Science

United Kingdom reveals last decoded Nazi message to mark VE Day

To mark Friday’s 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, the British government revealed the final Nazi message intercepted and decoded by U.K. codebreakers as Allied forces were advancing through Germany.

“To mark #VEDay75 our Historian Tony Comer tells an untold tale from our archives. For the first time he reveals the final messages intercepted by GCHQ from a German communications network in the days leading up to #VEDay,” tweeted Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

At 7:35 a.m. on May 7, 1945, a Nazi soldier identified as “Lt. Kunkel” sent a final message to colleagues from the town of Cuxhaven on Germany’s North Sea coast.

“British troops entered Cuxhaven at 14:00 on 6 May — from now on all radio traffic will cease — wishing you all the best. Lt Kunkel,” the message read. “Closing down forever — all the best — goodbye.”

In another message, intercepted three days earlier on May 4, a soldier in Denmark asks if anyone has any spare cigarettes before wishing everyone luck.

“No cigarettes here,” replies control.

The messages were intercepted at Bletchley Park, Britain’s code-breaking base northwest of London. Experts there helped break the famous German Enigma Code, which the Nazis used to transmit messages. Bletchley Park is now a museum dedicated to the code-breakers’ wartime work.

Image caption The messages give us insight into “the real people behind the machinery of war”, says GCHQ’s historian
(Bletchley Park Estate)

Nearly 9,000 people worked at Bletchley Park in 1945, most of them women. Allied efforts to break the enigma code included the work of computer science pioneer Alan Turing. Turing and codebreakers at Bletchley Park developed the Bombe machine to decipher German messages sent through the enigma machine.

The Nazis communicated through a German military radio network, code-named BROWN, which was used to sent reports about experimental weapons across Europe.

The German enigma machine.
(Nate D. Sanders Auctions)

“These transcripts give us a small insight into the real people behind the machinery of war,” said GCHQ historian Tony Comer.

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Friday celebrations of V-E Day were hampered by the ongoing lockdown measures amid the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump participated in a wreath-laying ceremony with a handful of veterans at a largely empty World War II memorial in Washington.

Fox News’ James Rogers contributed to this report.

‘Weird’ exoplanet 800 light-years from Earth has yellow skies and iron rain

Researchers have found the “weird” exoplanet WASP-79b, nearly 800 light-years from Earth, does not have a blue sky as our planet does. Instead, its skies are yellow.

According to a statement from NASA, WASP-79b orbits its host star once every 3.7 Earth days and is not in the habitable zone, the proximity of which a planet is to a star where it could support liquid water.

The exoplanet, known as a “hot Jupiter,” also does not have any evidence of Rayleigh scattering, which is what causes Earth’s skies to appear blue by “scattering the shorter (bluer) wavelengths of sunlight,” the agency noted. That’s left experts puzzled.

This is an artist’s illustration of the super-hot exoplanet WASP-79b, located 780 light-years away. The planet orbits precariously close to a star that is much hotter than our Sun. The planet is larger than Jupiter, and its very deep, hazy atmosphere sizzles at 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit — the temperature of molten glass. The Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories measured how starlight is filtered through the planet’s atmosphere, allowing for its chemical composition to be analyzed. Hubble has detected the presence of water vapor. (Credits: NASA, ESA and L. Hustak (STScI))

‘DISAPPEARING’ EXOPLANET MAY HAVE NEVER EXISTED, SCIENTISTS BELIEVE

“This is a strong indication of an unknown atmospheric process that we’re just not accounting for in our physical models,” said researcher Kristin Showalter Sotzen of the Johns Hopkins University in a statement. “I’ve shown the WASP-79b spectrum to a number of colleagues, and their consensus is ‘that’s weird.'”

In addition to having a yellow sky, WASP-79b is exceptionally hot, with an average temperature of approximately 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, making it one of the largest exoplanets ever observed.

“WASP-79b is twice the mass of Jupiter and is so hot it has an extended atmosphere, which is ideal for studying starlight that is filtered through and grazes the atmosphere on its way toward Earth,” NASA added.

The exoplanet is 780 light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus. A light-year, which measures distance in space, equals 6 trillion miles.

WASP-79b may also have “scattered clouds, and iron lifted to high altitudes could precipitate as rain,” the agency explained.

Researchers also discovered that another exoplanet, WASP 76-b, is believed to have “iron rain.”

