Scientists study monkey faces and cat bellies; another intermediate black hole in the Milky Way

This is not a rerun of last week’s roundup. I just couldn’t resist bringing this one up because another group of astronomers discovered a second intermediate-mass black hole in the Milky Way. Amazing! It may have formed in the early universe, may constitute the seed of a supermassive black hole, and may have formed not from stellar collapse, but from the accretion of multiple stars in a cluster.

If there’s a third one next week, I’ll be compelled to tell you about it, and if there’s a fourth one after that, I promise to put it in the footnotes. Elsewhere, scientists have watched monkeys make faces at each other, and a group of researchers studied a plentiful source: cat feces, to draw conclusions about human metabolism.

According to scientists, it is a medium-sized

Last week we reported that the first medium-sized black hole had been discovered in the Milky Way. This week, astronomers at the University of Cologne announced that The second Very close to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, the researchers were studying a star cluster called IRS 13.

Located 0.1 light-years away from the galactic nucleus (meaning it is “in” the galactic nucleus), this cluster exhibits a surprisingly orderly stellar motion and unexpected density, which has allowed researchers to draw only two conclusions: either IRS 13 somehow interacts with Sagittarius A*, or a gravitational object at the center of the cluster influences the motion of the stars and keeps the cluster compact. Multi-wavelength observations of the cluster with the Very Large Telescope, ALMA, and the Chandra X-ray Telescope confirm the presence of an intermediate black hole in IRS 13.

Cat in Kilograms

Domestic cats are a lot like humans — they live indoors in climate-controlled environments, lounge on furniture, and have ready access to cooked food — which has led scientists to think they might make good models for human diseases. In a new study, researchers at Ohio State University found that Analyzing cat intestinal bacteria To study the causes of obesity.

“Animals share our beds. They share our ice cream. The things people do to their pets highlight this as a naturally occurring disease model where pets are exposed to similar environments as humans,” said Jenessa Winston, assistant professor of veterinary clinical sciences at Ohio State University.

The researchers put seven obese cats on a four-stage diet: they fed commercial cat food ad libitum for two weeks, a weight-loss formula diet ad libitum for one week, then switched to a calorie-restricted weight-loss diet for 11 weeks, and finally switched back to the maintenance diet. By analyzing fecal samples, the researchers were able to track changes in metabolites produced by the cats’ gut bacteria that are linked to metabolic factors throughout the body, including hormonal signals linked to inflammation and insulin resistance.

During weight loss, the amount of propionic acid, a short-chain fatty acid, increased. “When cats are on a diet specifically formulated for weight loss, propionic acid increases and stays high, and then when they are put back on a maintenance diet, it goes down again, so it’s really a change in diet,” Winston says.

Expressive monkeys are popular, study finds

Social animals tend to have well-developed facial muscles. For example, scientists theorize that dogs developed complex orbital muscles during domestication, which allowed them to better communicate with humans (who have highly complex facial muscles, and Schwarzenegger’s facial muscle mass, symmetry, and conditioning). Facial expressions convey information and status, making them an important medium of communication.

Now, researchers at Nottingham Trent University Rhesus Macaquereport They found that monkeys with more expressive faces tend to have stronger social connections and be more socially successful. The study included nine social groups of macaques with similar makeup: one adult male, multiple adult females, and their offspring. The team focused on the dominant male in each group and developed a coding system to track the movements of 17 different facial muscles. They also quantified the social networks of all 66 monkeys studied, quantifying the time spent between specific pairs and grooming exchanges between members of the group.

Males with greater facial diversity are more likely to have stronger social bonds and be central to social networks. “Individuals with more expressive faces may be better able to establish and maintain strong social connections, which could lead to a range of benefits associated with group cohesion, including access to resources, mating opportunities and protection from threats,” said lead author Dr Jamie Whitehouse.

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