New Delhi: It is a known fact that dolphins are friendly animals. But can you imagine them “smiling” at each other underwater?

A team of researchers led by Veronica Maglieri from the University of Pisa in Italy has shown that bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) communicate during “social play” with the facial expression “Open Mouth Display” (OM), analogous to smiling. In addition, their playmates respond with a smile 33 percent of the time.

The playful signals of land mammals are well known. However, similar behaviors in cetaceans – classes of marine mammals such as dolphins, whales and porpoises – remain relatively unexplored.

This is what the new study says The Dolphins don’t smile when they play alone, but they smile at each other when playing socially When in the field of vision of other dolphins. According to the researchers, this suggests that dolphins pay attention to the alertness of their playmates.

The researchers, who studied the behavior of captive bottlenose dolphins while playing in pairs or with human trainers, also observed that the whales smiled when they played with each other, but not when playing with people.

To explain this behavior, the authors found that visual mechanisms have played a crucial role in shaping complex social communication in the mammalian family tree, not just in dolphins but across several species.

Antarctica is not currently “all white” but is turning green at a dramatic rate

Antarctica was once known for its polar ice caps, glaciers, etc gigantic amounts from snow. But today, due to anthropogenic warming, it is a realm of melting glaciers, snow and ice.

As extreme heat events become more common in Antarctica due to climate change, the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than the global average.

The result is a dramatic “greening” of Antarctica, as researchers from the Universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire and the British Antarctic Survey have found. Your new one study said that vegetation cover on the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than tenfold over the past four decades. It was published in the magazine on Friday Natural geosciences.

The research, led by Thomas P. Roland of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, found that vegetation cover increased from less than one square kilometer in 1986 to almost 12 square kilometers in 2021.

Between 2016 and 2021, vegetation cover grew at an accelerated rate of 400,000 square meters per year, the authors noted in the paper.

According to the study, greening accelerated by more than 30 percent between 2016 and 2021 compared to the overall greening rate from 1986 to 2021.

As part of the research, the scientists used satellite image data from the archives of NASA’s Landsat earth satellite.

Mosses, capable of surviving the harshest conditions on Earth, dominate Antarctica’s vegetation. However, due to human-caused climate change, plants have begun to colonize Antarctica. According to the study, plant growth will in turn enrich organic matter on the continent. However, this plant invasion may not be good news for Antarctica and its ecological future could be at risk.

Coriander flavored beer & high protein beer: RResearchers offer new possibilities

Researchers have discovered two new healthy and delicious beer options lover. These innovations – “herbal-spiced” beer and high-protein beer made from barley – appear in two articles in the American Chemical Society (ACS) Magazines.

A team of Japanese researchers led by Kiyoshi Takoi, a senior research brewer at Sapporo Breweries in Shizuoka, has presented the world with the recipe for an aromatic and flavorful beer brewed with coriander seeds. The study appeared in the magazine on Thursday ACS in Food Science and Technology.

According to the study, you can improve the taste of beer by brewing it with herbs and spices. The researchers used coriander seeds harvested in countries such as Bulgaria, Canada, Morocco and India to brew Belgian wheat beer.

The study found that coriander seeds give Belgian wheat beer a sweet, herbal and cooling taste.

On the other hand, a team of Researchers led by Mariana BC Pinto from the University of Campinas in Brazil has found that protein-rich barley can be used as malt to reduce the bitter taste of beer. The study appeared in September ACS Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Hops, the hanging flowers of the Humulus lupulus Plants are used in beer to give it taste, aroma and bitterness and to help preserve the foam and freshness of the drink. The researchers showed that beer made with higher protein barley malt had lower acidity because proteins capture and remove some bitter-tasting hop compounds. Brewers who prefer a bitter beer can use low-protein barley as their malt.

Mount Everest is getting higher every year

Mount Everest, the highest mountain on earth, is 8,849 meters above sea level. Researchers from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing and University College London in the United Kingdom have found that Mount Everest is about 15 to 50 meters higher than it otherwise would have been due to uplift from a nearby eroding river gorge.

The studyled by Xu Han of the China University of Geosciences, was published Monday in the magazine Natural geosciences.

A network of rivers about 75 kilometers from Mount Everest carves out a massive gorge – a deep, narrow valley with very steep sides through which a river or stream flows.

Due to erosion caused by the river, the gorge Lose landmass, whatwhich in turn causes Mount Everest to grow about 2 millimeters taller every year, the study says.

Over the past 89,000 years, the mountain has increased in height from 15 to 50 meters.

The science behind it is that when a nearby river erodes a significant amount of rock and soil, pressure from beneath the Earth’s crust acts as an uplifting force, the study says.

This happens because after part of the Earth’s crust loses land mass, the intense pressure exerted by the liquid mantle of the planet below becomes greater than the downward gravity of the eroded portion. This phenomenon, which causes the section that has lost landmass to float upward, is called isostatic rebound. This gradual process causes the Earth’s crust to rise by only a few millimeters each year.

(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)

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