The spread of Panama disease is threatening one of the world’s most popular fruits, and unless drastic steps are taken to address the issue, this fungicide-resistant pathogen could wipe out the banana industry entirely, according to a recent PLOS Pathogens study.
According to Science Alert and ABC News Australia, Panama disease has already spread across South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Australia, despite efforts to keep it quarantined. Now, experts believe it is only a matter of time before it makes its way into Latin America.
More than 80 percent of the world’s Cavandish bananas come from this part of the world, with more than one-third of the billion-dollar global export market coming from Ecuador alone. The disease, which previously brought the Gros Michel species of banana close to extinction during the 1960s, could soon decimate the most popular type of the fruit on the market today.
Cavendish bananas, which the Wageningen University and Research Centre scientists behind the new study explained were previously maintained as “interesting specimens” at botanical gardens in the UK and at a private collection in Honduras, were identified as resistant substitutes to the Gros Michel bananas. Now, however, they face a similar threat from Panama disease.
It may be time to build a better banana
This threat comes from a new strain of the pathogen known as Tropical Race 4 (TR4), and the study authors report that it is a single clone of the originate disease that is threatening Cavendish bananas all over the world. The new strain is said to have originated in Indonesia, and then spread to Taiwan, China, and the rest of Southeast Asia before going global.
One of the research team members, Gert Kema, told Quartz that they have identified TR4 in the countries of Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Oman, and Mozambique, as well as in Queensland in the northeastern part of Australia. The lack of genetic diversity in Cavendish bananas, which are just seedless clones of each other, make them extremely vulnerable, according to Science Alert.
While the authors emphasize that bananas will not disappear overnight, they do note that action needs to be taken to ensure the future of the fruit. The Panama disease fungus cannot be killed, so having reliable diagnostic tests to detect the pathogen and wiping out infected crops before it can spread is essential—and it may be time to start working on a replacement.
However, developing a new type of banana “requires major investments in research and development and the recognition of the banana as a global staple and cash crop.. that supports the livelihoods of millions of small-holder farmers,” the authors explained. Until that can happen, “any potential disease management option needs to be scrutinized, thereby lengthening the commercial lifespan of contemporary [bananas].”
Woah: 80 million-year-old dinosaur fossil has original blood vessels
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Christopher Pilny
Researchers from North Carolina State University have determined that the structures found within an 80-million-year-old fossil are, in fact, the dinosaur’s preserved blood vessels—findings that add to the growing pile of evidence showing that certain soft tissue structures can actually survive millions of years.
Molecular paleontologist Tim Cleland was the one who began the experiment, by demineralizing (stripping the bone from) a fossil. This bone came from the leg of a Brachylophosaurus canadensis—a 30-foot-long hadrosaur (duckbilled dinosaur) that pottered about what is now known as Montana.
According to the paper published in the Journal of Proteome Research, after the bone was stripped away, what was left were structures, which resembled blood vessels in their location, morphology, flexibility, and transparency. However, researchers weren’t certain whether these structures were blood vessels, or something left behind by bacteria, slime molds, or fungi—until they were examined using high resolution mass spectroscopy.
Using this technology, the scientists discovered the structures contained multiple proteins that are specific to blood vessels, including myosin, or the protein found in the type of muscle within blood vessel walls.
The team then stripped the bone minerals away from bone samples of modern archosaurs (animals such as chickens), which are the living relatives of the dinosaurs. When these vessels were examined, their peptide sequences—the specific order of the building blocks of their proteins—matched those of the vessels found in the hadrosaur. Following this, the team was able to confirm several previously found dinosaur peptide sequences and to add a few new ones to the list.
Study first of its kind, but no real-life Jurassic Park in the works
“This study is the first direct analysis of blood vessels from an extinct organism, and provides us with an opportunity to understand what kinds of proteins and tissues can persist and how they change during fossilization,” said Cleland, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, in a statement. “This will provide new avenues for pursuing questions regarding the evolutionary relationships of extinct organisms, and will identify significant protein modifications and when they might have arisen in these lineages.”
“Part of the value of this research is that it gives us insight into how proteins can modify and change over 80 million years,” added co-author Mary Schweitzer, a molecular paleontologist at NC State. “It tells us not only about how tissues preserve over time, but gives us the possibility of looking at how these animals adapted to their environment while they were alive.”
And, for everyone suddenly dreaming of a real-life Jurassic Park despite the repeated warnings given in the films, no such luck: No extractable DNA was found in the bones.
The moon is a lot more active than we thought, scientist says
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny
Using satellite data, scientists from the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and Umeå University have discovered that the lunar space environment is far more active than previously believed, as the moon’s surface reflects solar winds—or the continuous flow of plasma from the sun.
The discovery comes in a dissertation by Charles Lue, a member of the Faculty of Science and Technology in the Swedish university’s physics department. Lue’s research focuses on a pair of different interactions: those involving solar wind protons and lunar crustal magnetic anomalies, and those taking place between those same protons and the lunar regolith.
In his dissertation, Lue explains than he and his colleagues used particle sensors carried onboard the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter to study solar wind protons reflecting from the moon, including those that capture an electron from the lunar regolith and are reflected as energetic neutral atoms of hydrogen. They also used computer models and a hybrid plasma solver in their work.
They discovered that the reflection of solar wind protons from magnetic anomalies is a common phenomenon on the moon, and that the phenomenon has an impact on other features, such as the lunar water levels. These interactions had long gone undetected, Lue said, due to the thin nature of the lunar atmosphere and the moon’s lack of a global magnetic field.
Both the lunar dayside and nightside are affected
Because of the thin atmosphere and absence of a global magnetic field, scientists long assumed that the moon passively absorbed solar wind, and that the plasma flow had little to no affect on its surroundings. In his new study, however, Lue found that the moon’s surface and the localized magnetic fields actually reflects some of those protons after all.
Both the lunar dayside and nightside are affected by this phenomenon, the researchers explained. Reflected solar wind particles move in spiraling tracks that carry them from the dayside—where it first strikes the moon’s surface—to the nightside. In regions with strong local magnetism, the flow is restricted on the surface at the same time when nearby regions experience increased flow.
These effects “can even be seen in the form of visible light – like bright swirls imprinted on the surface of the moon,” Lue said. “The observations help us map and understand the variations in the lunar space environment. They also give us clues about the physical processes involved and the long-term effects they have on the lunar surface.”
Super rare fossil of dog-sized, horned dinosaur discovered
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny
A rare, recently-discovered jawbone fragment belonging to a dog-sized horned dinosaur is the first fossil of its kind from the Late Cretaceous period in eastern North America, claims research published in the January edition of the journal Cretaceous Research.
The jawbone, which was identified by Dr. Nick Longrich from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, belonged to a kind of plant-eating horned dinosaur called ceratopsians. This specific fossil belonged to a smaller cousin of the Triceratops known as the leptoceratopsids, but was too incomplete to determine the exact species, the university said in a statement.
The fossil analyzed by Dr. Longrich was kept at the Peabody Museum at Yale University, and it showed that the creature’s jaw had an unusual shape that caused its teeth to curve downward and outwards like a beak. It was also more slender than the jaws of ceratopsians found in the western part of North America, highlighting a fossil divide on the continent.
During the Late Cretaceous, the researcher explained, the land mass that represents modern-day North America was split in half by the Western Interior Seaway. Dinosaurs living in the western continent of Laramidia were similar to those from Asia. On the other hand, dense vegetation has made it difficult to find many specimens from the eastern continent of Appalachia.
Eastern, western North American dinosaurs had distinct evolutions
The jaw fragment, which originally came from the Campanian Tar Heel Formation (Black Creek Group) of North Carolina, represents the first ceratopsian from the Late Cretaceous period found in what was once Appalachia, and the creature evolved along a distinct evolutionary path.
“Just as many animals and plants found in Australia today are quite different to those found in other parts of the world,” Dr. Longrich said, “it seems that animals in the eastern part of North America in the Late Cretaceous period evolved in a completely different way to those found in the western part of what is now North America due to a long period of isolation.”
This discovery “adds to the theory that these two land masses were separated by a stretch of water, stopping animals from moving between them, causing the animals in Appalachia to evolve in a completely different direction, resulting in some pretty weird looking dinosaurs,” he continued.
In fact, many land masses, including Europe, Africa, South America, India, and Australia, were isolated due to water, Dr. Longrich added. “Each of these island continents would have evolved its own unique dinosaurs,” he said, “so there are probably many more species out there to find.”
Bizarre, three-armed ocean creature shows ancient lifeforms were more complicated than we thought
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Christopher Pilny
Ancient sea creatures might’ve been a little more complicated than previously thought, according to new research on the feeding habits of a bizarre three-armed ocean dweller that lived millions of years ago.
Tribrachidium heraldicum hunkered down in shallow sea waters around 555 million years ago, late in the geological period known as the Ediacaran. It apparently looked something like a disk with three fuzzy curving arms, giving it threefold symmetery—as in, each of the three segments were mirror images of the others.
