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Allanlom

15 Apr 2025 - 03:02 am

Why axolotls seem to be everywhere — except in the one lake they call home
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Scientist Dr. Randal Voss gets the occasional reminder that he’s working with a kind of superstar. When he does outreach events with his laboratory, he encounters people who are keen to meet his research subjects: aquatic salamanders called axolotls.

The amphibians’ fans tell Voss that they know the animals from the internet, or from caricatures or stuffed animals, exclaiming, “‘They’re so adorable, we love them,’” said Voss, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. “People are drawn to them.”

Take one look at an axolotl, and it’s easy to see why it’s so popular. With their wide eyes, upturned mouths and pastel pink coloring, axolotls look cheerful and vaguely Muppet-like.

They’ve skyrocketed in pop culture fame, in part thanks to the addition of axolotls to the video game Minecraft in 2021. These unusual salamanders are now found everywhere from Girl Scout patches to hot water bottles. But there’s more to axolotls than meets the eye: Their story is one of scientific discovery, exploitation of the natural world, and the work to rebuild humans’ connection with nature.

A scientific mystery
Axolotl is a word from Nahuatl, the Indigenous Mexican language spoken by the Aztecs and an estimated 1.5 million people today. The animals are named for the Aztec god Xolotl, who was said to transform into a salamander. The original Nahuatl pronunciation is “AH-show-LOAT”; in English, “ACK-suh-LAHT-uhl” is commonly used.
Axolotls are members of a class of animals called amphibians, which also includes frogs. Amphibians lay their jelly-like eggs in water, and the eggs hatch into water-dwelling larval states. (In frogs, these larvae are called tadpoles.)

Most amphibians, once they reach adulthood, are able to move to land. Since they breathe, in part, by absorbing oxygen through their moist skin, they tend to stay near water.

Axolotls, however, never complete the metamorphosis to a land-dwelling adult form and spend their whole lives in the water.

“They maintain their juvenile look throughout the course of their life,” Voss said. “They’re teenagers, at least in appearance, until they die.”

Rogerneova

15 Apr 2025 - 02:46 am

Siham Haleem, a private tour guide for 15 years, says that Doha now has many world-class, modern museums — the National Museum of Qatar being a firm personal favorite. And yet he says that visiting Sheikh Faisal’s museum should still be on everybody’s to-do list.
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“For those eager to learn about Qatar’s — and the region’s — heritage and beyond, the museum is an ideal destination,” he says. “Personally, I’m captivated by the car collection, the fossils, and especially the Syrian house, painstakingly transported and reassembled piece by piece.”

Stephanie Y. Martinez, a Mexican-American student mobility manager at Texas A&M University in Qatar likes the museum so much she includes it on all of her itineraries for students visiting from the main campus in Texas.

“The guided tours are very detailed, and the collections found at the museum have great variety and so many stories to unfold,” she says. “Truly, the museum has something to pique everyone’s interest. My favorites are the cars and the furniture exhibits showcasing wood and mother-of-pearl details. Definitely one of my favorite museums in Qatar, every time I visit I learn something new.”

Raynor Abreu, from India, also had praise for the unusual and immense collection.

“Each item has its own story, making the visit even more interesting,” he says. “It’s also impressive to know that Sheikh Faisal started collecting these unique pieces when he was very young. Knowing this makes the museum even more special, as it reflects his lifelong passion for history and culture.”

It takes time and dedication to truly examine the many collections within the museum — especially since most of them are simply on display without explanation.

Eclectic it may be, but it’s hard to fault the determination of Sheikh Faisal, who has brought together items that tell the story of Qatar and the Middle East.

Sarah Bayley, from the UK, says she visited the museum recently with her family, including 16 and 19-year-old teenagers, and was won over by its sheer eccentricity.

“Amazing. Loved it. It is a crazy place.”

Gabrielsow

15 Apr 2025 - 02:41 am

Axolotl problems
As Mexico City grew and became more industrialized, the need for water brought pumps and pipes to the lake, and eventually, “it was like a bad, smelly pond with rotten water,” Zambrano said. “All of our aquatic animals suffer with bad water quality, but amphibians suffer more because they have to breathe with the skin.”
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To add to the axolotls’ problems, invasive fish species such as carp and tilapia were introduced to the lake, where they feed on axolotl eggs. And a 1985 earthquake in Mexico City displaced thousands of people, who found new homes in the area around the lake, further contributing to the destruction of the axolotls’ habitat.

