🔴 🇬🇱 🛰️ **Incredible satellite images show Greenland’s massive ice sheet melting**

Julia Musto in New York

_“Altogether, the ice sheet shrank by 563 cubic miles, losing enough mass to fill Africa’s Lake Victoria. The most extreme thinning occurred at the glaciers along its edge, including those known as Jakobshavn Isbræ and Zachariae Isstrøm.”_

🔗 independent.co.uk/climate-chan

@science @climatechange

🔴 **Ancient genomes reveal Avar-Hungarian transformations in the 9th-10th centuries CE Carpathian Basin**

_“Our evaluations reveal spatially different histories in Transdanubia even between communities in close geographical proximity, highlighting the importance of dense sampling and analyses. Our findings highlight extensive homogenization and reorganization processes, as well as discontinuities between Hun, Avar, and Hungarian conquest period immigrant groups, alongside the spread and integration of ancestry related to the Hungarian conquerors.”_

Dániel Gerber et al., Ancient genomes reveal Avar-Hungarian transformations in the 9th-10th centuries CE Carpathian Basin. Sci. Adv.10, eadq5864(2024). DOI: doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adq5864.

@anthropology @archaeodons

_“By the numbers: According to the new Copernicus data, November was the 16th out of the past 17 months during which global average surface temperatures exceeded the 1.5°C target relative to pre-industrial temperatures.”_

@climatechange @science

The Science Desk  
Global climate records in 2023 and 2024 defy scientific explanation https://www.axios.com/2024/12/16/climate-change-records-surprise-scientists?utm...

🔴 **Scientists Warn of an ‘Unprecedented Risk’ From Synthetic ‘Mirror Life,’ Built With a Reverse Version of Natural Proteins and Sugars**

Eli Wizevich

_“Mirror cells,” as they are known, could one day compose “mirror life,” a type of synthetic organism that, on the molecular level, is the complete reverse of the life forms we know. But the 38 co-authors of the warning article published in the journal Science recommend that research into mirror life be blocked immediately, before it spirals out of control._

🔗 smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/

@science

🔴 **Publisher reviews national IQ research by British ‘race scientist’ Richard Lynn**

Hannah Devlin and David Pegg

_“There have been repeated calls for publishers to retract Lynn’s papers or flag concerns about their reliability with warning notices. Academics who have evaluated his papers allege that Lynn, who died last year, systematically biased data to produce implausibly low IQ scores for sub-Saharan nations.”_

🔗 theguardian.com/science/2024/d.

@science

Are there any benefits from climate change that one can preach about?

@science @climatechange

The Science Desk  
Trump’s Energy Secretary Pick Preaches the Benefits of Climate Change https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/who-is-chris-wright-trump-energy-secretar...

🔴 **The first ice-free day in the Arctic Ocean could occur before 2030**

_“The primary trigger of the rapid transition to the first ice-free day within 3–6 years that we identified was a warm atmosphere in the previous winter and spring, leading to a loss of sea ice mass year-round Fig. 3b).”_

Heuzé, C., Jahn, A. The first ice-free day in the Arctic Ocean could occur before 2030. Nat Commun 15, 10101 (2024). doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-545.

@science

🔴 🌡️ 🌊 **Meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic is weakening ocean circulation, speeding up warming down south**

_“Our results show the Atlantic overturning circulation is likely to become a third weaker than it was 70 years ago at 2°C of global warming. This would bring big changes to the climate and ecosystems, including faster warming in the southern hemisphere, harsher winters in Europe, and weakening of the northern hemisphere’s tropical monsoons.”_

🔗 unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024

@science @climatechange @environment

🔴 **‘Systematic reviews’ that aim to extract broad conclusions from many studies are in peril**

Holly Else

_“The size of the problem is not clear, but a manuscript posted to the Center for Open Science’s OSF preprint server in September suggests up to one in seven published papers are fabricated or falsified.”_

🔗 doi.org/10.1126/science.zpnivp.

@science

🔴 **Act now to stop millions of research papers from disappearing**

_“At the heart of the problem is a lack of money, infrastructure and expertise to archive digital resources. “Digital preservation is expensive and also quite difficult,” says Kathleen Shearer, who is based in Montreal, Canada, and is the executive director of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories, a global network of scholarly archives. “It is not just about creating backup copies of things. It is about the active management of content over time in a rapidly evolving technological environment.”_

🔗 doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-038

@science

🔴 **Genetic evidence points to distinct paternal settlers of the Faroe Islands and Iceland**

_“If Iceland and the Faroe Islands are indeed genetically divergent, as found in the present study, two scenarios may explain their differentiation and Iceland’s relative isolation on the networks: (1) the populations were settled by different regional groups; or, (2) another historically contingent process of evolution between the two groups has resulted in the divergence.”_

Mann AE, Magnussen E and Tillquist CR (2024) Genetic evidence points to distinct paternal settlers of the Faroe Islands and Iceland. Front. Genet. 15:1462736. doi: doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2024.146.

@science

🔴 **Demographic history and genetic variation of the Armenian population**

_“We also investigated the debated question on the genetic origin of Armenians and failed to find any significant support for historical suggestions by Herodotus of their Balkan-related ancestry. We checked the degree of continuity of modern Armenians with ancient inhabitants of the eastern Armenian highlands and detected a genetic input into the region from a source linked to Neolithic Levantine Farmers at some point after the Early Bronze Age.”_

Hovhannisyan et al., Demographic history and genetic variation of the Armenian population, The American Journal of Human Genetics (2025), doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2024.10

@science @anthropology

🔴 🎥 **The Art and Science of Light in the Middle Ages**

_"Scientists in the Middle Ages built on the science hypothesized by ancient philosophers via experimentation and observation. They created a solid foundation of the study of optics (vision and light), and even began to explore the neuroscience of light, or how light affects how we feel through brain processes."_

length: nine minutes and forty-five seconds.

🔗 youtu.be/30Cjntu9tIc

@science

‘An AI Fukushima is inevitable’: scientists discuss technology’s immense potential and dangers

Ian Sample

_A huge challenge for researchers is the black box problem: many AIs can reach decisions but not explain them, making the systems hard to trust. But that may be about to change, Hassabis said, through the equivalent of brain scans for AIs. “I think in the next five years we’ll be out of this era that we’re currently in of black boxes.”_

🔗 theguardian.com/science/2024/n

@science @ai

🔴 🌡️ Staggering temperature rise predicted for the Middle East and North Africa

"By 2100, the Arabian Peninsula could warm on average by 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) under low emission scenarios, and by 7.6 degrees Celsius (13.7 degrees Fahrenheit) under high emission scenarios."

🔗 news.agu.org/press-release/mid

@science @climatechange

🔴 Leveraging ancient DNA to uncover signals of natural selection in Europe lost due to admixture or drift

"Our findings suggest that selective events in European prehistory, including from the onset of animal domestication, have been obscured by neutral processes like genetic drift and demographic shifts such as admixture."

Pandey, D., Harris, M., Garud, N.R. et al. Leveraging ancient DNA to uncover signals of natural selection in Europe lost due to admixture or drift. Nat Commun 15, 9772 (2024). doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-538.

@science @biology

🔴 Magnetic North Pole moves closer to Russia in way never seen before by scientists

Jabed Ahmed

"The magnetic pole moved along the northern Canadian shore for centuries, Dr Brown said. It drifted into the Arctic Ocean in the 1990s, and after that, it accelerated and headed towards Siberia."

🔗 independent.co.uk/news/science

@geology @science

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