Cloned ‘sisters’ of Dolly the sheep are doing just fine
Written By: John Hopton
Brian Galloway
When Dolly, history’s most famous sheep, was given the chance of life via a cloning technique called somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), there was concern that a cloned sheep might not be as healthy as a regular one. Not so, according to recent health tests on her ‘sisters’.
Dolly developed arthritis at quite a young age and had difficulty walking, before dying in 2003 at six years old from a type of lung cancer caused by a virus.
Credit: Nature Communications
However, four cloned sheep that are genetically identical to Dolly, having been derived from the same batch of cells, have reached nine years of age – the equivalent of around 70 years in humans. They are still in good health.
The sheep were shown not to be suffering from some conditions that often affect older sheep, such as diabetes and high blood pressure (anyone else thinking: “so in humans those things can’t all be down to the booze and eating hamburgers?”).
“Despite their advanced age…none of the clones showed any clinical signs of disease,” researchers at the University of Nottingham, in England, wrote in the journal Nature Communications.
Dolly’s non-relatives are also doing fine
Nine other sheep unrelated to Dolly also underwent a series of health tests which had generally positive results. Some of the sheep showed signs of arthritis, but nothing beyond what would be expected for any sheep of that age.
Although the cloning technique carries a high risk of premature death or developmental abnormalities in the fetus, the clones that do survive now appear to have a good chance of a long and healthy life.
“From the current series of assessments, we conclude that there are no long-term detrimental health effects of cloning by SCNT for a long-lived species such as the sheep,” the researchers said.
Humans are the scariest animals in nature, study finds
Written By: Brett Smith
Brian Galloway
The lion may be the King of the Jungle, but it turns out some animals are ruled by a fear of humans.
According to a new study published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, small predators living in forests of the United Kingdom recognize humans as a bigger threat than large carnivores like bears or wolves.
Around the world, humans kill small carnivores at much greater rates than large carnivores, and the study team said their results show smaller carnivores fear the human ‘super predator’ much more they fear their enemies they’ve had for millions of years.
By terrifying their prey, large carnivores play a role in healthy ecosystems by keeping smaller carnivores from ravaging their prey unchecked, and the reduction in this ‘landscape of fear’ via the loss of large predators contributes to conservation concerns. Fear of humans has been suggested to act as a substitute, but the new study’s outcomes show the fear of humans is much different and cannot be projected to meet the same ecosystem function.
Studying Badgers Fear Levels
In the new study, researchers studied Europeans badgers in Wytham Woods, located just outside of the English city of Oxford. To contrast the animals’ relative fearfulness, the team played them the sounds of bears, wolves, dogs, and humans in their normal habitat and captured video of their reactions. While bear and dog sounds had some effect, the sound of people in conversation or reading from books kept some badgers from feeding, and significantly decreased the time spent feeding by others.
The researchers said small predators seem to be habituated to humans as they live in our midst, and are actually enduring elevated amounts of fear in human-dominated areas.
“Our previous research has shown that the fear large carnivores inspire can itself shape ecosystems. These new results indicate that the fear of humans, being greater, likely has even greater impacts on the environment, meaning humans may be distorting ecosystem processes even more than previously imagined,” study author Liana Zanette, a wildlife ecologist from Western University in Canada, said in a news release. “These results have important implications for conservation, wildlife management, and public policy.”
How many people will catch Zika? New model has the answer.
Written By: Brett Smith
Brian Galloway
New research published in the journal Nature Microbiology has found the number of Zika infections in the current epidemic should peak at around 93 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, including 1.6 million childbearing women.
In the news release, the study team said their calculations represent a worst-case scenario.
“In other words, we think these projections may be pretty good for a location where Zika shows up and starts an epidemic, but at the same time we acknowledge that due simply to random chance and the fact that some places are relatively isolated and sparsely populated, the virus won’t make it to every single corner of the continent,” said study author Alex Perkins, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Norte Dame.
Perkins added that the figures laid out in the study represent infections, not clinical cases. Many people infection with the Zika virus do not show symptoms.
“Only about 20 percent of people who are infected develop any symptoms whatsoever, and even fewer than that will seek medical care and show up in government statistics,” he said.
Modeling using Herd Immunity
In the study, the research team looked at a concept called “herd immunity,” which is when so many people become immune to a contagion, an epidemic cannot sustain itself.
“This idea was very central to our approach, as was the idea that more people become infected before herd immunity can extinguish an epidemic in areas where mosquitoes are plentiful and transmission is very intense,” Perkins said.
The researchers said a primary objective of their study was to establish concrete estimates of how big the Zika epidemic might become.
“Although there is lots of uncertainty around our projections and we will have a better idea of the situation as we get more data, our projections are some of the very first to give a ballpark estimate of the total number of people who might be at risk,” Perkins said. “Even after several months of intense research and analysis of this epidemic, our projection is some of the only information that decision makers have to go by right now.”
The study wasn’t based on data from the present epidemic. Rather, it used data from past dengue and chikungunya fever epidemics.
“In this research, we were interested in seeing what we could come up with at the earliest stages of the epidemic before we had the luxury of lots of data to work with,” Perkins said. “By the time we have enough data to make forecasts based on traditional approaches, much of the damage has already been done by the epidemic and it is too late for the research to be actionable.”
Meet Luca: The common ancestor of all life on Earth
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
By surveying nearly 2,000 genomes belonging to modern-day microbes, an international group of researchers has purportedly discovered that the last universal common ancestor of all life on Earth was a heat-loving, hydrogen-consuming organism that emerged 3.8 billion years ago.
In the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Microbiology, William Martin from the University of Dusseldorf in Germany and his colleagues reveal that life on Earth likely formed around hydrothermal vents, such as those found near undersea volcanoes, where heated water that was rich in hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and minerals could be found.
While the exact chemical events that resulted in the origin of life on Earth will likely never be fully understood, Scienceexplained that some of the earliest living organisms have left behind fragments of themselves in the genes passed on to their descendants. Martin’s team of researchers analyzed these genes as they hunted for clues pertaining to the daily life of our last universal common ancestor – LUCA, for short.
They found that LUCA was likely a microbe that fed on hydrogen gas and lived in an oxygen-free environment, indicating that it was probably born in hydrothermal vents. They also discovered that it possessed 355 proteins which are now nearly universally found in the bacteria and archaea that eventually developed from it, but as New Scientist pointed out, it was also quite different in many ways.
Organism was unable to produce its own energy; relied on its surroundings for help
Martin’s team analyzed the genomes of 1,800 bacteria and 130 archaea, the website explained, and their analysis revealed that, unlike those organisms, LUCA most likely was unable to pump ions across membranes to create an electrochemical gradient in order to produce the energy-rich molecule ATP. Rather, it harnessed an existing gradient in order to produce ATP.
This discovery would seem to support the notion that the earliest lifeforms obtained their energy from the natural gradient that exists between vent water and seawater, and only later evolved the ability to generate gradients on their own, New Scientist said. This also suggests that LUCA was forced to rely on these vents for their survival, only breaking away from them on two occasions: when the first archaea evolved, and then again when the earliest bacteria developed.
“We are seeing something for which there was previously no evidence. Just by asking the right questions of genome data, we were able to obtain some very interesting answers that also mesh well with what we know from geochemistry,” Martin told the Washington Post, adding, “I think that there’s a very direct link between geochemical processes, LUCA… and the first lineages of microorganisms that arose.”
While LUCA is the last known common ancestor to all living organisms on Earth, exactly how close it is to the beginnings of life remains unknown. Other scientists have suggested that it may have been preceded by other microbial life forms that have since died out. Martin told the Post that this was “possible, but I’m not sure how we would go about investigating any kind of question like that” without any fossil evidence or genetic link to pre-LUCA organisms. “The goal of evolutionary biology,” he added, “is to understand the history of the organisms that we know. When we’re done with that we can worry about the ones we can imagine.”
Solar Impulse finishes groundbreaking trip around the world
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
More than 500 days after its journey began, Solar Impulse touched down in Abu Dhabi on Monday, becoming the zero-fuel aircraft in history to circumnavigate the globe thanks to photovoltaic cells and the sun’s rays.
A single-seat plane flown alternately by Swiss aviators Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, Solar Impulse began its voyage in Abu Dhabi on March 9, 2015 and returned there Monday after a 17-stage journey that covered approximately 42,000 kilometers (26,000 miles) and took it over four continents, three different seas and a pair of oceans, according to BBC News.
With Piccard in the cockpit for the final leg, Solar Impulse lifted off from Cairo over the weekend. Two days and 47 minutes after lifting off, it landed for the last time, bringing the first ever solar-powered flight around the world to a close and breaking a total of 19 aviation records in the process – including one for the longest non-stop solo flight (4 days, 21 hours, 52 minutes) during a flight from Japan to Hawaii last summer, USA Today noted.
Piccard completed the journey shortly before dawn in the United Arab Emirates, and published reports indicate that moments after landing, he gave a thumbs up from the cockpit and said, “We made it! We made it! Altogether, we did it!” Later, while onlookers cheered and applauded, he added, “The future is clean. The future is you. The future is now. Let’s take it further.”
Solar Impulse touching down. (Credit: EPA)
Solar Impulse Project not About Setting Records, Pilot Emphasizes
Solar Impulse landed in Cairo on July 11 after a nearly 49-hour voyage from Spain and had been expected to depart on the final leg of its journey shortly thereafter. However, the trip was delayed briefly due to a heat wave in Saudi Arabia, forcing Piccard and Borschberg to wait a bit longer to enjoy the end of their 17-year mission to fly around the world using only solar power.
Using an aircraft that was made of carbon fiber and which had a wingspan larger than that of a Boeing 747, the Solar Impulse team relied on an array of 17,000 photovoltaic cells located on the wings of the plane to collect energy from the sun, some of which powered the plane and some of which was stored in batteries so that it could fly during the nighttime.
The Solar Impulse was as heavy as a family-sized automobile but was still able to reach speeds up to 62 mph (100 kph) and altitudes of nearly 28,000 feet (8,500 meters). The voyage was divided into 17 legs that took the plane and its pilots from the UAE to Oman, then to India, Myanmar, China, Japan, the US, Spain, and Egypt before returning to Abu Dhabi.
While the voyage itself is quite a feat, Piccard emphasized that personal achievements were not the main focus of the project, telling USA Today, “The most important thing isn’t to make world records. It’s to show what we can do with clean technologies.” Those comments echo ones made by Piccard to Reutersbefore the start of the 17th and final leg, in which he noted that while “the round the world flight ends in Abu Dhabi,” that the project’s core mission – promoting “clean technologies around the world” – was far from over.
Discomfort and pain are part of everyday life for most people with fibromyalgia. But most people with fibro find that they suffer more at some times than others. Many women with fibro have worse symptoms either right before or during their menstrual period, which seems especially unfair since periods bring their own discomforts. Here are some ways that you can manage your menstrual cycle with fibromyalgia and try to relieve some of the pain.
Look at the Root Cause
Many other chronic syndromes, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and interstitial cystitis, also get worse before and during the menstrual cycle. Research suggests that the likely common cause in all cases is the drop in estrogen levels late in the menstrual cycle. Estrogen tends to have a natural pain-reducing effect, although it’s not known why every woman with fibromyalgia doesn’t have more pain around her periods. If you do suffer from more pain around your cycle, try using hormone-balancing supplements or ask your doctor for a birth control pill that contains estrogen to keep your hormone levels steady.
Get More Exercise
Exercise can be more challenging when you have fibromyalgia. But there’s no question that regular exercise relieves some of the discomforts associated with your period. Fibro may make it harder to run a marathon or do intense forms of exercise, but you should be capable of doing gentle exercises like walking, swimming or yoga. Any type of regular exercise will reduce your pain overall and reduce PMS symptoms like cramping and mood swings.
Increase Your Calcium Intake
Many Americans don’t get enough calcium. It can be difficult to get enough calcium if you’re not careful with your diet. Soft drinks are another common cause of low calcium since the phosphoric acid in soda leaches calcium out of your bones. Not getting enough calcium can increase some of the discomforts associated with your period, such as leg cramps, depression and anxiety. Many of these symptoms overlap with fibro symptoms, so pay attention to your calcium intake throughout the month and especially in the PMS phase of your cycle.
Reduce Your Caffeine Intake
Caffeine is a double-edged sword for many fibro sufferers. The fatigue that’s so common to the illness makes you need more of an energy boost, which makes you turn to caffeine. But fibro sufferers are often especially sensitive to the effects of caffeine and caffeine can make your menstrual symptoms worse. Caffeine affects your estrogen levels, which we already know to be linked to the severity of pain during the menstrual cycle. Try cutting back on caffeine, at least in the last week or two of your cycle and during your period itself.
Consider Surgery
Many women with fibro also suffer from a condition called endometriosis that causes painful periods. In endometriosis, tissue grows outside of the uterus. An outpatient surgery called endometrial ablation cauterizes the lining of the uterus, making heavy bleeding less likely and periods will be less painful.
Managing your menstrual cycle with fibromyalgia can be challenging but it’s not impossible. If your pain levels improve, you’ll find that the lifestyle changes you need to make are very worthwhile!
Delta Aquarid: amazing meteor shower peaks on July 28th and 29th
Written By: John Hopton
Brian Galloway
As astronomers anticipate the arrival of the Perseids, an August event that’s one of the year’s most popular meteor showers, there is currently a warm up underway to get us in the mood for some meteors.
July 28 and 29 will see the peak of the Delta Aquarids meteor shower, with as many as 20 meteors an hour being visible. Observers in the Southern Hemisphere will get the best view, but there are opportunities for those in the Northern Hemisphere to witness the Delta Aquarids, too.
Between midnight and dawn, around 2 or 3am, is the best time to catch a glimpse. Delta Aquarid meteors are sometimes a little faint, so a dark sky free of moonlight and artificial lights is very useful.
Fortunately, the start of August brings a new moon and waning crescent moons, meaning darker skies and more visible meteors.
Slooh, an online observatory, is also providing a live broadcast of the meteor shower from an observatory on the Canary Islands, for those unable to get a good view. Here’s a link (That won’t start broadcasting until July 28th):
What causes meteor showers?
Meteor showers occur because the orbits of comets are a little lopsided, and they can veer too close to the sun. At this point, light bolts from the sun release bursts of ice and dust from the comet’s surface, and when this debris follows the comet’s path it forms a tail.
As Earth crosses the orbit of a comet, we pass through the tail. Planets’ gravity attracts the debris, and when it is pulled into Earth’s atmosphere it burns up upon collision with air molecules. The glowing, streaking tails – meteors or shooting stars – can be seen.
Delta Aquarid or Perseid?
Delta Aquarid and Perseid showers will overlap, but which one we are looking at can be ascertained by tracing the meteors backward through the sky to see where they originated from. Delta Aquarids meteors will appear to radiate from the star Skat, or Delta Aquarii, which is in the constellation Aquarius the Water Bearer.
Delta Aquarids meteors will appear to come from the south if being observed from the Northern Hemisphere, while in the Southern Hemisphere they will appear to radiate from just about overhead.
The Perseids, meanwhile, radiate from the constellation Perseus and appear to originate in the northeast or north for those in the Northern Hemisphere, or appear to dart up from the Northern horizon if in the Southern Hemisphere.