These combined threats have devastated axolotl populations. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, there are fewer than 100 adult axolotls left in the wild. The species is considered critically endangered.
While the wild axolotls of Lake Xochimilco have dwindled to near-extinction, countless axolotls have been bred for scientific laboratories and the pet trade. “The axolotl essentially helped establish the field of experimental zoology,” Voss said.

In 1864, a French army officer brought live axolotls back to Europe, where scientists were surprised to learn that the seemingly juvenile aquatic salamanders were capable of reproduction. Since then, scientists around the world have studied axolotls and their DNA to learn about the salamanders’ unusual metamorphosis (or lack thereof) as well as their ability to regrow injured body parts.
In addition to their role in labs, axolotls have become popular in the exotic pet trade (though they are illegal to own in California, Maine, New Jersey and Washington, DC). However, the axolotls you might find at a pet shop are different from their wild relatives in Lake Xochimilco. Most wild axolotls are a dark grayish brown. The famous pink axolotls, as well as other color variants such as white, blue, yellow and black, are genetic anomalies that are rare in the wild but selectively bred for in the pet trade.

What’s more, “most of the animals in the pet trade have a very small genetic variance,” Zambrano said. Pet axolotls tend to be inbred and lack the wide flow of different genes that makes up a healthy population in the wild. That means that the axolotl extinction crisis can’t simply be solved by dumping pet axolotls into Lake Xochimilco. (Plus, the pet axolotls likely wouldn’t fare well with the poor habitat conditions in the lake.)

Fame and misfortune
The difficulties that axolotls face in the wild are almost diametrically opposed to the fame they’ve found in recent years. Axolotls have captured the human imagination for centuries, as evidenced by their roles in Aztec religion and stories, but the early 21st century seems to be a high point for them. An axolotl graces the 50 peso bill. There are axolotl-inspired Pokemon, and Reddit commenters have noted that the character Toothless from the “How to Train Your Dragon” movie series is distinctly axolotl-like.

The introduction of axolotls to Minecraft in 2021 neatly mapped onto an uptick in Google searches for the animals, and social media makes it easy for people to gain access to photos and videos of the salamanders, particularly the photogenic pink ones often kept as pets.

The axolotl pet trade probably doesn’t directly harm the wild populations since wild salamanders aren’t being poached or taken from Lake Xochimilco. However, Zambrano said, axolotls’ ubiquity in pop culture and pet stores might make people assume that because axolotls “live in all the tanks around the world, they are not in danger.”

Jamesdrent

15 Apr 2025 - 02:05 am

‘For the public to enjoy’
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The museum’s history starts in 1998, when Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani opened a building to the public on his farm some 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Qatari capital Doha.

A distant relative of Qatar’s ruling family, founder and chairman of Al Faisal Holdings (one of Qatar’s biggest conglomerates), and a billionaire whose business acumen had him recognized as one of the most influential Arab businessmen in the world, Sheikh Faisal had already amassed a substantial private collection of historically important regional artifacts, plus a few quirky pieces of interest, allowing visitors an intimate look into Qatari life and history.

In an interview with Qatari channel Alrayyan TV in 2018, Sheikh Faisal said that the museum started as a hobby.

“I used to collect items whenever I got the chance,” he said. “As my business grew, so did my collections, and soon I was able to collect more and more items until I decided to put them in the museum for the public to enjoy.”

His private cabinet of curiosities has since evolved into a 130-acre complex. Through the fort-like entrance gate lies an oryx reserve, an impressive riding school and stables, a duck pond and a mosque built with a quirky leaning minaret. There’s now even a five-star Marriott hotel, two cafes and the Zoufa restaurant serving modern Lebanese cuisine.

Of course, there’s also the super-sized museum, with a recently-opened car collection housing everything from vintage Rolls-Royces to wartime Jeeps and colorful Buicks. Outside you’ll find peacocks roaming the grounds, and signs warning drivers to be aware of horses and ostriches.

Visitors to the FBQ museum are free to explore the grounds and can even enter the stables to pat the horses.

Scottjap

15 Apr 2025 - 01:50 am

Iceberg flotillas
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Located on the west coast, Ilulissat is a pretty halibut- and prawn-fishing port on a dark rock bay where visitors can sit in pubs sipping craft beers chill-filtered by 100,000-year-old glacial ice.

It’s a place to be awed by the UNESCO World Heritage Icefjord where Manhattan skyscraper-sized icebergs disgorge from Greenland’s icecap to float like ghostly ships in the surrounding Disko Bay.

