’s Head of Research, Nicholas Moy, underscore Windsurf’s newest efforts to differentiate its approach. “Today’s frontier models are optimized for coding, and they’ve made massive strides over the last couple of years,” says Moy. “But they’re not enough for us … Coding is not software engineering.” Windsurf notes in a blog post that while other models are good at writing code, they struggle to work between multiple surfaces — as programmers often do — such as terminals, IDEs, and the internet. The startup says SWE-1 was trained using a new data model and a “training recipe that encapsulates incomplete states, long-running tasks, and multiple surfaces.” Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW The startup describes SWE-1 as its “initial proof of concept,” suggesting it may release more AI models in the future. #vibecoding #startup #windsurf #launches #inhouse

trace it After latest kidnap attempt, crypto types tell crime bosses: Transfers are traceable Crypto abduction attempts continue to rock France. Nate Anderson – May 15, 2025 4:34 pm | 45 The kidnapping attempt in progress. Credit: France24 The kidnapping attempt in progress. Credit: France24 Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Masked men jumped out of a white-panel van in Paris this week, attempting to snatch a 34-year-old woman off the street. The woman's husband fought back and suffered a fractured skull, according to France24. The woman continued resisting long enough for a bike shop owner named Nabil to rush out swinging a fire extinguisher, which he hurled after the departing van as the attackers finally fled. The entire altercation was captured on video. The woman was identified as the daughter of a "crypto boss," and her attempted kidnapping is part of a disquieting surge in European crypto-related abductions—two of which have already involved fingers being chopped off. The last major abduction happened in Paris only two weeks ago, and it ended with French police storming a house in the Paris suburbs and rescuing a crypto mogul's now-four-fingered father. The attacks have spooked the industry, which has called, somewhat ironically, for enhanced protections from the government. Reuters notes that the issue has been escalated all the way to the top of the French government, where Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau announced plans this week to "meet with French crypto entrepreneurs to make them aware of the risks and to take measures to protect them." The sudden spike in copycat attacks in France, Belgium, and Spain over the last few months suggests that crypto robbery as a tactic has caught the attention of organized crime.Crypto industry insiders seem convinced that organized crime likes these attacks because of abelief that crypto transfers are untraceable. So people like Chainalysis CEO Jonathan Levin are trying to clue in the crime bosses. "For whatever reason, there is a perception that’s out there that crypto is an asset that is untraceable, and that really lends itself to criminals acting in a certain way," Levin said at a recent conference covered by the trade publication Cointelegraph. “Apparently, thethat crypto is not untraceable hasn't been received by some of the organized crime groups that are actually perpetrating these attacks, and some of them are concentrated in, you know, France, but not exclusively." Nate Anderson Deputy Editor Nate Anderson Deputy Editor Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica. His most recent book is In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World, which is much funnier than it sounds. 45 Comments #after #latest #kidnap #attempt #crypto

OpinionMay 14, 20255 min readFederal Budget Cuts Would Sabotage NASA’s Plans to Find Alien LifeNASA’s astrobiology ambitions are at risk of collapsing under the White House’s proposed budget. But your voice can make a differenceBy Michael L. Wong An artist’s illustration of a potentially habitable exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star. NASA's Goddard Space Flight CenterWe’ve never been so close to discovering life beyond Earth. Our generation could be the one that finds it—provided two essential ingredients exist. First, that there’s life out there. Second, that we’re willing to look.Alien life’s existence is outside our control, but the universe seems to encourage our attention. Many people rest their optimism about alien life on the remarkable fact that our cosmos is brimming with planetary possibilities. To date, we’ve discovered nearly 6,000 exoplanets, most of them around only the nearest of the Milky Way’s hundreds of billions of stars. That means all our astonishingly successful planet-hunting surveys have studied just a mere teardrop of a vast cosmic sea—and implies there are at least as many planets as stars in our galaxy alone, plus some 1025 worlds in the rest of the observable universe. Chances are we’re not alone—so long as the probability that planets spring forth life is not astronomically miniscule.Discovering alien life, on the other hand, rests squarely on us. For the first time in human history, we can meaningfully answer once-timeless questions. Countless generations before us could only ask “Are we alone?” as passive stargazers. Today our rockets reliably reach otherworldly destinations, our robotic emissaries yield transformative knowledge about our planetary neighbors, and our telescopes gaze ever farther into the heavens, revealing the subtle beauty of the cosmos.