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Embers of an Ancient Inferno Pinpoint The Worst Extinction in Earth’s History : ScienceAlert
The link between ancient volcanic eruptions and the most severe extinction event the world has ever seen just got even stronger. A new analysis of mercury isotopes has provided evidence that a quarter of a billion years ago, far-flung places in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere were blanketed with debris from volcanic eruptions in Siberia.
The so-called Great Dying, also called the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event, ensued, where most of life was wiped out under ash-filled skies.
While it’s clear how things ended – with the loss of more than 90 percent of marine species and over 70 percent of land-dwelling vertebrates – our understanding of how Earth’s biggest die-off event unfolded remains a bit cloudy, despite geologists’ best efforts.
Through piecing together chemical traces trapped in rocks and ocean sediments, geoscientists are fairly confident that a series of volcanic eruptions unleashed a cascade of dramatic changes in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans that eventually suffocated animals.
But an extinction event as big as the Great Dying also needs a pretty solid case before geoscientists can definitively say what caused it, and when it happened. They are squinting back in time some 252 million years, after all.
In past research, zinc and nickel have been used to link changes in ocean chemistry to massive volcanism and the loss of marine life. But these elements are recycled in Earth’s surface, unlike isotopes of mercury which offer a far more stable signal of volcanic activity.
Also, many studies of this mass extinction event have focused on sites from the Northern Hemisphere, making it difficult to understand the impact of volcanism on the underside of Earth. This is significant because mounting evidence suggests the Great Dying was not a single deathly event, but multiple extinction episodes that occurred in waves over a hundred thousand years.
So, paleoclimatologist Jun Shen of China University of Geosciences and colleagues set about detecting mercury isotopes in rock deposits in two Southern Hemisphere locations: the Karoo Basin in south-central Africa and Sydney Basin on Australia’s east coast.
At the time of the Great Dying, the basins were united in one supercontinent called Pangaea, but are now separated by roughly 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) and the Indian ocean. In them, the researchers found near-identical patterns: mercury isotopes peaked around the end of the Permian.
This evidence – from what are to date the most distant terrestrial sites from the Siberian Traps, the gigantic lava flows formed by the epoch-ending volcanoes in question – suggests mercury was blasted out of volcanoes in the Northern Hemisphere and swept around the globe, the researchers say.
“It turns out that volcanic emissions of mercury have a very specific isotopic composition of the mercury that accumulated at the extinction horizon,” explains study author and University of Connecticut geologist Tracy Frank.
“Knowing the age of these deposits, we can more definitively tie the timing of the extinction to this massive eruption in Siberia.”
Their work aligns with signals from sulfur isotopes coinciding with the Great Dying, and also builds on past research which suggests mass extinctions started occurring on land up to 600,000 years before marine life sucked in its last few breaths.
“That suggests that the event itself wasn’t just one big whammy that happened instantaneously,” explains Christopher Fielding, another geologist at the University of Connecticut.
“It wasn’t just one very bad day on Earth, so to speak, it took some time to build and this feeds in well into the new results because it suggests the volcanism was the root cause.”
The researchers acknowledge that nailing down the direct cause of the Great Dying is not easily done. Plumes of ash from volcanic eruptions in southern China have also been implicated in the carnage, in addition to the Siberian Traps.
So, try as we might reconstruct the sequence of events that lead to Earth’s biggest extinction event, perhaps a more salient message to absorb is the fragility of life on a violent planet that today is under pressure from many of the same climatic changes: rising temperatures and greenhouse gases.
The research has been published in Nature Communications.
New Map of the Universe Displays Span of Entire Cosmos With Pinpoint Accuracy and Sweeping Beauty
Brice Ménard (left) and Nikita Shtarkman examine the map of the observable universe. Credit: Will Kirk / Johns Hopkins University
The map charts a broad expanse of the universe, from the
Compiled from data mined over two decades by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the map was created by astronomers from Johns Hopkins University. It allows the public to experience data previously only accessible to scientists.
