Already known for their navigational skills and ability to establish a basic culture, bumblebees are also apparently innovative creatures that can be taught to problem-solve to obtain a reward, according to new research published online this week in the journal Science.

As part of their study, researchers from Queen Mary University of London trained bees to use a tiny ball to score goals in order to obtain a sugar-based food reward. First, they taught the insects the correct location for the ball, then taught them how to move a ball from a different location to the desired area in order to obtain their reward, they explained in a statement.

Once the bees were trained that the ball had to be in the correct location before they would get sugar water, they were shown three yellow balls placed at various distances from the target, said Science. Some of the bees watched as a scientist used magnets to move the ball farthest from the target to the correct location, triggering a reward, while some watched a previously-trained bee perform the task and others simply found the ball (and reward) already at the target.

Afterward, each bee was challenged to move one of the three balls to the target location in five minutes or less. The researchers found that the 10 bees that watched another bee perform the task were the most successful, solving the task faster than the other two groups. Furthermore, some of the insects found better ways to move the ball – walking backwards and pulling it instead of just pushing it, as they had seen during the pre-trial demonstrations, the authors noted.

Findings show that bees can adapt to solve complex tasks

Changing how they moved the ball was not the end of the bees’ innovation, either, according to Science. While during the demonstration, it was always the farthest ball that was moved (because the others had been glued in place), most bees adapted when it came time to perform the task and opted instead to move the ball that was nearest to the target area.

This persisted, even when the study authors swapped out the nearest yellow ball for a black one, indicating that the bees understood the basic principal of the task and knew that they did not have to necessarily move a yellow-colored ball – any ball would do. The research team is hopeful that their findings are evidence that bees are good enough at problem-solving to overcome changes to their environment and to the climate.

“The bees solved the task in a different way than what was demonstrated, suggesting that observer bees did not simply copy what they saw, but improved on it. This shows an impressive amount of cognitive flexibility, especially for an insect,” co-lead author Dr. Olli J. Loukola said in a statement.

“It may be that bumblebees… have the cognitive capabilities to solve such complex tasks, but will only do so if environmental pressures are applied to necessitate such behaviors,” he added, telling NewScientist, “They don’t just blindly copy the demonstrator; they can improve on what they learned… I think that’s really important.”

The research demonstrated that, despite their small brains, bumblebees are capable of “cognitive flexibility,” Dr. Loukola told the website. The study showed that the insects are able to carry out tasks that they do not naturally encounter, and can even adapt and improve upon how those tasks are performed. This should not come as a surprise, Science said, as previous studies have shown that bees can use tools, feel happiness and basically have a built-in biological GPS.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Scientists with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have released new footage of a massive crack in Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf that is threatening to produce a glacier bigger than the state of Rhode Island, according to BBC News and USA Today reports published earlier this week.

According to the BAS, satellite data collected earlier this month shows that the crack is growing and will soon cause a glacier with an area of more than 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) to break away and enter the Weddell Sea. The video, which was taken by an aircraft as it recovered instruments placed on the ice shelf, illustrates how dire the situation is getting.

Currently, the fissure is 175 km (109 miles) long and 400-500 meters (1312-1640 feet) wide in some places, and if it grows just 20 km (12.5 miles) more, a block of ice one-fourth the size of Wales will break off of the Larsen C Ice Shelf and enter the Waddell Sea, BBC News said. That could happen at any time, and once it does, scientists will turn their attention to the health of the ice shelf.

“Iceberg calving is a normal part of the glacier life cycle, and there is every chance that Larsen C will remain stable and this ice will regrow,” Dr. Paul Holland of the BAS said in a statement. “However, it is also possible that this iceberg calving will leave Larsen C in an unstable configuration. If that happens, further iceberg calving could cause a retreat of Larsen C.”

“We won’t be able to tell whether Larsen C is unstable until the iceberg has calved and we are able to understand the behaviour of the remaining ice,” he added. “The stability of ice shelves is important because they resist the flow of the grounded ice inland. After the collapse of Larsen B [in 2002], its tributary glaciers accelerated, contributing to sea-level rise.”

Scientists not certain that climate change is to blame

In addition to Larsen B, several other ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula have retreated, lost a significant amount of volume or disappeared entirely over the past few decades – including those in Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Wordie, Muller, Jones Channel, and Wilkins, BBC News said. The likelihood is that Larsen C will continue that ongoing trend.

The news isn’t entirely bad, however. When Larsen B calved, scientists were able to discover a wealth of never-before-seen species in the uncovered seabed, and it is likely that Larsen C would also be home to previously undiscovered organisms as well. However, while satellites would be used to keep track of the glacier, it would nonetheless pose a threat to shipping vessels all across the Southern Ocean, according to BBC News.

According to Project MIDAS, a UK-based Antarctic research project led by scientists at Swansea University that work alongside the BAS, “There is not enough information to know whether the expected calving event on Larsen C is an effect of climate change.” However, they added, there is “good scientific evidence that climate change has caused thinning of the ice shelf.”

While the 5,000 square km iceberg would be quite large, the BAS pointed out that it would not be the biggest ever recorded. In 1956, a US Navy icebreaker spotted a nearly 32,000 square km iceberg, which would make it larger than the nation of Belgium. However, the lack of satellites prevented the size of this monstrous iceberg from being verified. In 2001, an iceberg about the size of Jamaica (11,000 square km) became the largest ever recorded by satellites after it broke off from the Ross ice shelf.

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Image credit: British Antarctic Survey

The Laysan albatross believed to own the title of the world’s oldest known avian has hatched a new chick for the second straight year – no small feat for the approximately 66-year-old bird, as it takes approximately seven months to incubate an egg and raise a chick.

In a statement released late last week, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) revealed that the albatross named Wisdom, who has been living at Hawaii’s Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge and Battle of Midway National Memorial for more than six decades, had finally hatched an egg she that was first spotted incubating back in early December.

Wisdom, who according to NPR was first banded by biologist Chandler Robbins in 1956, has given birth to at least 30 to 35 chicks, said Bob Peyton, USFWS Service Project Leader for the Refuge and Memorial. When not incubating eggs, the agency said that she is typically extremely active, having flown an estimated three million miles over the course of her life.

“Wisdom continues to inspire people around the world,” Peyton explained. “Because Laysan albatross don’t lay eggs every year and when they do, they raise only one chick at a time, the contribution of even one bird to the population makes a difference.”

“Laysan albatross and other seabirds depend on the habitat protected by Midway Atoll and other Pacific remote wildlife refuges to raise their young. Thanks to the hard work of our volunteers, we have been able to restore the native habitat that the birds need for nesting sites, ensuring a future for these seabirds,” he added.