Starfish have fivefold symmetry, and humans have twofold symmetry—if a tall mirror were to be placed between your feet, so that it only reflected half of your body, the reflection would make it appear that you were a whole person. But nothing alive today that we know of has threefold symmetry.
“Tribrachidium doesn’t look like any modern species, and so it has been really hard to work out what it was like when it was alive,” explained co-author Dr. Marc Laflamme, an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga, in a statement.
“The application of cutting-edge techniques, such as CT scanning and computational fluid dynamics, allowed us to determine, for the first time, how this long-extinct organism fed.”
Aircraft technology models Tribrachidium body
According to the paper in Science Advances, an international team of researchers from the USA, UK, and Canada used computational fluid dynamics—a technique commonly used when designing aircraft—to build a computer model of the Tribrachidium body and simulate liquid flowing around it.
In the simulation, the currents slowed as they hit the virtual Tribrachidium, and then eddied behind it—which helped bring the water into the nooks of its arms on both the front and back sides. As the water collected in these nooks, food particles settled thanks to gravity, and Tribrachidium was able to eat.
“The computer simulations we ran allowed us to test competing theories for feeding in Tribrachidium,” said Dr. Imran Rahman from the University of Bristol. “This approach has great potential for improving our understanding of many extinct organisms.”
Ancient lifeforms more complex than we thought
In fact, this method has now revealed that ancient lifeforms were much more complex than previously thought.
“For many years, scientists have assumed that Earth’s oldest complex organisms, which lived over half a billion years ago, fed in only one or two different ways,” said Dr. Simon Darroch, an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University. These other ways include photoautotrophy (simply put, using sunlight for food).
“Our study has shown this to be untrue, Tribrachidium and perhaps other species were capable of suspension feeding. This demonstrates that, contrary to our expectations, some of the first ecosystems were actually quite complex.”
Suspension feeding “mobilizes organic material that was being carried around in the water column,” said Rahman. Or in other words, organisms feed on food materials suspended in water. “It can increase passage of sunlight through water and potentially increase oxygenation, as well”—helping to clear the water for photoautotrophy.
“This is really exciting, because we didn’t really have any good evidence of suspension feeding in organisms of this time period previously,” Rahman added.
First-ever sauropod dinosaur tracks discovered in Scotland
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
The largest collection of rare dinosaur tracks ever discovered in Scotland could help experts learn more about some of the largest land-creatures ever to roam the Earth, according to new research published in Tuesday’s edition of the Scottish Journal of Geology.
In the study, Dr. Steve Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Geosciences and his colleagues report on the discovery of hundreds of footprints and handprints left behind by a group of plant-eating sauropods some 170 million years ago at the Isle of Skye.
These long-necked dinosaurs, which include species such as Brontosaurus and Diplodocus, are among the biggest creatures of their kind—and the tracks found at Skye belonged to early distant relatives believed to be more than 15 meters long and weigh at least 10 metric tons.
The tracks were identified in layers of rock that would have been at the bottom of a shallow, salt-water lagoon at the time when the prints were made. They are the first sauropod tracks ever to be found in Scotland, which previously had only been home to bone and tooth fragments.
Prints reveal that the dinosaurs traveled through the water
“Believe it or not, Scotland is one of the only places in the world where you can find dinosaur fossils from the middle part of the Jurassic Period,” Dr. Brusatte told redOrbit via email. “We know that a lot of interesting things were happening in dinosaur evolution during this time – the first tyrannosaurs and plate-backed stegosaurs were evolving, birds were probably first taking to the skies, and the long-necked plant-guzzling sauropods were becoming even more colossal in size. But it’s hard to understand exactly what is going on when you have so few fossils.”
The newly-discovered footprints were created by “fairly large dinosaurs”, he added, noting that the biggest of the footprints are 70 centimeters in diameter. They also revealed that the dinosaurs were still fairly primitive compared to later sauropods, and since the prints were discovered in an ancient lagoon, they reveal that the creatures were either living in the lagoon or at the very least often travelled through it. This is a big shock, as they were thought to be exclusively land dwellers.
“They would have been walking in shallow water when they made the tracks,” Dr. Brusatte said. “And it wasn’t just a one-off: there are at least three layers of lagoon-dwelling sauropod tracks at the site, so it seems like these sauropods were habitually returning to the lagoons. The lagoons were a big part of their home… We don’t know why – maybe the lagoons provided a ready source of food, or protection from predators. But I think with more discoveries like these we’ll find out.”
He added that he was “really excited” about the find, which he discovered this past April along with colleague Dr. Tom Challands, a paleontologist from the Edinburgh School of Geosciences. They were working in the northern part of the Isle of Skye when they first spotted what he called a “weird pothole in the rocks”, followed by several more of them in a zigzag pattern. “We knew right away this was the biggest dinosaur site ever found in Scotland,” Dr. Brusatte said.
World leaders gather in Paris this week to discuss the future of the Earth
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
More than 100 world leaders gathered together Monday for a two-week long international summit designed to address the issue of climate change in what some are calling the last, best chance to curb greenhouse gas emissions before it is too late to reverse global warming. So basically it’s a big deal.
Among those in attendance at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, which run from now through December 11, are what the Huffington Post called “the leaders of the world’s worst pollution countries.” They include US President Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, and Narendra Modi of India, to name a few.
They, along with over 40,000 representatives of environmental groups and other organizations in nearby 200 countries, have gathered for one simple goal, according to CNN: To create a legally binding agreement that will force countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels that will prevent average global temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.
“A political moment like this may not come again. We have never faced such a test. But neither have we encountered such great opportunity,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said to those gathered at the conference. French President Francois Hollande added that “never have the stakes been so high because this is about the future of the planet, the future of life.”
World leaders look for action in wake for recent scientific findings
While some are still skeptical, evidence supporting the reality of climate change is mounting. In January, NASA and the NOAA said that 2014 was the warmest year on record, and on Monday, the World Meteorological Organization announced that 2015 was on pace to be even hotter, with temperatures passing 1 degree Celsius over preindustrial levels for the first time ever.
In addition, the WMO said that the five years from 2011-2015 was also expected to be the hottest such stretch on record. Previous studies found glaciers were melting at their fastest rate ever, that some cities in the Persian Gulf could ultimately become uninhabitable as the heat index nears the 170 degree level at the turn of the century, and that the flood risk for some of the biggest cities in the US could triple as climate change causes the sea level to rise in the years ahead.
As the Los Angeles Times pointed out Monday, negotiations to address the issues believed to be responsible for these trends have been ongoing for decades, and just six years ago, leaders were unable to reach any kind of consensus on what action to take. Things could be different this time around, according to President Obama, who believes that the global community now has a “sense of urgency… and a growing realization that it is within our power to do something about it.”
Among the issues that COP21 will attempt to resolve: which countries will be asked to assume the lion’s share of the costs associated with changing the global energy supply over to renewable sources (developing nations want the countries that gained wealth through fossil fuels to take on most of the burden), and how much financial assistance should be given to poorer nations—especially those already feeling the effects of climate change.
Still don’t believe we went to the moon? Apollo 16 crash site has just been found
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
More than four decades after it crash landed on the moon, the S-IVB third-stage rocket booster used on the Apollo 16 mission has been discovered by a Johns Hopkins University physicist, the researcher responsible for finding its impact crater confirmed over the weekend.
According to Inside Outer Space and Science Alert, Jeff Plescia, a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, used the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s high-resolution, three-camera LROC system to locate the long lost impact crater on the lunar surface.
“I did finally find the Apollo 16 SIVB crater,” Plescia told Leonard David of Inside Outer Space last week. He added that it “looks like the others, but its position was much more poorly defined since the tracking was lost prior to impact.”
Malfunction caused the booster’s tracking data to be lost
The Apollo 16 mission was the fifth in which the US space agency planned to send astronauts to the moon and bring them safely back to Earth. The booster rocket was intentionally crashed into the surface as part of an experiment designed to conduct seismic measurements and analyze the composition of the moon’s interior.
Due to a malfunction, however, the tracking data for the rocket was lost—meaning that for many years, NASA officials had no clue as to where it actually crash-landed. Now, thanks to Plescia’s work in reviewing images from the LRO satellite, the missing booster has been located.
Apollo 16 launched on April 16, 1972, and its S-IVB rocket was crashed into the moon three days later. The mission was the second-to-last in the Apollo program, and crew members were commander John Young, command module pilot Thomas Kenneth “Ken” Mattingly II, and lunar module pilot Charles Duke. In all, it lasted a total of 265 hours, 51 minutes, and five seconds.
Young and Duke, in the lunar module, landed in the Descartes Highlands region of the moon. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum said that the total lunar surface activities of the Apollo 16 crew lasted 20 hours 14 minutes, that 95 kilograms worth of rock samples were collected, and that the LRV traveled a total distance of 26.7 kilometers.
Controversial gene editing therapy can ‘turn off’ diseases
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills
A new, controversial form of gene therapy known as CRISPR has been making waves lately—and just recently may have successfully treated facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), one of the most common forms of muscular dystrophy in the world.