The interactive map depicts the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies. It is available online, where it can also be downloaded for free.
A new map of the universe displays for the first time the span of the entire known cosmos with pinpoint accuracy and sweeping beauty. Credit: Johns Hopkins University
“Growing up I was very inspired by astronomy pictures, stars, nebulae, and galaxies, and now it’s our time to create a new type of picture to inspire people,” says map creator Brice Ménard, a professor at Johns Hopkins. “Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, leading to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries. But nobody took the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to people who are not scientists. Our goal here is to show everybody what the universe really looks like.”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is a pioneering effort to capture the night sky through a telescope based in New Mexico. Night after night for years, the telescope aimed at slightly different locations to capture this unusually broad perspective.
The map visualizes a slice of the universe, or about 200,000 galaxies—each dot on the map is a galaxy and each galaxy contains billions of stars and planets. The Milky Way is simply one of these dots, the one at the very bottom of the map. Ménard assembled the map with the help of former Johns Hopkins computer science student Nikita Shtarkman.
Created by Johns Hopkins University astronomers with data mined over two decades by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the map allows the public to experience data previously only accessible to scientists. Credit: Johns Hopkins University
The map is even more colorful due to the expansion of the universe. Because of this, the farther an object is, the redder it appears. The first flash of radiation emitted soon after the
Researchers Pinpoint ‘Depressing’ Gut Microbe With Potential for Psychobiotic Drugs
Summary: Examining the gut microbiome of those with major depressive disorder, researchers identify the presence of the bacteria Faecalibacterium prausnitzii as being responsible for the functional discrepancies between healthy individuals and those with MDD.
Source: Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology
In a three-year study, researchers from Skoltech, Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of RAS, the Moscow-based Mental-Health Clinic No. 1 named after N.A. Alexeev and Serbsky Federal Medical Research Center of Psychiatry and Narcology have examined how gut microbes in patients with a major depressive disorder are different from those in mentally healthy people.
After analyzing all genes present in the gut microbiome, the team pinpointed a particular bacterium—Faecalibacterium prausnitzii—responsible for the largest functional discrepancy between the healthy and the depressed datasets.
The findings, which hold promise for express mental health diagnostics and psychobiotic medications, are reported in Biomedicines.
“If you know which genes are represented to a lesser or greater extent in depressive patients compared with the healthy population, and which bacteria are responsible for this, you can attempt to do two things,” the study’s lead author, Skoltech Bio research intern Alexey Kovtun, commented.
“First, you can use the analysis of fecal microbiota as a supplementary tool when diagnosing the mental disorder. Second, you can try to develop drugs that would ‘normalize’ gut microbiome in depressed patients.”
To identify “depressing” gut germs, the researchers conducted so-called full-metagenome analysis. That is, they recovered and sequenced the entirety of bacterial DNA from the feces samples of a cohort of patients diagnosed with the major depressive disorder and a cohort of mentally healthy individuals.
“The result is that we know both which genes and bacterial species are present in the microbiome of each group, and how strongly they are represented,” Kovtun said.
The next step is identifying the set of genes that vary significantly between the healthy individuals and those with the mental disorder and zooming in on those particular genes to find out which of the bacteria carrying them are actually over- or underrepresented in the microbiome of depressed patients.
“One particular bacterium really stood out,” Kovtun explained. “It is called Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, and it is significantly less abundant in the gut of patients with the major depressive disorder. We linked it to three strongly underrepresented gene groups in the microbiome metagenome of those patients.”
The first of the three notable gene sets is involved in the production of the hormone melatonin, which regulates the sleep-wake cycle. The second one is associated with the formation of the classical neurotransmitters glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid. The third one is comprised by multiple genes responsible for the synthesis of short-chain acids, whose deficiency has been linked to depression.