The protozoan Trypanosoma brucei causes African sleeping sickness and the disease was so prevalent at one point, it made parts of Africa uninhabitable.
But now, the microorganism is serving as a model for Swiss-based engineers developing a new class of microscopic robots that could be used to deliver drugs or perform life-saving surgeries at a microscopic scale.
According to a new report in the journal Nature Communications, engineers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne (EPFL) and the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ) in Switzerland are creating and assessing various designs of microscopic robots that can not only move around, but can be generated rapidly using a new manufacturing process. The outcome is a microscopic robot that can be manipulated with an electromagnetic field and, when warmed up, can even change its shape.
Designs Inspired by Bacteria
To make the robots, the team is using biocompatible hydrogel and magnetic nanoparticles, with the latter allowing the drones to move via magnetic field manipulation.
The researchers said they were inspired by Trypanosoma brucei, particularly its flagellum that it uses to move from the Tsetse fly to its host’s bloodstream. Once inside the host, the protozoan hides the whip-like appendage as a survival mechanism.
The new class of micro-drones uses an artificial flagellum to maneuver to a destination. Then, a laser can be used to change configuration and wrap the appendage around the robot, getting it out of the way.
Credit: EPFL
The microbot is created by putting tiers of magnetic nanoparticles into a biocompatible hydrogel. An electromagnetic field then moves the nanoparticles to various parts of robots and the hydrogel is hardened to keep it all in place. When put into water the micro-drone folds according to the orientation of the nanoparticles to create the last arrangement.
“We show that both a bacterium’s body and its flagellum play an important role in its movement,” study author Selman Sakar, a robotics engineer at EPFL, said in a news release. “Our new production method lets us test an array of shapes and combinations to obtain the best motion capability for a given task. Our research also provides valuable insight into how bacteria move inside the human body and adapt to changes in their microenvironment.”
China plans to treat lung-cancer patients with genetic modification
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Chinese researchers have announced their intention to treat lung-cancer patients with cells that have been modified using CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing method, which would mark the first time that the controversial technique had been used to alter the DNA of adult human subjects.
According to ScienceAlert, scientists at Sichuan University’s West China Hospital are planning to remove and replace faulty DNA in patients who have failed to respond to conventional forms of treatment, including chemotherapy and radiation, and are thus left with no other alternative.
The team, which is led by oncologist Lu You, will involve only metastatic non-small cell lung cancer patients and will involve the extraction of a specific type of immune cell known as a T cell from the patients’ blood. Those cells will be modified using CRISPR, then replaced in the hopes that they will trigger an immune response to combat the cancer, Nature added.
Specifically, the genes will be edited to remove a protein, PD-1, which normally prevents a cell from attacking healthy cells. A trial using a similar cancer-fighting technique has been approved in the US and could start before the end of the year, but while that trial will use antibodies, using modified DNA is far less unpredictable and more likely to provide the desired response.
“Treatment options are very limited. This technique is of great promise in bringing benefits to patients, especially the cancer patients whom we treat every day,” Lu told Nature last Thursday. “I hope we are the first, and more importantly, I hope we can get positive data from the trial.”
This will be the first time CRISPR will be used to modify human genetic code.
Cause for celebration or concern? The ethical debate continues
The deletion technique that the West China Hospital team plans to use it similar to those which have already been used to treat other patients, including purportedly saving the life of a girl with incurable leukemia. However, this will mark the first time that scientists will use CRISPR tools to genetically modify cells, according to ScienceAlert.
Carl June, a clinical immunotherapy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, called in “an exciting step forward,” while Timothy Chan, who conducts similar research at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, told Nature that “everything will be active” in the modified T cells. “That will be a concern.”
Of course, the use of modification tools to edit human genes has been a tremendous source of controversy over the years. In fact, according to The Guardian, Peter Mills, assistant director of the UK Nuffield Council on Bioethics, has expressed concerns that using CRISPR and tools like it on humans raises the risk of creating “designer babies,” and last March, a group of researchers published an open letter in Nature raising concerns over the “ethical and safety implications” of using these techniques to modify human DNA.
“In our view, genome editing in human embryos using current technologies could have unpredictable effects on future generations. This makes it dangerous and ethically unacceptable. Such research could be exploited for non-therapeutic modifications,” they wrote. “We are concerned that a public outcry about such an ethical breach could hinder a promising area of therapeutic development, namely making genetic changes that cannot be inherited… At this early stage, scientists should agree not to modify the DNA of human reproductive cells.”
Lu assured Nature that the researchers are taking a methodical approach to their work, having spent six months in a review process before receiving permission to move forward. However, Hokkaido University bioethicist Tetsuya Ishii told the journal that China has a reputation as a country that moves (perhaps too) quickly on CRISPR related research – after all, they already have developed the first CRISPR-edited monkeys and human embryos. That, June said, is only because China “places a high priority on biomedical research.”
Solar Impulse begins last leg of flight around the world
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
A solar-powered aircraft attempting to circumnavigate the globe began the final leg of its journey over the weekend, departing from the Egyptian capital of Cairo on Sunday for Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, the city where its voyage began in March 2015.
According to Reuters and BBC News, Solar Impulse, the single-seat, zero-fuel aircraft piloted at different times by Swiss aviators Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, is expected to reach its destination in 48-72 hours. Once it lands, it will have traveled about 30,000 kilometers (more than 18,600 miles) and become the first plane to circle the Earth using only solar power.
While the Solar Impulse team expects that Piccard, who is piloting the aircraft for the final leg of its journey, should not have too many difficulties, they did tell BBC News that they are a little bit worried that the heat in the Middle East could impact the plane’s performance. Piccard will likely spend much of the flight at high altitude, on oxygen, in order to avoid turbulence, they said.
Prior to liftoff, Piccard told Reuters, “The round the world flight ends in Abu Dhabi, but not the project.” That project, he explained, is “a big promotion of clean technologies around the world,” adding that “the legacy of Solar Impulse is the created international community.”
Solar Impulse began its journey in Abu Dhabi back in 2015. (Credit: Solar Impulse)
Solar Impulse Pilot: “Some passenger planes will be solar powered by 2026.”
Solar Impulse’s journey began when it lifted off from Abu Dhabi en route to Muscat, Oman on March 9, 2015. That initial journey took just over 13 hours and spanned 772 kilometers (around 480 miles), and was followed by trips to India, Myanmar, China, Japan, the US, Spain and then to Cairo, where it landed on July 11 after a nearly 49 hour segment of the voyage.
The aircraft was expected to take off shortly after reaching Egypt, but reports indicate that the final leg to the UAE had to be delayed due to a heat wave in Saudi Arabia. Once Piccard lands the plane in Abu Dhabi, it will bring to a close a 17-year undertaking that initially came to him after he completed the first non-stop, around the world balloon flight back in 1999.
Solar Impulse is constructed out of carbon fiber, has a larger wingspan than a Boeing 747 and is as heavy as a family-sized automobile. Even so, it is powered solely by solar energy collected by 17,000 photovoltaic cells located on its wings, some of which is stored in batteries to enable the plane to fly during the nighttime. It can reach speeds of up to 62 mph (100 kph) and altitudes of nearly 28,000 feet (8,500 meters), according to Reuters and BBC News.
While Piccard doubts that airliners will be replacing their jet engines with solar-powered ones any time soon, he told the British news agency that he is confident that “in 10 years we will have electric aeroplanes flying with 50 passengers for short- to medium-haul flights… and maybe sometimes people will say this all started with a crazy idea of flying around the world in a solar aeroplane, and the outcome was useful for everyone.”
Mysterious green foam oozing out of storm drain in Utah
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but for the residents of Bluffdale, Utah, it’s all too real: earlier this week, a massive, pale-green blob of foam started bubbling up through a roadway storm drain, forcing health department officials to launch an investigation.
Fortunately, as Gizmodo and Live Science explained, the substance is not believed to be linked to a excrement-fueled bloom of toxic algae currently affecting the Utah Lake area. Rather, it was likely the result of routine moss cleaning at a canal connected to the affected storm drain.
Of course, testing on samples taken from the drain is currently ongoing, and nothing is official until those results are announced, but Nicholas Rupp of the Salt Lake County Health Department assured reporters that the chemicals used to clear canals of moss tend to foam up, and that there is likely no link to the algal bloom on the lake, and thus nothing to be afraid of.
“At this point, we certainly don’t believe the foam is related to algae,” Rupp said, according to Gizmodo. “All evidence points to it coming from the moss cleaning process because that process creates foaming.” Likewise, Donna Spangler of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), told Live Science that the foam “has nothing to do with algae.”
While the investigation into the roadside gate forced the nearby street to be closed, people who live in the area will undoubtedly be thrilled to learn that the foam probably does not pose a health risk. The same cannot be said for Utah Lake, however, as the aforementioned algal blooms there have forced public health officials to close the lake due to concerns over cyanobacteria.
Cyanobacteria algae, Live Science explains, can release toxins that can affect the brain, nervous system, and liver function of anyone exposed to the substance. At its peak, the bloom has covered as much as 90 percent of the lake and has even crept into nearby tributaries, Spangler noted.
The combination of hot temperatures, low water levels and high phosphorus concentrations are being blamed for the growth of the algal mass, experts noted. Close to four-fifths of the water’s phosphorus content comes from discharge by nearby wastewater treatment plants, officials with the Utah DEQ explained. In short, human-produced waste is fueling the bloom’s growth.
In a statement, Utah state and county health officials said that the lake contained three times the algal content needed for closing a body of water. “Water with these levels of concentration in the algal bloom pose serious health risks,” said Ralph Clegg, Executive Director of the Utah County Health Department. “To protect the health of people and animals that use the lake, it is necessary for the lake to remain closed until it is safe for recreation.”
Officials are advising anyone concerned about exposure to the toxic algae to call contact local poison control centers or their doctors, and to avoid consuming any fish caught from Utah Lake on or after July 10. Furthermore, they are advising people to avoid fishing in rivers or tributaries near the lake until further notice.
New titanium alloy is four times stronger than steel
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
By adding gold to titanium, Rice University researchers report in the latest edition of the journal Science Advances that they have discovered an alloy that is several times stronger than steel, but which is still wear-resistant and non-toxic enough to be used in artificial knees and hips.
According to BBC News, Emilia Morosan, a professor of nanomaterials engineering at Rice, and her colleagues claim that the titanium-gold (Ti-Au) alloy is the hardest known metallic substance compatible with living tissues and is four times stronger than pure titanium, the material which is now used in the majority of dental implants and replacement joints.
“This began from my core research,” Morosan explained in a statement. “We published a study not long ago on titanium-gold, a 1-to-1 ratio compound that was a magnetic material made from nonmagnetic elements. One of the things that we do when we make a new compound is try to grind it into powder for X-ray purposes. This helps with identifying the composition, the purity, the crystal structure and other structural properties.”
However, when they developed the new alloy – a compound of three parts titanium and one part gold called beta-Ti3Au – they were unable to grind it, even when using a diamond-coated mortar and pestle. Follow up tests and comparisons to other titanium-gold compounds revealed that this new allow was at least three times harder than most steels, and comparable to other engineering alloys, according to the study authors.
Substance also more biocompatible, wear-resistant than regular titanium
The breakthrough could be good news for joint replacement patients, as in most cases, hip and knee implants need to be replaced once every 10 years or so because of wear and tear, said BBC News. Beta-Ti3Au could lead to the development of longer-lasting medical implants.
According to Morosan, the compound is “not difficult to make.” Its atoms are densely packed in what is known as a cubic crystalline structure long associated with hardness, and while the Rice-led team is not even certain that they were the first team to develop a purse sample of the alloy’s ultrahard beta form, they are the first to document the compound’s incredible properties.
In addition to measuring its hardness, the researchers gauged the biocompatibility and the wear resistance of beta-Ti3Au. Those tests revealed that the alloy was even more biocompatible than pure titanium, and it also exceeded its unaltered counterpart in measures of wear resistance. The material could also be used in the drilling and sporting goods industry, they added.
So what exactly is it that makes this alloy so much stronger, more biocompatible and better at resisting wear and tear than other types of titanium? As the researchers explained in the abstract of their study, its traits “can be attributed to the elevated valence electron density, the reduced bond length, and the pseudogap formation. Understanding the origin of hardness in this intermetallic compound provides an avenue toward designing superior biocompatible, hard materials.”
UK doctors complete first ever double hand transplant
Written By: Brett Smith
Brian Galloway
Doctors in the United Kingdom have announced a successful “double hand transplant” – the first time such an operation has ever been completed in that country.
The patient, Chris King, 57, lost both hands up to his thumbs in an accident involving a metal pressing machine. King said his two new hands, which he received from a donor, are already functioning.
“I couldn’t wish for anything better,” King said after the successful surgery. “It’s better than winning the lottery because you feel whole again.”
“They’re my hands. They really are my hands. My blood’s going through them. My tendons are attached. They’re mine. They really are.”
First Double Hand Transplant in the UK
The operation was the second successful hand transplant operation in the UK, but the first involving both hands. Doctors who performed the operation said it is the first time a hand transplant operation was done above the wrist, which makes the operation much more complex.
Simon Kay, the surgeon who performed the operation, noted that there are added concerns with a hand transplant, compared to internal organ transplant.
“Nobody cares what their kidney looks like as long as it works,” Kay said, according to BBC News. “But not only do we have to match the hands immunologically, in the same way that we have to match kidneys and livers, they also have to look appropriate because the hands are on view the whole time.”
Kay added that getting donor hands is more difficult because the loved ones of a deceased person are less likely to agree to donate them.
King still has his bandages on, and said he can’t wait to both see and try out his new hands.
“And it’s actually opened a memory because I could never remember what my hands looked like after the accident because that part of my brain shut down,” he said.
King was actually introduced to the surgeon Kay by to Mark Cahill, the first person to have a hand transplant in the UK. Cahill encouraged King to have the transplant operation.
“We’ll shake hands one day,” King said. “It’s wonderful stuff.”
The patient from Doncaster, England added that people should take time to talk to their loved ones about donating whatever organs or body part might potentially help someone else.
“Just have the conversation with your family. There’s no greater gift.”
—– Image credit: Leeds General Infirmary
Three-drug combos could help treat antibiotic-resistant bacteria
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
A team of UCLA scientists has identified a cocktail of three different drugs that, while unable to treat resistant bacterial infections on their own, could be combined to overcome resistance of these life-threatening pathogens to antibiotics, according to a recently-published study.
In fact, they tested the effectiveness of various one, two and three-drug combinations in treating lab-grown E. coli bacteria, and found that 94 out of 364 three-drug groupings killed 100% of the bacteria, senior author Pamela Yeh, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA, and her colleagues reported in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Furthermore, in a statement, Yeh’s team reported that the success rate of the three-drug combos may have been even more effective had they tested higher doses of the medications. Even so, the findings provide new hope for the nearly 700,000 people who die each year due to infection from drug-resistant bacteria, including carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae such as E. coli.
“Three antibiotics can change the dynamic,” said lead author Elif Tekin, a graduate student at the university. “Not many scientists realize that three-drug combinations can have really beneficial effects that they would not have predicted even by studying all pairs of the antibiotics together.”
One piece of the puzzle, but other steps still need to be taken
Tekin, Yeh and their fellow researchers selected their antibiotic combinations from a group of 14 different drugs, choosing each using a sophisticated framework that allowed them to determine if adding a third drug into the mix produced new effects that two-drug pairings could not achieve.