The work, which was completed by researchers from the University of Massachusetts, represents several firsts.
“While CRISPR technology has been used successfully in early studies of genome editing, this is the first report in which a CRISPR-based system has been used to ameliorate pathogenic gene expression in FSHD,” wrote lead author Charis Himeda, PhD, in the paper published in Molecular Therapy.
“This is also, to our knowledge, the first time the technique has been used successfully in primary human muscle cells.”
CRISPR—short for “clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”—was discovered while scientists were studying bacteria. These bacteria were found to be using a novel mechanism to purge their genomes of foreign genes, consisting of RNA and proteins: The RNA searches for and binds to a specific gene, which the protein then either cuts out, activates, or deactivates.
Naturally, molecular biologist have been attempting to adapt this mechanism for human uses ever since.
The genetic errors associated with FSHD made it a strong candidate for such a therapy. Cutting out entire genes is extremely risky—but FSHD could, in theory, be treated if a specific gene unit is silenced or activated.
This is because, in the most common form of FSHD, the genetic material of chromosome 4 is lacking repeats of a unit called D4Z4. Regularly, D4Z4 repeats between 11 and 100 times within the chromosome, but in this form of FSHD, there are only one to 10 copies.
Because there is a lack of D4Z4, the structure of the chromosome itself is changed, increasing the chances of a gene known as DUX4 of being expressed—a gene which, if triggered, starts a pathway ending in muscle destruction.
Other groups have already started working on targeting DUX4, so the UMass researchers took a slightly different tack: They decided to apply CRISPR to the D4Z4 repeats in order to fix the shape of the chromosome.
“The D4Z4 repeats encode multiple coding and noncoding RNAs, which have the potential to play downstream pathogenic roles in FSHD. Thus, targeting the FSHD locus to return the chromatin to its non-pathogenic, more repressed state might be more therapeutically beneficial than simply targeting DUX4,” the authors explained in a statement.
Their method, while not perfect, yielded a 50 percent success rate.
The pros and cons of such a therapy
Of course, such a therapy could have enormous benefits: “With increasing evidence that the repeat genome (comprising nearly half the human genome) plays important roles in gene regulation, additional diseases will likely be found associated with aberrant repetitive genomic sequences,” the authors wrote. “We have provided the first evidence that the repeat genome can be targeted via the CRISPR system, which is likely to prove useful as this hitherto overlooked portion of the genome is decoded.”
But many are hesitant to embrace CRISPR as a therapy. First, there is a concern about the downstream effects of modifying human genes—there could be repercussions that we are, at this moment, unaware of. Others take a moral issue with changing DNA, or fear that the world may become a sci-fi nightmare where genomic health, intelligence, and other traits are only bought by the rich, creating a new, insurmountable class divide.
“People talk about it as a great tool, and it’s promising, but it’s also scary,” Himeda told the Huffington Post. “We’re not ready for ‘Gattaca.’”
Japan to resume its controversial ‘scientific’ whaling program
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
Despite an international court ruling prohibiting the practice, Japan revealed over the weekend that it plans to resume its controversial whale hunts next summer in a plan that was immediately condemned by environmental organizations and the UK and Australian governments.
According to BBC News, the resumed hunts will come following a hiatus of more than a year, as Japan cancelled its so-called “scientific” whaling program for the whole 2014-15 season when the International Court of Justice ruled that the program was not scientific in any way whatsoever.
The ICJ’s decision also stated that it did not believe that Japan needed to kill the whale in order to study them. In announcing the resumption of the program, the government said that it would take the ruling into account, and that the new version of its program would be scaled down.
Plan to launch despite lack of IWC approval
Under the new plan, which is known as NEWREP-A, Japan proposes hunting down nearly 4,000 minke whales over a period of 12 years, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Saturday. The plan was not approved by a special International Whaling Commission panel in January, nor did it get the go-ahead from the IWC’s full scientific committee in May.
In one of several letters sent to and published by the commission, Joji Morishita, Japan’s IWC commissioner, said that the country had “sincerely taken into account” the recommendations of the group. Ultimately, however, they concluded that no “substantial changes” had to be made to “the contents of NEWREP-A,” and that the program would be launched next summer.
Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt told Sky News that his country “strongly opposes” the decision, and that Japan “cannot unilaterally decide whether it has adequately addressed the scientific committee’s questions.” Hunt added that Australia would “continue to pursue the issue through the International Whaling Commission and in direct discussions with Japan.”
Advocacy group World Animal Protection said via Twitter that they were “appalled” at Japan’s decision to resume the program, and UK environment ministry, Defra, told BBC News that they were “deeply disappointed with Japan’s decision to restart whaling in the Southern Ocean. This undermines the global ban on commercial whaling which the UK strongly supports.”
Astronomers have discovered the hottest white dwarf star in the galaxy
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
A dying star located on the outskirts of the Milky Way is the hottest white dwarf ever found in our galaxy, boasting a record-setting temperature of 250,000 degrees Celsius despite the fact that it has already entered its cooling phase, according to a new study.
Writing in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, a team of astronomers from the University of Tübingen reported that analysis of ultraviolet spectra taken by the Hubble Space Telescope show that the white dwarf RX J0439.8-6809 has a temperature of a quarter of a million degrees.
Such extreme heat can only be reached by a star five times more massive than the sun, and even more remarkably, the white dwarf is already in the process of cooling down. At its peak about 1,000 years ago, RX J0439.8-6809 likely reached a maximum of 400,000 degrees.
Previously, the hottest temperature observed on a dying star was measured to be 200,000 degrees Celsius, the study authors said. For the sake of reference, our sun’s surface temperature has been a fairly constant 6,000 degrees since it was born 4.6 million years ago.
An unusual gas cloud around the star
The study authors added that they witnessed an intergalactic gas cloud moving towards the Milky Way for the first time. This, they explained, would suggest that at least some galaxies gather new materials from deep space and use those substances to manufacture new stars.
The chemical composition of RX J0439.8-6809 is not yet fully understood. The star, which was first discovered two decades ago, appears to have both carbon and oxygen on its surface. Those elements are the products of the nuclear fusion of helium, but in most cases, that process occurs deep within the core of a star, the researchers said.
The white dwarf was initially believed to have been located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, but the new Hubble data revealed that it is actually located on the very edge of the Milky Way and is travelling outwards at a speed of 220 kilometers per second. Much to the astronomers’ surprise, the ultraviolet spectrum also revealed the presence of gases that are native not to the star.
Those gases are part of a cloud between the Milky Way and RX J0439.8-6809 that is moving towards the Large Magellanic Cloud at a velocity of 150 kilometers per second. Its composition reveals that it originated from intergalactic space, the researchers explained, providing evidence that galaxies do indeed gather deep space materials that are used to create new stars.
With vinyl record sales rising by 260 percent over the last few years, and showing no signs of slowing down, odds are that there’s an old-school vinyl fanatic in your life. And that he or she could be of any age. Between new bands releasing music on vinyl, and old classics getting polished up with new mastering technologies, music lovers of all ages are hopping onto the vinyl bandwagon.
Thus, we’ve teamed up with our friends at the “best damn record club out there”, Vinyl Me, Please, to bring you a gift guide full of products hand-picked for the vinyl lover in your life.
1. A new record, every month (starts at $23/month)
For starters, what good would all the other stuff on this list be without some actual vinyl to listen to? Vinyl Me, Please has gift plans for periods of three months, six months, or 12 months. Included in the subscription is monthly delivery of a vinyl LP (it’s always a surprise), an original 12”x12” art print inspired by the album, a cocktail recipe crafted specifically for pairing with the record, and other perks.
2. U-Turn Audio Orbit Plus Turntable ($309.00)
A minimalist turntable focused on detailed sound without unnecessary features, this is an excellent stereo component for the vinyl lover who wants audiophile-quality sound without the hefty price tag and extra features. Manufactured in Boston, Massachusetts, these things don’t just sound great. Made with an acrylic platter, which makes for consistent speed and punchy bass, they look great.
And, they even have a red Orbit. (We had to.)
3. AudioQuest NightHawk headphones ($599)
Some audiophiles prefer to listen to music with high-quality headphones rather than speakers—it allows them to hear a wider stereo image, and with the sound being pumped directly into their ears, they don’t have to worry about the acoustics of a room. Made with sustainable materials, some of these headphones’ components are made with 3D printing. But the important thing is the sound—the drivers in these headphones are designed to work more like loudspeakers than typical ’phones, and each component is meticulously crafted with acoustics in mind.
RedOrbit was able to get two pairs from AQ (Thanks guys!) and tested their gold standard song on them (The Jurassic Park theme), and it was like listening to an entirely new song. We heard parts of the arrangement we didn’t know existed. It brought a tear to our eye.
4. AudioQuest DragonFly DAC ($145.69)
This one doesn’t really have anything to do with vinyl, but it’s worth mentioning anyway. If you buy a nice pair of headphones for listening to your records, you may as well also use them for all of your digital music, as well! You can always just plug them into your computer’s headphone output, but unless you’ve built a custom machine, chances are, your computer’s audio card is of average quality at best. This nifty digital-analog converter is the size of a USB flash drive, and delivers the best possible audio so you can get the most out of those fancy headphones.