According to the authors of the paper, the microbe whose role the study highlights—Faecalibacterium prausnitzii—has increasingly attracted the attention of researchers in the context of developing treatment options and diagnostic approaches for various diseases based on certain bacterial strains. The professional community is excited about this bacterium.
“Hopefully, it could prove useful as a target for express test kits for mental disorder diagnostics and psychobiotic drugs promoting mental well-being by harmonizing patient microbiome,” Kovtun added.
“We hear a lot about prebiotics and probiotics—well, psychobiotics could be the next big thing, and our team is part of the global effort to make them a reality.”
About this microbiome and depression research news
Author: Press Office
Source: Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology
Contact: Press Office – Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access.
“Alterations of the Composition and Neurometabolic Profile of Human Gut Microbiota in Major Depressive Disorder” by Alexey S. Kovtun et al. Biomedicines
Abstract
See also
Alterations of the Composition and Neurometabolic Profile of Human Gut Microbiota in Major Depressive Disorder
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is among the most prevalent mental disorders worldwide. Factors causing the pathogenesis of MDD include gut microbiota (GM), which interacts with the host through the gut–brain axis.
In previous studies of GM in MDD patients, 16S rRNA sequencing was used, which provided information about composition but not about function.
In our study, we analyzed whole metagenome sequencing data to assess changes in both the composition and functional profile of GM.
We looked at the GM of 36 MDD patients, compared with that of 38 healthy volunteers. Comparative taxonomic analysis showed decreased abundances of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Roseburia hominis, and Roseburia intestinalis, and elevated abundances of Escherichia coli and Ruthenibacterium lactatiformans in the GM of MDD patients.
We observed decreased levels of bacterial genes encoding key enzymes involved in the production of arginine, asparagine, glutamate, glutamine, melatonin, acetic, butyric and conjugated linoleic acids, and spermidine in MDD patients.
These genes produced signature pairs with Faecalibacterium prausntizii and correlated with decreased levels of this species in the GM of MDD patients.
These results show the potential impact of the identified biomarker bacteria and their metabolites on the pathogenesis of MDD, and should be confirmed in future metabolomic studies.
Type-2 Diabetes signs: Scientists pinpoint common vegetable that can lower high blood sugar levels by 50 per cent
One in 10 people over the age of 40 in the UK are now living with Type 2 diabetes, which is a condtion that causes too much sugar in your blood. However, there is one common vegetable that can lower blood sugar levels by 50 per cent – and could see “potential use” in treating patients with diabetes.
People with Type 2 diabetes are not able to produce sufficient insulin from their pancreas to regulate blood sugar, which means that their blood sugar can reach dangerously high levels.
However, findings from 2015, presented at The Endocrine Society’s 97th annual meeting in San Diego, revealed that the extract of an onion bulb can “strongly lower” high blood sugar and total cholesterol levels when given alongside antidiabetic drug metformin.
Lead study author Anthony Ojieh of Delta State University in Abraka, Nigeria, said at the time: “Onion is cheap and available and has been used as a nutritional supplement. It has the potential for use in treating patients with diabetes.”
The researchers tested the theory on rats. In total, three groups of rats with medically induced diabetes were given various doses of the onion extract to see if it would enhance the drug’s effect.
The doses were 200mg, 400mg, and 600mg per kilogram of body weight. The researchers also gave the drug and onion to three groups of nondiabetic rats with normal blood sugar.
The study found that, of the diabetic rats, those given 400mg and 600mg per kilogram of body weight “strongly reduced” their blood sugar levels by 50 per cent and 35 per cent respectively compared with a baseline level.
The onion extract also lowered the total cholesterol level in diabetic rats, with the 400mg and 600mg having the greatest effects.
The study also found that the onion extract led to weight gain among the nondiabetic rats, but not the diabetic rats.
“Onion is not high in calories,” Ojieh explained. “However, it seems to increase the metabolic rate and, with that, to increase the appetite, leading to an increase in feeding.