Since different classes of antibiotics combat bacterial infections using different mechanisms, the team used both biological and mathematical techniques to discern which combinations would be the most effective. The three medications had to be selected “systematically and rationally,” Yeh said, and required determining if adding a third drug made the treatment more or less effective.
She also noted that three-drug combinations could allow doctors to prescribe lower doses of each antibiotic, which would reduce the risk of side effects in the patients. However, Yeh also warned that, while her team’s findings could help combat antibiotic resistance, other steps still needed to be taken in order to fully battle the increasing risk of these drug-resistant superbugs.
“We need to attack this problem from all sides,” she explained. “We need sound policy to stop the overuse of antibiotics, doctors to prescribe antibiotics wisely, agriculture to stop overusing antibiotics and researchers to develop new antibiotics,” Yeh added. On the plus side, however, she and her colleagues “think our contribution will buy time for researchers to better leverage existing drugs and for policymakers to develop better policy about the use of antibiotics.”
The researchers plan to release open-access software that will enable other scientists and doctors to review their methods and determine which antibiotic combinations will most effectively treat individual patients. They added that their approach could also be adapted to review the how four different medications interact, and could even be altered for use in non health-related fields.
Thanks to a new software update, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has become the first off-world exploration vehicle capable of autonomously selecting targets for one of its instruments, officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and their colleagues announced on Thursday.
The update allows Curiosity to select rock targets for chemical analysis using its ChemCam laser spectrometer without any input from a controller back on Earth, LANL scientists explained. In most cases, those targets will still be chosen by ground-based scientist, they noted, but the rover itself will be permitted to select several targets on its own each week.
Known as AEGIS (Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science), the software was developed by a engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, and requires scientists to set adjustable criteria, such as identifying rocks based on their size or brightness, for the rover to search for and target when working on its own.
As Roger Wiens, principal investigator for the ChemCam instrument at Los Alamos, said in a statement, it “will give us a chance to analyze even more rock and soil samples on Mars. The science team is not always available to pick samples for analysis,” he added. “Having a smarter rover that can pick its own samples is completely in line with self-driving cars and other smart technologies being implemented on Earth.”
The ChemCam allows for finer examination of rocks than the NaviCam. (Credit: NASA JPL)
Program will also make it easier to analyze fine-scale targets
The criteria used by AEGIS to help Curiosity select ChemCam targets can be altered based on the rover’s surroundings and the scientific goals of the measurements, the researchers said. The instrument uses spectrometers to record wavelengths while firing the laser, allowing scientists at Los Alamos to identify a rock’s chemical make-up.
The software was previously used on the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity to analyze images captured using a wide-angle camera as the basis for autonomously selecting rocks which are then photographed using a narrower-angle camera. AEGIS, which was honored by NASA as the best software developed in 2011, will analyze images from Curiosity’s Navigation Camera (Navcam) to select a target. It will then point ChemCam in the direction of that newfound target.
Alternatively, the program can use images from ChemCam’s own Remote Micro-Imager to find potential targets, analyzing those pictures to point the laser at fine-scale targets which were selected by scientists in advance, the laboratory explained. Located at the top of the rover’s mast, ChemCam can analyze the composition of a rock or soil target from approximately 23 feet (7 meters) away.
“Due to their small size and other pointing challenges, hitting these targets accurately with the laser has often required the rover to stay in place while ground operators fine tune pointing parameters,” explained robotics engineer Tara Estlin, who led the development of the software at JPL. “AEGIS enables these targets to be hit on the first try by automatically identifying them and calculating a pointing that will center a ChemCam measurement on the target.”
Massive protoplanet formed huge Moon crater, study finds
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
The asteroid that crashed into the lunar surface, creating the Imbrium Basin (the right eye of the so-called “Man in the Moon”) may have actually been twice as large and 10 times more massive than previously estimated, claims research published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Earlier estimates based on computer models had suggested that the impactor responsible for the crater’s formation was only approximately 50 miles in diameter, but new analysis of the basin by Pete Schultz, professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University, and his colleagues has found that the object may have actually been much larger.
“We show that Imbrium was likely formed by an absolutely enormous object, large enough to be classified as a protoplanet,” Schultz explained in a statement, adding that this is the first estimate to be based primarily on the moon’s geological features, and that the findings might help explain why the Imbrium Basin is surrounded by unusual terrain including grooves and gashes.
Furthermore, by comparing the impact crater’s size with others on the Moon, as well as some present on Mercury and Mars, the study authors suggest that protoplanet-sized asteroids may have been relatively abundant during the earliest days of the solar system.
New evidence makes scientists believe this crater is actually the aftermath of a protoplanet collision. (Credit: NASA/Northeast Planetary Data Center/Brown University)
Protoplanet-sized impactors common in the early solar system?
Visible even from Earth, the Imbrium Basin is a dark patch in the northwestern quadrant of the moon that is 750 miles long. Surrounding it is a feature known as the Imbrium Sculpture, which is comprised of grooves and gashes radiating out from the center of the basin on its southeastern side and was created by rocks ejected from the crater when it was first formed.
The grooves on the southeastern side suggest the object came from the northwest and struck the surface at an oblique angle, the researchers explained. However, the presence of a second set of grooves which a different alignment, apparently coming from an area to the northwest along the same trajectory as the impactor had long puzzled scientists.
“No one was quite sure where they came from,” Schultz noted. However, he and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments suggesting that the second set of grooves was likely created by shards of the impactor that broke off after it first struck the lunar surface. Based on their analysis of those grooves’ sizes, they were able to determine that the impactor was at least 150 miles (250 km) in diameter – large enough to be classified as a protoplanet – and potentially bigger.
“That’s actually a low-end estimate,” Schultz said. “It’s possible that it could have been as large as 300 kilometers.” His team then conducted similar experiments to determine the approximate size of impactors related to other basins on the Moon and found that they too were bigger than previously estimated, ranging from 100 to 110 km (62 to 68 miles) in diameter.
Based on these findings, and the fact that other worlds have impact craters larger than Imbrium Basin, Schultz believes that the findings indicate that protoplanet-sized asteroids were common at one time. He also believes that the findings explain why moon rocks collected by the Apollo missions had high meteoritic content (the result of intact fragments from the impactors) and that pieces of these large asteroids may be responsible for some of the impacts that took place during the Late Heavy Bombardment some 3.8 to 4.0 billion years ago.
World’s most sensitive dark matter detector finishes search
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Despite searching for a period of 20 months, a device heralded as the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector was unable to find even a hint of the invisible particles believed to account for up to 80% of the mass in the universe, an international team of scientists has revealed.
Speaking Thursday at the Identification of Dark Matter Conference (IDM2016) in Sheffield, UK, researchers involved with the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter experiment in South Dakota said the equipment’s sensitivity had “far exceeded” the project’s goals and that had it interacted with any dark matter particles, LUX “almost certainly” would have detected them.
“LUX has delivered the world’s best search sensitivity since its first run in 2013,” Rick Gaitskell, a physics professor at Brown University and co-spokesperson for the LUX Collaboration, said in a statement. “It would have been marvelous if the improved sensitivity had also delivered a clear dark matter signal. However, what we have observed is consistent with background alone.”
On the positive side, Gaitskell noted that during the final 20-month run (which began in October 2014 and ended in May 2016), scientists involved in the collaboration were able to push the dark matter detector’s sensitivity to levels “four times better than the original project goals.”
Credit: C. H. Faham
No evidence of WIMPs detected during 20-month run
Based on the performance of the detector’s xenon target, the researchers were able to eliminate many potential dark matter particle models, which they said will help direct future experiments designed to hunt for the source of this hypothesized, mysterious, nonluminous material.
According to Gaitskell and his colleagues, dark matter is believed to account for roughly four-fifths of the mass in the observable universe, and while it has never been seen, scientists believe that it exists based on how it influences gravity in galaxies and in the way that light bends as it travels through the cosmos. To date, though, no experiment has detected a dark matter particle.
Located in the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the LUX project was developed to search for one particular type of dark matter candidate – weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Scientists theorized that these particles are everywhere, but since they interact weakly with normal matter, they go completely unnoticed.
Using a detector comprised of 600-plus pounds of cooled liquid xenon and a powerful array of sensors, LUX was designed to detect the minuscule electrical charge and light flash emitted when WIMPs collide with xenon atoms within the detector’s tank. Since the tank is underground, it is protected from external sources of radiation, preventing interference with dark matter signals. Despite analyzing nearly one-half million gigabytes of data during its 20-month run, however, LUX was unable to detect any evidence of WIMP collisions.
“We worked hard and stayed diligent over more than a year and a half to keep the detector running in optimal conditions and maximize useful data time,” Berkeley Lab physicist Simon Fiorucci, science coordination manager for the experiment, said. “The is unambiguous data we can be proud of and a timely result in this very competitive field – even if it is not the positive detection we were all hoping for.”
Findings will greatly benefit future dark matter detection projects
The results obtained by the LUX experiment eliminated a large number of different mass ranges and interaction-coupling strengths where WIMPs were thought to exist, but it has not eliminated the possibility that the weakly-interacting particles themselves are real, Gaitskell emphasized. In fact, the WIMP model “remains alive and viable,” he added.
While they were unable to pinpoint dark matter particles, the research team said that their work will be valuable in shaping future detection experiments. “LUX has done much more in terms of its sensitivity and reliability than we ever expected it to do,” Gaitskell noted. “We always want more time with our detectors, but it’s time to take the lessons learned from LUX and apply them to the future search for dark matter.”
Members of the LUX Collaboration, including scientists from 20 universities and laboratories in the US, the UK and Portugal, will spend the next few months analyzing the data collected by the experiment. They hope to find additional information that will benefit future dark-matter hunting projects, including LUX’s direct successor, the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment.
“The global search for dark matter aims to answer fundamental questions about the makeup of our universe. We’re proud to support the LUX collaboration and congratulate them on reaching this higher level of sensitivity,” said Mike Headley, executive director of the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority (SDSTA), which manages both experiments. “We’re looking forward to hosting the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, which will provide another major step forward in sensitivity.”
How fibromyalgia tests your relationship’s patience
Written By: Holly Case
admin
Image:295098473/shutterstock
There’s no question that fibromyalgia is a challenging illness. It affects your health and functioning, but it affects your relationships almost as much. One in four people with fibro say that their partner or spouse doesn’t understand the illness; half said their illness damaged a current or past relationship. Here’s how it affects your relationships and a few tips for how to minimize its impact.
Unpredictable Symptoms and Timing
One of the most frustrating aspects of fibromyalgia is that it makes it hard to plan events in the future. You never know from one day to the next if it will be a bad pain day or if you’ll be feeling more functional. Many partners and spouses lose patience with the unpredictable nature and timing of when your symptoms will be bad.
Impact on Sex Life
Pain and fatigue are the most common fibro symptoms for the majority of people. When these symptoms are at their worst, it makes physical activity uncomfortable, if not impossible. Not surprisingly, this also makes it difficult to maintain an active sex life. Some partners and spouses may not be very understanding of the fact that your pain will make you feel like having sex less often and may feel personally rejected.
Suffering in Silence
Relationships are built on intimacy, which requires honesty and open sharing. Many fibro sufferers fear that their partners will think they’re exaggerating their symptoms, so they may choose to suffer in silence. This may create distance between the fibro sufferer and their partner or spouse which can ultimately have a negative effect on the relationship.
Improving Communication
All relationships need to have a foundation of good communication. But when one partner has a chronic health problem like fibromyalgia, it will make bad communication patterns even more obvious and destructive. However, establishing good communication skills can make a huge positive difference in your relationship, too. Set aside a specific time when you can talk to your partner so that you can communicate your needs. Plan a time when your partner is likely to be relaxed and reschedule if you’re experiencing “fibro fog” at the moment, which can impact your thinking and communication. Instead of having a list of complaints, come prepared with a list of concrete suggestions of things they can do to help you. Many partners and spouses do want to help but may feel helpless when they don’t have specific guidance.
Helping Caregiver Burnout
Even the most dedicated and understanding partner can find it overwhelming and exhausting to be a caregiver for someone with a chronic illness. If your partner or spouse is spending a lot of time helping out with running errands or doing extra work around the house, make sure they get an occasional afternoon to themselves with friends or to do fun activities to help them relax.
Fibromyalgia may have a major impact on relationships, but it is something that can be overcome with good communication and a compassionate partner. Be honest about your needs and find time to connect with each other.
Researchers just discovered a planetary system located 40 light years from Earth that hosts three possibly habitable planets each the size of Earth. Based on the calculated dimensions and surface temperatures of the planets, the scientists established that parts of each planet might have conditions ideal for life.
According to a new report in the journal Nature, researchers have now found the two innermost planets are rocky and have tight, dense atmospheres, like those found on Earth and Mars.
To make their discovery, the team borrowed NASA’s Hubble telescope and pointed it at the system’s star, TRAPPIST-1. The team commandeered the telescope in order to capture a rare double transit, when two planets in a system nearly simultaneously pass in front of their star.
The team was able to document a combined transmission spectrum of TRAPPIST-1b and c, which means that as one planet then the other crossed in front of the star, they could evaluate the modifications in starlight wavelengths as the quantity of starlight dipped with each pass.
The “pristine” data uncovered will lead to further studies using ground-based telescopes (Credit: NASA)
“The data turned out to be pristine, absolutely perfect, and the observations were the best that we could have expected,” study author Julien de Wit, a planetary scientist at MIT, said in a news release. “The force was certainly with us.”
The drops in starlight were identified over a thin array of wavelengths and turned out not to fluctuate significantly over that range. Had the dips varied considerably, it would have shown the planets have light, puffy atmospheres, comparable to that of the gas giant Jupiter.
Looking at the Planets’ Atmospheres
However, the data indicated both transiting planets have compact atmospheres, very similar our own.
“Now we can say that these planets are rocky. Now the question is, what kind of atmosphere do they have?” de Wit said. “The plausible scenarios include something like Venus, where the atmosphere is dominated by carbon dioxide, or an Earth-like atmosphere with heavy clouds, or even something like Mars with a depleted atmosphere. The next step is to try to disentangle all these possible scenarios that exist for these terrestrial planets.”
The researchers are currently trying to identify ground-based telescopes to delve further into this planetary system, as well as look for other similar systems.
The planetary system’s star, TRAPPIST-1, is referred to as an ultracool dwarf star, a kind of star that is normally chiller than the sun, giving off radiation in the infrared as opposed to the visible spectrum. De Wit’s colleagues from the University of Liège came up with the idea to check for planets around these stars, because they are much fainter than standard stars, meaning their starlight would not overwhelm the signal from planets themselves.
First six months of 2016 break global temperature records
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
The sixth-month period from January to June 2016 was the warmest such stretch in the planet’s history, and each individual month set a new record as the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, a team of NASAscientists revealedon Tuesday.
Those two records are among several climate-related high established so far this year, according to a new analysis of ground-based observations and satellite data conducted by researchers at the US space agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
As the modern temperature record dates back to 1880, that means that every month of this year so far has been the hottest in more than 130 years, and the six-month period ending in June was an average of 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the late 19th century.
Furthermore, analyses developed by scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Centerin Maryland found that five of the first six months of 2016 established new records for the smallest respective monthly sea ice extent since consistent satellite data was first collected back in 1979. March was the lone exception, as only the second smallest extend was observed for that month.
