Days after the inauguration of a President who has previously said that “nobody really knows” if climate change is real and who reportedly placed a gag order on researchers at the USDA and the EPA, a group of scientists have announced plans to organize a march on Washington.

The new, nonpartisan effort is designed to “to take a stand for science in politics,” the organizers explained on their website. “Slashing funding and restricting scientists from communicating their findings (from tax-funded research!) with the public…cannot be allowed to stand as policy,” they added, calling it an issue that “reaches far beyond people in the STEM fields.”

According to LiveScience, the seeds for the initiative were planted on January 22 (two days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration and one day after the Women’s March on Washington, a protest which reportedly drew more than three million people to the nation’s capital) on Reddit.

During a discussion regarding changes to the White House website, including the removed of a subsection on climate change, one Reddit user suggested that there should be a Scientists’ March on Washington. Others quickly chimed in with their support for the idea, and while there has not been an official date set for the gathering as of yet, the movement seems to be growing.

Movement still in its beginning stages, organizers admit

In addition to the website, the organizers have launched a Twitter handle (@ScienceMarchDC) that already has tens of thousands of followers, as well as a now-private Facebook group which has attracted more than 200,000 users, according to LiveScience and CNN.com reports.

The organizers told the Huffington Post that interest in the proposed march grew “far faster” than expected and admitted that they were still in the early stages of organizing the event. They added that concerns over the new President’s views on research served as the catalyst for the march.

“Scientists worldwide have been alarmed by the clear anti-science actions taken by the Trump administration,” they told the website via email. “It has been less than a week and there have already been funding freezes and efforts to restrict scientists from communicating their findings with the public… These actions are absurd and cannot be allowed to stand as policy.”

Public health scientist Caroline Weinberg, co-organizer of the march, told CNN.com that the group was currently “crafting a mission statement collaborating with a diverse group of scientists to ensure that our movement is all inclusive,” and that the movement would address issues such as federal funding for scientists, transparency, and US climate change policy.

In separate but related news, The Atlantic reported earlier this week that a new group known as 314 Action plans to encourage scientists to run for public office. As founder Shaughnessy Naughton explained, “A lot of scientists traditionally feel that science is above politics, but we’re seeing that politics is not above getting involved in science. We’re losing, and the only way to stop that is to get more people with scientific backgrounds at the table.”

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Image credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Is it possible to brew beer on the moon? We may soon have the answer to this pressing question, thanks to a team of researchers at the University of California, San Diego who have proposed an experiment that which would study the behavior of yeast on the lunar surface.

While the experiment will result in a freshly brewed batch of alcoholic beverages, the scientists from UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering aren’t just out to make space beer (which, in and of itself would be pretty cool). Rather, studying how yeast behaves on the moon is important for the development of various pharmaceuticals, as well as bread and similar foods.

The students, who have dubbed themselves “Team Original Gravity,” are one of 25 teams chosen from a group of several thousand to compete for a spot on an upcoming moon mission, according to Space.com. The contest organizers, Team Indus, are one of four groups that have a signed deal to send a spacecraft to the moon as part of the Google Lunar XPRIZE challenge competition.

ALEiens technology by Team Original Gravity.
(Credit: Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego Publications)

“The idea started out with a few laughs amongst a group of friends,” Neeki Ashari, a fifth-year bioengineering student at the university and the team’s PR & Operations Lead, explained earlier this month in a statement.

“We all appreciate the craft of beer, and some of us own our own home-brewing kits,” she said. “When we heard that there was an opportunity to design an experiment that would go up on India’s moonlander, we thought we could combine our hobby with the competition by focusing on the viability of yeast in outer space.”

Experiment would lift off in December if selected

Ashari and her colleagues will actually begin their experiment before leaving for the moon, as they will prepare the “wort” or unfermented beer on Earth before departing. They also will not be separating the fermentation and carbonation phases of the brewing process, as most brewers do, but will instead combine them to eliminate the need to release accumulated CO2.

Doing so, the researchers explained, will help them avoid safety and sanitation issues, while also eliminating the possibility of over-pressurization and making the system easier to design. Finally, instead of using density measurements to test fermentation and yeast viability, Ashari’s team will be doing so using pressure, since density measurements depend on gravity.

“Converting the pressure buildup to fermentation progress is straightforward, as long as volume and original gravity – specific gravity before fermentation, hence our name – are known prior to the experiment,” explained Han Ling, a fifth year bioengineering undergraduate and the brewing lead for the project, which would be the first to ever attempt to brew beer in outer space.

If chosen, the experiment will be launch on December 28 onboard the Team Indus spacecraft. Team Indus  has signed a contract with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as part of their entry in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, according to Space.com, and is looking to take hope a $20 million grand prize by sending a robot to the moon, having it explore at least 1,640 feet (500 meters) and send back high-definition images and videos.

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Image credit: Team Indus

Documents obtained by various media outlets has revealed that the Trump administration has placed a gag order on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibiting employees from communicating with the press.

Furthermore, according to The Guardian and The Verge, the order prohibits members of both agencies – including scientists – from using social media to communicate directly to the public. Emails detailing the new policy at the EPA were first obtained by the Associated Press, while a document sent to USDA employees was first obtained by Buzzfeed News.

The EPA email reportedly prohibits employees at the agency from “providing updates on social media or to reporters,” and also prohibits them from awarding new grants or contracts, according to The Guardian. The emails follow a report published earlier this week by The Hill stating that the new administration is planning to cut the agency’s budget by as much as $800 million.

As for the USDA memo, it was sent to various USDA employees – including those working at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) – and ordered them not to release “any public-facing documents” including “news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content” until further notice. On Tuesday, the agency told Buzzfeed that the new policy referred only to “informational products like news releases” and that “scientific publications, released through peer reviewed professional journals are not included.”

“As the US Department of Agriculture’s chief scientific in-house research agency, ARS values and is committed to maintaining the free flow of information between our scientists and the American public as we strive to find solutions to agricultural problems affecting America,” ARS spokesperson Christopher Bentley told reporters in a statement.