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.NASA has led the way on this work, but it now faces an existential threat in the form of short-sighted budget cuts proposed by the White House. If passed into law by Congress, these cuts would axe critical space missions, gut NASA’s workforce, and abandon one of the most captivating quests in all of science. Additional sweeping cuts planned for the National Science Foundation would be similarly ruinous for ground-based astronomy and a host of other endeavors that support NASA’s work at the high frontier.Led by NASA, for more than a half-century the U.S. has been building toward a golden age of astrobiology, a field of research the space agency helped invent. The groundwork was laid on Mars, beginning with the Viking missions of the 1970s and continuing into today, where the agency has “followed the water” to dried-up lakebeds. In 2014 NASA’s Curiosity rover uncovered clues pointing to an ancient, life-friendly Mars, and more recently NASA’s Perseverance rover has been caching promising rock samples for return to Earth. Researchers eagerly await their arrival, because if Mars ever did harbor life, then some of Perseverance’s specimens may well contain some sort of Martian fossils.Besides our own familiar Earth, Mars isn’t the only promising incubator of life around the sun. In the outer solar system, NASA’s Galileo probe and Cassini orbiter lifted the icy veils of Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, respectively. Beneath thick shells of ice, both moons harbor global subsurface oceans, which could be teeming with bacterial or even macroscopic denizens. NASA’s Clipper spacecraft launched in 2024 and is hurtling toward Europa, where it will make close flybys of the moon to assess its habitability. The agency has developed concepts for follow-on missions to land on both worlds and taste the chilly chemistry there for the telltale signs of life.Every organism on Earth requires liquid water, but perhaps that’s not a strict requirement elsewhere. Astrobiologists speculate about “weird life” in Venus’s sulfuric acid clouds and in the liquid hydrocarbon seas of Saturn’s frigid moon Titan. NASA plans to visit each of these worlds with state-of-the-art spacecraft—two to Venus and one to Titan—in the 2030s.And then there’s the great expanse of exoplanets. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has furnished unprecedented data about exoplanet atmospheres, most of them hot and puffy—the easiest to observe. But the most alluring exoplanets for astrobiologists—those the size and temperature of Earth—are just beyond our sight. Currently, teams of scientists are conceptualizing NASA’s next great eye in space, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, whose mission is as its name suggests: to image and examine dozens of notionally Earth-like planets for the global exhalations of alien biospheres.Taken together, these recent developments mean we could be at the doorstep of the next Copernican revolution, the next paradigm shift, the next epoch of human discovery.But the president’s recently proposed budget for the 2026 federal fiscal year strikes NASA’s Science Mission Directorate with a devastating 47 percent cut. Many of the boldest, most transformative space missions will be on the chopping block if the proposal passes. It specifically defunds the Mars Sample Return project, a cancellation that would squander billions of dollars and decades of investment. It also cancels the upcoming missions to Venus, which would investigate how the only other Earth-sized planet in our solar system turned out so drastically different from our own. And it scraps the launch of the already-built Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a project which among other things is a proving ground for imaging technologies essential to future exoplanet investigations; the loss of Roman would render prospects for the Habitable Worlds Observatory perilously dim. Also at grave risk are funding sources for brilliant early-career scientists working to make astrobiology’s future as bright as can be.NASA simply cannot continue its trend of breakthrough discoveries on only half its present budget. As talent departs the U.S. and organizational memory fades, brain drain will doom its global leadership in space science in what experts have called an “extinction-level event.”And because