It's Science Time

 

Just a few science and tech articles that have been cluttering up my in-box:

• "Plague Trackers: Uncovering the Elusive Origins of the Black Death"--SciTech Daily. It's long been known that the bubonic plague of the 14th Century began in an area of what is today Western China. But that doesn't explain the origins or sources of the plague bacterium from earlier or later outbreaks. This article describes a team using DNA analysis to try and track down the ultimate source of the disease. From the article:

    The team studied genomes from strains with a worldwide distribution and of different ages and determined that Y. pestis has an unstable molecular clock. This makes it particularly difficult to measure the rate at which mutations accumulate in its genome over time, which are then used to calculate dates of emergence.

    Because Y. pestis evolves at a very slow pace, it is almost impossible to determine exactly where it originated.

    Humans and rodents have carried the pathogen around the globe through travel and trade, allowing it to spread faster than its genome evolved. Genomic sequences found in Russia, Spain, England, Italy, and Turkey, despite being separated by years are all identical, for example, creating enormous challenges in determining the route of transmission.

    To address the problem, researchers developed a new method for distinguishing specific populations of Y. pestis, enabling them to identify and date five populations throughout history, including the most famous ancient pandemic lineages which they now estimate had emerged decades or even centuries before the pandemic was historically documented in Europe.

    “You can’t think of the plague as just a single bacterium,” explains Poinar. “Context is hugely important, which is shown by our data and analysis.”

    To properly reconstruct pandemics of our past, present, and future, historical, ecological, environmental, social, and cultural contexts are equally significant.

• "We Might Have Been Wrong About The Role Rats Played in The Black Death"--Science Alert. An excerpt:

    While plague begins in rodents, it sometimes spills over to humans. Europe may have once hosted animal reservoirs that sparked plague pandemics. But plague could have also been repeatedly reintroduced from Asia. Which of these scenarios was present remains a topic of scientific controversy.

    Our recent research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), has shown that environmental conditions in Europe would have prevented plague from surviving in persistent, long-term animal reservoirs. How, then, did plague persevere in Europe for so long?

    Our study offers two possibilities. One, the plague was being reintroduced from Asian reservoirs. Second, there could have been short- or medium-term temporary reservoirs in Europe. In addition, the two scenarios might have been mutually supportive.

However, the rapid spread of the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of the next few centuries also suggest slow-moving rats may not have played the critical role in transmitting the disease that is often portrayed.

European climate 

 

    To work out whether plague could survive in long-term animal reservoirs in Europe, we examined factors such as soil characteristics, climatic conditions, terrain types and rodent varieties. These all seem to affect whether plague can hold on in reservoirs.

    For example, high concentrations of some elements in soil, including copper, iron, magnesium, as well as a high soil pH (whether it is acidic or alkaline), cooler temperatures, higher altitudes and lower rainfall appear to favor the development of persistent reservoirs, though it is not entirely clear why, at this stage.

    Based on our comparative analysis, centuries-long wild rodent plague reservoirs were even less likely to have existed from the Black Death of 1348 to the early 19th century than today, when comprehensive research rules out any such reservoirs within Europe.

    This contrasts sharply with regions across China and the western US, where all the above conditions for persistent Yersinia pestis reservoirs in wild rodents are found.

    In central Asia, long-term and persistent rodent reservoirs may have existed for millennia. As ancient DNA and textual evidence hints, once plague crossed into Europe from central Asia, it appears to have seeded a short- or medium-term reservoir or reservoirs in European wild rodents. The most likely place for this to have been was in central Europe.

    However, as local soil and climatic conditions did not favor long-term and persistent reservoirs, the disease had to be re-imported, at least in some instances. Importantly, the two scenarios are not mutually exclusive.

