A Bold Bird, Cotton on the Moon, & Super-Silk
This week’s science bits from SWTG
Bold Bird Survives Five Rounds with Typhoon Faxai
Streaked Shearwater Seabird, Japan. Source: lin-sun-fong/iNaturalist/
A graduate student biologist at Tohoku University in Japan who fitted a streaked shearwater seabird with a tracking device found a surprise in the data. The bird had taken a ride in typhoon Faxai in September 2019 and went around five times. On its ride, the bird covered a distance of more than 1,000 km (about 621.3 miles) in 11 hours. While the streaked shearwater seabird usually flies at a max of 60 km/h at altitudes under 100 metres, our wonder bird clocked in at a speed of 170 km/h and a height of 4,700 metres. More here, paper here.
Chinese Moon Farm Produces Cotton
Photo Reconstruction of Cotton Plants on the Moon. Credit: Chonquing University.
The Chinese moon lander Chang’e-4 successfully sprouted the first known Earth plant to ever grow on another world. The Chinese lunar lander left behind a micro-ecosystem to see how plants react to the moon’s low gravity and intense radiation. The temperature-controlled container let in light through a small guide tube, allowing plants to sprout and photosynthesize despite challenges. Cotton, canola, potato, and mustard sprouts grew undisturbed by their odd environment, with cotton sprouts thriving the best. More here, papers here and here.
Silkworms Fed Rare Earth Minerals Make Super-Strong Silk
Silkworms eating. Lu et al., Science Bulletin (2023).
A team of chemists at the Tsinghua University in Beijing, China has developed a special diet for silkworms that helps them extra-strong “super silk”. Their secret is to supplement the usual silkworm diet of mulberry leaves with the rare earth mineral ions La3+ (Lanthanum) and Eu3+ (Europium). The worms then incorporate the rare earth minerals into their silk production, resulting in more narrow and dense fibres of silk with tensile strength and toughness approaching that of spider silk. The team confirmed that the rare earth minerals were integrated into the typical silk nanocrystal structures via X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis. The scientists suggest that their new super silk has potential engineering applications in aerospace materials production and the design of bulletproof armour. Press release here, paper here.