5. Audioengine A5+ Powered Speakers ($399)
These speakers have a built-in power amp, so that’s one less stereo component you’d need to buy! Capable of pumping out 150 watts, these bad boys will get loud, yet still remain punchy, clear, and balanced, whether you’re listening to music from a device plugged into the speakers via USB, or music from a turntable or other component.
6. Kate Koeppel Design Record Dividers ($70-410)
Once you own enough records, you’re going to want a way to keep them organized. These laser cut, wooden record dividers come in different quantities and methods of organization. There’s a 26-panel set (with each having a stenciled letter of the alphabet), and smaller alphabetical sets with a range of letters spread out over three or six panels. There are also genre dividers that can be ordered in varying quantities—and you get to pick which genres you want, so you have dividers that best suit your needs.
7. A Century of Artifice by Michael Cina ($55)
Award-winning artist Michael Cina has produced album covers for the label Ghostly International, whose roster includes electronic artists Com Truise, Tycho, and others since 2007. This book, produced in conjunction with the VSCO Artist Initiative, features 100 of the album covers he’s produced over the years, along with the accompanying concept art.
8. Dovetail Record Crates ($225)
Improperly stored vinyl can warp, causing it to spin on the turntable at an inconsistent speed and giving it a pitchy sound. Yuck! Keeping your records in a properly sized crate will keep them playing properly. Since you don’t probably want to keep your record collection out in the open where it’s easily accessible, you’ve got to check out these handcrafted solid-wood crates. They hold up to 100 LPs, come in oak or walnut, and feature sharp looking brass and leather handles.
9. Grado Labs SR325e Headphones ($295)
If you want some great sounding headphones, but the wood grain aesthetic of the NightHawk cans isn’t your style, check these out. They’re designed with more of a ‘60s aesthetic.
This power amplifier is sleek, simple, versatile, and loud. It’s the size of a large book, looks nice, and features digital, analog, and USB inputs, as well as Bluetooth capability.
12. Zu Audio Omen Mk.II Floor Speakers ($1800)
If you’re looking for a bigger sound than what tabletop speakers can deliver, look no further than these floor standing speakers. Built in the U.S., these high-quality speakers are built to last a lifetime and work well with both vintage and modern equipment.
13. Schiit Modi 2 Headphone Amplifier ($119)
If you’ve got nice headphones, you’re going to need something to power them. This simple headphone amplifier features analog inputs for your turntable and other stereo components, as well as USB connectivity so, like with the Audioquest DragonFly, you can use this to enjoy your digital music, as well.
14. Rogue Audio Cronus Magnum II Tube Amplifier ($2,295)
If you want to be really old school, you’ll want this tube-driven power amplifier. Tube audio components are renowned for their smoothness and warmth—it’ll add a little sweetness to the already warm vinyl sound (and, of course, your other audio sources, as well). It also features a built-in, one watt headphone amplifier.
15. Rega RP6 Turntable ($1,990)
We didn’t want to just give you one measly (though super cool) turntable in this roundup. Here’s another nice one worth your consideration. It has the same minimalist design as the Orbit turntable. And it comes in red.
16. Numero Group Ork Records Vinyl Box Set ($70)
This box set is a compilation of punk songs from the first punk record label, Ork Records. It’s available as a CD and book set, but seriously…get it on vinyl!
17. Spin Clean MKII Record Washer ($79)
Those records are going to get a little dusty over time, and you want to clean them thoroughly and carefully to keep them sounding like new. This nifty device allows you to clean both sides of your records at once!
18. Wax Poetics Magazine Subscription (4 issues for $54)
A quarterly journal, this magazine is the self-described “best music magazine on the planet”. It focuses on jazz, funk, soul, blues, and reggae.
19. 69 Love Songs Reissue by The Magnetic Fields ($100)
A three-volume concept album originally released by indie pop group The Magnetic Fields in 1999, this vinyl reissue includes six records in varying colors—black, red, and clear—in a slipcase with a 24-page book of liner notes.
Four pre-Incan “mummies,” buried sitting upright and facing the sea, have been found in a pyramid-shaped cemetery in Lima, Peru.
“There are four human burial sites, for adult individuals, three women and one man, who lived between the years 1000 to 1450,” explained archaeologist Isabel Flores, director of the excavation in Huaca Pucllana, an ancient ceremonial complex perhaps dating to 200 CE.
According to Daily Mail, the human remains were found in a residential area of the city, and confirm that the Ichma culture did indeed exist in early Lima. Archaeologists believe they were wrapped in textiles in an attempt to mummify them—which doesn’t seem to have worked, although some of them actually still have hair—and were found with offerings like ceramics and weaving tools.
The “mummies” belonged to a somewhat mysterious people known as the Ichma, who dominated the region near Lima following the Wari culture beginning around 1000. Eventually, they were absorbed by the Incas in 1440—a people whom we know significantly more about.
We do know that, like the Incas, the Ichma believed there was a link between the gods and living humans. This link was somewhat mediated by mummies, who were “consulted” on certain occasions, and who were often placed near temples and on high ground in a sort of gesture of honor. The sitting positions of the remains found are believed to be tied to this tradition, perhaps holding some sort of ritual significance.
The Spanish conquistadors of the 16th century were apparently disgusted by this practice, and thus looted and destroyed many of the grave sites and mummies—meaning much of the evidence of the Ichma culture was permanently lost. The four Ichma grave sites just found were also likely looted, but despite that they may provide previously unknown knowledge about these early people.
“These are the first four tombs of the Ichma culture. We think that we may still find more,” said Flores.
Growing evidence points to secret room in King Tut’s tomb
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Brian Galloway
The evidence is piling higher and higher in favor of King Tut’s tomb hiding a secret chamber. A second series of scans that began this week have reaffirmed previous findings, and Egyptian officials claim to be “approximately 90 percent sure” a hidden chamber lies behind the north wall of Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb.
A growing body of evidence
Using the same radar as the first round of scans, researchers measured the temperature differentials of the north wall of Tut’s tomb in Luxor, and found similar readings as before—meaning there could be a room or hallway behind that wall.
“Clearly it does look from the radar evidence as if the tomb continues, as I have predicted,” said Nicholas Reeves, the Egyptologist who convinced officials to investigate this possibility, at a press conference with the Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damati on Saturday, the AFP reported.
“The radar behind the north wall seems pretty clear. If I am right it is a continuation – corridor continuation – of the tomb, which will end in another burial chamber,” he said.
According to Minister el-Damaty, these scans are only preliminary, and are being sent to Japan for further analysis.
Who’s in the room?
As to who is buried in this possible chamber, the jury is still out.
“I think it is Nefertiti and all the evidence points in that direction,” said Reeves. Nefertiti is a reasonable guess; she was likely Tutankhamun’s stepmother. When he died suddenly at age 19—perhaps before his own burial chamber was finished—they could have placed him in hers instead.
Further, Reeves believes he just discovered that Tut’s burial mask was actually repurposed from Nefertiti’s, after finding what appear to be traces of her name erased and replaced with his on the inscription.
Mminister el-Damaty, however, is more inclined to believe that such a chamber belongs to someone like Kiya, who was a co-wife with Nefertiti in Pharaoh Akhenaten’s court.
Zahi Hawass, the former antiquities minister of Egypt, agreed. Nefertiti is unlikely to be found buried in Luxor, he said, because of her participation in a monotheistic cult instituted by her husband.
“Nefertiti will never be buried in the Valley of the Kings,” he told AFP. “The lady was worshipping Aton [the monotheistic sun god] with Akhenaten for years. The priests would never allow her to be buried in the Valley of the Kings.”
All this aside, none of the work—the scans, or the findings on Tutankhamun’s mask—have been peer-reviewed, meaning the findings are yet to be vetted by the greater scientific community. And, should the data solidly confirm the presence of a chamber, there is the trifling problem about actually getting to it.
“The data is being analysed to get a clear picture of what’s behind the wall,” said el-Damaty. “The next step, which we will announce once we agree on it, will be accessing what’s behind the wall without damaging the tomb.”
Snakes haven’t always been slitherin’—but the reason why they lost their legs has long puzzled scientists. It’s generally been thought that the limbs disappeared in order for snakes to make the transition from land to sea, but now a 90 million-year-old fossil is changing the discussion.
Losing legs left and right
The fossil consists of a reptile skull which, as reported in Science Advances, was compared to the skulls of modern lizards and snakes using CT scans—and led researchers to conclude that snakes lost their legs when they evolved to live and hunt in burrows, not when they evolved for the sea.
The specific fossil they studied was of Dinilysia patagonica, a six-foot-long reptile ancestral relative of modern snakes. In particular, they studied the inner ears of D. patagonica and modern snakes and lizards, which was then and still is now responsible for hearing and balance.
