Let’s delve into the new scientific research that happened in the past month or so and explore the latest technologies that are being created and breakthroughs that were achieved in this field.
In current blog, you will read about the following science events of the month:
- Moths blinding children in Nepal
- Researchers create Yeast from synthetic DNA
- NASA isn’t able to open asteroid capsule yet after spending billions to bring it on earth
- SpaceX starship explodes on its launch
- First Ever AI conference held in UK, New Laws passed in UK and US
- Researchers encountering a new problem: How to keep secrets in Quantum World
- How Europeans colonized the Americas; Lice DNA provides many clues
- The Literal “Monkey Business” uncovered in Research Institutions
- Deep Sea Mining threatening life there, New research shows
- Microbial Mining shows great promise in Rear Earth metal mining
- Iceland reeling with seismic activity and Volcanic eruption
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| Current Science Report: November 2023, Mufawad |
Moths blinding children in Nepal
By September-October, the end of the monsoon season in Nepal, is a time when ophthalmologists worry about the mysterious and debilitating eye infection known as seasonal hyperacute panuveitis (SHAPU). Symptoms typically begin with painless redness and loss of pressure in one eye. If the condition is not treated within 24 to 48 hours, children are at risk of losing their eyesight.
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In 2023, researchers in Nepal are more dedicated and better equipped than ever before to determine the cause of this mysterious disease. For the first time, they have environmental surveys, genome sequencing, and a reporting system to track down the source. However, they face major funding challenges and this year reports of the disease have changed.
It is pertinent to mention that the disease itself is not new. In 1979, ophthalmologist Madan P. Upadhyay, now chairman emeritus of the BP Eye Foundation in Kathmandu, was awakened by the sound of his doorbell. A man stood outside clutching his three-year-old daughter, whose right eye was sore. The scene was familiar and consistent with cases Upadhyay had seen before – first in 1975 and again in 1977.
Upadhyay named the mysterious illness SHAPU and noted that cases seemed to increase every two years. It turned out the condition was more serious than doctors had initially thought.
The cause remains unknown, meaning doctors are desperately trying different treatment options, including antibiotics, steroids, and other eye medications – with no guarantee of success. Sometimes the medications work; in other cases, the same treatment combination has little effect.
As of 2021, SHAPU had limited recognition and only a few cases per year were documented in hospital records and scientific journals. However, the country experienced a particularly large outbreak in 2021, with more than 150 cases. This attracted widespread attention in the local media, making doctors better prepared for 2023.
This year, doctors have a system in place to report cases in a timely manner across the country. This has already helped them better understand the geography of the disease. Many people anecdotally mentioned that they had had direct or indirect contact with a “white moth” before the onset of the disease.
In a survey, researchers found that the only statistically significant difference between people with SHAPU and a control group was that the people with SHAPU were almost seven times more likely than controls to report having contact with butterflies or whites have moths.
To answer this question, researchers are now collecting samples from the affected and unaffected eyes of people with SHAPU and family members. They will examine these samples for genetic material from bacteria and viruses to determine if it is a responsible microorganism. However at the moment, they do not have the resources to do everything necessary.
The changing geographic distribution of the disease and the range of reported symptoms are “making SHAPU increasingly mysterious.”
Sources: The Nature
Researchers create Yeast from synthetic DNA
A significant step towards the goal of producing complex cells with a fully synthetic genome has been reached by scientists. Scientists produced a Yeast strain with a genome that contains over 50% synthetic DNA. The strain's 16 chromosomes, half of which were developed and made entirely from scratch.
The remarkable achievement was made possible by the cooperation of the Sc2.0 consortium, a collection of laboratories that has been working for the past 15 years to produce a yeast strain with a completely synthetic genome. A number of studies published in the journals Cell and Cell Genomics have detailed their most recent accomplishment.
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According to the Nature, scientists have previously created certain bacteria and viruses with fully synthetic genomes, but they all have simple genetic structures. Apart from their simple genetic structures, they also had simple inner configurations.
According to New Scientist, the goal of the Sc2.0 teams' study, which focused on brewer's yeast, was to better comprehend complicated cells in order to develop strains for commercial application down the road. For instance, they may develop yeast strains that produce biofuels and medications rather than beer.