Newborn chick may be Wisdom’s 41st child, reports say

During the seven-month period required to incubate and raise the chick, Wisdom and her mate, Akeakamai, alternate tasks – taking turns caring for the egg and foraging for food, the FWS said. Since the process requires tremendous amounts of time and energy, most Laysan albatross do not lay an egg every year, although this is the second year in a row Wisdom has done so.

Last year, Wisdom hatched a chick named Kūkini, which is the Hawaiian word for messenger, said NPR. At the time, the media outlet said that Kūkini might have been Wisdom’s 40th chick. It was first seen on February 1, shortly after Akeakamai assumed incubation duties to allow his mate to go off in search of food. Kūkini was Wisdom’s eight chick since 2006.

The newborn chick as yet to be named, NPR said, but joins that the USFWS calls “the world’s largest colony of albatross.” Midway Atoll is home to about 70% of the global Laysan albatross population, as well as nearly 40% of all  Black-footed albatross and a significant percentage of endangered Short-tailed albatross, the agency said. They arrive at the refuge to breed starting in late October, and fill up all of the park’s nesting spots by early December.

“Most seabirds, including albatross, return to the place they hatched to breed and raise their young,” Holly Richards of the USFWS explained in a recent Tumblr post. “Biologists call this type of behavior ‘nest site fidelity,’ and it makes preserving places with large colonies of birds, like Midway Atoll, critically important for the future survival of seabirds like Wisdom.”

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Image credit: Naomi Blinick/USFWS Volunteer

The ability to quickly snatch prey, not the need for protection from predators, was probably the reason turtles developed the ability to retract their heads into their shells, according to new research published online last Thursday by the journal Scientific Reports.

As part of their study, co-author Jérémy Anquetin, a palaeontologist at the Jurassica Museum in Switzerland, and his colleagues analyzed the cervical bones of a 15-million-year old turtle fossil and found evidence of partial neck retraction linked to the quick capture of underwater prey.

According to the New York Times, Anquetin’s team studied a type of Late Jurassic period turtle known as Platychelys oberndorferi, and were able to determine from its skeleton and shell that it was part of the pleurodira group of turtles – that is, turtles that bend their muscles horizontally to pull their necks to the side and tuck it next to their shoulder during the retraction process.

However, these turtles, which are typically found in Africa, Australia, and South America, tend to pull their necks back horizontally, while the Platychelys oberndorferi did so vertically, much like another group of turtles – cryptodires, which include tortoises, box turtles, and sea turtles.

Anquetin suggested to the Guardian that the neck retraction mechanism likely developed more than once during the course of turtle evolution, as the early pleurodire specimen his team studied developed a mechanism similar to that which developed independently much later in cryptodires. But, he added, Platychelys oberndorferi was unable to fully tuck its head into its shell.

Mechanisms similar to modern-day snapping turtles

Since the creature could not completely fold its neck into its shell, it would have been somewhat exposed, suggesting that defense was not the main reason for the mechanism’s development. So what was the purpose for this morphology? To solve the puzzle, the researchers decided to study other features of the creature, and found that it resembled a mata mata or snapping turtle.

The mata mata and snapping turtle are distant relatives, the Times noted, and both are ambush predators that hunt by hiding among plants found on the bottom of swamps, ponds, and shallow lakes, then striking once their prey wanders close enough. “We can expect that our turtle was behaving the same way,” Anquetin told the newspaper.

Based on their findings, the study authors reported that the neck mechanisms discovered in their species and those belonging to modern cryptodires are a prime example of convergent evolution, meaning that they developed independently because of the evolutionary advantages they offered at their respective times, the Times said. They admit, however, that their findings do not explain why pleurodira turtles eventually evolved to retract their necks sideways.

“Most people believe that that particular way of retracting the head evolved for protection only,” Anquetin told the Guardian. But his team’s findings indicate that this is unlikely. While further research is needed to back up their hypothesis, he said that the study emphasized the importance of fossils. “Evolution is always more complex than what we thought at first,“ he added.

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Image credit: Patrick Roeschli

Approximately 4,000 years after it originally went extinct, the woolly mammoth may soon once again roam the Earth – sort of, according to researchers who have proposed using the CRISPR gene editing tool to create a hybrid mammoth-elephant embryo within the next two years.

To be precise, Harvard University geneticist and molecular engineer George Church plans to create a creature that is mostly elephant but which possesses several mammoth traits, including a coat of bushy hair and blood adapted to the cold, Archaeology reported Thursday.

The proposed hybrid, also known as a “mammophant,” would also have subcutaneous fat and small ears, Church said before the beginning of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which is being held this week in Boston.

The Asian Elephant is a close relative of the mammoth. Could they be the key to bringing this species back from the dead?

The genes for those characteristics would be spliced into Asian elephant DNA using CRISPR, he explained to The Guardian. Church’s team has already been successful at the cellular level and now plans to begin working on creating embryos – something that could happen within the next two years.

“We’re not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years,” Church added. “We’re working on ways to evaluate the impact of all these edits and basically trying to establish embryogenesis in the lab. We already know about ones to do with small ears, subcutaneous fat, hair, and blood, but there are others that seem to be positively selected.”

‘Mammophant’ proposal raising some ethical concerns

Wooly mammoths went extinct during the last ice age and roamed throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America before dying off approximately 4,000 years ago. Scientists believe that its extinction was likely the result of hunting by humans and climate change.

Church and his colleagues have been working on bringing the creatures back for some time now, according to the Huffington Post. He previously told the website that the process involved taking DNA from mammoth remains discovered in the frozen tundra and splicing it into the DNA of an Asian elephant, which is so closely related to the mammoth that they could breed.

The Harvard professor has also said that he envisioned the mammophants living in Canadian and Russian tundras and that he and his fellow scientists plan to grow the hybrid embryo to inside an artificial womb. While Church insists that the modifications may help prevent the Asian elephant from becoming extinct, this proposal has attracted some criticism from elsewhere in the scientific community.

“The proposed ‘de-extinction’ of mammoths raises a massive ethical issue,” zoology professor Matthew Cobb from the University of Manchester told The Guardian. “The mammoth was not simply a set of genes, it was a social animal, as is the modern Asian elephant. What will happen when the elephant-mammoth hybrid is born? How will it be greeted by elephants?”

