Category: 7. Science

Adapted from a release written by Alison Auld for Dalhousie University

A new study published in Science Advances has revealed the first detailed images of a newly developing subduction zone off the coast of British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii archipelago.

The international team of researchers collected the data for this study during a 2021 cruise by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory’s research vessel, the Marcus G. Langseth. They used a 15-kilometer-long underwater cable equipped with thousands of underwater microphones, called hydrophones, in the area off northern British Columbia to map the deep structure of the Earth’s subsurface.

Their data confirmed that the Queen Charlotte fault system can generate powerful megathrust earthquakes, which are capable of producing strong shaking and tsunamis.

Megathrusts are found in areas where one tectonic plate dives beneath another, in this case the Pacific plate being pushed under the North American plate. This area is known for generating powerful tremors. In fact, the Queen Charlotte fault system represents the greatest seismic hazard in Canada, producing the country’s largest recorded earthquake in 1949 and a notable earthquake in 2012 that created a tsunami.

“This region is actively becoming a subduction zone, so understanding the fault structure here tells us about the early stages of subduction zone development,” says lead author Collin Brandl, a postdoctoral research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of the Columbia Climate School. “Our study provides the first direct observations of the Haida Gwaii thrust, the “megathrust” of this system, which can help improve hazard analysis in the region, better preparing residents for future earthquakes and tsunamis.”

Brandl’s co-authors are part of an international team, with scientists from the University of New Mexico, Western Washington University, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Boise State University, Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University, the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, the Geological Survey of Canada, and the Universidad de Chile.

Press interviews with Collin Brandl can be arranged by emailing press@columbia.edu.

In nature’s endless game of survival and attraction, appearances can deceive. A soft flutter of wings might signal prey, a wasp, or danger. A bright color could warn of poison or invite a mate. But in one curious case, a dancing jumping spider has taken deception to a whole new level.

Jumping spiders are not what people typically imagine when they think of showy, dramatic displays. Yet one species, the Maratus vespa, does something few creatures dare. This jumping spider imitates one of its biggest threats – a wasp.

This surprising performance raised a question that scientists at the University of Cincinnati couldn’t ignore: why would a spider mimic a predator during something as important as courtship?

That question led to an experiment unlike most in behavioral biology. And the journey from simple curiosity to machine-aided discovery unveiled a strange and brilliant piece of evolutionary theater.

Jumping spiders in a wasp disguise

With travel restrictions in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, fieldwork came to a halt. But curiosity did not. Biologists at the University of Cincinnati turned to computers, hoping to uncover the secrets behind the spider’s dramatic disguise.

Humans often see faces where none exist, on rocks, in tree bark, even in cloud formations. Scientists wondered if the spider’s “wasp face” was a real mimicry or simply a trick of human perception.

To answer this question, the researchers needed a third party without such bias. They used computer vision techniques and machine learning.

Neural networks were trained to identify and classify images of different insect and spider species based on patterns and shapes. The test included 62 species, from jumping spiders to flies and wasps.

Wasp-like spiders trick algorithm

The results surprised the researchers. The artificial intelligence made classification errors nearly 12 percent of the time across all species. Thirteen species were identified correctly every single time. But others were harder to pin down.

“The original idea was inspired by one species, a peacock jumping spider called Maratus vespa, which is Latin for wasp,” said UC student and study lead author Olivia Harris.

In the case of Maratus vespa and a few other spiders, the AI struggled more than usual. It misidentified these spiders as wasps more than 20 percent of the time. Even without human bias, the computer saw what looked like a wasp.

This revealed something important. The spider’s mimicry may be strong enough to fool not just people but machines as well. If artificial intelligence gets confused, real predators might too.

Spider’s dance looks like a wasp

Maratus vespa is no ordinary spider. During courtship, it performs an elaborate dance. It raises its abdomen to display bright, bold patterns. The colors echo those of a wasp’s body. But it doesn’t stop there.

This jumping spider also raises side flaps on its body. The added shape creates the outline of a wasp’s triangular face.

The mimicry becomes more convincing with movement, colors, and structure. And this illusion, oddly enough, is used in one of the most vulnerable moments of its life, mating.