Sotzen added that the researchers are not really sure what’s causing the phenomena, as it’s the first time they’ve seen this.

“We need to keep an eye out for other planets like this because it could be indicative of unknown atmospheric processes that we don’t currently understand,” Sotzen explained. “Because we only have one planet as an example, we don’t know if it’s an atmospheric phenomenon linked to the evolution of the planet.”

The findings were published in the Astronomical Journal.

San Francisco COVID-19 testing reveals stark burden on the poor and marginalized

Ina Coolbrith Park, San Francisco, California, USA.
(iStock)

A COVID-19 mass testing effort within San Francisco’s Mission District — which aimed to broadly test individuals regardless of symptoms — found stark inequalities in how the virus is affecting different groups. About 95% of the people who tested positive were Latino, and the vast majority could not work from home. Not a single white person tested positive, despite making up about a third of the people who were tested.

The findings highlight just how hard it is to avoid the virus if you cannot shelter in place or work from home.

Overall, about 2% of residents and workers who participated in the study in late April tested positive for the disease. Only about half of those who tested positive reported having symptoms of COVID-19.

The findings suggest that “active infections are not evenly distributed across the community,” study researcher Dr. Diane Havlir, a professor of medicine and chief of the HIV/AIDS Division at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a news briefing on Monday (May 4). Low-wage essential workers in the Latino community were most affected, she said. Many of those people worked in construction or in the food and beverage industry, according to the study.

“Hopefully, with this data we can respond and start putting resources to work towards more equity in supporting this highly impacted community,” Havlir said in a statement.

The study focused on a particularly densely populated census tract in the Mission District, which has 5,700 residents, about 58% percent of whom are Latino.

Over a 4-day testing period beginning on April 25, the researchers tested 2,959 residents of the census tract and people who worked in the area, as well as 800 people who lived in the next census tract over, and 401 school teachers and other volunteers who worked in the neighborhood.

Among the 2,959 residents and workers, 2.1% tested positive for COVID-19. Those who worked in the census tract, but didn’t live there, were even more likely to test positive, with 6.1% of workers testing positive versus 1.4% of residents.

Among those living in the blocks nearby (but not officially in the census tract), 1.4% tested positive.

The overwhelming majority of those who tested positive were Latino, and 75% were men.

Nine out of 10 of these people said they could not work from home. That compares with 57% of the overall sample of workers and residents who reported not being able to work from home. Not being able to “shelter in place” at home may put people at greater risk of exposure to the infection.

In addition, about 89% of those who tested positive made less than $50,000 a year, even though this group made up just 39% of the overall sample.

“The virus exploits preexisting vulnerabilities in our society,” Havlir said. “Our community-based screening study emphasizes how high infection risk continues to be for this population.”

Among those who tested positive, only 47% reported symptoms, including cough, muscle aches and fever, while the rest reported no symptoms.

Few of those who tested positive had a primary care doctor, and the screening project worked to connect those who tested positive with appropriate medical care.

The findings have limitations. The researchers tested only an estimated 55% of residents of the census tract. Some residents may have avoided testing due to fear of needing to isolate or quarantine, fear of being tracked by government agencies, or fear of negative impact on local businesses if the neighborhood were to be labeled as a COVID-19 hotspot, Havlir said.

It’s unclear how well the findings translate to the San Francisco population as a whole, although the researchers suspect that infection rates are higher in this area due to socioeconomic factors that contribute to the spread of the virus (such as those with lower incomes needing to work outside the home and sharing households with more members.)

However, “the findings here don’t mean that the Mission is a less safe place to be than anywhere else,” said Dr. Susan Philip, director of Disease Prevention and Control for San Francisco Department of Public Health. Everyone needs to take precautions, including social distancing, to reduce the spread of the virus.

The researchers plan to conduct repeat COVID-19 testing in this same census tract in three month and again in six months, which will help researchers assess whether interventions to reduce the spread are working. The researchers also hope to expand this mass testing to other San Francisco neighborhoods.

The team also conducted antibody testing, which show a past infection with COVID-19, but those results won’t be available for a few more weeks.

The Mission screening project, known as Unidos En Salud, is a partnership between Mission community organizers in the Latino Task Force for COVID-19, UCSF researchers, the City and County of San Francisco, and the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH).

Originally published on Live Science.

Praying mantis eats murder hornet in frightening video

GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING

Want to see a praying mantis crack open a murder hornet’s head and gnaw its brain out?

