Ancient asteroids deposited water into the molten moon

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: June 1, 2016 Last Edited: June 1, 2016

Brian Galloway

While much recent research has focused on the role of comets in introducing water and the basic elements of life to Earth, a new study appearing in the latest issue of Nature Communication has revealed that H2O buried deep in the moon comes from a different source – asteroids.

In the paper, Dr. Jessica Barnes from the Open University in the UK and her colleagues analyzed the chemistry of rock samples obtained by the Apollo missions and compared their findings with the composition of other types of space rocks, according to BBC News reports.

Their results indicated water was most likely delivered to the moon, which would have still been molten at the time, by asteroids approximately 4.5 to 4.3 billion years ago, the Los Angeles Times added. The cooling magma would have prevented water from escaping, and volcanic activity occurring much later likely caused some of it to find its way back to the lunar surface.

When the Apollo astronauts reached the moon, they collected rocks containing trace amounts of water (between 10 and 300 parts per million), Dr. Barnes told BBC News. Past research found the molecular signatures of moon rocks were similar to those of the water-rich carbonaceous chondrite meteorites that occasionally find their way from the asteroid belt to the Earth.

These impacts happened when the Moon was mostly molten rock. Credit: NASA

Did the Earth get its water in the same way?

Now, Dr. Barnes and colleagues from the US and France conducted a series of simulations that found that, to achieve the chemistry of the water found on the moon, only a fraction of that H2O could have come from comets, as comets tend to have “heavier” water filled with the hydrogen isotope deuterium. They concluded that most of the water had to have come from asteroids.

These asteroids, the study authors explained, would have been extremely similar to carbonaceous chondrites and likely pelted the moon during its first 200 million years of existence. Based on the data, they believe that 80 percent of the lunar water was introduced there by asteroids, while only 20 percent had cometary origins – and due to the proximity of the moon to the Earth, particularly during this time, our planet’s water may have come from similar sources.

“We think that asteroids delivered water to the interior of the Moon, by in a crude sense, smashing into it,” Dr. Barnes explained to the Daily Mail. “This had to happen very early on in the moon’s history, in order to account for water that is present in very old samples that were derived from the interior of the moon. We believe this addition of water happened during the first 10 to 200 million years of its history, when the lunar magma ocean was present.”

She added that “there is still a lot we do not yet fully understand about the water and other volatiles in the moon and how they relate to each other, specifically the processes that might alter the abundances of volatiles in lunar magmas,” and told the UK newspaper that these topics are things that she plans to investigate during the months and years ahead.

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Image credit: NASA

Technology

VIDEO: Zookeepers attach GoPro to cheetah

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: May 31, 2016 Last Edited: May 31, 2016

Brian Galloway

In what is believed to be a world first, trainers from the Cincinnati Zoo have harnessed a GoPro on a cheetah, filming from its back as it took off at 60 miles per hour (100 kmh).

Let’s just say, it makes you feel like you’re riding a cheetah—and it’s not quite the same as riding a horse. The footage is played at regular speed (and by regular, we mean fast) and in slow motion, showing you the surprising amount of jostling a cheetah’s body goes through—and how little the cheetah’s head bounces as compared to its body.

The cheetah in question, Savannah, was hand-raised at the zoo from a young age, making it easy to attach the harness.

“We put it on Savannah and she could really [not] care less,” said Alicia Sampson of the Cat Ambassador program at the zoo.

Incidentally, while many commenters on their Facebook page seem to believe this is a PR move to divert attention away from the accident involving the shooting of Harambe—an endangered western lowland gorilla—after a child fell into his enclosure, this video was published several days before the gorilla accident, on May 26. The gorilla incident happened two days later, on the 28^th.

Watch Savannah run below!

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Science

Why isn’t the Antarctic Ocean warming up? New study has the answer.

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 31, 2016 Last Edited: May 31, 2016

Brian Galloway

In stark contrast to the rapid warming of the Arctic Ocean, the waters surrounding Antarctica have remained at roughly the same temperature over the past few decades, and now a team of researchers from the University of Washington believe they have found out why.

Using a combination of observations and climate models, Kyle Armour, an assistant professor of oceanography and atmospheric sciences at the university learned that the Southern Ocean has a unique current that continually forces older water to the surface.

This seawater can be up to several centuries old, they explained Monday in the journal Nature Geosciences, meaning that the last time that it was exposed to the Earth’s atmosphere was prior to the machine age and the beginning of fossil fuel-related climate change.

“With rising carbon dioxide you would expect more warming at both poles, but we only see it at one of the poles, so something else must be going on,” Armour explained in a press release. “We show that it’s for really simple reasons, and ocean currents are the hero here.”

“The Southern Ocean is unique because it’s bringing water up from several thousand meters,” or as much as two miles below surface level, he added. “It’s really deep, old water that’s coming up to the surface, all around the continent. You have a lot of water coming to the surface, and that water hasn’t seen the atmosphere for hundreds of years.”

Some of the water hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years. Credit: Thinkstock

Ocean currents responsible for shaping regional climate change

Known as meridional overturning circulation, this phenomenon is the result of gale-force winds travelling in a westerly direction causing surface water to be pushed northward, and unmodified deep water to be drawn up from below. The subducted water takes stored heat with it as it travels north, and it is replaced by water that will take centuries to fully experience warming.

“These findings,” Armour and colleagues from UW and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) wrote, “suggest the Southern Ocean responds to greenhouse gas forcing on the centennial, or longer, timescale over which the deep ocean waters that are upwelled to the surface are warmed themselves. It is against this background of gradual warming that multidecadal Southern Ocean temperature trends must be understood.”

“The oceans are acting to enhance warming in the Arctic while damping warming around Antarctica. You can’t directly compare warming at the poles, because it’s occurring on top of very different ocean circulations,” he added. “When we hear the term ‘global warming,’ we think of warming everywhere at the same rate. We are moving away from this idea of global warming and more toward the idea of regional patterns of warming, which are strongly shaped by ocean currents.”

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Image credit: Kyle Armour/University of Washington

Science

Ancient crops reveal mass migration from Asia to Madagascar

Written By: Brett Smith

Published Date: May 31, 2016 Last Edited: April 17, 2018

Brian Galloway

Anthropologists assert that people migrated from Southeast Asia to Madagascar around 1,000 years ago and a new study has revealed the first proof of such a migration.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the new study reveals evidence of ancient crop remains from Asian species like rice and mung beans at sites in Madagascar.

DNA research found the inhabitants of Madagascar have a common ancestry with Malaysians, Polynesians, and other Southeast Asians. In fact, the inhabitants of Madagascar speak Malagasy, a language common to Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

To date, archaeological studies have recognized human settlements in Madagascar from the first millennium. There are also studies indicating Madagascar could have been settled by hunter-gatherers from Africa by the first or second millennium. Until recently, archaeological evidence of a great migration had been absent.

Evidence for a great migration

The new study identified the species of almost 2,500 ancient plant remains acquired from their excavations at 18 ancient settlement locations in Madagascar, on neighboring islands and on the eastern African coast. They reviewed residues acquired from sediments in different archaeological tiers using a system of sieves and water.

The team found evidence of the earliest crops grown on the locations being both African in nature and crops brought to Africa from somewhere else. The team pointed to a definite pattern, with African crops mainly concentrated on the mainland and the islands nearest to the mainland.

In Madagascar, however, early agriculture involved primarily Asian crops. The information indicated an introduction of these crops, both to Madagascar and the nearby Comoros Islands, by the 8th and 10th century.

“Southeast Asians clearly brought crops from their homeland and grew and subsisted on them when they reached Africa,” study author Nicole Boivin, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, said in a press release.

“This means that archaeologists can use crop remains as evidence to provide real material insights into the history of the island. There are a lot of things we still don’t understand about Madagascar’s past; it remains one of our big enigmas. But what is exciting is that we finally have a way of providing a window into the island’s highly mysterious Southeast Asian settlement and distinguishing it from settlements by mainland Africans that we know also happened.”

A surprising discovery

While evidence of Asian crops was also found on the nearby islands of the Comoros, crop remains on the eastern African coast and coastal islands like Zanzibar were mainly African in origin.

“This took us by surprise,” said study author Alison Crowther, from the University of Queensland in Australia. “After all, people in the Comoros speak African languages and they don’t look like they have Southeast Asian ancestry in the way that populations on Madagascar do. What was amazing to us was the stark contrast that emerged between the crops on the Eastern African coast and the offshore islands versus those on Madagascar, but also the Comoros.”

“When we started looking more closely into research that has been carried out on Comorian languages, we were able to find numerous esteemed linguists who had argued for the exact thing we seemed to seeing in the Comorian archaeological record: a settlement by people from Southeast Asia,” Boivin said.

“So we’ve been able to not only to show for the first time an archaeological signature of Austronesians, we’ve also shown that it seems to extend beyond Madagascar. This is really exciting, and highlights how much we still have to learn about this fascinating migration.”

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Image credit: Mark Horton, University of Bristol.

Science

Is ‘Eve the sea monster’ a new plesiosaur species?

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 31, 2016 Last Edited: May 31, 2016

Brian Galloway

A rare, 165-million-year old plesiosaur skeleton discovered in 2014 and donated to the Oxford Museum of Natural History earlier this year remains the subject of intense research as scientists work to find answers to the many mysteries still surrounding the massive marine reptiles.

In January, an 18 foot (5.5 meter) long specimen known as “Eve” was donated by the owners of the Peterborough quarry where it was discovered, museum officials announced at the time. Since then, Dr. Hilary Ketchum, who looks after geological specimens at the center, and her colleagues have been working to clean and repair the creature, according to BBC News.

It takes more than an hour to assemble Eve’s skeleton, the British media outlet explained, calling the fossils “the biggest jigsaw puzzle you’ve ever seen” while adding that, “in this case, there are no instructions on the box.” In addition, museum conservators were working tirelessly to remove a clay encasing from the sea monster’s skull so that it could be analyzed by a CT scanner.

The intense preparation and examination of the remains should shed new light not only on this specific specimen – whose gender remains a mystery, despite its feminine name – but plesiosaurs as a whole, as there is still much to learn about the biology, anatomy and evolution of the marine reptiles that dominated the seas throughout much of the Mesozoic Era.

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A reconstruction of a plesiosaur.

Could ‘Eve’ be an entirely new species of marine reptile?

Plesiosaurs are “a type of reptile related to other reptiles like dinosaurs, crocodiles, ichthyosaurs and turtles,” Dr. Ketchum explained to BBC News, “but actually we’re not really sure where they fit in the grand scheme of things.” The creatures had long necks, broad and flat bodies, short tails and four long flippers powered by strong muscles attached to the shoulders and pelvis.

The creatures, which died out approximately 66 million years ago, breathed air, bore live young and may have been warm-blooded, although researchers are not yet certain about this. Experts at the museum have already scanned Eve’s skull once to explore how the bones and the teeth were positioned in the block of clay, and they hope that using more powerful CT scanning equipment at the University of Bristol will help them determine if this creature is a new species.

“It’s really clear in these high-resolution scans that we’ve got lots of really well-preserved bones that are going to give us lots of information,” Dr. Roger Benson, a vertebrate paleontologist at Oxford University, BBC News. “From what we’ve seen already… we know it has some features that are different to the other animals that we’ve seen,” he said.

Dr. Benson noted that it is “very likely that this is an animal that is new to science,” but pointed out that additional analysis will be required before that can be confirmed. “We think it’s possibly a new species,” added Dr. Ketchum, who is also the Earth Collections manager at the Oxford Museum, “but even if it’s not, it’s very unusual. They’re very rare fossils – plesiosaurs, especially nearly complete ones like this.”

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Image credit: Oxford Museum of Natural History

Space

NASA successfully deploys BEAM inflatable module

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: May 29, 2016 Last Edited: May 29, 2016

Brian Galloway

NASA has successfully inflated the world’s most expensive balloon on the International Space Station.

Okay, maybe calling it a balloon is selling it just a little bit short—because the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (or BEAM) is far more than that. It’s a $17.8 million expandable habitat for astronauts that might just revolutionize the future of space living. Contracted by NASA, this prototype room was built by Bigelow Aerospace. It folds up neatly to about one-fifth of its inflated size, meaning it takes up less space than a rigid metal room would, and it’s significantly lighter—thereby making it cheaper and easier to transport into space.

However, just because it’s easier to carry into space doesn’t necessarily mean everything that followed went just as smoothly. In fact, the first attempt at inflating BEAM—on Thursday (May 26)—did not quite go to plan. NASA detected unexpectedly high pressures inside BEAM and stopped their attempt after two hours—although later it was determined to likely have been a result of the fabric of the module sticking together.

A second attempt

According to Space.com, the second attempt at inflation began Saturday at 9:04 am EST (1304 GMT), taking seven and a half hours to complete—an intentionally slow process, for safety’s sake. NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, who led the operations to expand the module, opened the valve to the module 25 times, releasing air into BEAM in short bursts and allowing it to stabilize and expand in between. Throughout the inflation, loud popping noises could occasionally be heard, although that was a good thing, since it meant BEAM was expanding as planned.

“It sounds sort of like popcorn in a frying pan starts up,” said Jeff Williams.

Now that it’s fully-inflated, BEAM contains some 565 cubic feet (16 cubic meters) of living space—although astronauts won’t be floating inside of it just yet. NASA and Bigelow still need to complete about a week’s worth of leak checks before humans are allowed in it.

“This first test of an expandable module will allow investigators to gauge how well the habitat performs and, specifically, how well it protects against solar radiation, space debris and the temperature extremes of space,” said NASA officials said in a statement.

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Image credit: Bigelow Aerospace

Science

Man finds 2,300 year old Greek crown under his bed

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: May 29, 2016 Last Edited: May 29, 2016

Brian Galloway

An elderly man from Somerset, England had perhaps just a bit of a surprise when he discovered that the crown shoved under his bed in a dirty cardboard box is actually worth about $150,000 to $300,000 (£100,000 to £200,000).

According to Daily Mail, the wreath is about 2,300 years old and believed to be ancient Greek—dating from roughly to the Hellenistic period, the time following the death of Alexander the Great (300 BCE).

The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, possesses many items from his grandfather, who was a well-seasoned traveler.

“I inherited quite a lot of things from him and I just put this to one side for almost a decade and didn’t really think anything of it,” he told Daily Mail.

A family heirloom of great value

He decided to have appraisers from Duke’s of Dorchester—a nearby auction house—look at a few of the items he had inherited. One of the appraisers, Guy Schwinge, was present at the man rifled through a box filled with crumpled newspaper to bring out the delicate crown.

“When the owner pulled the gold wreath from a tatty cardboard box filled with paper, my heart missed a beat,” Schwinge told Daily Mail. “When I went to the cottage the last thing I expected to see was a piece of gold from antiquity.”

Despite its age and unusual method of storage (besides being stored under the bed, bits of dirt in the gold suggest it was once buried), the wreath is apparently in marvelous condition.

“It is eight inches across and weighs about 100 grams [1/4 of a pound],” said Schwinge. It’s pure gold and handmade, it would have been hammered out by a goldsmith. The wreath is in very nice condition for something that’s 2,300 years old. It’s a very rare antiquity to find, they don’t turn up often. I’ve never seen one in my career before.”

Of course, being found in a cottage with no provenance to speak of makes it a challenge to know much about the wreath at all—you can’t carbon date gold, and without the context in which it was found (like its location, and what other objects were found near it), some things will be never be certain.

“It is notoriously difficult to date gold wreaths of this type,” said Schwinge. “Stylistically it belongs to a rarefied group of wreaths dateable to the Hellenistic period and the form may indicate that it was made in Northern Greece.”

Gold wreaths of a similar style were designed to imitate the real thing: Crowns made of real plants—like branches of laurel, myrtle, oak, and olive trees—that were given to victors in athletic and artistic contests worn in ancient Greece for religious ceremonies. However, the golden versions were so delicate, they were only worn rarely, for special occasions.

As to how the owner’s grandfather got ahold of such a rare artifact, no one’s quite sure. The family believes he probably picked it up during his travels.

