EverythingScience

Why hosting the UN climate summit in the Amazon was so important, despite the disappointing outcome For the first time, this annual climate summit was held in Amazonia, a place at the frontline of climate change. The pivot from the two previous conferences in petrostates Azerbaijan and UAE to a base in the world's largest tropical forest (albeit in one of the world's largest oil-producing countries) was jarring. As Amazonian researchers, and past and present residents of the city, we saw the potential for COP30 to move discussions further forward than its predecessors in two key ways. First, and in contrast to many previous gatherings that have sidelined them—or suppressed them altogether—Indigenous and marginalized voices were impossible to ignore at COP30. They have helped shape media narratives and discourse in the blue zone, the venue that hosted events in hundreds of dedicated spaces for national and organizational bodies. The Belém gathering saw the largest Indigenous participation in Cop history, with around 900 registered representatives. The Cúpula dos Povos, a parallel event hosted at the Universidade Federal do Pará, gave many more Indigenous peoples and local communities a platform to argue against the status quo of relative inaction. Hosting COP30 in Belém broke down the physical travel barriers for many potential attendees from Indigenous peoples and local communities. The summit organizers went beyond the normal attempts at tokenism in engaging them in discussions. The region's extensive river networks allowed many Indigenous peoples and local communities from across Amazonia to reach Belém by boat. They held a symbolic "people's flotilla" with over 500 people in 200 vessels, sailing to demand their voices be heard in calling for climate justice and an end to mining and large infrastructure projects affecting their territories. Meanwhile, the disruptive influence of some Indigenous protesters and their allies in breaching security lines and temporarily obstructing access to the blue zone hopefully focused minds inside, in addition to garnering global headlines. The second reason to be hopeful about COP30 was that the realities of climate and land use change are jarringly obvious in Amazonia. Belém's oppressive heat and humidity were evident even within the main blue zone arenas. Many delegates were visibly uncomfortable. This catalyzed an official complaint from UN climate chief Simon Stiell about the climate conditions in the Cop venue, asking for "a clear delivery plan on how temperatures will be brought down within the next 24 hours." The parallels to the goals of the wider negotiation process were hard to miss. The city's local climate became a protagonist in its own right. A huge thunderstorm during one afternoon flooded many roads and brought down trees across the city, causing power outages. A recent study has shown that Belém is now experiencing more and more days of high "wet bulb" temperatures (which determine the comfort level of the atmosphere). Such temperatures can lead to deadly heat stress. Continued warming could make many parts of the tropics unlivable. Source:Phys.org @EverythingScience

Newly Discovered Organism Could Represent a Whole New Branch in The Tree of Life It's not every day that biologists announce an entirely new branch of life, and this one has been hiding under their noses for years. It was discovered hiding in a lab sample of marine ciliates scientists had been tending to since collecting them from Croatian waters in 2011. But it wasn't until the ciliates suddenly died that this new, tiny creature, which scientists have named Solarion arienae, came into view. "This organism allows us to look into a very ancient chapter of cellular evolution that we previously could reconstruct only indirectly," say protistologists Ivan Čepička and Marek Valt, from Charles University in the Czech Republic, lead authors of the study. "The cells of Solarion are tiny and only slightly motile, and we overlooked them in the ciliate culture for several years… Given that we missed Solarion even in our long-term laboratory culture, it would probably go unnoticed in natural samples," the research team writes. The microorganism's fascinating, sun-like form is rivaled only by what lies within. The single-celled eukaryote has a membrane-bound nucleus full of DNA, just like each of our own cells, and, also like our cells, it has mitochondria – 'the powerhouse of the cell', where fat and carbohydrate molecules are converted into chemical energy. The team demonstrated that Solarion does not fall within any of our existing categories for eukaryotes, and so this lonely little sun is sharing a newly-defined phylum with another bizarre protist, Meteora sporadica, which is further nested within a newly-established kingdom shared only with the distantly-related protists Provoraand Hemimastigophora. But its mitochondria are distinctly different from any others scientists have seen before. They still contain the genetic breadcrumbs of what may once have been an entirely separate being. Mitochondria, scientists think, were once an organism all of their own, an ancient bacterium. But at some point in the evolutionary history of life on Earth, they took up residence inside the single-celled body of another organism. We know this because of the remaining genetic code stored inside all mitochondria, which all come from the same ancient phylum. Over time, these two parts became so inextricably linked that the line between self and other dissolved entirely. Inside most of your cells, there are still mitochondria, complete with their own set of (much abbreviated) DNA, without which you would not survive. In most eukaryotes – animals, plants, fungi, seaweeds, and a plethora of single-celled friends – the mitochondria contain scant evidence of their primordial independence. But Solarion still carries within its microscopic body a genetic memento from that long-forgotten time: the gene secA, which was once part of the proto-mitochondria's molecular toolkit, involved in getting proteins across its membrane when it lived independently. Source:ScienceAlert @EverythingScience

