It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, November 13, 2022
Octopuses caught on video throwing silt and shells around themselves and at each other
Octopus debris-throwing recorded for first time, at times during aggressive interactions with other octopuses
IMAGE: PANEL A — OCTOPUS (LEFT) PROJECTS SILT AND KELP THROUGH THE WATER; B – AN OCTOPUS (RIGHT) IS HIT BY A CLOUD OF SILT PROJECTED THROUGH THE WATER BY A THROWING OCTOPUS; C – SHELLS, SILT, ALGAE OR SOME MIXTURE IS HELD IN THE ARMS PREPARATORY TO THE THROW, MANTLE IS INFLATED PREPARATORY TO VENTILATION DURING THE THROW, SIPHON AT THIS STAGE MAY STILL BE VISIBLE IN ITS USUAL POSITION PROJECTING FROM THE GILL SLIT ABOVE THE ARM CROWN; D – SIPHON IS BROUGHT DOWN OVER REAR ARM AND UNDER THE WEB AND ARM CROWN BETWEEN THE REAR ARM PAIR (ARMS R4 AND L4), AND WATER IS FORCIBLY EXPELLED THROUGH THE SIPHON, WITH CONTRACTION OF THE MANTLE, AS HELD DEBRIS IS RELEASED, PROJECTING DEBRIS THROUGH THE WATER COLUMN. ILLUSTRATIONS BY REBECCA GELERNTER.view more
CREDIT: GODFREY-SMITH ET AL., 2022, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)
Octopuses appear to deliberately throw debris, sometimes directed at other octopuses, according to a study publishing November 9 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE led by Peter Godfrey-Smith at the University of Sydney and colleagues.
Researchers recorded the behavior of gloomy octopuses (Octopus tetricus) in Jervis Bay, Australia in 2015 and 2016 using underwater video cameras. They analyzed 24 hours of footage across several days and identified 102 instances of debris throwing in a group of roughly 10 octopuses, although individual identification was not always possible.
Octopuses gathered material such as silt or shells, and released it while using a jet of water from their siphon (a tube-shaped structure that can eject water at speed) to propel it between their arms and through the water, often throwing material several body lengths away. To perform the throws, octopuses had to move their siphon into an unusual position, suggesting the behavior was deliberate. Both sexes were observed throwing, but 66% of throws were performed by females. Around half of throws occurred during or around the time of interactions with other octopuses, such as arm probes or mating attempts, and about 17% of throws hit other octopuses. Octopuses can change their skin coloration, with dark colors generally associated with aggression, and the researchers found that dark-colored individuals tended to throw more forcefully and were more likely to hit another octopus. Octopuses hit by thrown material often altered their behavior by ducking or raising their arms in the direction of the thrower.
This is the first time that throwing behavior has been reported in octopuses. The authors say that although it is difficult to determine the intent of octopuses propelling debris through the water, the behaviors observed suggest that at least in some social contexts, octopuses are capable of targeted throws towards other individuals, a behavior that has only been observed previously in a few non-human animals.
The authors add: “Wild octopuses project various kinds of material through the water in jet-propelled ‘throws,’ and these throws sometimes hit other octopuses. There is some evidence that some of these throws that hit others are targeted, and play a social role.”
Citation: Godfrey-Smith P, Scheel D, Chancellor S, Linquist S, Lawrence M (2022) In the line of fire: Debris throwing by wild octopuses. PLoS ONE 17(11): e0276482. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276482
Author Countries: Australia, USA, Canada
Funding: General financial support was provided to PGS by the City University of New York (https://www.cuny.edu) and to DS through Alaska Pacific University (https://www.alaskapacific.edu) from donations by the Pollock Conservation Consortium. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
IMAGE: FOUR SQUID EMBRYOS IN THEIR EGG SAC. THESE ARE THE SQUID SPECIES DORYTEUTHIS PEALEII.view more
CREDIT: KRISTEN KOENIG
Cephalopods — which includes octopus, squid, and their cuttlefish cousins — are capable of some truly charismatic behaviors. They can quickly process information to transform shape, color, and even texture, blending in with their surroundings. They can also communicate, show signs of spatial learning, and use tools to solve problems. They’re so smart, they can even get bored.
It’s no secret what makes it possible: Cephalopods have the most complex brains of any invertebrates on the planet. What remains mysterious, however, is the process. Basically, scientists have long wondered how cephalopods get their big brains in the first place? A Harvard lab that studies the visual system of these soft-bodied creatures — which is where two-thirds of their central processing tissue are focused — believe they’ve come close to figuring it out. The process, they say, looks surprisingly familiar.
Researchers from the FAS Center for Systems Biology describe how they used a new live-imaging technique to watch neurons being created in the embryo in almost real-time. They were then able to track those cells through the development of the nervous system in the retina. What they saw surprised them.
The neural stem cells they tracked behaved eerily similar to the way these cells behave in vertebrates during the development of their nervous system. It suggests that vertebrates and cephalopods, despite diverging from each other 500 million years ago, not only are using similar mechanisms to make their big brains but that this process and the way the cells act, divide, and are shaped may essentially layout the blueprint required develop this kind of nervous system.