“I knew my grandfather travelled extensively in the 1940s and 50s and he spent time in the north west frontier area, where Alexander the Great was, so it’s possible he got it while he was there,” said the man. “But he never told me anything about this wreath.”

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Image credit: Dukes/BNPS

Health

Infection resistant to our ‘antibiotic last resort’ reported in US

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 28, 2016 Last Edited: May 28, 2016

Brian Galloway

A 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman has become the first American to become infected with bacteria resistant to colistin, the antibiotic of last resort in treating such pathogens, researchers from the US Department of Defense revealed this week in a published report.
The discovery, which was detailed in a paper published Thursday in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, involved a bacterial urinary tract infection which was found to have 15 genes for resistance to various antibiotics. Unlike previous forms of antibiotics, however, the superbug was not vulnerable to treatment with the potent polymyxin antibiotic colistin.
Colistin-resistance has been detected in bacteria in the past, according to Scientific American, but in those cases the resistance genes were located on a type of DNA that was not easily shared with other kinds of bacteria, and it made the pathogen weaker. In the case of this new strain, however, experts report that the bacteria itself has been infected by a tiny piece of genetic material called a plasmid, which conveyed a gene known as mcr-1 that confers resistance to colistin.
Bacteria carrying this plasmid can share copies of it with other microbes they come into contact with, enabling colistin resistance to easily and rapidly spread from pathogen to pathogen. As the study warns, the discovery “heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria.” There is no indication as to how the pathogen entered the woman’s system, noted CNN.

So how did this happen, and what do we do now?

As James Johnson, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota, told Scientific American, the emergence of the mcr-1 gene likely occurred due to the overuse of colistin in food animal production. His theory is supported by a Thursday blog post from the Department of Health and Human Service and the USDA announcing that they had found colistin-resistant bacteria in a sample obtained from the intestine of a pig in the US.
The patient reportedly had not traveled outside of the US for a period of at least five months, and was treated and released as doctors found no other medical issues, Dr. Alex Kallen, a doctor with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN. The CDC added that it was on the lookout for other potential cases at the medical facility where the woman was treated, and USDA officials said that they were investing to see if any additional animals had been infected.
Kallen called the two reported incidents a “warning sign, more than a catastrophe,” and doctors emphasized to the Washington Post that the woman’s UTI is treatable using other antibiotics, but the concern that the mcr-1 gene could spread to microbes that are already resistant to other forms of treatment remains high.
“It basically shows us that the end of the road isn’t very far away for antibiotics – that we may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive care units, or patients getting urinary-tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics,” CDC Director Tom Frieden told the newspaper in an interview Thursday. “I’ve cared for patients for whom there are no drugs left. It is a feeling of such horror and helplessness. This is not where we need to be.”
“It’s hard to imagine worse for public health in the United States,” added George Washington University professor Dr. Lance Price, who is also the director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center (ARAC) in Washington, DC. “We may soon be facing a world where CRE [carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae] infections are untreatable.”
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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

Rosetta’s comet contains the ingredients for life

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 28, 2016 Last Edited: May 28, 2016

Brian Galloway

Glycine, an organic compound found in proteins, has been detected in the halo surrounding Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe, according to new research published earlier this week in the journal Science Advances.

Kathrin Altwegg, a researcher at the University of Bern in Switzerland, and her colleagues made the discovery using an instrument known as the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA), and according to AFP and Associated Press reports, their find provides new evidence supporting the theory that comets brought the ingredients for life to the Earth.

Previously, researchers had confirmed the presence of more than 140 different molecules in the interstellar medium, the matter that exists in the space between the star systems in a galaxy, but the presence of amino acids such as glycine had yet to be confirmed, the study authors explained in a statement. They had been first detected in a comet by NASA’s Stardust mission in 2004, but scientists were able to rule out terrestrial contamination of the collected dust samples.

According to Altwegg, her team’s study provides “the first unambiguous detection of glycine in the thin atmosphere of a comet,” and the research provides evidence to support the belief that the building blocks of life may have been delivered to our planet by objects such as comets.

Rosetta has given us a great deal of data about this comet. Credit: ESA

Discovery suggests that life could indeed exist elsewhere in the universe

In addition to detecting glycine, the ROSINA spectrometer also detected phosphorous, also an essential component of DNA and cell membranes, and other organic materials, according to the study authors. Combined, the results support the notion that comets brought key components of prebiotic chemistry to our solar system, and specifically, to the young Earth.

“The multitude of organic molecules already identified by ROSINA, now joined by the exciting confirmation of fundamental ingredients like glycine and phosphorous, confirms our idea that comets have the potential to deliver key molecules” for early life, noted Matt Taylor, a Rosetta project scientists with the ESA.

“Demonstrating that comets are reservoirs of primitive material in the Solar System, and vessels that could have transported these vital ingredients to Earth, is one of the key goals of the Rosetta mission, and we are delighted with this result,” he added. The researchers also detected signs of methylamine and ethylamine, the precursors to glycine, indicating that the compound most likely formed directly in the comet, as the reaction does not require the presence of liquid water.

“The beauty of it,” Altwegg told the AP via email, “is that the material in the comet was formed before the Sun and planets formed… That means what has happened a long time ago in the cloud from which our solar system emerged could happen in all clouds. Then you just need another planetary system forming with a planet at the right position and you could have another go at life. It may not be successful, but as there are billions of stars and as we now know billions of planets, chances are good.”

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Image credit: ESA

Science

What made the Mongols flee Hungary in 1242?

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: May 27, 2016 Last Edited: May 27, 2016

Brian Galloway

In 1242, Hungary was poised on the edge of disaster: The Mongols, who already conquered large swaths of Asia and Eurasia (including China and Russia), had set their sights on Eastern Europe, and Hungary was the next target.

Hungary was ill-prepared, and in the spring of 1241, an army of around 130,000 Mongol soldiers invaded, devastating the eastern portion of the country, destroying the capital city, and causing the king of Hungary, Béla IV, to flee to Austria. In the winter of 1242, the invasion into the western half began, leaving mass destruction in its wake—but then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the Mongols withdrew and returned to Russia, never to return again.

No explanation was ever given to the surprising move, leaving historical scholars puzzled for hundreds of years. Numerous ideas have been offered up, though. Was the retreat a result of political upheaval caused by the death of one of Genghis Khan’s sons, Ögödei Khan, in December of 1241? Did the Eastern Europeans put up more of a fight than they were expecting? Nothing seemed to fit quite right.

Finding the solution to an ancient problem

Until now that is, as a pair of researchers from the Swiss Federal Research Institute and the Institute for Advanced Study in the U.S., Ulf Büntgen and Nicola Di Cosmo, believe they may have finally found the solution: plain old bad weather.

According to their paper in Scientific Reports, the team made use of historical records and tree ring data in Hungary to determine the conditions at the time of the invasion. Tree rings, whose patterns are affected by the weather, are very specific in terms of dates—and so data on the rings can provide a screenshot of the weather for different seasons of each year. In this case, the tree ring data suggests that the winter of 1242 was particularly bad—which is also corroborated by the historical documents.

However, that winter wasn’t bad because it was extremely cold or snowy, but because the temperature was just low enough to cause widespread freezing across Hungary. When the spring of 1242 arrived, everything melted, leading to flooding. And, as it turns out, the part of Hungary the Mongols were looking to invade sits at low elevations, meaning all the meltwater puddled across the land. Because of this, the region was quickly filled with mud (obviously making traveling a challenge), which kept the grasses across the region from growing.

Why is a lack of grass such a huge problem? Well, quite simply, the Mongols invaded on horseback, with each cavalryman owning three or four apiece. The horses survived by eating grass, and with the land quickly becoming a mud pit, it could no longer sustain the Mongols’ horses.

Or in short, it seems that the weather conditions were just right to make an invasion a tactical challenge, and that the Mongols simply decided it was not worth the trouble.

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Image credit: J. Paul Getty Museum

Science

Schrödinger’s cat can be dead and alive in two places at the same time

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 27, 2016 Last Edited: May 27, 2016

Brian Galloway

Designed to illustrate how an object can exist as a combination of multiple states in a quantum system, the Schrödinger cat state paradox presents a scenario in which a feline subject can both alive and dead at the same time, but a new study examines the issue from a new angle.

Writing in the May 27 edition of the journal Science, Physicist Chen Wang from Yale University and a group of researchers from INRIA Paris-Rocquencourt, a division of the French National Institute for computer science and applied mathematics, described experiments which showed how the cat could be both alive and dead, as well as in two places at the exact same time.

The study authors constructed their “cat” from coherent microwave photons, which they induced to have matching states (or to become entangled), and showed how the state of the subject can be shared by two separated cavities. The experiments, they explained in a press release, demonstrate the ability to manipulate complex quantum states, and are believed to represent the first time that scientists have been able to achieve this kind of quantum coherence at a macroscopic scale.

The ability to manipulate these multicavity quantum states, and thus sharing quantum states that are in different locations, could be a powerful tool for quantum information processing, and may have applications in the fields of computing and long-distance communication, they noted. Their work, in short, could greatly benefit the quest for reliable quantum computing.

So how were they able to pull this off?

First devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, the paradox is based on the idea that a cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive source and a poison that will be triggered if an atom of the radioactive substance decays. Quantum physics suggests that the cat is both dead and alive (a superposition of states) until the box is opened, changing the quantum state.

The core of the experiment is an investigation into how a quantum system such as a photon or an atom, can exist as a combination of states when it is not observed. Scientists who are analyzing a box containing the cat cannot know the state of that cat unless the box is opened, meaning that it is both alive and dead when nobody is looking at it.

The new Yale-led experiment takes this idea to another level by combining the Schrödinger cat experiment the concept of entanglement by having the cat live or die in two different boxes at the same time. They built a device made up of two, three-dimensional cavities and a monitoring port connected by a superconducting artificial atom. They then placed their confined microwave light “cat” in both cavities and joined them by a supercurrent, which does not require voltage.

The photons in one cavity were then subjected to a maze of gates to give them a distinct spin so that the researchers could give the photons two states – “dead” and “alive” like the cat – and they observed the similar state in photons in the adjoining cavity. Thus far, they have been able to see “cats” as large as 80 photons in size, and plan to use specially controlled pulses to observe larger ones.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

Mars is coming out of an extreme ice age, study finds

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 27, 2016 Last Edited: May 27, 2016

Brian Galloway

In a discovery that could shed new light on the past habitability of Mars and provide new insight into how to deal with the climate change problem back here on Earth, a team of researchers found evidence of an ice age recorded in the polar deposits of the Red Planet.

Writing in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, Dr. Isaac Smith, a postdoctoral researcher at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, and his colleagues explained they analyzed radar data collected using the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and found layered ice deposits around the planet’s north pole similar to those responsible for ice ages on Earth.

“We found an accelerated accumulation rate of ice in the uppermost 100 to 300 meters of the polar cap,” Dr. Smith said in a statement. “The volume and thickness of ice matches model predictions from the early 2000s. Radar observations of the ice cap provide a detailed history of ice accumulation and erosion associated with climate change.”

Ice ages on Mars, he explained, are driven by processes similar to such events on Earth: long-term cyclical changes in the planet’s tilt and orbit impacting how much solar radiation it receives at any given latitude. Much like Earth, Mars experiences not only annual rotation and seasonal cycles, but longer cycles which impact the distribution of ice as well, and these periods may be more pronounced on the Red Planet.

Findings will help with Mars exploration and climate science on Earth

The reason for this phenomenon, according to the SwRI team, is that the planet’s tilt can change by as much as 60 degrees over a span of several hundred thousand years. In comparison, Earth’s tilt varies by just two degrees over the same period of time. This increase variability plays a key role in determining how much sunlight reaches the surface at each latitude, and thus, how much ice forms at any particular location.

“Because the climate on Mars fluctuates with larger swings in axial tilt, and ice will distribute differently for each swing, Mars would look substantially different in the past than it does now,” explained Dr. Smith, who worked on the study alongside scientists from the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics and the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. “Furthermore, because Mars has no oceans at present, it represents a simplified ‘laboratory’ for understanding climate science on Earth.”

Their measurements of ice thickness indicated that approximately 87,000 cubic kilometers of ice have accumulated at the Martian poles since the end of the last ice age nearly 370,000 years ago, and that the bulk of this ice accumulated at the planet’s north pole. If spread uniformly across the surface, this would be equal to a layer approximately 60 centimeters thick, the authors said. The results will help them better understand the history of polar deposit accumulation relative to the planet’s orbital eccentricity, axial tilt, and rotation around the Sun.

Furthermore, the findings will help improve efforts to better model the past and future climate of Mars by examining how ice moves from poles to mid-latitudes during climate cycles. Dr. Smith added that learning more about ice on Mars is “important to the future of human exploration of the Red Planet,” as locating potential sources of water on the planet’s surface would be “critical” to the long term survival of a Martian colony.

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Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin

Science

Have scientists quietly found a fifth fundamental force of nature?

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 26, 2016 Last Edited: May 26, 2016

Brian Galloway

Under-the-radar research published earlier this year in the journal Physical Review Letters may have discovered a previously unknown fifth fundamental force of nature: a new boson which is only 34 times heavier than the electron and which does not violate the laws of physics.

The study, which was the topic of reports by Nature and Popular Science this week, was led by Attila Krasznahorkay at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’s Institute for Nuclear Research in Debrecen and went largely unnoticed until a second team of researchers reviewed their results in April and concluded that it was plausible that they had found a fifth fundamental force.

Currently, there are four known fundamental forces of nature: gravity, which holds planets and galaxies together; electromagnetism, which binds our molecules together; strong nuclear forces, which hold atomic nuclei together; and weak nuclear forces, which help some kinds of atoms go through radioactive decay. Together, these forces explain the majority of observable physics.

Over the years, there have been many claims that a fifth fundamental force exists, but as of yet, no researchers have been able to find evidence to substantiate this proposition. The inability of the standard model to explain dark matter, the invisible particles believed to make an estimated three-fourths of the universe, has led scientists to ramp up the search for new forces or particles to help explain this phenomenon, including so-called “dark photons.”

Exact nature of the discovery remains unknown

In fact, Krasznahorkay’s team was searching for evidence of dark photons, but the team which reviewed those earlier findings believe that the group may have discovered something different. The Hungarian scientists fired protons at lithium-7 targets to create unstable beryllium-8 nuclei, which they decayed and emitted pairs of electrons and positrons, according to Nature.

The standard model indicated that they should have seen the number of observed pairs decrease as the angle separating the trajectory of the electron and positron increased, but according to the results of their study, there was an increase of emissions at an angle of approximately 140º, then a decrease again at higher angles. Krasznahorkay believes that this brief uptick is evidence that some of the beryllium-8 nuclei emitted excess energy in the form of a new particle.

This particle, which is estimated to have a mass of about 17 megaelectronvolts (MeV) and which would then decay into an electron–positron pair, may either be a dark photon or a protophobic X boson, the former of which would couple to electrons and protons and the latter of which would couple to electrons and neutrons.

While the investigation continues into exactly what they might have found, Krasznahorkay and his colleagues are confident that it is not simple an anomaly, as they reported that they have been able to repeat the results several times over a three-year span. They added that they had been able to eliminate every possible source of error, which is true, means that the odds of them witnessing such an event without something unusual happening were just one in 200 billion, said Nature.

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Image credit: MTA-Atomki

Science

Aristotle’s 2,400 year old tomb discovered in Greece

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 26, 2016 Last Edited: May 26, 2016

Brian Galloway

A two-decade long excavation at the ancient city of Stagira in Central Macedonia has led to the discovery of the tomb of Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle, the archaeologists responsible for the discovery announced today at the Aristotle 2400 Years World Congress.

According to Greek Reporter, it was previously believed that the philosopher, who was born in Stagira in 384 BC, was buried in Chalcis, Evia, where he died in 322 BC. Now, though, Kostas Sismanidis and his fellow archaeologists have said that they are certain that the tomb at the Macedonian site belongs to Aristotle.