“We need to investigate the mechanism by which onion brought about the blood glucose reduction. We do not yet have an explanation.”
This article was amended on 5 September 2022 to reflect that this study was published in 2015. It originally said that the findings had been presented to a meeting in 2022.
Type-2 Diabetes signs: Scientists pinpoint common vegetable that can lower high blood sugar levels by 50 per cent
One in 10 people over the age of 40 in the UK are now living with Type 2 diabetes, which is a condtion that causes too much sugar in your blood. However, there is one common vegetable that can lower blood sugar levels by 50 per cent – and could see “potential use” in treating patients with diabetes.
People with Type 2 diabetes are not able to produce sufficient insulin from their pancreas to regulate blood sugar, which means that their blood sugar can reach dangerously high levels.
However, findings from 2015, presented at The Endocrine Society’s 97th annual meeting in San Diego, revealed that the extract of an onion bulb can “strongly lower” high blood sugar and total cholesterol levels when given alongside antidiabetic drug metformin.
Lead study author Anthony Ojieh of Delta State University in Abraka, Nigeria, said at the time: “Onion is cheap and available and has been used as a nutritional supplement. It has the potential for use in treating patients with diabetes.”
The researchers tested the theory on rats. In total, three groups of rats with medically induced diabetes were given various doses of the onion extract to see if it would enhance the drug’s effect.
The doses were 200mg, 400mg, and 600mg per kilogram of body weight. The researchers also gave the drug and onion to three groups of nondiabetic rats with normal blood sugar.
The study found that, of the diabetic rats, those given 400mg and 600mg per kilogram of body weight “strongly reduced” their blood sugar levels by 50 per cent and 35 per cent respectively compared with a baseline level.
The onion extract also lowered the total cholesterol level in diabetic rats, with the 400mg and 600mg having the greatest effects.
The study also found that the onion extract led to weight gain among the nondiabetic rats, but not the diabetic rats.
“Onion is not high in calories,” Ojieh explained. “However, it seems to increase the metabolic rate and, with that, to increase the appetite, leading to an increase in feeding.
“We need to investigate the mechanism by which onion brought about the blood glucose reduction. We do not yet have an explanation.”
This article was amended on 5 September 2022 to reflect that this study was published in 2015. It originally said that the findings had been presented to a meeting in 2022.
Type-2 Diabetes signs: Scientists pinpoint common vegetable that can lower high blood sugar levels by 50 per cent
One in 10 people over the age of 40 in the UK are now living with Type 2 diabetes, which is a condtion that causes too much sugar in your blood. However, there is one common vegetable that can lower blood sugar levels by 50 per cent – and could see “potential use” in treating patients with diabetes.
People with Type 2 diabetes are not able to produce sufficient insulin from their pancreas to regulate blood sugar, which means that their blood sugar can reach dangerously high levels.
However, findings from 2015, presented at The Endocrine Society’s 97th annual meeting in San Diego, revealed that the extract of an onion bulb can “strongly lower” high blood sugar and total cholesterol levels when given alongside antidiabetic drug metformin.
Lead study author Anthony Ojieh of Delta State University in Abraka, Nigeria, said at the time: “Onion is cheap and available and has been used as a nutritional supplement. It has the potential for use in treating patients with diabetes.”
The researchers tested the theory on rats. In total, three groups of rats with medically induced diabetes were given various doses of the onion extract to see if it would enhance the drug’s effect.
The doses were 200mg, 400mg, and 600mg per kilogram of body weight. The researchers also gave the drug and onion to three groups of nondiabetic rats with normal blood sugar.
The study found that, of the diabetic rats, those given 400mg and 600mg per kilogram of body weight “strongly reduced” their blood sugar levels by 50 per cent and 35 per cent respectively compared with a baseline level.
The onion extract also lowered the total cholesterol level in diabetic rats, with the 400mg and 600mg having the greatest effects.
The study also found that the onion extract led to weight gain among the nondiabetic rats, but not the diabetic rats.