Interestingly, all 16 yeast chromosomes have been created in synthetic form by the scientists. However, it could take another year or more to actually incorporate them into a single strain of yeast. Project manager Jef Boeke claims that "debugging the synthetic chromosomes" is the bigger problem than actually putting the strain together.
When the scientists constructed things, they came upon "bugs" that are the outcome of modifications they made without understanding they could have a negative impact.
Source: The Indian Express
NASA isn’t able to open asteroid capsule yet after spending billions to bring it on earth
As you know, NASA has successfully collected the largest-ever asteroid sample and bought it back to our Planet.
NASA collected 70.3 grams of Bennu asteroid material that was stuck to the outside of the capsule.
The capsule was shot into space as part of the agency's OSIRIS-REx mission in 2016, and the team has been following the Bennu asteroid for years.
The capsule was enclosed within a spacecraft that made a 4-billion-mile journey to reach Bennu.
The capsule was enclosed within a spacecraft that made a 4-billion-mile journey to reach Bennu.
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The curation team that has been processing the samples says it has removed and collected 70.3 grams of Bennu material from the capsule so far, and it has not even been opened yet. The sample processed so far includes rocks and dust found on the outside of the sampler head, as well as a portion of the bulk sample from inside the head, which was accessed through the head’s mylar flap. Additional material remaining inside the sampler head, called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), is set for removal later, adding to the mass total.
NASA intends to share the wealth of the Bennu bits with over 200 scientists at 25 different facilities, 4% to the Canadian Space Agency, and 0.5% to JAXA. The remaining approximately 70% will be stored at Johnson Space Center to be studied for years to come, much like Apollo moon rock samples continue to be investigated decades after being brought to Earth by astronauts.
Part of the reason there is so much of the Bennu sample within this capsule is due to the touch-and-go process itself. When the OSIRIS-REx sample collection mechanism dipped toward the rock to gather a few asteroid pieces, scientists watching were surprised to see Bennu wasn't a nice, solid object like you might expect. Scientists still aren't sure exactly how much sample is in the OSIRIS-REx capsule in general.
Source: The Space
SpaceX starship explodes on its launch
SpaceX's Starship spacecraft successfully launched from Boca Chica, Texas, on 18 November, marking its first time going into space. However, the craft exploded above the Gulf of Mexico eight minutes after launch due to its self-destruct function.
The US Federal Aviation Administration will oversee an investigation into the explosions and need to approve future tests. NASA needs Starship to prove itself if it wants to put astronauts on the Moon later this decade. No successful flights have been demonstrated yet.
In its latest attempt, Starship performed better than its first major test flight in April, which also ended in an explosion. The rocket booster successfully lit all 33 engines, causing no severe damage to the launch pad and the surrounding environment. The rocket booster and Starship made it past the point at which they separate, demonstrating a 'hot staging' process where the craft's engines were deliberately ignited earlier than usual while Starship was separating from its booster.
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SpaceX has ambitious dreams of using Starship to send humans to Mars, but its most important client is NASA, which has given SpaceX contracts worth over $4 billion to develop Starship for ferrying astronauts and supplies to the Moon. Many steps remain before SpaceX can prove that the craft is safe for landing people on the lunar surface. NASA is now considering changing the Artemis III mission to not involve landing people on the Moon. NASA administrator Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on the test flight. He also revealed that NASA is working with another aerospace company, Blue Origin, to develop a lunar lander for future Moon visits.
Sources: The Nature
First Ever AI conference held in UK, New Laws passed in UK and US
Two major steps towards governmental oversight of artificial intelligence (AI) have occurred in the United States and the United Kingdom. Both nations have committed to developing a national AI research resource, with the aim of providing AI researchers with cloud access to heavy-hitting computing power.
The United Kingdom has made a "massive investment" in this area, with Russell Wald leading the policy and society initiative at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence in California in the USA.
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The US President Joe Biden signed his nation's first AI executive order on 30 October, with directives for US federal agencies to guide the use of AI and put guardrails on the technology. On 1st and 2nd November, the United Kingdom hosted a high-profile AI Safety Summit, convened by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, with representatives from more than two dozen countries and tech companies including Microsoft and Meta.