“Our conclusions were surprising because a lot of what we know about nervous system development in vertebrates has long been thought to be special to that lineage,” said Kristen Koenig, a John Harvard Distinguished Fellow and senior author of the study. “By observing the fact that the process is very similar, what it suggested to us is that these two independently evolved very large nervous systems are using the same mechanisms to build them. What that suggests is that those mechanisms — those tools — the animals use during development may be important for building big nervous systems.”
The scientists from the Koenig Lab focused on the retina of a squid called Doryteuthis pealeii, more simply known as a type of longfin squid. The squid grow to be about a foot long and are abundant in the northwest Atlantic Ocean. As embryos the look quite adorable with big head and big eyes.
The researchers used similar techniques to those made popular to study model organisms, like fruit flies and zebrafish. They created special tools and used cutting edge microscopes that could take high resolution images every ten minutes for hours on end to see how individual cells behave. The researchers used florescent dyes to mark the cells so they could map them and track them.
This live-imaging technique allowed the team to observe stem cells called neural progenitor cells and how they are organized. The cells form a special kind of structure called a pseudostratified epithelium. Its main feature is the cells are elongated so they can be densely packed. The researchers also saw the nucleus of these structures move up and down before and after dividing. This movement is important for keeping the tissue organized and growth continuing, they said.
This type of structure is universal in how vertebrate species develop their brain and eyes. Historically, it was considered one of the reasons the vertebrate nervous system could grow so large and complex. Scientists have observed examples of this type of neural epithelium in other animals, but the squid tissue they looked at in this instance was unusually similar to vertebrate tissues in its size, organization and the way the nucleus moved.
The research was led by Francesca R. Napoli and Christina M. Daly, research assistants in the Koenig Lab.
Next, the lab plans to look at how different cell types in cephalopod brains emerge. Koenig wants to determine whether they’re expressed at different times, how they decide to become one type of neuron versus another, and whether this action is similar across species.
Koenig is excited about the potential discoveries that lie ahead.
“One of the big takeaways from this type of work is just how valuable it is to study the diversity of life,” Koenig said. “By studying this diversity, you can actually really come back to fundamental ideas about even our own development and our own biomedically relevant questions. You can really speak to those questions.”
Cephalopod retinal development shows vertebrate-like mechanisms of neurogenesis
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
9-Nov-2022
Dread and Portent: Reading H. P. Lovecraft‘s
Necronomicon as Social Criticism. (2010)
VANCE, G. WARLOCK, Ph.D
Directed by Dr. Keith Cushman. 177 pp
.This dissertation explores the narratives of the twentieth-century American author
H. P. Lovecraft, focusing on those tales which feature his creation of a metafictional
spellbook titled the Necronomicon. Relying on a close reading of the texts, critical
materials, and Lovecraft‘s letters, I demonstrate how the use of the Necronomicon
throughout Lovecraft‘s fiction reflects how clearly the author espouses the faddish ideas
and prejudicial fears of his era. Use of the spellbook delineates the breadth of moral
decline he perceived in the world, from such causes as miscegenation, physical and
spiritual decadence, and incest. Additionally, the project provides evidence of how the
Necronomicon functions as a tool for chronicling and interpreting scientific facts and
discoveries popular in Lovecraft‘s lifetime, particularly advancements in theoretical
physics, by scientists like Albert Einstein, and the exploration of the polar regions by
adventurers such as Rear Admiral Richard Byrd. In many of these latter narratives where
the Necronomicon plays such a role, readers encounter a strange dichotomy: the author‘s
genuine love of and appreciation for the various sciences tempered by a fear of
humanity‘s terrifying use of the knowledge it has gained. This results in the Lovecraft‘s
perception of a universe wholly apathetic to the presence of mankind, a space of limitless
dimensions which dwarf human perceptions. My project also discusses the influence of
the Necronomicon on popular culture and on modern fiction, proving how the spellbook
inspires current writers of genre fiction and those in the field of contemporary literature.
Mapping The Drowned World
Climate-change is the new Cold War.
Abstract:
Like the omnipresent threat of nuclear
annihilation, climate-change looms in the background, a constant insidious threat:
imminent and inexorable, yet ill defined. Written in 1962, during the perpetual slowburning crisis of the Cold War, J.G. Ballard’s novel The Drowned World reads like an
uncanny premonition of the key crisis of our current age: climate-change. As a bridge
between the post-war apocalyptic fears of the recent past and current eschatological
anxieties, this allegorical work of fiction is a rich source of information.
Mapping The Drowned World is driven by the research question: what can we learn
about our world by re-reading, re-writing and re-interpreting The Drowned World
through the lens of art? This three-pronged methodology has generated three suites
of artworks: a series of maps, and two major installations in the form of ruined scalemodel cities. In addition, a group exhibition which featured some of these works,
alongside works made by five other Australian artists, was staged and documented in
a catalogue, also titled Mapping The Drowned World. The written content of this
research includes several new analyses of The Drowned World, critiques of the
artworks made as part of this project and works made by other artists, and an original
interstitial chapter for the novel which recuperates the only female character in The
Drowned World.