Record low sea ice extents recorded in the Arctic region as well
Although the new records set in these two important climate-related categories will garner a lot of attention, NASA scientists emphasized that it was “more significant” that global temperatures and Arctic sea ice levels are continuing to change, as they have been for decades. Those changes, the agency claimed, are due to increased levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Currently, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic during the peak of the region’s summer melt season covers an average of 40% less area than it did during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and during the month of September (the seasonal low point in the annual cycle), the extend is declining at a rate of more than 13% per decade, the GISS and Goddard researchers reported Tuesday.
“It has been a record year so far for global temperatures, but the record high temperatures in the Arctic over the past six months have been even more extreme,” Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA Goddard, said in a statement. “This warmth as well as unusual weather patterns have led to the record low sea ice extents so far this year.”
The new observations are part of the agency’s ongoing effort to investigate the Earth and to learn more about how the planet we call home is changing. NASA is currently involved in 19 different space-based, Earth-monitoring missions, and it also uses aircraft to conduct measurements of the Arctic sea ice cap surface as part of its long-running Operation IceBridge campaign. Researchers from the agency are also working in the Arctic region to learn more about what is causing sea ice melt to increase, as well as the impact of warmer conditions on that area’s ecosystems.
SpaceX talks about its next mission– Landing three rockets at once
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Having successfully landed its reusable Falcon 9 booster for the fifth time on Monday, SpaceXhas decided to up the degree of difficulty and will now attempt to land three rockets at the same time as part of its Falcon Heavy project, various media outlets reported on Tuesday.
According to Gizmodoand the Christian Science Monitor, the aerospace firm is seeking permission from the government to use two extra landing pads to prepare for the maneuver, which will attempt to have one large rocket comprised of three individual boosters strapped together land at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida.
“SpaceX expects to fly Falcon Heavy for the first time later this year,” SpaceX told the Orlando Sentinel in a statement, adding that they are “seeking regulatory approval to build two additional landing pads at Cape Canaveral” and that they may “initially… attempt drone ship landings.”
While the three boosters would each land at close to the same time, Musk emphasized on Twitter that they would not be exactly simultaneous: two of the rockets would touch down one right after the other, while the third would arrive after a brief delay, no more than a few minutes later.
Can’t wait to see all three cores of Falcon Heavy come back for landings! First two will be almost simultaneous. https://t.co/ryMiewZM4L
Like with the lightweight Falcon 9 rockets, the landing is intended to enable SpaceX to recover, repair and reuse the boosters to help save on the costs of space travel, Popular Science explained. The first launch of the Falcon Heavy is currently scheduled for November, and if successful, the heavy-duty rocket could be used to carry crew and supplies to Mars, the website added.
Falcon Heavy landing would be preceded by first Falcon 9 re-launch
Early Monday morning, SpaceX was able to land its reusable, two-stage Falcon 9 rocket for the fifth time, as it softly returned to a site a few miles south of its Cape Canaveral-based launch pad after propelling a Dragon capsule filled with supplies to the International Space Station (ISS).
The Hawthorne, California-based aerospace firm initially completed the maneuver successfully in December 2015, then followed that with three landings involving its floating drone platform earlier this year (once in April and twice in May). Following Monday’s landing, Musk said that the rocket passed post-landing inspection, was in good shape and was ready to fly again.
While SpaceX seems to have the landing thing down pretty well, they have yet to actually reuse one of their Falcon 9 boosters – although, as Business Insider reported earlier this week, they did select the rocket which will be used to make that first attempt, which could take place as early as September. That launch will involve the rocket used for the April landing, as Musk explained he wants to preserve the one from the first landing as a monument.
“Getting to the point where they are not only recovering them intact, but reusing them and, here is the key point, reusing them on launches where there is a customer paying for that launch, that is the hard part,” Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told the Christian Science Monitor.
“It is the reuse that still remains to be proven. The landing of the stages they seem to have got down now, not 100 percent but they have basically got that sorted. So doing that for three stages at once is an operational challenge, but it is not a fundamental challenge. I see no reason why they can’t do this, and it is going to be spectacular,” he added.
Strange Zika virus case confuses US health officials
Written By: Brett Smith
Brian Galloway
Public health officials are currently investigating the possibility of a new way the Zika virus could be transmitted.
Currently, there are only two known transmission methods for Zika: bites from Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus mosquitoes or sexual activity. However, a person in Utah recently contracted Zika after caring for an elderly person with the virus.
Officials said extremely close contact may have passed the virus from one person to another.
“This case is unusual. The individual does not have any of the known risk factors we’ve seen thus far with Zika virus,” Gary Edwards, a Salt Lake County health officer said during a news conference.
Edwards said the patient hadn’t been to a Zika-affected area, nor had intimate contact with the older infected person. However, the person had “helped provide care for the deceased patient.”
Noting privacy guidelines, public health officials have declined to give additional details.
Uncertainty as to How the Virus Jumped
The main mosquitoes recognized for transferring Zika are not seen in Utah, Edwards pointed out. As a preventative measure, officials are capturing and evaluating mosquitoes all over both persons’ homes to rule out that manner of transmission.
“At this time we don’t know if the contact between the new case and the deceased patient played any role in the transmission of the disease,” Edwards said. “There is uncertainty about how this new case contracted Zika. But we do not believe that there is risk of Zika transmission among the general population in Utah based on what we know so far.”
On Monday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said the older man had traveled to a Zika-affected region and lab tests revealed he had distinctly high quantities of virus in his blood – greater than 100,000 times the levels seen in specimens of other infected people.
Public health researchers in Utah are meeting with the caregiver who was infected and their family to find out more on the kinds of interaction the patients had before the first patient passed. Officials also are collecting specimens for testing, and collaborating with facilities where that patient was to ascertain what kind of contact he had with the staff.
What does the future hold for NASA? Here are the agency’s plans
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Launching a new giant space telescope, missions to study both Jupiter and its moons, and the continued exploration of the Red Planet are among NASA’s plans for the future, the US space agency revealed in a report published online Monday by Astronomy Magazine.
Fresh off a historic fly-by of Pluto and a mission studying the protoplanets Vesta and Ceres, one of the main focuses now for NASA scientists is the Juno mission, which will examine the origins and the interior structure of our solar system’s largest planet in the weeks and months ahead.
The Juno mission is a major focus in NASA’s near future. (Credit: NASA)
Juno will obtain the first close-up images of Jupiter in late August, and according to Planetary Division Director Jim Green, the spacecraft is “the latest example of the extraordinary science we have to look forward to right in our own solar system. There are many uncharted, promising worlds and objects we are eager to explore with our current and future missions.”
Earlier this month, Juno captured its first (low-resolution) image from orbit around Jupiter, and during the duration of its mission, it will circle the gas giant a total of 37 times, including flybys that will bring it to within 600 miles (4,100 kilometers) of the planet’s cloud tops.
In addition, the agency plans to use continue investigating Jupiter’s moons. They have selected nine science instruments for a planned mission to Europa to search for a liquid ocean beneath the surface of the unusual satellite, and will continue to monitor the intense geological activity on Io, the most volcanically active object in the entire solar system, according to NASA officials.
Hubble’s replacement, continuation of the Journey to Mars planned
One of the instruments that has been responsible for analyzing Jupiter in the past, the Hubble space telescope (which recently captured the planet’s auroras and found evidence of saltwater on its largest moon, Ganymede) will soon have a successor, as NASA plans to launch the new James Webb Space Telescope in 2018.
Called the Webb telescope for short, the instrument will be able to observe all of the planets and moons in our solar system, as well as faint, distant objects located elsewhere in the universe. The telescope’s angular and spectral resolution will enable scientists to observe each of these objects with unprecedented sensitivity, and will purportedly even be able to track geologic activity.
The James Webb telescope will be the next generation space observatory slated to launch in 2018 (Credit: NASA)
“From 2016 to 2018, there are installations and tests for the telescope and the telescope plus the instruments, followed by shipping to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas where end-to-end optical testing in a simulated cryo-temperature and vacuum space environment will occur,” Paul Geithner, technical manager for the telescope, said in a statementearlier this year. “Then all the parts will be shipped to Northrop Grumman for final assembly and testing.”
NASA also said that it was “closer than ever” to sending a manned mission to Mars. Currently, the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers are exploring the surface of the Red Planet, while the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) and other orbiters continue to monitor its atmosphere from above. InSight, a mission designed to study the interior of Mars, is scheduled to launch in 2018, followed two years later by the next-generation of Mars rover.
Earlier this month, in a speech to the National Press Club, NASA administrator Charles Bolden also said that the agency’s Orion spacecraft, which is being designed to send a four-person crew of astronauts beyond the moon, was “the most advanced… spacecraft ever designed.” He added that the upcoming Asteroid Redirect Mission would play an important part in the organization’s Journey to Mars program, as they hope to send astronauts to explore and collect samples from a relocated near-Earth object sometime in the 2020s.
New Horizons, Cassini to continue work; OSIRIS-REX to launch
New Horizons, the probe responsible for the aforementioned historic flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto and its moons, was approved to continue its voyage to study an object in the cold outer regions of the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt. It is expected to reach that object, a minor planet or cubewano known as 2014 MU69, on January 1, 2019.
Likewise, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will continue its exploration of the Saturn system, and in 2017, it will complete nearly two-dozen dives between the narrow gap that separates the planet’s outer atmosphere from its rings. Dubbed “the Grand Finale” by NASA officials, this portion of the mission will provide researchers with previously unattainable scientific data and new images of the solar system’s second largest planet and its ring system.
Just a few months from now, NASA will launch the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft. Designed to solve several of the mysteries surrounding the history of our solar system and how life originated on Earth, it will launch in September, travel to a near-Earth asteroid known as Bennu, and collect a sample that will be returned to Earth in 2023, according to officials at the space agency.
OSIRIS-REx will reach Bennu in 2018, NASA revealedback in May, and will spend one year flying in close proximity to the asteroid. During this period it will use a suite of five instruments to determine the physical and chemical properties of the object. It will then collect a sample of at least two pristine ounces of surface material which will be transported back to Earth so scientists can further analyze this chunk of debris from the solar system’s formation.
—- Image credit: NASA/JPL
Kepler’s K2 mission confirms 104 new Earthlike exoplanets
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Talk about your happy accidents: the Kepler space telescope’s broken pointing system is being credited for helping an international team of researchers discover more than 100 confirmed new exoplanets – the largest find since Kepler began its K2 mission.
The findings, which included the first planetary system comprised of four planets that could be potentially similar to Earth, were confirmed by follow-up observations conducted using ground-based telescopes including the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii. The researchers have published their findingsonline in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.
During the original phase of its mission, Kepler surveyed specific areas in the skies above the northern hemisphere, searching for Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars. In 2013, however, it lost the ability to closely examine its original target area, forcing engineers to repurpose it to examine multiple independent target areas in both hemispheres.
The now community-driven K2 mission gave Kepler new life, and enabled researchers to use it along with ground-based observatories to examine a larger percentage of smaller and cooler red dwarf stars, which are far more common in our galaxy than Sun-like stars, the team explained.
“Kepler’s original mission observed a small patch of sky as it was designed to conduct a demographic survey of the different types of planets,” lead investigator Ian Crossfield, a Sagan Fellow at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, said in a statement. “This approach effectively meant that relatively few of the brightest, closest red dwarfs were included in Kepler’s survey. The K2 mission allows us to increase the number of small, red stars by a factor of 20 for further study.”
Techniques could ‘triple’ the number of known Earth-like planets
Using data obtained by Kepler, and confirming those observations with others made at the Keck Observatory, the Gemini telescopes on Maunakea and in Chile, the Automated Planet Finder of the University of California Observatories, and the Large Binocular Telescope at the University of Arizona, Crossfield’s team managed to find 197 candidates and 104 verified planets.
Among the new worlds they were able to discover was a system of four potentially rocky planets that were each 20% to 50% larger than Earth, and which orbit a star less than half as large as our Sun. The orbits of these worlds range from 5.5 to 24 days, and while their host star gives off less light than the Sun, two of the worlds may experience radiation levels comparable to ours.
While their orbits bring them closer to their host star than Mercury’s orbit does to the Sun, there is still a possibility that such planets could be habitable, Crossfield explained. “Because these smaller stars are so common in the Milky Way, it could be that life occurs much more frequently on planets orbiting cool, red stars rather than planets around stars like our sun,” he said.
Once the planets were identified by K2, the researchers used Keck Observatory’s near infrared camera (NIRC2) and other instruments to obtain high-resolution images of the stars, and the high resolution spectrograph (HIRES) instrument at the Maunakea facility and the Automated Planet Finder to gather high-resolution optical spectroscopy data to verify the candidate planets.
Using the spectrographs allowed the researchers to disperse the starlight and measure the mass, radius, temperature and other physical properties of the star, the study authors said. This, in turn, made it possible for them to infer the characteristics of each planet orbiting those stars, and by applying these techniques to future K2 findings, Crossfield said that he believes that they will be able to “double or triple the number of relatively small planets orbiting nearby, bright stars.”
SpaceX sticks reusable rocket landing for the fifth time
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
An overnight launch designed to deliver cargo and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) crew has culminated in a fifth successful landing for SpaceX’sreusable two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, according to CBS News and Space.com reports published early Monday morning.
The Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 12:45 am EDT on Monday, carrying a docking mechanism needed for new US crew capsules in development and nearly 5,000 pounds of equipment and supplies to the crew of the orbiting research facility.
The first stage of the rocket separated less than three minutes after launch and completed a series of engine burns to return to Cape Canaveral. At 12:53 am, it completed a soft landing only a few miles south of its launch pad while SpaceX’s Dragon capsule continued towards the ISS.
This marks the fifth time that the California-based aerospace company founded and owned by Elon Musk has been able to successfully launch and land a reusable rocket. The first of those successes came following a commercial satellite launch in December 2015. It was followed by a second landing in April and two others in May, all involving a floating at-sea platform.
“We just completed the post-landing inspection and all systems look good. Ready to fly again,” Musk tweeted following the successful launch-and-landing. During a press conference held after the liftoff, Joel Montalbano, NASA’s deputy manager of ISS utilization, called it “a great day for SpaceX, a great day for NASA. The launch campaign was just fantastic to watch.”
Out on LZ-1. We just completed the post-landing inspection and all systems look good. Ready to fly again. pic.twitter.com/1OfA8h7Vrf
Commercial Crew capsule adapter among cargo en route to ISS
Meanwhile, the crew onboard the space station is anticipating the arrival of the Dragon capsule on Wednesday, which in addition to much-needed supplies contains materials essential to many of the 250-plus investigations scheduled to begin over the next several months, NASAsaid.
One of those projects was created by high school students in Colorado and will study how silver crystals can forms larger structures in space because they do not collapse under their own weight in the microgravity environment. Another experiment will examine micro-sized structures, to see how they form themselves into different shapes in structures without gravity’s influence.
The capsule will also deliver TangoLab-1, a rack that was developed by Kentucky-based Space Tango and which will house up to 24 experiments at any given time, as well as the international docking adapter (IDA), a ring that weighs more than 1,000 pounds and will serve as a connection point for future Boeing and SpaceX capsules currently being developed as part of the US space agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
“Engineered to an international docking standard and with numerous sensors and instruments attached, the adapter is designed to work with automated guidance systems on arriving spacecraft so they can safely dock to the station with little, if any, involvement from the crew in the spacecraft,” said NASA. The adapter is scheduled to be installed next month.