This month NASA celebrates an incredible milestone - 25 years of continuous human presence aboard the Space Station! During this time, astronauts have shared their unique experiences of life in microgravity, inspiring us all. Learn more: nasa.gov/international-… Source: RT@LearnWithNASA @EverythingScience

'Quiet piggy' and other slurs: Powerful men fuel online abuse against women in politics and media Tuesday [was] the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and the beginning of 16 days of activism against gender-based violence. It's a global call to action by the United Nations to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls. This year's theme—"End digital violence against all women and girls"—aims to draw attention to the rapid rise of hate directed at women online. Sadly, this problem is all too common in today's political world. Why do we need attention drawn to this issue in politics? Technology-facilitated gender-based violence is a serious and growing threat to women and girls. It's defined by the UN as: "Any act that is committed, assisted, aggravated, or amplified by the use of information communication technologies or other digital tools that results in or is likely to result in physical, sexual, psychological, social, political, or economic harm, or other infringements of rights and freedoms." It includes hate speech, violent threats, cyber-harassment, doxxing, image and video-based abuse, astroturfing, gendered disinformation and defamation. Silencing prominent women Marginalized women and women with public-facing roles—especially politicians, journalists and activists—often bear the brunt of attacks, with the intent to silence and push them out of the public arena. While popular assumptions about online misogynists view them as "bearded white dudes in a basement" ranting about women on their computers anonymously, some political leaders are also unfortunately spreading misogyny openly online. What motivates leaders to spread gendered hate online? Politicians who are most likely to use misogynistic rhetoric are those who seek to uphold a "masculinist strongman ideal," according to research by British scholar Nitasha Kaul. She explains how public figures like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi have all used misogyny to assert their power. By positioning women (and men who do not conform to dominant masculine norms) as inferior, strongmen are signaling their dominance to their followers and to other "strong" men. When it's directed at women in the public eye, political misogyny serves to suppress the voices of political opponents and people with differing views, posing threats to freedom of expression and fundamental human rights. American public policy scholar Suzanne Dovi explains how political misogyny unfolds through an evolving process, and includes three stages... Source:Phys.org @EverythingScience

Sleep Apnea Dramatically Raises Parkinson’s Risk, Study Finds Scientists suspect that repeated nightly drops in oxygen put long-term strain on neurons, potentially contributing to neurodegeneration. The results highlight how something as simple as improving sleep quality may offer powerful protection against conditions once thought largely inevitable with age. Sleep Apnea Linked to Higher Parkinson’s Risk New findings indicate that individuals who leave obstructive sleep apnea untreated face a greater likelihood of developing Parkinson’s disease. Improving sleep quality through the use of continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, can meaningfully lower this risk. The work, published today (November 24) in JAMA Neurology, analyzed electronic health records from more than 11 million U.S. military veterans who received care through the Department of Veterans Affairs between 1999 and 2022. Scientists from Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland VA Health Care System led the investigation. Parkinson’s is a progressive neurological disorder that affects roughly 1 million people in the United States, and the odds of developing it gradually increase with age, particularly after 60. Age-Related Rise in Parkinson’s Cases The new research points to a long-term elevation in Parkinson’s risk among people whose sleep apnea goes untreated. After accounting for factors such as obesity, age, and high blood pressure, investigators still identified a clear association between untreated sleep apnea and Parkinson’s. In this large population of veterans with sleep apnea, those who did not use CPAP had nearly twice the likelihood of developing Parkinson’s compared with individuals who used the therapy. Source:SciTechDaily @EverythingScience