After the CT scans, the team built virtual 3D models of all the inner ears in order to compare them, and made an interesting discovery: In D. patagonica and modern burrowing reptiles, the inner ears contained a distinctive structure, which might help in detecting predators and prey. Such a feature is absent in modern snakes that live in the water or aboveground.
This not only shows that D. patagonica was the largest burrowing snake ever known, but that this theoretical ancestral species of modern snakes was a burrower, not a swimmer.
“How snakes lost their legs has long been a mystery to scientists, but it seems that this happened when their ancestors became adept at burrowing,” said Dr. Hongyu Yi of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, who led the research, in a statement. “The inner ears of fossils can reveal a remarkable amount of information, and are very useful when the exterior of fossils are too damaged or fragile to examine.”
“This discovery would not have been possible a decade ago – CT scanning has revolutionized how we can study ancient animals,” added co-author Mark Norell, of the American Museum of Natural History. “We hope similar studies can shed light on the evolution of more species, including lizards, crocodiles and turtles.”
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Pictured is a rendering of the reptile skull used in the study
Understanding synapse degradation could lead to Alzheimer’s treatment
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
The discovery of how brain cell synapses degrade during the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease could eventually lead to new ways to treat this deadly form of dementia.
In a study published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, Dr. Vladimir Sytnyk of the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales and his colleagues explained that they studied a type of protein, neural cell adhesion molecule 2, that helps physically connect the membranes of synapses in the brain.
Neural cell adhesion molecule 2, or NCAM2, also helps stabilize synaptic connections between neurons, they explained. The loss of synapses and the destruction of neural connections are some of the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Sytnyk said. It occurs early on in the disease, when patients typically only have mild cognitive impairment and well before nerve cells die off.
“Synapses are required for all brain functions,” he explained in a statement, “and particularly for learning and forming memories.” He added that he and his UNSW associates had “identified a new molecular mechanism which directly contributes to this synapse loss – a discovery we hope could eventually lead to earlier diagnosis of the disease and new treatments.”
NCAM2 broken down by beta-amyloid protein
Dr. Syntnyk’s team used post-mortem brain tissue from both Alzheimer’s patients and people who did not have the condition. By analyzing this tissue, they discovered that individuals that had the disease had lower levels of synaptic NCAM2 in the hippocampus, which is among the first parts of the brain to be affected by the disease.
Furthermore, mice studies and laboratory research both demonstrated that NCAM2 was broken down by beta-amyloid, another type of protein that makes up the majority of the plaque which is known to accumulate in the brains of people suffering from the neurodegenerative condition.
“Our research shows the loss of synapses is linked to the loss of NCAM2 as a result of the toxic effects of beta-amyloid,” said Dr. Sytnyk, who worked with first author Dr. Iryna Leshchyns’ka of the UNSW School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences. “It opens up a new avenue for research on possible treatments that can prevent the destruction of NCAM2 in the brain.”
Can you tell a person’s gender through their fingerprint?
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Law enforcement officials have long relied upon fingerprints as a tool to capture criminals, but for this identification technique to work, there has to be an existing record of a person’s identity. Without this information, these distinctive markings are of little to no use– until now.
Recently, researchers from the University of Albany have come up with a new method that analyzes the chemical composition of fingerprints to determine if it was left it behind by a man or a woman. This technique, according to Gizmodo and Forensic Magazine, analyzes the amount of amino acid content in DNA left behind in the prints.
As Dr. Jan Halamek, an assistant chemistry professor at the university, and his colleagues wrote in the journal Analytical Chemistry, they analyzed residual sweat in search of subtle variations in amino acid content between men and women. Specifically, they noted, women typically leave behind twice as many amino acids as men, and there are differences in amino acid distribution as well.
This technique doesn’t serve as a replacement for traditional identity-matching techniques, but Halamek’s team believes that it could be useful in cases where the prints left behind are compromised as a way to at least narrow down potential perpetrators.
Gender identification technique 99 percent accurate
The team transferred a fingerprint onto a piece of plastic wrap to extract the amino acids and placed a solution of hydrochloric acid onto the print before heating it. This allowed water-soluble amino acids to migrate into the acidic solution, after which they looked at the amino acid levels and use the data to determine a person’s gender.
The method was first tested using “mimicked fingerprint samples,” the study authors explained in a statement. It was found to have a 99 percent accuracy rate in determining the sex of the man or woman who left behind the fingerprint. Next, they had three female volunteers place prints on five different surfaces, and the method was used to confirm the sex of those individuals.
“One of the main goals for this project was to move toward looking at the chemical content within the fingerprint, as opposed to relying on simply the fingerprint image,” Dr. Halamek said. “We do not intend to compete with DNA analysis or the databases used for identification.”
Rather, he said, he and his colleagues “are aiming at differentiating between demographic groups” and “making use of fingerprints that are smudged/distorted or that don’t have an existing match.” The researchers are currently working to improve on the fingerprint technique, and hope to investigate similar methods involving forensically-relevant attributes.
Woah! New gold aerogel is 98 percent air, floats on water
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Scientists from ETH Zurich claim that they have created the lightest gold nugget ever: a type of the precious metal made from real 20 carat gold that is said to be 1,000 times lighter than normal– light enough to float on top of the milk foam in a cappuccino.
Their work, reported in the November 23 edition of the journal Advanced Materials, is basically a three-dimensional porous foam aerogel made out of gold, an according to Raffaele Mezzenga, the professor of food and soft materials that led the research, it is even lighter than water.
(Credit: Gustav Nyström and Raffaele Mezzenga/ETH Zurich)
In fact, Mezzenga and his colleague claim that the substance is almost as light as air and nearly indistinguishable from regular gold to the naked eye. The aerogel even has a metallic shine, he explained. However, as it is made from 98 parts air and old two parts solid material (80 percent of which is gold and 20 percent of which is milk protein fibrils), it is soft and malleable.
The foam’s color, reflectivity and absorption can be altered
The substance is created by heating milk proteins to create nanometer-scale amyloid fibrils, or protein fibers which are then put into a solution of gold salt, the researchers explained. The fibers become interlaced into a basic structure along with crystallized gold particles, creating a network of gold fibers that is dried using carbon dioxide to prevent damage to the structure.
The process, in which gold particles are crystallized during the actual manufacture of the aerogel protein structure instead of added to a pre-existing scaffold, is new and makes it easier to end up with a homogeneous substance that is an exact copy of gold alloys. Furthermore, the authors said that this method makes it possible to easily manipulate the properties of gold along the way.
“The optical properties of gold depend strongly on the size and shape of the gold particles,” said first author Gustav Nyström, a postdoc at ETH Zurich. “Therefore we can even change the color of the material. When we change the reaction conditions in order that the gold doesn’t crystallize into microparticles but rather smaller nanoparticles, it results in a dark-red gold.”
In addition to influencing the color, this method allows them to alter other properties of the gold, such as absorption and reflection. The researchers believe this foam could be used in many of the same application which currently require regular gold, proving a smaller, lightweight and porous alternative to the metal, including pressure sensors.
Scientists get first look at a star being swallowed up by a black hole
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
For the first time, astrophysicists have observed a star being consumed by a supermassive black hole, ejecting a short-lived and high-speed thermal flare as it is swallowed up by a dense pocket of spacetime, according to research published this week in Science.
According to Sjoert van Velzen, a Hubble fellow at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and his colleagues, the star is approximately the same size as our sun and has been yanked from its customary path by the gravitational pull of the black hole. The flare it emitted moved at close to the speed of light, the team of 13 international scientists added in their report.
A black hole is a region of space that is so dense that its gravity prevents matter, gases, and even light from escaping, causing them to be essentially invisible and creating the appearance that there is a void in the very fabric of space. Astrophysicists predicted that a black hole that suddenly takes in large amounts of gas (say, the amount found in a whole star that is being consumed), a fast-moving jet of plasma could escape from the event horizon.
In a statement, van Velzen said that these events are “extremely rare.” In fact, he noted, this was “the first time we see everything from the stellar destruction followed by the launch of a conical outflow, also called a jet, and we watched it unfold over several months… Previous efforts to find evidence for these jets, including my own, were late to the game.”
Black hole’s close proximity made the observations possible
The supermassive black hole being observed by the Johns Hopkins-led team is about one million times the mass of our sun, meaning that it is on the lighter end of the spectrum. Nonetheless, the black hole is still more than strong enough to swallow a star whole, van Velzen’s team said.
A team at the Ohio State University, working with an optical telescope in Hawaii first witnessed the star being consumed and announced their discovery via social media in December 2014. Shortly thereafter, van Velzen and a team of astrophysicists from Oxford University used a radio telescope array to conduct follow up observations, hoping to catch the deed being done.
They were just in time, and were able to collect X-ray, radio and optical data from both satellites and ground-based observatories, providing what they called a “multi-wavelength” portrait of the phenomenon. Helping their cause was the fact that the galaxy was a mere 300 million light years from Earth, making it at least three times closer than other, similar supermassive black holes.