Together, both the creative and written components of this research contribute new
knowledge to three fields: scholarship on J.G. Ballard, including contemporary
artworks made in direct response to his stories; the field of critical cartography, both
textual and visual; and works which respond to eschatological anxiety
Beto’s Free Speech Comeback? After Loss In Texas Governor’s Race, O’Rourke Will Fight For The Right To Call A Pipeline Billionaire A Crook
Christopher Helman, Forbes Staff - Thursday
Texas energy billionaire Kelcy Warren sued O’Rourke for defamation in February in a case that pits a powerful energy billionaire against a high-profile politician.
Beto O'Rourke stumping at a 'Keeping the Lights On' rally in Houston on February 15, 2022, the one-year anniversary of the winter storm that crippled the state.
Former El Paso Congressman Robert “Beto” O’Rourke lost his 2018 bid for the U.S. Senate to Ted Cruz. His 2020 presidential bid didn’t gain traction. On this Election Day, he succumbed in a 55% to 44% wipeout to Texas’ incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott.
What’s next for O’Rourke? A court date as a defendant in a potentially high-profile lawsuit.
O’Rourke, 50, is fighting a defamation suit brought by oil and gas pipeline billionaire Kelcy Warren, founder and executive chairman of Dallas-based Energy TransferET, in early 2022. O’Rourke said some pretty nasty things about Warren while on the campaign trail. The worst: accusing him of bribing Governor Abbott with $1 million as part of a conspiracy to sabotage the Texas power grid so Warren’s company could profit by gouging customers with high-priced emergency supplies of natural gas. As O’Rourke repeated the attacks on his February “Keep The Lights On” campaign tour across Texas, Warren repeatedly demanded O’Rourke retract his statements and not repeat them.
Warren filed suit in February. But O’Rourke refused to back down, and blasted him in a March press conference, saying Warren “not only is trying to influence the political process through the campaign donations he’s making, not only did he make illegal windfall profits off the suffering, misery, and death, of our fellow Texans, he’s now trying to shut us down in the courts through a frivolous lawsuit.”
The context: Energy Transfer made $2.4 billion in windfall profits during Texas’ February 2021 deep freeze, which knocked out power and heat to millions, leading to more than 200 deaths and at least $80 billion in damage. Electricity prices spiked from $30 per megawatt hour to hit the $9,000/mwh cap; natural gas jumped from $3 per million British thermal units to $500. During the freeze, many power plants went down, in some cases because they couldn’t get enough natural gas from pipeline systems that had frozen up or lost power. Energy Transfer’s operations were ready for the cold temperatures — enabling the company to charge escalated prices amid a shortage of natural gas. Their customers, mostly electric power utilities, have had to pass on record fuel prices to the very Texans hurt most by the freeze.
O’Rourke seized on the story of a billionaire pipeline magnate making money while Texans froze to death, after Abbott signed SB 3 in June 2021. The bill required energy companies to winterize their equipment to avoid future freeze offs. But it had a loophole: companies didn’t have to winterize if they declined to “self-identify as critical entities.” Energy Transfer didn’t. Soon after Abbott signed the bill, Warren wrote him a $1 million campaign check. Beto called quid pro quo.
O’Rourke wasn’t alone in casting aspersions. In August 2021, the Houston Chronicle published an editorial titled: “We froze and Abbott got paid — $1 million from the billionaire profiteer of Texas’ deadly storm.” A San Antonio paper questioned whether the governor really was taking bribes. Not a good look for the billionaire “profiteer from the greatest statewide disaster in recent memory,” as O’Rourke described Warren.
In December 2021, Abbott tweeted that Texas power plants had made upgrades and “they are good to go” for winter. O’Rourke responded that “we won’t be ‘good to go’” until pipeline operators were winterized — “but you let them off the hook b/c gas CEOs like Kelcy Warren donated millions to your reelection campaign…” O’Rourke tweeted that gas companies made $11 billion during the freeze because Abbott “put their profits over our lives” after “they bought him off,” and that they are “trying to do it again.”
O’Rourke likely figured there were political points to win in going after Warren and Energy Transfer. It’s one of the biggest pipeline companies in the United States, with 120,000 miles of pipes moving an estimated 30% of America’s oil and natural gas. The company became a left-wing pariah in 2017 when the path of construction for its Dakota Access Pipeline was blocked for months by hundreds of camped out anti-oil environmentalists. Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace and other groups in 2018 for conspiring against it; that case was dismissed in 2019, prompting Energy Transfer to file another complaint in North Dakota state court. Trial is scheduled for June 2023. Related video: Greg Abbott defeats Beto O’Rourke in Texas governor’s race View on Watch
Billionaires tend to have thick skins — so why did Warren let O’Rourke get under his skin rather than let the attacks roll off his back? Because, according to his court filings, Warren is outraged at O’Rourke’s “relentless and malicious attack on [him] by accusing him of serious crimes including extortion, bribery, and corrupt influence.”. These are fightin’ words. Warren sued O’Rourke in San Saba County, where he has owned the 21,000-acre Los Valles Ranch in the town of Cherokee since 2003.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, September 2022.
