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Human antidepressants found in brains of Great Lakes fish

Walleye. Image via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In a new study, researchers detected high concentrations of human antidepressants and their metabolized remnants in the brain tissue of 10 fish species – including bass and walleye – common to the Great Lakes region of the United States. The drugs enter rivers and lakes from treatment plants and sewage overflows, scientists say.

Diana Aga of the University at Buffalo is lead author of the study, published on August 16, 2017 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Aga said in a statement:

These active ingredients from antidepressants, which are coming out from wastewater treatment plants, are accumulating in fish brains. It is a threat to biodiversity, and we should be very concerned.

These drugs could affect fish behavior. We didn’t look at behavior in our study, but other research teams have shown that antidepressants can affect the feeding behavior of fish or their survival instincts. Some fish won’t acknowledge the presence of predators as much.

The researchers said that levels of antidepressants they found do not pose a danger to humans who eat the fish, especially in the U.S., where most people do not eat organs like the brain. But the risk that the drugs pose to biodiversity is real, and scientists are just beginning to understand what the consequences might be.

The percentage of Americans taking antidepressants rose 65 percent between 1999-2002 and 2011-14, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Wastewater treatment facilities have failed to keep pace with this growth, typically ignoring these drugs, which are then released into the environment, Aga says. In general, wastewater treatment focuses narrowly on killing disease-causing bacteria and on extracting solid matter such as human excrement. Antidepressants, which are found in the urine of people who use the drugs, are largely ignored, along with other chemicals of concern that have become commonplace, Aga said in a statement.

These plants are focused on removing nitrogen, phosphorus, and dissolved organic carbon but there are so many other chemicals that are not prioritized that impact our environment. As a result, wildlife is exposed to all of these chemicals. Fish are receiving this cocktail of drugs 24 hours a day, and we are now finding these drugs in their brains.

Her new study looked for a variety of pharmaceutical and personal care product chemicals in the organs and muscles of 10 fish species: smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, rudd, rock bass, white bass, white perch, walleye, bowfin, steelhead and yellow perch in the Niagara River, a vital conduit that connects two of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, via Niagara Falls.

Antidepressants stood out as a major problem: These drugs or their metabolites were found in the brains of every fish species the scientists studied. The antidepressants that Aga’s team detected in fish brains had accumulated over time, often reaching concentrations that were several times higher than the levels in the river.

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Bottom line: New research has detected high concentrations of human antidepressants and their metabolized remnants in the brain tissue of 10 fish species common to the Great Lakes region of the United States.

Daytime moon, west after sunrise

Photo at top by Dan Bush of the great website MissouriSkies

Tomorrow morning – September 8, 2017 – and for a few mornings after that, look west after sunrise for the daytime moon. The September 2017 full moon has passed. Now the moon is in a waning gibbous phase, which means it rises in the east later and later each evening.

So you’d look east before going to bed tonight to catch the moon over the eastern horizon. Then you’d look in the west after sunrise tomorrow, or in the next few mornings, to see the daytime moon over your western horizon.

Sylvia asked:

When is the best time to see the moon in the sky during daylight hours?

The answer is that a daytime moon is up there much of the time, but, because it’s pale against the blue sky, it’s not as noticeable as the moon at night.

Daytime moon image by Brian Pate. Used with permission.

The most noticeable moon at night is the one that stays out all night long. That would be around the time of full moon each month, when the moon is 180^o from the sun, or opposite the sun in our sky. Full moon was on September 6, 2016 at 7:03 UTC.

A full moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise. But now the moon is in a waning gibbous phase – rising later each night – and setting in the west later each day after sunrise.

So, in the next several mornings – after sunrise – look for the waning gibbous moon in the west during the morning hours. At mid-northern latitudes in North America, the moon will set better than one hour after sunrise on September 8, and will set a solid hour later each day thereafter.

By the way, the moon is up during the day half the time. It has to be, since it orbits around the whole Earth once a month. The crescent moon is hard to see because it’s so near the sun in the sky. At the vicinity of last quarter moon about a week from now, you might have to crane your neck, looking up, to notice it after sunrise.

Ordinarily, we don’t look up to see the waning last quarter moon and waning crescent after sunrise. That’s one reason why people so often miss the moon during the day.

Day by day, the lighted portion of the waning gibbous moon will shrink and the half-lit last quarter moon will come on September 13. Watch for the daytime moon to climb higher and higher into the western sky after sunrise all this coming week!

