Numlock News: January 9, 2025 • Reptilians, Truffles, Lemonade

Jan 09, 2025

There’s Nothing in the Rulebook That Says a Dog Cannot Be a Mycologist

Dogs trained to find truffles that are highly prized for their culinary uses can also, it turns out, aid researchers trying to find other scientifically interesting truffles as well. In the Pacific Northwest, people train their dogs to find Oregon white truffles and Oregon black truffles, which can fetch a solid payday. That said, there are a whole lot more hypogeous, underground-fruiting fungi in Oregon, and the dogs are helping biologists find them. One golden retriever named Rye has helped a biologist at University of Oregon find thousands of truffles from over 50 genera. There are 350 truffle species in the PNW, and many are endangered, so anything that makes it easier for researchers study the health of the unique species is a major help.

Christie Wilcox, Science

MoviePass

The saga of MoviePass is coming to a close, finally, as the former chief executive has pleaded guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy, according to the Department of Justice, related to representing to investors that the company’s “unlimited movies for $9.95 per month” was actually sustainable. Turns out that company brass knew it was absolutely and utterly unsustainable and that their claims that they were able to run a viable business monetizing the data of MoviePass subscribers using artificial intelligence in order to generate revenue was, in fact, a bunch of crap. With 3 million subscribers using the cinema for all it’s worth, you’re talking a business that is essentially structured to implode.

Jordan Valinsky, CNN

Lemonade

Chick-Fil-A is moving its lemonade production out of its 3,200 locations and into a centralized, automated plant in California that processes 30 to 35 truckloads of lemons per day, each with 50,000 pounds of fruit. It loses some of the homespun charm, but the juice is worth the squeeze given that only about 40 percent of the lemon gets used at a given location, compared to pretty much all of it at the facility, in no small part because centralizing production means that the lemons’ oils can be extracted and sold to the fragrance and cosmetics industry.

Daniela Sirtori, Bloomberg

Drill?

While many want the government to stop putting up red tape and just let the oil and gas industries drill, drill, drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it’s worth asking whether or not anyone actually wants to do that. The U.S. Interior Department just put up an oil and gas lease sale for 400,000 acres in ANWR as required by the 2017 tax law, and received exactly zero bids. Critics called the sale “restrictive” but there were 400,000 perfectly good acres up to lease for drilling, and lo and behold, nobody bit. The coastal plain of ANWR contains 4.25 billion to 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, but recovering it does mean having to schlep into northern Alaska to roll the bones about oil of indeterminate quality.

Becky Bohrer, The Associated Press

Reptilians

Determining the diet of an unknown reptile can be confusing, as insectivores, herbivores, and carnivores all tend to have similar looks and dental situations. Compare the skeletons of an algae-eating Galapagos iguana and a carnivorous lizard and you’re not really going to be able to suss out the plant fan just from eyeballing it. This presents unique issues for archaeologists and paleontologists encountering new beasties in the fossil record, but a new study might offer a little bit of insight. The researchers compared the geochemistry of the calcium and strontium deposits present in the teeth and bones of 28 reptile species, and found that with every step upward on the food chain, the concentrations of the isotopes calcium-44 and calcium-42 declined. Essentially, the highest levels of those isotopes were found in reptiles that were insectivorous, eating lots and lots of bugs, and the levels were lowest in carnivores.

Kathrin Voigt, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

Cuffing Season

The percentage of adults who did not live with a spouse or partner increased steadily up through around 2019, hitting 44 percent. Since then, though, the trend has reversed, and now 42 percent of adults are unpartnered, thanks to slight increases in the percentage of married adults and percentage of adults who cohabitate with an unmarried partner. In general, young people are way more likely to be unpartnered than any other age demographic, with 88 percent of men aged 18 to 24 and 83 percent of women 18 to 24 not having a partner.

Richard Fry, Pew Research

Los Angeles

Several wildfires in the Los Angeles area fueled by strong winds continue to expand and destroy large swaths of the city. The Palisades fire (15,832 acres, 0 percent contained), Eaton Fire (10,600 acres, 0 percent contained), and Hurst fire (700 acres, 0 percent contained) have all been raging since Tuesday, affecting the foothill communities of the city and triggering evacuations amid the damage and destruction of over 2,000 structures. On Wednesday evening, an additional fire broke out near Runyon Canyon that quickly grew to 20 acres.

Hannah Fry, The Los Angeles Times and Clara Harter, The Los Angeles Times

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