Beto doesn’t appear to be particularly worried about some High Noon showdown with Warren, even after the court denied his motion for an early dismissal of the case in July. In their appeal, filed a week after their motion to dismiss was denied, O'Rourke's attorneys note there are strong protections for the “First Amendment rights of a gubernatorial candidate to speak freely regarding matters of utmost importance to Texans” — like the “exorbitant fees charged” by gas suppliers. They insist that O’Rourke’s “sharp language” to describe payment of a $1 million campaign check and its effect on public policy is “core protected political speech.” It’s likewise legitimate to question Abbott’s failure to prohibit gas price gouging that enabled Warren’s company to generate massive profits. O’Rourke’s brief says that his use of the word “bribe” was in “its nondefamatory colloquial sense.”
Even in San Saba County, where Warren hosts an annual music festival open to the public on his ranch, O’Rourke could win his appeal to dismiss the case if he can convince the appellate judges that his words are shielded by the Texas Citizens Participation Act, an “anti-SLAPP” statute that “protects citizens from retaliatory lawsuits that seek to intimidate or silence them on matters of public concern.” However, this defense isn’t a sure thing - O’Rourke’s motion for an early dismissal on TCPA grounds alone failed in July.
O’Rourke will increase his chances of winning if he can convince a judge or jury that Warren is not a private citizen, but rather a public figure “who has drawn substantial public attention” due to fame or notoriety or wealth (which would make him harder to defame). Warren first appeared on The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in 2009, was first featured in Forbes magazine in 2010, and this year rose to No. 227 on The Forbes 400, with a fortune estimated at $4.6 billion.
Because name-calling is generally not considered defamatory, O’Rourke can safely compare Abbott to Vladimir Putin and characterize Warren as one of his corrupt oligarchs. Warren, in his brief, responds that he “is a life-long Texan, not a Russian, and a self-made businessman.”
Warren contends that it is malicious, false and absurd for O’Rourke to allege that Abbott and Warren conspired to leave the Texas power grid vulnerable in order to make a few extra bucks. His original complaint says the allegation, “ignores the roles that [the Electric Reliability Commission of Texas], the [Public Utility Commission] and the Texas Legislature play in the management of Texas’ power grid and the oversight thereof.”
Warren’s attorneys, in briefs filed with the court, say O’Rourke has damaged their client’s reputation and wrongly dragged him into a public fight. And why him? Energy Transfer was far from the only winner in the deep freeze. Dallas Cowboys billionaire Jerry Jones crowed when the gas company he controls, Comstock Resources, made a billion dollars that week, as did another pipeline giant, Kinder MorganKMI (founded by Houston tycoon Richard Kinder). The Houston gas trading desk of Australian bank Macquarie scored $250 million. By singling out Warren when he hasn’t spoken publicly or sought publicity about any of this, O’Rourke “exposes him to public hatred, contempt, and ridicule […] impeaches Warren’s honesty, integrity, virtue and reputation,” Warren’s lawyers claim.
No evidence has surfaced indicating that Warren’s campaing donation was illegal. The only civil action Energy Transfer appears to be involved in related to the deep freeze is a case brought by San Antonio utility CPS Energy, which seeks to convince a Texas court to invalidate $257 million in charges owed to Energy Transfer for emergency gas on the grounds that high prices violated state price-gouging bans. Energy Transfer in its response says CPS should have had better risk management.
It’s significant too that, despite O’Rourke’s Chicken Little protestations, there were no problems with the Texas grid last winter. The state also managed to meet record high power demand during record-breaking summer heat without any reported blackouts. "Beto should stop cheering for the failure of Texas," an Abbott spokesman said in July.
Warren, like many other energy CEOs, has supported Abbott in nearly every race for more than a decade. His lawyers claim in their brief that O’Rourke knows full well that Warren’s donation to Abbott “was legal and does not constitute a ‘bribe’ or ‘corruption.’ Defendant knows that because he himself has actively solicited millions of dollars in donations (including by those in the energy industry), including a $1 million campaign contribution from billionaire George Soros.” It’s dangerous to condemn opponents’ campaign donors lest they look into yours. In addition to $1.5 million from Soros, O’Rouke received a $1 million check from now-humbled crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried.
Vicki Granado, a spokesperson for Energy Transfer, tells Forbes that O’Rourke’s central assertion — that Warren wants the Texas grid to fail so he can make more money — is just demonstrably false. “We have been designing and weatherizing our systems for years, so they are equipped to operate in all weather conditions. We have spent more than $30 million in Texas alone on this effort,” says Granado. Why would Warren bribe Abbott to avoid having to make investments they’d already made?
Oral arguments before a Texas appeals court panel on whether Warren vs. O’Rourke ought to be dismissed are set for December 27.
HOMOPHOBIC HETEROSEXISM
Transgender influencer Nikita Dragun placed in men’s jail after arrest: ‘Extremely disturbing and dangerous
Transgender beauty influencer Nikita Dragun was released from a Miami jail on Wednesday after she was temporarily held in a men’s unit.
Dragun, 26, was arrested at The Goodtime Hotel in Miami Beach on Monday after she was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct and felony battery of a law enforcement officer, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by USA TODAY.