Bottom line: Starting around the morning of September 8, 2017 look for the daytime moon in the west after sunrise!

September 2016 guide to the bright planets

The lunar calendars are almost here! They’ll help you the moon phases throughout the year.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1ODCsff

Photo at top by Dan Bush of the great website MissouriSkies

Sylvia asked:

When is the best time to see the moon in the sky during daylight hours?

The answer is that a daytime moon is up there much of the time, but, because it’s pale against the blue sky, it’s not as noticeable as the moon at night.

Daytime moon image by Brian Pate. Used with permission.

A full moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise. But now the moon is in a waning gibbous phase – rising later each night – and setting in the west later each day after sunrise.

Ordinarily, we don’t look up to see the waning last quarter moon and waning crescent after sunrise. That’s one reason why people so often miss the moon during the day.

Bottom line: Starting around the morning of September 8, 2017 look for the daytime moon in the west after sunrise!

September 2016 guide to the bright planets

The lunar calendars are almost here! They’ll help you the moon phases throughout the year.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1ODCsff

What's it like to be a dog-cognition scientist?

"I can't imagine not living with dogs. That would be really sad for me," says Emory neuroscientist Gregory Berns, with Callie (left) and Cato. His latest book is called "What's It Like to Be a Dog?"

Five years ago, Emory neuroscientist Gregory Berns became the first to capture images of actual canine thought processes. To explore the minds of the oldest domesticated species, the Berns lab trained dogs to remain still and alert while undergoing functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) — the same tool that is unlocking secrets of the human brain. The project opened a new door into canine cognition and social cognition of other species.

Berns went on to conduct a series of experiments on dogs, gathering both behavioral and fMRI data on questions such as: How capable are dogs of self-restraint? Do dogs prefer praise from their owners or food? How do dogs process faces in their brains? What’s going on in a dog’s brain when it smells the scent of its owner?

In 2013, Berns wrote a New York Times bestseller called “How Dogs Love Us.” He described how the death of his beloved pug Newton planted the seeds for his eventual switch from the studying the human brain to focus on non-invasive studies of the cognition of dogs and other animals.

In the following Q&A, Berns talks about his new book, “What It’s Like to Be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience,” just published by Basic Books. The book focuses on his hopes that understanding how animals think will revolution how we treat them.

Question: Can you talk about all the dogs you’ve had as pets during your life?

Gregory Berns: When I was a child growing up in Southern California we had two golden retrievers, Pretzel and Popcorn. It’s embarrassing, but my parents always named their dogs after food. I’m not sure why. Most of the children in the area had dogs and horses and we would go traipsing around the hills. Kids and dogs go together.

Berns and Callie

After I was done with medical school and stopped moving around, my wife and I had three pugs, Simon, Newton and Dexter, and then a golden retriever, Lyra.

We now live with our two daughters and have three dogs: Callie, a Feist, which is a Southern squirrel hunting dog; Cato, a Plott hound, which is the state dog of North Carolina; and Argo, a yellow dog of some kind of mix. We also have two bearded dragons and a chameleon.

I can’t imagine not living with dogs. That would be really sad for me.

Q: “What It’s Like to Be a Dog” describes all the experimental work you have done so far with canine cognition. What’s the biggest surprise to come out of your research?

GB: If you take language out of the picture, what we’re finding is that we see a lot of similarities between dogs and humans. In one study, for instance, we used fMRI to measure the relative value of food versus praise to the dogs and found that almost all the dogs’ brains responded to praise as much, and sometimes more, than to food. We ourselves know how it feels when someone praises us, there’s a positive feeling associated with it. That’s perhaps similar to what dogs are feeling.

We also did a study on dogs and delayed gratification. We found that part of the prefrontal cortex is more active in dogs during self-control. And, just like experiments with humans have found, we showed that the dogs who are better at this task use more of their prefrontal lobes.

Now that we are gaining a basic understanding of canine cognition, we are starting to focus more on the individuality of dogs — what it’s like to be this dog, as opposed to that dog.

Q: You’re also using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to study the brains of other mammals, mapping the neural pathways in brains from animals that are long deceased and stored in museum collections. How did this project come about?

