https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-potato-got-its-start-nine-million-years-ago-thanks-to-a-tomato/

The Potato’s Mysterious Family Tree Revealed—And It Includes Tomatoes

About nine million years ago, a hybridization involving the lineage of another farmers market star gave rise to the modern-day cultivated potato

By Nora Bradford edited by Dean Visser

Nine million years ago, in the shadow of the rising Andes Mountains, a key ancestor of the beloved modern-day potato was born. And now new research shows this pivotal event—and the mashed, baked and fried bounty it routinely delivers today—only happened with crucial help from another treasured kitchen staple: the tomato.

According to a study published on Thursday in Cell, the prehistoric potato precursor was a hybrid of nearby-growing plants in the lineages of the tomato and Etuberosum, a section of species in the genus Solanum. The latter visually resembles the modern-day cultivated potato plant, which is part of the lineage of the Solanum section Petota. But it lacks the ability to produce the distinctive tubers that store all that useful nutrition in a convenient, fist-sized underground package,

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“We have always thought that these three lineages were closely related,” says study co-author Sandra Knapp, a research botanist at the Natural History Museum in London. “But what the relationships between those three lineages were [was] not clear; different genes told us different stories. Our group came together to look into the why!”

The potato is one of the world’s most widely used staple crops (along with corn, wheat and rice). But until now, its genetic backstory had been elusive to scientists. Though potatoes resemble Etuberosum and were known to share some genes with tomatoes, scientists hadn’t managed to pin down the evolutionary story that somehow tied these plants together.

Knapp and her international team of researchers began by analyzing more than 100 genomes from modern-day potatoes and tomatoes, as well as the largest collection of Etuberosum genomes ever analyzed. The scientists found that each potato genome carried a balanced mosaic of genes from the tomato and Etuberosum lineages. Team members pieced together all the possible phylogenetic trees that could have related the three lineages—and they found strong evidence that the potato was likely not a sister of either the tomato or Etuberosum. The team could then conclude that the potato was a result of a hybridization between the two.

But another mystery remained: neither the tomato nor Etuberosum have tubers, thick parts of the stem that burrow underground and store nutrients for plants such as potatoes, yams and taros. So how did tubers develop in potato plants?

The researchers found that each ancestral parent contained one key gene that—when combined—allowed tubers to grow. Tomatoes contributed the SP6A gene, which acts like a master switch to begin tuber formation. And from the Etuberosum side, another gene called IT1 controls the growth of stems that become tubers.

“We are aware that hybridization generates new traits and new species,” says the study’s senior researcher Sanwen Huang, an agriculturist at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. “However, this study is the first to show that hybridization generated a new type of organ, the tuber, which later became [a key part of] one of the staple foods of humanity.”

Tomatoes and Etuberosum likely hybridized during a period of rapid uplift in the Andes range. The resulting tubers enabled the potato’s ancestors to reproduce asexually and thus survive in new, higher-elevation habitats. Today tubers allow potatoes to grow resiliently in a range of environments and climates, supporting our ever growing assortment of potato-based foods.

“Now we have a story to tell about potato origins,” says Walter De Jong, a plant geneticist at Cornell University, who was not involved in the study, “another addition to our growing understanding of what makes a potato a potato."

via Scientific American https://ift.tt/n28oUxz

July 31, 2025 at 11:36AM

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/29/1120765/earth-battery-quidnet/

The Texas-based startup Quidnet Energy just completed a test showing it can store energy for up to six months by pumping water underground.

Using water to store electricity is hardly a new concept—pumped hydropower storage has been around for over a century. But the company hopes its twist on the technology could help bring cheap, long-duration energy storage to new places.

In traditional pumped hydro storage facilities, electric pumps move water uphill, into a natural or manmade body of water. Then, when electricity is needed, that water is released and flows downhill past a turbine, generating electricity. Quidnet’s approach instead pumps water down into impermeable rock formations and keeps it under pressure so it flows up when released. “It’s like pumped hydro, upside down,” says CEO Joe Zhou.

