Hiroshima marks 80 years as US-Russia nuclear tensions rise


By AFP
August 5, 2025


Hiroshima is marking 80 years since the world's first atomic bomb attack - Copyright AFP Richard A. Brooks
Kyoko HASEGAWA

Japan marks 80 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Wednesday with a ceremony reminding the world of the horrors unleashed, as sabre-rattling between the United States and Russia keeps the nuclear “Doomsday Clock” close to midnight.

A silent prayer was due to be held at 8:15 am (2315 GMT), the moment when US aircraft Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” over the western Japanese city on August 6, 1945.

The final death toll would hit around 140,000 people, killed not just by the colossal blast and the ball of fire, but also later by the radiation.

Three days after “Little Boy”, on August 9, another atomic bomb killed 74,000 people in Nagasaki. Imperial Japan surrendered on August 15, bringing an end to World War II.

Today, Hiroshima is a thriving metropolis of 1.2 million people, but the ruins of a domed building stand in the city centre as a stark reminder.

Wednesday’s ceremony was set to include a record of around 120 countries and regions including, for the first time, Taiwanese and Palestinian representatives.

The United States — which has never formally apologised for the bombings — will be represented by its ambassador to Japan. Absent will be Russia and China, organisers said Monday.

Nihon Hidankyo, the grassroots organisation that last year won the Nobel Peace Prize, will represent the dwindling number of survivors, known as hibakusha.

As of March, there are 99,130 hibakusha, according to the Japanese health ministry, with the average age of 86.

“I want foreign envoys to visit the peace memorial museum and understand what happened,” the group’s co-chair Toshiyuki Mimaki told local media ahead of the commemorations.

– Younger generation –

The attacks remain the only time atomic bombs have been used in wartime.

Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui is expected at the ceremony to urge attendees to “never give up” on achieving a nuclear-free world.

Kunihiko Sakuma, 80, who survived the blasts as a baby, told AFP he was hopeful.

“I think the global trend of seeking a nuclear-free world will continue,” he said.

“The younger generation is working hard for that end,” he said ahead of the ceremony.

But in January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” shifted to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest in its 78-year history.

The clock symbolising humanity’s distance from destruction was last moved to 90 seconds to midnight over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russia and the United States account for around 90 percent of the world’s over 12,000 warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

SIPRI warned in June that “a dangerous new nuclear arms race is emerging at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened,” with nearly all of the nine nuclear-armed states modernising their arsenals.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump said that he had ordered the deployment of two nuclear submarines following an online spat with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

Last month, Matsui urged Trump to visit Hiroshima after the US president likened the 1945 atomic bombings to air strikes on Iran in June.

“It seems to me that he does not fully understand the reality of the atomic bombings, which, if used, take the lives of many innocent citizens, regardless of whether they were friend or foe, and threaten the survival of the human race,” Matsui said at the time.

 

New ancient marine reptile species discovered in Germany's famous Jurassic fossil beds

PeerJ

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Plesionectes longicollum 

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Credit: Credit Artist: Peter Nickolaus

Paleontologists have identified a new species of ancient marine reptile from Germany's world-renowned Posidonia Shale fossil beds, expanding our understanding of prehistoric ocean ecosystems that existed nearly 183 million years ago.

The newly classified species, named Plesionectes longicollum ("long-necked near-swimmer"), represents a previously unknown type of plesiosauroid—the group of long-necked marine reptiles that inhabited Earth's oceans during the age of dinosaurs. The specimen is a nearly complete skeleton that even preserves remnants of fossilised soft tissue. It was originally excavated in 1978 from a quarry in Holzmaden, Southwest Germany, but its unique anatomical features have only now been fully recognized through comprehensive scientific analysis.

"This specimen has been in collections for decades, but previous studies never fully explored its distinctive anatomy," said Sven Sachs of the Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld, the study's lead author. "Our detailed examination revealed an unusual combination of skeletal features that clearly distinguish it from all previously known plesiosaurs."