“The only reason the mammoth has emerged as the iconic target for de-extinction is that it would be utterly cool,” wildlife biologist Stanley Temple told BBC News, adding that he fears that such a breakthrough might undermine conservation efforts. “De-extinction just provides the ultimate ‘out’. If you can always bring the species back later, it undermines the urgency about preventing extinctions.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Previously believed to reproduce exclusively through the laying of eggs, the group of animals that include dinosaurs and birds actually gave birth to live young at some point, according to the authors of a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

While live birth “has evolved many times independently in vertebrates,” it had been “unknown” in the group known as the Archosauromorpha, a group currently represented by modern birds, crocodiles and turtles, lead author Jun Liu of the Hefei University of Technology in China and colleagues from the US, UK and Australia wrote in their study.

Now, however, the researchers reveal that they have discovered a pregnant, long-necked marine reptile known as Dinocephalosaurus that dated back roughly 245 million years ago to the Middle Triassic. The specimen, discovered in a fossil deposit in the Yunnan Province of southern China, represents the first-known evidence of live birth in archosauromorphs, BBC News noted.

The discovery should quell speculation that the biology of dinosaurs and their relatives prevented them from giving birth to live young, as the discovery in the embryo of this marine reptile shows that no fundamental barrier preventing members of this clade from carrying an embryo, study co-author and University of Bristol professor Mike Benton added.

Findings also reveal how the offspring’s sex was determined

According to Liu, Benton and their colleagues, the adult Dinocephalosaurus would have been between three and four meters long with an approximately 1.7 meter long neck, while its embryo was about one-half meter long and was positioned inside the rib cage of the would-be mother.

Initially, the researchers thought that the fossil, which BBC News reported was first discovered in 2008, represented an adult archosauromorph and the fossilized contents of its last meal, but a closer look revealed that this was not likely the case, as the smaller animal was facing forward.

In most cases, the study authors explained to the UK news outlet, consumed prey typically face backward because predators find it easier to consume meals head-first. Furthermore, the smaller specimen was found to be the same species as the adult, suggesting that it was offspring that was being carried by a parent – the first and thus far only evidence of live birth in such creatures.

In a statement, Professor Liu said that the team’s research “pushes back evidence of reproductive biology in the group by 50 million years” and added that information on the reproductive biology of pre-Jurassic Period archosauromorphs “was not available until our discovery,” despite the 260 million year history of these creatures.

Co-author and Montana State University professor Chris Organ added that their analysis revealed how the offspring’s sex would have been determined. “Some reptiles today, such as crocodiles, determine the sex of their offspring by the temperature inside the nest,” he noted. “We identified that Dinocephalosaurus, a distant ancestor of crocodiles, determined the sex of its babies genetically, like mammals and birds.”

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Image credit: Dinghua Yang

Not even creatures living in some of the deepest waters in the world are free from the effects of toxic, man-made chemical pollution, according to a new study led by scientists from the UK and published Monday in the online-exclusive journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

According to USA Today and the Washington Post, Dr. Alan Jamieson, a marine ecologist from Newcastle University, and his colleagues found elevated levels of industrial chemicals a group of tiny shrimp-like crustaceans living at depths of 10,000 meters in the Mariana Trench.

In fact, they discovered higher levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in amphipods in the Trench than in crabs living in waters fed by one of the most polluted rivers in China. They also found comparable levels of PCBs and other harmful chemicals in the bodies of similar creatures living in the slightly-less deep Kermadec Trench.

The study indicates that humans have left a “footprint in the deepest places in the world,” Jamieson told USA Today. “Not only are (the pollutants) in every single sample, regardless of species, depth, trench, whatever, the concentrations are extraordinarily high. That was a big surprise.”

“We still think of the deep ocean as being this remote and pristine realm, safe from human impact, but our research shows that, sadly, this could not be further from the truth,” he added in separate comments made to the Guardian. “The fact that we found such extraordinary levels of these pollutants really brings home the long-term, devastating impact that mankind is having on the planet.”

Contamination levels were ‘sky high,’ study authors found

As part of their research, Jamieson and colleagues from the University of Aberdeen and the James Hutton Institute used a robotic submarine to collect amphipods from the Mariana and the Kermadec Trenches and analyzed them for PCBs and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), two now-banned types of chemicals linked to a variety of health problems.

Both PCBs and PBDEs are persistent organic pollutants (POPs), industrial chemicals whose use has been limited or banned for years but which do not break down in the environment, according to the Guardian. Studies have linked these substances to neurological and immune problems, as well as to reproductive issues and even cancer in humans, the Washington Post added.

Using vehicles known as “deep-sea landers,” the study authors trapped amphipods living in the deepest parts of the trenches and tested them for PCBs and PBDEs. They found pollutants in all types of the crustaceans, in both trenches and at all depths samples, up to 10,000 meters deep in both locations. Average concentrations were higher in the Mariana Trench, the Post noted, with some testing at levels 50 times higher than crabs from China’s highly polluted Liaohe River.

“The very bottom of the deep trenches like the Mariana are inhabited by incredibly efficient scavenging animals… so any little bit of organic material that falls down, these guys turn up in huge numbers and devour it,” Jamieson told the Guardian. While he was not surprised to find some POPs in creatures living at such extreme depths, he said that the shocking thing was “just how high the levels were – the contamination in the animals was sky high.”

Katherine Dafforn, a senior research associate at the University of New South Wales in Australia and the author of a commentary accompanying the new study, called the findings “surprising and quite alarming.” As she explained to USA Today, “Chemicals that were produced, subsequently regulated and then largely eliminated before I was even born have continued to persist, and now we find evidence of them even in our deepest oceans.”

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Image credit: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration

Could Arctic sea ice decline be slowed by using millions of wind-powered pumps to transport water to the region, where it can freeze and thicken the ice cap? Scientists from Arizona State University seem to think so and have detailed their plan in the journal Earth’s Future.

According to physicist Steven Desch and his colleagues, climate change could cause the Arctic to be ice-free during the late summer months within the next two decades, and it is unlikely that temperatures and greenhouse gasses could be decreased in time to prevent such an occurrence.

“Restoring sea ice artificially is… imperative,” the authors wrote. Fortunately, they have a plan: building 10 million wind-powered pumps above the Arctic ice cap that would be used during the winter, which they argue could increase the thickness of the ice by as much as one meter over the course of the season and “more than reverse current trends of ice loss in the Arctic.”

“Thicker ice would mean longer-lasting ice. In turn, that would mean the danger of all sea ice disappearing from the Arctic in summer would be reduced significantly,” Desch said during an interview with the Observer on Saturday. “Our only strategy at present seems to be to tell people to stop burning fossil fuels. It’s a good idea but it is going to need a lot more than that to stop the Arctic’s sea ice from disappearing.”

The proposed system would be part of a multi-pronged strategy for restoring Arctic sea ice, the researchers said, and while it has the potential to succeed, it would come at a cost – $500 billion, to be specific. It is, in the Observer’s words, “an astonishing sum,” but Desch and his colleagues believe that it may well be necessary to prevent a potential catastrophe in the Arctic.