—– Image credit: SpaceX
Turtle shells didn’t evolve for protection, study claims
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
While modern-day turtles rely upon their shells as protection from predators, that wasn’t the primary reasons that the reptiles’ bone-based outer casing originally evolved, researchers from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science have revealed in a newly-published study.
Rather, the broad ribbed proto shell found on the earliest partially shelled fossil turtles was an adaptation designed to help the creature burrow underground, not protect itself from becoming lunch for an aggressive carnivore, an international team lead by Denver Museum paleontologist Dr. Tyler Lyson reported in Friday’s edition of the journal Current Biology.
“Why the turtle shell evolved is a very Dr. Seuss-like question and the answer seems pretty obvious – it was for protection,” Dr. Lyson explained in a statement. “But just like the bird feather did not initially evolve for flight, the earliest beginnings of the turtle shell was not for protection but rather for digging underground to escape the harsh South African environment where these early proto turtles lived.”
These digging adaptations helped facilitate the movement of turtles into aquatic environments early on in the creature’s evolutionary history, and probably played an key role in helping stem turtles survive the Permian/Triassic extinction event, the authors wrote in their study.
Scientists finally discovered that the turtle’s shell wasn’t an evolutionary adaptation for protection. (Credit: Thinkstock)
Adaptations apparent on newfound proto turtle specimens
Scientists have long been puzzled by the initial evolution of the turtle shell, according to Dr. Lyson. The fossil record and observations of shell development in modern turtles demonstrated that one of the first major physiological changes which takes place is a broadening of the ribs, a change which alters both the breathing and the speed of the reptiles.
“The integral role of ribs in both locomotion and breathing is likely why we don’t see much variation in the shape of ribs,” Dr. Lyson explained. “Ribs are generally pretty boring bones. The ribs of whales, snakes, dinosaurs, humans, and pretty much all other animals look the same. Turtles are the one exception, where they are highly modified to form the majority of the shell.”
He and his colleagues were able to discover new insight about the origin of turtle shells thanks to the discovery of several specimens of a 260-million-year-old, partially shelled proto turtle known as Eunotosaurus africanus, the oldest known creature of its kind, in South Africa’s Karoo Basin. One of those specimens was particularly well-preserved and had fully articulated hands and feet, enabling the researchers to conduct a detailed analysis and draw their conclusions.
The research “indicates the initiation of rib broadening was an adaptive response to fossoriality” or burrowing, Dr. Lyson and his colleagues wrote. Similar to other species with adaptations for digging, these proto turtles had “an intrinsically stable base” that would have helped “operate a powerful forelimb digging mechanism,” as well as other adaptations indicating that its ancestors “possessed a body plan significantly influenced by digging.”
Could this team bring invisibility cloaks to reality?
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
The quest for a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak has taken another step big step forward, as engineers from the UK have for the first time successfully demonstrated a device which enables curved surfaces to appear flat when exposed to electromagnetic waves.
While their breakthrough doesn’t mean that people or objects are going to be able to disappear from sight anytime soon, it could change how antennas are tethered to their platform, making it possible for different sized and shaped ones to be attached to a variety of unusual surfaces.
According to study co-author Yang Hao, a Professor of Antennas and Electromagnetics in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London (QUML), his team’s design was “based upon transformation optics,” which is one of the primary concepts driving the ongoing research into the invisibility cloak concept.
“Previous research has shown this technique working at one frequency,” Professor Hao added in a statementFriday. “However, we can demonstrate that it works at a greater range of frequencies making it more useful for other engineering applications, such as… the aerospace industry.”
Breakthrough could benefit a number of different industries
The QMUL engineers coated a curved surface, approximately the same size as a tennis ball with a nanocomposite medium, with seven distinct layers called graded index nanocomposite. Each of the layer had a different electrical property based on its position, enabling an object to be hidden or “cloaked” rather than causing electromagnetic waves to be scattered.
When the cloaking device is not in use, the object’s presence along the path of the traveling wave causes a drastic change in its electric field configuration, Hao and his colleagues explained. Once activated, however, the application of the graded-index nanocomposite causes a reduction in how much shadowing is visible immediately after the object, as well as noticeable improvement in the reconstruction of wave fronts.
“In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate for the first time a dielectric surface wave cloak from engineered gradient index materials to illustrate the possibility of using nanocomposites to control surface wave propagation through advanced additive manufacturing,” they wrote, adding that the design “has much wider applications” than similar devices, “which span from microwave to optics for the control of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and radiation of nanoantennas.”
“We demonstrated a practical possibility to use nanocomposites to control surface wave propagation through advanced additive manufacturing,” added lead author Dr. Luigi La Spada, also of QMUL. “Perhaps most importantly, the approach used can be applied to other physical phenomena that are described by wave equations, such as acoustics. For this reason, we believe that this work has a great industrial impact.”
Dads play a key role in child development, study finds
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Often depicted as being bumbling goofballs or out-of-touch with their families in pop culture, dads actually play a surprisingly important role in the child development from birth through fifth grade, according to new research coming out of Michigan State University.
In a pair of recently published studies, one appearing in the journal Early Childhood Research Quarterly and the other in Infant and Child Development, the MSU-led team found that fathers are far more involved in language development and cognitive growth than previously believed, and that programs such as Head Start would benefit from a “whole family” approach.
“There’s this whole idea that grew out of past research that dads really don’t have direct effects on their kids, that they just kind of create the tone for the household and moms are the ones who affect their children’s development,” MSU associate professor of child development Claire Vallotton, who led the research project, explained Thursday in a statement.
“But here we show that fathers really do have a direct effect on kids, both in the short term and long term,” Vallotton added. Her team’s findings underscore the increasing evidence supporting the notion that the characteristics of a father and the quality of his relationship with his children, not just his mere presence in the child’s life, are important to that child’s development.
Fathers’ stress, mental health issues could inadvertently harm their kids
The researchers analyzed data from 730 families participating in a survey conducted at Early Head Start programs in 17 different locations in the US to determine how much of an impact parental stress and mental health issues such as depression would have on their offspring.
They found that the parenting-related stress of fathers had a negative impact both the cognitive and the linguistic development of children when they were between the ages of 2 and 3, even if the mother’s influences were taken into account. Furthermore, the findings also showed that the effects were more pronounced on the language development on sons than of daughters.
A father’s stress levels play an important role in their child’s development. (Credit: Thinkstock)
Vallotton and her colleagues also found that the mental health of both mothers and fathers had a similarly significant effect on behavior problems in toddlers, and that the mental health of fathers had a long-term impact, resulting in differences in the social skills of children (i.e. self-control or the ability to cooperate with others) by the time those youngsters reached fifth grade.
“A lot of family-risk agencies are trying to get the dad more involved, but these are some of the things they could be missing,” explained Tamesha Harewood, who was the lead author of the Infant and Child Development paper and works in the MSU Department of Human Development and Family Studies.
“When the agency is talking with the dad, it’s not just about providing for your child economically, but also to be there for your child, to think about how stress or depression might be influencing your child,” she added. “In order to understand and help children in their development, there needs to be a comprehensive view of the whole family, including both mom and dad.”
Best known for keeping you physically healthy by fighting off disease-causing agents and by bolstering the body’s natural defenses, the immune system may also play a role in maintaining healthy social relationships, the University of Virginia School of Medicine has discovered.
In fact, as Dr. Jonathan Kipnis, the chairman of the UVA Department of Neuroscience, and his colleagues revealed in the journal Nature, they found that the immune system can directly affect, and in some cases control, social behaviors such as the desire to interact with one another.
Furthermore, they found that issues with the immune system could potentially prevent a person from having normal social interactions – a discovery that could significantly affect neurological conditions such as autism and schizophrenia, potentially leading to new treatment options.
“The brain and the adaptive immune system were thought to be isolated from each other,” Dr. Kipnis said in a statement, “and any immune activity in the brain was perceived as sign of a pathology. And now, not only are we showing that they are closely interacting, but some of our behavior traits might have evolved because of our immune response to pathogens.”
Your immune system could change your social ability.
Findings could lead to new treatments for autism, schizophrenia
While it might sound unbelievable, Dr. Kipnis, who last year revealed that the brain actually had a direct connection to the immune system, said that it might be possible that we are nothing more than “multicellular battlefields for two ancient forces: pathogens and the immune system. Part of our personality may actually be dictated by the immune system.”
In their new study, the UVA team demonstrated that a specific type of immune molecule called interferon gamma appeared to be essential for social behavior, and that several types of creatures, including mice, rats and flies, activate interferon gamma responses during such interactions. This is unusual, as the molecule is typically produced in response to bacteria, viruses or parasites.
When the researchers used genetic modification to block interferon gamma production in mice, portions of the rodents’ brains became hyperactive and the creatures were noticeably less social. When the molecule was restored, brain connectivity and behavior returned to normal, which led the researchers to conclude that it must play a “profound role” in normal social relationships.
“It’s extremely critical for an organism to be social for the survival of the species. It’s important for foraging, sexual reproduction, gathering, hunting,” said Dr. Anthony Filiano, lead author of the study and a Hartwell postdoctoral fellow in the Kipnis lab. “So the hypothesis is that when organisms come together, you have a higher propensity to spread infection.”
“So you need to be social, but [in doing so] you have a higher chance of spreading pathogens. The idea is that interferon gamma, in evolution, has been used as a more efficient way to both boost social behavior while boosting an anti-pathogen response,” he added. While he and his colleagues believe that it is unlikely that the molecule alone could cause or cure social problems associated with neurological and psychiatric disorders, their findings do suggest that the immune system could be one potential target for future clinical treatments.
—– Image credit: Thinkstock
New dinosaur species independently evolved ‘T. rex arms’
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Researchers are still uncertain why the Tyrannosaurus rex, one of the largest known land predators ever to roam the Earth with the strongest bite force of any terrestrial species, had such tiny forelimbs, but a new study has found that it was not alone in this category.
Writing in the journal PLOS One, Peter Makovicky, dinosaur curator at The Field Museum in Chicago, and his colleagues revealed that they had discovered a new species of dinosaur from Patagonia that, while not a close relative of the T. rex, had similar short, two-fingered claws.
Like tyrannosaurs, the newly-discovered Gualichoshinyae is a theropod, or a two-legged, bird-like type of dinosaurs. However, it belonged to a different branch of the family tree – a group of medium-to-large carnivorous theropods known as allosaurids – which suggests that it developed its short-arms independently rather than through a shared ancestor with the T. rex.
“Gualicho is kind of a mosaic dinosaur, it has features that you normally see in different kinds of theropods,” Makovicky, the study’s corresponding author, said in a statement. He added that the newfound species was “really unusual – it’s different from the other carnivorous dinosaurs found in the same rock formation, and it doesn’t fit neatly into any category.”
Experts still unsure why trait is so common among theropods
Discovered in the Huincul Formation of northern Patagonia in 2007 and only now identified as a new theropod species, Gualicho was named in honor of Gualichu, a spirit revered by Patagonia’s Tehuelche people, and Akiko Shinya, chief fossil preparator at The Field Museum’s and the man who originally found the fossilized remains of the creature, the researchers said.
While its skeleton is incomplete, Shinya, Makovicky and their colleagues have determined that it was most likely a medium-sized, approximately 1,000-pound predator that was roughly the same size as a polar bear. It appears to be closely related to Deltadromeus, a carnivorous dinosaur with long legs and slender arms that was found in Africa.
Despite its polar bear-like size, Gualicho‘s forelimbs were said to be similar in size to those of a human child’s, and like the tyrannosaur, it had only a pair of digits (a thumb and forefinger), the researchers noted. Its discovered provides additional evidence that smaller forelimbs had evolved independently on multiple occasions, though scientists still do not know what so many species of theropods seemed to have developed this particular trait.
“By learning more about how reduced forelimbs evolved, we may be able to figure out why they evolved,” said Makovicky, who worked on the research along with colleagues at the Universidad Maimónides in Argentina, the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and the Gobierno de la Provincia de Río Negro in Argentina.
Researcher finds first example of children’s doodles from the medieval period
Written By: Brett Smith
Brian Galloway
They say that children are our future, but that doesn’t mean they can’t also leave their mark on the past.
According to a new report published in the journal Cogent Arts & Humanities, doodles spotted in the margins of a 14th-century book from a Franciscan convent in Naples appear to be the work of mischievous little scamps.
Study author Deborah Thorpe, a medieval manuscript expert at the University of York in Canada, said she found the drawings by chance while researching for an unrelated project. The drawings appear to be of a human, a cow or horse and some kind of demon or devil.
“I was looking through a database of medieval manuscripts online and I found images of these beautiful doodles in the margins and to me they looked like they were done by children,” she said in a statement. “I thought ‘this is really interesting, has anyone written anything about this?’”
(Credit: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries folio 22r.)
Working with modern-day psychologists
To assess the doodles, Thorpe recruited several child psychologists, who concluded the drawings likely came from children between the ages of 4 and 6 years old.
“The psychologists came up with a set of criteria for why we could say they were the work of children, for example the elongated shapes, the really long legs and the lack of a torso, the focus on the head,” Thorpe said. “These are the things that are most important to children. If you compare them with the doodles that children make today they are really similar. It was just a case of detective work really.
LJS 361, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries folio 23r.
The manuscript itself covers astronomy, astrology, religious sermons, biblical dates and tables for determining any day of the week between 1204 and 1512 – all subjects that were likely dull to the children who came across them.
The University of York researcher noted that there are later examples of historical children’s drawings, but “this is the first time I think that children’s drawings in medieval books have been classified as the work of children using a set of psychological criteria.
“It is striking evidence of interactions between children and books in the medieval period,” Thorpe said. “It shows how children back then enjoyed playing and learning, expressing themselves and allowing their imagination to take off, just like today’s children.
“Perhaps they were allowed to do it or perhaps they weren’t, it adds another human dimension to a fascinating story.”
—–
Image credit: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries folio 26r.
Team observes snow line in protoplanetary disk for first time ever
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Image of the disk taken with ALMA Credit: (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/L. Cieza
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile have observed a water snow line within a protoplanetary disk for the first time – a breakthrough that they detailed in research scheduled for publication in the journal Nature.
Protoplanetary disks are rotating circumstellar rings of dense gas and dust that surround newly formed young stars, and it is from this material that planets originate, researchers affiliated with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) involved with the study said in a statement.
Located within each of these disks is a boundary marking where its internal temperature drops sufficiently enough for snow to form – the water snow line – and now, a stellar outburst from a young star named V883 Orionis has enabled lead author Lucas A. Cieza of Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, to make the first ever resolved observations of this feature.
“The ALMA observations came as a surprise to us. Our observations were designed to look for disc fragmentation leading to planet formation. We saw none of that,” Cieza said. “Instead, we found what looks like a ring at 40 au. This illustrates well the transformational power of ALMA, which delivers exciting results even if they are not the ones we were looking for.”
Findings could improve planetary formation models
According to the study authors, the inner portion of the disk surrounding V883 Orionis had been flash heated due to a dramatic increase in the star’s brightness, causing the water snow line to be pushed outward to a greater-than-normal distance and making it observable for the first time.