Employees defy, experts respond to the administration’s orders

In addition, as Time reported on Tuesday, officials running the Twitter account of the Badlands National Park in South Dakota tweeted out a series of climate change-related statistics that seem to run counter to the administration’s official stance on the issue – an activity that some believed may have been in defiance of the EPA gag order. Those tweets were later deleted.

That Twitter activity “followed a brief suspension Friday of all National Park accounts… after the National Park Service’s official account retweeted two posts that were unflattering toward the Trump administration,” the publication added. One of the tweets “noted the changing language” regarding climate change and other issues on the new White House website. It was later deleted and officials from the Park Service apologized for having shared it.

“President Trump and his administration have ignored scientific reality, and now they’re trying to hide it,” Emily Southard, campaign director of ClimateTruth.org, said in a statement. “Merely five days into Donald Trump’s presidency, the administration is silencing the agencies tasked with protecting our environment, our health, and our food supply.”

Southard said that the move “sets a dangerous precedent and is sending a chilling message to civil servants throughout the country,” adding that researchers “have a right to speak freely and duty to share their research publicly” and that “suppressing… scientists from communicating with the American public is a dangerous move that sets us on a path where policy decisions are divorced from reality.”

The gag order and the freeze on EPA grants and contracts “don’t just threaten scientists – they threaten everyone in the country who breathes air, drinks water and eats food,” added Andrew Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “These agency scientists carry out research in support of policies that protect our health and safety and help farmers, and it makes no sense to put up walls between them and the public, or unilaterally halt the work they do.”

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Image credit: Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images

A newly identified species of prehistoric otter weighed more than 100 pounds and was about the same size as a modern-day wolf, making it one of the largest otters ever discovered, according to research published online earlier this week by the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

Dubbed Siamogale melilutra, the creature lived more than six million years ago in the Yunnan Province in China and was “two to three times larger than any modern otter species,” Denise Su, curator and chief of paleobotany and paleoecology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and co-author of the new study, said Monday in an interview with NPR.

Dr. Su and her colleague Dr. Xiamong Wang, curator and head of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, explained that Siamogale melilutra was part of a lineage of extinct otters that was previously identified only through the discovery of a few teeth belonging to a different, far older species that were previously recovered in Thailand.

With this new species, however, the study authors found a complete cranium and mandible along with other skeletal remains, which allowed made it possible for them to discern much about these creatures’ evolutionary history, functional morphology and taxonomy, they said in a statement.

“While the cranium is incredibly complete, it was flattened during the fossilization process. The bones were so delicate that we could not physically restore the cranium. Instead, we CT-scanned the specimen and virtually reconstructed it in a computer,” explained Dr. Su. Through those CT scans, the researchers learned that the species possessed both otter-like and badger-like features, leading to the name “melilutra” (a combination of the Latin words for otter and badger).

One mystery solved, but another puzzle remains unanswered

Among the discoveries made through the analysis of these newly discovered fossils, NPR noted, was the answer to a longstanding mystery surrounding the teeth of otters. Giant otters, they said, possessed large bunodont, or round-cusped, teeth, and researchers were unsure if these teeth had been inherited from a common ancestor or if they were the result of convergent evolution.

Based on their analysis, Dr. Su and Dr. Wang determined that these bunodont teeth had appeared independently on at least three separate occasions through the evolutionary history of otters, thus suggesting that convergent evolution caused by the creatures consuming the same kinds of foods was the most likely cause.

Professor Ji Xueping of the Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology told CNN that Siamogale melilutra would have been a semi-aquatic creature that measured between 1.5 and 2.0 meters (5 and 6.5 feet) in length and would have fed on fed on large shellfish, which it would have crushed between its powerful jaws. While they have learned much about otters by studying this new specimen, they remain puzzled about the reasons why it grew so big.

“A lot of times in modern carnivores, the large size is partly due to subduing prey, so their prey is bigger and the carnivores also get bigger,” Dr. Su told NPR. But as that was not the case here, “Why did this species grow so large? How did its size affect its movement on land and in water? And most importantly, what types of advantages did its size give?” Additional research is needed before those questions can be answered.

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Image credit: Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Once a relatively rare occurrence, dozens of corpse flowers bloomed throughout the world last year, and scientists are puzzled as to why so many of the putrid-smelling plants suddenly started opening and releasing their powerful odors over such a short time span.

According to the Huffington Post, a University of Wisconsin-Madison led study found that there were only 157 corpse flower blooms between 1880 and 2008. However, BBC News reported that since January 2016, at least 32 of the plants have bloomed, most of them in the US.

Officially known as the Amorphophallus titanum (which in Greek translated literally to “giant misshapen phallus”) but also called the titan arum, corpse flowers tend to require between 7 and 10 years of vegetative growth before blooming for the first time. Afterwards, however, the time needed for them to bloom again varies greatly, with some needing up to another decade.

Yet a funny thing happened last year. After a corpse flower at the New York Botanical Garden bloomed late last July, others started blooming just a few days later in Indiana, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida and Washington DC. Shortly after those flowers bloomed, one did in Colorado, and that was followed by several others in Missouri, Hawaii, New Hampshire and elsewhere.

And the corpse flowers aren’t just blooming in the US, either – blooms have also occurred in the UK, India, Australia, Belgium and Denmark, and while there have been a few theories as to why the plants’ blooming activity has apparently become synchronized, researchers have yet to come up with a solid answer as to why this is happening.

Related plants, improved horticultural care among possible explanations

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last summer, Marc Hachadourian, director of the Nolen Greenhouses at the New York Botanical Garden, said that he and some of his colleagues were asking “how did six or seven happen all at once?’” Several months later, he is still looking for the answer to the mystery, as he explained to BBC News earlier this week.

While experts have suggested that many of the corpse flowers currently being cultivated are the second-generation descendants of seeds distributed widely in 1990s, which would mean that they are loosely related and possibly explaining the recent increase in blooms, Hachadourian has his doubts about this theory. “I’ve talked to some of the other botanical gardens,” he told BBC News, “and I can’t seem to find a link that they all came from the same seed source.”