A hefty price tag, but study authors confident it will work

Why such urgency? Desch explained that the region is currently warming twice as fast as climate models from just a couple of years ago predicted and that the 2015 Paris climate agreement alone will not be enough preventing the sea ice there from disappearing completely during the summer. In fact, he and his colleagues warn that said ice could vanish by as soon as 2030.

Were that to happen, the Observer said, it would cause many of the animals living in the area to become endangered, and could cause the rest of the world to heat at an even greater rate because of the loss of solar radiation-reflecting ice. Ultimately, this would cause weather patterns all over the northern hemisphere to become disrupted and would increase the amount of carbon escaping into the atmosphere due to the melting of permafrost in some regions.

“The rapid and alarming loss of Arctic summer sea ice represents a powerful and detrimental positive feedback in the system that must be arrested to prevent even greater changes to the climate,” Desch and his co-authors wrote. “Given the unlikelihood that the global climate changes that are triggering the loss of ice will be solved by then, we are motivated to investigate means of directly and intentionally increasing the ice thickness.”

“We have considered the feasibility of using wind power to pump seawater from below the ice to the surface, where it can freeze more easily,” they noted. Based on their analysis, they found that the Arctic is home to enough wind power that for every windmill with six meter diameter blades, 1.3 meters of water (equal to 1.4 meters of ice) could be pumped over 0.1 square kilometer of the Arctic during the winter months, increasing ice thickness by nearly one full meter.

Since the mean annual thickness of Arctic ice is approximately 1.5 meters, they explained, this plan could increase the thickness of the ice by about 70% over the course of a winter – enough to counteract the 0.58 meters lost each year due to the changing climate. While the program would be costly, Desch told the Observer, he said that he was “confident” that it would be effective.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

We all know guys can impress the ladies by having “Moves Like Jagger,” but new research published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports reveals exactly how guys (and gals) should dance in order to maximize their potential sexiness.

For males, the best moves are focused on the upper body, while for females, the hips, thighs, and arms are key, psychologists from Northumbria University in the UK and their colleagues learned by using a highly-scientific method involving motion-capture technology and digital avatars.

As Engadget and Popular Science explained, the researchers used 3D motion-capture technology to record women dancing to a song by British recording artist Robbie Williams, then mapped the footage onto digitally-created characters in order to eliminate other variables, such as clothing or hairstyle. The footage was then shown to groups of heterosexual men and women.

The researchers found three movement types that contributed to attractive female dancing, they reported in their new study: greater hip swing, asymmetric thigh movements and an intermediate amount of asymmetric arm movements to go along with the independent hip and leg motions.

“Hip swing is a trait that identifies female movement,” they explained, and the ability to move independently (asymmetrically) “may attest to well-developed motor control” provided it “does not verge into uncontrolled pathological movement. We also found that the same level of dance quality could be predicted by different combinations of dance features.”

Sexiness of these moves may vary by gender, culture

As Engadget noted, corresponding author Nick Neave and his colleagues believe that the value placed on hip swing and independent thigh movements is due to a perceived link between motor control and fertility – but they warn that most attractive moves may also vary by culture.

“Dance is strongly influenced by culture, so there may be some cultural differences in specific movements or gestures,” Neave told Popular Science. In general, though, he said people tend to agree on the topic. “The basic idea that dance moves are able to convey honest information about the reproductive qualities of the dancer in question appears sound.”

“Previous research has shown that male dance quality can be predicted by variability in the amplitude of neck and trunk movements together with the speed of movement of the right knee,” the authors wrote. “Here, using cutting-edge motion-capture technology combined with powerful multi-level models, we have uncovered a set of specific movement parameters associated with perceived female dance quality.”

The researchers noted that while men and women generally rated dance moves consistently, they did notice some statistically significant differences between the two sexes. This is likely because heterosexual males are evaluating the dancers in terms of their potential as partners, while the females might be looking at the performers as rivals or potential competitors.

“Future work might examine whether dance attractiveness differs according to variables that distinguish individuals in terms of their value or potential as a partner or competitor,” the study authors said. “Previous work has found that the physical traits of a single individual tend to be awarded similar ratings of attractiveness, suggesting that traits function as a single ornament of partner quality. Dance might be another part of this ornament.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Making craft beer isn’t typically considered part of an archaeologist’s job description, but that hasn’t stopped a team of researchers from Stanford University from recreating a 5,000-year-old Chinese brew from residue gathered from the inside of ancient pottery containers.

The recipe, which was detailed in a study published last summer in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, included ingredients such as barley, broomcorn millet, a type of Asian grass known as Job’s tears, and other grains. It was said to be the first direct evidence of in situ beer production in China, as well as the earliest known evidence of barley use.

Now, as reported earlier this week by Engadget and Tech Times, Stanford Chinese archaeology professor Li Liu and her students successfully recreated the brew – which was said to be sweeter, thicker, and less bitter than modern beers while having a fruity aroma – as part of the professor’s Archaeology of Food: Production, Consumption and Ritual coursework.

“Archaeology is not just about reading books and analyzing artifact. Trying to imitate ancient behavior and make things with the ancient method helps students really put themselves into the past and understand why people did what they did,” Liu, who was a member of the team which made the initial discovery of the pottery and beer residue while working at a site in northeastern China, explained earlier this week in a statement.

So how did they do it, and why (hint: because it’s beer)

In addition to cereal grains and Asian grass, the researchers found yam and lily root among the beer’s ingredients – although it was the barley that Liu said she sound most surprising because the use of barley seeds had previously only dated back 4,000 years. The discovery suggests that barley was first used in China for alcohol, not for food, the professor explained.

The ancient brew was not only sweeter and fruitier than modern beers, but was also thicker and was said to resemble porridge, the researchers said. The ingredients that were used to ferment it were not filtered out, and straws would have been used to consume the beverage. Unsurprisingly, the brew captured the attention of homebrew experts and craft beer aficionados, so in addition to having her students recreate it, Liu has posted a video explaining the process.

To begin with, each of the students chooses to use either wheat, millet or barley seeds to create an imitation of the ancient brew. The selected grain is then covered with water and given time to sprout (a process called malting). Afterward, the seeds are crushed, once again placed in water and placed in an oven, where they are heated to 149 degrees Fahrenheit (65 degrees Celsius) for one hour, and then they are sealed with plastic and allowed to ferment for about a week.