The research, published by Sven Sachs and co-author Dr. Daniel Madzia from the Polish Academy of Sciences, demonstrates that the Posidonia Shale—already famous for its exceptionally preserved fossils—contained even greater marine reptile diversity than previously recognized.

The Plesionectes specimen is particularly significant as it represents the oldest known plesiosaur from the Holzmaden area. Despite being an immature individual, its distinctive anatomical characteristics were not significantly affected by its developmental stage, warranting classification as an entirely new genus and species.

"This discovery adds another piece to the puzzle of marine ecosystem evolution during a critical time in Earth's history," explained Dr. Madzia. "The early Toarcian period when this animal lived was marked by significant environmental changes, including a major oceanic anoxic event that affected marine life worldwide."

The fossil is permanently housed at the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart (Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History) where it is cataloged as specimen SMNS 51945.

The Posidonia Shale at Holzmaden has previously yielded five other plesiosaur species, including representatives from all three major plesiosaur lineages. This new addition further cements the formation's status as one of the world's most important windows into Jurassic marine life.

Read the full article in PeerJ Life & Environment https://peerj.com/articles/19665/ (please note this link will only work from 4th August.)

Watch a video interview with author https://youtu.be/C3J0YAk4WEc

Plesionectes skeleton at the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart 

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Journal

PeerJ

DOI

10.7717/peerj.19665 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

An unusual early-diverging plesiosauroid from the Lower Jurassic Posidonia Shale of Holzmaden, Germany

Article Publication Date

4-Aug-2025

 

Major discovery of Ice Age bones in a Norwegian cave opens a window into the past

Bournemouth University

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Cave contents

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Credit: Trond Klungseth Lødøen

Scientists have uncovered the remains of a vast animal community that lived in the European Arctic 75,000 years ago.  

The bones of 46 types of animals – including mammals, fish and birds – were discovered in a cave on the coast of Northern Norway, representing the oldest example of an animal community in the European Arctic during this warmer period of the ice age.  

The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).  

The research team believe the bones will help scientists understand how wildlife once responded to dramatic climate shifts, insights that will be highly relevant for conservation work today.  

“These discoveries provide a rare snapshot of a vanished Arctic world,” said the study’s first author Dr Sam Walker of Bournemouth University and the University of Oslo. “They also underscore how vulnerable cold adapted species can be under changing climate conditions, which can help us to understand their resilience and extinction risk in the present,” he added. 

Amongst the animals they identified were polar bear, walrus, bowhead whale, Atlantic puffin, common eider, rock ptarmigan and Atlantic cod. They also found collared lemmings, a species that is now extinct in Europe and which had never been found in Scandinavia until now. 

DNA testing also found that the lineages of these animals did not survive when the colder conditions returned.   

“We have very little evidence of what Arctic life was like in this period because of the lack of preserved remains over 10,000 years old,” said senior author Professor Sanne Boessenkool of the University of Oslo. “The cave has now revealed a diverse mix of animals in a coastal ecosystem representing both the marine and the terrestrial environment,” she added.  

The Arne Qvamgrotta cave was discovered in the 1990’s when a local mining industry built a tunnel through the nearby mountain. It has remained largely unexplored for nearly 30 years when the research team carried out large excavations in 2021 and 2022 and unearthed the cave’s secrets.  

The variety of animals suggests the habitat at the time was largely ice free along the coast after glaciers had melted. This would have provided a suitable habitat for the migratory reindeer whose remains they discovered.  

The presence of freshwater fish means there would have been lakes and rivers within the tundra and there must have been sea ice off the coast for some of the mammals such as bowhead whales and walruses. The sea ice was likely to be seasonal because harbour porpoises, also found amongst the animal remains, are known to avoid ice. 

Although these animals colonised the region after the glaciers melted during this period, it appears that whole populations died as they could not migrate to alternative ecosystems when the ice returned and covered the landscape.  

“This highlights how cold adapted species struggle to adapt to major climatic events. This has a direct link to the challenges they are facing in the Arctic today as the climate warms at a rapid pace,” said Dr Walker. “The habitats these animals in the region live in today are much more fractured than 75,000 years ago, so it is even harder for animal populations to move and adapt,” he added.  