Officials at Kew Gardens in London, which was the site of 11 titan arum blooms between 2005 and 2009, believe that an increased number of corpse flowers in their collection and the efforts of their horticulturists in caring for the plants were the reasons for their success. Daniel Jansen from the University of Pittsburgh told the Wall Street Journal that the simultaneous activity might be intentional, as the flowers could increase their chances to cross-pollinate by blooming together.

Corpse flowers are hardly the only species of flower to undergo simultaneous blooming events, Hachadourian told BBC News, with the reasons varying by species. Since corpse flower studies have thus far been sparse, much work would need to be done to find a possible reason why they started blooming at the same time. “At this point,” he said, “only the plants know for sure.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Having parents who speak with them about the importance of science, math, and technology can encourage teenagers to pursue careers in STEM-related fields, and can actually boost their scores on aptitude tests, researchers from the  University of Chicago report in a new study.

In fact, according to lead author Christopher S. Rozek and his colleagues, high-school students whose parents provided them with information related to the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math scored an average of 12% higher on the science and math ACT tests.

Furthermore, as the researchers explained in Tuesday’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, those students were also found to be more likely to take science and math-related courses in college and to pursue careers in STEM-related fields.

“By the time students are teenagers, many parents don’t think there is much they can do to change their children’s minds or help them be motivated. This research shows that parents can still have a substantial effect,” Rozek said in a statement. “Parents are potentially an untapped resource for helping to improve the STEM motivation and preparation of students.”

“We could move the needle by just encouraging parents to have these conversations about the relevance of math and science,” the UC postdoctoral scholar added. Experts from Northwestern University, the University of Virginia and the University of Wisconsin-Madison and were also involved in the research.

Findings could help students improve science, math test scores

Based on international test results, the US currently ranks 27th in science achievement and 35th in math achievement, the study authors said. Looking to improve on our national performance in these key fields, the researchers set out to see if there was a link between parental intervention in STEM-related education and improved academic achievement.

“Given the importance of STEM careers as drivers of modern economies,” the authors wrote, a deficiency in preparation for careers in STEM-related fields “threatens” the “continued economic progress” of the US. In their new study, they added that they “evaluated the long-term effects of a theory-based intervention designed to help parents convey the importance of mathematics and science courses to their high-school-aged children.”

This intervention strategy was found to not only encourage high-schoolers to take STEM-related courses, but also helped those students to score better on the science and math portions of college preparation tests like the ACT. These indications of improved high-school STEM preparation, in turn, was linked to increased pursuit of careers in such fields five years later.

“These results suggest that the intervention can affect STEM career pursuit indirectly by increasing high-school STEM preparation,” the authors wrote. “This finding underscores the importance of targeting high-school STEM preparation to increase STEM career pursuit” and “demonstrate that a motivational intervention with parents can have important effects on STEM preparation in high school, as well as downstream effects” several years later.

The research expands on an earlier study in which Rozek’s team found that 11th and 12th grade students whose parents had access to materials about the importance of math and science tended to take an average of one additional semester of STEM-related classes, the authors noted.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Despite argument in some circles that climate change is nothing more than a hoax, 2016 marked the third straight year of record-setting heat, statistics released Wednesday by scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have confirmed.

According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the globally-averaged surface temperatures finished 1.78 degrees Fahrenheit (0.99 degrees Celsius) above the mid-20th century mean for 2016, making it the hottest year since modern records were first kept in 1880.

An independent review of the climate data by NOAA confirmed that 2016 was indeed the hottest year ever recorded, but determined than average temperature across land and ocean surfaces was 1.69 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, or 0.07 degrees hotter than 2015.

Since the start of the 21st century, the annual global temperature record has been broken on five occasions (2005, 2010, 2014, 2015, and 2016), the agencies reported. Furthermore, according to CNN.com, 16 of the 17 hottest years in the planet’s history have come since the year 2000, while the last time annual temperatures dipped to an all-time low was back in 1911.

“2016 is remarkably the third record year in a row,” GISS Director Gavin Schmidt confirmed in a statement which noted that he and his colleagues are 95% certain about their conclusions. “We don’t expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear.”

Impact of climate change ‘as plain as day,’ say experts

According to the New York Times, this marks the first time in the modern era of climate-related data that record highs have been reported in three consecutive years, and while El Niño weather pattern was responsible for intensifying matters, the newspaper said that the primary factor was the long-term warming trend blamed linked to increasing greenhouse gas levels.

Since the late 19th century, Earth’s average surface temperature has increase roughly 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) due largely to increased carbon dioxide and other emissions into the atmosphere, said NASA. In addition to 2016 being the hottest year on record, eight out of the 12 months in the year also set records, while three others were the second-warmest ever.

Furthermore, according to NOAA, both the globally-averaged sea surface temperature and the globally-averaged land surface temperature were the highest ever recorded (1.35 degree and 2.57 degrees Fahrenheit above average, respectively). It was also the hottest year of all time in North America and the second-warmest in South American and Africa, the organization added. Sea ice extents in the Arctic and Antarctic seas also reached historic lows.

“(T)he spate of record-warm years that we have seen in the 21st century can only be explained by human-caused climate change,” Michael Mann of the Earth Science Center at Pennsylvania State University told CNN.com. “The effect of human activity on our climate is no longer subtle. It’s plain as day, as are the impacts – in the form of record floods, droughts, superstorms, and wildfires – that it is having on us and our planet.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

President-elect Donald J. Trump hasn’t even taken his oath of office yet, but as the Washington Post reported earlier this week, he’s already having an impact on the scientific world – not with his policies, but with his resemblance to a newly-discovered species of moth.

The new species, Neopalpa donaldtrumpi, is described in a recent issue of the journal ZooKeys and is described as a small insect with a wingspan of less than a centimeter, orange-yellow and brown colored wings, and bright yellow scales on its head, according to the newspaper.

That head tuft is yuuuge (Credit: Dr Vazrick Nazari)

It was these scales, which are present only on the heads of adults, which inspired the researcher who discovered the species, evolutionary biologist Dr. Vazrick Nazari, to name it after the soon-to-be 45th President of the United States and his rather distinctive hairstyle.

