ScientiFix, our weekly feature, offers you a summary of the top global science stories of the week, with links to their sources.
New Delhi: It is a known fact that dolphins are friendly animals, but can you imagine them “smiling” at each other underwater?
A team of researchers, led by Veronica Maglieri of the University Pisa in Italy, has shown that bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) communicate during “social play” using the open mouth display (OM) facial expression, analogous to smiling. Moreover, their playmates respond 33 percent of the time by smiling back.
The study, published Wednesday in the Cell Press journal iScience, terms this mirror response from a dolphin playmate “rapid facial mimicry”.
The playful signals exhibited by terrestrial mammals are well known. However, similar behaviours in cetaceans—clades of marine mammals such as dolphins, whales and porpoises—have been relatively unexplored.
The new study said that the dolphins do not smile when playing alone, but they smile at each other during social play and when in fellow dolphins’ field of view. This, the researchers said, suggests that dolphins pay attention to the attentive state of their playmates.
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The researchers, who investigated the behaviour of captive bottlenose dolphins when they played in pairs or with human trainers, also observed that the cetaceans smiled when playing with each other, but not when playing with humans.
Explaining this behaviour, the authors noted that visual mechanisms have played a crucial role in shaping complex social communication in the mammal phylogenetic tree, not only in dolphins but in several species.
Antarctica is not ‘all-white’ now, turning green at a dramatic rate
Antarctica was once known for its polar ice caps, glaciers, and gargantuan amounts of snow. But now, due to anthropogenic warming, it is a realm of melting glaciers, snow, and ice.
Since extreme heat events in Antarctica are becoming increasingly common due to climate change, the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than the global average.
The result is Antarctic ‘greening’ at a dramatic rate, researchers from the universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire and the British Antarctic Survey have found. Their new study said that over the past four decades, vegetation cover across the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than tenfold. It was published Friday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Led by Thomas P. Roland of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, the research found that vegetation cover increased from less than one square kilometre in 1986 to nearly 12 square kilometres in 2021.
Between 2016 and 2021, the vegetation cover increased at an accelerated rate of 400,000 square metres per year, the authors noted in the paper.
Greening accelerated by more than 30 percent between 2016 and 2021 compared to the overall greening rate from 1986 to 2021, the study said.
As part of the research, the scientists used satellite imagery data obtained from archives of NASA Earth satellite Landsat.
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Mosses, which can survive the harshest conditions on Earth, dominate Antarctic vegetation. But, due to anthropogenic climate change, plant life has started to colonise Antarctica. The growth of plants, in turn, will add organic matter to the continent, according to the study. However, this plant invasion may not be good news for Antarctica, and its environmental future may be in jeopardy.
Coriander-flavoured beer & protein-rich beer: Researchers offer new options
Researchers have discovered two new healthy and delicious options for beer aficionados. These innovations—”herbal and spicy” beer and protein-rich beer made from barley—appear in two papers in the American Chemical Society (ACS) journals.
A team of Japanese researchers, led by Kiyoshi Takoi, a senior research brewer at Sapporo Breweries in Shizuoka, has presented the world with the recipe for an aromatic and flavourful beer brewed with coriander seeds. The study appeared Thursday in the journal ACS in Food Science & Technology.
According to the study, one can enhance beer flavour by brewing it with herbs and spices. The researchers used coriander seeds harvested from countries such as Bulgaria, Canada, Morocco, and India to brew Belgian white beer.
The study found that coriander seeds imparted sweet, herbal and cooling flavours to Belgian white beer.
On the other hand, a team of researchers led by Mariana B.C. Pinto of the University of Campinas in Brazil has found that one can use high-protein barley as malt to reduce the bitter taste of beer. The study came out in September in the ACS Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Hops, the hanging flowers of the Humulus lupulus plant, are used in beer to add flavour, aroma, and bitterness and help retain the foam and freshness of the beverage. The researchers showed that beer prepared using higher-protein barley malt had lower acid levels because proteins trap and remove some bitter-tasting hop compounds. Brewers who prefer a bitter beer can use low-protein barley as malt.
Mount Everest is getting taller year by year
Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth, stands 8,849 metres above sea level. Researchers from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing and University College London in the United Kingdom have found that due to the uplift caused by a nearby eroding river gorge, Mount Everest is about 15 to 50 metres taller than it would otherwise have been.
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The study, led by Xu Han from China University of Geosciences, was published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
A river network, about 75 kilometres from Mount Everest, is carving away a substantial gorge—a deep, narrow valley with very steep sides, with a river or stream running through it.
Due to the erosion induced by the river, the gorge is losing landmass which, in turn, is causing Mount Everest to grow taller by about 2 millimetres each year, the study said.
Over the past 89,000 years, the mountain’s height has increased by 15 to 50 metres.
The science behind this is that when a nearby river erodes a substantial amount of rocks and soils, pressure from below the Earth’s crust acts as an uplifting force, the study explained.
This happens because after a section of the Earth’s crust loses landmass, the intense pressure exerted by the planet’s liquid mantle below becomes more than the downward force of gravity of the eroded portion. This phenomenon, which causes the section that lost landmass to float upwards, is known as isostatic rebound. This gradual process causes an upward rise of the Earth’s crust by only a few millimetres annually.
NOTE – This article was originally published in theprint and can be viewed here