It happened.

Graphic viral video shows a praying mantis snatch one of the hornets from behind, hold its deadly stinger at bay and chew through its entire head.

ASIA’S ‘MURDER HORNET’ LANDS IN US FOR FIRST TIME

The video emerged after widespread reports that the Asian giant hornets, the world’s largest hornets, have arrived in the U.S.

They can grow to be up to 2 inches long, and they are a major threat to honeybees — crucial pollinators that are already in decline.

But the 57-second video shows a larger praying mantis making a quick meal out of the bug.

The predatory hornets nest in the ground and are known to attack honeybee hives and kill the adult bees inside before feasting on larvae and pupae, according to Washington State University.

The hornets are also potentially deadly to humans — capable of breaking through beekeeper suits — although health experts say the number of people they sting who need medical attention is small.

In this Dec. 30, 2019, photo provided by the Washington State Department of Agriculture, a dead Asian giant hornet is photographed in a lab in Olympia, Wash. The world’s largest hornet, a 2-inch long killer with an appetite for honey bees, has been found in Washington state and entomologists are making plans to wipe it out. Dubbed the “Murder Hornet” by some, the Asian giant hornet has a sting that could be fatal to some humans. It is just now starting to emerge from hibernation. (Quinlyn Baine/Washington State Department of Agriculture via AP)

Washington’s Department of Agriculture said last week it would begin trapping queens of the new species this spring in an effort to prevent its population from establishing.

Chris Looney, an entomologist working on the state’s search for the hornets, told The Associated Press that the hype about the invasive species may not be as bad as it seems — just two dead specimens were found in the state in December 2019, and a live nest in Canada was wiped out in September, according to experts.

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The praying mantis is a powerful predator in its own right — there are dozens of videos on YouTube and elsewhere online showing them capturing and consuming insects, lizards, birds and small mammals.

They range in size from 1/2 to 6 inches long, and females are even known to cannibalize their mates, according to National Geographic.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

US will see increasing number of extreme climate events by 2050: study

The U.S. will most likely be exposed to a larger number of extreme climate events such as more frequent heat waves, longer droughts and more intense floods, according to a new report that also warns of negative health consequences.

A team of researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Istanbul Technical University, Stanford University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research reached this conclusion by using ORNL’s Titan supercomputer to calculate the trajectories of nine types of extreme climate events. Results from their research were published in Earth’s Future in March.

“We calculated population exposure at a 1-kilometer scale, which had never been done before, to provide more precise estimates,” Moetasim Ashfaq, a climate computational scientist at ORNL, said in a statement.

The team based its calculations on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information Climate Extremes Index, or CEI. Previous studies have examined the impact that one type of extreme, such as temperature or precipitation, could have on broad climate zones across the country.

SEWAGE OFFERS CORONAVIRUS CLUES FOR SCIENTISTS TRYING TO STUDY ITS SPREAD

The map displays projected changes in human exposure to extreme climate events at a 1-kilometer scale from 2010 to 2050, which range from minor decreases in rural and suburban areas to moderate and major increases in densely populated urban centers.
(Adam Malin/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy)

REPORT ON FACE MASKS’ EFFECTIVENESS FOR COVID-19 DIVIDES SCIENTISTS

However, this team estimated the combined consequences of many different types of extremes all at once and did its analysis at the county level. This approach provides unprecedented regional and national climate projections to identify the areas and population groups that are most likely to face such hardships.

According to the researchers’ estimates, on average, more than 47 million people throughout the U.S. are exposed to extreme climate conditions annually, and this population exposure has been increasing. Scientists expect the trend to continue and anticipate that the number of people exposed could double by 2050, which means that one in every three people would be directly affected.

“These collaborative efforts could uncover how various climate extremes affect certain areas and help determine the types of policies and mitigation strategies that may be required to prevent or reduce the damage,” Ashfaq said.

Scientists estimated the prevalence of extreme events, like droughts, in a new study. (iStock)

Experts also believe such an increase in extreme weather could exacerbate a range of cardiovascular, respiratory and medical conditions, in addition to negatively impacting crop yields and disrupting economies that rely on agriculture.

Nurses boost hospital morale by wearing ‘funky’ scrubs

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Nurses at a busy hospital have been boosting morale by wearing bright-colored, patterned scrubs made from bedding.