Small boats take visitors out to sail closely among the bay’s magnificent iceberg flotilla. But not too close.

“I was on my boat once and saw one of these icebergs split in two. The pieces fell backwards into the sea and created a giant wave,” said David Karlsen, skipper of the pleasure-boat, Katak. “…I didn’t hang around.”

Disko Bay’s other giants are whales. From June to September breaching humpback whales join the likes of fin and minke whales feasting on plankton. Whale-watching is excellent all around Greenland’s craggy coastline.

Whales are eaten here. Visitors shouldn’t be surprised to encounter the traditional Greenlandic delicacy of mattak — whale-skin and blubber that when tasted is akin to chewing on rubber. Inuit communities have quotas to not only hunt the likes of narwhals but also polar bears, musk-ox and caribou — which can also appear on menus.

Leonardvob

15 Apr 2025 - 01:28 am

Everyone is talking about Greenland. Here’s what it’s like to visit
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A few months ago, Greenland was quietly getting on with winter, as the territory slid deeper into the darkness that envelops the world’s northerly reaches at this time of year.

But President Donald Trump’s musings about America taking over this island of 56,000 largely Inuit people, halfway between New York and Moscow, has seen Greenland shaken from its frozen Arctic anonymity.

Denmark, for whom Greenland is an autonomous crown dependency, has protested it’s not for sale. Officials in Greenland, meanwhile, have sought to assert the territory’s right to independence.

The conversation continues to intensify. A contentious March 28 visit to a US military installation by Usha Vance, the second lady, accompanied by her husband, Vice President JD Vance, was the latest in a series of events to focus attention on Trump’s ambitions for Greenland.

The visit was originally planned as a cultural exchange, but was shortened following complaints from Greenland Prime Minister Mute B. Egede.

Had the Vances prolonged their scheduled brief visit, they would’ve discovered a ruggedly pristine wildernesses steeped in rich Indigenous culture.

An inhospitable icecap several miles deep covers 80% of Greenland, forcing the Inuit to dwell along the shorelines in brightly painted communities. Here, they spend brutally cold winters hunting seals on ice under the northern lights in near perpetual darkness. Although these days, they can also rely on community stores.

The problem for travelers over the years has been getting to Greenland via time-consuming indirect flights. That’s changing. Late in 2024, the capital Nuuk opened a long-delayed international airport. From June 2025, United Airlines will be operating a twice-weekly direct service from Newark to Nuuk.

Two further international airports are due to open by 2026 — Qaqortoq in South Greenland and more significantly in Ilulissat, the island’s only real tourism hotspot.

Johnnielam

15 Apr 2025 - 01:07 am

Curiosity rover makes ‘arguably the most exciting organic detection to date on Mars’
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The NASA Curiosity rover has detected the largest organic molecules found to date on Mars, opening a window into the red planet’s past. The newly detected compounds suggest complex organic chemistry may have occurred in the planet’s past — the kind necessary for the origin of life, according to new research.

The organic compounds, which include decane, undecane and dodecane, came to light after the rover analyzed a pulverized 3.7 billion-year-old rock sample using its onboard mini lab called SAM, short for Sample Analysis at Mars.

Scientists believe the long chains of molecules could be fragments of fatty acids, which are organic molecules that are chemical building blocks of life on Earth and help form cell membranes. But such compounds can also be formed without the presence of life, created when water interacts with minerals in hydrothermal vents.

The molecules cannot currently be confirmed as evidence of past life on the red planet, but they add to the growing list of compounds that robotic explorers have discovered on Mars in recent years. A study detailing the findings was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The detection of the fragile molecules also encourages astrobiologists that if any biosignatures, or past signs of life, ever existed on Mars, they are likely still detectable despite the harsh solar radiation that has bombarded the planet for tens of millions of years.

“Ancient life, if it happened on Mars, it would have released some complex and fragile molecules,” said lead study author Dr. Caroline Freissinet, research scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in the Laboratory for Atmospheres, Observations, and Space in Guyancourt, France. “And because now we know that Mars can preserve these complex and fragile molecules, it means that we could detect ancient life on Mars.”

Lloydapold

14 Apr 2025 - 11:12 pm

Tesla is bringing its electric cars to oil-rich Saudi Arabia amid falling global sales
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Tesla will start selling its electric vehicles in Saudi Arabia, entering the Gulf region’s largest economy as the company’s global sales are sliding and CEO Elon Musk courts controversy with his role in the US government.