Of course, Mr. Trump will have some catching up to do to equal his predecessor, Barack Obama, when it comes to the number of species named in his honor: late last year, a newfound species of basslet was named after President Obama, and as the Post noted, the 44th President also inspired the names of a type of lichen and a now-extinct species of lizard.

Unusual moniker given in ‘good spirit,’ but with a serious message

Dr. Nazari discovered Neopalpa donaldtrumpi while looking through materials borrowed from the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis. During his review, he discovered several specimens that did not match any known species, and after extensive analysis, he determined that they belonged to a new species of twirler moth.

The newly described species is the second belonging to the genus Neopalpa and shares a habitat that includes California, Arizona and northern Mexico, with its relative, Neopalpa neonata. Yet the two can be easily distinguished by the yellowish-white head scales which helped inspire the name given to Neopalpa donaldtrumpi – which, Dr. Nazari said, is all in good fun.

“I hope he takes it with the good spirit as it is intended,” he told the Post. “We need the next administration to continue protecting vulnerable and fragile habitats across the United States.” He added that his opinion of the new President was “inconsequential,” as he is Canadian, but noted, “I wish him success in his job because if he succeeds, the United States succeeds.”

In all seriousness, however, Dr. Nazari said in a statement that the discovery of this new species in the fragile dune habitats of southern California “underscores the importance of conservation of the fragile habitats that still contain undescribed and threatened species.” By giving the species a unique name, he explained that he hoped to “bring some public attention to, and interest in, the importance of alpha-taxonomy in better understanding the neglected micro-fauna component of the North American biodiversity.”

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Image credit: Dr Vazrick Nazari

A massive alligator has become an Internet sensation after a video showing the creature out on a stroll through a Florida nature preserve went viral, with CBS News reporting that the footage had already been shared on social media more than 25,000 times as of Monday afternoon.

The video, which was recorded by Kim Joiner during her visit to the Circle B Bar Reserve at the Polk Nature Discovery Center in Lakeland, Florida, shows the gator as it emerges out of a group of trees, walks across a trail in front of onlookers, then disappears behind a second group of plants.

Joiner wasn’t the only person looking on, according to reports: park attendee Kristi Buckley was also on hand, snapping pictures mere feet from the massive gator. As she admitted to WTSP, she “probably should’ve been a little more afraid than I was.” Instead, she said that she was “inspired by seeing this amazing creature come across the path who’d obviously been there for decades.”

In fact, the gator has been there for decades, and has even been nicknamed “Mr. Humpback” by regular visitors to the reserve, although Buckley told CBS that she and her husband have taken to calling it “Godzilla” – a name which seems more appropriate, as nature experts told WTSP that it may be as much as 15 feet long and weigh a whopping 800 pounds.

Experts caution, keep your distance from the enormous reptile

Naturally, such incredible footage will cause some to be skeptical of its authenticity, but Buckley assured News 13 that the photos and videos were “definitely not fake.” She added that the whole this was “an amazing experience” and an indication of why it’s “important that places like Circle B exist so these animals can live and hunt their fish and birds and other things that they eat.”

Jeff Spence, director of environmental lands for Polk County, confirmed to local media outlets that the creature in the video is indeed “Mr. Humpback,” and that the massive alligator has lived at the reserve for at least a decade. He added that he did not know just how much it weighed.

The viral video, which was shot on Sunday, has resulted in a significant increase in the number of visitors to the Polk Nature Discovery Center, including Bridgett Pitts, who told News 13 that she was looking for the gator and that she “[hoped] to see it today.” However, Spence said that visitors to the park should be careful: while there have no reports of gator attacks at the reserve, people should nonetheless exercise caution and refrain from approaching these wild creatures.

The “Mr. Humpback” sighting comes less than a year after a massive gator was spotted on the 18th hole of a Cypress Lakes, Florida golf course in April 2016. Photos of that gator walking on the cart path en route to a nearby pond were taken by a 10-year-old boy, and like the more recent pictures and video, went viral as folks raced to look at the rather large reptile.

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Image credit: KAB photography

While “baby talk” may be suitable for infants and toddlers, odds are you’d get funny looks from your co-workers or college professors if you tried it with them, and now a new study reveals that this same idea applies when speaking to your adult dog.

Writing in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Nicolas Mathevon from the City University of New York, and his colleagues recorded adults speaking to photos of puppies, adult dogs and older canines, then played back those recordings to gauge how the dogs themselves reacted to dog-directed speech versus normal speech.

What they found was that human speakers tended to use dog-directed speech with canines of all ages, and that the acoustic structure of this speech was largely consistent, except when it came to puppies. Sound pitch was “relatively higher” when people spoke to younger dogs, they said.

However, when they played these recordings back to the dogs, they discovered that only puppies reacted strongly to the dog-directed speech, and that older dogs showed no difference in reaction to dog-directed speech compared to normal speech. So while puppies, like babies, seem to enjoy baby talk-style speech, the evidence suggests that older dogs simply don’t care.

Only puppies reacted differently to dog-directed speech

Infant-directed speech has its benefits, as ScienceAlert explained. It can help engage babies and keep them engaged, serving to facilitate social interactions with their caregivers. It has also been shown to increase cerebral activity more than adult-directed speech, and while using this kind of speech does seem pleasing to puppies, the new study suggests it is wasted on older pets.

During their investigation, Mathevon and his colleagues recruited 30 women and had each look at photographs of 30 puppies, 30 middle-aged canines, and 30 older dogs. They then asked these women to say common dog phrases (such as “who’s a good boy” and “come here!”) while they looked at those pictures. The goal was to see if and how their voices changed while speaking to dogs of different ages and to see if their pitches rose to baby-talk levels.

They made a total of four sets of recordings: puppy-directed, adult dog-directed, old dog-directed and adult-human directed, which served as the control. The verbal content of each recording was the same, and the researchers found that all of the subjects tended to speak to all dogs in the same high-pitched tone, similar to infant-directed speech, but that their tones tended to become slightly higher-pitched when addressing puppies instead of fully-grown canines.