“I have no hard proof, but strong indications lead me to almost certainty,” Sismanidis previously told Sigmalive, adding that the tomb’s location, the period during which it was first built and the other evidence indicates that the tomb was erected to hold Aristotle’s remains, which were taken from Chalcis and returned to his birthplace, literary sources indicate.

Tomb had been built quickly, then improved later, archaeolgists say

The tomb itself was constructed near the center of Stagira and had a marble floor that dated back to the Hellenistic period, Greek Reporter said. There is evidence that it was initially built quickly and then improved with higher quality materials, the website noted, and was up to ten meters tall.

In addition, there is an altar on the outside of the tomb, as well as a Byzantine tower surrounded by a square floor and a semi-circular wall that is two-meters tall, the website added. A pathway that leads to the tomb was constructed for those wishing to come and pay their respects, and the tomb also contained ceramics from the royal pottery workshops and dozens of ancient coins.

Aristotle, who was a pupil of fellow Greek philosopher Plato, “is regarded as the first genuine scientist in human history,” according to Raw Story. During his life, he made “significant and seminal contributions to biology, physics and zoology, and he also influenced thousands of years of thought in aesthetics, metaphysics, linguistics, government and poetry,” the website added. “He tutored Alexander the Great, who spread Greek philosophy to Africa and the Middle East.”

The Aristotle 2400 Years World Congress started on Monday and will run through May, and the event is being held at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, according to the ANSA. The conference is part of a multidisciplinary effort to emphasize the impact that Aristotle had on science, philosphy and other areas of human culture, explained Demetra Sfendoni-Mentzou, the president of the Interdisciplinary Center for Aristotle Studies in Thessaloniki.

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All images credit of GreekReporter

Space

‘Young’ lunar craters discovered in the moon’s darkest regions

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 26, 2016 Last Edited: May 26, 2016

Brian Galloway

A pair of geologically young craters, including one a mere 16 million years old, have been discovered in the darkest regions of the lunar surface, experts with the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) reported in research to be published in the scientific journal Icarus.

In addition to the extremely fresh crater, a second believed to be between 75 million and 420 million years old were detected using the Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) instrument on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), SwRI officials explained in a statement.

Using far-ultraviolet Lyman-alpha band skyglow and light from ultraviolet-bright stars, LAMP is capable of observing permanently shaded lunar regions. By combining those observations with data from the LRO’s Mini-RF radar, SwRI senior research scientist Dr. Kathleen Mandt and her colleagues were able to map the floors of large craters near the lunar south pole.

These craters are extremely difficult to study since sunlight never illuminates them directly, the researchers explained. Slight differences in albedo (reflectivity) measured by LAMP enabled the SwRI team to not only find the craters, which Dr. Mandt called “a really exciting discovery,” but also to estimate how old they were.

“Finding geologically young craters and honing in on their age helps us understand the collision history in the solar system,” she added. “Discovering these two craters and a new way to detect young craters in the most mysterious regions of the Moon is particularly exciting.”

Credit: NASA GSFC/SwRI

Technique could also be used on other planets and asteroids

Dr. Thomas Greathouse, LAMP deputy principal investigator with the SwRI, explained that the reason that researchers study planetary geology was to better understand the origins of the solar system. He said that it was “exciting and extremely gratifying” to find “a unique and unexpected new method for the detection and age determination of young craters.”

Dr. Mandt added that the new technique “will be useful not only on the Moon, but also on other interesting bodies, including Mercury, the dwarf planet Ceres, and the asteroid Vesta.” Collisions in space played a vital role in the formation of the moon and the rest of the solar system, she and her colleagues said, and impact craters can tell the story of those collisions.

The lunar surface is filled with such impact craters, they noted, and studying them could allow scientists to determine the motion of objects throughout the solar system’s history. Craters such as the two newly discovered ones, which are considered to be “young” based on a geological timeline, can also reveal information about how frequently collisions occurred.

Upon impact, an object causes material to be ejected and forms a ring of material that surrounds the crater. With younger craters, this ejected material is often comprised of rough rubble batches and a light coating of condensed, bright dust that, over time, become weathered and covered over by layers of darker, fluffier material.

In this case, the SwRI team determined that the areas surrounding these two newfound craters were brighter and rougher than the surrounding terrain. The older of the two craters had a rough extended ejecta blanket that had fades, suggesting that it had to be at least 75 million years old. However, the ejecta blanked was not completely covered in dark, fluffy dust, indicating that the crater was not yet 420 million years old.

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Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/NASA

Science

Neanderthals built mysterious French cave rings 175,000 years ago

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 26, 2016 Last Edited: May 26, 2016

Brian Galloway

Mysterious stone rings found in a cave in southwestern France were likely built by Neanderthals, suggesting that our ancient relatives were skilled builders and far more “human” than previously believed.

According to BBC News and National Geographic, the circles were found in Bruniquel Cave, an archaeological site located in the Midi-Pyrénées region of southern France, and were constructed from stalagmites more than 175,000 years ago.

Writing in Wednesday’s edition of the journal Nature, University of Bordeaux prehistorian and Paleolithic archaeology professor Jacques Jaubert and his colleagues wrote that these stalagmites were broken to similar lengths and specifically arranged in two oval patterns up to 16 inches (40 centimeters) high. There were also traces of fire detected around the stalagmite circles.

The stone rings are “among the oldest known well-dated constructions” made by hominins, the study authors wrote, and the fact that they had been constructed more than 330 meters from the cave’s entrance “indicates that humans from this period had already mastered the underground environment, which can be considered a major step in human modernity.”

Scientists created a 3D model of the cave’s design.

Evidence that ancient hominins worked together on an unknown project

Although previous studies had suggested that the Bruniquel Cave structures pre-dated the arrival of modern humans in Europe roughly 45,000 years ago, scientists assumed that Neanderthals did not have the capability to engage in the kind of complex behavior required to work underground. In the new study, however, Jaubert and his fellow researchers suggest otherwise.

“The origin of the structures is undeniably human. It really cannot be otherwise,” the Bordeaux professor told the Associated Press, explaining that his team’s work ruled out the possibility that the cave structure was assembled by animals, such as bears and wolves whose bones were found at the mouth of the cave, or that the formation of the stone rings was the product of nature.

Jaubert added that the Neanderthals must have had a special “project” in mind to travel so deep into a cave that lacked natural light, and suggested that they formed groups and worked together to explore the underground, using fire to help them find their way around. An organized effort like this would have been “exceptional,” he said, though the reasons behind such excursions are still unclear.

Nonetheless, as paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London told National Geographic, the discovery “provides clear evidence that Neanderthals had fully human capabilities in the planning and the construction of ‘stone’ structures, and that some of them penetrated deep into caves, where artificial lighting would have been essential.”

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Image credit:Etienne FABRE – SSAC

Fibromyalgia

Foods you should only buy if they’re organic

Written By: Holly Case

Published Date: May 26, 2016 Last Edited: May 26, 2016

Preston Hemmerich

Image: Rawpixel.com/shutterstock

In a perfect world, you could always choose the foods with the organic label. You care about your health and you know that pesticide exposure is a big deal. But unfortunately, you don’t have a Gwyneth Paltrow kind of budget, so you need to pick and choose the most important foods to buy organic. Some foods, like pineapple, avocado and sweet corn, don’t absorb as much pesticide residue, so you can feel reasonably safe choosing the conventionally grown option.

But other foods absorb large amounts of pesticides, and more evidence is emerging about the damaging effects of pesticides on hormones and neurological disorders. The amount of pesticides on food is a problem that is getting worse, not better. Some foods contain a lot of pesticides, so it’s very important to choose the organic option whenever possible.

Grapes

This is near the top of most lists of foods you should buy organic. More pesticides are used on grapes than on any other fruit. In fact, investigators found 64 different pesticides on the combined grape samples they tested. Maybe this also means you should get organic wine!

Nectarines

Imported nectarines are especially bad news if you’re avoiding pesticides. Researchers found pesticides on every single imported nectarine they tested. Nectarines also contained the highest concentration of pesticides by weight.

Bell Peppers

Don’t let the first two items on this list convince you that fruits are the only concern. Bell peppers have the highest concentration of pesticide residue of any vegetable, with one pepper testing positive for 15 different pesticides. Investigators found a shocking total of 88 different pesticides on bell peppers they sampled.

Leafy Greens

Most people who choose to have a green smoothie for breakfast and a salad for lunch are doing so in the name of health. Therefore, it’s sad and ironic that leafy greens—yes, even kale—are on the list of foods that contain too many pesticides. What’s worse is that the class of pesticides used on leafy greens, called organophosphates, are the most toxic. Don’t give up your smoothies and salads, but definitely buy organic greens.

Apples

Apples have been a target of protective moms since the 1980s since this crop is among the foods most likely to be contaminated by pesticides. According to the Environmental Working Group, 99 percent of conventionally-grown apples contain residue of at least one pesticide. You can and should wash and peel apples to remove some of the residue. However, products like apple juice and applesauce will still contain pesticides, so you should choose the organic option here as well.

Meat

It’s easy to choose the organic option when it comes to produce because the price difference between conventional and organic is ultimately not that significant. Choosing organic meat will definitely affect your budget, though. Here’s why it’s worth it anyway: cows and chickens used for conventional meat are typically fed large amounts of antibiotics. This may slightly reduce your risk of contamination, but significantly increases your exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The idea of bacteria that we can’t fight off with any antibiotics is a scary thought. As an alternative, you could always reduce your consumption of meat or even go vegetarian.

Science

Climate change could destroy this 100-million year old partnership

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 25, 2016 Last Edited: May 25, 2016

Brian Galloway

For more than 100 million years, a species of spiny crayfish native to eastern Australia and tiny, tentacled flatworms known as temnocephalans have shared a symbiotic relationship, but a newly published study suggests that climate change could soon put an end to the relationship.

Writing in the latest edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, lead author Dr. Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill from Cambridge University’s Department of Earth Sciences and her colleagues explained that the temnocephalan flatworms, which depend on the Australian spiny mountain crayfish for sustenance, are in danger of coextinction with their endangered hosts.

The flatworms and the crayfish live in the cool freshwater streams of eastern Australia, Cuthill and her co-authors explained. The flatworms live on the surface or the gill chambers of the crayfish, capturing tiny food particles and helping to remove parasites. However, environmental changes and habitat loss pose a serious threat for the crayfish, and by proxy, the flatworms.

In the study, the authors reconstructed the ecological and evolutionary history of both species using DNA sequences from specimens obtained from throughout eastern Australia. By doing so, they not only were able to recreate the shared evolution of the creatures, but measured for the first time the risk of extinction the temnocephalans face due to crayfish’s endangerment.

Three-fourths of crayfish, 60% of flatworms face extinction

“The extinction risk to the crayfish has been measured, but this is the first time we’ve quantified the risk to the temnocephalans as well – and it looks like this ancient partnership could end with the extinction of both species,” Dr. Cuthill explained Wednesday in a statement.

The first species of mountain spiny crayfish date back at least 80 million years and the creatures have diversified over time. A “molecular clock” reconstruction of the temnocephalans’ timeline revealed that the flatworms were every bit as ancient as their symbiotic partners, the researchers reported.

The two species have evolved together since the Cretaceous Period, but today, many species of crayfish have much smaller geographic ranges than in the past due to long-term climate warming and drying in the region. These crayfish have been categorized by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as either endangered or critically endangered, and now the study has shown for the first time that the flatworms face a similar threat level.

“Environmental change” had left “host-specific temnocephalans vulnerable to coextinction with endangered hosts,” the Dr. Cuthill and her colleagues wrote. “Consequently, the extinction of all Euastacus species currently endangered (75%) predicts coextinction of approximately 60% of the studied temnocephalans, with greatest loss of the most evolutionarily distinctive lineages.”

“The intimate relationship between hosts and their symbionts and parasites is often unique and long lived, not just during the lifespan of the individual organisms themselves but during the evolutionary history of the species involved in the association,” co-author Dr. Tim Littlewood of the National History Museum in London added. “This study exemplifies how understanding and untangling such an intimate relationship across space and time can yield deep insights into past climates and environments, as well as highlighting current threats to biodiversity.”

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Image credit: David Blair, James Cook University

Science

Historian uncovers ‘eye watering’ scope of Black Death devastation

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 25, 2016 Last Edited: May 25, 2016

Brian Galloway

A new analysis of broken pottery fragments collected from various rural locations throughout east England has shed new light on the devastating impact of the Black Death, the fearsome pandemic that ravaged much of Europe between the years of 1346 and 1351.

University of Lincoln Professor Carenza Lewis and her colleagues collected pieces of pottery from nearly 2,000 standard-sized test pits in more than 55 locations in six counties which were also settlements during the 14th century. These artifacts, the Guardian reported, were excellent indicators of the human population because they were commonly-used everyday items.

By counting and comparing the number and weight of broken pottery pieces from different date levels, the researchers were able to determine how many people were living at a specific location at any given time. What they found was the “eye-watering” discovery that the population fell by as much as 70 percent in some areas, such as Binham in Norfolk; Cottenham in Cambridgeshire, Shillington in Bedfordshire, and Great Amwell in Hertfordshire.

Lewis and her fellow archaeologists collected the pottery fragments from more than 2,000 one-square meter test pits excavated between 2005 and 2014, and found that nine-tenths of all of the 55 locations recorded a decline in the number of test pits yielding at least two shards. Their work also reveals which parts of the country were most severely affected by the plague.

These terrifying masks were thought to be able to stop the spread of the plague

These terrifying masks were worn by physicians and thought to be able to stop the spread of the plague.

Population levels 35 to 55 percent below normal through 16th century

“The true scale of devastation wrought by the Black Death in England during the ‘calamitous’ fourteenth century has been a topic of much debate among historians and archaeologists,” Lewis said in a statement. “Recent studies have led to mortality estimates being revised upwards but the discussion remains hampered by a lack of consistent, reliable and scalable population data.”

“This new research offers a novel solution to that evidential challenge, using finds of pottery – a highly durable indicator of human presence – as a proxy for population change in a manner that is both scalable and replicable,” the professor added. “It shows that pottery use fell by almost a half in eastern England in the centuries immediately after the Black Death.”

There was an overall decline of 45 percent in pottery finds between the high medieval period (early 12th to early 14th centuries) and the late medieval period (late 14th to late 16th centuries). The findings, reported in the journal Antiquity, supported the growing belief that the post-Black Death population of England remained 35 and 55 percent below the pre-disease levels well into the 16th century.

“Just as significantly, this new research suggests there is an almost unlimited reservoir of new evidence capable of revealing change in settlement and demography still surviving beneath today’s rural parishes, towns and villages – anyone could excavate, anywhere in the UK, Europe or even beyond, and discover how their community fared in the aftermath of the Black Death,” said Lewis.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

Scientists find link between dark matter and primordial black holes

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 25, 2016 Last Edited: May 25, 2016

Brian Galloway

While most scientists believe that the elusive substance known as dark matter is comprised of extremely massive exotic particles, one NASA scientist believes that it might actually be made up of black holes formed during the very first moments of the universe’s existence.

In a new study published Tuesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and his colleagues believe that the link between dark matter and primordial black holes correlates with what experts know about the cosmic infrared background (CIB) and cosmic X-ray background (CXB).

Furthermore, it could help to explain the unexpectedly high masses of merging black holes first detected in 2015, the study authors said. The research is “an effort to bring together a broad set of ideas and observations to test how well they fit, and the fit is surprisingly good,” Kashlinsky explained in a statement. “If this is correct, then all galaxies, including our own, are embedded within a vast sphere of black holes each about 30 times the sun’s mass.”

Dark Matter is one of the greatest scientific mysteries of our time. Credit: NASA Goddard

According to NASA, dark matter is “one of the most important unresolved issues” in the field of astrophysics, and while the preeminent theoretical models used to explain its existence believe it exists as an exotic massive particle, thus far researchers have been unsuccessful in detecting any concrete evidence to support this possibility.

While studies investigating dark matter “are providing increasingly sensitive results, slowly shrinking the box of parameters where dark matter particles can hide,” Kashlinsky noted that “the failure to find them has led to renewed interest in studying how well primordial black holes – black holes formed in the universe’s first fraction of a second – could work as dark matter.”