there is no profit-driven incentive for discovering life on a distant world, corporate entities cannot and will not fill NASA’s void. SpaceX is great at building rockets, not robotic geologists on wheels. Commercial rocket companies hone their success by reliably building the same product over and over again, but most every NASA exploration mission must do something new.A mentor of mine once described astrobiology as “a gateway drug to science.” Astrobiology invites anyone—regardless of age or background—to cultivate curiosity, creativity, humility and patience. It motivates collaboration across fields and across borders. Even if we never discover life beyond Earth, astrobiology would still offer humanity a profound gift, allowing us to marvel as never before at our existence on this lonely and precious blue-green dot.So, we must choose to do astrobiology. That means you, dear reader, have the power to influence this field’s fate. Whether through contacting elected officials, informing your friends and family about NASA’s precarious position, or simply sharing your love for space exploration, your actions can make a difference in humanity’s search for life in the universe.In the best of times, we have only a few opportunities per generation to launch revolutionary space missions, let alone ones that could forever change our sense of place in the cosmos—and perhaps even our destiny. Now we have just a fleeting moment to prevent a multigenerational disaster. If we fail, we’ll lose the future of astrobiology and all the insight it could bring.Worst of all, we wouldn’t even know what we’d be missing.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are solely their own and not those of any organization they are affiliated with or necessarily those of Scientific American. #trumps #budget #cuts #would #sabotage

It’s difficult to pin the destruction of a tsunami to a tsunami — that is, unless someone was around to witness the devastation. But a new study shows that there are some surprising geological sources that scientists can consult as an archive of ancient tsunami occurrences, many millions of years after they occur. Turning to Hokkaido Island in Japan, the Scientific Reports study suggests that deposits of amber in deep-sea sediments on the island may reveal tsunamis that occurred there between 116 and 114 million years ago. At that time, the study authors say, one or more tsunamis may have swept this fossilized tree resin — then still soft — from the island’s forests to the ocean floor, where it settled and solidified, preserving its particular method of deposition within its structure.“We describe extraordinarily rich amber concentrations in Early Cretaceous deep-sea deposits,” the study authors write in their study. “The most plausible cause for the presence of this enigmatic amber in a deep-sea setting is large-scale tsunamis.” The Ancient Traces of TsunamisAmber concentration in Hokkaido deep-sea sediments.from Kubota, A., Takeda, Y., Yi, K. et al. Amber in the Cretaceous Deep Sea Deposits Reveals Large-Scale Tsunamis. Sci Rep 15, 14298. This work is openly licensed via CC BY 4.0.)Despite their immediate devastation, tsunamis don’t leave a distinctive or long-lasting trace on the landscape. “Large-scale tsunamis destroy coastal areas and rapidly transport huge amounts of plants and other debris over long distances,” the study authors write. “However, due to their poor preservation potential and the lack of unequivocal identifying features, tsunami deposits are rarely recognized in the geological record.”One part of the problem is that the traces of ancient tsunamis are deposited along the coast, a dynamic landscape that’s constantly changing due to the crashing of continuous waves. Another is that distinguishing between tsunami deposits and storm deposits is incredibly difficult, with tsunamis leaving some of the same signs as hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons.The new study suggests, however, that records of ancient tsunamis may be found in the form of amber and other terrestrial material deposited in deep-sea sediments. Indeed, studying sediments that were once buried beneath the open ocean on Hokkaido, the study authors found that soft amber was moved, in water, so rapidly from land to sea between 116 and 114 million years ago, that it was probably transported by a tsunami. Read More: 5 Worst Tsunamis in HistoryAmber ArchivesTo arrive at their results, the study authors focused on amber-filled silica deposits from Hokkaido’s Shimonakagawa Quarry, which were deposited when the area was still covered with water. Fluorescence imaging found that “flame structures,” or distinctive flame-shaped deformations, were preserved within the deposits. Forming in amber that is still soft at the time of its deposition, these distortions suggest that the fossilized resin on Hokkaido traveled from land to open ocean in water, without popping up for air, only