“The destruction of a star by a black hole is beautifully complicated, and far from understood,” said van Velzen, who studied supermassive black hole jets as a doctoral student at Radboud University. “From our observations, we learn the streams of stellar debris can organize and make a jet rather quickly, which is valuable input for constructing a complete theory of these events.”
Natural greenhouse gas emissions could speed up climate change more than expected
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Natural greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change alongside man-made gasses– and the rate of natural emissions will rise as the climate changes, meaning that the effects of global warming will progress more quickly than previously believed, researchers at Linköping University’s Tema Environmental Changecenter report in a new study.
Sivakiruthika Natchimuthu, a doctoral student at the university has spent the last two years examining greenhouse gas emissions alongside her colleagues, including their most recent project measuring natural methane emissions. Each study came to effectively the same conclusion: as the temperature rises, natural greenhouse gas emissions will increase.
As Natchimuthu explained in a statement, “Everything indicates that global warming caused by humans leads to increased natural greenhouse gas emissions. Our detailed measurements reveal a clear pattern of greater methane emissions from lakes at higher temperatures.”
She and her co-authors examined methane emissions from three lakes, and found that emissions of the gas increased exponentially along with temperature. As the team wrote in the latest issue of the journal Limnology and Oceanography, a temperature increase of 15 to 20 degrees Celsius nearly doubled the methane level at those lakes.
Reducing human-caused gas emissions twice as effective
While anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gas emissions are regularly included in climate models, the future behavior of naturally-occurring emissions has been unclear, the study authors explained. Their findings indicate that there is a cycle in which human-caused emissions result in higher temperatures, in turn leading to increased natural emissions and higher temperatures.
“We’re not talking about hypotheses anymore,” said co-author David Bastviken, a professor at Tema Environmental Change, Linköping University. “The evidence is growing and the results of the detailed studies are surprisingly clear. The question is no longer if the natural emissions will increase but rather how much they will increase with warming.”
As a result, he said, climate change will take place faster than had been anticipated by models using anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions alone. In addition, this indicates that reductions in the burning of fossil fuels or other human-caused activity would be twice as effective – not only would it reduce the direct impact on climate change, but it would lessen the ensuing natural greenhouse gas emissions that would result from hotter conditions.
New evidence suggests King Tut’s gold mask actually belonged to Queen Nefertiti
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills
The second round of scans of King Tutankhamun’s tomb are slated to be completed this weekend, but the British Egyptologist who convinced everyone else to look closer at the tomb hasn’t been sitting idle. Instead, Nicholas Reeves has now made another discovery, adding more weight to the notion that King Tut was laid to rest inside Queen Nefertiti’s tomb.
The story was broken by Al-Ahram Weekly, to whom Reeves emailed an advanced copy of a paper accepted for publication in December. The paper focuses on the gold mask of Tutankhamun, which Reeves believes actually belonged to Nefertiti.
Reeves has suspected this for a long time. He actually wrote a paper on the topic several years ago, although at that time he was able to find some compelling—but not definitive—evidence to support it. For example, while the face on the mask is definitely Tut, the remainder of the headdress is a different color of gold. And the mask’s ears have two piercings—something usually only seen in queens and children—meaning Tut’s face may have been placed over someone else’s.
However, the hieroglyphic inscriptions gave no hints indicating that the mask pre-dated Tut’s reign.
“Happily, this reluctant presumption of the mask’s textual integrity may now be abandoned,” wrote Reeves in the paper, adding that “a fresh examination of the re-positioned and newly re-lit mask in Cairo at the end of September 2015 yielded for the first time, beneath the hieroglyphs of Tutankhamun’s prenomen, lightly chased traces of an earlier, erased royal name.”
When Reeves discovered what appeared to be the not-fully erased hieroglyphs behind Tut’s name on the mask, he recruited specialists who helped him to reconstruct the potential previous inscription.
“Above, in green, we see the present, Tutankhamun-era inscription, with visible portions of the earlier, underlying text highlighted in red; below, in yellow, is the agreed reconstruction of this original name,” wrote Reeves.
What’s the significance?
Of course, such images mean little to most people, so Reeves then explained their significance.
“The easiest elements to recognise within the erased text are three floating legs of a xpr-hieroglyph. Positioned somewhat to the left of the superimposed xpr of Tutankhamun’s prenomen nb-xprw-ra (Nebkheperure), space had originally been reserved on the right to accommodate a separate sign with rounded top and vertical base — evidently an anx.
“In combination with the remains of three short verticals beneath the later plural strokes of the Tutankhamun xprw and a heavily reemphasised ra, what these traces plainly spell out, from right to left, is the prenomen anx-xprw-ra – Ankhkheperure.”
Ankhkheperure is a personal name historically known to be associated with two people: Pharaoh Akhenaten’s chief wife Nefertiti, and the pharaoh Smenkhkare.
In fact, the entire inscription appears to read Ankhkheprure Nefernefruaten, or Queen Nefertiti.
“This name indeed confirms the conclusion I had reached previously on non-inscriptional grounds — namely, that Tutankhamun’s headpiece had been prepared originally for the coregent,” said Reeves.
There are other traces in the potentially erased inscription that point to Nefertiti as well. One part Reeves has intuited likely read mr nfr-xprwra, or “beloved of Neferkheperure”—another name for Akhenaten, Nefertiti’s husband.
Of course, this paper is yet to be published (although it has now been placed online for others to read), and the tomb is not cracked, so some may be (rightfully) skeptical of Reeves’ findings. However, the inscription has always been a confusing element of Tut’s mask, so Reeves’ interpretations may have just resolved a puzzling mystery.
For better mental health, treat yourself like an animal
Written By: John Hopton
Emily Bills
“I would never take a dog and lock them up inside a cement kennel for 9 or 10 hours with poor food and only a laptop for company, but that’s what we do to ourselves all the time,” says author Laurel Braitman. “Then we wonder why we are suffering.”
Her book, Animal Madness: Inside TheirMinds, explains how understanding an animal’s mental health is not only a fascinating insight and ethically sound, but can also help us to understand human mental health better.
“Most of the things that help us, help them, and most of the things that help them, help us,” Braitman says. “All the things you can do to make your dog less compulsive and less depressed are all the things you can to make yourself less compulsive and less depressed.”
And yet, animal psychiatry tends to think of their behavior as a product of their environment, whereas human psychiatry tends to think of our behavior as a function of our chemistry and our background.
“I think we should think of ourselves more like the animals we are, and treat ourselves accordingly,” Braitman suggests.
Animals had the drugs first
Many animals now receive mental health treatments, especially in the United States. The concept may seem odd to some, but the crossover between human and animal mental health is closer than we think.
“Most of what we know about treating mental illness stems from the last 150 years of studies on animals,” Braitman says. “People think it’s weird that dogs are taking Prozac and zoo gorillas are taking Xanax – that they’re taking human drugs. But the truth is that these are animal drugs.”
The drugs were originally tested on animals, and were shown not only to be non-toxic, but also to help them relax. “It’s not that much of a leap to give back to them the drugs that they gave us in the first place,” Braitman adds.
This is not to say that drugs are necessarily the best option—for animals or humans.
“There are psychopharmaceutical drugs available, but I think they should be the last resort,” Braitman says. “Much more important for social animals is time with other animals – and that could be their own species or other species. Exercise has also been shown to be at least as helpful as anti-depressants.”
So how easy is to diagnose an animal?
According to Braitman, animals can’t be diagnosed at first sight. You can’t walk up to a group of gorillas in the wild and say “that one’s depressed.” But at the same time, the lack of verbal communication doesn’t have to be a hindrance. Just the same as diagnosing children, observing behavior over a period of time can provide a pretty clear sign.
A major crossover between human and animal problems is a lack of purpose. With captive animals, taking away the things they would normally spend their time on, such as searching for food or building a nest, can lead to compulsive rather than productive behavior. Even with pets, we need to keep their minds stimulated to keep them healthy.
“And it’s the same with humans,” Braitman says. “Everyone needs a job. We all want to feel useful and busy.”
She adds that: “We have all the power in the world to make our pets happy, mostly by doing the things that make us happy. I guarantee if you run around on the beach with a stick you’re gonna have a good time.”
Not all the examples are so common – going to the zoo one day and playing harmonica for a gorilla would brighten its day, Braitman says. She recently explained to TED some ways in which we could be a “better human at the zoo” (even if we don’t like zoos). Along with harmonica playing was the idea of wearing a costume.
Sounds more fun than 10 hours on a laptop, for sure.
Why the new fad detox shouldn’t be your holiday weight-loss solution
Written By: Abbey Hull
Emily Bills
The holiday season always seems to be a joyous occasion where families gather and, well, eat. From turkey to stuffing, Americans stuff themselves, but when the calories seek revenge, Americans turn to the current trend—detoxification. But listen up ladies and gents, because redOrbit is about to debunk those fad detoxes and make you rethink that post-Thanksgiving turkey juice diet.
“But I heard detoxing is the perfect way to cleanse your body?”