How gravitational wave observations provided important clues

The Goddard astrophysicist was a member of a team that, in 2005, used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to explore the background glow of infrared light in one portion of the sky, detecting a pattern of patchiness in the glow and determining that it was aggregate light coming the cosmic infrared background, a 13 billion year old light source dating from the origins of the universe.

Eight years later, another study compared the cosmic X-ray background detected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory to the CIB in the same part of the sky, and found that the irregular glow of the low-energy X-rays in the CXB were a close match to the patchiness of the CIB, according to the US space agency. Since the only object capable of being this luminous across such a wide energy range is a black hole, the researcher team determined that primordial black holes made up at least one-fifth of all of sources contributing to the CIB.

Physicists have come up with multiple hypothesis that could explain how the early universe may have produced primordial black holes during the first milliseconds following the Big Bang, noted NASA. The older the universe was when these mechanisms occurred, the largest the black holes can be, and since there was such a narrow window during which these black holes might have been produced, experts believe that they would exhibit a narrow range of masses.

Last September, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) facilities in Washington, and Louisiana detected the first ever gravitational waves produced by two merging black holes located 1.3 billion light years from Earth. The signal also provided scientists with measurements of the masses of each black hole, which at 29 times and 36 times the mass of the sun, respectively, were “unexpectedly large and surprisingly similar,” according to NASA.

Assuming that primordial black holes have properties very similar those of the black holes that LIGO detected, Kashlinsky said that the scientists could have detected “a merger of black holes formed in the early universe,” which he said may have an impact of “our understanding of how the cosmos ultimately evolved.” He and his colleagues set out to determine what could have taken place if dark matter was comprised of black holes similar to those detected by LIGO.

Post-Big Bang heat would not have affected dark matter

The researchers explained that these black holes would have caused small fluctuations in the distribution of mass in the early universe, which would have had an impact on the development of the first stars several hundred-million years later. While normal matter would have been far too hot to form stars during the first 500 million years after the Big Bang, the heat would have no impact on dark matter, as the mysterious matter primarily interacts through gravity.

By coalescing through mutual attraction, dark matter would have formed into a series of clumps known as minihaloes, which would have helped enable normal matter to begin accumulating as hot gas collapsed towards them. This phenomenon would have created gas pockets dense enough to further collapse into the very first stars, and if black holes play the role of dark matter, then the entire process would have occurred more rapidly, according to Kashlinsky.

Ultimately, this would produce the so-called lumpiness found in the Spitzer observations of the CIB, even if only a small percentage of minihaloes successfully produced stars. As cosmic gases collapsed into these dark matter clumps, some of it would also have been captured by the black holes that comprised them, causing that matter to become heated and produce X-rays. Together, the infrared light from the early stars and the X-rays produced by the gas falling into dark matter black holes would account for the similar irregularities observed in the CIB and the CXB.

“Future LIGO observing runs will tell us much more about the universe’s population of black holes, and it won’t be long before we’ll know if the scenario I outline is either supported or ruled out,” added Kashlinsky.

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Image credit: NASA

Fibromyalgia

Hairless dog breeds can reduce your fibro symptoms

Written By: Sara Snoddy

Published Date: May 24, 2016 Last Edited: May 24, 2016

Preston Hemmerich

mammal, mexican, black, small, funny, friend, color, peruvian, background, dog, breed, isolated, white, xoloitzcuintli, portrait, cute, young, hairless, sketch, domestic, pet, xoloitzcuintle, animal, sleep, header

Image: Karina Gromova/Shutterstock

Best friends. Bed buddies. Fur babies. Whatever you call your pet, you love them dearly and take the best care of them, treating them better than family. We’ve always known that dogs were man’s best friend, but we also know of something they provide more than just love and companionship—health benefits. Research has proven that dogs can improve your health. From getting you outside to soak up vitamin D, they also enhance social skills, balance emotional and psychological mood swings and decrease risk of heart attack by being a calming force. But some hairless dog breeds can even help alleviate symptoms of fibromyalgia.

Breeds like the Xoloitzcuintli, more commonly known as the Mexican Hairless dog, have the exact same body temperature as any other dog. And it would seem counterintuitive that dogs with bodies full of hair wouldn’t emit more heat than dogs with no hair, but that’s actually been found to be true. Because this breed is suited to warmer climates, and there’s no hair to block from their warm skin, people have used them in the place of hot water bottles since the dawn of time—or at least for the past 3,000 years.

Beside the joy having a pet can bring, the heat that these hairless dog breeds radiate act as a natural muscle relaxant for people who deal with pain daily. They also share something in common with people who have fibro: their unprotected skin is sensitive. So they’re cute and they can empathize with you. Here are five of the most well-known hairless dog breeds that make perfect pets for fibromyalgia sufferers and some interesting facts about them:

Xoloitzcuintli

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Image: Utekhina Anna/Shutterstock

Lifespan: 12-15 years

Temperament: Friendly and protective, needs training

Fun fact: They’re the “first” dog of the Americas

“Xolos”, as they are often called, are one of the oldest and rarest breeds in existence. Believed to have accompanied explorers across the Bering Strait, they eventually migrated with men to the Southern reaches of Mexico and Central America. Hairless dog breeds like Xolos were popular for the the warmth of their bodies, and villagers often used them to soothe arthritis, asthma, toothaches and insomnia, making them their very own hot water bottles. Their full name derives from the name of the Aztec Indian god Xolotl and Itzcuintli, the Aztec word for dog. For more information visit their AKC page.

American Hairless Terrier

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Image: Mac-leod/Shutterstock

Lifespan: 14-16 years

Temperament: Intelligent and energetic

Fun fact: Their skin prevents them from hunting as they’re bred to do

Even if your fibro brings you down, the American Hairless Terrier will be there to pep you up because they’re always game. Though they come in a small package, Terriers are one of the most diverse popular breeds, especially in America and Europe (there are several Terrier clubs of America, one for each type). But these dogs weren’t bred for playtime. In fact, Terrier ancestors were bred to hunt rats and other vermin. But unlike other Terriers, the hairless variety are not suited to hunt, which means more snuggly wuggly time for you. However, before you adopt one make sure they have someone to play with, or all that pent up energy will cause them to combust. A multi pet family would be desirable, that way you can let them exasperate each other while you rest. For more information visit their AKC page.

Chinese Crested Dog

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Image: Jaromir Chalabala/Shutterstock

Lifespan: 13-15 years

Temperament: Sweet and happy

Fun fact: They’re cat-like

Wouldn’t they make the perfect lightweight heat pack? The hairless Chinese Crested Dog is one of the cutest hairless dog breeds who love pleasing their owners, and once they do something that amuses you they’ll probably do it again to get your attention. But they also like perching on high places or on the arms of furniture, just like cats. Although they are generally regarded for their stately appearance and playful attitude, they’re frequently entered in ugly dog competitions (resulting in this hilarious news blooper) — but this doesn’t make us love them less. For more information visit their AKC page.

Peruvian Hairless Dog

Image: Yuri Hooker/Wikipedia

Lifespan: 11-12 years

Temperament: Loving, but reserved

Fun fact: They come in multiple sizes

Originating in Peru, the Peruvian hairless dog, a darker skinned version of the Peruvian Inca Orchid, is like Xoloitzcuintlis in that it’s an old breed. Their ancient history is a story told through reliefs of these dogs, which began appearing around 750 A.D. They have been depicted in Moche, Chimu, Chancay and Inca pottery. The Chancay people loved them so much that they even drew them with sweaters on, and like most of the other hairless dog breeds on this list they were regarded for the healing property of their warmth. Of course, this might have been taken too far when their urine and feces was used in medicines. For more information on Peruvian hairless dog breeds you can visit the Inca Orchid AKC page.

Ecuadorian Hairless Dog

Image: SAExpeditions Travel Blog/Nick Dall

Life span: Unknown

Temperament: Intelligent and affectionate

Fun fact: They’re naked as a baby

The Ecuadorian Hairless Dog is so rare that it’s not on any registry, and some people now think it’s a cross between the Peruvian Hairless dog and the Mexican Xoloitzcuintli. While some variations of this breed have hair on the top of their head, this elegant dog is typically characterized by their distinct lack of hair anywhere, making it one of the more desirable hairless dog breeds for people with fibro. Their rarity is due to their ancient history, with figurines from Valdivia demonstrating a domestication of these animals as early as 4,500. B.C.

Space

Scientists solve the ‘Faint Young Sun Paradox’

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 24, 2016 Last Edited: May 24, 2016

Brian Galloway

Powerful solar eruptions that took place four billion years ago, when the sun was only about 75 percent as bright as it is today, may have warmed the planet enough to allow simple molecular life to form into complex compounds such as RNA and DNA, a new study reveals.

When the first organisms emerged, the sun was so weak that the Earth “should have been an icy ball,” study lead author Vladimir Airapetian, a solar scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, explained in a statement. “Instead,” he noted, “geological evidence says it was a warm globe with liquid water. We call this the Faint Young Sun Paradox.”

Now, thanks to observations made by NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, Airapetian and his colleagues believe that they have come up with an explanation for this apparent paradox. They found other stars, roughly the same age as the sun when life first emerged on the Earth, that were far more active than their older counterparts, Space.com reported Monday.

These stars, which are only a few million years old (much younger than our 4.6 billion year old sun), were found to produce clouds of superheated plasma called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and bursts of radiation in the form of solar flares far more frequently than older stars. If our sun was this active during its youth, it would have had a dramatic warming effect on the Earth.

The young sun was much weaker than today’s, and scientists wondered how it could have kickstarted life on Earth.

Changes to atmospheric chemistry may have been a difference maker

In fact, as Airapetian’s team reported in the latest edition of the journal Nature Geoscience, the sun currently produces a “superflare,” a rare and enormous solar eruption, once ever century or so. Younger stars, meanwhile, produce up to 10 such events each day, the Kepler data revealed, and the flares are more frequent and stronger than the sun’s.

Furthermore, NASA said, Earth’s current magnetic field is far stronger than it was billions of years ago. Today’s magnetic field prevents many dangerous solar rays from reaching the surface, but this wasn’t the case during Earth’s infancy. In fact, the study authors believe that space weather particles would have traveled down the magnetic field lines, colliding with nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere and causing chemical changes to occur.

The molecular nitrogen content of the early Earth’s atmosphere was higher than it is now (up to 90 percent of the atmosphere was nitrogen, versus 78 percent today), NASA scientists explained, and as particles from solar activity slammed into these molecules, the impact would have caused them to break down into individual nitrogen atoms, which then collided with carbon dioxide and caused those molecules to be broken down into carbon monoxide and oxygen.

The now free-flowing nitrogen and oxygen particles would have combined to form nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas that would have warmed the planet significantly. If the atmosphere was filled with less than one percent as much N2O as CO2, the agency explained, it would have been enough to warm the planet such that liquid water would be able to exist on the surface, and may have provided enough energy to make complex chemicals to form the molecules that went on to seed life.

“Our new research shows that solar storms could have been central to warming Earth,” Airapetian told Space.com. “Changing the atmosphere’s chemistry turns out to have made all the difference for life on Earth.”

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Image credit: NASA

Science

5,000-year-old Chinese beer recipe had a ‘secret ingredient’

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 24, 2016 Last Edited: May 24, 2016

Brian Galloway

Using residues left behind on prehistoric pots discovered in China, researchers have discovered and recreated what is likely one of the oldest beer recipes in recorded history: a 5,000 year old brew made from broomcorn millet, barley, Job’s tears, and tubers.

Writing in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team of researchers from Stanford University and Brigham Young University, along with a team of colleagues from China, reported that this is believed to be the earliest direct evidence of in situ beer production in that country, and the first to report the use of barley in such activity. Scientists were surprised to learn that the recipe included barley, making it the “secret ingredient” that scientists didn’t expect to find.

Lead author Jiajing Wang, a Ph. D. student at Stanford, and her co-authors explained that they used a recently-developed method based on phytolith morphometrics to identify the presence of the barley. This discovery predates macrobotanical remains of barley by about 1,000 years, even though the brew itself is some 4,000 years younger than the oldest beer ever discovered: a 9,000 year old concoction, also from China, made of rice, honey, and fruit, according to CNET.

The pottery containing the beer residue was discovered, along with other tools required to brew beer, in dwellings at the Mijiaya archaeological site in northern China, the authors explained. It indicates that the residents there has established advanced beer-brewing techniques around 5,000 years ago, and suggest that early brewing may have been the motivation for the initial importing of barley from Western Eurasia long before it became a cultivated food crop.

These funnels were used to make beer. Credit: Fulai Xing

Beer brewing may contributed to the rise of hierarchal societies

Upon discovering pottery coated with a yellowing substance at the Mijiaya site, the researchers analyzed it and found that it was an alcoholic beverage made from broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), barley (Hordeum vulgare), an Asian wild grain known as Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi), and tubers from plant roots, which were combined and fermented together.

The archaeologists also found traces of oxalate, a byproduct that forms a scale called beerstone in brewing equipment, according to Live Science. Items such as ceramic pots, funnels and stoves that would have been used in the preparation of the beverage were also discovered, and Wang’s team dated them back to the late Stone Age Yangshao period (3400 BC to 2900 BC).

The Stanford and BYU team traveled to the Shaanxi Institute of Archaeology, where the artifacts from the Mijiaya site are currently stored, last summer, when they extracted and analyzed residue from the pottery. The most startling discovery was the use of barley, which only became a staple food crop during the Han dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD), indicating that the Yangshao people had learned of the crop’s use in brewing in other parts of the world, Wang told Live Science.

“It is possible that the few rare finds of barley in the Central Plain during the Bronze Age indicate their earlier introduction as rare, exotic food,” the authors wrote. “Our findings imply that early beer making may have motivated the initial translocation of barley from western Eurasia into the Central Plain of China before the crop became a part of agricultural subsistence in the region 3,000 years later.”

“Like other alcoholic beverages, beer is one of the most widely used and versatile drugs in the world, and it has been used for negotiating different kinds of social relationships,” they added. “The production and consumption of Yangshao beer may have contributed to the emergence of hierarchical societies in the Central Plain, the region known as ‘the cradle of Chinese civilization.’”

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Image credit: Fulai Xing

Science

New ichthyosaur species is a ‘black sheep’ of evolution

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 23, 2016 Last Edited: May 23, 2016

Brian Galloway

A newly discovered species of ichthyosaur, so radically different from its relatives that the team of researchers who found it described it as the “black sheep” of the family, could provide insight into evolution that radically changes our understanding of the process.

Ichthyosaurs were a group of marine reptiles which typically resembled dolphins in appearance, with streamlined bodies, long beak-like snouts and powerful tail fins, researchers from the Field Museum in Chicago explained in a statement Monday. The newly discovered species, however, had a much shorter snout and a long, whip-like tail that lacked triangular flukes.

Dubbed Sclerocormus parviceps, this ichthyosauriform also lacked the conical teeth that many of its relatives used to catch prey. In fact, it didn’t have teeth at all, instead using its short snout as a tool to create pressure and inhale food like a syringe, the authors added. The differences between this creature and other ichthyosaurs are so radical that it has led to a startling observation.

“Sclerocormus tells us that ichthyosauriforms evolved and diversified rapidly at the end of the Lower Triassic period,” said Olivier Rieppel, the Rowe Family Curator of Evolutionary Biology at the museum. “We don’t have many marine reptile fossils from this period, so this specimen is important because it suggests that there’s diversity that hasn’t been uncovered yet.”

Da-yong Jiang

Newfound species could improve understanding of evolution

Roughly 250 million years ago, volcanic eruptions, rising sea levels and climate change resulted in a mass extinction event that wiped out 96 percent of all marine species. While aquatic life was able to rebound in the years that followed, scientists long believed that the first marine reptiles to emerge following that mass extinction event evolved slowly.

The new discovery challenges that assumption, as the Sclerocormus evolved into a different form “very quickly, in short bursts of lots of change, in leaps and bounds,” Rieppel explained. Its rapid evolution is inconsistent with Darwin’s model of evolution, which is comprised of small, gradual changes that take place over an extended period of time, and provides new insight into how some species respond to environmental pressures like those responsible for the mass extinction.