to sink to the ocean floor and solidify. “These resin deformations occurred underwater, implying their direct transport,” the study authors write. “Such rapid and direct transport of terrestrial materials from land to ocean could be driven by a tsunami.”According to the study authors, there are signs that landslidesmay have occurred on Hokkaido at around the same time in the Early Cretaceous, adding additional support to the tsunami theory. There are also displaced masses of mud, tree trunks, and other plant material that appear to have been deposited rapidly within the sediment between 116 and 114 million years ago — a deposition that is also more indicative of a tsunami than a storm. Similar deposits of amber in deep-sea sediments may reveal other tsunamis at other sites, the study authors say. And these archives aren’t limited to amber alone, as other material that starts on land and travels to open ocean may also signal the occurrence of ancient tsunamis, many millions and millions of years ago. “Large-scale tsunamis may not be recorded in coastal areas due to the destruction of such settings,” the study authors write, but deep-sea sediments and the terrestrial deposits within can still “serve as significant archives for large-scale destructive events.”Read More: Here’s How Earthquakes Cause TsunamisArticle SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Scientific Reports. Amber in the Cretaceous Deep Sea Deposits Reveals Large-Scale TsunamisSam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. #deepsea #deposits #amber #document #massive

May 15, 20254 min readThis Strange Mutation Explains the Mystifying Color of Orange CatsYour orange cat may host a never-before-seen genetic pathway for color pigmentation, according to new studiesBy Gayoung Lee edited by Lauren J. Young Chris Winsor/Getty ImagesCats are arguably perfect. At least, evidence suggests that felines, which have evolved with minimal variation and maximal efficiency, have reached the “perfect” genetic form.“Everything you need to know about genetics, you can learn from your cat,” says Leslie Lyons, a veterinary scientist specializing in cat genetics at the University of Missouri. Studying cats’ coat colors, for instance, has informed various aspects of modern genetics, she says. But one cat fur hue has stumped scientists for decades: orange. In house cats, orangeness appears to be sex-linked; it almost always occurs in males because of a mutation on the sex-determining X chromosome. Scientists have long been unable to pinpoint any specific gene responsible for pumpkin-colored cats, however.Now two papers, published concurrently on Thursday in Current Biology, reveal a remarkably unique genetic pathway that has never been seen in other felines—or any other mammals. With their colleagues, two separate groups at Stanford University and Kyushu University in Japan independently arrived at the same surprising conclusion: a tiny deletion in a cat’s X chromosome increased the activity of a gene called Arhgap36, which scientists had never previously associated with pigmentation. In this case, it appeared to be coaxing the cat’s melanin-producing cells to shift orange.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.These findings close decades’ worth of investigations surrounding house cats with a ginger hue—a coat coloration that had “been recognized for more than a centurykind of an exception to the genetic rules that explain coloration in most mammals,” says Christopher Kaelin, a geneticist and lead author of the Stanford study.That’s partly because what seemed to be causing orange fur in cats wasn’t so much an “orange gene” as it was an “orange mutation” in an unknown gene, Kaelin says. The term mutation refers to changes to the original DNA, notes geneticist Greg Barsh, senior author of the Stanford study. “So how do you know that a visible traitis caused by a change in DNA sequence?” Barsh adds. “The answer is pretty simple: you see it inherited from parent to child.”The marked abundance of male orange cats had long led scientists to suspect the trait is sex-linked—more specifically, tied to a variation in the X chromosome. British geneticist Mary Lyon confirmed this theory in 1961 through the discovery of X-inactivation, wherein female mammals’ cells randomly switch off one of the two X chromosomes they inherited from their parents. For most mammals, including humans and cats, this helps prevent genetic complications that might arise from having an additional X chromosome.Male kittens, also like most other male mammals, have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. Male cats with orange-colored parents only get one copy of the orange mutation and thus end up with entirely orange fur. Female cats, however, have two X chromosomes. If one of these happens to have the orange mutation, the process of X-inactivation will produce orange, brown or black patches depending on which X