The summit produced the Bletchley Declaration, which agrees to better assess and manage the risks of powerful 'frontier' AI — advanced systems that could be used to develop risky technologies, such as biological weapons.
Both nations have committed to developing a national AI ‘research resource', with the aim of providing AI researchers with cloud access to heavy-hitting computing power. These efforts are meaningful for a branch of science that relies heavily on expensive computing infrastructure.
One important emphasis in the order is on creating much-needed standards and definitions in AI. The order calls for the US National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop such standards, alongside tools (such as watermarks) and 'red-team testing' — in which good actors try to misuse a system to test its security — to help ensure that powerful AI systems are "safe, secure, and trustworthy."
The executive order directs agencies that fund life-sciences research to establish standards to protect against AI being used to engineer dangerous biological materials. Agencies are also encouraged to help skilled immigrants with AI expertise to study, stay, and work in the United States. The National Science Foundation (NSF) must fund and launch at least one regional innovation engine program that prioritizes AI-related work, and, in the next 18 months, establish at least 4 national AI research institutes, on top of the 25 currently funded.
Biden's order commits the NSF to launching a pilot of the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) within 90 days, a proposed system to provide access to powerful, AI-capable computing power through the cloud.
The UK government plans to set up a national AI Research Resource (AIRR) to provide supercomputer-level computing power to diverse researchers keen on studying frontier AI.
Such moves are helping countries like the United Kingdom to develop the expertise needed to guide AI for the public good, but legislation will also be needed, he says, to safeguard against the development of future AI systems that are smart and hard to control.
Sources: The Nature
Researchers encountering a new problem: How to keep secrets in Quantum World
In July 2022, a pair of mathematicians in Belgium broke a data-encryption scheme designed to withstand attacks from quantum computers so sophisticated they don't yet exist. The encryption scheme, dubbed SIKE, was chosen in 2022 for potential adoption by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in its Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization process.
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The aim is to find algorithms that can safeguard private information from the looming threat of quantum computers. The world's digital information relies on encryption to keep it secure. Hard drives containing medical data, secrets held by national militaries and intelligence agencies, online credit-card payments, digital signatures, readings from smart meters, the computers in driverless cars, and the chips in passports all depend on algorithms, developed in the 1970s, that turn easy-to-read data into encrypted ciphers accessible only to those with a mathematical 'key' to unlock them. Those algorithms, in turn, depend on mathematical functions that are straightforward to use to create keys but difficult to run in reverse to reveal them.
If practical quantum computers arrive, these hard-to-solve problems will suddenly become child's play. RSA, an encryption scheme that allows systems to share keys, could take a classical computer most of the lifetime of the Universe to reverse-engineer. A quantum computer, researchers estimate, could do the same job in 8 hours.
The Diffie–Hellman key exchange, another widely used cryptographic method, named after its two inventors, could also be easily reversed by a quantum machine.
Existing quantum computers contain a handful of qubits and have limited capabilities. The global technology firm IBM plans to release a chip with 1,121 qubits next year and says it will have a computer with more than 4,000 qubits by 2025.
Scientists from Google and the Swedish National Communications Security Authority estimated in 2021 that 20 million qubits would be necessary to crack an RSA key of 2,048 bits, a commonly used key length.
In case practical quantum computers do arrive, cryptographers and standards bodies around the world are working to come up with a set of encryption techniques that will be as hard for a quantum computer to unravel as existing schemes are for classical computers. To do that, many researchers are putting the latest algorithms to the test.
Sources: The Nature
How Europeans colonized the Americas; Lice DNA provides many clues
A new study published in PLOS ONE suggests that the genetics of head lice can shed light on when and where groups of humans split and came together in the past. The authors present data suggesting European and American lice share a genetic affinity dating back to the European colonization of the Americas. Lice may even offer clues to ancient relationships not captured by human DNA or archaeological evidence, which could be a potential new angle to look at human migration and interactions.
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Head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) cling to hairs and feast on blood from the scalp. They are an old foe and people around the world have complained about lice for thousands of years. Because head lice can only spread between people, they are a good proxy for tracking human migrations. In the past, scientists have shown that the global distribution of lice strains mirrors past and contemporary population movements, and they have done similar studies with other parasites such as bedbugs and pathogens such as tuberculosis and the bacterium responsible for the Black Death.