Each of the various concoctions that the students come up with are ultimately going to be used as part of ancient alcohol research that Liu and her colleagues are currently working on, Stanford said in a statement. The beers will be analyzed and incorporated into the ongoing study, research team member and doctoral candidate Jiajing Wang noted, allowing students “experience what the daily work of some archaeologists looks” and “contribute to our ongoing research.”

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Image credit:  Jiajing Wang et al

Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Virginia’s Liberty University have reportedly discovered fragments of the original Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient texts containing the oldest-known biblical manuscripts, at a new cave located in the West Bank of Israel.

According to Smithsonian.com, Hebrew University archaeologist Oren Gutfeld and his fellow researchers discovered a piece of parchment in a cave hidden in the hills of Wadi Qumran, the same site where 11 caves have previously been found to contain the 2,000-year-old scrolls.

Entrance to Dead Sea Scrolls Cave 12 (Photo: Casey L. Olson and Oren Gutfeld)

In a statement, Gutfeld emphasizes that no actual Dead Sea Scrolls were found at the new site, but the discovery of the rolled-up parchment “indicate beyond any doubt that the cave contained scrolls that were stolen.” He called the find “one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries, and the most important in the last 60 years, in the caves of Qumran.”

The first fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the late 1940s by a group of teens exploring a cave at the Wadi Qumran, and as Smithsonian.com explained, the documents are not only ancient records of the Hebrew bible, but also “first-person accounts of history” filled with a “priceless” amount of historical and linguistic information.

Experts have ‘no doubt’ that the cave was once home to a scroll

The excavation which led to the discovery was part of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s (IAA) new “Operation Scroll” initiative, and Gutfield’s team said that they are the first archeologists in more than six decades to discover and properly excavate a new scroll cave at Wadi Qumran.

Their excavation efforts, they explained, revealed that it was indeed home to Dead Sea Scrolls at one time, though as mentioned above, no scrolls were actually found by the research team. What they did find, however, were several jars and lids which dated back to the Second Temple period (530 BC-70 AD), all of which had been broken and had their contents removed.

Cloth used to wrap the scrolls (Credit: Casey L. Olson AND Oren Gutfield)

In addition, the archeologists found two iron pickaxe heads dating back from the 1950s near the back end of the cave, which they say was evidence that the cave had previously been looted. The new cave would not be the first suspected Dead Sea Scrolls location to not actually contain a part of the document, as the eighth cave was also home to scroll jars but no scroll fragments.

“This exciting excavation is the closest we’ve come to discovering new Dead Sea scrolls in 60 years. Until now, it was accepted that Dead Sea scrolls were found only in 11 caves at Qumran, but now there is no doubt that this is the 12th cave,” Gutfield said in a statement.

In addition to the storage jars believed to have held the stolen scrolls, the researchers also found a leather strap that would have been used to bind the parchment, a cloth used to wrap it, pieces of skin-connecting fragments, several flint blades and arrowheads, and a decorated stamp seal made from the semi-precious stone carnelian, indicating that the cave was used during the Chalcolithic and Neolithic periods.

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Image credit: Casey L. Olson and Oren Gutfeld

A newly-discovered species of geckos have a unique method of escaping predators – the unusual creatures can not only detach their tail like other geckos but can also shed their scales in order to escape capture, according to research published Tuesday in the journal PeerJ.

Identified as Geckolepis megalepis, the new species has fish-like scales that are larger than other members of its genus, the Los Angeles Times said, and while other geckos also have scales which can be removed, they lack the level of control that the Geckolepis has over the mechanism.

When grasped, this lizard loses its scales (F. Glaw)

Megalepis was found in the limestone karst of Ankarana in northern Madagascar, according to the study authors, and is the first new member of its genus to be detailed in 75 years. In fact, they were even able to snap an image of a nearly scale-less specimen, which had pink skin and looked like “a fresh, uncooked sausage that is… wet,” the Washington Post noted.

The good news, lead author Mark Scherz, a herpetologist with the Bavarian State Collection for Zoology in Munich, told the Post, is that they can replace the lost scales in a matter of weeks. He noted that the regeneration process “is, as far as we have been able to tell, scarless” and that new scales appear to be “indistinguishable” from the original ones.

Defense mechanism ‘unique among vertebrates,’ scientists say

Informally dubbed “fish-scale geckos,” G. megalepis appear can be removed far more easily than most other gecko scales, according to the Times. This is due partially to their size, but Scherz and his colleagues believe that the lizards use a control mechanism to trigger the process as well.

As the researchers explained, the gecko contracts a layer of connective tissue located beneath the skin in order to release its scales. At the same time, the blood vessels closest to the surface of the skin contract to prevent bleeding, thanks to a specialized type of cell called a myofibroblast.

Myofibroblasts tighten on contact, the Post explained, causing both the upper layers of skin and the subcutaneous fat tissue to loosen, allowing the scales to be easily removed. While Scherz and his colleagues have only seen this defense mechanism used once in the wild, he said that it would be “reasonable to infer that this is a good escape strategy, or else it is unlikely to have evolved.”

While the Times compared the appearance of the scale-less gecko to that of “a half-picked scab,” stem cells from the bottom layers of connecting tissue soon begins regenerating the scales, and it usually takes just a few weeks before the creatures are once again covered in scales. The process is described by the study authors as “unique among vertebrates,” and further analysis could help scientists adapt the mechanisms to help treat humans.

Scherz admitted to the Post that his team doesn’t know a ton about these new creatures yet, but that they are hopeful that they will be able to learn more about this scale-shedding process and its functionality against various types of predators in future studies. Researchers from Sam Houston State University in Texas, and Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt and Technische Universität Braunschweig in Germany were also involved in the study.

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Image credit: F. Glaw

Scientists are currently highly interested in surfaces that can kill bacteria, and dragonfly wings may be able to help.

Research into bacteria-killing surfaces has included infusing a slippery surface with molecules that disrupt bacterial communication and using deadly silver nanoparticle coatings.

The most brutal example uses black silicon to rip bacteria apart on a ‘bed of nails’ consisting of nanopillars. This is part of research into nano-textured surfaces (NTS), which nature has its own examples of – including dragonfly wings.

The wings kill bacteria with a structure very similar to that created by black silicon.

Dragonfly wings are made of an amazing material (Credit: Thinkstock)

Why are dragonfly wings so effective?

Until now, experts believed that the so-called bed of nails punctures the cell wall in order to inflict damage. But a team of Australian and Nigerian researchers has used microscopy techniques to come up with a new theory.

The researchers noticed that in dragonfly wings the nanopillars were not of equal height, which does not apply in bed of nails tests.

In fact, they noted, with dragonfly wings the bacterial membrane has no direct contact with the nanopillars. Instead, the nanopillars attach to extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) – structural molecules secreted by the bacteria (E. coli in this study). They also attach to “finger-like” extensions.