Quidnet started a six-month test of its technology in late 2024, pressurizing the system. In June, the company was able to discharge 35 megawatt-hours of energy from the well. There was virtually no self-discharge, meaning no energy loss, Zhou says.

Inexpensive forms of energy storage that can store electricity for weeks or months could help inconsistent electricity sources like wind and solar go further for the grid. And Quidnet’s approach, which uses commercially available equipment, could be deployed quickly and qualify for federal tax credits to help make it even cheaper.

However, there’s still a big milestone ahead: turning the pressurized water back into electricity. The company is currently building a facility with the turbines and support equipment to do that—all the components are available to purchase from established companies. “We don’t need to invent new things based on what we’ve already developed today,” Zhou says. “We can now start just deploying at very, very substantial scales.”

That process will come with energy losses. Energy storage systems are typically measured by their round-trip efficiency: how much of the electricity that’s put into the system is returned at the end as electricity. Modeling suggests that Quidnet’s technology could reach a maximum efficiency of about 65%, Zhou says, though some design choices made to optimize for economics will likely cause the system to land at roughly 50%.

That’s less efficient than lithium-ion batteries, but long-duration systems, if they’re cheap enough, can operate at low efficiencies and still be useful for the grid, says Paul Denholm, a senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

“It’s got to be cost-competitive; it all comes down to that,” Denholm says.

Lithium-ion batteries, the fastest-growing technology in energy storage, are the target that new forms of energy storage, like Quidnet’s, must chase. Lithium-ion batteries are about 90% cheaper today than they were 15 years ago. They’ve become a price-competitive alternative to building new natural-gas plants, Denholm says.

When it comes to competing with batteries, one potential differentiator for Quidnet could be government subsidies. While the Trump administration has clawed back funding for clean energy technologies, there’s still an energy storage tax credit, though recently passed legislation added new supply chain restrictions.

Starting in 2026, new energy storage facilities hoping to qualify for tax credits will need to prove that at least 55% of the value of a project’s materials are not from foreign entities of concern. That rules out sourcing batteries from China, which dominates battery production today. Quidnet has a “high level of domestic content” and expects to qualify for tax credits under the new rules, Zhou says.

The facility Quidnet is building is a project with utility partner CPS Energy, and it should come online in early 2026. 

via Technology Review Feed – Tech Review Top Stories https://ift.tt/0OzDi3m

July 29, 2025 at 11:36AM

https://www.popsci.com/science/dungeons-and-dragons-weirdest-thing-podcast/

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: DnD is good for your brain

By Rachel Feltman

On this week’s episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, I covered a couple mini-facts—one of which is that tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons seem to be really good for players’ mental health. 

This story actually comes from my other podcast, Science Quickly. You can check out my video on the recent boom in DnD-related scientific research (featuring famous DM Brennan Lee Mulligan) here:

Dungeons and Dragons surged in popularity during COVID lockdowns, and the spike in interest has inspired several TTRPG-loving academics to bring their favorite game into the lab.There’s a lot of research left to do, but a growing body of evidence suggests that tabletop games can help players in all sorts of ways. Check out this week’s episode—and the video above—to learn more!

I also talked about why sharks play dead when they get flipped upside down. According to a recent study, the answer could be… just ’cause. 

FACT: Marathon swimmers have to get really good at peeing in the ocean

By Laura Baisis 

As a young swimmer in New Jersey, endless laps in a concrete box was just too boring for me. I longed to be on some kind of “ocean swim team,” so I became an open-water marathon swimmer in my early 20s. 

A marathon swim is any event over 6.2 miles or 10K in a river, lake, ocean, really any body of water that is not a pool. The sport has roots in Ancient Greece with the legend of Leander swimming across the Hellespont to his lover the goddess Hero. Inspired by Leander, the poet Lord Byron swam the water separating Europe and Asia, along with Lieutenant Ekenhead, on their second attempt in 1810. Modern marathon swimming was born in 1875, when Matthew Webb became the first person to successfully swim across the English Channel. In 1926, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman and sixth person to ever swim the channel. A 10K open-water swim was also added to the Olympics in 2008.

