Best of Last Week: Patterns in mass extinctions, cause of ice ages, blood vessel damage in children from COVID-19
It was a good week for Earth science as a trio of researchers from Japan, the U.K. and Sweden ran artificial intelligence applications that found surprising patterns in Earth's biological mass extinctions—Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill, Nicholas Guttenberg and Graham Budd also found that productive periods were rarely connected to mass extinctions. Also, a pair of biologists at Monash University found evidence that suggested Charles Darwin was right about why insects are losing the ability to fly—Rachel Leihy and Steven Chown found that insects that fly on islands tend to get blown out to sea. And an international team of researchers wondered what caused the ice ages. In their study, they discovered that tiny ocean fossils offer key evidence.
In technology news, QuantumScape announced that after a decade's worth of effort, they have developed a solid-state automotive battery that could transform the EV industry—they claim their lithium-metal battery can travel 80% farther than those equipped with lithium-ion batteries, last longer and maintain more than 80% of their capacity after 800 recharges. Also, Nordic Harvest opened a giant vertical farm in Denmark—they expect it to produce almost 1,000 tons of produce annually when running at full capacity. And a team at Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon and Central European University developed a deep neural network to study the socioeconomic inequalities that arise from urbanization. And a team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions in China announced that they had developed new 2-D Ruddlesden-Popper-layered, perovskite-based solar cells that can be produced using renewable resources.
Also, a team at Iowa State University found evidence that diet modifications—including more wine and cheese—may reduce cognitive decline as people age. And a combined team from Hokkaido University and Amoeba Energy, both in Japan announced that their 'electronic amoeba' found an approximate solution to the famous traveling salesman computer problem in linear time.
And finally, if you are a parent worried about your child being infected with COVID-19, you may want to check out the work done by at a team at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia—they found elevated biomarkers for blood vessel damage in all the children infected with SARS-CoV-2 that they tested.
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