AUSTRALIA
Male kalutas die from sex
A tiny marsupial found only in the arid, northwest Pilbara region mates so intensely that an entire generation of males can die off during a single breeding season, researchers said yesterday. Biologists studying kalutas — a mouse-sized marsupial — believe that they die en masse because of sex-driven immune system collapse. Female kalutas mate frequently and with different males during each breeding season. “That means that males also have to mate a lot, and have good quality sperm (and lots of it), to outcompete rival males,” said Genevieve Hayes, who led the University of Western Australia research team. “This intense investment in reproduction, evidenced by their large testes, appears to be fatal for males.” Scientists believe that it is a rare example of male semelparity — a reproduction strategy characterized by “synchronized death,” often before offspring are born. “Males were regularly captured in healthy numbers throughout the study, except immediately after the mating seasons, when no males were captured,” Hayes said. “This, coupled with other research in the field and laboratory, strongly suggests that males die after the mating season.” The researchers said that despite the kalutas’ “extreme mating behavior,” the species appears to be doing well.
JAPAN
Scientists discover dinosaur
Scientists have identified a new species of dinosaur from a nearly complete, 8m-long skeleton that was the largest ever discovered in the country. After analyzing hundreds of bones dating back 72 million years, the team led by Hokkaido University concluded that the skeleton once belonged to a new species of hadrosaurid dinosaur, a herbivorous beast that roamed the Earth in the late Cretaceous period. A partial tail was first found in northern Japan in 2013 and later excavations revealed the entire skeleton. The team named the dinosaur Kamuysaurus japonicus, which means “Japanese dragon god,” the university said in a statement. They believe the dinosaur was nine-year-old adult and would have weighed either 4 tonnes or 5.3 tonnes — depending on whether it walked on two legs or four. The discovery was published in British peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports. “The fact a new dinosaur was discovered in Japan means there was once an independent world of dinosaurs in Japan or in East Asia, and an independent evolution process,” team leader Yoshitsugu Kobayashi said. K. japonicus probably lived in coastal areas, a rare habitat for dinosaurs at that time. The research raises the possibility that some species of dinosaurs “preferred to inhabit areas near the ocean, suggesting the coastline environment was an important factor in the diversification” of the dinosaurs in their early evolution, the university said.
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
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