Now, the peeing thing. You have to drink a lot of water to stay hydrated and also consume calories when swimming for hours at a time. It varies person to person, but most swimmers will eat every 30 minutes. We call these “feeds” and they must be done in the water while treading or sometimes laying on your back like an otter, since you can’t hang on to the boat or kayak. With that, comes practice peeing while swimming in open water…not in the pool. Don’t pee in pools.

FACT: A biologist in NYC rediscovered a salamander after 60 years

By Ryan F. Mandelbaum

I’ve been super into salamanders lately. Even if you also love these little guys, you might be surprised to learn that a small population actually lives in Manhattan. 

Despite the city’s reputation as a concrete jungle, these dusky salamanders have managed to survive in some rocky, hidden corners of Highbridge Park for decades. Even when the park was full of garbage, these salamanders continued to hang on. 

On this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing, I talk about how fragile and isolated this little urban habitat really is—and how conservation even works in a place where nature and urban life have become intertwined. For more on urban wildlife, subscribe to my newsletter and check out my new book, Wild NYC.

The post Research on Dungeons and Dragons is booming—and it seems like it’s great for your brain  appeared first on Popular Science.

via Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now https://www.popsci.com

July 30, 2025 at 08:11AM

https://www.popsci.com/environment/sea-star-urchins-kelp/

While they have no backbone, sunflower sea stars (Pycnopodia helianthoides) mean business–especailly when faced with spiny sea urchins. These 24-armed, roughly 3-feet-wide sea stars can move 40 inches per minute when on the prowl for crabs, snails, sea urchins, and other ocean creatures to eat. 

Sea urchins appear to sense the sea star’s presence–desipte not having a brain–and avoid these predators, according to a study recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Since multiple species of sea urchins can wreak havoc on ecologically important kelp forests, understanding how natural predator-prey relationships like this one between urchins and sea stars could be used to protect kelp. 

Why kelp rocks

Kelp forests are critical to the ocean–and planet’s–health. They live along most of North America’s western coast. These large, brown algae grow in cool, relatively shallow coastal waters. Kelp forests contribute roughly $500 billion to the global economy every year, as kelp is a key ingredient in everything from salad dressings to certain vitamins. 

Similar to forests on land, they grow in dense groups that provide food and shelter to numerous animal species, including fish (abalone, rockfish, and kelp bass), invertebrates (sea stars, urchins, and bristle worms), and marine mammal species (sea lions and otters). Many of these organisms can use the thick blades to shelter their young from predators or even storms.

About 10 years ago, sunflower sea stars went locally extinct in large parts of California and Oregon due an outbreak of wasting disease in 2013. The region’s kelp forests were lost right along with the sea stars. In the years since, neither the sea stars or kelp have fully recovered and the urchins that eat the kelp have pressed on. 

Natural kelp forest guardians

Previous research has found that increased sea otter populations have helped curb urchin populations around kelp forests. A group of ecologists and undergraduates at the University of California, Santa Cruz were curious to learn more about how sunflower sea stars could deter the urchins from eating kelp. To find out, they placed pairs of cages on the sea floor a few miles east of Sitka, Alaska, where resident urchins have turned once-thriving kelp beds into more barren zones. Both cages were made of plastic pipe and covered with fine mesh and kelp blades were tied to all of the cages as bait. A sunflower sea star was placed in one cage, while the other was sea star free. The two pairs of cages were about 60 to 100 feet apart.

After one day, they observed that red urchins (Mesocentrotus franciscanus) remained an average of about six feet away from the kelp tethered to the cages with sea stars inside. However, the green urchins (Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis) were not so easily deterred. Even with the mixed results, they study found that the sea stars clearly deterred one type of urchin. According to the team, an increase in the presence of sunflower sea stars, either natural or artificial, may help kelp forests by deterring urchins, without requiring divers manually remove urchins.

