Sometimes, Mother Nature doesn’t care about her own rules, and that’s when researchers discover a new 600-mile coral reef located at the mouth of the Amazon River.

If you’re wondering what’s wrong with that sentence, let us break it down to you. Coral reefs usually cover the ocean floors, and they almost never live in riverbeds, where the waters get murky and the sunlight cannot shine through.

That’s why it was a complete surprise for a team of Brazilian and American scientists to find this mature reef in the Amazon. It seems to stretch across more than 3,600 square miles and is at a depth of about 30 to 120 meters below the muddy waters.

Unfortunately, the unexpected finding was made at a site already marked for oil explorations. Scientists, the government, and oil companies are still quite flabbergasted about how a huge coral reef like this has gone unnoticed for so long.

Even though reefs generally thrive in sunlit, clear waters, this Amazon reef appears to defy nature and stubbornly live beneath the murkiest of waters – beaming with algae, corals, fish, sponges, and stars alike.

However, the oil plans for the area pose a great threat to the coral reefs. Certain regions have already undergone the start of the exploration for oil; presumably, the Brazilian government has sold roughly 80 blocks of the area at the mouth of the river for this very purpose.

Moreover, it’s possible that 20 of these 80 blocks – 25 percent of the entire area – is already producing oil; this operation might be happening right above the endangered coral reef.

The study’s authors warn about the major environmental challenge caused by such large-scale industrial activities.

“These [exploration] blocks will soon be producing oil in close proximity to the reefs, but the environmental baseline compiled by the companies and the Brazilian government is […] largely based on sparse museum specimens,” they added.

But oil production is not the only threat to the Amazonian reef; industrial fisheries and climatic changes also pose an incredible danger.

And looking at the situation on a global scale, researchers raised a red flag regarding the largest coral reef bleaching on record.

The study discovered the coral reef appears to be home to 73 different species of fish, more than 60 species of sponges, starfish, lobsters, and other reef life.

Each day we find out more about the growing need to protect our fragile marine ecosystems. The details of the newly discovered reef have been featured in the journal Science Advances.
Image Source: Aqua World

San Diego by night

These days, almost everything and everyone seem to have a microbial signature, so why not cities?

According to a study published in mSystems, an open access publication from the American Society for Microbiology, cities do have their own specific microbial communities.

However, offices in the same city don’t vary that much in microbial communities; the study was meant to offer insight into what contributes to the composition of microbes in built environments.

After collecting samples from nine offices in three North American cities, the research team led by Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff discovered that human skin has a significant contribution to the makeup of built environment surfaces.

The team also found that the most contaminated surface in an office is the floor, evidently because of soil and other materials that are brought in by the workers’ shoes.

Study author J. Gregory Caporaso, Ph.D., the assistant director of the Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics at the University, said that in normal conditions, “microbes may be passively accumulating on surfaces in the built environment rather than undergoing an active process.”

For the study, Caporaso and colleagues kept an eye on three offices over a one-year period in three cities, Toronto, San Diego, and Flagstaff. In each office, researchers placed three sampling plates containing two or three swatches of ceiling tile, painted drywall, and carpet.

At the same time, they installed sensors that allowed them to monitor different parameters of the environment, such as temperature, relative humidity on the surfaces of the swatches, light, and occupancy.

Each season, researchers collected the samples and analyzed them with two laboratory techniques called ITS-1 and 16S rRNA gene sequencing to determine the bacterial and fungal communities.

Regardless of the material, floor samples contained the highest levels of microbes. Researchers also found that each of the three cities has its own signature microbial communities.

Caporaso said this was the most interesting finding, especially because even though the offices studied within a city were different in size, ventilation systems, and usage patterns, they still followed the same microbial pattern.

It suggests that “geography is more important than any of these features in driving the bacterial community composition of the offices within the ranges that we studied,” Caporaso added.

Researchers also tested to see if office workers were sources for the microbes found in offices, so they collected human skin, oral, nasal, and fecal microbiome samples. At least 25-30 percent of the office microbiome was determined to come from human skin.
Image Source: Visit California

Google has been rather reserved as far as Android Auto was concerned, allowing only some apps to support the system. The search giant has also made sure that every app in Android Auto followed the same template so that all users experienced the same.

But one of the things that bugged users for a while is the interaction limit within Google Play Music on Android Auto. They could only interact with the user interface with six taps at a time, including browsing through a playlist, skipping music, and other commands of the sort.

In today’s update for Android Auto, that limitation has been removed at least for Google Play Music. It’s possible that other media and music apps for Android Auto will also be updated sometime in the future.

It’s noteworthy to mention that the interaction limit is not completely gone. What happened is that Google has tweaked the limit to make it disappear when the car is in Park mode. So don’t be surprised if the interaction limit still exists when you are in Driving mode.

Some users might not know that even third-party head units can detect whether you are in Park or not. For example, the Pioneer AVH-4100NEX won’t allow you to use Android Auto if you are not in Park.

While this might be frustrating, it makes sense. Drivers should not be playing around with their phones when you’re driving. Google helps you to keep your eyes on the road for your own safety behind the wheel.

The Android Auto update was rolled out today, as Google also expanded the list of countries where the system has started being available.

India and 17 other countries (including, Austria, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador Guatemala, Russia, Venezuela, and others) can now download Android Auto from Google Play Store.

Not much else has changed with the new update, and it’s a bit strange that the interaction limit has only been lifted for Google Play Music. Spotify, Pocket Casts or other apps have remained the same, so we’ll have to wait and see if Google will roll it out to other apps.

Why strange, you ask? Because the change is part of an Android Auto update, no a Google Play Music update, so users expected some improvements across more apps.

Either way, it’s great to see that Google is really invested in working on Android Auto to make it better and better with each update.
Image Source: Gizmodo