Typically, the heat from a young solar-type star means that the water inside a protoplanetary disk is gaseous up to distances of 3 au from the star, or less than three times the average distance from the Earth to the Sun (approximately 450 million km), the researchers explained. Due to the lower pressure further out, water molecules transition directly from gas to ice on dust grains.
The area where this gas-to-ice transition takes place is the water snow line, and the one located in the protoplanetary disk of V883 Orionis is somewhat unusual because, as Cieza noted earlier, the dramatic increase in brightness experienced by the star has caused the boundary to be pushed out to a distance of about 40 au (6 billion km, or close to the size of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun).
Cieza and his colleagues explained that the sudden increase in brightness experienced by V883 Orionis occurs when large amounts of material from the protoplanetary disk fall onto the surface of the star. Although this young solar-time star is just 30% more massive than the sun, it is now 400 times more luminous and far hotter because of this ongoing stellar outburst.
“The discovery that these outbursts may blast the water snow line to about 10 times its typical radius is very significant for the development of good planetary formation models,” the ESO said. “Such outbursts are believed to be a stage in the evolution of most planetary systems, so this may be the first observation of a common occurrence. In that case, this observation from ALMA could contribute significantly to a better understanding of how planets throughout the universe formed and evolved.”
Juno spacecraft returns its first image from Jupiter’s orbit
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has sent back its first image since entering orbit around Jupiter just over a week ago, showing a sunlit region of the gas giant and three of its larger moons (Io, Europa and Ganymede) in a low-resolution photograph captured using its JunoCam instrument.
According to the US space agency, it will still be a few weeks until the probe will be able to take the first high-resolution images of Jupiter, but as BBC News noted, for now NASA scientists are just relieved to find out that Juno is in good shape following its exposure to harsh radiation while successfully completing orbital insertion maneuvers early last week.
“This scene from JunoCam indicates it survived its first pass through Jupiter’s extreme radiation environment without any degradation and is ready to take on Jupiter,” Scott Bolton, the principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas, explained in a statement. “We can’t wait to see the first view of Jupiter’s poles.”
The image, pictured above, was captured on July 10 at 1:30pm EDT (10:30am PDT), when Juno was 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) from Jupiter on the outbound portion of its initial 53.5-day capture orbit, NASA noted. In addition to the three large moons, features depicted in the image included the Great Red Spot, the well-known persistent anticyclonic storm near Jupiter’s equator.
Juno will orbit around Jupiter 30 times throughout the lifespan of its mission. (Credit: NASA)
High-res photos due in August; science operations to begin in October
The plan is for JunoCam to continue taking low-resolution images as it completes its first orbit around the gas giant, according to Juno co-investigator Candy Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. The first high-resolution image is expected to be taken on August 27, when the spacecraft will make its next close pass to Jupiter, she added.
Currently, Hansen, Bolton and their colleagues in the process of activating each one of Juno’s instruments to ensure that they function as expected, BBC News said. If everything checks out, their next step will be to calibrate the spacecraft’s equipment. Provided no issues are found, the mission’s scientific operations will commence in October.
Juno will complete a total of 37 trips around Jupiter, including several that will take it beneath the planet’s cloud tops to within 2,600 miles (4,100 km) of its surface. These flybys will allow the probe to study the gas giant’s auroras, and to obtain new information about its atmosphere, magnetosphere, structure and its origins. The mission is scheduled to last 18 months.
As for JunoCam, while the visible-light camera was created to capture photographs of Jupiter, particularly its polar regions and its cloud tops, it is not considered to be one of the spacecraft’s scientific instruments, according to NASA. It was developed exclusively to help engage people and get them interested in the mission, and to that end, the agency is working to upload each of the images it captures to the project’s website so that the public can access them.
This is sort of one of those stories that tells you what you already know, but it’s nice to have it confirmed by science. According to new research, eating fruit and vegetables makes us happier.
Anyone who already eats fruit and other healthy food regularly will already be fully aware of the impact healthy eating can have on our psychological wellbeing. This is especially true for those of us who generally eat well but have the occasional junk food binge and realise just how awful we feel shortly afterwards.
We don’t predominantly feel good because eating healthy food gives us some kind of smug diet superiority complex (although that sometimes does kick in), we generally just have a better mood because, well, if we feel physically crap we feel mentally crap and the same applies in reverse.
But just in case that wasn’t clear, which in fairness it may not be to people who never eat healthily, British and Australian researchers have confirmed it is the case.
Fruit and vegetables could be the key to a happy life in more ways than one. (Credit: Unsplash)
Due to be published shortly in the American Journal of Public Health, the University of Warwick study is actually one of the first of its kind to look at the relationship between healthy eating and psychological wellbeing.
Observation of 12,000 randomly selected people revealed that those who went from eating almost no fruit and vegetables to eating eight portions a day experienced an increase in life satisfaction, over a two-year period, equivalent to moving from unemployment to employment. Interestingly, participants’ happiness levels increased incrementally for each extra daily portion of fruit and vegetables up to eight portions per day.
Factors such as changes in employment status and other personal circumstances over the period were taken into account.
A link with antioxidants?
Professor Andrew Oswald said: “Eating fruit and vegetables apparently boosts our happiness far more quickly than it improves human health. People’s motivation to eat healthy food is weakened by the fact that physical-health benefits, such as protecting against cancer, accrue decades later. However, well-being improvements from increased consumption of fruit and vegetables are closer to immediate.”
Experts from the University of Queensland, Australia collaborated with their British counterparts on the research. Food diaries of 12,385 randomly sampled Australian adults over 2007, 2009, and 2013 were studied, using the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey.
The academics suggest a link could eventually be found between their findings and current research into antioxidants that suggests a connection between optimism and carotenoid in the blood. A great deal of further research is needed in this area, though.
In the meantime, we’ll simplify things by assuming that fruit and vegetables make us healthier and being healthy in turn makes us feel good.
—– Image credit: Thinkstock
Dinosaurs may not have roared after all, new study suggests
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
In films such as Jurassic World, predatory dinosaurs are typically shown giving off a fearsome roar before unleashing carnage on their unsuspecting victims, but a new study published online in the journal Evolutionindicates that they may have actually sounded quite different.
According to researchers from Midwestern University in Arizona, the University of Texas at Austin,some dinosaurs would have mumbled or cooed with closed mouths, similar to how many modern-day bird species can emit sounds with their beaks shut tightly.
“Looking at the distribution of closed-mouth vocalization in birds that are alive today could tell us how dinosaurs vocalized,” Chad Eliason, a postdoctoral researcher at the UT Austin Jackson School of Geosciences and co-author of the study, explained in a statementMonday.
“Our results show that closed-mouth vocalization has evolved at least 16 times in archosaurs, a group that includes birds, dinosaurs, and crocodiles. Interestingly, only animals with a relatively large body size (about the size of a dove or larger) use closed-mouth vocalization behavior,” he added.
Here is an example of what this sounds like in an ostrich:
Examining modern birds for more insight
Eliason, lead author Tobias Riede, a physiology professor at Midwestern University, and their colleagues examined the evolution of closed-mouth vocalizations in birds in order to learn more about how they developed their unique vocal organ. Since birds descended from dinosaurs, they believe that their work could also reveal how those ancient lizards produced sound.
Closed-mouth vocalizations, the study authors explained, are typically emitted through the skin in the neck region while the beak remains closed. Birds produce these noises by pushing the air which precipitates sound production into an esophageal pouch instead of through an open beak, producing a call that tends to be quieter and lower in pitch than open-mouth vocalizations.
To better understand how these calls, which are only used by birds when they want to attract a mate or need to defend their territory, evolved, the research team developed a statistical method which they used to analyze the distribution of these calls among bird and reptilian groups. They analyzed 208 bird species and found that 52 utilize closed-mouth vocalizations.
The reason for this, Riede explained, is due to simple physics: “The inflation of an elastic cavity could present a size-dependent challenge. The lung pressure required to inflate a cavity depends on the tension in the wall of the cavity, and this tension increases for smaller body sizes.” While the study makes a compelling argument, the researchers admit that there is no direct evidence in the fossil record that indicates just what dinosaur might have actually sounded like.
“To make any kind of sense of what nonavian dinosaurs sounded like, we need to understand how living birds vocalize,” said study co-author Julia Clarke, a professor at the Jackson School of Geosciences. “This makes for a very different Jurassic world. Not only were dinosaurs feathered, but they may have had bulging necks and made booming, closed-mouth sounds.”
Located far beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt, a recently discovered dwarf planet named 2015 RR245 can be up to 120 times further away from the sun than Earth and takes approximately 700 years to complete a single orbit, the International Astronomical Union has announced.
According to CNETand ScienceAlert, 2015 RR245 as a diameter of about 700 kilometers (435 miles), although more accurate measurements will need to be made to verify its exact size, and it has a gargantuan orbit that, at closest approach, will bring it to within five billion km of the sun in 2096. It was found by members of the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS).
“The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the Sun. They let us piece together the history of our Solar System,” OSSOS team member Dr. Michelle Bannister from the University of Victoria in British Columbia said in a statement. “But almost all of these icy worlds are painfully small and faint: it’s really exciting to find one that’s large and bright enough that we can study it in detail.”
While the Survey has identified more than 500 trans-Neptunian objects thus far, 2015 RR245 is being hailed as its most significant discovery yet. It was first sighted by Dr. JJ Kavelaars of the National Research Council of Canada, who spotted it in images originally captured in September 2015 using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Maunakea, Hawaii.
Scientists aren’t yet sure about the new dwarf planet’s appearance, but further examination is underway. (Credit: NASA)
Further analysis needed to unlock this galactic ‘time capsule’
Currently, there are many questions surrounding this newfound dwarf planet, Bannister noted. Chief among them is its exact size, which cannot be precisely determined until researchers can conduct further measurements of its surface properties. While the object is at least twice as far from the Sun as Neptune, it is not yet known is if is “small and shiny, or large and dull.”
Likewise, as it has only been observed for one year in its 700-year orbit, where it originally came from and how its orbit will change over time are also uncertain. Over the next few years, its orbit will be refined and RR245 will be given an official name. It is the largest discovery, and thus far the only dwarf planet, found by OSSOS, a collaboration of 50 scientists from various universities and institutes all over the world conducting research since 2013.
“OSSOS was designed to map the orbital structure of the outer Solar System to decipher its history. While not designed to efficiently detect dwarf planets, we’re delighted to have found one on such an interesting orbit,” explained University of British Columbia professor Brett Gladman. He and his colleagues believe that RR245 could be one of the last dwarf planets to be discovered before larger instruments become available for use in the new future.
The discovery of dwarf planet such as this are of vital importance to researchers, Pedro Lacerda of the Queen’s University Belfast Astrophysics Research Centre told The Guardian. Such worlds are “extremely rich and complex,” as New Horizons’ analysis of Pluto has revealed, and “are the closest thing to a time capsule that transports us to the birth of the solar system,” he added. “You can make an analogy with fossils, which tell us about creatures long gone. 2015 RR245 is much smaller than Pluto, about one-third as wide, so it tells us things that Pluto cannot.”
What NOT to say to your insurance provider when you have fibromyalgia
Written By: Justin Horner
admin
Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
Many of those who suffer from fibromyalgia turn to insurance providers to help offset the cost of their doctor’s appointments, treatments, and the at times inability to work. Fibromyalgia is a disease that causes long-term disability and is recognised by the CDC, but when fibromyalgia patients come seeking disability insurance, many insurance agencies only show skepticism. In order to best increase your chances of receiving disability insurance from your insurance provider, be very specific and detailed in your descriptions and answers, and whatever you do, do NOT say:
“I have Fibro-fog”
The commonly used term “brain fog” or “fibro fog”, describing the confusion or lack of mental clarity many who have fibromyalgia experience, is not well-received by those who process insurance claims. It doesn’t help that even physicians will use the term, but when you are in the office of the insurance company instead describe the effect these unfocused moments. “I have difficulty finding my words” or “I forget important things” are better than the unspecific “brain fog”.
“It hurts all over”
Despite what it seems like, those with fibromyalgia do not hurt all over their body. There are 18 specific points which can hurt when pressure is applied if you have fibromyalgia. Telling an insurance agent that all of your body hurts will only make them more skeptical of your condition. Instead be as specific as possible. “It hurts behind my shoulder blades, upper arms, lower back, and/or etc.” will mean much more than speaking of your body in general.
“I have good days and bad days”
First off, downplaying your disability is rarely a good idea when applying for insurance, but especially so with this common phrase. Everyone, no matter the state of their health, will have some days where they feel better physically than others. This expression comes out in particular when an insurer challenges the insured by asking how they are able to participate in an activity when they are claiming disability. Rather than “I have good days and bad days”, saying “My doctor’s treatment plan advises staying as active as I can, but I have a hard time functioning afterwards”. It is also wise to keep a journal detailing your daily physical activities and how they make you feel.
“I sleep all the time”
The problem with this statement is when insurance surveillance comes around. Once you are observed not sleeping, it could put your disability claim in jeopardy. While many who have fibromyalgia experience fatigue, most treatment plans involve staying active, exercising, or physical therapy. Similar to “good days and bad days”, when describing your fatigue say something closer to “Following my treatment plan is exhausting and physical activity causes me great fatigue”, than simply “I sleep all the time”.
The key to making sure you receive the disability insurance you deserve is to be as specific as possible. Fibromyalgia affects everyone slightly differently meaning your experience is unique. Treat it as such. Avoid generalities, and remember that it is better to be overly descriptive of your symptoms than under.
Female doctors make $20,000 less per year than male doctors
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Brian Galloway
While the existence of the wage gap remains a raging debate, a new study out of Harvard Medical School has something to add in terms of a specific career—namely, that female doctors are paid almost $20,000 per year less than their male counterparts, after taking into consideration years of experience, specialty, faculty rank, research productivity, clinical revenue, and age.
The data came from 10,241 academic physicians across 24 public medical schools across 12 states, who are mandated to release the salary information of such employees. Of this group, 3,549 were female; their unadjusted salary difference was a whopping $51,315 per year. After taking into consideration the aforementioned variables—as female doctors tend to be younger, are less likely to be full professors, and have fewer scientific publications that men—the difference dropped to $19,878 per year.
Massive losses in the long-term
This may seem like an insignificant sum to some, but in fact it ends up being nearly $700,000 less across an entire 35-year career as compared to their male counterparts.
“The fact that men and women in academic medicine who perform similar work are paid different amounts not only has implications for equity but for efficiency; i.e. how can we expect to continue to attract the most talented women into the field if we don’t fix this issue?”
One of the biggest differences was found in professors. The adjusted salary of female full professors was $250,971; this is comparable to the salary of male associate professors ($247,212). Associate professors, incidentally, are an entire level below full professors in rank.
Of course, there were other differences, such as in pay between the 24 universities themselves, as well as between the various medical specialties. Female orthopedic surgeons earn nearly $41,000 less than male ones, while internal medicine only had a difference of $16,159.
“It suggests that there is something not just at the institutional level that could be driving these gaps, but there may be something more systematic about the types of doctors who are in certain specialists and the cultures in those specialties,” said Jena.
Of course, the study does not reveal what is causing this enormous difference, but Jena believes research such as his can help fix it. “Because we used data that was publicly available, it really highlights the idea that transparency could play a transformative role in dealing with this issue,” he said.