“We show that the sea stars create a ‘landscape of fear’ among red sea urchins in degraded urchins barrens that reduces grazing on kelp,” study co-author and ecologist Kristy Kroeker, said in a statement. “These are very hungry urchins that are dissuaded enough by the scent of a sea star to deter grazing on kelp forests, which is promising for thinking about their role in kelp-forest recovery.”

[ Related: What’s killing sea stars? ]

Prowling for purple predators?

Additional research is needed to test whether the presence of the sea stars would have a similar effect on the most destructive kelp eater in the region–the purple sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus). While a natural part of the ecosystem, if the population of purple sea urchins gets too high, the urchins can eat the kelp faster than they can reproduce. 

“My educated guess is that they will deter purple urchin grazing as well, but it’s a question of how much and for how long,” Kroeker said. “There are many unknowns that need to be addressed and many steps that need to be taken between our results and the reintroduction of Pycnopodia for kelp-forest recovery.”

The study also highlights how undergraduate students can be a real asset in scientific research at universities.

“I feel very grateful to have had the privilege of working on this study alongside my peers. Participating in the entire process, from diving to scientific writing, was exciting and impactful as an undergraduate student,” added study co-author Rae Mancuso. “I hope the findings from this field experiment contribute in some way to the restoration of our all-important kelp forests.”

The post Meet the 24-armed sea star, a kelp forest’s bodyguard appeared first on Popular Science.

via Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now https://www.popsci.com

July 30, 2025 at 09:31AM

https://www.popsci.com/environment/potato-evolved-from-tomato/

What came first, the potato or the tomato? A new genetics study says the answer is that juicy, fragrant tomatoes were the first to arrive on planet Earth, and eventually helped starchy spuds do the same. 

About 9 million years ago, a natural inbreeding in the wild between tomato plants and a potato-like plant species in present-day South America gave way to what we know as the potato. This new (and nutritious) plant arose from an evolutionary event that triggered the formation of the tuber–the underground structure that plants like potatoes, yams, and taros use to store food. The findings are detailed in a study published July 31 in the journal Cell.

“Our findings show how a hybridization event between species can spark the evolution of new traits, allowing even more species to emerge,” Sanwen Huang, a study co-author and agricultural genomicist at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said in a statement. “We’ve finally solved the mystery of where potatoes came from.” 

A puzzling plant

Potatoes are one of humanity’s most important crops. Spuds provide basic nutrients including carbohydrates, dietary fiber (found in their skin), and vitamins and minerals like potassium, magnesium, and iron. They are also considered a climate-friendly crop by the United Nations, due to their low greenhouse gas emissions compared to other crops. They can also grow in areas where some natural resources are limited and expensive. Potatoes are versatile and can grow in a wide variety of conditions, making them a good crop choice for several regions.  

Despite being such a staple crop, the origin of this starchy staple has puzzled scientists. Modern potato plants physically look almost identical to three potato-like species from Chile called Etuberosums. However, Etuberosums do not have the signature tubers that allow potatoes to store nutrients and easily reproduce. This is part of why Etuberosums are considered “potato-like” and not full spuds. Phylogenetic analysis also shows that potato plants are actually more closely related to tomatoes than Etuberosums.

To look closer, the research team from this new paper studied 450 genomes from cultivated potatoes common on farms and 56 wild potato species. 

“Wild potatoes are very difficult to sample, so this dataset represents the most comprehensive collection of wild potato genomic data ever analyzed,” added Zhiyang Zhang, a study co-author and biologist at the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, part of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. 

Every potato species contained a mix of genetic material from both Etuberosum and tomato plants. According to the team, this suggests that modern potatoes originated from a hybridization event–when individuals from two different species successfully reproduce–between these plants millions of years ago.  While Etuberosums and tomatoes are distinct species, they do share a common ancestor that lived about 14 million years ago. Even after diverging for about 5 million years, both could interbreed. This interbreeding is what gave  rise to the earliest potato plants with tubers roughly 9 million years ago. 