More than 100 sets of scrubs in funky colors and patterns were made for medics at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in Scotland, according to an SWNS report.

The unique scrubs were made by a group of about 20 volunteers who crafted them from donated materials at Hyndland Secondary School in Glasgow. There are at least 12,709 coronavirus cases in Scotland, where the virus has killed at least 1,703.

Kay Muir, 56, set up the Scrub Hub as part of Med Supply Drive Scotland’s initiative to get personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline hospital staff, which is managed by her niece, Gillian Higgins, a surgical trainee at GRI.

REPORT ON FACE MASKS’ EFFECTIVENESS FOR COVID-19 DIVIDES SCIENTISTS

Nurses at Glasgow Royal Infirmary get their hands on a set of wacky scrubs made by volunteers.
(SWNS)

SEWAGE OFFERS CORONAVIRUS CLUES FOR SCIENTISTS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND ITS SPREAD

The group has now made more than 100 sets of the wacky scrubs from bright bedding and children’s fun duvets, the news agency reported.

Staff nurse Phil Malik, who is currently working in intensive care at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, described the beautiful scrubs as a “wave of armour.”

“The scrubs, masks and bags are not only well-made, comfy and funky, but are worn like a badge of honor or pride,” Malik told SWNS.

According to staff nurse Jennifer Hale, the project has helped elderly people in isolation who have volunteered to work on the project.

FOR CORONAVIRUS PATIENTS WITH DIABETES, BLOOD SUGAR CONTROL IS KEY, CHINA STUDY FINDS

“From the donations of material, to the people making the patterns, and to those putting the scrubs together — it all involves giving up their time for us and other frontline healthcare staff,” Hale added.

Baby black rhino has incredible routine, pictures show

An endangered baby black rhino has had an extraordinary routine since coming into the care of a wildlife trust in Africa.

Known as Apollo, the miniature mammal was found after rangers in the Tsavo West National Park in Kenya discovered his mother, Amoy, died in September 2019, British news agency SWNS reports.

Apollo now resides at Kenya’s Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s Kaluku Field HQ, which has raised 17 orphaned rhinos so far. He spends his day taking mud baths, getting rubbed on his horn and is the object of affection of his caretakers.

Apollo is an adorable yet critically endangered baby black rhino who came into the care of the Sheldrick Wildlife trust after his mother Amoy was found by rangers in the Tsavo West National Park, Kenya, having died in September 2019. (Credit: SWNS)

AMPUTATED WONDER DOG IS ABLE TO WALK ON TWO RIGHT LEGS

“Typical of black rhinos, Apollo enjoys routine, familiar faces and known surroundings,” Rob Brandford, executive director of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, said in a statement on the trust’s website. “Most mornings, he begins his days early, emerging from his custom-built stable (which keeps him warm, cozy and secure from predators during the night) at six in the morning to mill around close to home after enjoying his morning milk feed.”

Apollo is now being cared for at the Trust’s Kaluku Field HQ close to Apollo’s place of rescue and potential reintegration sites. The Trust will continue to care for him until he is old enough to return to the wild in a protected area. (Credit: SWNS)

Brandford, who noted that Apollo was an orphan at six months, added that the keepers are playing the role of Apollo’s parents, with him every minute of the day.

“Apollo is cared for a by a team of experienced rhino Keepers, who work in rotation to ensure Apollo doesn’t get used to any one carer should they go on annual leave,” Brandford explained. “During his daily excursions, there are always two keepers with him and most days they encounter a number of wild animals along the way, varying from elephants, to the tiny dik-dik.”

Apollo lives with rangers attending to his every need providing personalised mud baths and comforting horn rubs. Pint-sized Apollo is not short of love or affection and is fast learning about his wild environment during his daily bush school wanders. (Credit: SWNS)

Once Apollo is old enough, he will be returned to the wild in a protected area, SWNS added.

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Black rhinos are considered “critically endangered” by the World Wildlife Fund. The organization noted that between 1960 and 1995, the population of black rhinos dropped 98 percent to less than 2,500.

“Since then, the species has made a tremendous comeback from the brink of extinction,” the WWF wrote, adding that the population now ranges between 5,042 and 5,455 today.

In December 2019, a black rhino calf was born on Christmas Eve in Michigan’s Potter Park Zoo, the first time in the zoo’s 100-year history.