Hotel security staff were reportedly called to Dragun’s hotel room where loud music was playing. Police records show the transgender YouTuber was “causing a disturbance for a long period of time” and was walking around the hotel pool “unclothed”. After she was told to stop her behavior by police officers and hotel staff, Dragun allegedly threw a water bottle at a security guard and a police officer.
Following the arrest, Dragun was placed into police custody and transferred to a men’s unit of the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami-Dade County. She was released from custody without bail less than two days later.
“The situation with Nikita, who is legally female, being placed in a men’s unit of a Florida jail is extremely disturbing and dangerous,” said Jack Ketsoyan, a representative for Dragun, in a statement to NPR.
“This decision made by the Miami-Dade County corrections department directly violates their protocol, which mandates that transgender inmates are classified and housed based on safety needs and gender identity,” the statement read. “Nikita has been released and is now safe.”
Dragun reportedly asked a Miami-Dade judge during her hearing whether she had to remain in the men’s unit. In a video from the hearing, which has circulated on social media, the beauty influencer appears over video call and is seen asking the judge, “Do I have to stay here in the men’s unit still?”
The judge replied that she doesn’t “make the rules” and redirected the request to the correctional facility to provide a separate accommodation for Dragun.
Nikita Dragun has 3.54m subscribers on YouTube and 9m followers on Instagram, where she regularly posts about beauty and makeup. In 2015, Dragun came out as transgender in a YouTube video titled, “I Am TRANSGENDER”.
The Independent has contacted Nikita Dragun’s representatives for comment.
Dolphins Smash Into 'Monster' School of Salmon in Wild Footage
Two dolphins have been caught on camera slamming into a massive school of salmon, causing chaos as the fish desperately try to escape. Duration 1:11 View on Watch
The video was captured on November 10 off Tura Beach in New South Wales, Australia, by professional fisherman and tour guide Jason Moyce, who goes by Trapman Bermagui online. He shared the video of the breathtaking sight to Facebook.
"Very lucky today to be filming a monster school of salmon, just as dolphins arrive and totally smash into them. I could hear the noise from 100m [about 330 feet] away. Incredible to watch in real life. hopefully the drone did it justice," he wrote in the caption of the Facebook post.
"I'm stoked with this footage. I didn't see the dolphins at all till they just turned up while filming," he wrote in a comment.
There are no species of true salmon off the coast of Australia, so what Bermagui refers to is likely the Australian salmon, Arripis trutta, which is technically a completely different type of fish. These fish gather in large schools as seen in the video, swimming near to the coast, feeding on smaller baitfish like pilchards and anchovies en masse.
Dolphins, as well as seals and sharks, are one of the main predators of Australian salmon. The two dolphins in the video can be seen lunging into the large school of fish, grabbing their prey. As highly intelligent and social animals, dolphins will often work in tandem with other members of their social groups to manipulate a fish school into being easier to catch.
One method that has been often observed in dolphins is herding, where a pod of dolphins herds the fish into a smaller and smaller group, called a bait ball. The dolphins then take turns to swim through the bait ball, picking off fish as they go.
Other techniques used by the dolphins include corralling, herding the fish into shallow waters, making it easier to catch them, hitting the fish with their tails to stun them, and even driving the prey onto the beach itself in a process known as strand feeding.
Some dolphins even use tools to capture their prey, with some protecting their mouths using sea sponges as they forage on the seafloor.
"Spongers really do stand out as being more solitary and less sociable," she says.
And when they do socialize, spongers tend to form cliques with other spongers, and most interesting of all, she says, is that sponging seems to be passed down from mothers to daughters.
"One of the females who was discovered in 1984 is still sponging," Janet Mann, a behavioral ecologist at Georgetown University, told National Geographic.
Dolphins in larger groups may vary the techniques used to reduce competition for their prey.
"One dolphin does this, another does that," Shannon Gowans, a behavioral ecologist who studies the animals at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, told National Geographic in 2019.
"This helps reduce competition between individuals, and gives the [fish-kickers] an advantage over those doing the same thing as everybody else."
Using these varied hunting techniques, dolphins manage to eat between four and 10 percent of their body weight each day.
The Deepest Part of the Ocean Is Practically an Alien Planet
Ashley Stimpson - Yesterday
How deep is the ocean? At nearly seven miles, the deepest part is a mile longer than Mount Everest is tall.
Both manned and unmanned vessels have reached these depths, called Challenger Deep. It was long thought nothing could live in the Mariana Trench, but robotic probes have revealed worms, shrimp, and microorganisms.
Almost three-quarters of our world is covered in saltwater, and, on average, the ocean is about 12,100 feet, or 2.3 miles deep. But in certain places, the sea floor plummets to truly astonishing depths.
In the Atlantic Ocean, the Puerto Rico Trench, which lies directly north of its namesake, plunges more than 27,000 feet below the surface. The Indian Ocean’s deepest point is the Java Trench, a 2,000-mile chasm off the coast of Sumatra with depths of around 24,000 feet.
But it’s the Pacific Ocean that boasts the deepest waters on Planet Earth.
How Deep Is the Deepest Part of the Ocean?
About 125 miles east of the Mariana Islands—a U.S. territory north of Guam—lies the deepest place known to man. The Mariana Trench, a crescent-shaped depression on the floor of the Western Pacific, stretches about 1,500 miles long and 43 miles wide.