Adhesive forces then deform the bacterial membrane, even though they may not actually be enough to cause rupture. Bacteria are now in trap a which they could probably survive for a time if they remained still. However, once they move, the force on the EPSs causes the membrane to be torn apart and cellular content of the bacteria to leak out like air from a balloon.

Finally, the nanopillars penetrate the dead cells.

Although a change in accepted theory may be on the cards, further tests are required. Tests on bacteria with only one membrane (E.coli has two) as well as on bacteria with fewer EPSs are needed. New experiments that amend the synthetic bed of nails to give pillars of different heights are also desirable.

One thing is for certain, though – as well as being beautiful, dragonfly wings are also clean.

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Image credit:

By analyzing the genome of the Australian pitcher plant and comparing it to those of other types of carnivorous plants elsewhere in the world, the authors of a new study have discovered that all of them underwent similar molecular changes, despite differences in time and location.

“We’re really looking at a classic case of convergent evolution,” Victor Albert, a biologist with the University of Buffalo and the co-leader of the research, told Scientific American on Monday. Despite being continents away from each other and evolving several millions of year apart, these plants all appear to have developed very similar digestive processes, his team found.

Unlike the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), which entombs its prey in a jaw-like structure if triggered, pitcher plants trick insects into a slippery cup-shaped leaf that keeps them from getting out once they fall in, explained NPR. Once the insect is trapped, its exoskeleton is slowly broken down by a liquid, allowing the plant to obtain the nutrients it needs in order to survive.

“It’s kind of counterintuitive that a plant is actually using an animal for some of its food. We usually think of animals, such as ourselves, as using plants,” Albert said, adding that his study has discovered that “the pathways to evolving a carnivorous plant, and in particular, to a pitcher plant, may be very restricted.”

‘Similar genetic building blocks’ found in multiple pitcher plants

To investigate what genetic changes may have occurred to allow flora to capture and to digest insects, the study authors first examined the genome of the Australian pitcher plant (Cephalotus follicularis). These plants, they explained, have two different types of leaves – one group that is responsible for photosynthesis, and one which become the bug-trapping pitcher.

By sequencing the DNA of the Australian pitcher plant, they found genes that are specific to the pitcher leaf, and are rarely or never found in other parts of the plant. As they reported earlier this week in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, they believe that this DNA is responsible for the development of the trap mechanism. Furthermore, by comparing it to samples from unrelated American and Asian pitcher plant species, they found similar digestive processes at work.

In short, despite the fact that all three types of pitcher plants evolved in different locations and at different times, they all developed similar mechanisms for trying to cope with environments with nutrient-poor soil by trying to obtain nitrogen and phosphorus from trapped insects. Furthermore, they each shared “similar genetic building blocks,” co-author Kenji Fukushima told Gizmodo.

Albert’s colleagues are praising the findings. Thomas Givnish, who studies plant evolution at the University of Wisconsin, called it “a really unique study and the first of its kind” in an interview with NPR while Massachusetts ecologist Aaron Ellison told Scientific American that the research was important because it demonstrated that convergent evolution for carnivorous plants could be proven to occur down to even the molecular level.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

After more than five decades, researchers have found a rare, elusive species of frog known as the “cave squeaker” in Zimbabwe, with four specimens of the unusual amphibian having been found in a mountainous area in the eastern part of the country, various media outlets have reported.

According to The Guardian, the Arthroleptis troglodytes, nicknamed the “cave squeaker” due to its preferred habitat, was originally discovered in 1962 but had not been spotted since then – that is, until researchers discovered the first of three males on December 3 of last year.

Robert Hopkins of the natural history museum in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and his colleagues were working in the Chimanimani region when they found the frog – or, to be more accurate, the other members of the team were working there when they made their discovery. Hopkins was not with them at the time, he explained to the New York Times.

“I was at the base. I can no longer climb the mountains as I am 75,” he noted. Nonetheless, the discovery is the culmination of his team’s eight-year search for the Arthroleptis troglodytes, and they now plan to breed more of the frogs and reintroduce them to the mountains of Zimbabwe.

Experts fear this might be bad news for the endangered species

A tiny creature that is light brown in color with dark spots, the Arthroleptis troglodytes is listed as Critically Endangered (Possibly Extinct) on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. While the discovery of the new specimens seems like it would be good news, officials at the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority are somewhat concerned.

Spokewoman Caroline Washaya-Moyo explained to The Guardian that interest in the frog from members of the scientific community may result in the frogs being caught and illegally exported to other countries. “We are expecting an influx of scientists looking for it,” she said. “We will do everything in our power to protect and conserve the frog,” including devising a plan to protect it from such threats.

According to the IUCN, the “cave squeaker” is listed as critically endangered because its extent of occurrence is just 20 square kilometers, it lives in just a single threat-defined location, and the extent and quality of its habitat is currently in decline. It was tagged as “possibly extinct” due to the length between sightings and the inability of 2010 surveys to find any specimens.

“This is a very poorly understood species,” the Zoological Society of London added. “Most of the cave squeaker specimens were collected in sinkholes or caves, and a few were found in open montane grassland… It is thought to be very rare and difficult to find, but very little is known about what factors may threaten its survival in the wild. As an isolated, montane species, it could be at risk from the effects of climate change.”

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Image credit: Francois Becker/AP

Already under a gag order preventing them from communicating with the press or using social media and facing the threat of funding cuts, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could be eliminated altogether under a new bill proposed last week by a Florida congressman.

The bill, HR 861, is a proposed law introduced by Florida Republican Matt Gaetz on February 3 that would “terminate” the EPA. While the full text of the bill was not available as of Sunday, it would transfer regulatory power to the states, according to the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal.

As NBC News reported, while President Donald Trump has proposed reducing EPA funding by as much as $800 million, Gaetz’s bill would see that the agency is abolished by the end of 2018, and it comes two months after Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (who has filed a total of 14 lawsuits against the EPA) was selected by Trump to lead the organization.

“When it was originally created, states and local communities didn’t have the technology or expertise to protect the environment,” Gaetz told the News Journal Friday “We’ve come a long way in the last 50 years. Time and again, I’ve seen constituents unknowingly subject themselves to the oppressive jurisdiction of the EPA by doing simple things.”

The bill has been co-sponsored by congressmen Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Steven Palazzo of Mississippi and Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, all Republicans, Gizmodo said. While Massie told the News Journal that the EPA needs to be eliminated because it “makes rules that undermine the voice of the American people and threaten jobs in Kentucky,” Gizmodo noted that the new bill is thus far short on detail regarding how the dismantling procedure would work.

Could states handle the burden of environmental regulation?