Researchers gathered 274 lice from around the world, including a few from schools in Mexico and Argentina. They sequenced the insects’ DNA and singled out short, repetitive segments known as microsatellites.
Lice that share these segments inherited them from a common ancestor, giving the researchers a tool to sort the parasites into closely related families. One cluster of microsatellites pointed to a genetic link between lice in Asia and Central America, reflecting the initial migration of people from East Asia into the Americas.
Another cluster linked lice from the Americas and Europe. Based on how quickly the lice reproduce and accumulate the genetic mutations that lead to microsatellites, the researchers could estimate when the lice of Indigenous Americans might have hybridized with European lice. The most likely answer, they found, was about 500 years ago during the time of European colonization.
Sources: The Science
The Literal “Monkey Business” uncovered in Research Institutions
In 2019, immunologist Jonah Sacha purchased a shipment of monkeys for his research into infectious diseases. However, while conducting preliminary chest X-rays, Sacha found one monkey with latent tuberculosis (TB), meaning it was carrying the bacterium that causes TB. This rendered the entire shipment of 20 monkeys unusable for research due to the risk that the infection would spread. This cost hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage and delayed the research by many years.
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The risk of disease is a growing concern among scientists who work with monkeys, especially as news reports suggest that some laboratory monkeys are being illegally poached from the wild, falsely labelled as captive-bred, and sold as research animals, a practice known as monkey laundering.
Long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) make good models for infectious-disease research and vaccine development because they are genetically and physically similar to humans. Biomedical researchers use captive-bred primates that are free from certain types of viruses, bacterium, and parasite.
China has been the biggest exporter of research macaques, with the United States in particular relying heavily on its supply. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 halted the export of macaques and other wildlife to reduce the potential spread of the disease. In the wake of the pandemic, the global supply of good-quality research monkeys remains at an all-time low.
In May, a report from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that more than half of researchers surveyed had experienced problems obtaining primates for their research in 2021. The report also found that researchers are waiting longer now than before COVID-19 hit to procure research macaques, and the cost per animal has skyrocketed.
The huge demand for research monkeys and their rising costs have created a market for monkey smugglers, according to Anne-Lise Chaber, a veterinary physician who has researched illegal wildlife trade at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Evidence of this trade is slowly coming to light, with eight people — including two wildlife officials from Cambodia — charged with smuggling hundreds of wild long-tailed macaques from Cambodia to the United States for use in research; the animals were allegedly labelled as captive-bred.
Confounding results can be caused by ethical and legal issues with smuggling wild monkeys into medical trials, as well as invalidating study results. Wild monkeys have already been exposed to a cocktail of diseases, which means that in vaccine studies, they would produce a very different immune response from animals that have been purpose-bred in sterile facilities.
Some retroviruses, such as HIV, can alter the immune system even when they don't cause obvious illness. Lung mites (Pneumonyssus simicola), tiny parasites that infect wild monkeys, cause rash-like lesions in the respiratory system, which can be confused with those caused by other illnesses.
Putting a halt to monkey laundering is not straightforward, as every year, thousands of macaques are legally traded for research. Research institutions should inspect the facilities from which they acquire research monkeys to ensure that the animals are bred in line with regulations and need to be audited regularly to catch any suspicious activity.
Sources: The Nature
Deep Sea Mining threatening life there, New research shows
A study has found that mining of the ocean floor for minerals like cobalt and manganese could harm deep-sea jellyfish. The study suggests that sediment stirred up from mining sites could activate damaging stress responses in the jellyfish.
Commercial harvesting of the sea floor for minerals like cobalt and manganese could soon get the green light, as it is needed to support the manufacturing of electric-vehicle batteries and other electronics. However, scientists warn that too little is known about its potential impacts on deep-sea ecosystems.
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The study, co-led by Vanessa Stenvers, a marine ecologist at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, analyzed deep-sea helmet jellyfish collected from Norwegian sea. At higher sediment concentrations of above 17 mg, the jellyfish showed signs of acute stress, producing excessive amounts of mucus, a common stress response for cnidarians. On average, more than 30% of the animals' bodies were covered in mucus after being exposed to the two highest sediment concentrations for 24 hours.