“That got us thinking,” Harris said. “Why would a spider want to look like a wasp, which is a predator of spiders, especially as a primary element of its courtship display?” The answer lies in attention, survival, and split-second timing.

Male jumping spiders seeking attention

Jumping spiders are highly visual animals. They have multiple sets of eyes, each with different abilities. Females especially are careful observers.

When they detect movement from afar, particularly something that resembles a predator, they freeze and focus.

It turns out, this reaction might give males a critical opening. If the female thinks a wasp is nearby, she becomes alert but still. That moment of pause may allow the male spider to begin his courtship display.

The study’s authors believe the male uses this mimicry as a tactic. It isn’t to scare her, but to capture her attention and hold it long enough to start the dance.

Spiders aren’t the only tricksters

Nature is full of strange strategies when it comes to attracting mates. Some male moths, for example, imitate the ultrasonic calls of bats. This discourages females from flying away.

In Africa, topi antelope bulls pretend to spot predators to stop females from leaving their territory.

“But this is the only case we’ve found of males mimicking a predator visually,” she said.

Visual mimicry as a courtship trick remains extremely rare. That makes the Maratus vespa spider an unusual and fascinating example.

The study suggests this behavior represents a form of sensory exploitation. The male takes advantage of how the female processes visual information.

The limits of illusion

Professor Nathan Morehouse, who co-authored the study, explained that the illusion works best from a distance or from the female’s side view.

These angles rely on her peripheral vision, which sees only in green. At that range, the bright pattern and angular shape suggest danger. But when the male moves closer, the illusion wears off.

“Females will not be fooled forever. If they were, they would be robbed of the ability to make mate choices, which would put the species at a long-term disadvantage,” Morehouse said. “It’s beneficial for the males to break the illusion.”

In other words, the mimicry is a tool to get noticed, not to deceive permanently. The female must still decide if the male is worthy. And once she’s focused, she uses her color-sensitive front eyes to make that decision.

Jumping spiders posing as wasps

The team now hopes to follow up with behavioral studies. They want to test if live female spiders behave differently based on the strength of the male’s visual mimicry.

Do some jumping spiders copy wasps better than others? Do females prefer males with more convincing patterns? And can these differences affect which males succeed in passing on their genes?

These questions may reveal even more about how animals use deception not just for survival, but for love.

In the meantime, Maratus vespa continues to dance its strange, bright, and possibly risky dance in the wilds of Australia. A spider pretending to be its enemy, all in the name of romance.

The study is published in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

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In 2008, Erez Ben-Yosef unearthed a piece of Iron Age “trash” and inadvertently revealed the strongest magnetic-field anomaly ever found.

Ben-Yosef, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University, had been working in southern Jordan with Ron Shaar, who was analyzing archaeological materials around the Levant. Shaar, a geologist at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was building a record of the area’s magnetic field.

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Chemists at The Ohio State University have developed a new approach for generating reactive carbon-based intermediates known as metal carbenes, according to a study published in Science. These intermediates serve as essential building blocks in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and materials.

Carbenes are short-lived, highly reactive species that contain a divalent carbon atom. While valuable in chemical transformations, they are often challenging to produce due to their instability and the hazardous conditions typically required for their formation.

The Ohio State team reports a method that uses iron as a catalyst along with chlorine-containing molecules that release radicals. Together, these components generate carbenes under milder conditions. The resulting carbenes can then undergo a reaction to form cyclopropanes – three-membered ring structures commonly found in medicines and agrochemicals.

“Our goal all along was to determine if we could come up with new methods of accessing carbenes that others hadn’t found before,” said David Nagib, co-author of the study, a distinguished professor in arts and sciences and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University. “Because if you could harness them in a milder catalytic way, you could reach new reactivity, which is essentially what we did.”

Cyclopropanes are valued for their compact size and high ring strain, which can influence the biological activity of compounds. Although many synthetic routes to these structures exist, the new method provides an alternative path by accessing carbenes that were previously difficult or impossible to create.