The bill has been submitted to the House Committee on Natural Resources, where the chairman of the committee, Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, will determine whether or not it will be put to a vote. While Gaetz is confident that environmental regulatory power would simply shift to the states if the EPA is disbanded, legal experts told the News Journal that might not be the case.

“A lot of states just don’t have resources available to them,” said Mary Jane Angelo, a professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and the director of its Environmental and Land Use Law Program. “Wealthier states would have better protection for their citizens’ health than poorer states,” and if the agency were eliminated, “decisions would have to be made on hundreds of programs about what happens to them,” she added.

Without federal oversight, states would begin “a race to the bottom,” added Alyson Flournoy, a UF law professor a member scholar at the liberal Center for Progressive Reform. Without having it as an incentive to attract industry, many states would relax environmental guidelines as part of an ill-advised short-term economic strategy that could significantly harm public health, she said.

The move “seems to be part of a wave from elected officials designed to capture headlines but not do good government,” Flournoy told the newspaper. However, Gaetz, argued in an email he sent to colleagues that his bill would cut overhead at the federal level, citing statistics from the right-leaning American Action Forum claiming that it takes more than 94,000 full-time workers earning an average of $33 per hour to complete one year of EPA paperwork.

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Image credit: Getty

The date has been set for a previously-announced protest march in support of scientists, and it couldn’t have been more appropriate in light of the fact that the main target of the protests is a president who has claimed that “nobody  knows” if climate change is real.

Yes, according to Salon.com and The Independent, the organizers of the nonpartisan March for Science have announced they plan to stage an event to “take a stand for science in politics” in Washington DC (and in several other major US cities) on Saturday, April 22.

According to the group’s website, they will be holding a “teach-in” at the National Mall as part of their campaign, which they are calling “a celebration of our passion for science and a call to support and safeguard the scientific community” in light of “recent policy changes.”

Get ready.

“Mischaracterization of science as a partisan issue, which has given policymakers permission to reject overwhelming evidence, is a critical and urgent matter,” the organizers said. “It is time for people who support scientific research and evidence-based policies to take a public stand and be counted” in order to “support and safeguard the scientific community,” they added.

The March for Science movement, which started on Reddit just days after the Women’s March on Washington, follows the placing of a gag order on EPA and USDA researchers by the Trump administration and comes amid threats of funding cuts to NASA and the EPA, Salon.com said.

Is the march a good idea? Not all scientists think so.

Given the President’s stance on climate change, it seems fitting that the March is scheduled to take place on the day many credit with bringing environmental issues to the forefront. The first Earth Day was created by Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970, The Independent said, and was held just a few months before the EPA signed into law by President Richard Nixon.

As the organizers previously told the Huffington Post, “Scientists worldwide have been alarmed by the clear anti-science actions taken by the Trump administration,” noting that there had been “funding freezes and efforts to restrict scientists from communicating their findings” just a week into the Trump presidency – “absurd” actions that “cannot be allowed to stand as policy.”

Not all scientists are on board with the planned protests, however. In an editorial written for the Washington Post, Western Carolina University coastal geology professor Robert S. Young called the planned event “a terrible idea” that “will serve only to reinforce the narrative from skeptical conservatives that scientists are an interest group and politicize their data, research, and findings for their own ends.”

“A march by scientists, while well intentioned, will serve only to trivialize and politicize the science we care so much about,” Young said, adding that it would “turn scientists into another group caught up in the culture wars and further drive the wedge between scientists and a certain segment of the American electorate.”

“The solution here is not mass spectacle, but an increased effort to communicate directly with those who do not understand the degree to which the changing climate is already affecting their lives. We need storytellers, not marchers,” he concluded. “Believe me, I understand the desire to impart to everyone how important science is to every sector of our economy, the health of our planet and the future of our families. But I don’t see how a march accomplishes any of that. If tens of thousands of us show up, it will simply increase the size of the echo chamber.”

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Image credit: Mario Tama

Snatching flies out of the air is no easy task, but new research published this week in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface had revealed that frogs have a secret weapon in their arsenal which makes things easier – super-sticky saliva specially evolved to help them hunt insects.

Scientists have long suspected that frogs used their saliva to help catch their prey, but as part of their new study, a team led by Georgia Institute of Technology Ph. D. student Alexis Noel used a combination of high-speed photography and an instrument called a rheometer to confirm that the tailless amphibians are able to produce ultra-adhesive saliva when catching flies.

According to NPR, Noel and her colleagues gathered 15 frogs and scraped their tongue to collect saliva samples under prey-capturing conditions. They then analyzed those specimens and learned that when the frog’s tongue came into contact with a fly, the saliva’s properties change.

While frog saliva is typically thick like molasses, the force of the impact between the tongue and the fly causes it to liquefy and cover the prey’s body. Once it spreads out, the saliva thickens and allows the predator to pull the now-trapped insect into its mouth. What this means, the authors of the study said, is that frog spit is a non-Newtonian fluid, meaning it can change properties.

Protein content, structure of tongue responsible for this ability

In an interview with The Guardian, Noel called the process “incredible” and explained that the process is the result of shearing forces or forces that work in unaligned directions. In this case, frog saliva is known as a “shear-thinning fluid,” meaning that it typically has a thick consistency but is thinned dramatically by a shearing force, allowing it to enter into the fly’s crevices.

“Then, when the tongue snaps back, the saliva changes and becomes more viscous – thicker than honey, actually – gripping the insect for the ride back,” she told the UK media outlet. Afterward, the frog rubs its tongue on the inside of its mouth, dislodging the fly and allowing the predator to swallow its prey – thanks to an assist from its eyeball, which helps it to liquefy the saliva.

What causes this unusual phenomenon to happen? Noel explained that it is due in part to a number of long-chain proteins contained in the frog’s saliva, which cause it to be more mucus-like than human spit. Of course, the bungee-cord-like properties of the amphibian’s tongue also play a key role in the process by allowing it to stay in contact with the insect, and the tongue’s softness helps keep the saliva as it returns to the frog’s mouth, she told NPR.

The study is said to be the first to use these techniques to study the viscosity of frog saliva, and the researchers believe that learning more about how frog tongues work could someday make it possible to develop reversible soft adhesives capable of working at high velocity – perhaps even a conveyor belt that could be used to pick up fragile components in a manufacturing facility.

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Image credit: A. Noel and D.L. Hu/Georgia Institute of Technology

A piece of crust that broke off from the supercontinent Gondwana approximately 200 million years ago has been found underneath the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, according to new research published this week in the journal Nature Communications.