The Mariana Trench is a subduction zone, the spot where one tectonic plate slides under the other. The Pacific Plate, which makes up half of the trench (the Philippine Plate comprises the other), is made up of some of the oldest seafloor in the world, around 180 million years old, so it has been settling lower and lower for quite some time. Two other factors contribute to the Mariana Trench’s enormous depth. First, its remote location means it’s far from any rivers that might fill it up with sediment. Second, fault lines cut the Pacific Plate into narrow grooves near the Trench, allowing it to fold at a steeper angle than in other subduction zones.
At the southern end of the Mariana Trench, there is a small, narrow valley known as the Challenger Deep. It is named for the 1951 expedition that first recorded its depth—an astounding 36,201 feet, or about 6.8 miles. If Mount Everest were placed into the trench at this point, its peak would still be underwater by more than 1.2 miles.
What’s It Like Down There?
At nearly seven miles underwater, the pressure is around 1,000 times greater than what we experience at sea level. Water temperatures hover around freezing, and everything is shrouded in absolute darkness.
It may be cold and quiet, but the deepest part of the ocean, we’re learning, is a noisy place. In 2015, a team made up of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, and Oregon State University, dropped a hydrophone (a waterproof microphone) into the Challenger Deep. Within 23 days, the data capacity of the device was full. After analyzing the recordings, the researchers reported hearing natural phenomena like earthquakes, typhoons, and whale calls, as well as man-made noises like boat engines. Have Humans Explored the Deepest Part of the Ocean?
In 1875, the HMS Challenger measured the depths of the Challenger Deep using a weighted rope. The discovery, made by a crew circumnavigating the globe on a marine research expedition, was a completely serendipitous one after unpredictable wind blew the ship off its planned course. More than 75 years later, Challenger II surveyed the spot using echo sounding, an easier and much more accurate way to map the ocean floor. This survey confirmed the Challenger Deep as the deepest spot in the world, at more than 36,000 feet below the surface.
Only three divers have ever explored the Challenger Deep. In 1960, Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh explored the Challenger Deep in a submersible called Trieste. The dive lasted only 20 minutes due to the extreme pressure, and it kicked up so much debris from the seafloor that the men were unable to take photos.
It took more than 50 years for the next adventurer to reach the Challenger Deep. Filmmaker James Cameron visited in 2012 in a submarine he designed himself. During the three-hour dive, immense pressure damaged Cameron’s equipment. Batteries and sonar equipment went dead, and the vessel’s thrusters malfunctioned.
Dozens of other unmanned research vessels have explored the Mariana Trench and the Challenger Deep, contributing to our growing, but still incomplete knowledge, about the deepest corner of our world. What Lives Down There?
Pressure at the bottom of the Challenger Deep is so great that calcium cannot exist except in solution, meaning that bones would theoretically dissolve at such depths. Because of this, scientists are skeptical that any fish or other vertebrate could survive there. However, robotic probes that have sampled the water and seabed of the Challenger Deep have returned worms, shrimp, and microorganisms.
Paradoxically, there are only trace amounts of life on the floor of the Challenger Deep, yet scientists believe life on Earth may have gotten its start in these depths. Deep, hydrothermal vents that spew mineral-rich seawater—like the ones found in the Mariana Trench—may have provided the ideal conditions for the origin of life on our planet. The chemical reactions facilitated by these vents could be responsible for the increasingly complex organic compounds that eventually evolved into the lifeforms familiar to us today.
Terrifying Images Show Monstrous Deep-Sea Creature With Enormous Fangs
A fangtooth fish spotted at a depth of 800 meters (around 2,600 feet) below the surface. Relative to body size, the teeth of this species are larger than any other marine species. NOAA Ocean Exploration
Deep in the ocean lives a ghoulish fish with huge and menacing, fang-like teeth. Duration 0:42 View on Watch
The aptly named common fangtooth fish (Anoplogaster cornuta)—sometimes referred to by its nickname "ogrefish"—inhabits deep waters all around the world, occurring at depths between 650 and 6,500 feet, although the species has been observed as far down as 16,000 feet. This makes it one of the deepest-living fish.
While the fangtooth fish sometimes rise near to the surface at night to feed, they generally spend their time in waters deeper than 3,300 feet in the open ocean away from land, according to Tracey Sutton, a professor with the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Center at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.
"The one species is truly a child of the Earth, occurring in all but the polar seas," Sutton told Newsweek.
The common fangtooth fish is rarely seen by humans—the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, for example, has spotted the creature fewer than 10 times in around 30 years of conducting deep-sea expeditions with remotely operated vehicles. However, this does not necessarily mean that the fish is truly rare.
"It occupies nearly all of the global deep ocean, so its total numbers could actually be staggeringly high—though it is a loner, not occurring in groups, and thus not abundant in any specific place," Sutton said.
While there is only one confirmed species in its family, a second was described from a juvenile specimen but never collected as an adult, according to Sutton. Fangtooth fish have no known close relatives.
Despite its small size—the common fangtooth fish reaches lengths of around 6 to 7 inches—the characteristic features of this species are the "huge" head and teeth relative to the rest of its body.