“We’re in a mass extinction right now, not one caused by volcanoes or meteorites, but by humans,” Rieppel said. “So while the extinction 250 million years ago won’t tell us how to solve what’s going on today, it does bear on the evolutionary theory at work. How do we understand the recovery and rebuilding of a food chain, of an ecosystem? How does that get fixed, and what comes first?”

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Image credit: Da-yong Jiang

Science

Oregon school bans materials that doubt climate change

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 23, 2016 Last Edited: May 23, 2016

Brian Galloway

A resolution passed by the Portland Public Schools Board last week will prohibit teachers from using any classroom materials that treat climate change as anything other than a proven scientific fact, and will require them to list human activity as one of its causes.

The move first drew national interest when it was reported Friday by conservative news website The Blaze, but has also been covered by The Oregonian and the Portland Tribune. The move aims to eliminate dispute over global warming and its potential impact.

The resolution was introduced by school board member Mike Rosen, who also leads the NW Ecoliteracy Collaborative, a project that focuses on environmental curriculum standards. He told the Tribune that his work with that initiative is currently on hold, however, and the schoolboard unanimously passed the proposed changes to the district’s curriculum.

Books that cast doubt on global warming ‘unacceptable,’ student says

Testifying before the school board, Lincoln High School student Gaby Lemieux said that it was “unacceptable” that she and her fellow pupils were learning from “textbooks… that spread doubt about the human causes and urgency of the crisis.” She added that “climate education” was “the minimum requirement for my generation to be successful in our changing world.”

Likewise, former Portland teacher Bill Bigelow told district officials, “A lot of the text materials are kind of thick with the language of doubt, and obviously the science says otherwise.” Bigelow noted that the books being used by schools frequently used words such as might and could when discussing climate change, and that students should not be learning using materials which he said look as if they were provided “courtesy of the fossil fuel industry.”

“What we’re asking for is not: Buy new stuff,” said Bigelow, who according to the Tribune is a co-author of a textbook on environmental education called A People’s Curriculum for the Earth. “What we’re looking for is a whole different model of curriculum development and distribution,” he added, noting that some schools in the district already has climate-change literacy classes.

Such a move is unlikely to be universally supported in the Portland area, however, as according to Fox News, a petition circulated by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) that calls upon the US to reject the international global warming agreement signed in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 has to date been signed by nearly 32,000 people, including 9,000 people with post-secondary degrees.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Fibromyalgia

5 commonly misdiagnosed conditions that mimic fibromyalgia

Written By: Sara Snoddy

Published Date: May 23, 2016 Last Edited: May 23, 2016

Sara Snoddy

sick woman on bed concept of stomachache, headache, hangover, sleeplessness or insomnia

Image: ketmanee/Shutterstock

Imagine spending countless hours and exorbitant amounts of money on doctors appointments and medication that doesn’t seem to fix what you know is going on in your body. And then one day, if you’re lucky, you get that final diagnosis you’ve been waiting for: it’s fibromyalgia. Of course, now that opens all kinds of doors with their new fears behind them. After all, what is fibromyalgia really besides a painful yet often untreatable and incurable disease? But for some people, that accurate diagnosis never comes, and they’re forever stuck thinking their problems are something else.

The road to an accurate diagnosis is often more difficult than the long battle of treatment or even the disbelieving opinions of people who don’t believe fibro is a real illness. Unfortunately, a string of misdiagnoses is a harsh reality for many people with fibro because it’s one of the hardest diseases to pinpoint. Because fibros symptoms are so universal, it’s easily confused with other similar illnesses. Here are some of the most commonly misdiagnosed conditions that mimic fibromyalgia.

Lupus

To say lupus mimics fibromyalgia would be an understatement. As with any autoimmune disease, lupus shares many of its main symptoms with fibro, such as fatigue and joint pain. Although lupus usually brings the butterfly rash with it, a rash across the nose and cheek area, the inward symptoms are what causes it to be commonly confused with other diseases. Both people with lupus and fibro are likely to experience sensitivity to light, cold, and pain, and sharp chest pains can occur as well. Frequent headaches and mood disorders are probably the most obvious yet ignored symptoms of both lupus and fibromyalgia, along with inflammation.

Lyme Disease

Unlike other non-life-threatening ticks, deer ticks inject bacteria that causes the tick-borne illness known as Lyme disease. Often misdiagnosed as the flu or another other fatigue-related illness, Lyme disease can become debilitating if left untreated and is one of the most commonly misdiagnosed conditions that mimic fibromyalgia. Symptoms, besides a bulls-eye rash, include joint pain and weakness in the limbs — two of the most common indicators of fibro and the cause of many misdiagnoses.

Arthritis

This condition, which attacks joints primarily, is perhaps the most like fibromyalgia than any other on this list because it causes inflammation and pain. Over time, this inflammation can cause bone erosion and joint deformity. Rheumatoid arthritis, one of the many forms of arthritis, is much like lupus in that it is an autoimmune disease. While it can eventually go away, rheumatoid arthritis is often lifelong, affecting people from their twenties and onward the most. Like other conditions that mimic fibromyalgia, arthritis is currently incurable.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Chronic fatigue syndrome may be one of the worst conditions on this list, not just because of how it can affect your daily living, but because of the deeper connection it shares with fibromyalgia. People with fibro often endure negative opinions from other individuals who don’t believe the condition is real, which is hard to imagine. Unfortunately, people exist who see claims of fibro or similar conditions as mere excuses to be on disability or unemployed. Those same people often chalk the symptoms up to laziness and confuse CFS with major depression, which both cause a feeling of lethargy all day similar to fibro. This serious yet commonly misdiagnosed condition often causes sleep abnormalities and pain, resulting in impaired mental and physical capabilities. Like fibromyalgia, cases of CFS occur more among women, and symptoms become more severe with increased exertion.

Hypothyroidism

Hypothyroidism is a condition in which the thyroid gland doesn’t produce enough thyroid hormone, disrupting heart rate, body temperature, and all aspects of metabolism. Universal symptoms of fatigue, sensitivity, and mood disorders can be linked to thyroid issues, but because the symptoms are so general they are often misdiagnosed. Like CFS and fibro, hypothyroidism affects mostly older women, and, like all the other conditions on this list, it can be debilitating and make even the most simple tasks hard to accomplish. However, unlike many other conditions that mimic fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism is treatable with thyroid hormone replacement therapy.

Health

Study finds ‘Big Five’ personality traits show how often newlyweds will have sex

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 23, 2016 Last Edited: May 23, 2016

Brian Galloway

Fiancés who might be curious how much sex they will have after marriage may want to have their significant other take a personality test before tying the knot, according to a new study published in the May 17 online edition of the Journal of Research in Personality.

As part of their research, Florida State University psychologists Drs. Andrea Meltzer and James McNulty examined data from three independent daily-diary studies of newlywed couples to find out if there was a link between their personalities and their levels of sexual functioning.

Specifically, they focused on the so-called “Big Five” personality traits – openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism – and learned that couples with a wife that scored high in agreeableness tended to have more frequent intercourse, while there was apparently no such link between probability of sex and the personality traits of males.

“No prior research has examined the association between partners’ Big Five traits and daily reports of sexual activity,” Metlzer, a professor of social psychology at FSU, told PsyPost on Friday, “so we were hesitant to make specific predictions. It was somewhat surprising, however, that husbands’ Big Five did not predict couples’ sexual frequency.”

Low levels of neuroticism linked to higher sexual satisfaction

Meltzer and McNulty reviewed data involving 278 recently-married heterosexual couples, each of whom underwent an psychological examination to assess their personalities. The newlyweds also kept a 14-day journal about their marital life, including periods of sexual activity.

The couples, each of whom had been married for less than six months, had intercourse between three and four times, on average, over the two-week period, PsyPost said. In addition to finding that women with higher agreeableness levels tended to have sex more often, they also discovered a similar but weaker link between openness levels in women and frequent intercourse.

People who score high in measures of agreeableness tend to be more trusting and compassionate, while those who are high in openness are usually more open to trying new things, the researchers explained. The findings, they wrote, suggest that it is the personalities of the wives and not of the husbands that predicts the probability of sex amongst newlyweds.

The research also found that both husbands and wives who scored low in neuroticism reported having higher levels of satisfaction with sex when it occurred, the FSU team said. Surprisingly, husbands who scored low on tests of openness also reported higher levels of sexual satisfaction, while the data found that the personality of the partner appeared not to have any impact on the experience whatsoever.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Health

Low-sodium diets could be bad for your heart, study finds

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: May 22, 2016 Last Edited: May 22, 2016

Brian Galloway

While most health agencies advocate a low-sodium diet for heart health, a controversial new study out of the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences in Canada has found that the opposite holds true— low salt intake may not be beneficial, and might actually increase the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and death when compared to those who consumed an average amount of sodium.

The study, which is published in The Lancet, recruited 133,118 people across 49 countries. After measuring the sodium in their urine to estimate how much they consume on a daily basis, they followed these people across a median time period of 4.2 years and correlated their sodium levels to major CVD events (like heart disease and stroke) and mortality rates.

At the end of the study, they found that regardless of blood pressure level, lower sodium intake than the average Canadian consumes (less than 3,000 mg per day) was tied to a greater number of heart attacks, strokes, and deaths as compared to average intake (3,500 to 4,000 mg per day).

“These are extremely important findings for those who are suffering from high blood pressure,” said Andrew Mente, lead author of the study, a principal investigator of PHRI and an associate professor of clinical epidemiology and biostatistics at McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, in a statement.

“While our data highlights the importance of reducing high salt intake in people with hypertension, it does not support reducing salt intake to low levels. Our findings are important because they show that lowering sodium is best targeted at those with hypertension who also consume high sodium diets.”

Further, the study also found that a high sodium intake (6,000 mg per day) was only harmful to those with high blood pressure.

“Low sodium intake reduces blood pressure modestly, compared to average intake, but low sodium intake also has other effects, including adverse elevations of certain hormones which may outweigh any benefits. The key question is not whether blood pressure is lower with very low salt intake, instead it is whether it improves health,” said Mente.

The American Heart Association strikes back

Many health experts strongly disagree with the results of the study, with the American Heart Association leading the criticism.

“This is a flawed study and you shouldn’t use it to inform yourself about how you’re going to eat,” said Elliott Antman, M.D., associate dean for clinical/translational research at Harvard Medical School and senior physician in the Cardiovascular Division of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, in an AHA statement. “The AHA has reviewed the totality of the evidence and we continue to maintain that no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day is best for ideal heart health.”

(1,500 milligrams, of course, is the recommendation for the average person, not including those working in extreme heat or with specific illnesses.)

Antman went on to point out that the methods of the study—namely, estimating daily salt intake based off of a single urine test at the start of the study—is likely a poor indicator of how much salt a person truly consumes. This is because urine does not reflect how much salt a person eats in the long-term, but rather how much they just ate.

“If we followed you for two years and made assumptions on whatever that first meal was, it just wouldn’t be accurate all along the way,” said Antman. “There are a lot of assumptions being made in this study, and the results are not reliable.”

“The link is proven between excess sodium and high blood pressure, and I find it worrisome that adoption of the authors’ recommendations may reverse the progress that has occurred in modifying dietary sodium intake and reducing the risk of high blood pressure and its effect on heart disease and stroke,” added Mark Creager, M.D., president of the American Heart Association and director of the Heart and Vascular Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center at Dartmouth College.

“Today’s widely accepted sodium recommendations are based on well-founded scientific research – and that’s what people should understand.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Science

Marine dinosaurs evolved extremely quickly, study finds

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: May 22, 2016 Last Edited: May 22, 2016

Brian Galloway

Hundreds of millions of years ago, marine reptiles like the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs ruled the seas—but researchers were never quite sure about their origins, or their rise to dominance. Now, research published from paleobiologists from the University of Bristol has shed some light on their mysterious past.

As told in their paper in Paleobiology, the scientists have uncovered evidence that during the Mesozoic– an era about 252 to 66 million years ago—these predators suddenly burst onto the scene, instead of a slow evolution into their environment.

“We show that when marine reptiles first entered the oceans in the Triassic period, they rapidly became very diverse and had many morphological adaptations related to feeding on varied prey,” said the lead author of the study, Dr. Tom Stubbs, in a statement.

“Within a relatively short space of time, marine reptiles began feeding on hard-shelled invertebrates, fast-moving fish and other large marine reptiles. The range of feeding-related morphological adaptations seen in Triassic marine reptiles was never exceeded later in the Mesozoic.”

Studying the fossil record

The team came to these conclusions after carefully studying the fossil record of Mesozoic marine reptiles and using statistic to quantify the variation in the shape and function of jaws and teeth across these predators. Before now, studies had mostly been based on estimates of biodiversity across time. But this new study shook things up by tying the shape of jaws and teeth to their different modes of life (like their different modes of feeding).

“We always knew that the marine reptiles expanded relatively fast into a world in turmoil, after a devastating mass extinction event that killed as many as 95 per cent of species,” said co-author Professor Michael Benton.

“But what was unusual was that they were inventing entirely new modes of life that had not existed before the end-Permian mass extinction. Our work shows they expanded into nearly every mode of life, indicated by their feeding habits and range of body sizes, really much faster than might have been imagined.”

Interestingly, though, this sudden evolutionary burst took a sharp downturn within 30 million years. At this point—the Late Triassic—the marine reptiles started undergoing mass extinctions, wiping out most groups. The research from the University of Bristol shows that these extinctions eliminated many of the animals with specialized niches and morphological adaptations, and have had huge long-term effects on marine reptile evolution.

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Image credit: Listverse

Health

Taking selfies could make you act like a narcissistic jerk, study shows

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 21, 2016 Last Edited: May 21, 2016

Brian Galloway

Men and women whose Facebook and Twitter feeds are filled with selfies tend to significantly overestimate their attractiveness and likability, and are typically viewed being more narcissistic than those who don’t frequently take photos of themselves, according to a new study.

Writing in a recent edition of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, Daniel Re, a psychologist from the University of Toronto, and his colleagues conducted a study to find out if there was a link between taking selfies and a phenomenon known as “self-favoring bias”, where a person believes that they are better than average in many ways.

According to PsyPost and the Daily Mail, they interviewed 198 college students, 100 of whom said that they regularly took selfies and 98 of whom said that they rarely or never used a phone or other mobile device to take pictures of themselves. Study participants were asked to take one selfie using a smartphone camera, and also had their photo taken by one of the researchers.

Each of the images were rated by the students themselves and by an independent third party, and while both the selfie takers and the non-selfie takers tended to rate themselves higher in terms of attractiveness and likability than the third-party raters, the authors found that regular selfie-takers overestimated themselves significantly more and were judged to be more vain.

So what is it about taking selfies that leads to this bias?

The results of the study indicate that regularly snapping photos of yourself could increase your susceptibility to self-favoring bias, causing you to unwittingly overestimate how attractive your photos are over the course of time. This effect, the researchers explained, may be due to positive feedback received over social media, or the use of strategies to take flattering photos.

In addition, Re and his colleagues wrote that their research found that “selfie-takers perceived themselves as more attractive and likable in their selfies than in others’ photos, but that non-selfie-takers viewed both photos similarly. Furthermore, external judges rated the targets as less attractive, less likable, and more narcissistic in their selfies than in the photos taken by others.”

Essentially, they believe that “self-enhancing misperceptions may support selfie-takers’ positive evaluations of their selfies, revealing notable biases in self-perception,” and that becoming good at taking selfies could increase the likelihood of others viewing them negatively, at least when it comes to narcissism, according to PsyPost.

The new findings come on the heels of an Ohio State University study published last year which found that men who posted more selfies on social media sites like Facebook and Instrgam scored higher on measures of narcissism and psychopathy, and that guys who edited those self-portraits before posting them scored higher in narcissism and self-objectification. Based on the science, it might be wise to think twice before shooting and sharing those self-portraits.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

Mars will be close to Earth this weekend– Here’s how to spot it

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 21, 2016 Last Edited: May 21, 2016

Brian Galloway

Grab your telescopes and binoculars, folks: this weekend, Mars reaches “opposition,” meaning that it will be exactly opposite the sun in Earth’s sky and will thus be shining more brightly than at any other time during the year, making it an ideal time to hunt for the Red Planet.