Team restores sight to blind mammal for the first time
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
In a groundbreaking series of experiments, scientists from the Stanford University School of Medicine and their colleagues have successfully restored several essential aspects of vision in mammals for the first time – work that would eventually help restore sight to the blind.
Their research, which was detailed in a paper published online Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience, involved coaxing severed optic nerve cables to regenerate.
As they did so, senior author Dr. Andrew Huberman, an associate professor of neurobiology at Stanford, and his colleagues found that they nerves could retrace their previous routes and were able to re-establish connections with the necessary parts of the brain.
Prior to the procedure, the mice had a condition similar to glaucoma, one of the primary causes of blindness in humans. Glaucoma affects nearly 70 million people worldwide, the study authors said in a statement, and is caused when there is too much pressure on the optic nerve. Their new findings could potentially help reverse vision loss causes by this disease, they noted.
Coaxing retinal ganglion cell axons to regenerate
Among the essential components required for humans and other mammals to be able to see are the retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), which are a type of neurons that produce long, slender, wire-like processes known as axons. Bundles of axons extend down the length of the optic nerve and then fan out to connect with nerve cells in the brain.
The axons pass along electrical signals that contain information about what is being seen. Those cues are then interpreted by the brain, the researchers explained. More than two dozen regions of the brain receive signals from RGCs, which are the only nerve cells that connect it to the eye. If the connection is severed, “it’s like pulling the vision plug right out of the outlet,” Dr. Huberman explained, and in mammal brains, damaged axons typically do not regenerate in mammals.
Repairing axons has proven to be very difficult (Credit: Thinkstock)
As a result, damage to the RGC axons in mammals typically equals permanent loss of vision, the study authors said. However, in most cases, axons located outside of a mammal’s central nervous system are able to regenerate, and during the early stages of development, nerve cells often grow and generate new axons in the brain and spinal cord – cells that can somehow navigate their way through bundles of brain tissues to reach their desired targets within the mammalian brain.
Adult brain cells lose the capacity to regenerate over time because an intracellular pathway that encourages growth known as the mTOR pathway becomes less active in these cells. In their new study, Dr. Huberman’s team treated mice which had a damaged optic nerve in one eye with either a regimen of daily exposure to high-contrast visual stimulation (images of a moving black-and-white grid), biochemical manipulations which caused the mTOR pathway to become more active, or a combination of the two treatment methods.
The mice were then tested three weeks later, and the researchers discovered that both the mTOR-pathway reactivation and the visual stimulation resulted in modest regrowth of RGC axions, but only to the point of the optic chaiams, where healthy axons leave the optic nerve and begin to go to other parts of the brain. However, the combination of the two approaches caused a substantial number of axons to grow, move beyond the optic chasm, and spread throughout the brain.
While vision was successfully restored, the process is not perfect
The study authors went on to test the vision of the mice, and found that the RGCs were receiving visual input from the damaged eye’s photoreceptor cells and conveying it to the correct areas of the brain . In fact, in one test that simulated the approach of a bird of prey, the eye that had been damaged spotted the predator and the mice took appropriate action.
“Somehow these retinal ganglion cells’ axons retained their own GPS systems. They went to the right places, and they did not go to the wrong places,” Dr. Huberman explained in a statement. In short, the regenerating axons were able to grow, reach the various parts of the brain and managed to re-establish functional links with those areas to effectively restore vision in a once blind eye.
The team believes this kind of procedure could be beneficial to humans in the future. (Credit: Unsplash)
However, the researchers emphasize that the eye was not exactly as good as new. On some tests that required detailed visual discrimination, the mice failed. They pointed out that the axons from a pair of specific RGCs reached their targets, but lacked the molecular labels that would have let them known whether or not axons from other subtypes had done likewise.
Solving this issue will require the scientists to increase the total number of ganglion cell axons that successfully reach and re-establish contact with the correct part of the brain, and to discover some way to engage and assess a greater number of the nearly 30 RGC subtypes, Dr. Huberman, who worked on the study with researchers from the University of California-San Diego, Harvard University and Utah State University, noted. “We’re working on that now,” he added.
Archeologists discover the first-ever Philistine burial site
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
As their nearly three-decade long excavation comes to an end, a team of archeologists working at a site in Israel have announced the discovery of what is thought to be the first Philistine cemetery to ever be unearthed in the region, according to BBC News and National Geographic.
The burial site, which was actually found in 2013 and kept secret until now, was discovered beyond the walls of ancient Ashkelton, a major city inhabited by the Philistines from 2th century BC to the 7th century BC and which was located in southern Israel off the coast of the Mediterranean– approximately eight miles (13 km) north of the Gaza Strip.
Members of the Leon Levy Expedition, the team of archaeologists responsible for the discovery, reported that they discovered the remains of between 145 and 211 individuals in multiple burial chambers. Some of those individuals, whose bodies had been dated back to between the 11th and the 8th century BC, were surrounded by jewelry, weapons, food, or other artifacts.
“After decades of studying what Philistines left behind, we have finally come face to face with the people,” Daniel M. Master, one of the leaders of the excavation, told BBC News. “With this discovery we are close to unlocking the secrets of their origins.”
Director Adam Aja documents a burial. (Credit: The Leon Levy Expedition to Askelond)
Discovery could shed new light on a poorly understood culture
According to Nat Geo, while archaeologists had successfully discovered the five major cities of the Philistines, a group that they referred to as “one of the most notorious and enigmatic peoples of the Hebrew bible,” they had only tentatively identified a handful of burial sites previously.
In the bible, the Philistines are portrayed as a villainous civilization who warred with the nation of Israel, even seizing the Ark of the Covenant for a short time, and it is from this group that the giant who was felled by David, Goliath, emerged. They first appear in the archaeological record in the early 12th century BC, and some believe they are related to the mysterious Sea People.
The site included many clay pots and other artifacts. (Credit: Reuters)
The discovery, which was kept secret for three years to avoid protects by orthodox Jewish people who have previously demonstrated at digs where ancient burial sites were disturbed, may provide new insight into the burial practices of the Philistines, which had been was so poorly understood that expedition leader and Harvard archaeologist Lawrence Stager compared it to the accuracy of “the mythology about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree” to Nat Geo.
“Finding the Philistine cemetery is fantastic because there are so many questions regarding their genetic origins and their interconnections with other cultures,” said assistant excavation director Assaf Yasur-Landau. “So much of what we know about the Philistines is told by their enemies, by the people who were fighting them or killing them,” Master added. “Now, for the first time… we’ll really be able to tell their story by the things they left behind for us.”
A long-held suspicion appears to be confirmed, as permanently shadowed regions have been found on the dwarf planet Ceres—meaning these areas could potentially be billion-year-old traps for water ice, according to NASA.
“The conditions on Ceres are right for accumulating deposits of water ice,” said Norbert Schorghofer, a Dawn guest investigator at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “Ceres has just enough mass to hold on to water molecules, and the permanently shadowed regions we identified are extremely cold — colder than most that exist on the moon or Mercury.”
As the name implies, a permanently shadowed region receives no direct sunlight, being located on crater floors and similar areas. Of course, they still can receive indirect sunlight—but not all that much, as the temperature often hovers below minus 240 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 151 degrees Celsius). Because of this, permanently shadowed areas can be cold traps, meaning they’re good places for water ice to gather and remain stable.
Ceres findings confirm previous predictions
The existence of such traps on Ceres was predicted, but none had been discovered until now, when Schorghofer and his team took a hard look at Ceres’ northern hemisphere. After combining images taken by the Dawn spacecraft to create a depiction of the dwarf planet’s shape and features in three dimensions, a sophisticated computer model was able to determine which areas received direct sunlight, how much solar radiation reached the dwarf planet’s surface, and how conditions change with time, according to a study in Geophysical Research Letters.
The model found that there are dozens of permanently shadowed regions across Ceres’ northern hemisphere, which only occupy a small portion of the surface—some 695 square miles. But these dark spaces are extraordinarily cold, even colder than similar ones found on Mercury or the moon, which are closer to the sun (although Mercury is a closer approximation).
“On Ceres, these regions act as cold traps down to relatively low latitudes,” said Erwan Mazarico, a Dawn guest investigator. “On the moon and Mercury, only the permanently shadowed regions very close to the poles get cold enough for ice to be stable on the surface.”
According to the recent research, about one of every thousand water molecules generated on Ceres’ surface ends up in a cold trap within one Ceres’ year (1,682 days), meaning small but detectable ice deposits build up every 100,000 years or so.
“While cold traps may provide surface deposits of water ice as have been seen at the moon and Mercury, Ceres may have been formed with a relatively greater reservoir of water,” said Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Some observations indicate Ceres may be a volatile-rich world that is not dependent on current-day external sources.”
A crowdfunded archaeological dig in Lancashire, England is looking to uncover a rare find: A Bronze Age burial mound untouched by human hands for potentially thousands of years.
Run by DigVentures, the dig is the first excavation of a Bronze Age barrow in Northwest England in over 50 years. It began on July 4th and is set to finish on the 17th, with the aim of studying the area quickly and thoroughly, to preempt any looting and destruction of the site. In this vein, the exact location of the site is being kept top secret, lest objects be stolen in the night.
Potentially groundbreaking site
The site itself is near Morecambe Bay, and was only discovered in March. Metal detectorists Matthew Hepworth and David Kierzek were surveying a small hill overlooking the bay when they came across a bronze knife and chisel just under the surface.
After reporting the finds to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, a small test pit verified the area as a barrow—a burial mound that first emerged in the Neolithic across England—and an ancient one at that. The knife and chisel were around 3,000 years old, dating from the Middle to Late Bronze Age (1,000 to 800 BCE), but it seems that the mound was in use for 1,500 years prior to that, during the Neolithic. All in all, it is an amazing find.
“The artifacts found so far are rare for the area, and remarkably well preserved,” wrote the DigVentures team. “They also indicate that the barrow may contain an undisturbed burial, which presents a tremendous opportunity for further archaeological investigation.”
An unprecedented discovery
Even more rarely, the barrow was not accidentally disturbed by a farmer’s plow or the trowels of antiquarians, who more or less went through sites seeking out objects for personal use and either ignored or destroyed the rest. Which means that the DigVentures archaeologists will be able to undertake a careful, scientific study of a site with all its information intact.
“We are obviously NOT looking for treasure, and we don’t expect to find anything of significant financial value,” the team wrote. “The special thing about this dig is the very rare opportunity it presents to meticulously excavate every single item exactly as it was put in place in the Bronze Age using the latest archaeological recording techniques. The context of these finds has the potential to provide priceless information, helping us to better understand this period and the customs of Bronze Age Britons.”
Anyone can contribute to the campaign, and it comes with some pretty great benefits—certain levels get you the opportunity to participate in the excavation yourself, while learning how to do it properly from the field’s best experts. But even if you don’t donate, what these scientists find won’t exist in a vacuum.
“We’re going to publish all of our finds online, so that any discoveries you help us make will be freely available for the rest of the world to see,” wrote the DigVentures team. “And we’re going to do it live, so that anyone can follow the progress of the dig in real time.”
A team of astronomers from the University of California, Riverside may have finally solved a longstanding mystery by explaining exactly why some galaxies stop forming stars, according to new research published in the latest edition of The Astrophysical Journal.
Study authors Behnam Darvish and Bahram Mobasher, along with a group of colleagues at the UK’s Lancaster University and the California Institute of Technology , studied a large sample of more than 70,000 galaxies to discover both the internal and external processes that influence the formation of stars and to discover why this process eventually comes to an end.
While galaxies come in different shapes (elliptical, spiral and irregular) and sizes, they also can be either blue or red depending upon whether or not they are still actively forming stars (blue do, but red ones do not). However, the reasons that galaxies cease star formation remained a bit of a mystery, but now, Darvish and Mobasher have identified some of the factors responsible.
They identified several external mechanisms, including drag generated from an infalling galaxy in a cluster that pulls away gas and multiple gravitational encounters with other galaxies and the dense surrounding environment, which causes material to be stripped away, and internal factors like the presence of a black hole or stellar outflow, that play a role in ending star formation.
Internal, external factors both play key roles at different times
The study authors, who reviewed data from the COSMOS UltraVISTA survey, also found that the halting of the supply of cold gas to a galaxy, causing it to have the supply of materials which it needs to produce new stars, to become cut off over a prolonged period of time.
“By using the observable properties of the galaxies and sophisticated statistical methods, we show that, on average, external processes are only relevant to quenching galaxies during the last eight billion years,” Darvish, a former graduate student in UC Riverside’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and first author of the study, explained in a statement.
“On the other hand,” he added, “internal processes are the dominant mechanism for shutting off star-formation before this time, and closer to the beginning of the universe.” This discovery will help improve their understanding of which processes are responsible for halting star formation at different points in the evolution of a galaxy, as they detected these so-called “quenched” galaxies at different distances (and different points in time) during future studies.
Despite the breakthrough, it remains unclear if internal factors, external ones or a combination of the two are primarily responsible for quenching, and astronomers are not sure when the different types of processes begin to play important roles in galaxy evolution. However, the UCR-led team now plans to expand their research to analyze the environment of galaxies on a larger scale.
“We found that on average the external processes act in a relatively short time-scale, around one billion years, and can more efficiently quench galaxies that are more massive. Internal effects are more efficient in dense clusters of galaxies,” said Mobasher, an astronomy and physics professor. “The time-scale is very important. A short time-scale suggests that we need to look for external physical processes that are fast in quenching. Another important result of the work is that internal and external processes do not act independently of each other in shutting-off the star formation.”
—–
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).
Scientists model 17,000 year old brain from child’s skull
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Thanks to the discovery of the 17,000-year-old skull of a Paleolithic preteen in southern Italy, a team of scientists led by University of Florence ancient history professor Fabio Martini has been able to recreate the brain of an early human ancestor for the first time.
According to The Local, Martini and his colleagues discovered the ancient skull, which belonged to a boy between the ages of 10 and 12, in Calabria’s Grotta del Romito, a cave used by early Homo sapiens between 23,000 and 10,000 years ago. The researchers found an imprint on the inside of the skull that they used to create a model of the ancient brain.
“The boy was still growing and therefore the bones of his skull were quite soft,” Martini said to the Italian publication. “The pressure of the growing brain on the bone left a sort of ‘imprint’ on the inside of the skull. Now, thanks to 3D scanners and computer technology, we have been able to create a reliable 3D model of an ancient brain, which is groundbreaking. Soon we will be able to hold in our hands the brain of a 17,000-year-old boy.”
Working with a team of neuroscientists, anthropologists and paleontologists, he explained that he plans to compare the reconstructed brain with that of a modern youth, especially in the regions of the brain associated with language, social interaction and spatial coordination, Archaeology said. Their findings could provide new insight into how these areas originally developed.
Work would be the first ever recreation of Paleolithic brain
An archaeologist by trade, Martini revealed the discovery of the skull and the recreation of the ancient brain during a press conference at a recent UNESCO Global Geoparks event, according to International Business Times. He said that their reconstruction, which would be the first ever morphological reconstruction of a Paleolithic brain, should be finished by year’s end.
The skull itself was discovered during a recent excavation at the Grotta del Romito, which has been called one of Italy’s most important Paleolithic sites. Expeditions at this cave have already unearthed several dwellings, rock art and burial sites created during a period that was marked by significant climate change, and such findings have proven essential to experts’ understanding of pre-agricultural revolution Italy, The Local and International Business Times said.