• "A blast of ultrasound waves could rejuvenate ageing cells"--New Scientist. The article relates: "Low-frequency ultrasound appears to have rejuvenating effects on animals. As well as restarting cell division in ageing human cells, it has reinvigorated old mice, improving their physical performance in tests such as running on a treadmill and making one old mouse with a hunched back move around normally again." It continues:

    After a certain number of divisions – known as the Hayflick limit – the cells in our bodies stop dividing, becoming senescent. Stresses such as toxic chemicals can also make cells become senescent.

    This can have knock-on effects because some senescent cells secrete chemicals that cause inflammation or induce senescence in other cells. The growing proportion of senescent cells in various tissues in our bodies as we get older is thought to be one of the main causes of ageing and age-related diseases. For this reason, many people are trying to develop treatments that involve killing off senescent cells.

    But another approach could be to use low-frequency ultrasound to rejuvenate them.

    Sheetz’s team has found that low-frequency ultrasound makes senescent cells from monkeys and humans resume dividing and halts the secretion of chemicals that promote senescence. The researchers used ultrasound with a frequency of less than 100 kilohertz, well below the 2000 kHz or so used for medical imaging.

• "Loss of Epigenetic Information Can Drive Aging, Restoration Can Reverse It"--Harvard Medical School.

    Perhaps the most burning question for those who study aging is what causes it.

    For decades, a reigning theory in the field was that aging arises from an accumulation of changes to DNA, primarily genetic mutations, which over time prevent more and more genes from functioning properly. These malfunctions, in turn, cause cells to lose their identity, so that tissues and organs break down, leading to disease and, ultimately, death.

    In recent years, however, studies have increasingly hinted that there’s more to the story.

    For instance, some researchers found that some people and mice with high mutation rates don’t show signs of premature aging. Others observed that many types of aged cells have few or no mutations.

    Researchers started wondering what else works with or instead of DNA changes to cause aging. A list of possible culprits grew. Among them were epigenetic changes.

    A component of epigenetics is the physical structures such as histones that bundle DNA into tightly compacted chromatin and unspool portions of that DNA when needed. Genes are inaccessible when they’re bundled up but available to be copied and used to produce proteins when they’re unspooled. Thus, epigenetic factors regulate which genes are active or inactive in any given cell at any given time.

    By acting as a toggle for gene activity, these epigenetic molecules help define cell type and function. Since each cell in an organism has basically the same DNA, it’s the on-off switching of particular genes that differentiates a nerve cell from a muscle cell from a lung cell.

    “Epigenetics is like a cell’s operating system, telling it how to use the same genetic material differently,” said Yang, who is co-first author with Motoshi Hayano, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Sinclair lab who is now at Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo.

    In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Sinclair’s lab and others showed in yeast and mammals that epigenetic changes accompany aging. Yet they couldn’t tell whether these changes drove aging or were a consequence of it.

    It wasn’t until the current study that Sinclair’s team was able to disentangle epigenetic from genetic changes and confirm that a breakdown in epigenetic information does, in fact, contribute to aging in mice.

ICE mice 

 

    The team’s main experiment involved creating temporary, fast-healing cuts in the DNA of lab mice.

    These breaks mimicked the low-grade, ongoing breaks in chromosomes that mammalian cells experience every day in response to things like breathing, exposure to sunlight and cosmic rays, and contact with certain chemicals.

    In the study, to test whether aging results from this process, the researchers sped the number of breaks to simulate life on fast-forward.

    The team also ensured that most of the breaks were not made within the coding regions of the mice’s DNA — the segments that make up genes. This prevented the animals’ genes from developing mutations. Instead, the breaks altered the way DNA is folded.

    Sinclair and colleagues called their system ICE, short for inducible changes to the epigenome.

    At first, epigenetic factors paused their normal job of regulating genes and moved to the DNA breaks to coordinate repairs. Afterward, the factors returned to their original locations.

    But as time passed, things changed. The researchers noticed that these factors got “distracted” and did not return home after repairing breaks. The epigenome grew disorganized and began to lose its original information. Chromatin got condensed and unspooled in the wrong patterns, a hallmark of epigenetic malfunction.

