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Record lightning
Lightning strikes in North and South America set new records for length and duration. In early February, the Meteorological Organization certified these records: 768 km for a lightning observed in April 2020 in the southern United States and 17.1 seconds for a lightning observed in Uruguay in June 2020. The previous records were 709 km for a Brazilian lightning in 2018 and 16.7 seconds for an Argentinian lightning in 2019.
Quiz
What have researchers discovered in snake and spider venom?
PHOTO WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Russell’s Viper, a venomous snake from Sri Lanka
Bacteria. This means they survive the venom’s microbicidal environment and could be responsible for bite-related infections, according to a UK study pre-published just before Christmas on BiorXiv. Biologists from the University of Northumbria and the company Venomtech argue that this could undermine the “dogma” of the sterility of venom, sterility that Venomtech planned to exploit for medical applications.
The number
PHOTO FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WEBSITE
Terrestrial algae in Wisconsin
5 millions
This is the amount of microscopic algae in each gram of soil, according to a French study. Published in early February in the journal The New Phytologist, this work by the University of Toulouse III and the CNRS shows that terrestrial algae capture more CO2 than expected, equivalent to 30% of human greenhouse gas emissions. These microscopic algae could be used in CO capture projects2 atmospheric.
Sumerian remedies
PHOTO PROVIDED BY CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY
The maritime squill, in a 13th-century Arabic manuscriptand century
A Sumerian and Babylonian medicinal plant was identified in January by an American archaeologist. This plant, which was used in all sauces in medicine in the two millennia BC, is actually sea squill, a plant that is toxic in large quantities. Its bulb resembles an onion, which allowed the classicist from Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, to draw this conclusion from Sumerian, Babylonian, Greco-Roman and medieval Arabic texts. His analysis is published in the journal Ancient Near East Today.
More trees than expected
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The boreal forest in Quebec
The Earth has 14% more tree species than expected, according to a new US study. There are 73,300 tree species, according to the new count from the University of Minnesota, published in late January in the journal PNAS. Minneapolis biologists estimate that 43% of tree species are in South America and that a third are rare species often threatened with extinction.