The fragment appears to have broken off from the island of Madagascar when Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctic spilt apart and formed the Indian Ocean, lead author Lewis Ashwal, a professor at Wits University in South Africa and his colleagues reported in their study.

After breaking off from the supercontinent, the piece of crust was covered by lava following volcanic eruptions on the island, and by studying the zircon content of the rocks, Ashwal’s team determined that the mineral remnants were far too old to have come from Mauritius itself.

“Earth is made up of two parts – continents, which are old, and oceans, which are ‘young,’ the professor explained in a statement. “On the continents, you find rocks that are over four billion years old, but you find nothing like that in the oceans, as this is where new rocks are formed.”

“Mauritius is an island, and there is no rock older than 9 million years old on the island,” added Ashwal. “However, by studying the rocks on the island, we have found zircons that are as old as 3 billion years.”

Findings support a controversial earlier study

According to the researchers, zircons are minerals that are predominantly found in granites from the continents and contain trace amounts of uranium, thorium, and lead. Since these minerals are able to survive geological processes well, they can be dated with very high accuracy.

The findings support a 2013 study in which traces of several-billion-year-old zircons were found in beach sand on the island of Mauritius – research which the authors of the new study noted has been criticized because the mineral may have been brought there by other means (for instance, it could have been blown in by the wind or inadvertently brought there by scientists).

However, Ashwal said, “The fact that we have found zircons of this age proves that there are much older crustal materials under Mauritius that could only have originated from a continent.” His team’s results “corroborates the previous study and refutes any suggestion of wind-blown, wave-transported or pumice-rafted zircons for explaining the earlier results,” he added.

Furthermore, he and his colleagues reported that the findings suggest that the break of up the supercontinent Gondwana (also known as Gondwanaland) was a complex process which left a number of various splintered fragments spread throughout the Indian Ocean. This process was the result of shifting plate tectonics, and left behind “fragments of continental crust of variable sizes,” the Wits University professor concluded.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

The first underwater images of a 3,600 square mile (9,500 square km) coral reef system that was discovered last April in the Amazon region have been released by Greenpeace environmentalists, along with a warning that the newfound ecosystem may already been in danger.

According to BBC News, the 620 mile (roughly 1,000 km) long Amazon Reef is located where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean and runs from French Guyana to the Brazilian state of Maranhao, and Greenpeac officials are concerned that it could soon be affected by oil drilling if companies are granted permits by the Brazilian government.

(Credit: Greenpeace)

“This reef system is important for many reasons, including the fact that it has unique characteristics regarding use and availability of light, and physicochemical water conditions,” Nils Asp from the Federal University of Pará, one of the authors of the 2016 Science Advances paper reporting on the reef’s discovery, said in a statement. “It has a huge potential for new species, and it is also important for the economic well-being of fishing communities along the Amazonian Coastal Zone.”

“Our team wants to have a better understanding of how this ecosystem works, including important questions like its photosynthesis mechanisms with very limited light,” he added. “Hopefully, this will lead to a gradual mapping of the reef system. At the moment, less than 5% of the ecosystem is mapped.”

Group calling on Brazil to protect surprising coral ecosystem

Asp and his colleagues discovered the Amazon Reef, which ranges from approximately 82-393 feet (25-120 meters) deep, while searching for a submarine launched from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza off the coast of Brazil. The discovery came as a surprise, according to BBC News, as the researchers believed the area was unfavorable to coral growth.

Only 5% of the reef has been mapped so far (Credit: Greenpeace)

While they are currently working to document, photograph and study the ecosystem, they fear that a pair of petroleum companies, BP and Total, may soon be given permission to drill in the area. According to Greenpeace, the proposed drilling area may potentially contain up to 15 to 20 billion barrels worth of oil reserves, though they fear the damage that an oil spill could cause to the newfound reef.

“We must defend the reef and the entire region at the mouth of the Amazon River basin from the corporate greed that puts profits ahead of the environment,” Thiago Almeida, an activist working at Greenpeace Brazil, said in a statement. “One of Total’s oil blocks is only eight kilometers from the reef, and environmental licensing processes are already under way.”

“After ratifying the Paris Agreement, President Michel Temer declared that the climate issue is an obligation for all governments,” added Almeida. “If Brazil’s commitment is serious, we must prevent the exploration of oil in the region and keep fossil fuels in the ground to avoid climate catastrophe.”

According to Greenpeace, 95 wells have been drilled in the region thus far. Twenty seven of those were abandoned following mechanical incidents, while the others were abandoned due to the lack of economically or technically viable petroleum. In addition to housing the reef system, the Amazon River is the habitat of the endangered river otter, the American manatee, the yellow tortoise and dolphins, the conservation group noted.

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Image credit: Greenpeace

Children’s relationships with their pets are more fulfilling than those with their siblings, a new study has found.

The University of Cambridge research even suggested that children may feel closer to their pets than they do to siblings.

”Anyone who has loved a childhood pet knows that we turn to them for companionship and disclosure, just like relationships between people,” said Matt Cassells, a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the Department of Psychiatry, who led the study.

“We wanted to know how strong these relationships are with pets relative to other close family ties. Ultimately this may enable us to understand how animals contribute to healthy child development.”

The family pet could be a great boon to your family’s emotional health. (Credit: Andrew Branch/Unsplash)

The importance of pets to human well-being

The study, published in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology and conducted in collaboration with the WALTHAM Centre for Pet Nutrition, asked 12-year-old children from 77 families about their connections to their pets.

Overall, the children said they had stronger relationships with their pets compared to with their siblings, with dogs providing the greatest satisfaction.

Although in their responses some children may overlook the nuanced differences between relationships with animals and family members (and many would rarely be expected to publicly admit to loving their brother or sister in any context), the study does add to growing research about the important of pets in human well-being. In this case in the emotional and social development in children.

“Evidence continues to grow showing that pets have positive benefits on human health and community cohesion,” said Dr. Nancy Gee, Human-Animal Interaction Research Manager at WALTHAM and a co-author of the study.

“The social support that adolescents receive from pets may well support psychological well-being later in life but there is still more to learn about the long-term impact of pets on children’s development.”

Pets are good listeners

Speaking about the differences between genders, Cassels noted that: “While previous research has often found that boys report stronger relationships with their pets than girls do, we actually found the opposite. While boys and girls were equally satisfied with their pets, girls reported more disclosure, companionship, and conflict with their pet than did boys.”

One important element of the importance of pets in kids’ lives may simply be that they are seen as being good listeners.

”Even though pets may not fully understand or respond verbally, the level of disclosure to pets was no less than to siblings,” explained Cassels. “The fact that pets cannot understand or talk back may even be a benefit as it means they are completely non-judgemental.

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Image credit: Thinkstock