Lettuce tell you something. 🥬 Growing food in space isn’t easy, and it’s key to NASA’s #Artemis missions, where astronauts will live and work on the Moon. Data from NASA’s Open Science Data Repository show that lettuce grown aboard the Space Station contained up to 31% less calcium and 25% less magnesium than Earth lettuce, vital nutrients for bone and muscle health. These insights help NASA scientists understand how to keep future Artemis astronauts strong and healthy on longer missions, while exploring ways to bioengineer crops that are more nutritious for space. More: go.nasa.gov/3XbRIIx Source: @NASAScience_ @EverythingScience

“First light” for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission! 🚀📸 These images, taken on Nov. 21, 2025, are ESCAPADE’s “first light,” or first images taken from space. Just about a week after launch, one of the two Mars-bound spacecraft took these images as part of the commissioning process, which checks that all the spacecraft’s instruments are functioning as expected. The images, captured by the spacecraft's onboard VISIONS cameras, were taken about 550,062 miles (885,240 kilometers) from Earth. The view looks along the spacecraft's solar panel and out into space. The left-side image shows the view from the visible-light sensor, while the right-side image was taken with the infrared sensor, showing which parts of the array are warmer and cooler. At Mars, the visible-light camera will attempt to capture Mars’ auroras, whereas the infrared sensor will capture the changing temperatures on the Martian surface as the Sun rises and sets. Learn more: go.nasa.gov/4oeAlSc Source: @NASASolarSystem @EverythingScience

Check out our GITAI robot in action, autonomously assembling a 5-meter tower for future lunar and Martian habitats! Building the future, one block at a time. 🏗️🌕 Open positions ➡grnh.se/g9o3tnbr8us Source: @GITAI_HQ @EverythingScience

Study finds a connection between musical tastes and political leanings Source:Phys.org @EverythingScience

JUNO experiment delivers first physics results two months after completion After more than a decade of design, construction, and international collaboration, JUNO has become the world's first next-generation, large-scale, high-precision neutrino detector to begin operation. Early data show that the detector's key performance indicators fully meet or surpass design expectations, confirming that JUNO is ready to deliver frontier measurements in neutrino physics. A detailed paper describing the detector performance has been submitted to Chinese Physics C and was posted on the arXiv preprint server. At a press conference, Prof. Wen Liangjian, physics analysis coordinator of the JUNO Collaboration, presented the experiment's first physics results. Using data collected between August 26 and November 2, 2025—just 59 days of effective data after the start of operation—JUNO has already measured the so-called solar neutrino oscillation parameters, known as θ12 and Δm221, with a factor of 1.6 better precision than all previous experiments combined. These parameters, originally determined using solar neutrinos, can also be precisely measured by reactor antineutrinos. Earlier results from the two approaches showed a mild 1.5-sigma discrepancy, sometimes called the solar neutrino tension, hinting at possible new physics. The new JUNO measurement confirmed this difference, which can be proved or disproved by the JUNO experiment only using both solar and reactor neutrinos. "Achieving such precision within only two months of operation shows that JUNO is performing exactly as designed," said Yifang Wang, JUNO project manager and spokesperson. "With this level of accuracy, JUNO will soon determine the neutrino mass ordering, test the three-flavor oscillation framework, and search for new physics beyond it." JUNO is a major international collaboration led by the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The project involves more than 700 scientists from 74 institutions across 17 countries and regions. Source:Phys.org @EverythingScience

Funky-Nosed "Pinocchio" Chameleons Get A Boost As They Turn Out To Be Multiple Species Source:IFLScience @EverythingScience

A 180-Year Assumption About Light Was Just Proven Wrong The team demonstrated that this magnetic component significantly contributes to the Faraday Effect, even accounting for up to 70% of the rotation in the infrared range. By proving that light can magnetically torque materials, the findings open unexpected pathways for advanced optical and magnetic technologies. Source:SciTechDaily @EverythingScience