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Gilead updates remdesivir supply status after emergency FDA approval

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As the coronavirus pandemic continues into its sixth month with no cure, the maker of the recently approved drug remdesivir said it is working with companies to expand its manufacturing “through at least 2022.”

In an open letter obtained by Fox News, Gilead Sciences said it is working with “leading chemical and pharmaceutical companies” to make sure remdesivir is available in Europe, Asia and the developing world.

“Gilead is in discussions with some of the world’s leading chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing companies about their ability, under voluntary licenses, to produce remdesivir for Europe, Asia and the developing world through at least 2022,” the company wrote. “The company is also negotiating long-term voluntary licenses with several generic drugmakers in India and Pakistan to produce remdesivir for developing countries.”

In this March 2020 photo provided by Gilead Sciences, rubber stoppers are placed onto filled vials of the investigational drug remdesivir at a Gilead manufacturing site in the United States. (Gilead Sciences via AP)

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Gilead, which is working to provide the technology for remdesivir production, added it is working with Medicines Patent Pool, “which Gilead has partnered with for many years, to license remdesivir for developing countries.”

Gilead has previously said it would donate its available stock of the drug and is ramping up production to make more.

“Our existing supply, including finished product ready for distribution as well as materials in the final stages of production, amounts to 1.5 million individual doses,” Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day said in an open letter sent out last month. “We had estimated that this would be 140,000 treatment courses based on a 10-day treatment duration. The ability to shorten duration for severely ill patients means we can significantly increase the number of courses available, all of which Gilead has committed for donation.”

Remdesivir was recently approved by the FDA under its emergency use protocol for COVID-19 treatment after two separate studies, including one run by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), showed promising results.

In an open letter last month, O’Day noted that in addition to the NIAID trial, a SIMPLE clinical trial of “severe” COVID-19 patients showed that a five-day treatment of remdesivir was just as effective as a 10-day treatment.

On Sunday, O’Day appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and said the biotech intends to get the drug to coronavirus patients in the early part of this week.

The antiviral was previously used to treat Ebola patients and has been garnering massive attention as the world scrambles to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Experts, however, warn that people should not take the drug unless prescribed by a doctor.

The various trials of remdesivir have come under intense scrutiny.

In a recent post on the clinicaltrials.gov website, officials explained that the primary metric for the Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT) of remdesivir sponsored by the NIAID is patients’ time to recovery by day 29 of treatment.

EXPERIMENTAL CORONAVIRUS TREATMENT LERONLIMAB RESULTED IN ‘REMARKABLE RECOVERIES,’ DEVELOPER SAYS

The Washington Post reports that, previously, the trial’s primary metric was counting the number of people taking remdesivir who were kept alive on ventilators or died.

In a statement about the trial released on Feb. 24, the National Institutes of Health said that outcomes at day 15 of treatment were being scored on a seven-point scale ranging from fully recovered to death.

In the recent post, officials described the evaluation of patients using an eight-point scale, including death, need for ventilation, and recovery at day 15 as now a key secondary outcome of the trial.

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As of Wednesday morning, more than 3.68 million coronavirus cases have been diagnosed worldwide, more than 1.2 million of which are in the U.S., the most impacted country on the planet.

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Fox News’ James Rogers contributed to this story.

More than ‘covid toes’: Numerous reports of skin rashes tied to COVID-19

Numerous reports of skin rashes in patients with COVID-19 are cropping up around the world.

The rashes can take many forms — some appear as tiny red spots, while others appear as larger flat or raised lesions. Some have a hive-like appearance, while others look like frostbitten toes.

However, it’s too early to say whether these rashes are indeed caused by the new coronavirus, or whether they are related to other factors. “That’s really the million dollar question,” said Dr. Kanade Shinkai, a professor of dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco, and editor-in-chief of the journal JAMA Dermatology.

“It’s unclear whether the skin lesions we see in COVID are actually a direct manifestation of the virus” in the skin, or whether they are a “reaction pattern” due to a generally ramped-up immune system, Shinkai told Live Science.

It’s also possible some rashes are due to complications from the disease, reactions to medications or even due to other viruses in patients with “co-infections,” Shinkai and colleagues wrote in an editorial published April 30 in the journal JAMA Dermatology.

Social media posts and online forum discussions have called attention to these rashes, but “it is now time for rigorous science,” the authors wrote. Work is needed to address many unanswered questions, such as how common the rashes are, and what they mean with regard to the patients’ ultimate outcomes.

