Meaty information
Food manufacturing contributes considerably to world greenhouse fuel emissions. Altering your eating regimen can scale back these emissions, Betsy Ladyzhets reported in “Food choices” (SN: 5/7/22 & 5/21/22, p. 22).
The story displayed a map exhibiting the influence of a mean individual’s eating regimen, by nation, on greenhouse fuel emissions (see “Putting emissions on the map,” beneath). Reader Steve Woodbury puzzled whether or not the map depicts emissions attributable to nations’ consumption or exportation of meals merchandise.
On this map, the greenhouse fuel emissions are counted solely within the nation the place the meals use is occurring, Ladyzhets says. The scientists who labored on this evaluation selected to deal with modeling consumption habits as a result of “the majority of food produced in most countries is consumed domestically,” she says.
All concerning the struggle
A gap within the cranium of a Triceratops dubbed “Big John” might have been a battle scar sustained throughout a struggle with a peer, Anna Gibbs reported in “Triceratops hole may be a combat injury” (SN: 5/7/22 & 5/21/22, p. 20).
Reader Dale S. Smith requested how scientists know that Big John was male, and whether or not the harm may have resulted from mating with a feminine.
We know that Big John is almost certainly male due to the morphology and measurements of the skeleton, significantly the cranium and pelvis, says Ruggero D’Anastasio, a paleopathologist on the “G. D’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy.
It’s unlikely that the harm occurred throughout mating, D’Anastasio says. The location and form of the wound signifies that it was inflicted from behind, which might be not the place a feminine Triceratops can be positioned throughout mating, he says. The form of the opening additionally means that a big horn penetrated perpendicular to the cranium’s bony frill. If the harm was sustained throughout mating, the lesion would seemingly have a special form, attributable to a giant horn that pierced the cranium’s fan at an acute somewhat than perpendicular angle, he says.
But it’s doable that mating rivalry had a component within the brawl. “In many animal species, males struggle with each other to acquire the right to mate with females,” D’Anastasio says. “It is all about fighting.”
Mass mismatch
A brand new measurement suggests the W boson might have the next mass than anticipated, revealing a possible flaw in the usual mannequin of particle physics, Emily Conover reported in “Subatomic particle may be extra hefty” (SN: 5/7/22 & 5/21/22, p. 12).
The W boson’s newly measured mass is 80,433.5 million electron volts, Conover reported. That exceeds the anticipated mass of 80,357 MeV by roughly 0.1 p.c. Reader Jerry Boehm requested if such a tiny discrepancy is critical sufficient for scientists to debate the prospect of recent particles.
In brief, sure, Conover says. “Even though that sounds like a very small mismatch, physicists have determined the measured and predicted W boson masses so precisely that the discrepancy is much bigger than expected,” she says. “The W boson mass was measured to a precision of 0.01 percent, similar to that of the predicted mass. So we’d expect those values to be much closer together, unless we’re missing something. That ‘something’ could be an exciting find, like new particles, or it could mean that there’s something else that’s not accounted for properly in either the measurement or the prediction.”