Official "Science News" Thread

[ewmayer]

[Background: beewolves are solitary digger wasps that carry paralyzed bees into their underground brood cells; these serve as a food supply for their offspring]

Beewolves have been successfully using the same antibiotics for 68 million years | Phys.org

The discovery of penicillin about 90 years ago and the widespread introduction of antibiotics to combat infectious diseases have revolutionized human medicine. However, in recent decades, the increase in multidrug-resistant pathogens has confronted modern medicine with massive problems. Insects have their own antibiotics, which provide natural protection against germs. A team of scientists from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena have now found that beewolves, unlike humans, do not face the problem of antibiotic resistant pathogens. These insects team up with symbiotic bacteria which produce an antibiotic cocktail of up to 45 different substances within a single species to protect their offspring against mold fungi. The researchers not only discovered that the number of antibiotic substances is much higher than previously thought, they also proved that the cocktail has remained surprisingly stable since the symbiosis emerged, about 68 million years ago.

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

[Background: beewolves are solitary digger wasps that carry paralyzed bees into their underground brood cells; these serve as a food supply for their offspring]

Beewolves have been successfully using the same antibiotics for 68 million years | Phys.org

I'm no expert, but that seems to me to be a startling find, from both the medicine perspective and the animal biology perspective. Good stuff.

[VictordeHolland]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Meet the pirate queen making academic papers free online - The Verge, on SciHub founder Alexandra Elbakyan

The idealist in me would say all (government funded) scientific research should be available freely to the public and I think most would agree The prices universities have to pay to the publishers are just crazy! The publishers are abusing their power (a university needs access to the papers in the 5-6 biggest publishers), so the public is paying twice for research, first to conduct the research and a second time to grant access to it by universities.

That being said, that doesn't make it right what she has been doing. The motivation is admirable, but what she has been doing is in fact copyright infringement...

The real change that needs to happen is by the government and the scientist themselves. The scientists will need to publish more in the open access journals and leave the money-making -prestigious journals sidelined (I understand the appeal of publishing in prestigious journals like Nature) and the government has a role to create the financial incentives to do so. Then there is the issue of quality control, but I think that should be solvable.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

[Background: beewolves are solitary digger wasps that carry paralyzed bees into their underground brood cells; these serve as a food supply for their offspring]

Beewolves have been successfully using the same antibiotics for 68 million years | Phys.org

I wonder if it is only beewolves which have this adaptation.

Where I grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast, there is a large reddish wasp that we called a "cicada killer." Its nurturing of its young is the same, except that "breakfast" is much larger. (I see that this is an accepted name, not just my family's invention.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphecius

Sphecius grandis (Say, 1823) – Western cicada killer (Costa Rica; Mexico: Baja California, Chihuahua, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Yucatán; Nicaragua; USA: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington)

Now consider that large breakfast is being buried in the hyper-humid conditions of the Gulf Coast. Molds are omnipresent in that setting. It seems that any wasp with this propensity would need some way to protect its larvae and pupae. A similar symbiosis seems like a strong possibility.

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by VictordeHolland

Then there is the issue of quality control, but I think that should be solvable.

I think that is the entire source of the problem, not some side issue. Solve this and everything will naturally and quickly follow, regulation or not, intervention or not. But solving this is not so easy.

[rogue]

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[Uncwilly]

The random walk of cars and their collision probabilities with planets

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

The random walk of cars and their collision probabilities with planets

For an extensive if somewhat lay-level discussion of the results, see https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comm...rman_roadster/

[retina]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

For an extensive if somewhat lay-level discussion of the results, see https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comm...rman_roadster/

There's about a 100% chance the roadster won't exist in one million years. I expect it will have disintegrated long before that.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by retina

There's about a 100% chance the roadster won't exist in one million years. I expect it will have disintegrated long before that.

Why do you think that?

My answer: it will be in a museum within a century or so and consequently exposed to a much harsher environment than interplanetary space.

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by xilman

Why do you think that?

My answer: it will be in a museum within a century or so and consequently exposed to a much harsher environment than interplanetary space.

I'm not sure about a century. I'd guess at several centuries.