GB: It started in 2015 when we gained access to the brains of two dolphins that had died, and we showed that we could use DTI to map their sensory and motor systems. Dolphins are incredibly intelligent, social animals but they’ve remained relatively mysterious. We provided the first picture of the entire dolphin brain and all the white matter connections inside of it. This year, we reconstructed the brain architecture and neural networks of the extinct Tasmanian tiger, also known as a thylacine, using two brain specimens from museums, both of which were about 100 years old. Through a project I call the Brain Ark we’re collecting a digital archive of high-resolution, three-dimensional brain structures of megafauna. It’s publicly available to other researchers to contribute to and draw data from.

Q: What is the ultimate goal of your animal neuroscience research?

GB: The Brain Ark is an attempt to catalog and study brains of large mammal species before they are gone. Or, as in the case of the Tasmanian tiger, after they’re gone. Many megafauna are in danger of extinction because their habitats are being chopped up in ways that don’t allow them to sustain themselves or to migrate.

In the grand scheme of things, I’d also like to explore the commonalities that we have with other animals. That has important ethical implications for how we treat them and for their right to exist in the first place. Animal welfare laws cover things like abuse — pain and suffering. I think we should go beyond that and acknowledge that animals also have a right to lead a good life — whatever that means for that animal.

from eScienceCommons http://ift.tt/2vNjMYq

Berns and Callie

After I was done with medical school and stopped moving around, my wife and I had three pugs, Simon, Newton and Dexter, and then a golden retriever, Lyra.

Science Buddies Teacher Dashboard

Learn more about the new Teacher Dashboard for teachers using Science Buddies with Google Classroom.

from Science Buddies Blog http://ift.tt/2wJeREQ

See an extra red moon or sun this week?

Full moon on the night of September 5-6, 2017 as seen by Joe Randall. He wrote: “Smokey over Colorado tonight.”

We’re receiving many messages and some images from people who are seeing especially red moons – or very red sunsets or sunrises – this week. Of course, the moon or sun near the horizon always look redder than usual, due to the fact that – when the moon or sun is low in the sky – you’re seeing them through a greater-than usual thickness of Earth’s air. But, this week, some commented that the moon looked red even when it was high in the sky. And many are commenting on the extra red sunsets. NASA Earth Observatory reported this week:

With dozens of wildfires burning across the western United States and Canada, many North Americans have had the acrid taste of smoke in their mouths during the past few weeks. On September 5, 2017, the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) reported more than 80 large fires burning in nine western U.S. states. People living in large stretches of northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho have been breathing what the U.S. government’s Air Now website rated as ‘hazardous’ air.

NASA Earth Observatory also published these two amazing images:

This natural-color mosaic was made from several scenes acquired on September 4, 2017 by the Suomi-NPP satellite. Image via NASA Earth Observatory.

The Ozone Mapper Profiler Suite (OMPS) on Suomi NPP also collected data on airborne aerosols as they were swept by winds from west to east across the continental United States. The OMPS map depicts relative aerosol concentrations, with lower concentrations appearing in yellow and higher concentrations appearing in dark orange-brown. Note that the sensor detects aerosols in high-altitude plumes more readily than lower plumes, so this map does not reflect air quality conditions at “nose height.” Rather it shows where large plumes of smoke were lofted several kilometers up into the atmosphere. Data to make this image was acquired on September 4, 2017. Image via NASA Earth Observatory.

The reports of smokey skies didn’t start this week. We’ve been seeing photos of smoke-filled skies for several weeks, caused by the ongoing wildfires in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Canada, and, at first, most of the photos of very red moons and sun were coming from there. But now the smoke seems to be spreading.

So if the sun or moon looks particularly red to you – and you live in the U.S. – wildfire smoke might be the reason!

September 2, 2017 sunrise as captured by Gary Peltz in smokey Seattle. He wrote: “This summer has been the hottest and driest in recorded history here in western Washington State. Wildfires continue to ravage the Cascade Mountains from British Columbia to Oregon. Smoke from central Washington around 90 miles east of Seattle is keeping the atmosphere very hazy and producing some very interesting sunrises and sunsets. It’s also keeping the 15 degree above normal temperatures that we are experiencing around 5 degrees F lower than they’d be otherwise.” Look closely at this image, and you’ll also see sunspots!

Bottom line: Smoke from wildfires is spreading across the U.S., causing very red moons and suns. Photos from both Earth and space here.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2eL63dm

Full moon on the night of September 5-6, 2017 as seen by Joe Randall. He wrote: “Smokey over Colorado tonight.”