    As the mice lost their youthful epigenetic function, they began to look and act old. The researchers saw a rise in biomarkers that indicate aging. Cells lost their identities as, for example, muscle or skin cells. Tissue function faltered. Organs failed.

    The team used a recent tool developed by Sinclair’s lab to measure how old the mice were, not chronologically, in days or months, but “biologically,” based on how many sites across the genome lost the methyl groups normally attached to them. Compared to untreated mice born at the same time, the ICE mice had aged significantly more.

Young again 

 

    Next, the researchers gave the mice a gene therapy that reversed the epigenetic changes they’d caused.

    “It’s like rebooting a malfunctioning computer,” said Sinclair.

    The therapy delivered a trio of genes — Oct4, Sox2, and Klf4, together named OSK — that are active in stem cells and can help rewind mature cells to an earlier state. (Sinclair’s lab used this cocktail to restore sight in blind mice in 2020.)

    The ICE mice’s organs and tissues resumed a youthful state.

    The therapy “set in motion an epigenetic program that led cells to restore the epigenetic information they had when they were young,” said Sinclair. “It’s a permanent reset.”

    How exactly OSK treatment achieved that remains unclear.

• "Harvard scientists find eight surprising social factors that raise your risk of an early death - including living in an unclean neighborhood, not seeing your children or being disrespected"--Daily Mail Online. The 8 factors are: (i) being lonely, (ii) living in an area with dirty streets, (iii) having little control over your finances, (iv) meeting children less than once a year, (v) not working for pay, (vi) avoiding children, (vii) not volunteering and (viii) being treated with less courtesy or respect.
• "Unhappy marriages are BETTER for your health than being single or divorced, scientists say"--Daily Mail Online.

    People who live with a spouse are less likely to have high blood sugar levels which can lead to type 2 diabetes — regardless of how harmonious or acrimonious their relationship is, according to research.




    Experts believe couples influence each other's behaviour – such as diet – as well as tending to have higher shared income, which can also lead to healthier eating. 

 

"Drinking two cans of beer or glasses of wine per day may LOWER chance of developing dementia, major study suggests - but risk goes up with every sip beyond that"--Daily Mail Online.
• "Curious Kids: why do we think there is a possible Planet X?"--The Conversation. 

    There’s a good reason astronomers spend many hundreds of hours trying to locate a ninth planet, or “Planet X”. And that’s because the Solar System as we know it doesn’t really make sense without it.

    Every object in our Solar System orbits around the Sun. Some move fast and some slow, but all move abiding by the laws of gravity. Everything with mass has gravity, including you and me. The heavier something is, the more gravity it has.

    A planet’s gravity is so large it impacts how things move around it. That’s what we call its “gravitational pull”. Earth’s gravitational pull is what keeps everything on the ground.

    Also, our Sun has the largest gravitational pull of any object in the Solar System, and this is basically why the planets orbit around it.

    It’s through our understanding of gravitational pull that we get our biggest clue for a possible Planet X.

    When we look at really distant objects, such as dwarf planets beyond Pluto, we find their orbits are a little unexpected. They move on very large elliptical (oval-shaped) orbits, are grouped together, and exist on an incline compared to the rest of the Solar System.

    When astronomers use a computer to model what gravitational forces are needed for these objects to move like this, they find that a planet at least ten times the mass of Earth would have been required to cause this.

VIDEO: "Electric Solid Rockets - Throttleable Solid Propellant"

Integza (16 min.) 

• "Packing Aerogel With Uranium Could Give Us The Space Engine We've Been Looking For"--ScienceAlert.

    ... NASA's Institute of Advanced Concepts has provided a grant to a company called Positron Dynamics for the development of a novel type of nuclear fission fragment rocket engine (FFRE). It could strike the balance between the horsepower of chemical engines and the longevity of solar sails.

    FFREs are not a new concept in themselves, but many have massive technical hurdles to overcome before they can be considered useful. Their advantages, such as high specific impulse and extremely high power density, are offset by their disadvantages, such as requiring a complicated form of plasma levitation.