The mouth of this fish is full of long, pointed teeth—including two sets of large fangs on the lower and upper jaw—which enable it to catch and hang on to prey of many different sizes, a beneficial adaptation in the deep sea where food can be hard to come by.
Common fangtooths tend to be more active than many other deep-sea fishes and will seek out food by heading toward the surface at night—rather than lying around and waiting for prey like other ambush predators, who might using various luring techniques.
The diet of the common fangtooth includes other fish, crustaceans and cephalopods—the group of animals that contains octopuses, squid and cuttlefish.
When a fangtooth approaches prey animal, the fish opens its huge mouth and sucks the unfortunate victim inside.
"They are voracious—they seem to eat anything that will fit in their mouths," Sutton said.
A composite image showing two fangtooth fish. These animals grow to around seven inches in length.
The teeth of this species, relative to body size, are larger than any other marine species, according to the Smithsonian Institution. They are so big, in fact, that the fish has special pouches on the roof of its mouth to accommodate the fangs on the lower jaw when the mouth is closed.
This species has relatively poor eyesight but to compensate for this, as well as the low light conditions in the water where it lives, the fangtooth has an unusually prominent lateral line—a sensory system found in fish and aquatic amphibians—that helps it to sense movement and vibrations in the surrounding water.
A close-up on the face of a fangtooth fish. These animals live in deep sea waters around the world.
"It has a complex arrangement of nerves on its head. In a manner of speaking, it 'listens' with its face," Sutton said.
This arrangement of nerves is the "front end" of the lateral line system, according to Sutton. It explains the heavy "sculpting" on the front of the fangtooth's face, which you can see in the image above.
The common fangtooth is dark brown to black in color, which helps the fish to camouflage itself in the deep ocean—helpful for catching prey or avoiding predators. Its body is also covered in prickly scales and spines.
A juvenile fangtooth fish displaying its typical coloration. While adult fangtooths tend to be uniformly black or dark brown in color and have enormous fangs, the juveniles are usually light gray and feature smaller teeth.
Because they live so far down, scientists know little about their life and reproduction habits, but the fangtooth fish reproduce via external fertilization—a process in which females lay a clutch of eggs as the males release sperm into the water to fertilize them.
The fish do not have many predators, but animals that do hunt them include tuna and marlin. While fangtooth fish live far away from human civilization, they still face several man-made threats.
For example, deep-sea mining activities and fossil fuel exploration can cause "catastrophic" damage to deepwater ecosystems—as occurred after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico—according to Sutton.
"Fisheries are also expanding into deep pelagic (being neither close to the bottom nor near the shore) waters as coastal fisheries are depleted," Sutton said. "Last, climate change is predicted to change ocean circulation, which is predicted to reduce the amount of pelagic life."
The fangtooth fish is one of millions of species thought to be living in the deep ocean, most of which have never been seen or described by humans. Among these weird and wonderful deep-ocean creatures are the vampire squid, dumbo octopuses and the bloody-belly comb jelly.
SOCIOBIOLOGY; STEP PARENTS ABUSE
California megachurch leader, grandparents charged with murder, torture in death of 11-year-old daughter
Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY -
A California megachurch leader and her parents have been arrested on charges including murder and torture in the death of the woman's 11-year-old daughter.
Arabella was initially fostered before being adopted by Brian and Leticia McCormack, officials said.
The 49-year-old church elder's father, Stanley Tom, 75, was also charged with murder, three counts of torture, and three counts of willful cruelty to a child, according to a news release from the department. Arabella's grandmother Adella Tom, 70, was booked on three counts of torture and three counts of willful cruelty to a child.
'Severe levels of malnourishment'
On Aug. 30, deputies responded to a child-in-distress call at a home in Spring Valley, in the eastern part of the county, where they found Arabella, according to the news release.
The 11-year-old was rushed to a hospital, where her health declined and she died, officials reported, according to the release. Detectives said they suspected child abuse.
The girl was covered in bruises and had suffered "severe levels of malnourishment," a police spokesperson told The San Diego Union-Tribune.
During the investigation, deputies contacted the girl's father, Brian McCormack, near the family's home. According to the release, he died by suicide in their presence.
Arabella had two sisters, ages 6 and 7, the release says, who are now living with a foster family.
On Thursday afternoon, a Rock Church spokesperson told USA TODAY that Leticia McCormack began volunteering with the Rock Church in 2013 and has helped in various capacities, including administrative tasks and helping coordinate events and other ministry activities.
The spokesperson also said that her ordination at Rock Church was previously suspended and as of Thursday was in the process of being revoked.
The church also released the following statement to USA TODAY:
"We continue to grieve for Arabella and her sisters. We are so sorry that their family and friends are experiencing this unimaginable loss and pain. We send our deepest condolences to all that are grieving at this time. Our hearts go out to each of them.
The legal process will run its course and we hope justice for Arabella and her sisters will be served. We are praying that God’s love and grace will bring comfort and healing.
The Rock no longer has any official relationship with Leticia."
The sheriff's department could not immediately be reached by USA TODAY Thursday.
Are Stepchildren at Higher Risk for Abuse Than Biological Children?