Enabling faster and safer transformations

The researchers also found that their new method can also be carried out effectively in water, raising the possibility that carbenes could one day be generated inside of living cells. Such an approach could be transformative in discovering new drug targets, according to the researchers.

Having access to a new way of creating carbenes that can replace the current, more wasteful approaches, could also help to bring down the cost of drugs by making their production safer and easier. 

Similarly, the researchers hope that this method could help to prevent shortages of important medicines, including antibiotics, antidepressants and treatments for conditions such as heart disease, COVID and HIV. 

Looking ahead, the team plans to continue refining the approach and exploring how the reaction might be extended to other catalysts and molecular targets. 

“Our team at Ohio State came together in the coolest, most collaborative way to develop this tool,” Nagib said. “So we’re going to continue racing to show how many different types of catalysts it could work on and make all kinds of challenging and valuable molecules.”

Reference: Nguyen KNM, Mo X, DeMuynck BM, et al. Harnessing carbene polarity: Unified catalytic access to donor, neutral, and acceptor carbenes. Science. 2025;389(6756):183-189. doi: 10.1126/science.adw4177

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Last month, the parachutes on Hélène Huby’s small spacecraft failed to deploy, and the vehicle and its cargo crashed into the ocean on Earth.

It was both a success and a failure.

The success was that after Huby founded The Exploration Company in Europe, she managed to move nimbly with the “Mission Possible” spacecraft such that it cost less than $25 million to build and reached space in less than three years. The vehicle ticked off a number of successes in spaceflight before making a controlled descent through the atmosphere.

But at 26 km above the planet, as the spacecraft slowed to Mach one, The Exploration Company lost contact. Huby was not sure how this loss would be received in Europe, where failures in spaceflight have not been traditionally well-tolerated.

“What was interesting is the feedback I got in Europe,” Huby said in an interview this week at the company’s offices in Houston. “The German Space Agency, the French space agency, the European Space Agency said, OK, that’s a great achievement. For the time and money we spent, performing 80 percent of that mission was a good investment.”

No drop tests

After the spacecraft was lost on June 24, the company established an independent investigation team. Huby said it is “99 percent” confirmed there was a problem with the deployment of the parachutes, either the drogue chutes or the main parachutes. The fault was not with the provider of the parachutes themselves, US-based Airborne Systems, but the company’s mechanism, she said.

To save time and money, The Exploration Company did not conduct any drop tests. Such a campaign would have added millions of dollars to a program that was trying to be lean, plus a year of schedule to a mission attempting to move fast.

“We made a mistake, basically, to underestimate the risks,” she said. In retrospect, Huby added, the company could have done more testing on the ground.

Now the firm faces a big decision: How to proceed from here. One option is building another small spacecraft, similar to Mission Possible, for testing purposes. But there is limited commonality in the parachute system for this vehicle and the larger Nyx spacecraft the company is building for operational missions. So if the Mission Possible parachutes were to work, that would not guarantee success for Nyx.

The College of Agriculture, Biotechnology & Natural Resources mourns the passing of David A. Schooley, Ph.D., a distinguished professor emeritus of biochemistry, a renowned insect endocrinologist, and a beloved educator and mentor. He joined the University in 1988 and served with distinction until 2013, leaving a legacy of scientific innovation and student-focused education.

David earned his doctorate in organic chemistry from Stanford University in 1968 under famed chemist Carl Djerassi, whose research, along with that of other scientists, helped pave the way for the development of the birth control pill. David later held leadership roles at Zoecon Corporation, where he helped develop methoprene, a synthetic, environmentally safe insect hormone analog now used worldwide to combat mosquito-borne diseases. His early identification of the first four juvenile hormone molecules left a lasting mark in the field of insect physiology and public health.

David continued his prolific research career after joining the University of Nevada, Reno, publishing nearly 200 articles in leading journals. His work has been cited more than 11,000 times by researchers around the world. Much of his research focused on insect diuretic hormones and helped reshape how scientists understand hormone function, evolution and potential biomedical parallels.

During his tenure, David played a key role in establishing the Nevada Proteomics Center, now known as the Mick Hitchcock, Ph.D. Proteomics Center, securing funding to bring state-of-the-art mass spectrometry capabilities to the University. His efforts helped launch a wave of interdisciplinary research across departments.