These recordings were then played back to 40 different dogs of various ages before or after the human-directed recordings, to see if there were any differences in the dogs’ responses to the dog-directed baby talk or the human-directed normal speech. They found that while the puppies paid more attention to the speaker when dog-directed speech was played, dogs of other ages appeared to be no more interested in the baby talk than they were the normal human speech.

In an interview with Gizmodo, Mathevon said, “I think that we are directing a human behavior at dogs. Our study suggests that we use this kind of speech pattern to engage interaction with a non-speaking listener… It underlines that we try to adapt the way we speak to our listener – or to what we think our listener is able to understand.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

An unusual creature that has defied classification since it was originally discovered on the ocean floor roughly 175 years ago has finally been placed on the so-called tree of life, researchers from the US and Canada reported in research published this earlier week in the journal Nature.

The extinct creature, known as a hyolith, was a marine species that had a cone-shaped shell and tentacles which it used while feeding, said BBC News. It originally appeared in the fossil record about 530 million years ago, the researchers said, and lived until about 250 million years ago.

According to Seeker, scientists long believed that the hyotlith belonged to the same family as squids and snails. However, an analysis of soft tissue recovered from more than 1,500 specimens recovered from the Burgess Shale site in British Columbia revealed they are actually Palaeozoic lophophorates – a group of invertebrates similar to the modern-day brachiopod.

The new study “solves this long paleontological mystery,” lead author Joseph Moysiuk, a student at the University of Toronto, told BBC News. “We have been able to discover some new features of a very old group of fossil animals, and it’s allowed us to reveal the evolutionary history of this group of animals.”

Hyoliths, brachiopods shared common feeding structures

By studying the soft tissue of the hyoliths, Moysiuk and his colleagues were able to discover the existence of the tentacle-like structure protruding from its mouth. This apparatus, which is called a lophophore, was apparently used to help the creature feed, and the only current creature to have a structure similar to this are brachiopods – shelled, soft-bodied marine animals.

Unlike bivalve mollusks, the soft bodies of brachiopods are encased between upper and lower shells, not left and right shells. The open these shells while eating, but in all other instances, keep them closed to protect the lophophore. The hyolith has a comparable feeding structure, Moysiuk explained in a statement, indicating that it is a relative of brachiopods, not mollusks.

“Our most important and surprising discovery is the hyolith feeding structure, which is a row of flexible tentacles extending away from the mouth, contained within the cavity between the lower conical shell and upper cap-like shell,” the study author said. “It suggests that these hyoliths fed on organic material suspended in water as living brachiopods do today, sweeping food into their mouths with their tentacles.”

“Although a molluscan affinity was proposed by some authors, this hypothesis remained based on insufficient evidence. Hyoliths became an orphaned branch on the tree of life,” added study co-author Bernard Caron of the Royal Ontario Museum. “Our most recent field discoveries were key in finally cracking their story, around 175 years after the first description of a hyolith.”

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Image credit: Danielle Dufault/Royal Ontario Museum

For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that non-human primates possess a tongue and a larynx that enables them to produce a series of vowel-like sounds similar to humans, indicating that they may have had the physical capability for language for several million years.

Writing in the journal PLOS One, a group of French researchers explained that by studying the vocalizations of 12 female and three male baboons living in an outdoor enclosure, they managed to pinpoint sounds comparable to the human vowels A, E, I, O and U in some of their calls.

“This is the first time we have shown this in a non-human primate,” said co-author Joel Fagot, a researcher at France’s National Center for Scientific Research, explained to AFP. He added that the discovery “suggests that human speech has a very long evolutionary history” and most likely had already begun long before the evolution of the modern human.

While many experts believe that language began within the last 70,000 to 100,000 years, Fagot and his colleagues report that the articulation skills required for speech could be up to 25 million years old and might date back to the Cercopithecoidae, the last common ancestor of humans and non-human primates such as baboons.

Tongue control, not larynx placement, most important factor

Previously, scientists believed that nonhuman primates were incapable of producing vowel-like sounds because their larynxes were located far higher in the neck than the human voice box, the Los Angeles Times noted. Recently, however, that theory has come under fire, as scientists have found lowered larynxes in other species incapable of producing vowel sounds.

The larynx-placement theory was typically used to support “the theoretical claim of a recent date for language origin, e.g. 70,000-100,000 years ago,” the study authors wrote. “It also diverted scientists’ interests away from articulated sound in nonhuman primates as a potential homolog of human speech, and thus lent support to less direct explanations of language evolution, involving communicative gestures, complex cognitive or neural functions, or genetics.”

Thanks to recent developments in computer modeling, experts have discovered that controlling and moving the tongue’s position is more important than voice box placement when it comes to producing vowels, and by an analyzing five types of vocalizations produced by baboons, Fagot’s team found that the primates appear to be capable of producing “vowel-like segments.”

Specifically, the Times said, the researchers analyzed the baboons’ grunts, wahoos, barks, yaks and mating calls – types of vocalizations which appeared to feature “formants” or concentrations of acoustic energy found in a vowel that can review the configuration of the mouth that produced it. They studied 1,335 spontaneous vocalizations and, after splitting the wahoos into the wa- and hoo- subunits, they identified 1,404 vowel-like vocalizations produced by the primates.

Furthermore, the newspaper added, the researchers verified that the creatures had the physical capacity to produce these sounds by dissecting and studying the tongues of two already deceased baboons. The findings suggest that the ability to produce vowel-like vocalizations are as much as 25 million years old, and that the ability to create distinct vowels improved over time, explaining why only humans are currently capable of producing full spoken language.

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A killer whale that performed at SeaWorld, was featured in the documentary “Blackfish” and which had been linked to three fatalities over the span of the approximately 34 years it spent in captivity has died, officials at the marine park confirmed in a statement late last week.

According to LiveScience, the 36-year-old killer whale named Tilikum was one of three orcas that attacked a trainer who fell into a tank at Sealand of the Pacific in 1991, causing the woman to drown. Eight years later, a man entered the whale’s tank at SeaWorld Orlando after the park closed, and while it isn’t certain if Tilikum attacked him or not, he was found dead the next morning.