April 9, 2013 •
By A GoodTherapy.org News Summary
According to sociobiology, genetic preservation is at the core of human behavior. Because it is inherent in our genetic structure to ensure survival, individuals are predisposed to take measures to guarantee their genetic survival. In other words, they favor strategies and methods that will increase the likelihood of their family lineage being carried on. This is done through positive and negative methods. Positively, people have children so that their genetic tree can be extended to further generations. Negative methods of preserving genetic lineage also exist and include violence and aggression toward people who are not blood relatives. Based on these theories, it could be assumed that stepchildren are more likely to be abused by parents than biological children. In fact, some research has provided evidence of a 5-fold increase in risk of child abuse for step-children compared to biological children.
There is abundant evidence that children living in stepfamilies are more likely to experience sexual abuse. And children living with unmarried parents are also at risk for abuses including physical, sexual and emotional abuse. However, it has not been clearly established if stepchildren are injured as a result of their abuse more often than biological children. To get a better look at abuse rates among biological and stepchildren, Stewart J. D’Alessio of the Deaprtment of Criminal Justice at Florida International University recently examined data from more than 130 cities that was used as part of a larger study on abuse incident reporting. He looked at the biological status of the children, as well as the socioeconomic condition of their environment, as it has been suggested that disadvantaged communities have higher levels of stepchildren abuse.
D’Alessio found that children living in disadvantaged communities were more likely to experience abuse than those in socioeconomically advanced environments. He also found that the age of the perpetrator was influential of abuse. Younger parents were more likely to abuse children than older parents. However, there was no evidence suggesting that stepchildren were at increased risk for injury. “Contrary to expectations,” said D’Alessio, “Our results showed that the effect of a child’s genetic status on the likelihood of physical injury was in the opposite direction as predicted by sociobiology.” In fact, the stepchildren were less likely to be physically injured than the biological children. D’Alessio notes that these findings raise more questions for future research, and that that exploration should consider that many incidents of abuse are never reported. Methods to ascertain more reliable and valid abuse rates should be investigated in future work in this area.
Reference: D’Alessio, Stewart J., PhD, and Lisa Stolzenberg. (2012). Stepchildren, community disadvantage, and physical injury in a child abuse incident: A preliminary investigation. Violence and Victims 27.6 (2012): 860-70. ProQuest. Web.
A wide range of child and caregiver characteristics, including parental psychopathology, parents’ childhood experiences of abuse, parenting stress, child age, parent age, child disabilities, socio-cultural background, and caregiver’s relationship to the child, have been reported to contribute to increased risk of violence directed against children. Although there is a dearth of research into violence against children in stepfamilies, some studies have indicated that stepparents are more likely to abuse children compared with genetic parents. Stepparents also have been found to pose a significantly greater risk of using excessive violence, which can subsequently lead to the death of a child. The risk of violence against stepchildren has also been found to be significantly elevated with the presence of stepparent’s genetic offspring. One possible explanation for increased violence in stepfamilies is that stepparents do not want to invest feelings and resources in children who do not carry copies of their genes. Sexual violence by stepparents, on the other hand, can be explained by the lack of exposure to a learning mechanism termed ‘incest aversion’, which refers to negative sexual imprinting during a critical period of early childhood to avoid inbreeding. Yet another possibility is that people who divorce are more likely to do so due to aggressive impulses which can play a part in relationship termination. When they remarry, those aggressive impulses can be directed against stepchildren. However, stepfamilies are also reported to experience more stressors associated with family violence, including alcohol abuse, child’s behavioral problems, adverse contextual backgrounds, and weaker social networks. This suggests that the stepfamily structure may not be a risk factor of violence against children per se. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a description of the problem of violence against children by stepparents, discuss the extent of the phenomenon and its possible theoretical explanations, critically review empirical research assessing violence against children by stepmothers and stepfathers, as well as suggest directions for future research.
Vatican to investigate French cardinal who abused 14-year-old girl
took place 35 years ago when he was a parish priest
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican will open an investigation into French Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, who earlier this week admitted to sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl decades ago.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Friday a preliminary investigation would start once the most suitable person with the "necessary autonomy, impartiality and experience" was found to carry it out.
He said the Vatican was taking into account that French judicial authorities had opened a file on the case.
The Vatican's investigation would not begin in earnest until French civil authorities inquiry had concluded, so that its finding could be used for information.
Earlier this week Ricard, 78, acknowledged the abuse, which he said took place 35 years ago when he was a parish priest. Ricard, who was bishop in the southwest region of Bordeaux from 2001 to 2019 and was made a cardinal in 2006 by former Pope Benedict, asked for forgiveness and said he would withdraw from his functions and be available for civil and Church authorities.
Eleven bishops in France are being investigated for sexual abuse.
An independent investigation in France last year found that clergy had sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the previous 70 years.
After the Vatican investigation of Ricard, Pope Francis could discipline him either by sentencing him to a life of prayer and penitence in isolation or go as far as defrocking him.
Defrocking is an expulsion from the Roman Catholic priesthood.
The last cardinal to be defrocked was Theodore McCarrick of the United States in 2019 after an internal investigation found him guilty of sexual abuse of minors and adults and abuse of power.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Alex Richardson and Richard Chang)