During opposition, Mars will rise as the sun sets and set as the run rises, according to Space.com, and will be visible all night long on Saturday and Sunday. The exact time that it will first become visible varies by location, but it will be visible for longer periods of time in the south.

Catching a glimpse of the Red Planet will be easy, NPR explained. Shortly after the sun sets, go outside and look towards the southeastern part of the sky. Locate the full moon, which should be an easy task, and then look for what appears to be a bright red star to its right. That’s Mars.

In addition to being extremely bright, Mars will be the closest it’s been to Earth in more than 10 years on Sunday, according to EarthSky. At a distance of 46.78 million miles (75.28 million km), the planet will the closest it’s been to Earth since it’s November 2005 opposition.

After its opposition, Mars will begin to gradually fade in brightness, the website said. However, this year’s event is an “awesome” opportunity to catch a glimpse of the planet, as it “will briefly match the brightness of Jupiter, currently the brightest starlike object in the evening sky (since Venus is now behind the sun).”

More about Mars and its upcoming opposition

Why is this event called an opposition? As NASA scientist Michelle Thaller told NPR, the name dates back to a time when astronomers held “a more Earth-centric view” of the solar system, and it seems fitting, as it looks as though Mars and the sun are on opposite sides of the sky.

While this year’s opposition event will bring Mars closer than it has been in over a decade, it still is not the closest it has ever been. According to EarthSky, the greatest/closest opposition of Mars since the Stone Age took place in August 2003, as the planet was just 34.65 million miles (55.76 million km) from the Earth. That record is not expected to fall until August 2287.

Earlier this week, to mark the occasion, NASA revealed new up-close images of Mars captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, and those photographs show the planet’s polar caps and clouds floating above the rust-colored surface of the planet. The images were taken by the telescope on May 12, when Mars was 50 million miles away, and reveal details as small as just 20 to 30 miles across, according to the US space agency.

“The biennial close approaches between Mars and Earth are not all the same,” explained NASA. “Mars’ orbit around the sun is markedly elliptical; the close approaches to Earth can range from 35 million to 63 million miles. They occur because about every two years Earth’s orbit catches up to Mars’ orbit, aligning the sun, Earth, and Mars in a straight line.”

“This phenomenon is a result of the difference in orbital periods between Earth’s orbit and Mars’ orbit. While Earth takes the familiar 365 days to travel once around the sun, Mars takes 687 Earth days to make its trip around our star,” the agency added. “ As a result, Earth makes almost two full orbits in the time it takes Mars to make just one, resulting in the occurrence of Martian oppositions about every 26 months.”

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An artists’s impression of what Mars might have looked like 4 billion years ago. Image credit: ESO

Health

UK government creates plan to combat superbug disaster

Written By: Brett Smith

Published Date: May 20, 2016 Last Edited: May 20, 2016

Brian Galloway

A new report coming from United Kingdom is calling for a global revolution in the way we use antibiotics.
The report laid out a plan to halt the advance of “superbugs” – or microbes that have developed a resistance to antibiotics. The UK report said the continued proliferation of superbugs would cast medicine “back into the dark ages.”
The UK plan for dealing superbugs called for a number of initiatives, including a global fund for antibiotic research and paying drug companies for discovering new drugs.

Is this plan enough?

While some public health groups praised the plan, others criticized it by saying it didn’t go far enough.
Based on eight previous studies, the new report made an urgent call for a substantial global awareness marketing campaign to raise awareness of the risks associated with antibiotics overuse. The plan also called for a $2 billion Global Innovation Fund and $1 billion award for every new antibiotic created.
The UK plan also called for the promotion of vaccines as alternatives to antibiotic drugs, better access to clean water, increase monitoring of superbug proliferation, better sanitation and cleaner hospitals to keep infections proliferating. The report called for a ban on unnecessary antibiotic use in agriculture, including a prohibition on antibiotics deemed “highly critical.”
“We need to inform in different ways, all over the world, why it’s crucial we stop treating our antibiotics like sweets,” Jim O’Neill, an economist from Manchester University who led the global review, said according to the BBC. “If we don’t solve the problem we are heading to the dark ages, we will have a lot of people dying.
“We have made some pretty challenging recommendations which require everybody to get out of the comfort zone, because if we don’t then we aren’t going to be able to solve this problem,” he added.
Grania Brigden, from Doctors Without Borders, said the plan didn’t go far enough.
“The O’Neill report proposes considerable new funding to overcome the failures of pharmaceutical research and development, but the proposals do not necessarily ensure access to either existing tools or emerging new products,” Brigden said. “Instead, in some cases, the report’s solution is simply to subsidize higher prices rather than trying to overcome them.”
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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

Unique galaxy explains the origin of heavy elements

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 20, 2016 Last Edited: May 20, 2016

Brian Galloway

By analyzing the faint starlight of a far-off dwarf galaxy, a team of researchers from the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI) have finally solved a decades-long mystery surrounding the origins of precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum.

While the majority of chemical elements that make up planets and just about everything else in the universe were forged in nuclear furnaces like the sun, the roots of specific heavy and usually valuable elements like gold, silver, lead, and uranium have remained an enigma, according to the authors of a new study published earlier this year in the journal Nature.

To solve this puzzle, they monitored an old dwarf galaxy in the local group known as Reticulum II, which is contains stars abundant in these so-called “r-process” metals. Based on their research the MKI team believes that a collision between extremely dense objects called neutron stars that took place billions of years ago created the large quantities of heavy elements in the galaxy, and that those elements then became intermingled with its gas and dust reservoirs.

This now r-process metal rich material ultimately went on to form Reticulum II’s unique stars, they explained in a statement. While scientists had long suspected that these collisions played a key role in the process, this marks the first observational evidence to support that hypothesis.

‘Cosmic genes’ provide a window to early star, galaxy formation

Two of the researchers involved in the study – Anna Frebel, an assistant professor in the MIT Department of Physics, and Alexander Ji, the graduate student who first discovered the enriched stars in Reticulum II and lead author of the Nature paper – talked about their findings this week as part of a roundtable discussion at the Kavli Institute.

“Understanding how heavy, r-process elements are formed is one of hardest problems in nuclear physics,” Frebel said at the event, according to Phys.org reports. “The production of these really heavy elements takes so much energy that it’s nearly impossible to make them experimentally. The process for making them just doesn’t work on Earth. So we have had to use the stars and the objects in the cosmos as our lab.”

Frebel added that their research demonstrates how an increasingly popular technique called “stellar archaeology” is helping scientists determine the history of galaxies by analyzing the contents of the stars found there. She added that their work had “opened a new door for studying galaxy formation with individual stars and to some extent individual elements. We are seriously connecting the really small scales of stars with the really big scales of galaxies.”

Approximately two percent of neutron stars have a companion, and a fraction of those are orbited by another neutron star, the study authors pointed out. If the neutron stars are close enough, they will eventually collide, causing some of the material to be ejected into space at close to the speed of light. Their atoms would then become mixed with ambient gas and dust, and this newly mixed material would be used to form the next generation of now r-process metal enriched stars.

“Because the elements that we observe in our stars today were made prior to the stars’ birth – the stars inherited these heavy elements like ‘cosmic genes’ – we have this incredible opportunity to look back in time to study the early chemical and physical processes that ushered in stars and galaxy formation soon after the Big Bang,” Frebel said.

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Image credit: Dana Berry / Skyworks Digital, Inc.

Health

CDC finds health violations at 80 percent of all US pools

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 20, 2016 Last Edited: May 20, 2016

Brian Galloway

Nearly 80 percent of all public pools in the US had committed at least one violation of public health and safety rules, and 1-in-8 had problems serious enough to warrant immediate closure, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The statistics, based on more than 84,000 routine inspections of nearly 49,000 public pools and other aquatic venues in Arizona, California, Florida, New York, and Texas, found that 15 percent had issues with pH balance, while 13 percent had problems with safety equipment and 12 percent had incorrect disinfectant concentration levels, according to ABC News.

Pools in those states were chosen because they are home to an estimated 40 percent of the more than 309,000 public water parks in the US, the Los Angeles Times noted, and while they are not necessarily representative of public pools throughout the country, the CDC’s findings are certain to cause some concern among parents as we draw closer to the start of summer.

“No one should get sick or hurt when visiting a public pool, hot tub, or water playground,” said Dr. Beth Bell of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. “That’s why public health and aquatics professionals work together to improve the operation and maintenance of these public places so people will be healthy and safe when they swim.”

So what should you do to protect yourself and your children?

The report revealed that 79 percent of routine inspections in those five states revealed at least one code violation, with some facilities having as many as 21 separate violations. In 12 percent of the cases, the inspections revealed a violation that forced the immediate closure of the pool, the CDC said, and one in five kiddie or wading pools had to be shut down due to various issues.

“This report’s findings underscore the need to improve the operation and maintenance of U.S. public aquatic facilities to prevent illness and injury,” the study authors reported.

So what can parents or swimmers do in the meantime? As Dr. Robert Glatter, a physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York who was not involved in the preparation of the CDC study said to ABC News, the first step is to pay attention to the pool’s condition. If the bottom of the pool is visible, he said, it’s a good sign that it is clean and well maintained – but those with concerns can ask a lifeguard or manager about the facility’s safety-related practices.

Furthermore, the CDC advises purchasing test strips, available at pool supply shops or hardware stores, that can measure the pH and disinfectant content of a pool’s water. A pool should have a pH balance of between 7.2 and 7.8, chlorine levels that are at least 1 part per million (for regular pool water) or 3ppm (for hot tubs), and bromine levels that are at least 3ppm (for pools) or 4ppm (for hot tubs), according to the Los Angeles Times.

And while is really should not need to be said, the agency also advises people to do their part to keep the pools free of fecal matter, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. Diapers should be changed in the restrooms or changing area, not by poolside, and adults currently experiencing or recovering from a bout of diarrhea probably should not swim, and if/when they do return to the pool, they should make sure to have a good shower beforehand.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Space

NASA collects first data on a post-Pluto object

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: May 19, 2016 Last Edited: May 19, 2016

Brian Galloway

New Horizons has broken a lot of ground in the outer reaches of the solar system by studying Pluto and its moons, but now it has gone a step beyond by studying 1994 JR1—the first post-Pluto Kuiper Belt object (KBO) it has observed.

According to NASA, looking at 1994 JR1 is something like a warmup for New Horizons’ hopeful future—its team is awaiting approval to extend the spacecraft’s mission in order to fly by another KBO, titled 2014 MU69, in 2019. During this mission, it will hopefully be able to grab close-ups of some potential 19 other KBOs as well.

New Horizons has completed two observations of 1994 JR1, a 90-mile-wide object that orbits more than 3 billion miles (5 billion km) from the Sun. The observations were performed on April 7-8 using New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), and at an extraordinarily close distance (relatively speaking)—it was only 69 million miles (111 million km) away from 1994 JR1. This smashes the previous record for this particular object, which was completed in November of 2015 from a distance of 170 million miles (280 million km) away.

Making new discoveries

And already, they’re made some exciting discoveries about 1994 JR1.

“Combining the November 2015 and April 2016 observations allows us to pinpoint the location of JR1 to within 1,000 kilometers (about 600 miles), far better than any small KBO,” said Simon Porter, a New Horizons science team member from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, according to NASA.

This new knowledge means that scientists can rule out a previous theory about the KBO—namely, that it was a quasi-satellite of Pluto. Further, the newest observation has led to scientists identifying 1994 JR1’s rotation period (how long it takes to complete one revolution, or a day for the object). By analyzing the changes in light that was reflected off its surface, they were able to gather that it makes a full rotation every 5.4 hours.

“That’s relatively fast for a KBO,” said science team member John Spencer, also from SwRI. “This is all part of the excitement of exploring new places and seeing things never seen before.”

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Image credit: NASA

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Image credit: NASA

Space

Scientists discover icy comets orbiting a sun-like star

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 19, 2016 Last Edited: May 19, 2016

Brian Galloway

For the first time, astronomers have found evidence of icy comets orbiting a nearby sun-like star, and the discovery may shed new light on how our own solar system developed, according to new research scheduled to be presented Thursday at a scientific conference in Chile.

An international team led by scientists from the University of Cambridge have detected minute levels of carbon monoxide gas around HD 181327, a star with a mass that is approximately 30% greater than the sun and which is located 160 light years away in the Painter constellation.

The carbon monoxide content in the 23-million-year-old system is consistent with that found in the comets observed in our own 4.6-billion-year-old solar system, the researchers will announce at the Resolving Planet Formation in the Era of ALMA and Extreme AO conference in Santiago. Their work will also be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Lead author Sebastián Marino, a PhD student from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, and his colleagues believe that their findings will ultimately help researchers determine the properties of the cometary gas clouds that typically form around sun-like star shortly after they first born.

“Young systems such as this one are very active, with comets and asteroids slamming into each other and into planets,” Marino said in a statement. “The system has a similar ice composition to our own, so it’s a good one to study in order to learn what our solar system looked like early in its existence.”

Researchers also suspect that planets may be orbiting the star

Comets, the researchers explained, are basically “dirty snowballs” of ice and rock that sometimes leave behind a trail of dust and evaporating ice. They often form early on in the star system’s life cycle, and while they are usually found in the outer reaches of our solar system, they are easier to see during the infrequent occasions when they venture into the inner regions.

When our solar system first formed, Earth is believed to have been a rocky wasteland similar to modern-day Mars, Marino and his colleagues explained. It wasn’t until comets collided with the emerging world that water and other essential compounds made their way here, and by locating the ring of dust around HD 181327, the authors believe that they may see processes very similar to those that took place shortly after the planets formed around our system’s sun.

In fact, they found a ring of dust surrounding the star that was created by collisions that involved comets, asteroids and other objects, and while they believe that there may be planets currently in orbit around the star, they are unable to directly observe them due to technological limitations.

“Assuming there are planets orbiting this star, they would likely have already formed, but the only way to see them would be through direct imaging, which at the moment can only be used for very large planets like Jupiter,” explained co-author Luca Matrà, who is also a PhD student at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy.

To detect the possible presence of comets, the researchers used ALMA to search for signatures of gas, and found extremely low levels of carbon monoxide gas – the lowest ever detected in a belt of comets and asteroids, according to Marino. The same collisions thought to have formed the dust ring HD 181327 are likely responsible for the release of the gases as well.

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Image credit: Amanda Smith, University of Cambridge

Fibromyalgia

Best Exercises for People with Fibromyalgia

Written By: Holly Case

Published Date: May 19, 2016 Last Edited: May 19, 2016

Preston Hemmerich

Senior people stretching out in fitness room

Image: goodluz/Shutterstock

Regular exercise is important for everyone. There’s a reason it appears in virtually every health-related article you read: it’s the best thing you can do for your health and to prevent disease. However, even though it’s actually more important to exercise after you’ve been diagnosed with a chronic illness like fibromyalgia, your symptoms can make it harder to get exercise.

If you choose the right exercises, your illness should never have to stop you from being active. If you stay active now, you’re less likely to become completely disabled later, which is one big reason to choose to work out even when you don’t feel like it. Consider the following gentle exercises and lace up those sneakers.

Yoga

Yoga is an almost perfect exercise for fibro sufferers. Yoga provides gentle stretching, gradual strengthening of muscles and a deep sense of relaxation that will help you manage your stress. Because many people with fibromyalgia wake up feeling stiff and sore in the mornings, you may want to take a warm bath to relax your muscles before attempting a morning workout. As long as you avoid a strenuous routine, doing yoga before bed can also improve your quality of sleep.

Walking

Exercise doesn’t have to suck! You may be so sore and out of shape that the thought of any exercise is overwhelming. But remember, when we say that exercise will help your health, that means any exercise. You don’t have to go out and start training for a marathon or take up CrossFit. Even going for a 30-minute walk after dinner can be an easy and relaxing way to get some exercise.