[ Related: Scientists finally figured out why tomatoes don’t kill you. ]

A model of survival

The researchers also traced the origins of the key tuber-forming genes within the potato. The gene that tells the plant when to start making tubers (called SP6A) came from the tomato side of the family and not the potato-like plants. A separate important gene which helps control growth of the underground stems that form tubers (called IT1) came from the Etuberosum side. Without either of these genetic pieces, it would be impossible for the resulting hybrid offspring to produce tubers. 

Additionally, this evolutionary innovation overlapped with the rapid uplift of the Andes mountains. New ecological environments were emerging with all of this upheaval. Early potatoes were able to respond with a tuber that stores nutrients underground–a very helpful trait for surviving harsh mountain weather conditions. Tubers also allow potato plants to reproduce without pollination or seeds. Buds sprout right from the tuber to grow new plants, so this trait helped potatoes rapidly spread. They eventually filled diverse ecological niches from the mild lower-lying grasslands up to high and cold meadows in Central and South America. 

“Evolving a tuber gave potatoes a huge advantage in harsh environments, fueling an explosion of new species and contributing to the rich diversity of potatoes we see and rely on today,” Huang said.

The post How the tomato created the potato appeared first on Popular Science.

via Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now https://www.popsci.com

July 31, 2025 at 10:06AM

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2861959/birds-arent-robots-but-their-brains-are-flash-drives.html

With apologies for contradicting the weird stickers and meme-obsessed teenagers you’ve been seeing for the last few years, birds are actually quite real. They aren’t robots built by the government to spy on you. But, at the risk of contradicting myself, their brains are computers. Let me explain—or rather, let me sum up since there is too much.

You probably know that birds are smarter than we give them credit for. Corvids like crows and ravens can be as smart as human children, with a shocking capacity to retain information. YouTuber and audio scientist Benn Jordan knows this, and he knows that the sounds birds make to communicate between themselves can be incredibly complex. But is it complex enough to retain and transmit digital information? The digital information of an image made and encoded by humans, perhaps?

Turns out, yes! Over a few months, Jordan studied several species of birds to find complex birdsong, settling on the European starling for its intelligence and impressive ability to mimic sounds with the specific structure of its lungs and larynx. Specifically, he visited The Mouth, a semi-domesticated rescued starling owned by Sarah Tidwell, who has been around humans his whole life.

Almost as a goof, Jordan drew a simple photo of a bird in a spectral synthesizer. (This is an extremely basic way of representing audible sounds as a 2D image.) Jordan then played the sounds corresponding to the image to The Mouth (the starling). While Jordan didn’t immediately hear the bird repeat the sequence of sounds corresponding to the image during his visit to Tidwell’s home, after analyzing the recordings of his visit, he spotted something strange in the visual graph of the recordings.

Benn Jordan

There was the bird drawing. The one that Jordan had drawn in the synthesizer days or weeks previously, reproduced in the starling’s song, and showing up in a completely different visualization of the data. While the reproduction isn’t digitally perfect, Jordan estimates that The Mouth effectively retained and re-transmitted 176 kilobytes of data in audio format. Not enough to replace your SSD, perhaps, but more than enough to transmit, say, a large text file.

Oh crap, maybe the birds are spying on us after all.

Bird mimicry isn’t anything new, of course. And again, we’ve known for a while that birds can be much more intelligent than we previously assumed, especially when you expand the definition of “intelligence” beyond a human standard. But the ability of The Mouth to so accurately retain and then transmit data is incredible, and Jordan’s video is such a vivid, literal illustration of that ability.

via PCWorld https://www.pcworld.com

July 29, 2025 at 09:52AM

https://www.space.com/astronomy/earth/hurricane-forecasters-are-losing-3-key-satellites-ahead-of-peak-storm-season-a-meteorologist-explains-why-it-matters

via Latest from Space.com https://www.space.com

July 27, 2025 at 07:04AM