    Positron Dynamics hopes to tip that balance by utilizing two separate breakthroughs derived from other areas of research. The first novel approach would be to put the fissile material in an ultralight aerogel. The second would be implementing a superconducting magnet to contain those fission particles.

    FFREs essentially utilize the same nuclear process that powers energy-generating nuclear plants on Earth. However, instead of generating only electricity, they also generate thrust and a very high amount of thrust at that.

    However, it's not practical to send a whole bar of uranium fuel, such as that used in fission reactors here on Earth, up into space.

    Embedding the fuel itself into one of the lightest known human substances solves that problem.

    Aerogels are extraordinarily airy materials that look ethereal when someone is holding them, as they are in the lead image above. Embedding fuel particles for the fission reaction in them would be a convenient way to hold the fuel together while still allowing the overall structure to be light enough to be lifted into orbit.

    However, the structure of the aerogels themselves wouldn't do much to contain the fission fragments as they break apart. To do so would require a massive outside force, which is where the superconducting magnet comes in.

• "Blue Origin Making Solar Cells from Lunar Regolith"--Next Big Future.

    Since 2021, Blue Origin has been making solar cells and transmission wire from regolith simulants. Using regolith simulants, their reactor produces iron, silicon, and aluminum through molten regolith electrolysis, in which an electrical current separates those elements from the oxygen to which they are bound. Oxygen for propulsion and life support is a byproduct.

    This process purifies silicon to more than 99.999%. This level of purity is required to make efficient solar cells. While typical silicon purification methods on Earth use large amounts of toxic and explosive chemicals, their process uses just sunlight and the silicon from their reactor.

    The harsh lunar environment means lunar solar cells need cover glass. They would only last for days without glass. This technique uses only molten regolith electrolysis byproducts to make cover glass that enables lunar lifetimes exceeding a decade.

• "NASA captures hidden light shows on the sun that could explain why our star's outermost layer reaches more than a million degrees - at least 100 times hotter than its surface"--Daily Mail Online.

    Using the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), the American space agency captured various X-rays emitted by the hottest material in our star's atmosphere.

    High-energy X-rays were observed in only a few locations, while low-energy X-rays and ultraviolet light were detected across the ball of gas's entire face.

    Scientists hope the new views will help them solve one of the sun's biggest mysteries: why its outer atmosphere reaches more than a million degrees -  at least 100 times hotter than its surface.

And:

    While astronomers are perplexed by the source of the corona's, the sun's outermost layer, heat, they speculate it could come from small eruptions in the sun's atmosphere called nanoflares. 

    Flares are large outbursts of heat, light, and particles visible to a wide range of solar observatories. 

    While nanoflares are much smaller events, both types produce material even hotter than the average temperature of the corona. 

• "'Impossible' new ring system discovered at the edge of the solar system, and scientists are baffled"--LiveScience. 

    Astronomers have discovered an entirely new ring system within the solar system, and it's located at such a great distance from its dwarf planet parent that it should be impossible. 

    The ring surrounds Quaoar, which is around half the size of Pluto and located beyond Neptune. It is only the third ring to be found around a minor planet and the seventh ring system in the solar system, with the most famous and well-studied rings surrounding the giant planets Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus.

However, and this is what is baffling the boffins, "[t]he ring system is located at a distance of seven planetary radii away from Quaoar (that is, seven times Quaoar's radius), which is twice as far out as the theoretical maximum limit for a ring system, known as the Roche limit. For comparison, the main part of Saturn's rings sits at just three planetary radii from the gas giant."

• "Breakthrough in Battery Technology: Progress on Fast-Charging Lithium-Metal Batteries"--SciTech Daily.

    This new approach, led by University of California San Diego engineers, enables charging of lithium-metal batteries in about an hour, a speed that is competitive against today’s lithium-ion batteries. The UC San Diego engineers, in collaboration with UC Irvine imaging researchers, published this advance aimed at developing fast-charging lithium-metal batteries today (February 9, 2023) in the journal Nature Energy.