Swimming or Water Aerobics

Exercising in water is notoriously gentle. Yet it also gives a much better workout than you’d expect because the water provides natural resistance, like light weights you barely notice. Swimming laps in a heated pool can be incredibly relaxing and gently works out your muscles as well.

If swimming is not really your thing or you just want a change of pace, water aerobics are another great choice for fibro sufferers. Water aerobics are designed to be gentle but effective at the same time, working to tone your muscles. You get a great workout without feeling all sweaty, which is helpful since many fibro patients get overheated easily.

Exercise Bike or Elliptical Machine

Using an exercise bike or elliptical machine are both good choices for people with chronic pain. It provides a bit better of a workout than yoga or plain walking but is easier on the knees. Because you control the pace of your exercise on one of these machines, you can go faster on days when you feel strong or slow down on those days when you deserve a gold star just for showing up.

It’s not important what type of exercise you choose. Even as little as 10 to 15 minutes is better than nothing, and gradually you will be able to exercise for longer periods of time. Just get up and get moving!

Space

These stars are dying off prematurely. What’s killing them?

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 19, 2016 Last Edited: May 19, 2016

Brian Galloway

In a discovery that could challenge the accepted scientific view of stellar evolution, a team of researchers from Australia’s Monash University and an international team of colleagues have found evidence that a large group of stars in a nearby cluster are dying prematurely.
Monash PhD student Ben MacLean and professor John Lattanzio, along with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO), reported Thursday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that a large quantity of helium-burning stars are prematurely dying in the M4 globular cluster.
Globular cluster are among “the oldest objects in the universe,” Lattanzio said in a statement. “Although we have some ideas for what is going on in them, every time we look carefully we find something unexpected. They are both fascinating and frustrating at the same time.”
In this case, despite the fact that M4 is one of the nearest and brightest spherical collections of stars in our corner of the universe and has already been well studied, he and his colleagues made the startling discovery that about half of the stars found there tend to skip their red giant phases, becoming white dwarfs several million years earlier than they normally should.

Scientists searching for an explanation for this unusual phenomenon

MacLean, Lattanzio and their colleagues used a new instrument outfitted on the AAO’s Anglo Australian Telescope (AAT) called a high efficiency and resolution multi-element spectrograph or HERMES for short. Using this device, they were able to determine the chemical composition of stars in M4 using their starlight, which led them to the startling discovery.
The findings build upon previous research at Monash University which found similar premature star deaths in another globular cluster, NGC 6752. However, the stars in that cluster were sodium rich, study author Dr. Simon Campbell, adding that it was “totally unexpected” to witness similar premature stellar deaths en masse in a “normal” star cluster like M4. However, the authors of the new study have reported that all early deaths involved sodium-rich, oxygen poor-stars.
The causes of this phenomenon remain unknown, and models of the affected stars have not been able to predict their premature deaths, according to the research team. Moving forward, Lattanzio said that he and his colleagues will need to develop new computer simulations that improve upon existing models and which will better demonstrate what is happening in these stars’ cores.
AAO researcher Dr. Gayandhi De Silva also praised the HERMES instrument, which made it possible for the AAT telescope to analyze the chemical composition of as many as 400 stars at the same time. De Silva said that the spectrograph “represents a significant step forward for Australia’s observational capacity” because “it combines multi-object capability with high data quality. Otherwise we are limited to observing one star at a time.”
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Image credit: NOAO/AURA/NSF

Science

Newly discovered dinosaur species had a spiked shield for protection

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 18, 2016 Last Edited: May 18, 2016

Brian Galloway

The discovery of skull fragments and other fossilized remains at the Judith River geological formation in Montana has led to the identification of a new species of horned dinosaur, raising the total number of new species discovered in this region of the state to nine.

The new dinosaur, which has been named Spiclypeus shipporum and which is described in the latest edition of the journal PLOS One, was described from bone representing the skull, part of the legs, hips, and backbones in a hillside that had once been part of an ancient floodplain.

Skull reconstruction of Spiclypeus shipporum gen et sp. nov. (CMN 57081). (A) Left lateral view; (B) right lateral view; (C) anterior view; (D) dorsal view. Missing parts of skull shown faded. Credit: Canadian Museum of Nature.

According to lead author Jordan Mallon of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa and his colleagues, the creature was different from other horned dinosaurs because of the way its horns were oriented sideways in the skull. In addition, its frill contained an array of uniquely formed bony spikes, some of which curled forward and some of which projected outward.

“This is a spectacular new addition to the family of horned dinosaurs that roamed western North America between 85 and 66 million years ago,” Mallon explained Wednesday in a statement. “It provides new evidence of dinosaur diversity during the Late Cretaceous period from an area that is likely to yield even more discoveries.”

Credit: Mike Skrepnick

Creature likely suffered from arthritis and bone infection

Analysis of the specimen, affectionately known as “Judith” because of where it was discovered, also revealed that the Spiclypeus shipporum may have been in pain throughout its life. The upper part of the arm bone (the humerus) showed signs of arthritis and bone infection, according to the study authors. Even so, the creature is believed to have been 10 years old when it died.

Spiclypeus shipporum is the ninth known dinosaur species to have been identified from remains discovered in or around Montana’s Judith River Formation, and when combined with previously published studies, it indicates that dinosaur faunas in western North American could have been highly localized some 70-80 million years ago. The newest fossils were found on land belonging to retired nuclear physicist Dr. Bill Shipp, for whom the creature is partially named.

“Little did I know that the first time I went fossil hunting I would stumble on a new species,” he noted in a statement. “As a scientist, I’m really pleased that the Canadian Museum of Nature has recognized the dinosaur’s value, and that it can now be accessed by researchers around the world as part of the museum’s fossil collections.”

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Image credit: Canadian Museum of Nature

Science

Archaeologists uncover important props in Shakespeare’s Curtain theater

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: May 18, 2016 Last Edited: May 18, 2016

Brian Galloway

Picture one of Shakespeare’s plays being performed for the first time: The hoi polloi stand before the stage, with the wealthier watching from boxes, in the circular confines of the Globe Theatre, as actors strut across the stage.

Well, this image may need to change a bit, because excavations of an earlier theatre Shakespeare used for his plays—the lesser-known Curtain theatre, where Romeo and Juliet and Henry V may first have been performed—has turned up some surprising finds, ranging from the shape of the theatre to the tools used in performances.

“There is going to have to be a certain amount of revision of the chapter on The Curtain in my book,” archaeologist Julian Bowsher told The Guardian.

Not a lark or a nightingale, but a whistle

According to BBC, a bird whistle has been recovered from the site of the Curtain—something that may have been used in performances of Romeo and Juliet, which frequently makes references to birdsong. “It is not yet near day: it was the nightingale, and not the lark,” Juliet tells Romeo, pleading him not to leave their marriage bed.

“Theatre producers at that time were always trying to find new ways to animate their productions and delight audiences,” Heather Knight, the senior archaeologist leading the dig on behalf of the Museum of London Archaeology, told BBC.

According to The Guardian, other finds include a lead token (possibly used to buy a pot of ale), a broken comb made of bone (likely for removing lice), and a fine metal mount for a cloth purse (interestingly, a cutpurse is known to have been arrested at the Curtain).

_89709605_16th17thcenturybirdwhistlefromcurtaintheatre,mayhavebeenasoundeffect-cmola036316001

Credit: MOLA

Coming full-rectangle

The remains of the Curtain (which opened in 1577) were missing for a few hundred years; its general area was known, but the exact spot wasn’t rediscovered until five years ago, when buildings constructed in the 1970s and 80s were removed for redevelopment.

Happily, “missing” did not mean the site was totally ruined. In fact, it’s the best-preserved of all of Shakespeare’s theaters that have been excavated, according to Knight. For instance, the Globe and the Rose theaters have nothing left save trace remains of the foundations. The relative preservation of the Curtain is apparently thanks to the building later being reused for a different purpose.

Credit: MOLA

Archaeologists have so far found several brick walls that reach up to 4’9” (1.5 m), and part of the sloping graveled surface where the less wealthy stood to watch performances has been uncovered as well.

But most excitingly, the excavations have revealed that the long-held belief regarding the shape of the theater was entirely wrong. Since it’s believed that Henry V was first staged in the Curtain, and the prologue of the play takes note that the theater is round (it’s referred to as a “wooden O”), historians long thought that the Curtain was round.

The current excavations, however, show that the Curtain is rectangular.

“It now seems clear that the playhouse was a conversion of an earlier tenement – essentially a block of flats – and was later converted back into a tenement again,” said Bowsher to The Guardian.

Bowsher believes the Henry V line about the wooden O may be a later addition, then, for when the play was performed at the Globe. Addition or not, though, the show always went on.

“There’s been a lot of scholarly argument about the shape of Tudor theaters, but the evidence from actors is that it made no difference to the performance of the plays, you could ask them to stand on a chair and they’d just get on and do it.”

Credit: MOLA

The site of the Curtain will be put on permanent display, according to BBC, in an area that will also feature brand-new homes, shops, and restaurants. But if you’d like to visit the site before then, there are free public tours on Fridays until the 24^th of June—be sure to book your place here if you would like to go!

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Image credit: MOLA

Health

GMOs are safe to consume, study says

Written By: Brett Smith

Published Date: May 18, 2016 Last Edited: May 18, 2016

Brian Galloway

Genetically-engineered crops (GMOs) are crops that have had their genes tweaked so as to facilitate their growth in agriculture and despite the advantages that changes like increased insect resistance offer, many people are worried this genetic tinkering could have catastrophic unintended consequences.
However, a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has found GMOs are safe to eat and do not affect the environment.
The report noted that new methods, such as making small genetic modifications using genome-editing, are clouding the difference between genetic engineering and common plant breeding, making the present regulatory system outdated. The report advocates for a new system that brings more focus on the features of the crop, compared to the way it was produced.

Do GMOs improve crop yields?

The study team also said it isn’t clear just how much genetic technique are increasing farmers’ yields.
“Despite industry claims, these crops are clearly not the answer to world hunger,” Michael Hansen, senior scientist at anti-GMO Consumers Union, said in a statement.
Authors of the new report conceded that the issue of GMOs is highly complex and does not lend itself to easy answers.
“We received impassioned requests to give the public a simple, general, authoritative answer about (GMO) crops,” Fred Gould, chairman of the committee that compiled the report from North Carolina State University, wrote in the report’s preface. “Given the complexity of (GMO) issues, we did not see that as appropriate.”
The study team reviewed over 1,000 research studies, considered accounts from 80 witnesses in public meetings, and reviewed 700 comments sent in by the public.
The committee targeted its review on GMOs that account for the majority of modified plants grown in the United States, like corn containing bacterial genes that make the crops resistant to insects.
The report said foods produced from such crops do not seem to pose health risks, according to chemical studies of the foods and on animal feeding reports, though it said many animal analyses are too small to supply company outcomes.
Many other regulatory, scientific and health organizations have also concluded the foods are safe. A 2010 report by the National Academies, which are scientific groups set up by Congress,, found genetic engineering offers environmental and economic benefits to farmers.
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Image credit: Thinkstock

Science

Complex life formed 1.5 billion years ago, study finds

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 18, 2016 Last Edited: May 18, 2016

Brian Galloway

New fossils discovered in the Gaoyuzhuang formation of Northern China suggest that complex living organisms capable of organizing itself into large cellular colonies emerged on Earth more than 1.5 billion years ago, or nearly one billion years earlier than previously believed.

However, the findings, which were the work of a team of US and Chinese researchers and have been published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Communications, have divided members of the scientific community, according to AFP reports. Some have praised the research, the news organization said, while others are not convinced by the paper’s claims.

As BBC News and the Daily Mail explained, fossils large enough to be visible to the naked eye first became common between 541 and 635 million years ago. However, the study authors wrote that macroscopic eukaryote fossils found in the 1.56 billion-year-old Gaoyuzhuang formation are two to three times that age, and are likely the oldest multicellular organisms ever discovered.

As Maoyan Zhu, a professor at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology and one of the researchers involved in the study, told AFP, “Our discovery pushes back nearly one billion years the appearance of macroscopic, multicellular eukaryotes compared to previous research.”

Other scientists divided about the study’s claims

Zhu’s team found 167 measurable fossils at the Gaoyuzhuang formation that were preserved as carbonaceous compressions and which were up to 30 centimeters long and nearly 8 centimeters wide. One-third of the fossils were irregularly shaped, including some which were linear, some which were wedge-shaped, and some which were oblong – a sign of complexity.

Furthermore, detailed analysis of some of the fossil specimens revealed that they were made up of a tightly-packed arrangement of individual cells measuring approximately 10 micrometers in length, or about the same size as the width of cotton fibers, BBC News noted. These eukaryotes were described as marine organisms, somewhat similar to algae, that used photosynthesis.

The stone where the fossils were found. Credit: Maoyan Zhu

While the authors noted that some of the fossils could simply be different parts of a single type of organism, they are confident that tongue-shaped ones they discovered are unique. They added that the fossils provide circumstantial evidence for at least limited cell differentiation, one of the key stages of evolution, but they have been unable to link these eukaryotes to any other group of organism, living or extinct, according to BBC News and Daily Mail reports.

Zhu told the AFP that the research team’s findings provide “compelling evidence for the early evolution of organisms large enough to be visible with the naked eye” and that it “totally renews current knowledge on the early history of life.” Phil Donoghue, a professor and paleobiologist at the University of Bristol, agreed, calling the discovery “a big deal” and adding that these fossils “are certainly the oldest demonstrably multicellular eukaryotes.”

Others were more skeptical, including Jonathan Antcliffe, a senior researcher in the University of Oxford’s department of zoology, who told the news agency that there was no evidence to suggest that the organisms were eukaryotic and not single-celled organisms such as bacteria. Likewise, Abderrazak El Albani of the University of Poitiers in France told AFP that there was not enough detail in the paper to back up the authors’ claims that the organisms were multicellular.

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Image credit: Maoyan Zhu

Space

Giant fireball explodes over northeastern United States

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: May 17, 2016 Last Edited: May 17, 2016

Brian Galloway

If you happened to see an enormous burst of light in the night sky early this morning somewhere in the northeast, you are not alone, as hundreds of people have reported seeing what is being reported as a huge fireball.

According to the American Meteor Society, the fireball blazed across the sky around 12:50 AM EST (4:50 GMT), and was bright enough to be seen for hundreds of miles. More than 330 sightings have been reported—primarily from Maine, but also from the rest of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Canada (Toronto, Ontario, and Québec, to be precise).

It was apparently quite a sight to behold.

“The giant ball of fire was extremely close going down below the treed horizon. I waited a minute because I thought I’ll see fire erupting beyond the end of the lake but nothing…” reported Julian K from Ontario, according to the AMS.

“There was a 3-5 min delay from the time I saw it to the boom I heard and felt , very loud and shook the home , unlike anything I have ever experienced before,” wrote Craig C., from Canton, Maine.

Others joked about where it came from…and what came with it.

Of course, the explanation is a bit simpler than alien tech; it is most likely a fireball, which is the term for a very bright meteor.

Fireballs, incidentally, are more common than you would think.

“Debris from space hits Earth all the time,” Mike Hankey, the operations manager of the AMS, told CNN. “The bigger the debris, the bigger the flash of light.”

According to Hankey, the fireball from last night was probably the result of something the size of a car—perhaps a piece of an asteroid.

“These are totally harmless events and they happen every day on the planet,” said Hankey. “But for an individual to see something like this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing – just the odds of you being the in the right place at the right time.”

If you were lucky enough to see the fireball, please report it here.

Here’s a compilation video of footage of the fireball:

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Image credit: American Meteor Society

Science

Researchers discover a new form of light

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 17, 2016 Last Edited: May 17, 2016

Brian Galloway

In a breakthrough that has the potential to alter our understanding of the fundamental nature of light, scientists from the Trinity College Dublin School of Physics and the CRANN Institute in Ireland have discovered a never before seen new form of luminescence.