“Onion is not high in calories,” Ojieh explained. “However, it seems to increase the metabolic rate and, with that, to increase the appetite, leading to an increase in feeding.
“We need to investigate the mechanism by which onion brought about the blood glucose reduction. We do not yet have an explanation.”
This article was amended on 5 September 2022 to reflect that this study was published in 2015. It originally said that the findings had been presented to a meeting in 2022.
Type-2 Diabetes: Scientists pinpoint common vegetable that can lower high blood sugar levels by 50 per cent
One in 10 people over the age of 40 in the UK are now living with Type 2 diabetes, which is a condtion that causes too much sugar in your blood. However, there is one common vegetable that can lower blood sugar levels by 50 per cent – and could see “potential use” in treating patients with diabetes.
People with Type 2 diabetes are not able to produce sufficient insulin from their pancreas to regulate blood sugar, which means that their blood sugar can reach dangerously high levels.
However, findings from 2015, presented at The Endocrine Society’s 97th annual meeting in San Diego, revealed that the extract of an onion bulb can “strongly lower” high blood sugar and total cholesterol levels when given alongside antidiabetic drug metformin.
Lead study author Anthony Ojieh of Delta State University in Abraka, Nigeria, said at the time: “Onion is cheap and available and has been used as a nutritional supplement. It has the potential for use in treating patients with diabetes.”
The researchers tested the theory on rats. In total, three groups of rats with medically induced diabetes were given various doses of the onion extract to see if it would enhance the drug’s effect.
The doses were 200mg, 400mg, and 600mg per kilogram of body weight. The researchers also gave the drug and onion to three groups of nondiabetic rats with normal blood sugar.
The study found that, of the diabetic rats, those given 400mg and 600mg per kilogram of body weight “strongly reduced” their blood sugar levels by 50 per cent and 35 per cent respectively compared with a baseline level.
The onion extract also lowered the total cholesterol level in diabetic rats, with the 400mg and 600mg having the greatest effects.
The study also found that the onion extract led to weight gain among the nondiabetic rats, but not the diabetic rats.
“Onion is not high in calories,” Ojieh explained. “However, it seems to increase the metabolic rate and, with that, to increase the appetite, leading to an increase in feeding.
“We need to investigate the mechanism by which onion brought about the blood glucose reduction. We do not yet have an explanation.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect that this study was published in 2015.
Scientists pinpoint common vegetable that can lower high blood sugar levels by 50 per cent
Scientists have revealed one common vegetable that can lower blood sugar levels by 50 per cent – and could see “potential use” in treating patients with diabetes.
People with Type 2 diabetes are not able to produce sufficient insulin from their pancreas to regulate blood sugar, which means that their blood sugar can reach dangerously high levels.
However, findings presented at The Endocrine Society’s 97th annual meeting in San Diego on Thursday (25 August) revealed that the extract of an onion bulb can “strongly lower” high blood sugar and total cholesterol levels when given alongside antidiabetic drug metformin.
Lead study author Anthony Ojieh of Delta State University in Abraka, Nigeria, said: “Onion is cheap and available and has been used as a nutritional supplement. It has the potential for use in treating patients with diabetes.”
The researchers tested the theory on rats. In total, three groups of rats with medically induced diabetes were given various doses of the onion extract to see if it would enhance the drug’s effect.
The doses were 200mg, 400mg, and 600mg per kilogram of body weight. The researchers also gave the drug and onion to three groups of nondiabetic rats with normal blood sugar.
The study found that, of the diabetic rats, those given 400mg and 600mg per kilogram of body weight “strongly reduced” their blood sugar levels by 50 per cent and 35 per cent respectively compared with a baseline level.
The onion extract also lowered the total cholesterol level in diabetic rats, with the 400mg and 600mg having the greatest effects.
The study also found that the onion extract led to weight gain among the nondiabetic rats, but not the diabetic rats.