The study also found that jellyfish doubled their respiration rate at the highest sediment concentrations, suggesting that the animals required more energy than they would otherwise need. Jellyfish that produced excessive mucus also overexpressed genes involved in energy metabolism, wound repair, and the immune system. If other gelatinous organisms in the deep ocean respond similarly, commercial harvesting of the sea floor could reduce biodiversity and threaten crucial ecosystem functions, such as carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling.
Sources: The Nature
Microbial Mining shows great promise in Rear Earth metal mining
REEgen, a biomining company, is exploring the use of bacteria-based products to mine rare-earth elements (REEs) from ground-up rocks, waste electronic components, and other solids. REEgen's bacterial soup dissolves these metals, which have valuable conductive, magnetic, and fluorescent properties and are used in various applications such as mobile phones and wind turbines. The company's product is less hazardous to people and the environment than traditional chemicals used to separate metals from ore.
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Rare-earth elements (REEs) include those in the lanthanide series, as well as group 3 transition metals scandium and yttrium. They are used in products such as magnets, light bulbs, and electric cars, and end up in various waste streams, including mining tailings and ash from coal plants.
Despite their name, REEs are not found in concentrated deposits and are difficult to purify. The conventional purification process involves repeatedly separating the metals using aqueous acids and organic solvents, which is inefficient, costly, and damaging to health and the environment.
Researchers are now investigating biomining as an alternative to traditional methods. Many microorganisms naturally concentrate metals, and some are already used to mine copper and gold. The discovery of microbes that use lanthanides for their metabolism allowed researchers to explore the feasibility of adapting the microorganisms or their components to isolate REEs.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has invested around $43 million in research-industry partnerships to develop biomining for REEs.
Microbe miners can play a significant role in the biomining process. Many microbes secrete acids that can solubilize metals from rocks, discarded appliances, and other electronic waste, and some make proteins that specifically interact with REEs, giving scientists the opportunity to isolate the elements from other metals and perhaps even from each other. However, scaling up microbe-based mining and remediation from the bench to an industrial process involves substantial challenges.
One potential microbe miner is Gluconobacter oxydans, an acid-producing bacterium found in garden soil, fruits, and flowers. The acid produced by G. oxydans dissolves phosphates that it then uses in DNA, liberating REEs as a collateral benefit that humans can exploit. In experiments at Idaho National Laboratory, G. oxydans secreted a gluconic acid mixture that was better at leaching rare metals from industrial waste than a comparable concentration of commercial, pure gluconic acid.
Work at REEgen to combine genetically engineered G. oxydans with optimization of the firm's processes has boosted leaching by up to five times compared to wild-type microbes.
Researchers are now exploring the use of rare-earth elements (REEs) in mining and recycling. REEs were once thought to have no direct relevance to living organisms, but they have been found to be used by certain microbes to metabolize methanol and are even vital to the survival of microorganisms living in volcanic mud pots in Italy.
Lanthanides, which provide essential cofactors for microbial enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases, are widespread among microbes, even those that don't eat methanol. Researchers are now adapting these microbes or their REE-binding molecules to concentrate the desired elements.
One such microbe is Methylobacterium extorquens, which is found in various locations, such as plants and the oceans. The microbes secrete methylolanthanin into their surroundings, where it sticks to nearby lanthanides, which are otherwise insoluble.
The complex is then taken up by a microbial transporter and brought into the cell to serve as a cofactor for alcohol dehydrogenase. M. extorquens also has a system to store lanthanides for later use, saving the metals either in granules or in structures called lanthasomes. This allows the bacterium to prepare for a lanthanide drought and can stockpile enough of the metals to last for several microbial generations.
To improve lanthanide uptake for biomining purposes, researchers engineered a strain of M. extorquens that allowed them to control and scale up methylolanthanin production. This more than tripled the microbes’ ability to collect neodymium and other REEs from pulverized magnets. Then it’s a relatively simple matter of breaking open the cell and precipitating the lanthanides, resulting in REEs that are more than 98.8% pure.