The carmaker announced Wednesday that it would host a launch event in the kingdom on April 10, where it will showcase its EVs. Attendees will also have the chance to “experience the future of autonomous driving with Cybercab and meet Optimus, our humanoid robot, as we showcase what’s next in AI and robotics,” Tesla (TSLA) said.

Tesla may struggle to gain market share in oil-rich Saudi Arabia as EVs make up a little over 1% of all car sales in the country, according to a report by consultancy PwC published in September.
Tesla’s entry into the new market comes as the company fights battles on several fronts.

Last year, it recorded the first annual decline in sales in its history as a public company, posting a drop of 1%.

The company is facing intensifying competition in China, the world’s largest auto market. On Tuesday, BYD, a Chinese maker of electric and hybrid cars, reported $107 billion in annual sales for 2024, beating the near-$98 billion notched by Tesla.

And last week, BYD unveiled an ultra-fast charging system, which it said was capable of adding 250 miles (402 km) of range in just five minutes, easily outdoing Tesla’s charging technology. Tesla’s Superchargers take 15 minutes to charge an EV, providing a range of 200 miles.

Tesla has also suffered slumping sales in Europe. In February, the carmaker sold around 40% fewer vehicles on the continent compared with the same month in 2024, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.

Davidbib

14 Apr 2025 - 11:11 pm

While the Cumberland sample may contain longer chains of fatty acids, SAM is not designed to detect them. But SAM’s ability to spot these larger molecules suggests it could detect similar chemical signatures of past life on Mars if they’re present, Williams said.
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“Curiosity is not a life detection mission,” Freissinet said. “Curiosity is a habitability detection mission to know if all the conditions were right … for life to evolve. Having these results, it’s really at the edge of the capabilities of Curiosity, and it’s even maybe better than what we had expected from this mission.”

Before sending missions to Mars, scientists didn’t think organic molecules would be found on the red planet because of the intensity of radiation Mars has long endured, Glavin said.
Curiosity won’t return to Yellowknife Bay during its mission, but there are still pristine pieces of the Cumberland sample aboard. Next, the team wants to design a new experiment to see what it can detect. If the team can identify similar long-chain molecules, it would mark another step forward that might help researchers determine their origins, Freissinet said.

“That’s the most precious sample we have on board … waiting for us to run the perfect experiment on it,” she said. “It holds secrets, and we need to decipher the secrets.”

Briony Horgan, coinvestigator on the Perseverance rover mission and professor of planetary science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, called the detection “a big win for the whole team.” Horgan was not involved the study.
“This detection really confirms our hopes that sediments laid down in ancient watery environments on Mars could preserve a treasure trove of organic molecules that can tell us about everything from prebiotic processes and pathways for the origin of life, to potential biosignatures from ancient organisms,” Horgan said.

Dr. Ben K.D. Pearce, assistant professor in Purdue’s department of Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences and leader of the Laboratory for Origins and Astrobiology Research, called the findings “arguably the most exciting organic detection to date on Mars.” Pearce did not participate in the research.

Chesterphome

14 Apr 2025 - 09:51 pm

Curiosity has maintained pristine pieces of the Cumberland sample in a “doggy bag” so that the team could have the rover revisit it later, even miles away from the site where it was collected. The team developed and tested innovative methods in its lab on Earth before sending messages to the rover to try experiments on the sample.
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In a quest to see whether amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, existed in the sample, the team instructed the rover to heat up the sample twice within SAM’s oven. When it measured the mass of the molecules released during heating, there weren’t any amino acids, but they found something entirely unexpected.

An intriguing detection
The team was surprised to detect small amounts of decane, undecane and dodecane, so it had to conduct a reverse experiment on Earth to determine whether these organic compounds were the remnants of the fatty acids undecanoic acid, dodecanoic acid and tridecanoic acid, respectively.

The scientists mixed undecanoic acid into a clay similar to what exists on Mars and heated it up in a way that mimicked conditions within SAM’s oven. The undecanoic acid released decane, just like what Curiosity detected.

Each fatty acid remnant detected by Curiosity was made with a long chain of 11 to 13 carbon atoms. Previous molecules detected on Mars were smaller, meaning their atomic weight was less than the molecules found in the new study, and simpler.
“It’s notable that non-biological processes typically make shorter fatty acids, with less than 12 carbons,” said study coauthor Dr. Amy Williams, associate professor of geology at the University of Florida and assistant director of the Astraeus Space Institute, in an email. “Larger and more complex molecules are likely what are required for an origin of life, if it ever occurred on Mars.”