    To grow lithium metal crystals, the researchers replaced the ubiquitous copper surfaces on the negative side (the anode) of lithium-metal batteries with a lithiophobic nanocomposite surface made of lithium fluoride (LiF) and iron (Fe). Using this lithiophobic surface for lithium deposition, lithium crystal seeds formed, and from these seeds grew dense lithium layers – even at high charging rates. The result was long-cycle-life lithium-metal batteries that can be charged quickly.

    “The special nanocomposite surface is the discovery,” said UC San Diego nanoengineering professor Ping Liu, the senior author on the new paper. “We challenged the traditional notion of what kind of surface is needed to grow lithium crystals. The prevailing wisdom is that lithium grows better on surfaces that it likes, surfaces that are lithiophilic. In this work, we show that is not always true. The substrate we use does not like lithium. However, it provides abundant nucleation sites along with fast surface lithium movement. These two factors lead to the growth of these beautiful crystals. This is a nice example of a scientific insight solving a technical problem.”

• "New imaging finds trigger for massive global warming 56 million years ago"--Ars Technica.

    Scientists have scanned a section of the North Atlantic and revealed the remnants of what had been a huge pulse of hot rock that initiated a rapid climate warming event 56 million years ago.

    The climate event, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), warmed the already-hot climate of the time by about 5.6° C due to a jump in atmospheric CO2. Levels of that greenhouse gas rose from about 1,120 parts per million to about 2,020 ppm—much higher than today’s 417 ppm. Although it didn’t trigger a major extinction, it still exterminated some deep-sea creatures and tropical plants. ...

And:

    Although the cause of PETM has been debated since it was discovered in the 1990s, more and more evidence has accumulated that points to massive quantities of CO2 and methane emitted due to volcanic activity in the North Atlantic as the primary cause. This activity created what’s now known as the North Atlantic Igneous Province— the same kind of enormous volcanic phenomenon linked to climate disruption and extinctions at other times in Earth’s past, like the end-Triassic, the end-Permian, the early Jurassic, and others.

    But there’s a problem with that explanation. The jump in temperatures at the start of the PETM took between 3,000 and 10,000 years, whereas the igneous activity lasted far longer, from about 63 to 54 million years ago. If the volcanic activity was responsible for the PETM, then something extraordinary must have happened at the time of the warming to distinguish it from the volcanism that preceded and followed. That extraordinary event seems to have been a geologically quick surge of magma that invaded oil-rich sediments and boiled off CO2 and methane. A paper published in 2019 showed how a huge pulse of hot mantle rock from a “mantle plume” could have supplied that magma as it spread out beneath the crust.

    In December, at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Chicago, the same team of scientists behind the 2019 paper presented preliminary evidence that there had been a huge pulse of hot mantle rock, based on what it left behind in the North Atlantic.

• "World-first vaccine that fights off range of fungal infections is 100% effective at preventing severe disease in early study — as hit show The Last of Us heightens fungal fears"--Daily Mail Online.

    The vaccine, called NXT-2, works by providing the body with antibodies that can fight off infections caused by three species of fungus: Aspergillus, Candida and Pneumocystis.

    The shot was 100 percent effective at preventing serious infection in monkeys and mice that were immune suppressed and exposed to a fatal amount of fungi.

    Researchers say that plans for a human trial are now underway. 

• "Fluke Discovery of Ancient Farming Technique Could Stabilize Crop Yields"--Science Alert.

    While studying food diversity in 2011, environmental scientist Morgan Ruelle, now at Clark University, accidentally stumbled across one possible technique that could help stabilize dipping crop yields.

    The once widespread practice is now only used by small farms in places like Caucasus, Greek Islands, and the Horn of Africa. Despite being incredibly simple, most of the agroecology community weren't aware of it.

    Yet farmers have been using this technique for more than 3,000 years across at least 27 countries. It may have even been what gave rise to agriculture in the first place.