“Onion is not high in calories,” Ojieh explained. “However, it seems to increase the metabolic rate and, with that, to increase the appetite, leading to an increase in feeding.
“We need to investigate the mechanism by which onion brought about the blood glucose reduction. We do not yet have an explanation.”
Scientists pinpoint the exact moment in evolutionary time when mammals became warm-blooded
Scientists have pinpointed the moment in time our earliest ancestors evolved to be warm-blooded, and it happened much later and far more quickly than the researchers expected.
The discovery, made by studying the minuscule tubes of the inner ear, places the evolution of mammalian warm-bloodedness at around 233 million years ago — 19 million years later than scientists previously thought.
These semicircular canals are filled with a viscous fluid, called endolymph, that tickles tiny hairs lining the canals as the fluid sloshes around. These hairs transmit messages to the brain, giving it instructions for how to keep the body balanced. Like some fluids, the honey-like endolymph gets runnier the hotter it is, requiring the semicircular canals to change their shape so the fluid can still do its job. In ectothermic, or cold-blooded, animals, this ear fluid is colder and thus behaves more like molasses and needs wider spaces in which to flow. But for endothermic, or warm-blooded, animals, the fluid is more watery and small spaces suffice.
Related: Ancient toothless ‘eel’ is your earliest known ancestor
This temperature-based property makes tiny, semicircular canals a perfect place to spot the moment when ancient mammals’ cold blood turned hot, researchers wrote in a paper published July 20 in the journal Nature (opens in new tab).
“Until now, semicircular canals were generally used to predict locomotion of fossil organisms,” study co-lead author Romain David, an evolutionary anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, said in a statement (opens in new tab). “However, by carefully looking at their biomechanics, we figured that we could also use them to infer body temperatures.
“This is because, like honey, the fluid contained inside semicircular canals gets less viscous [syrupy] when temperature increases, impacting function,” David explained. “Hence, during the transition to endothermy, morphological adaptations were required to keep optimal performances, and we could track them in mammal ancestors.”
To discover the time of this evolutionary change, researchers measured three inner ear canal samples from 341 animals — 243 living species and 64 extinct species — spanning the animal kingdom. The analysis revealed that the 54 extinct mammals included in the study developed the narrow inner ear canal structures suitable for warm-blooded animals 233 million years ago.
Before this study, scientists thought mammals inherited warm-bloodedness from the cynodonts — a group of scaly, rat-like lizards that gave rise to all living mammals — that were thought to have evolved warm-bloodedness around the time of their first appearance 252 million years ago. However, the new findings suggest that mammals diverged from their early ancestors more markedly than expected.
And this drastic change happened surprisingly fast. Heat-friendly ear canals didn’t just appear later in the fossil record than the scientists expected. It happened far more rapidly, too — popping up around the same time the earliest mammals began evolving whiskers, fur and specialized backbones.
“Contrary to current scientific thinking, our paper surprisingly demonstrates that the acquisition of endothermy seem[s] to have occurred very quickly in geological terms, in less than a million years,” study co-lead author Ricardo Araújo, a geologist at the University of Lisbon in Portugal, said in the statement. “It was not a gradual, slow process over tens of millions of years as previously thought, but maybe was attained quickly when triggered by novel mammal-like metabolic pathways and origin of fur.”
Follow-up studies will need to confirm the findings via other means, but the researchers said they are excited that their work will help to answer one of the longest-standing questions about the evolution of mammals.
“The origin of mammalian endothermy is one of the great unsolved mysteries of paleontology,” study senior author Kenneth Angielczyk, the Field Museum’s MacArthur curator of paleomammalogy, said in the statement. “Many different approaches have been used to try to predict when it first evolved, but they have often given vague or conflicting results. We think our method shows real promise because it has been validated using a very large number of modern species, and it suggests that endothermy evolved at a time when many other features of the mammalian body plan were also falling into place.”
Originally published on Live Science.