“It is also important to note that this was a shift to a colder, not a period of warming that we are facing today,” Professor Boessenkool said. “And these are cold adapted species – so if they struggled to cope with colder periods in the past, it will be even harder for these species to adapt to a warming climate,” she concluded.  

The study is a collaboration between the University of Oslo, Bournemouth University, University Museum of Bergen, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and other institutions. 

Polar Bear bone

Credit

Trond Klungseth Lødøen

Animal bone fragments

Credit

Sam Walker

Team excavators in cave

Credit

Trond Klungseth Lødøen

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2415008122 

Method of Research

Imaging analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Major discovery of Ice Age bones in a Norwegian cave opens a window into the past

Article Publication Date

4-Aug-2025

Ancient arthropods on the move: Unraveling the secret steps of the burgess shale trilobites

Researchers map range of movement in Olenoides serratus, revealing insights into life 500 million years ago.

Harvard University

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a, A complete specimen with antennae and limbs (USNM PAL 65510). b, Limbs of GSC 34695a showing various degrees of flexure and extension.

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Credit: Photo credit: Sarah R. Losso.

The Burgess Shale in British Columbia is renowned for its exceptional preservation of soft tissues in fossils, including limbs and guts. While trilobites are abundant in the fossil record thanks to their hard exoskeleton, their soft limbs are rarely preserved and poorly understood. However, Olenoides serratus, a particularly abundant and well-preserved  Burgess Shale trilobite, offers a unique opportunity to study these appendages.

In a new study published in the BMC Biology, researchers led by Sarah Losso, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB) at Harvard, analyzed 156 limbs from 28 O. serratus fossil specimens to reconstruct the precise movement and function of these ancient arthropod appendages—shedding light on one of the planet’s earliest and most successful animals.

“Understanding behavior and movement of fossils is challenging, because you cannot observe this activity like in living animals,” said Losso. “Instead, we had to rely on carefully examining the morphology in as many specimens as possible, as well as using modern analogues to understand how these ancient animals lived.”

Arthropods have jointed legs composed of multiple segments that can reach upwards (extend) or downwards (flex). The range of motion depends on the difference between how far each joint can reach in either direction. This range, along with the leg and shape of each segment, determines how the animal uses the limb for walking, grabbing, and burrowing.

Horseshoe crabs, common arthropods found along the eastern shore of North America, are frequently compared to trilobites even though they are not closely related. Horseshoe crabs belong to a different branch of the arthropod tree, more closely related to spiders and scorpions, whereas trilobites’ family ties remain uncertain. The comparison is due to the similarity in that both animals patrol the ocean floor on jointed legs. The results, however, showed less similarity between the two animals.

Unlike horseshoe crabs, whose limb joints alternate in their specialization for flexing and extending—a pattern that facilitates both feeding and protection—O. serratus displayed a simpler, but highly functional limb design.

“We found that the limbs of O. serratus had a smaller range of extension and only in the part of the limb farther from the body,” explained Losso. Although their limbs were not used in exactly the same way as horseshoe crabs, Olenoides could walk, burrow, bring food towards its mouth, and even raise its body above the seafloor.

To bring their findings to life, the team created sophisticated 3D digital models based on hundreds of fossil images preserved at different angles. Because fossilized trilobite limbs are usually squashed flat, reconstructing them in three-dimensions posed a challenge.

“We relied on exceptionally well-preserved specimens, comparing limb preservation across many angles and filling in missing details using related fossils,” said senior author Professor Javier Ortega-Hernández, also in OEB.

The team compared the shape of trace fossils with the movement of the limbs. “Olenoides serratus could create trace fossils of different depths using different movements,” Losso explained. “They could raise their body above the sediment in order to walk over obstacles or to move more efficiently in fast-flowing water.”

Surprisingly, the researchers discovered that the male species also had specialized appendages used for mating, and that each leg also had a gill used for breathing.