    The method is planting maslins – a combined mix of cereals that can include rice, millet, wheat, rye, barley and more – and harvesting them all together to be separated or used as a single product.

    In Ethiopia, for example, where Ruelle discovered the existence of maslins, duragna contains multiple species and varieties of barley and wheat, all grown together. The locals consider the mix to be one crop, using it to make bread, beer and traditional savories with it.

    Local farmers reported this mix ensures at least some yield under unfavorable conditions, and now researchers have the experimental trials to back up these claims. Working at Cornell University, Ruelle and colleagues conducted a review of previous work, demonstrating maslins yielded higher stability under changing conditions. By shifting species composition each season, farmers could hedge against climate impacts without the need for additional intervention.

• "Sea Level Is Stable Around the World… The Good News the Media Don’t Want Us to Hear"--Watts Up With That?

    The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has updated its coastal sea level tide gauge data which continue to show no evidence of accelerating sea level rise. These measurements include tide gauge data at coastal locations along the West Coast, East Coast, Gulf Coast, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as seven Pacific Island groups and six Atlantic Island groups, comprising more than 200 measurement stations.

    The longest NOAA tide gauge record on coastal sea level rise measurements is in New York at the Battery, with its 160-year record which is shown below with a steady rate of sea level rise of 11 inches per century. A slightly slower rate of sea level rise occurs at nearby Kings Point, New York, whose 80-year record also appears below.

    Tidal gauges at the Battery and Kings Point show sea level rising at a pace of 11 inches per century. Both locations show a steady pace of increase, with the same pace of increase holding steady despite periods of relatively rapid temperatures increase and periods of cooling. The Battery measurements date back to 1855, showing the same pace of sea level rise well before the existence of coal power plants and SUVs.

    NOAA data provide assessments with a 95% confidence level at all measured locations which demonstrate the consistent behavior of location-specific sea level rise over time. The 2016 updated NOAA tide gauge data include four long-term periods between 92 and 119 years for California coastal locations at San Diego, La Jolla, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The actual measured steady rates of sea level rise at these locations vary between four inches and nine inches per century.

    In contrast to the steady but modest rise in sea level, revealed in long-term measurements, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) speculates that sea level will almost immediately begin rising significantly more than in the past and present. NOAA records contradict such claims. This pattern of steady but modest sea level rise extends throughout the world, throughout times of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, and throughout periods of accelerated warming and cooling.

• "Green Fail: Dozens of Scottish Wind Turbines Powered by Diesel Generators, Pour Hydraulic Oil Into Countryside"--Breitbart.

    Scotland’s green-obsessed left-separatist government has been left with egg on its face by revelations that dozens of gigantic onshore wind turbines are having to be hooked up to diesel generators, leaking thousands of litres of hydraulic oil into the countryside.

    Scottish Power — led by a Spaniard, Ignacio Galan, and actually a subsidiary of Spanish firm Iberdrola — conceded that some 71 of its turbines had to be hooked up to diesel generators to keep them warm in December, according to the Sunday Mail, with a whistleblower telling the left-leaning newspaper that problems with the turbines are deep-seated.

• "Moderna Booster Vaccine Singled Out for Chronic Hives"--MedPage Today.

    The monovalent Moderna COVID-19 booster vaccine may be associated with an elevated risk for new-onset chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU), or hives lasting more than 6 weeks, according to a Swiss study.

    Among people who got an mRNA COVID vaccine booster and had new-onset hives reported to local allergists, 90% had vaccination precede CSU in the canton of Vaud during the study period, as did 81% of patients in the nationwide cohort, reported Yannick Daniel Muller, MD, PhD, of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and coauthors.

    Crude incidence rates of CSU following a booster dose in the two cohorts was 1.9-2.1 per 100,000 doses of Pfizer's vaccine and 30.8-43.9 per 100,000 doses of Moderna's product, according to their research letter in JAMA Network Openopens in a new tab or window.