How common are these rashes?

It’s well known that some viral illnesses, such as chickenpox, measles and hand, foot and mouth disease, can cause rashes. But virus-related rashes are more typically seen in children, Shinkai said. “That’s why it’s much more striking” to see numerous reports of rashes in adult patients with COVID-19, she said.

Exactly how common the rashes are remains unclear. In one early study of more than 1,000 COVID-19 patients in China, published Feb. 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine, rashes were noted in only 0.2% of patients. However, in a more recent study of about 150 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Italy, rashes were found in 20% of patients. The latter study, published March 26 in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, was conducted by dermatologists, who “are going to be able to detect more subtle skin changes” than doctors in other specialities, Shinkai said.

More studies are needed that follow patients over a period of time to get a better idea of the true prevalence of rashes tied to COVID-19, Shinkai said. Still, one challenge to this is that some patients may have mild or no other symptoms of disease, and may never be diagnosed with COVID-19, she said.

What do the rashes look like?

Distinct rashes can sometimes be a “telltale sign” of a particular infection. Whether this will be the case for COVID-19 patients remains to be seen, the JAMA editorial said.

So far, a variety of rashes have been noted in COVID-19 patients. A Spanish study published April 29 in the British Journal of Dermatology grouped coronavirus-related rashes into five categories: a “maculopapular” rash, or one that’s characteristic of viral infections such as measles, with red bumps on reddish skin; a “urticaria” rash characteristic of hives; a ‘livedo” rash with a lace-like or fishnet pattern; a “vesicular eruption” or blistering rash; and a frostbite-like rash on the toes, unofficially dubbed “covid toes.”

In addition, one recent case report published April 30 in JAMA Dermatology described the case of a man in Spain who developed “petechiae,” or tiny red dots on the skin; and a separate case report, also published in JAMA Dermatology, described a patient in France who developed larger lesions known as a “digitate papulosquamous eruption.”

The timing of rash symptoms with COVID-19 also seems to vary widely — in some cases, rashes precede symptoms such as fever; in other cases, rashes may appear a few days into the illness or not show up until late in the course of the infection.

Unanswered questions

Research is needed to comprehensively evaluate these rashes and when they occur, Shinkai said. Doctors will also need to examine tissue samples to determine if the virus that causes COVID-19, known as SARS-CoV-2, can be detected in the skin itself, which is the case for some viral illnesses that cause rashes, Shinkai said.

In addition, the significance of these rashes — such as whether they are tied to better or worse outcomes for patients — should also be studied, she said. For example, some patients with covid toes have been reported to have mild or asymptomatic cases of COVID-19, Live Science previously reported.

To help doctors learn more about COVID-19 and rashes, a task force with the American Academy of Dermatology has created an online COVID-19 dermatology registry, where health care providers can report skin findings linked to the disease, Live Science previously reported.

Originally published on Live Science.

Highest-ever concentration of microplastics found on seafloor, study reveals

A new international research project revealed the highest concentration of microplastic ever seen on the seafloor — up to 1.9 million pieces in a thin layer covering one square meter.

More than 10 million tons of plastic waste enter the oceans each year, but that type of floating plastic — think bags, straws or cellphone cases — accounts for less than 1 percent of total plastic entering the world’s oceans.

According to new research published this week in the journal Science, deep-sea ocean currents are acting as conveyor belts to move these extremely tiny plastic fragments and fibers across the seafloor. Microplastics, which are typically less than 5 milimeters in length, account for the other 99 percent.

“Our study has shown how detailed studies of seafloor currents can help us to connect microplastic transport pathways in the deep-sea and find the ‘missing’ microplastics. The results highlight the need for policy interventions to limit the future flow of plastics into natural environments and minimize impacts on ocean ecosystems,” research co-lead Mike Clare, of the National Oceanography Centre, said in a statement.

CORONAVIRUS COULD CAUSE LARGEST DROP IN CARBON EMISSIONS EVER: REPORT

Those ocean currents can then concentrate the microplastics into “hotspots” or huge areas of microplastic accumulation.

“Almost everybody has heard of the infamous ocean ‘garbage patches’ of floating plastic, but we were shocked at the high concentrations of microplastics we found in the deep-seafloor,” said the study’s lead author, Ian Kane of The University of Manchester.

Science

How common are these rashes?

What do the rashes look like?

Unanswered questions

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