A passionate educator, David mentored dozens of students in biochemistry, and launched many of them into successful scientific careers. He received the University’s Teacher of the Year and Outstanding Researcher Awards, as well as the Nevada Regents’ Researcher Award.

“David was one of the most decent people I have ever known and is largely responsible for me becoming the scientist I am today,” said Vincent Lombardi, David’s former doctoral student and now an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. “He was an amazing scientist and an exceptional mentor.”

David’s contributions earned national and international recognition, including the Kenneth A. Spencer Award from the American Chemical Society, the Ted Hopkins Insect Physiologist Award from Kansas State University and the Invertebrate Neuropeptide Award from the International Peptide Society. He also served on many editorial boards and was active in several scientific societies.

Colleagues remember him as a brilliant scientist and generous mentor.

“Dave Schooley was a world leader in insect peptide hormones and juvenile hormone,” said Bob Ryan, a former colleague and professor of biochemistry. “His meticulous, impactful research played a key role in building what is now a thriving arthropod research group in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. Recruiting him was a major achievement for the department at the time.”

Those who had the privilege to work with and get to know David over his tenure at the University will certainly miss him as a dear, witty and humorous colleague.

The College joins the scientific community and the family of David in mourning his loss. We extend our heartfelt condolences to his wife, Eleanor, and their children and grandchildren.

Scientists have uncovered a genetic variant, inherited from Neanderthals, that may limit athletic performance.

The mutation is thought to affect roughly 8% of modern-day Europeans and influences the activity of a key enzyme in the production of energy in skeletal muscle.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo in collaboration with Aisin Corporation have demonstrated that universal scaling laws, which describe how the properties of a system change with size and scale, apply to deep neural networks that exhibit absorbing phase transition behavior, a phenomenon typically observed in physical systems. The discovery not only provides a framework describing deep neural networks but also helps predict their trainability or generalizability. The findings were published in the journal Physical Review Research.

In recent years, it seems no matter where we look, we come across artificial intelligence in one form or another. The current version of the technology is powered by deep neural networks: numerous layers of digital “neurons” with weighted connections between them. The network learns by modifying the weights between the “neurons” until it produces the correct output. However, a unified theory describing how the signal propagates between the layers of neurons in the system has eluded scientists so far.

“Our research was motivated by two drivers,” says Keiichi Tamai, the first author, “partially by industrial needs as brute-force tuning of these massive models takes a toll on the environment. But there was a second, deeper pursuit: the scientific understanding of the physics of intelligence itself.”

This is where Tamai’s background in statistical physics of phase transitions gave him the first hint. Absorbing phase transitions refer to a sharp shift at a tipping point from an active to an absorbing phase, from which the system cannot escape without outside help. An example of such a physical system would be a fire burning out. Crucially, these systems exhibit universal behaviors near the tipping point and can be described using universal scaling laws if certain properties are preserved. If deep neural networks exhibit absorbing phase transitions, then then universal scaling laws may apply, providing unified framework for describing how they function. Consequently, researchers would be able to predict whether a signal would “burn out” in a certain deep learning set up.

To investigate, the researchers combined theory with simulations. They derived the exponents, which are universal across systems, and scaling factors, which differ across systems, from theory when possible and used simulations to confirm the scaling laws in more complex cases.

“What a coincidence, I thought,” Tamai says, remembering when he first noticed the link between deep neural networks and absorbing phase transitions. “I never imagined I would end up doing research on deep learning, let alone finding an effective use of a concept I worked on as a doctoral student in physics.”

The finding also brings us closer to understanding the physics of intelligence itself, as it reinvigorates the brain criticality hypothesis, which states that some biological networks operate near phase transitions. Tamai is excited about the prospects of this line of research.

“Alan Turing hinted at this connection as early as 1950, but the tools weren’t ready back then. With the rapid accumulation of evidence in neuroscience and the rise of near-human-level AI, I believe we’re at a perfect moment to revisit and deepen our understanding of this fundamental relationship.”