    This difference translated to a relative risk with the Moderna booster dose of 20.8 (95% CI 6.5-66.0) for the Vaud cohort of 80 people, and 16.1 (95% 10.8-24.0) in the Swiss cohort of 782 individuals.

    "These data should not discourage patients from being vaccinated," Muller's group concluded. "However, guidelines defining the eligibility and dosing for upcoming mRNA-based boosters are needed for patients with CSU after an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine."

    The reason behind the possible association are unclear, and warrant further study, according to the study authors.

• "The truth about 'Pfertility': Covid vaccines CAN disrupt menstrual cycles but do not appear to damage fertility because birth rates went UP during pandemic"--Daily Mail Online. The truth is that we do not know what will be the long term impact of the vaccines and boosters.
• "Innovation in Science Is on The Decline And We're Not Sure Why"--ScienceAlert.

    The rate of ground-breaking scientific discoveries and technological innovation is slowing down despite an ever-growing amount of knowledge, according to an analysis released Wednesday of millions of research papers and patents.

    While previous research has shown downturns in individual disciplines, the study is the first that "emphatically, convincingly documents this decline of disruptiveness across all major fields of science and technology," lead author Michael Park told AFP.

    Park, a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, called disruptive discoveries those that "break away from existing ideas" and "push the whole scientific field into new territory."

    The researchers gave a "disruptiveness score" to 45 million scientific papers dating from 1945 to 2010, and to 3.9 million US-based patents from 1976 to 2010.

    From the start of those time ranges, research papers and patents have been increasingly likely to consolidate or build upon previous knowledge, according to results published in the journal Nature.

    The ranking was based on how the papers were cited in other studies five years after publication, assuming that the more disruptive the research was, the less its predecessors would be cited.

    The biggest decrease in disruptive research came in physical sciences such as physics and chemistry.

    "The nature of research is shifting" as incremental innovations become more common, senior study author Russell Funk said.

Burden of knowledge 

 

    One theory for the decline is that all the "low-hanging fruit" of science has already been plucked.

    If that were the case, disruptiveness in various scientific fields would have fallen at different speeds, Park said.

    But instead "the declines are pretty consistent in their speeds and timing across all major fields," Park said, indicating that the low-hanging fruit theory is not likely to be the culprit.

    Instead, the researchers pointed to what has been dubbed "the burden of research," which suggests there is now so much that scientists must learn to master a particular field they have little time left to push boundaries.

    This causes scientists and inventors to "focus on a narrow slice of the existing knowledge, leading them to just come up with something more consolidating rather than disruptive," Park said.

    ​Another reason could be that "there's increasing pressure in academia to publish, publish, publish, because that's the metric that academics are assessed on," he added.

    The researchers called on universities and funding agencies to focus more on quality, rather than quantity, and consider full subsidies for year-long sabbaticals to allow academics to read and think more deeply.

    "We're not getting any less innovative as a species," Park emphasized, pointing to recent breakthroughs such as the use of mRNA technology in COVID-19 vaccines, or the measurement of gravitational waves in 2015.

    Jerome Lamy, a historian and expert in the sociology of science at France's CNRS research agency, who was not involved in the research, said it showed that "ultra-specialization" and the pressure to publish had increased over the years.

    He blamed a global trend of academics being "forced to slice up their papers" to increase their number of publications, saying it had led to "a dulling of research."

Some other items not discussed in the article are the rise of scientific orthodoxies that require you to subscribe to the orthodoxy to get a research position. In his 2006 book, The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of Science, and What Comes Next, by Lee Smolin, he discusses the lack of advance in theoretical physics and assigns quite a bit of the blame to a heterodoxy built up around string theory that means that forces up and coming graduate students to either adopt string theory as their focus of research or not work within the academic community. 

    Another item Smolin discusses, however, is that there is an emphasis on advancing students and researchers who are good at the mathematics rather than being creative and thinking outside the box. I suspect that is why we see so many papers with Chinese names attached.