Health & Science

Recharting the flow of the maple’s sap

For centuries New England’s maple-syrup-makers have worked on the principle that sap flows downward from the tops of mature maple trees. When the weather is right—on a warm day following a below-freezing night—they tap a spot near the trunk’s bottom to collect the vital fluid before boiling it down to syrup. But apparently they’ve had it wrong all along. University of Vermont researchers have discovered that sap actually flows up from the ground, an insight that could revolutionize the maple syrup industry. “It had never occurred to anyone. It’s just always been done this way,” Vermont syrup-maker Laura Sorkin tells NPR.org. Researchers made the discovery when a vacuum pump extracted far more sap than expected from an older maple tree that had lost its crown, and confirmed it with tests on saplings that had their tops lopped off. They’ve since concluded that rows of chest-high, branchless saplings could produce 10 times more syrup per acre than a stand of mature maples does. Sorkin, for one, worries that the new approach could open syrup production to entrepreneurs anywhere. “And on a more visceral level,” she says, “I feel that maple syrup is and should remain a product of the wild.”

A Pompeii of animals

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Scientists have long puzzled over why a northern Chinese lake bed contains such a wealth of exceptionally well-preserved fossils of birds, small mammals, and dinosaurs. Now a new study has found that the creatures all died when a volcanic eruption similar to the one that destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii wiped out their ancient ecosystem roughly 125 million years ago. The explosion seared the landscape with waves of hot gas known as pyroclastic density currents, which can reach temperatures of 1,830 degrees Fahrenheit and speeds of up to 450 miles per hour. Scientists examining 14 fossil specimens found carbonized muscle and skin tissue, along with a pattern of cracking on the bones’ surfaces consistent with exposure to intense heat. “What we’re talking about in this case is literal charring, like somebody got put in the grill,” mineralogist George Harlow tells LiveScience.com. Researchers also noted that the animals were preserved in “entombing poses” characteristic of other volcano victims throughout history, with flexed limbs and extended spines caused by the post-mortem shortening of tendons and muscles in high heat.

Rewriting memory

Human memory doesn’t work like a video camera capturing a single version of events. Instead, a new study has shown, recollections are constantly being overwritten with fresh information through an editing process that occurs in the brain’s hippocampus. Researchers used MRI scans to track brain activity in 17 participants, who were first asked to remember the location of an object pictured against a specific background, such as an ocean scene. They were then asked to place the object in the same spot on a computer screen against a new background—something none of them did correctly. When participants were shown the original scene and asked to pinpoint the spot where they had first seen the object, they invariably picked instead the location they’d identified on the second screen, showing that their memory had been altered to reflect intervening experience. Researchers say such revision actually helps people adapt to their environments. “Everyone likes to think of memory as this thing that lets us vividly remember our childhoods or what we did last week,” Northwestern University neuroscientist Joel Voss tells ScienceDaily.com. “But memory is designed to help us make good decisions in the moment and, therefore, memory has to stay up-to-date.”

Penguins in peril

Climate change is killing increasing numbers of Magellanic penguins, and the trend is likely to accelerate. That’s the conclusion of a 27-year study of the world’s largest colony of Magellanics, a famously squawky species that inhabits coastal regions of Argentina, Chile, and the Falkland Islands. Between 1983 and 2010, researchers collected data on nearly 3,500 chicks living in Punta Tombo, Argentina, checking nests once or twice daily during the September-to-February nesting season. While starvation and predation caused the majority of deaths most years, the study found that heavy storms and extreme heat have taken an increasing toll over time. “The weather has become a very important mortality factor, and it didn’t used to be,” ecologist Dee Boersma tells ScienceMag.org. Chicks are most vulnerable between nine and 40 days after hatching, when they are too large to seek shelter under their parents’ bodies but have not yet developed waterproof plumage. Baby penguins are more likely now than three decades ago to catch hypothermia during storms or succumb to excessive heat. The altered weather patterns are likely having similar impact on other Magellanic colonies; globally, the species has lost 20 percent of its population since 1987.