chromosome—orange or nonorange—is activated in that part of their skin. This will give the kitten an overall coat pattern that is either mottled orange and blackor a patchwork of orange, black and white.Over the years, scientists had incrementally closed in on the key mutation’s general location on the cat genome. “The candidate region had more than 10 genes, none of which was known for pigment regulation,” says Hiroyuki Sasaki, a geneticist and senior author of the Kyushu University study. Sasaki and his team decided to sequence the whole genomes of cats with different coat colors to single out any variations on the X chromosome. Similarly, the Stanford team collected a variety of data from a wide assortment of cats, directly comparing the DNA sequences of orange and nonorange ones.Both teams identified the small mutation, which was not in the Arhgap36 gene “but close to it,” Kaelin explains. That meant that the mutation didn’t disrupt the gene’s expression in the cat’s genome but that it was close enough to affect the gene’s activity, specifically in cells that produce melanin. “That’s a very unusual kind of mutation,” Barsh says.“Thepathway is interesting because it adds to the knowledge about this gene and how it functions,” says Lyons, who was thanked for contributing to cat genomic resources in the Stanford paper but wasn’t involved in either study. “This tells us that health is a complex interaction of genes and occurrences during the developmental process.”Orange and tortoiseshell cats’ tendency toward amusing, friendly and sometimes mischievous behavior is a running joke among cat owners, but there’s no scientific evidence linking coat colors and behavioral differences, Barsh says. Researchers aren’t yet sure if the mutation could play a role in this—it’s a question they’d like to ask next, however. “Because Arhgap36 is expressed not only in pigment cells but also in the brain and hormonal glands, an interesting possibility is that its altered expression causes changes in neuronal activity and even behavior,” Sasaki suggests.“We think that there is no advantage—or really, disadvantage—to having an orange mutation in a cat,” Barsh says. “It's just something that happenedthey’re attractive; people like them, and so people saved it.” #this #strange #mutation #explains #mystifying

Geologists turned to tiny bubbles to investigate the dynamics driving magma flow beneath Hawaii’s volcanoes as the country’s islands drift northwest on a tectonic plate. They found that, as the islands slip away from the hotspot that fuels Kiluaea on the “Big Island, magma flow not only slows, but shifts deeper underground," according to a report in the journal Science Advances.“This challenges the old idea that eruptions are fueled by magma stored in the Earth’s crust and suggests a new possibility that magma is stored and matures in the Earth’s mantle, and eruptions are fueled from this deep mantle reservoir,” Esteban Gazel, a Cornell University scientist and author of the paper, said in a press release.Understanding Volcano EruptionsTo reach this conclusion, scientists employed a technique that will help increase understanding of what causes eruptions and help them predict those events more accurately. They focused on tiny gas bubbles that become trapped inside crystals within magma — a phenomenon called “fluid inclusion.” Calculating the pressure and depth at which those bubbles are captured gives scientists more precise information about magma’s activity.“The technology allows us to measure pressure from depths with an uncertainty as small as just hundreds of meters, which is very, very precise for depths that are tens of kilometers below the surface,” Gazel said in the release. “Before this, measuring magma storage was much more difficult, with uncertainties that could span kilometers.”Read More: 5 of the Most Explosive Volcanic EruptionsLooking at Different Volcano Life StagesThe scientists applied the method to samples from three Hawaiian volcanoes that are at different stages of their “lives.” Kilauea’s magma was stored at relatively shallow depths of about a mile, as predicted. They found two magma storage areas beneath Haleakala — a shallow one just over a mile down, and a deeper one at 12 to 16 miles in the Earth’s mantle. Diamond Head on the island of O’ahu, showed magma storage around 13 to 18 miles deep, all within the Earth’s mantle.“Knowing these depths precisely matters, because to understand the drivers of eruptions, one of the most important constraints is where magma is stored,” Gazel said in the release. “That is fundamental for physical models that will explain eruptive processes and is required for volcanic risk assessment.”Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Science Advances. Crustal to mantle melt storage during the evolution of Hawaiian volcanoesBefore joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American. #tiny #bubbles #within #magma #reveal