Previously, it was believed angular momentum, a vector quantity which expresses the amount of dynamical rotation present in a beam of light, would always be a multiple of Planck’s constant (a physical constant which sets the scale of quantum effects), regardless of the light’s form.

However, in a new paper published in a recent edition of the journal Science Advances, Trinity College PhD graduate Kyle Ballantine, Professor Paul Eastham and their colleagues reported that they had demonstrated a new type of light where the angular momentum of each particle takes on only half of this value – a small but profound difference, according to the study authors.

“We’re interested in finding out how we can change the way light behaves, and how that could be useful,” Eastham explained in a statement. “What I think is so exciting about this result is that even this fundamental property of light, that physicists have always thought was fixed, can be changed.”

Findings could result in new forms of quantization

Donegan, whose research focused on the field of light’s behavior at the nanometer scale (better known as nanophotonics), explained that a beam of light is characterized by its color, wavelength and angular momentum, which measures the degree to which something is rotating.

“For a beam of light, although travelling in a straight line it can also be rotating around its own axis. So when light from the mirror hits your eye in the morning, every photon twists your eye a little, one way or another,” he said. “Our discovery will have real impacts for the study of light waves in areas such as secure optical communications.”

The Trinity College-led team made their discovery using a 200-year-old technique which found that when a ray of light passed through certain crystals, it would become a hollow cylinder that could be used to generate beams with a screw-like structure. By analyzing the light beams using the theory of quantum mechanics, the researchers were able to predict that the these particles (or photons) would have a half-integer total angular momentum.

To test out that prediction, they came up with an experiment in which they used a specially made device to measure the flow of angular momentum in a beam of light. This also enabled them, for the first time, to measure the variations in this flow created by quantum effects, the study authors said in a statement. Their experiments revealed that a tiny shift, just one-half the size of Planck’s constant, in the angular momentum of each photon.

“We conclude that for light, as is known for electrons, reduced dimensionality allows new forms of quantization,” the authors wrote. Their findings confirm something that theoretical physicists have long suspected: that particles which are free to move in only two dimensions could result in unusual new possibilities, including the existence of particles with quantum numbers that are just a fraction of those that had been expected.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Science

April 2016 was the hottest April ever recorded

Written By: Brett Smith

Published Date: May 17, 2016 Last Edited: May 17, 2016

Brian Galloway

New data released by NASA reveals April was the seventh straight month that broke global temperature records.

In fact, last month surpassed the previous April record by the biggest-ever margin, .43 degrees F, the third straight month this has happened.

“The very unfortunate circumstance we have now is the overlap of a very intense El Nino that has been magnified by climate change,” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told BBC News. “All of these record breaking temperatures and attendant implications that we have had, such as record breaking fires for example, and droughts in India are all reminders that we cannot afford to do anything except to accelerate the solution agenda – we absolutely have no other option but to accelerate.”

What’s causing temperatures to rise?

The record-breaking temperatures are being driven, in part, by an enormous El Niño, which is a pool of warm water spanning across the Pacific Ocean. However, it’s not the largest El Niño on record and this year’s surge in temperatures is happening over a recent history of global warming, driving temperatures to all-time highs.

Andy Pitman, a climate science director at the University of New South Wales in Australia, told The Guardian the international goal in Paris of keeping warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees F) warming is in doubt given the temperatures being posted this year.

“The 1.5 degree C target, it’s wishful thinking,” Pitman said. “I don’t know if you’d get 1.5 degrees C if you stopped emissions today. There’s inertia in the system. It’s putting intense pressure on 2 degrees C.”

The April datasets were released as the symbolic milestone of carbon dioxide concentrations of 400 parts per million have been surpassed at a crucial measuring station in Tasmania, Australia known as Cape Grim.

“The thing that’s causing that warming, is going up and up and up,” Pitman said. “So the cool ocean temperatures we will get with a La Niña are warmer than we’d ever seen more than a few decades ago.”

He noted that these temperature swings will decimate sensitive coral reef ecosystems near his native Australia.

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Image credit: NASA

Health

Boston-area hospital completes first US penis transplant

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 17, 2016 Last Edited: May 17, 2016

Brian Galloway

Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital have become the first surgical team in the US and just the third worldwide to successfully complete a penis transplant, announcing this week that they had attached a donated organ onto a 64-year-old man who had lost his due to cancer.

According to BBC News, the patient, Thomas Manning of Halifax, Massachusetts had his penis amputated three years ago due to penile cancer, but thanks to what doctors are calling “a surgical milestone,” he is expected to regain full urinary and sexual function over within a few months.

The transplant reportedly took 15 hours and required the efforts of more than four dozen doctors from several different departments, including urology and plastic surgery, the British news outlet said on Monday. Dr. Chris Cetrulo, head of the surgical team, said that the surgery could help to prevent suicides, and as such could even be viewed as “life-saving.”

Dr. Cetrulo said that he hoped that the transplant procedure could be used on wounded soldiers returning to the States from Iraq and Afghanistan. He and his colleagues also said that they plan to perform a second penis transplant involving a patient who had his destroyed in a car accident as soon as a donor becomes available.

Recipient hopes to ‘usher in a bright future’ for procedure

As mentioned earlier, Manning is only the third man to undergo a penis transplant procedure. The first such patient, a Chinese man who received a donated organ in 2006, ultimately decided to have the transplant reversed two weeks later after he and his wife experienced what they said was a “severe psychological problem,” according to BBC News.

The second procedure took place last year in South Africa and involved a man who suffered a series of complications following a botched circumcision ceremony. That operation turned out to be far more successful, and the recipient even went on to father a child using the donated organ. Manning’s surgery was performed on May 8 and May 9, the New York Times said.

In a statement, Manning said that he was beginning “a new chapter filled with personal hope and hope for others who have suffered genital injuries. In sharing this success with all of you, it’s my hope we can usher in a bright future for this type of transplantation.” He added that he hoped that going public with his experience would help others overcome the embarrassment associated with these injuries and showing that recovery from such trauma is possible.

Manning, who underwent a partial penectomy (amputation of the penis) after being diagnosed with penile cancer in 2012, underwent a procedure called a genitourinary vascularized composite allograft (GUVCA). The goals of the surgery, the hospital explained, are to reconstruct external genitalia to make it appear more natural, to re-establish urinary function, and, when possible, to restore normal sexual function for the patient.

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Image credit: BBC News

Science

Divers find huge trove of late Roman-era artifacts

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 17, 2016 Last Edited: May 17, 2016

Brian Galloway

Two recreational divers exploring off the coast of the Roman-era seaport Caesarea have found what experts are calling one of the most extensive shipwreck finds of the last three decades – a cache of artifacts, statues, and coins believed to be at least 1,600 years old.

According to the Times of Israel, divers Ran Feinstein and Ofer Ra‘anan of Ra’anana had gone to the site of the ancient harbor in the Caesarea National Park last month when they noticed the ship and its treasures, buried in the seafloor but partially exposed by the shifting sands.

Credit: The Times of Israel

They contacted the Israel Antiques Authority (IAA), who then dispatched their own divers to the scene and recovered a bevy of artifacts dating back to the Late Roman period, including a bronze lamp depicting an image of a sun god, a figurine of a moon goddess, fragments of three life-sized bronze statues and a hoard of coins bearing the likeness of Constantine the Great.

In a statement, IAA officials said that the majority of artifacts were “in an extraordinary state of preservation” and also included a lamp in the image of the head of an African slave, objects that were fashioned in the shape of animals, and fragments of large jars that were likely used to carry drinking water for the ship’s crew.

Antiquities officials tout the beauty, historical significance of the find

The bronze statues are said to be extremely rare, and antiquities officials noted that they were being taken to be melted down when the ship sank, thus enabling the seawater to preserve them. One of the biggest surprises, they added, was the discovery of two metallic lumps, each weighing about 20 kg, made of coins and in the shape of the container used to transport them.

Credit: Israel Antiques Authority

Jacob Sharvit, director of the IAA’s Marine Archaeology Unit, and deputy director Dror Planer explained that the “extraordinary beauty” and “historical significance” of the artifacts makes this an “extremely exciting” discovery. The location and distribution of the cargo appear to indicate that the vessel was a merchant ship carrying metal for recycling when it encountered a storm at the harbor’s entrance, causing it to drift into the seawall and the rocks there.

Preliminary analysis of the ship’s iron anchors suggest that the crew attempted to stop the ship before it washed ashore by dropping the anchors into the sea. Their attempts were unsuccessful, however, as the anchors apparently broke due to the high-speed winds and powerful waves they encountered, according to Sharvit and Planer.

“A marine assemblage such as this has not been found in Israel in the past thirty years,” the IAA officials said. “Metal statues are rare archaeological finds because they were always melted down and recycled in antiquity. When we find bronze artifacts it usually occurs at sea. Because these statues were wrecked together with the ship, they sank in the water and were thus ‘saved’ from the recycling process.”

“In the many marine excavations that have been carried out in Caesarea only very small number of bronze statues have been found, whereas in the current cargo a wealth of spectacular statues were found that were in the city and were removed from it by way of sea,” the duo added. “The range of finds recovered from the sea reflects the large volume of trade and the status of Caesarea’s harbor during this time, which was known as period of economic and commercial stability in the wake of the stability of the Roman Empire.”

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Image Credit: Israel Antiques Authority

Science

Roman subway excavation uncovers massive underground barracks and grave

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: May 16, 2016 Last Edited: May 16, 2016

Brian Galloway

Work on Rome’s future Metro Line C has uncovered an ancient Roman barracks and mass grave 30 feet (nine meters) below street level.

Of course, having been inhabited continuously for some 2700 years, this probably isn’t any great shock; every time you kick over a rock, you find another lost piece of history. However, these finds are exceptional for a variety of reasons.

An exceptional find

As reported by Phys.org, the barracks date back to the second century (101-200 CE) and were the home of the Praetorian Guard—the elite group of men used as bodyguards for Roman generals in the Republican era and for emperors in the imperial era. Of course, they went far beyond the bounds of modern bodyguards, fighting in various wars, suppressing mutinies, and occasionally throwing coups and crowning emperors themselves.

A view of ancient roman ruins and mosaics discovered during work on a new underground line, in Rome, Monday, May 16, 2016. Work on the Metro C being built through the center of Rome has once again run into ancient roman ruins, this time the barracks for the Roman Praetorian guards dating back to the period of Emperor Hadrian, in the second century A.D. Officials say the barracks cover 900 square meters, and include a 100 meter hallway with 39 rooms. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Credit: AP

The barracks perhaps emphasized their higher status: 39 rooms, decorated with black and white floor mosaics and a frescoed wall, span 9,600 square feet (900 square meters) of barracks.

“It’s exceptional, not only for its good state of conservation but because it is part of a neighborhood which already included four barracks,” said Rossella Rea of the Culture Ministry, according to Phys.org. “And therefore, we can characterize this area as a military neighborhood.”

Besides the enormous barracks, they have also uncovered a mass grave. 13 adult skeletons have been uncovered so far, along with a bronze coin and bracelet.

Much like Boston’s infamous Big Dig, the construction of Rome’s Metro Line C has famously been slow to complete, having been beset by multiple issues like corruption probes, funding shortages, and discoveries like this barracks. The construction launched in 2007; the future station where the barracks were found is scheduled to open in 2020, and officials intend to incorporate the finds with it.

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Image credit: Alessandra Tarantino/AP

Science

Massive earthquake could soon threaten Hawaii, experts warn

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 16, 2016 Last Edited: May 16, 2016

Brian Galloway

There is a nearly one-in-10 chance that a massive earthquake powerful enough to generate a mega-tsunami could occur in the Aleutian islands within the next five decades, according to a new study published last week in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

According to lead researcher Rhett Butler, a geophysicist at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), and his colleagues, there is about a 9% chance that a Magnitude 9-plus earthquake will hit the Pacific island chain within the next 50 years, affecting an estimated 300,000 people living in the state of Hawai’i.

Earthquakes occur when two section of the planet’s rocky crust suddenly move past each other at a point known as the fault, and an earthquake occurring along the faults of the Aleutian Islands is likely to generate a tsunami capable of causing nearly $40 billion in damage in Hawaii, the study authors said Friday in a statement released by the university.

Researchers hope findings will serve as catalyst for mitigation efforts

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” explained Butler. “Having no recorded history of mega tsunamis in Hawai’i, and given the tsunami threat to Hawaii, we devised a model for Magnitude 9 earthquake rates following upon the insightful work of David Burbidge and others.”

His team developed a numerical model based on fault length and plate convergence rate, using Bayesian techniques of probability interpretation to account for uncertainties in their data. They then turned to historical records related to the five largest earthquakes ever (Kamchatka, 1952; Chile, 1960; Alaska, 1964; Sumatra-Andaman, 2004; and Tohoku, 2011) and geologic evidence of prehistoric seismic events preserved in costal sediments and other sites.

“We were surprised and pleased to see how well the model actually fit the paleotsunami data,” said Butler, adding that the recorded earthquake activities “differed in details,” but that each of those phenomena had “generated great tsunamis that caused enormous destruction.”

Based on their detailed analysis, the researchers believe that there is a 6.5% to 12% chance of a Magnitude 9 event occurring in the greater Aleutian islands within the next half-century, and that there is an annualized risk of nearly $30 million to the Hawaiian islands. The authors are hopeful that their findings will spur state officials to prioritize mitigation efforts to this potential disaster, and are now looking for ways to expand their analysis to smaller earthquakes.

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Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Science

Newly discovered microbe plays huge role in climate regulation, study finds

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: May 16, 2016 Last Edited: May 16, 2016

Brian Galloway

An international group of scientists has discovered that a tiny ocean bacteria that is one of the most abundant microbes on Earth plays an key role in regulating the planet’s climate, according to new research published in Monday’s edition of the journal Nature Microbiology.

The organisms in question are members of the bacterial group Pelagibacterales, and they make up about 500,000 of the microbial cells found in every teaspoon of water, Dr. Ben Temperton, a bioscientist at the UK’s University of Exeter, and his colleagues explained in a statement.

Based on their work, the study authors believe that these microbes help stabilize the atmosphere by producing dimethylsulfide (DMS), an organosulfur compound that stimulates cloud formation and is an essential component to a negative feedback loop called the CLAW hypothesis.

In the CLAW hypothesis, Earth’s atmospheric temperature is stabilized through a cycle where sunlight causes certain kinds of phytoplankton to become more abundant. This, in turn, causes an increase in the production of another compound, dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP). When this compound is broken down by microbes, it forms DMS, which increases cloud droplets.

Enzyme responsible for process also found in other microbes

These cloud droplets reduce the amount of sunlight that hits the surface of the oceans, and based on the new research, Pelagibacterales plays an important role in this process and may potentially be used to create improved models of how DMS affects climate, Dr. Temperton explained.

The research, he noted, “shows that the Pelagibacterales are likely an important component in climate stability” and sheds new light on exactly how the bacteria produce this vital compound. “What’s is the elegance and simplicity of DMS production in the Pelagibacterales,” the doctor said. “These organisms don’t have the genetic regulatory mechanisms found in most bacteria.”

“Having evolved in nutrient-limited oceans, they have some of the smallest genomes of all free-living organisms, because small genomes take fewer resources to replicate,” Dr. Temperton said. He compared the process to “a pressure release valve” that is “always on, but only comes into play when DMSP concentrations exceed a threshold.” In these instances, the DMSP “flows down a metabolic pathway that generates DMS as a waste product.”

While such forms of kinetic regulation are not uncommon in bacteria, the researchers noted that this is the first time that one has been found to be involved in such an important biogeochemical process. In the case of the Pelagibacterales, it controls the process using a previously unknown enzyme that generates DMS – and it isn’t the only microbe to possess this particular enzyme.

“Excitingly, the way Pelagibacterales generates DMS is via a previously unknown enzyme,” said study co-author Dr. Emily Fowler, a Ph. D. student in UEA’s School of Biological Sciences at the time of the research, “and we have found that the same enzyme is present in other hugely abundant marine bacterial species. This likely means we have been vastly underestimating the microbial contribution to the production of this important gas.”

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Image credit: Ben Temperton