Yes, but not in the ways you think. Our bodies are built to naturally detox, or cleanse the body of toxins which can build up over time. The intake of highly-processed foods, GMOs, artificial sweeteners, and preservatives causes our bodies to take on daily toxins, which, when not cleaned out properly due to the amount, can begin to build up along our digestive tract.
“Your natural detoxification process is an organ: the liver. It filters out of the bloodstream those things that are harmful and breaks those substances down into substances that the body can remove easily,” said Dr. Autumn Marshall, Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Kinesiology at Lipscomb University.
This natural process leads to a varied definition of the word detox for each person, mostly due to their dietary habits. “Detoxing for one person at one end of the spectrum who’s eating organic vegetables, nuts, seeds, and good quality proteins is totally different than getting rid of toxins for the average American who eats fast food and packaged foods throughout the day,” continued Dr. Mari-Chris Savage, registered dietitian and director of client operations and wellness at CareHere in Nashville. So, those fad detoxes might not even work for all different types of eaters!
“But isn’t it true that detoxing helps you lose weight?”
Yes, it will help you lose weight…but only water weight. According to both Savage and Marshall, the fad diet of juicing may begin burning some fat, but for the most part the only weight lost will be due to the loss of water.
“Your body’s going into starvation mode,” Savage continued when describing detoxes’ dehydration effects, “so everything you do hold on to and your insulin levels becoming so high…all are going to go into storage because your body’s freaking out.”
“Isn’t it true that detoxing helps you be healthier? That’s my goal for next year.”
While fad diets may seem like the perfect way to cleanse the body, in reality detoxing can cause more harm than good.
“The dangers lie in hormonal control,” Savage explained. “Your hormones are going to go crazy with that lack of calories. Your insulin will skyrocket, your cortisone will go out of control, your serotonin levels will duck, which means you won’t have energy. This then leads to energy loss and brain fog.” While she claims there’s little severe risk of irreversible damage, the detox may cause more hormonal damage than you need.
The juices also lack one special ingredient needed to actually detox the body: fiber. Working like a little sponge along the digestive track, fiber absorbs those lingering toxins and “detoxes” by removing them from the body. Huh, suddenly those yogurt commercials are beginning to make sense…
“But all over the place people are promoting these juices, shakes, and trendy diets as successful!”
“I have never seen a detox diet that would delineate the toxins that need to be removed,” Marshall argues. “Nor have I ever seen a detox diet tell me how to evaluate how much of the toxin has been removed.” Let’s really think about—how do we know the toxins are actually out of our bodies? How do we know how many we start with anyways?
“If it worked in a perfect world, you would consume something that would either attach to a toxin and pull it out of the body, or consume something that would change the chemical structure of a toxin into something that will come out of the body easily and harmlessly,” Marshall continued. However, in reality your body’s natural detox is still the best method to rely on for the best results we know will happen.
“So what should I do then?”
Never fear, there are multiple solutions to this holiday calorie catastrophe. Rather than vow off foods to start your holiday season, Savage suggests a much healthier and happier solution: “cycling patterns”. By cycling out some of the foods one at a time rather than stripping it all away and freaking out, the dieting process becomes an achievable goal.
Marshall’s advice is to eat more fruits and vegetables. By eating these, your body can intake all the wonderful health-promoting nutrients that are absent during these fad detox diets, she said.
Agreeing, Savage explains that by filling half your plate with these veggies, you’ll be taking in the vitamins, mineral intake, and fiber that your body needs. “It’s the best trick to use because it focuses your mind on the good and not on what you can’t have,” she concluded.
So, you want to save a little money but break that habit of bad food for a New Year’s Resolution? Don’t stress—you’ll be there by February. “While your hormones begin to reset naturally in 3 days, the 15-30 days suggested to break a habit is more for mentality than anything,” said Savage. “If you give your body a couple days without the junk, it’ll detox naturally. You don’t need these special pills or aids to detox.”
Check out this giant purple ‘Cheshire Cat’ galaxy group smiling at us from space
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
While the scientific community marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of the theory of general relativity this month, NASA researchers have release images of galaxies that provide an in-depth example of one of the key tenants of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
As the US space agency explained in a recent statement, one significant result of the century-old theory is that matter warps space-time—which in turn allows massive objects to cause a detectable bending of light from background objects. Also known as gravitational lensing, this phenomenon has been observed many times and been used by scientists to examine distant galaxies.
Now, in a paper currently available online and published in The Astrophysical Journal, experts at the University of Alabama, the National Observatory of Brazil, the Gemini Observatory, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics take an up-close look at one group of galaxies that demonstrates how gravitational lensing could lead to new discoveries.
Known as the “Cheshire Cat” group of galaxies because they have features resembling a smiling feline, the closest of these galaxies are located about 4.6 billion light years away, Space Alabama said. Some of those cat-like features are actually distant galaxies whose light has been stretched and bent by the large amounts of mass from dark matter (which can only be detected through the galaxies’ gravitational effect) present in the system.
The Cheshire Cat is slowly becoming a fossil group
This light-distorting mass is primarily located around the two giant “eye” galaxies and a “nose” galaxy. Lensing effects from four different galaxies located far behind the eye galaxies create the arcs of the circular “face,” and both these arcs and the individual galaxies in the system have been observed in optical light using the NASA Hubble Space Telescope.
The eye galaxies are the brightest members of their respective group of galaxies, and both groups are said to be on moving towards one another at speeds topping 300,000 mph. Evidence of this is present in data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which detected gas heated to a temperature of several million degrees and an active supermassive black hole at the center of the left eye.
NASA explained that astronomers believe that the Cheshire Cat group of galaxies will ultimately become a fossil group, or a gathering of galaxies which contain one giant elliptical galaxy along with a handful of other smaller, fainter ones. Fossil groups, they explained, could be a temporary stage of evolution experienced by all galaxy groups, and as a result, astronomers are anxious to learn more about them.
The Cheshire Cat group of galaxies could provide the first opportunity to observe this process as it happens. The study authors estimate that the two eye galaxies will eventually merge and leave behind one extremely large galaxy and dozens of smaller ones. The transformation will not happen quickly, however—NASA believes the merger could take about a billion years.
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Feature Image: NASA/CXC/UA/J.IRWIN ET AL; OPTICAL: NASA/STSCI
Eight-year-old girl youngest ever to develop rare form of breast cancer
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
An eight-year-old Utah girl has been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of breast cancer after she discovered a lump earlier this month, and doctors believe she may be one of—if not the youngest person ever—to come down with the disease, various media outlets have reported.
According to USA Today and the New York Daily News, Chrissy Turner was diagnosed with a condition known as secretory breast carcinoma, which accounts for fewer than 1% of all breast cancer cases worldwide. She was diagnosed on November 9 after approaching her parents and complaining about the lump, which she said had already been there for some time.
A GoFundMe page set up by a family friend claimed that no specialist across the country had seen a case of secretory breast carcinoma in a child as young as Turner, and that there are only a handful of other cases to compare it to. Her case is being reviewed by top oncologists and she is set to have surgery at the Huntsman Cancer Institute early next month, the page added.
The good news is that despite the rarity of the illness, “it is very treatable,” her physician, Dr. Brian Bucher at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, told ABC. “Chrissy will need to undergo a simple mastectomy… to remove all the remaining breast tissue to prevent this cancer from coming back.”
A closer look at this rare form of breast cancer
Research published in the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine in 2011 indicates that secretory carcinoma is a “rare but distinct” subtype of breast cancer with a “generally favorable prognosis.” While primarily described as a juvenile cancer that occurs in young children, study authors indicate that the majority of cases actually occur in both male and female adults.
The US National Library of Medicine said that the characteristic features of secretory carcinoma are “pronounced intracellular and intramicrocystic periodic acid Schiff (PAS) positive secretions. The presence of vacuolated cytoplasm is also characteristic of this tumor.” The tumors tend to be more aggressive and nodal metastasis is “more frequent and extensive” in adults then in kids.
“It’s the first case I have ever seen of breast cancer this young,” Dr. Bucher told Today.com. “It’s more common among kids in adolescence, but before puberty is very strange,” he added, noting that there are unconfirmed reports that the disease has been reported in children as young as three years of age. The doctor also said that this type of cancer typically does not spread.
It’s official: Ötzi the Iceman has the oldest tattoos in the world
Written By: Aaron Deter-Wolf
Sam Savage
What are the world’s oldest tattoos?
If you ask the Internet this question you find a quick and easy answer: The oldest tattoos belong to Ötzi, aka the Iceman, who died and was frozen beneath an Alpine glacier along the Austrian-Italian border between about 3370 and 3100 BC. Thanks to numerous studies, including new findings published earlier this year, we know that Ötzi had a total of 61 tattoos across this body. These were arranged in groups on his left wrist, lower legs, ankles, and lower back, created using ink made from campfire soot, and may have been applied as part of therapeutic treatments for his various injuries and ailments.
While Ötzi has been popularly regarded as having the oldest tattoos, if you posed this same question to the global community of tattoo scholars you were likely to receive a different answer. Until recently many–including myself–would have instead pointed to a tattooed mustache on the mummified body of a man from the Chinchorro culture of South America as being the world’s oldest surviving tattoo.