In February 2010, Tilikum dragged SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau into the water following a show, causing her to die as a result of drowning and trauma, the website said. Brancheau’s death was part of “Blackfish,” which criticized the park’s handling of the incident and which played an important role in changing public perception regarding SeaWorld’s practice of keeping whales in captivity – something that the park promised to begin phasing out last March.

With Tilikum’s death, SeaWorld told NPR that it would be ending its One Ocean show after one final performance on Sunday. In its place, they plan to introduce Orca Encounter, which the park is calling an educational experience which will “have the feel of an engaging documentary” and will focus on “the orca’s natural behaviors, physical attributes, intelligence, social structures, and unique relationship with mankind.”

A look back at the controversial killer whale’s life

Tilikum was believed to be 36 years old when he died on Friday, according to NPR. His health had been declining, the park explained, and he was dealing with “very serious” issues for several months. While a necropsy is necessary to determine the official cause of death, SeaWorld noted that he had been plagued by a “persistent and complicated bacterial lung infection.”

Tilikum’s lifespan was fairly typical when compared to wild male orcas, which LiveScience (citing information obtained  from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) tend to live about three decades outside of captivity, but can live for as much as twice that long. The SeaWorld whale was 22.6 feet long, which the website said is “on the high side of average” for an Icelandic killer whale, and weighed 12,500 pounds.

Colin Baird, who trained Tilikum, told CNN that the orca was popular and “very easy to work with… He was very easygoing, he learned quickly, he learned well, very responsive.” However, he also said that the whale, like any other creature, had “good days and bad days” and that “some days, Tilikum would have a certain look in his eye – then I would just say, ‘Nope, not getting in the water with him today.’”

Tim Zimmerman, who wrote about Brancheau’s death in Outside magazine and was a producer on Blackfish, told NPR that the documentary helped make the late orca a sympathetic figure for many people. “I think that’s the most amazing thing that comes out of Tilikum’s story,” he said. “He killed three human beings. And yet when you learn about his life story, he does become the victim and you do sympathize with him.”

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Image credit: Gerardo Mora/Getty Image

A Stonehenge-like rock formation recently discovered on the southern coast of Sicily by a team of Italian archaeologists contains a large hole they believed was used to mark the seasons, as the rising sun was found to be in perfect alignment with the hole during the winter solstice.

According to Archeology and LiveScience, archeologist Giuseppe La Spina and his colleagues discovered the approximately 5,000-year-old Neolithic rock on a hill near an ancient necropolis located roughly six miles from the city of Gela on the island’s southern coast. They discovered the structure while surveying some World War II-era bunkers in the area.

“It appeared clear to me that we were dealing with a deliberate, man-made hole,” La Spina told Seeker on Thursday. “However, we needed the necessary empirical evidence to prove the stone was used as a prehistoric calendar to measure the seasons.”

To gather that evidence, he and his fellow researchers used compasses, video cameras mounted on a GPS-equipped drone, and other equipment to test their theory on the solstice by examining if the rising sun would align with the 3.2-foot diameter hole. The experiment turned out to be a “total success,” the archaeologist said. “At 7:32am the sun shone brightly through the hole with an incredible precision. It was amazing.”

A companion summer solstice stone may be nearby, say experts

Based on their observations, the researchers believe that the 23-foot-tall stone was likely used to predict when the seasons and the weather would change, preparing the people who lived there for cold weather and precipitation. It also likely was used in rituals, as they later discovered that this site had been a sacred place in the late third millennium BC, LiveScience said.

In addition to the calendar rock, La Spina’s team also found a 16.4-foot-tall on the ground to the east, according to Archaeology. There was a pit dug at the base of the stone that suggests that the stone had once been placed upright in front of the holed stone. This rock, also called a menhir, is also different than the calendar rock in terms of composition, leading the researchers to believe it had been transported to the site from a different location.

The holed stone is at least the third to have been found in Silicy, and as Alberto Scuderi, regional director of Italian Archaeologist Groups, told Seeker, all three appear to have been crafted by the same people. One of the other stones, which Scuderi discovered near Palermo, “lined up with the rising sun at the winter solstice,” he said, while the other produced a similar affect with the rising sun during the summer solstice. For that reason, he told the website that he believes that a second holed stone – a summer solstice companion to the newfound one – should be near Gela.

However, Giulio Magli, professor of archaeo-astronomy at the Polytechnic University of Milan, told Seeker that while the discovery is interesting, the stones need to be studied further. He added that we “should not consider the holed stones as precise calendars or an instrument to observe the sun’s cycle, but rather monuments that provided information on the solstices for practical and agricultural purposes.”

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Image credit: Giuseppe La Spina

The human body is starting off the new year with a new organ, although the structure has been part of our digestive systems the entire time and was previously thought to be nothing more than a fragmented series of individual structures, according to a newly-published study.

Writing in the journal The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, J. Calvin Coffey, a surgeon and a professor at the University of Limerick in Ireland, and colleagues presented evidence that reveals that these apparently separate pieces are, in fact, part of an organ called the mesentery.

The mesentery is an organ in the body in its own right, according to new research at the University of Limerick in IrelandJ Calvin Coffey / The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology

“In the paper, which has been peer reviewed and assessed, we are now saying we have an organ in the body which hasn’t been acknowledged as such to date,” Professor Coffey explained in a statement. “The anatomic description that had been laid down over 100 years of anatomy was incorrect. This organ is far from fragmented and complex. It is simply one continuous structure.”

“When we approach it like every other organ… we can categorize abdominal disease in terms of this organ,” he added. “This is relevant universally as it affects all of us. Up to now there was no such field as mesenteric science. Now we have established anatomy and the structure.”

Next step is to determine the function of the mesentery

According to ScienceAlert, the mesentery is a double fold of peritoneum (the substance that lines the abdominal cavity) which is attached to digestive tract organs including the stomach, the small intestine, and the pancreas. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first individuals to describe the new organ, but for centuries it was dismissed as a largely insignificant structure.