With dozens of wildfires burning across the western United States and Canada, many North Americans have had the acrid taste of smoke in their mouths during the past few weeks. On September 5, 2017, the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) reported more than 80 large fires burning in nine western U.S. states. People living in large stretches of northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho have been breathing what the U.S. government’s Air Now website rated as ‘hazardous’ air.

NASA Earth Observatory also published these two amazing images:

This natural-color mosaic was made from several scenes acquired on September 4, 2017 by the Suomi-NPP satellite. Image via NASA Earth Observatory.

So if the sun or moon looks particularly red to you – and you live in the U.S. – wildfire smoke might be the reason!

Bottom line: Smoke from wildfires is spreading across the U.S., causing very red moons and suns. Photos from both Earth and space here.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2eL63dm

Denying Hurricane Harvey’s climate links only worsens future suffering

Human-caused climate change amplified the damages and suffering associated with Hurricane Harvey in several different ways. First, sea level rise caused by global warming increased the storm surge and therefore the coastal inundation and flooding from the storm. Second, the warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, which intensifies extreme precipitation events like the record-shattering rainfall associated with Harvey. Third, warmer ocean waters essentially act as hurricane fuel, which may have made Harvey more intense than it would otherwise have been.

There are other possible human factors at play about which we have less certainty. For example, it’s possible that Harvey stalled off the coast of Texasbecause of changes in atmospheric circulation patterns associated with human-caused global warming. As climate scientist Michael Mann notes, his research has shown that these sorts of stationary summer weather patterns tend to happen more often in a hotter world, but we can’t yet say if that happened in Harvey’s case.

Other human activities also worsened Harvey’s impacts. For example, Houston suffers from urban sprawl, covering a larger area (nearly 600 square miles) than the cities of Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Manhattan, and Santa Barbara combined. With urban sprawl and poor planning came expansive impervious surfaces – absorbent soil covered instead by concrete and asphalt, increasing flood risks. Houston’s lack of zoning laws combined with the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) also encouraged development in flood prone areas.

We’re subsidizing risky behavior

Private insurance companies don’t want to insure homes that face a significant risk of flooding, but with a lack of regulation and/or government insurance offered by NFIP, development in relatively high-risk flood areas can be profitable. That is, until a flood strikes. 85% of Houston homeowners don’t have flood insurance and will be unable to recover most of their losses from Hurricane Harvey. Others are covered by NFIP, which was already $24 billion in debt before Harvey. That’s because NFIP hasn’t been charging sufficiently high premiums, in large part because it has underestimated flood risks based on maps and projections that are sometimes decades out of date. And climate change is amplifying those flood risks.

It’s a challenging problem because for homeowners living in areas where flood risks have significantly increased, flood insurance premiums should hypothetically increase significantly to cover those risks. But factors like rising sea levels and expanding urban sprawl that contribute to that increased risk aren’t the fault of the homeowners, who can then become angry constituents for politicians working on updating NFIP. And so needed changes to the program have yet to be made.

As a result, the government is effectively subsidizing the costs associated with living in high-risk flood areas. Between 1978 and 2005, NFIP paid out $5.5 billion (9.6% of paid claims) to just 30,000 properties (0.6% of the total covered by flood insurance) that each flooded an average of five times. Because the NFIP premiums are too low, taxpayers end up footing billions of dollars of those payouts.

The situation is analogous to climate change. Without a price on carbon pollution, industries and individuals can dump carbon in the atmosphere for free. But that carbon pollution has costs that we eventually pay, in the form of increased property damage due to amplified storms like Hurricane Harvey, for example. Or from higher food prices when farmers are struck by an intensified drought, or decreased worker productivity in heat waves, or valuable coastal property lost to encroaching sea levels, or homes lost to bigger wildfires and increased costs to fight them – the list of climate costs goes on and on.

Those costs are eventually paid by taxpayers, but we’re picking up the tab for the polluters. It’s effectively a subsidy for the fossil fuel industry to the tune of trillions of dollars every year, and as with artificially cheap flood insurance premiums, we’re subsidizing risky behavior that ultimately causes severe damages.

The Trump administration is in denial

Ten days before Hurricane Harvey hit, the Trump administration rolled back the Federal Flood Risk Mitigation Standard. The policy was implemented by the Obama administration, and required taxpayer-funded public infrastructure projects to plan for future flooding risks. Much infrastructure within and around Houston is now underwater, and accounting for future flooding risks when replacing it would be smart. But the Trump administration considered this policy a burdensome regulation, claiming that the infrastructure permitting process has too many “inefficiencies.” Apparently those “inefficiencies” include saving taxpayer money by reducing future flood losses.