While this will mark the first time that an ancient human brain has been recreated, it is not the first time that researchers have looked to reproduce the central nervous system’s key organ. In late 2015, scientists digitally recreated a portion of a juvenile rat’s brain, including 31,000 cells of 207 different types and 37 different neural connections, according to Live Science.
That research was part of the Blue Brain Project, an imitative to create a computer simulation of a rat brain, and eventually of the human mind, inside the computer. The team responsible for that work successfully harnessed the fundamental behavior of neurons and even predicted some kinds of brain-related behavior that had not been previously discovered, the website added.
This is the Last Thing Japan’s Hitomi Satellite Saw Before it Died
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Just before its untimely death in March, the Hitomi satellite was able to collect X-ray data from the Perseus galaxy cluster, allowing scientists to track the motion of emissions from this part of the universe for the first time and find that this movement is less turbulent than expected.
According to BBC News, the data, which was published in Wednesday’s edition of the journal Nature, indicates that the hot gases located between galaxies in the Perseus cluster travel at a far slower speed (340,000 mph / 540,000 km/h) and in a steadier way than previously thought.
“For the first time, we have mapped the motion of the X-ray-emitting gas in a cluster of galaxies and determined its velocity structure over a wide range of spatial scales,” Richard Kelley, the US principal investigator for the Hitomi collaboration and a researcher at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.
He added that while the gas in this cluster, which is located roughly 240 million light years from Earth, “is continually stirred by fast outflows from the central black hole,” that “its velocities are small on astronomical scales and show evidence for only minor levels of turbulence.”
The Hitomi satellite was originally named Astro-H, but was renamed once in orbit.
Discoveries made possible due to Hitomi’s cutting-edge spectrometer
Hitomi, a satellite whose key components were built at Goddard, launched in February but soon began to spiral out of control. By the end of the next month, scientists on the ground lost contact with the $250,000 probe, but with these observations, it has provided a final, parting gift.
Hot gases in the Perseus cluster can reach average temperatures of 90 million degrees Fahrenheit (50 million degrees Celsius) and glow brightly when viewed in X-rays, NASA explained. Before Hitomi, however, astronomers lacked the capability to accurate measure the detailed dynamics of these gases, largely due to gas bubbles expelled by a nearby, active supermassive black hole.
Image of the Perseus cluster taken by the satellite before it went offline. (Credit: JAXA, NASA, ESA)
Using its Soft X-ray Spectrometer (SXS), Hitomi monitored a region in the core of the cluster for more than 2 1/2 days, and the resulting X-ray spectrum revealed emission lines from a number of metals (such as iron, nickel, chromium, and manganese) in data that were 30 times more detailed than the best previous observations. Those metals, the US space agency explained, formed in the billions of massive stars in the cluster and dispersed after those stars went supernova.
The velocity of the gases were said to be modest by cosmic standards, and experts expected them to be extremely chaotic. However, as Brian McNamara, a research team member and a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo in Canada, told BBC News, they learned that the gas was “relatively stable” and was getting “pushed around” less than they expected.
“This is the first time we’ve looked at a galaxy cluster with an instrument capable of resolving the components of various atomic emission lines, and we immediately saw contradictions with current models,” added his colleague, Maxim Markevitch from Goddard. “This is a long-awaited tool for diagnosing the conditions in cosmic plasmas that we can finally apply to galaxy clusters, and there will be a number of papers to come based on these data.”
The US Navy is Spending $750k on Bomb-Sniffing Robot Locusts
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Brian Galloway
Locusts tend to be associated with plagues, but they might soon be our saviors—because a researcher from Washington University in St. Louis is looking to turn them into living bomb detectors, according to ScienceAlert.
According to team leader Baranidharan Raman, the project aims to achieve this by combining locusts’ keen sense of smell with electronics, thereby creating a sort of locust cyborg. For instance, a heat-generating tattoo on the wings of the insects can allow the team to control where they fly, while a small computer attached to its body will capture their neural signals. The computer will then decode the signals as a “yes” or “no” message, which will be sent back to the team. There, it will cause a red or green LED to light up, signaling either that a bomb is present or that it is not.
As to why a locust—and not just a bomb-sniffing drone or dog—it comes down to simplicity. Dogs have one of the most powerful senses of smell amongst animals, but require years of training; locusts have a strong sense of smell, and can be directed much more simply. And taking advantage of a pre-made (in this case, naturally-existing) system means you don’t have to throw extraordinary amounts of money into developing a new one. Plus, the locust system might perform better than man-made ones.
Using the insect’s incredible senses
“It took only a few hundred milliseconds for the locust’s brain to begin tracking a novel odour introduced in its surroundings,” Raman told the BBC. “The locusts are processing chemical cues in an extremely rapid fashion.”
“Even the state-of-the-art miniaturised chemical sensing devices have a handful of sensors. On the other hand, if you look at the insect antennae, where their chemical sensors are located, there are several hundreds of thousands of sensors and of a variety of types,” he added.
These “cyborg” locusts are currently in their early phase of testing, but Raman believes that the technology could become available within two years. Raman also stated in a recent interview that his team isn’t sure how exactly how the locusts will be used to improve safety, but potential use cases should make themselves apparent over time.
Of course, a recent grant of $750,000 from the U.S. Office of Naval Research doesn’t hurt, either.
—–
Image credit: Baranidharan Raman, Washington University in St. Louis
New research indicates Neanderthals living in Europe just north of the Alps had a very unique food source: other Neanderthals.
Published in the journal Scientific Reports, the new research is based on the analysis of Neanderthal bones found in Belgium that were dated to between 40, 000 and 46,000 years old. The study described the first known evidence of cannibalism in this ancient human species.
Cannibalism from Ancient Neanderthals
The study team conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the mitochondrial DNA of ten Neanderthals, which doubled the existing genetic information on a species of humans that became extinct around 30,000 years ago. The genetic data validated earlier studies, which indicated fairly little genetic diversity in late European Neanderthals. In other words, these populations were intently related to one a different.
The cavern where the study specimens were found was excavated almost 150 years ago, but today, scientists are capable of extracting vast quantities of data using processes like making exact digital measurements, assessing the conditions that preserved bone fragments, isotopic analysis and genetic investigation.
Bones of five different individuals used in the study.
According to the study, a few Neanderthal remains from the archeological site have been worked on, as denoted by cut marks and notches. The scientists understand this as an indication the bodies from which they came had been butchered. The butchering appeared to be thorough, the remains revealed skinning, cleaning and extraction of bone marrow.
“These indications allow us to assume that Neanderthals practiced cannibalism,” Hervé Bocherens, a professor of biogeology at the University of Tübingen, said in a news release.
The study researchers said they were unable to determine if the remains were symbolically butchered, or butchered for food.
“The many remains of horses and reindeer found in Goyet were processed the same way,” Bocherens added.
The study noted that four bones from the location revealed Neanderthals used their dead relatives’ bones as tools, with one thigh bone and three shinbones used to shape tools. Animal bones were regularly employed as knapping tools.
“That Neanderthal bones were used for this purpose – that’s something we had seen at very few sites, and nowhere as frequently as in (the study location),” Bocherens said
—–
Image credit: Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
Brown dwarf contains first water clouds spotted outside solar system
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
New observations of a brown dwarf known as WISE 0855 has revealed evidence of water clouds in the body’s atmosphere, marking the first time astronomers have been able to detect such signals from an object beyond our solar system.
According to Space.com, WISE 0855 is a “failed star” located 7.2 light years from Earth. It is the coldest known object located outside of the solar system, the website said, and is barely visible at infrared wavelengths when viewed using Earth’s most powerful ground-based telescopes.
Now, a team led by Andrew Skemer, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California-Santa Cruz analyzed WISE 0855 using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii and captured the first details of the brown dwarf’s composition and chemistry, as well as “strong evidence” that clouds of water or water ice surround the extrasolar object.
“WISE 0855 is our first opportunity to study an extrasolar planetary-mass object that is nearly as cold as our own gas giants,” Skemer noted earlier this week in a statement. “We would expect an object that cold to have water clouds, and this is the best evidence that it does.”
Research reveals similarities between brown dwarf, Jupiter
Five times more massive than Jupiter, WISE 0855 is both too large to be a planet and too small to trigger the internal fusion reactions necessary to become a star. It was first discovered in 2014 using date from the NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft (hence its name), and later research found early evidence of atmospheric water clouds.
In the new study, Skemer and his colleagues used the Gemini North telescope and the Gemini Near Infrared Spectrograph to observe the brown dwarf for a total span of about 14 hours over 13 nights. While the object is too faint to be studied using conventional spectroscopy at optical or near-infrared wavelengths, the researchers were able to take advantage of a narrow window created thanks to thermal emissions from its deep atmosphere.
Skemer explained that WISE 0855 is “five times fainter than any other object detected with ground-based spectroscopy at this wavelength. Now that we have a spectrum, we can really start thinking about what’s going on in this object. Our spectrum shows that WISE 0855 is dominated by water vapor and clouds, with an overall appearance that is strikingly similar to Jupiter.”
Specifically, their findings – which have been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters – revealed that the brown dwarf’s spectrum appears to feature water-absorption features similar to those found in Jupiter’s atmosphere, according to Space.com. However, the object has much less phosphine (a compound of phosphorous and hydrogen created in the extremely hot interior of an object) than Jupiter, suggesting that it has a less turbulent atmosphere than the gas giant.
“The spectrum allows us to investigate dynamical and chemical properties that have long been studied in Jupiter’s atmosphere, but this time on an extrasolar world,” said Skemer, who worked on the study along with colleagues from NASA, Bucknell University, the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Gemini Observatory.
—–
Image Credit: Joy Pollard, Gemini Observatory/AURA
However, while the new research, which was led by immunopathogenesis professor Dr. Rafick-Pierre Se´kaly, was able to replicate results from a previous RV144 vaccine trial, it also revealed that replacing the alum adjuvant – a substance often found in non-living vaccines that can induce antibody-mediated immunity – with a stronger agent would not produce a better vaccine.
Dr. Sekaly and his colleagues tested RV144 on rhesus macaques, and found that the combination of the vaccine and the original alum adjuvant reduced the acquisition rate of the HIV-like simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) by 44 percent. In previous studies involving humans, RV144 was shown to have a 31 percent efficacy, the study authors explained Thursday in a statement.
However, when they replaced the alum adjuvant with MF59, which has been shown to stimulate immune response in the human body, they found that the results were not significantly better. In fact, the altered treatment was unable to prevent SIV acquisition at a greater rate, and could only trigger an immune response at the point of infection, as had been hypothesized.
Unaltered RV144 with alum adjuvant proven most effective
Furthermore, Dr. Sekaly’s team discovered more about how the alum adjuvant acts in the RV144 vaccine: a unique link between an intercellular pathway called Ras-Raf-MEK-ERK (RAS) and RV144 efficacy. Ten of 12 genes associated with this pathway were expressed within the vaccine, they said, and were shown to trigger multiple adaptive responses.
Those responses, in turn, have been associated with a reduced SIV acquisition rate in the group of rhesus macaques that received the alum-vaccine group, the researchers added. Based on these findings, future studies to investigate whether or not RAS activation is involved in the efficacy of HIV vaccines in humans are likely.
“These fascinating clinical results effectively dispel our previous belief that the RV144 vaccine could possibly become more effective with the MF59 adjuvant,” Dr. Sekaly said in a statement. “Instead, we found that the modified vaccine actually triggered the recruitment of innate cells in the site of infection.”
“Through this research, we were able to confirm the efficacy of the current RV144 vaccine in preventing infection by HIV/SIV in macaques, creating an even clearer pathway to the near-term development of this vaccine for human use,” he continued, adding that based on his team’s work, they were able to accurately predict whether or not an animal would respond to the treatment by analyzing their pre-vaccination RNA expression.
In fact, they correctly forecasted the vaccine’s effectiveness in two-thirds of the macaques that were tested. Those results “strongly support the notion that personalized and predictive vaccinology will soon become a reality, including in HIV – a disease area for which this type of precision medicine is desperately needed but has not yet been extensively studied,” the professor concluded.
This crazy monogamous fish changes sex 20 times per day. Why?
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Monogamy and hermaphroditism are not all that uncommon in the animal kingdom, but put both of these traits together and ramp them up to 11 and you have an unusual type of fish that changes its sex role more than 20 times per day while remaining faithful to its life partner.
This unusual species is known as the chalk bass (Serranus tortugarum), and according to a new study published recently in the journal Behavioral Ecology, this tiny reef fish lives in Panama, is neon green in color, grows to more than three inches in length, and enters a lifelong relationship with a mate that requires it to rapidly switch between male and female roles.
According to National Geographic, chalk bass utilize a reproductive technique known as “egg trading” in which they split their daily egg clutch into small groups, then alternate sex roles in repeated spawning bouts to ensure that they can fertilize as many eggs as they make. Switching roles encourages reciprocation and faithfulness from their mates, the study said.
“Our study indicates that animals in long-term partnerships are paying attention to whether their partner is contributing to the relationship fairly – something many humans may identify with from their own long-term relationships,” lead author Mary Hart, an adjunct biology professor at the University of Florida, said in a statement.
Unexpected behavior appears to provide a reproductive advantage
Switching sex roles is key to the survival of the chalk bass, Hart explained, because it is the only way that a member of the species can make sure its partner is contributing equally. Basically, if a member of the species wants its mate to produce more eggs, it first has to lead by example.
Hart told Nat Geo that, during her observations of the species, she found that individuals would rarely produce more than two egg parcels at one time before changing sex roles and encouraging their mate to follow their example. Her team monitored the chalk bass for six months and found that all of the couples remained together the entire time that both were living at the site.
“I found it fascinating that fish with a rather unconventional reproductive strategy would end up being the ones who have these long-lasting relationships,” said study co-author Andrew Kratter, an ornithologist with the Florida Museum of Natural History and Hart’s husband of 10 years. He noted that the species “live in large social groups with plenty of opportunities to change partners, so you wouldn’t necessarily expect this level of partner fidelity.”
Based on Hart and Kratter’s findings, the chalk bass looks to be a unique creature. Only three to five percent of all known species are monogamous, the researchers said, and only two percent of fish are estimated to be hermaphroditic, Nat Geo added. Unlike most of those species, however, the chalk bass can simultaneously produce both male and female gametes (sperm or eggs), which is a trait possessed by only a handful of subfamilies of primarily deep-sea fish.
Hart told Nat Geo that the frequency with which the carp bass switch sex roles is particularly unusual, and that she and Kratter are still uncertain exactly why they do change so many times. However, she hypothesized that the behavior likely provides the creatures with some sort of a reproductive edge, and that assuming both male and female roles ups the odds that the fish will be able to pass on their genes to their offspring.
—–
Image credit: Mary K. Hart
Fibromyalgia Treating is now part of the RedOrbit.com community!
We are excited to announce that FibromyalgiaTreating.com is now part of RedOrbit.com. All of the same great people, writers and editors but now with more firepower. We now have access to an enormous amount of additional research information
from doctors and scientists. We can now extend to other conditions that may be part of your everyday lives and help you on a broad level if that is what you need. We are here for you and now, better than ever so sit back and enjoy
the new Fibromyalgia Treating by RedOrbit!