However, in 2012, Coffey’s team conducted a series of microscopic examinations that led them to conclude that the mesentery was actually one continuous part of the body, and not a group of smaller individual parts. As of last year, medical students began being taught that it was actually an organ, but the new study lays out additional evidence to support this line of thinking.

“During the initial research, we noticed in particular that the mesentery, which connects the gut to the body, was one continuous organ. Up to that it was regarded as fragmented,” said Coffey, adding that the next step was to determine its function. “If you understand the function you can identify abnormal function, and then you have disease. Put them all together and you have the field of mesenteric science… the basis for a whole new area of science.”

So what exactly does all of this mean? As LiveScience explained, now that doctors know that the mesentery is one continuous organ, it could be looked at as a potential way for diseases to spread from one part of the gut to another. Furthermore, it could open up new pathways for surgery, but first they need to determine its function, and what body system it is actually part of.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Dinosaur eggs took between three and six months to hatch, depending upon the species, a new study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by researchers from Florida State University in Tallahassee has revealed.

According to NPR News and the New York Times, FSU biological sciences professor Gregory M. Erickson and his colleagues analyzed rare unhatched dinosaur embryos and found they take roughly twice as long as a baby bird of comparable size to free themselves from their eggs.

Specifically, by studying growth rings on the teeth of these dinosaurs (which are similar to lines of von Ebner typically found on trees), they were able to estimate the ages of various dinosaur species, and found that a large duck-billed dinosaur would have taken at least six months to hatch.

Scientists studied growth lines on the teeth of embryonic dinosaurs to reach their conclusions (Credit: G.M. Erikson, et. al./Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences)

In comparison, most birds that evolved from dinosaurs now only take between 11 and 85 days to hatch. Dinosaurs apparently had much longer incubation times, however, which Erickson and his colleagues explained put eggs and their parents at risk from predators and other hazards, and also casts doubt on some theories of dinosaur migration patterns.

“We suspect our findings have implications for understanding why dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period,” the professor said in a statement. Since dinosaurs required a great deal of resources to grow, the longer incubation periods most likely placed them at a competitive disadvantage compared to those creatures that survived the extinction event.

Animals that reproduced more quickly tended to adapt better

As part of their study, Erickson and associates from the University of Calgary and the American Museum of Natural History examined embryos belonging to Protoceratops, which was a sheep-sized dinosaur with rather small eggs, and the Hypacrosaurus, a large duck-billed dinosaur with eggs that weighed more than four kilograms.

The researchers used a CT scanner to look at the teeth and jaws of the creatures and extracted a few of the teeth for further examination under microscopes as well. They found growth lines that revealed precisely how long the creatures had been growing in the eggs: nearly three months for the Protoceratops embryos, and six months for the Hypacrosaurus specimen.

Based on their findings, the study authors concluded that dinosaur incubation was similar to that of other primitive reptiles, and theories that some species nested in the more temperate lower latitudes of Canada before migrating to the Arctic during the summer were unlikely, based on the amount of time needed for eggs to hatch and for such a journey to be completed.

Also, as Erickson told NPR, the long incubation period likely played a key role in the ultimate demise of the dinosaurs. As the professor explained, “You can imagine after the asteroid hit all of a sudden the resources went to nothing. Even when they [dinosaurs] did reproduce, they had extremely long incubation periods on top of it,” meaning that they were likely outcompeted by creatures that reproduced more quickly.

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The world’s smallest snowman has been produced by using a scanning electron microscope. The instrument’s operator at Western University in Canada said the 3-micrometer tall sculpture sets a new record.

In 2005, Todd Simpson from Western University produced the ‘snowman’ by chance. In an attempt to produce a matrix of isolated silica spheres, he placed a solution of them on a polymer film dotted with nanoscale holes. When the film was taken off the isolated spheres were left behind, sitting on a surface. A few of the holes were a little deeper than others and greater than one silica sphere had fallen in to develop a dimer, or one sphere on top of another. And in a few instances, a dimer was stacked on top of a different silica sphere to generate the three-sphered, albeit faceless, snowman.

Recently, Simpson discovered the old specimen and used the focused ion beam of his lab’s electron microscope to create the snowman’s mouth and eyes. The ion beam is often used to put down tiny amounts of platinum and so Simpson was able to build arms and a nose for the Frosty-inspired sculpture. Each silicon sphere is 0.9 micrometers across making the snowman just short of 3 micrometers tall.

How adorable!

Bulletproof Snowmen?

Miniscule silica spheres are good for more than just building snowman. In 2014, researchers used them to test out the possibility of bulletproof vests made from graphene, a very thin form of carbon just an atom or so thick.

In the study, researchers by fired silica spheres at sheets of the nearly-transparent form of carbon. They study team reported that graphene can be more resilient than steel when absorbing impact.

Created by arranging atoms in a honeycomb structure, graphene is thin, strong and flexible. It is also a very efficient conductor of heat and electricity. The researchers had to use lasers in order to observe the silica spheres as they hit sheets of graphene 10 to 100 layers thick. They then compared the kinetic energy of their “microbullets” both before and after piercing the graphene.

Electron microscope observations showed graphene dissipates the energy of projectiles by stretching into a cone shape and then cracking in random directions.

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Image credit: Todd Simpson, Western University Nanofabrication Facility, Ontario, Canada.

As 2016 has given the world an unprecedentedly contentious US Presidential election, claimed the lives of countless beloved public figures, and has generally cultivated turmoil throughout the world, most people tend to agree that they simply cannot wait for the year to be over.

Unfortunately, as IANS and the Economic Times are reporting, that will take a little longer than usual this year, as a “leap second” will be added to the world’s clocks when they hit 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on December 31, 2016.

This will correspond to 6:59:59 pm Eastern Standard Time, at which point the extra second will be inserted at the US Naval Observatory’s Master Clock Facility in Washington, DC, scientists at the observatory explained in a statement originally released over the summer. The end result will be that those highly anticipating the end of 2016 will have to wait just a little bit longer.

What’s the reason for the leap second? According to the Washington Post, the Earth slows down because of ocean waves, slowing down at a rate of 2 milliseconds per day per century. Adding an extra second allows atomic clocks to again match up with the speed of the planet’s rotation.