While more than 22,000 species of trilobites have been described, less than 0.2% show any trace of legs at all. Nevertheless, lack of preservation does not imply these ancient arthropods went legless—rather, their soft limbs simply seldom survived the fossilization process. The rare conditions of the Burgess Shale—a fast burial by underwater landslides cutting off oxygen—were key to capturing such fleeting biological details.

The study provides a rare window into a more dynamic picture of life more than half a billion years ago, as trilobites like Olenoides serratus scuttled across the seabed with sophisticated limbs that could burrow and foraged through prehistoric seas, revealing not just how they survived, but how they thrived.

Model showing different combinations of flexure and extension that could allow it to stand, raise its body or dig into sediment, and bring food towards the mouth.

Credit

Photo credit: Walker C. Weyland.

Journal

BMC Biology

DOI

10.1186/s12915-025-02335-3 

Article Title

Quantification of leg mobility in the Burgess Shale Olenoides serratus indicate functional differences between trilobite and xiphosuran appendages

Article Publication Date

4-Aug-2025

 

Simple algorithm paired with standard imaging tool could predict failure in lithium metal batteries

University of California - San Diego

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Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a simple yet powerful method to characterize lithium metal battery performance with the help of a widely used imaging tool: scanning electron microscopy. The advance could accelerate the development of safer, longer-lasting and more energy-dense batteries for electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage.

The work was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lithium metal batteries have the potential to store twice as much energy as today’s lithium-ion batteries. That could double the range of electric cars and extend the runtime of laptops and phones. But to realize this potential, researchers must tackle a longstanding challenge: controlling lithium morphology, or how lithium deposits on the electrodes during charging and discharging.

When lithium deposits more uniformly, the battery can achieve longer cycle lifetimes. By contrast, when lithium deposits unevenly, it forms needle-like structures known as dendrites that can pierce a battery’s separator and cause the battery to short-circuit and fail.

Historically, researchers have largely determined the uniformity of lithium deposits by visually assessing microscope images. This practice has led to inconsistent analyses between labs, which has made it difficult to compare results across studies.

“What one battery group may define as uniform might be different from another group’s definition,” said study first author Jenny Nicolas, a materials science and engineering Ph.D. candidate at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. “The battery literature also uses so many different qualitative words to describe lithium morphology — words like chunky, mossy, whisker-like and globular, for example. We saw a need to create a common language to define and measure lithium uniformity.”

To do so, Nicolas and colleagues — led by Ping Liu, professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering — developed a simple algorithm that analyzes how evenly lithium is spread across scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. The researchers used SEM because it offers detailed images of battery electrodes by capturing 3D surface features as 2D grayscale images — it is also a widely used technique in battery research.

To use their method, the team first takes SEM images of battery electrodes and converts them to black and white pixels. The white pixels represent the topmost lithium deposits in the sample and black pixels represent either the substrate or inactive lithium. The images are divided into multiple regions, and the algorithm counts the number of white pixels in each, then calculates a metric called the index of dispersion (ID).

“The index of dispersion is a measure of lithium uniformity,” Nicolas explained. “The closer it is to zero, the more uniform the lithium deposits. A higher value means less uniformity and more clustering of lithium particles in certain areas.”

The team first validated the method on 2,048 synthetic SEM images with known particle size distributions. The ID measurements aligned with the ground-truth distributions, which confirmed the method’s accuracy. The team then applied the method to real electrode images to analyze how lithium morphology changes over time under different cycling conditions. They found that as batteries cycled, the ID increased — indicating more uneven lithium deposits. Meanwhile, the energy required for lithium to deposit increased — a sign of degradation. In addition, the researchers found that local peaks and dips in the ID consistently appeared just before cells failed. Such peaks and dips could serve as an early warning sign of short circuits.

A big advantage of this method is that it is accessible. Battery researchers already use SEM imaging as part of their studies, Nicolas noted, and they can use the simple algorithm presented here to calculate the ID from the data they already collect.

“Our tool can be employed as a low-hanging fruit for researchers to take their analysis to the next level by utilizing image analysis to its fullest potential,” she said.

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2502518122 

Article Title

A quantitative imaging framework for lithium morphology: Linking deposition uniformity to cycle stability in lithium metal batteries