When asked about the causes and contributors to Hurricane Harvey and its damages, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt sidestepped the subject by using the Trump administration’s favorite strategy – attack the media:

I think for opportunistic media to use events like this to, without basis or support, just to simply engage in a cause and effect type of discussion, and not focus upon the needs of people, I think is misplaced.

Worse yet, EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman accused climate scientists of “engaging in attempts to politicize an ongoing tragedy.” It’s similar to the argument that we shouldn’t talk about gun control in the aftermath of a mass shooting. That’s precisely when we should be working on solutions to prevent these types of disasters from happening again and again.

Denial increases suffering

Those who oppose climate policies will often argue that we can simply adapt to the consequences of human-caused climate change. Most recently, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens suggested that Harvey will just be a “speed bump” for Houston’s economy, and that the world should follow Houston’s example of “environmental resilience” by following “the path of its extraordinary economic growth.” The people in Texas suffering from having lost their homes and possessions probably aren’t comforted that Stephens considers Harvey a “speed bump” for the local economy (which coincidentally is probably not true). As renowned glaciologist Lonnie Thompson put it:

Click here to read the rest

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/2j4PvOX

We’re subsidizing risky behavior

The Trump administration is in denial

I think for opportunistic media to use events like this to, without basis or support, just to simply engage in a cause and effect type of discussion, and not focus upon the needs of people, I think is misplaced.

Denial increases suffering

Click here to read the rest

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/2j4PvOX

Harvey churned up, cooled down Gulf water

These maps shows sea surface temperatures in the western Gulf of Mexico on August 23 and August 30, 2017, as well as the storm track for Harvey. Image via NASA Erth Observatory.

Hurricane Harvey changed the landscape of southern Texas and the lives of millions of people. The storm also changed the surface profile of the Gulf of Mexico, say NASA scientists, though those effects are likely to be short-lived.

When Harvey crossed the Yucatán Peninsula into the Gulf of Mexico on August 22–23, 2017, the tropical depression moved into waters that were warmer than the long-term average – by 1.5 to 4 degrees Celsius (2.5 to 7 degrees F.)

Hurricanes feed off of warm ocean temperatures, like a fire relies on a steady oxygen supply to keep burning.

…So this deep, warm pool of water helped provide additional fuel for Harvey to intensify.

That’s according to Dalia Kirschbaum, a scientist and natural hazards specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Once in the Gulf, Harvey grew rapidly and sped toward the Texas coast as a category 4 hurricane — then lingered for five days as a tropical storm. In the process, the storm dropped unprecedented amounts of rainwater on Houston and southern Texas while churning up the Gulf of Mexico.

These maps show sea surface temperature anomalies; that is, how much the surface layer was above or below the long-term average temperature for this time of year. Image via NASA Earth Observatory.

All of the fresh rainwater and the ocean mixing from the storm combined to dramatically alter the surface waters of the Gulf. According to a statement for NASA Earth Observatory:

Cooling naturally as it rose through the atmosphere, the water that fell back onto the sea as rain likely would have been cooler than the surface waters. At the same time, the winds and waves of the storm worked to disperse warm surface water and to bring up cooler water from the ocean depths.

In theory, scientists say, the cooler water now near the surface of the northern Gulf of Mexico should make it less likely for a new storm to develop or intensify there in the coming weeks. However, the waters of the Gulf are not exactly cool. Scientists generally agree that sea surface temperatures should be above 27.8°C (82°F) to promote the development and intensification of hurricanes. (There are some exceptions.) So even some of the light blues on the sea surface temperature maps above are still warm enough for storms.

Bottom line: NASA Earth Observatory maps show how of the fresh rainwater and ocean mixing from hurricane Harvey combined to dramatically alter the surface waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

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Human antidepressants found in brains of Great Lakes fish

Daytime moon, west after sunrise

What's it like to be a dog-cognition scientist?

Science Buddies Teacher Dashboard

See an extra red moon or sun this week?

Denying Hurricane Harvey’s climate links only worsens future suffering

We’re subsidizing risky behavior

The Trump administration is in denial

Denial increases suffering

We’re subsidizing risky behavior

The Trump administration is in denial

Denial increases suffering

Harvey churned up, cooled down Gulf water

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