This will be the 27th leap second added to the atomic clock

As the Naval Observatory explained, historically speaking, time was based on the mean rotation of the Earth relative to other celestial bodies. This reference frame was used to define the second, but the advent of atomic clocks resulted in another, more precise timescale that is independent of the planet’s rotation.

However, measurements indicate that the Earth’s rotation runs slightly slower than atomic time, and scientists have determined that this difference would reach one second after a span of about 500 to 750 days. Thus, an organization known as the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) was formed to make adjustments to keep atomic clocks and UTC times to within 0.9 seconds of each other by adding leap seconds as needed.

“In order to create UTC, a secondary timescale, International Atomic Time (TAI), is first generated; it consists of UTC without leap seconds,” the Naval Observatory explained. “When the system was instituted in 1972, the difference between TAI and UTC was determined to be 10 seconds.  Since 1972, 26 additional leap seconds have been added at intervals varying from six months to seven years, with the most recent being inserted on June 30, 2015. “

“After the insertion of the leap second in December, the cumulative difference between UTC and TAI will be 37 seconds,” they continued, noting that the leap seconds are actually “indications of the accumulated difference in time between the two systems… We can easily change the time of an atomic clock,” the Observatory concluded, “but it is not possible to alter the Earth’s rotational speed to match the atomic clocks.”

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Although Carrie Fisher, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 60 following a heart attack, was best known to the millions of Star Wars fans all around the world as Princess Leia, many are also remembering the actress as an activist who helped destigmatize mental health issues.

As Fisher, who has also battled substance abuse problems early on in her life, told Diane Sawyer of ABC News back in 2000, “I used to think I was a drug addict, pure and simple – just someone who could not stop taking drugs willfully… but it turns out that I am severely manic depressive.”

Manic depression, also called bipolar disorder, is a conditioned marked by alternating periods of depression and elevated mood (also known as mania). During mania, patients can behave or feel abnormally energetic or happy, go without sleeping for several days at a time, and/or experience delusions or hallucinations, while depression episodes can be more difficult to treat.

Fisher told Sawyer that it took several years before she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and even longer to come to terms with that diagnosis, saying that she initially thought that the doctors only told her she was manic depressive “to make me feel better about being a drug addict.”

Following a stint in rehab, Fisher wrote a book about the experience called Postcards from the Edge. She eventually came to terms with the condition and worked to raise awareness of bipolar disorder, which was poorly understood by the general public at the time, Polygon explained.

‘You can lead a normal life’ with treatment, she emphasized

During her interview with Sawyer, Fisher called bipolar disorder “a world of bad judgment calls. Just every kind of bad judgment, because it all seems like a good idea at the time… You can’t stop,” she told Sawyer, adding, “I outlasted my problems. I am mentally ill. I can say that. I am not ashamed of that. I survived that, I’m still surviving it, but bring it on. Better me than you.”

“The only lesson for me, or anybody, is that you have to get help. It’s not a neat illness. It doesn’t go away. I’m just lucky this hasn’t happened more,” Fisher told People. She tended to use humor to deal with her condition, the Washington Post noted. “That’s my way of surviving, to abstract it into something that’s funny and not dangerous.”

In 2001, Fisher spoke about mental health during an Indianapolis rally to increase state funding for addiction and mental health treatment services, according to ABC News. Also that year, she was honored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness for her work helping end mental health discrimination and stigma. In 2002, Fisher was recognized by the Erasing the Stigma Leadership awards for her work “speaking the truth about mental illness.”

“There is treatment and a variety of medications that can alleviate your symptoms if you are manic depressive or depressive,” Fisher told USA Today in 2002. “You can lead a normal life, whatever that is. I have gotten to the point where I can live a normal life, where my daughter can rely on me for predictable behavior, and that’s very important to me.”

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Image credit: Gage Skidmore

Rapid declines in the cheetah population have the world’s fastest land animal speeding towards possible extinction, conservationists from the Zoological Society of London and their colleagues reported this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

According to BBC News and USA Today, the new report estimated that there are currently only 7,100 cheetahs left alive in the world – a far cry from the approximately 100,000 that roamed the Earth at the tail end of the 19th century, based on National Wildlife Federation statistics.

In fact, lead study author Sarah Durant and her fellow researchers found that 14 of the 18 groups of wild cheetahs living in Africa that they studied were on the decline – none more severely than those living in Zimbabwe, which have fallen 85% (from 1,200 to 170) over the past 16 years.

Furthermore, cheetahs in Asia have essentially been wiped out, they added, and a population that lives in Iran is believed to number less than 50 at this moment. Based on their research, the ZSL-led team is calling for an urgent re-classification of the species from vulnerable to endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

As Durant explained in a statement, “Our findings show that the large space requirements for cheetah, coupled with the complex range of threats faced by the species in the wild, mean that it is likely to be much more vulnerable to extinction than was  previously thought.”

‘Concerted action’ needed to save the world’s fastest land animal

The cheetah is one of the widest-ranging carnivores in the world, the authors said, which means that they tend to roam far beyond the protected areas that have been established for them. In fact, more than 75% of their habitat lies outside of parks and wildlife reserves, BBC News said.

For this reason, they are increasingly entering lands that are being developed for agriculture, and their prey is on the decline due to bushmeat hunting, the UK media outlet added. In addition, the illegal trade of cheetah cubs as pets, the increased selling of their skins and the threat of being hit by fast-moving vehicles have all contributed to their population decline, the study found.

“This study represents the most comprehensive analysis of cheetah status to date. Given the secretive nature of this elusive cat, it has been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked,” said Durant. “Concerted action” was needed to “reverse ongoing declines in the face of accelerating land use changes across the continent,” she added.

“We’ve just hit the reset button in our understanding of how close cheetahs are to extinction,” added Dr. Kim Young-Overton, director of the cheetah program for Panthera, a group that was also involved in the study. “The take-away from this pinnacle study is that securing protected areas alone is not enough. We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-reaching cats inhabit, if we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever.”

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