Lanmodulin, discovered in 2018, is a lanthanide-binding molecule that sits between the two outer membranes of the bacterium, alongside the alcohol dehydrogenases that use lanthanides as a cofactor. Researchers are adapting parts of the protein to create luminescent and fluorescent biosensors that could highlight where REEs are present or accumulating and might even be used to remediate REE contamination of water sources.
Lanmodulin and M. extorquens are part of a small group of emerging tools for purifying REEs. Researchers have also designed lanthanide-binding peptide tags that can be encoded in a gene of interest. Researchers are studying the REE-collecting abilities of the model microbe Pseudomonas putida and of Methylacidiphilum fumariolicum, the species discovered in volcanic Italian mud pots.
The most challenging step once REEs are obtained is to separate them from each other. There are 17 rare-earth metals, which are not necessarily interchangeable for commercial applications. Their similarities in size and chemistry explain why the current chemical separation process is so laborious.
Iceland reeling with seismic activity and Volcanic eruption
Icelanders are on edge as magma moving underground in the country's southwest threatens to breach the surface and begin flowing across the landscape. If it does, the volcanic eruption could threaten the coastal community of GrindavÃk, home to more than 3,000 people, as well as a geothermal power plant that supplies energy to tens of thousands of houses.
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Scientists are tracking every aspect of the geological unrest, helping Icelandic officials to prepare for whatever might be coming next. Many researchers now think that this region of Iceland is entering a new phase of volcanic activity that could last for decades or centuries.
In the past three years, three small eruptions have taken place in this area, the Reykjanes peninsula. The last time this part of the country was volcanically active — roughly between the years AD 800 and AD 1240 — lava flowed into what is now the suburbs of ReykjavÃk, Iceland’s capital city.
The latest unrest kicked off on 25 October, when thousands of small earthquakes began occurring north of GrindavÃk. In the following days, parts of the ground had risen 7 centimetres, a startlingly large rate of uplift. Volcanologists at the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) in ReykjavÃk and elsewhere concluded that molten rock had injected itself into a 15-kilometer-long crack in the Earth’s crust, known as a dike, less than 5 kilometers beneath the surface.
The latest unrest kicked off on 25 October, when thousands of small earthquakes began occurring north of GrindavÃk. In the following days, parts of the ground had risen 7 centimetres, a startlingly large rate of uplift. Volcanologists at the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) in ReykjavÃk and elsewhere concluded that molten rock had injected itself into a 15-kilometer-long crack in the Earth’s crust, known as a dike, less than 5 kilometers beneath the surface.
Since then, earthquakes have continued to rattle the area, and some roads have cracked as the ground subsides around GrindavÃk as the magma moves. On 10 November, another earthquake swarm prompted authorities to evacuate the town, fearing that an eruption was imminent. Workers have been building earthen barriers around the nearby power plant, in the hope of diverting any lava flows.
The activity is the latest in several years of volcanic action on the Reykjanes peninsula — and the most hazardous because it is happening so close to where people live and work. The magma beneath the Reykjanes peninsula is relatively low in viscosity, which allows gas bubbles to escape and reduces the chance of an explosive eruption. And the activity is not taking place beneath glacial ice, which increases the chance of explosions.
Icelandic volcanologists are monitoring the situation with a variety of instruments to measure changes in the ground as magma shifts beneath it. They have even repurposed a fibre-optic communications cable to detect earthquakes in real time. IMO scientists have also deployed gas sensors to detect sulfur dioxide and other gases wafting up from the magma.
The activity is the latest in several years of volcanic action on the Reykjanes peninsula — and the most hazardous because it is happening so close to where people live and work. The magma beneath the Reykjanes peninsula is relatively low in viscosity, which allows gas bubbles to escape and reduces the chance of an explosive eruption. And the activity is not taking place beneath glacial ice, which increases the chance of explosions.
Icelandic volcanologists are monitoring the situation with a variety of instruments to measure changes in the ground as magma shifts beneath it. They have even repurposed a fibre-optic communications cable to detect earthquakes in real time. IMO scientists have also deployed gas sensors to detect sulfur dioxide and other gases wafting up from the magma.
Sources: The Nature