The Chinchorro culture was a preceramic fishing society that lived in the coastal regions of Southern Peru and Chile between about 7000 and 1100 BC. Some of the earliest Chinchorro burials are naturally mummified as a result of the arid environment of the Atacama Desert, and are among the oldest human mummies identified anywhere in the world. The reported age of the tattooed Chinchorro mummy ranges between about 4000 and 6000 BC, therefore apparently predating Ötzi.
Finding the Chinchorro Mummy
Identifications of the Chinchorro man having the world’s oldest tattoos generally reference a discussion of early mummies from coastal Peru and Chile published in the 1996 volume “Human Mummies: A Global Survey of their Status and the Techniques of Conservation.” That report describes that the oldest tattoo identified in the region is “a thin pencil mustache” on the upper lip of a Chinchorro man dated to about 6000 Before Present (BP). Because of the intricacies of radiocarbon dating–which we’ll get into more below–this date is the equivalent of about 4050 BC thereby making the Chinchorro specimen some 700 years older than Ötzi. However, the 1996 source does not specify where the Chinchorro mummy was discovered or how the date estimate was reached, and does not provide an illustration of the tattooed mustache.
The tattooed mustache on the Chinchorro mummy Mo-1 T28 C22 (after Arriaza, Modelo Bioarqueologico Para la Busqueda y Acercamiento al Individuo Social. Chungara, Revista de Antropología Chilena 21:9–32, 1988.) (Credit: Aaron Deter-Wolf)
A desire to discover the specific identity and age of the tattooed Chinchorro mummy prompted a collaborative research effort between myself, Benoît Robitaille, Lars Krutak (National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution), and Sébastien Galliot (Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l’Océanie at Aix-Marseille Université). As a result of that work we were able not only to uncover the identity of the Chinchorro specimen, but also to compile a reference list of tattooed mummies from across the globe and thereby demonstrate that Ötzi does indeed sport the oldest tattoos identified to date. Our findings were published online this week in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
By working back through the literature we were able to determine that the Chinchorro mummy in question was recovered in 1993 from the site of El Morro in the city of Arica, Chile. The naturally-mummified Chinchorro man known as “Mo-1 T28 C22” was between about 35- and 40-years-old at the time of his death. His tattoos consist of single lines of black dots across his upper lip to either side of the nose, with eight dots to his left and four to his right. Although these dots did not meet our expectations for the “thin pencil mustache” described in 1996, so far as we are able to determine no other Chinchorro mummies have been recorded as having facial tattoos.
Archaeologists will date anything
Without getting too far into the weeds, there are a couple of important points in understanding how archaeologists reference dates. This first is that years “BP” and “BC” or “BCE” are not identical. Before Present, or BP, is typically used to reference radiocarbon dating, which calculates how many years in the past an organism died and therefore stopped taking in the naturally-occurring isotope carbon 14 (14C). Secondly, for the purposes of radiocarbon dating, “Present” is AD 1950. Finally, because it is not possible to measure 100% of the 14C in a sample, there are small errors in the calculation, which are expressed either as a ± value or as a date range. What all this means is that when presented with a radiocarbon date you should read that number as indicating “approximately _____ years before AD 1950.” When, for example, Ötzi’s age is given as 5300 BP or 5300-years old, this means he died approximately 5,300 years before AD 1950, or around 3350 BC.
During the 1980s a radiocarbon date was obtained for a sample of lung tissue from the tattooed Chinchorro mummy. That date was reported as 3830 ± 100 BP, the equivalent of 1880 ± 100 BC. Ötzi on the other hand has been the subject of extensive radiocarbon dating since his discovery in 1991. Different studies have dated samples of his bones and tissue, wood from his bow and axe, pieces of his clothing, and even mosses and animal hair recovered from beneath the glacier in the same gully where he was entombed. These studies show that Ötzi died sometime during the period ca. 3370–3100 BC, and is therefore at least 400 years older than the Chinchorro mummy.
Where things went wrong
As we report in our study, the dates of between 4000 and 6000 BC attributed to the tattooed Chinchorro mummy appear to be the result of a series of errors reading the radiocarbon data. The correct date of 3830 ± 100 BPwas initially misread as being 3830 ± 100 BC – the equivalent of about 5,780 BP. As a result, the report in Human Mummies identified the Chinchorro specimen as originating “about 6000 BP.” To compound this initial error, several more recent discussions have further misinterpreted the date. By presenting the already incorrect figure of 6000 BP as instead being 6000 BC (the equivalent about 7950 BP) these works have pushed the reported date for the El Morro mummy back some 4,000 years older than its actual age.
Mummies, mummies, everywhere
Before officially declaring Ötzi to be the oldest tattooed individual, we double checked our data by compiling a list of tattooed human mummies from around the globe. This catalog included at least 49 sites spanning the period between around 3370 BC and AD 1600, and spread throughout the American Arctic, Siberia, Mongolia, western China, Egypt, Sudan, the Philippines, and Greenland in addition to Europe and South America. Some of these finds, such as the Princess of Ukok, the men and women from Burials 2 and 5 at the Pazyryk burial ground, and the woman from Grave 50 at 3-J-23, et-Tereif, Sudan have been well-publicized outside of academia. Others are mentioned simply in passing in early archaeological reports, or appear only in regional and hard-to access journals. A number of sites include multiple tattooed individuals, sometimes numbering in the dozens. In all we were able to identify eleven tattooed mummies greater than 4,000 years old (about 2000 BC). In addition to Ötzi and the Chinchorro man these include seven individuals from Egypt, and two from Russia. To date, Ötzi is the oldest of these finds.
New mummified human remains are regularly being discovered throughout the world, particularly in the arid regions of South America’s Pacific coast, along the Nile Valley in Egypt and Sudan, and throughout China’s Traim Basin. New technologies and advanced imaging techniques being used on these new finds and for reexaminations of previously recovered mummies in museum collections will inevitably reveal additional evidence of tattooing in the ancient world. Although Ötzi presently holds the title of “World’s Oldest Tattoos,” future research may well identify preserved ink predating the marks of the Tyrolean Iceman.
Aaron Deter-Wolf is a Prehistoric Archaeologist for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology and an adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University, where he teaches the Anthropology of Tattooing. In 2013 he co-edited the volumeDrawing with Great Needles: Ancient Tattoo Traditions of North AmericaYou can follow his research here.
Ancient DNA reveals how farming rapidly changed European genetic history
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills
New evidence has shown that 8,500 years ago, Turkish populations forever changed the lives of ancient Europeans—both historically and genetically. However, scientists have been hard-pressed to study exactly what these changes were, as typically they could only extract enough DNA necessary for intensive study from modern subjects.
“It’s a great mystery how present-day populations got to be the way we are today, both in terms of how our ancestors moved around and intermingled and how populations developed the adaptations that help us survive a bit better in the different environments in which we live,” said co-senior author David Reich, professor of genetics at HMS, in a statement. “Now that ancient DNA is available at the genome-wide scale and in large sample sizes, we have an extraordinary new instrument for studying these questions.”
Thanks to new DNA extraction and analysis techniques, researchers can now directly see how natural selection happened in ancient humans by examining their DNA—and have found support for the idea that Europe’s first farmers arrived from Turkey.
“It allows us to put a time and date on selection and to directly associate selection with specific environmental changes, in this case the development of agriculture and the expansion of the first farmers into Europe,” explained Iain Mathieson, a research fellow in genetics at Harvard Medical School and first author of the study.
According to the study, which is published in Nature, the researchers studied the genes of 230 people who lived in Europe, Siberia, or Turkey between 8,500 to 3,000 years ago—allowing them to create the largest collection of genome-wide datasets from ancient human remains to date. These datasets then allowed them to identify specific genes that changed during and after Europe’s transition from hunting and gathering to farming.
Why we can drink milk
From the Turkish migrants arose changes on or near genes associated with taller height, the new ability to digest lactose as an adult, light skin pigmentation, and blue eye color. Other variants affected fatty acid metabolism, vitamin D absorption, and immunity—which makes sense, according to co-author Wolfgang Haak.
“The Neolithic period involved an increase in population density, with people living close to one another and to domesticated animals,” he said, meaning that changes to immunity were necessary to keep the population healthy.
“Although that finding did not come fully as a surprise,” he added. “It was great to see the selection happening in ‘real time.'”
Besides helping scientists pinpoint how and when these genes came about, they also show that farming was most likely brought into Europe by Turkish migrants.
“From an archaeological perspective, it’s quite amazing,” said co-senior author Ron Pinhasi, associate professor of archaeology at University College Dublin. “The Neolithic revolution is perhaps the most important transition in human prehistory. We now have proof that people did actually go from Anatolia into Europe and brought farming with them. For more than 40 years, people thought it was impossible to answer that question.
“Second, we now have evidence that genetic selection occurred along with the changes in lifestyle and demography, and that selection continued to happen following the transition.”
Navy research shows how some fish make themselves ‘invisible’
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
The combination of specific elements in their silvery skin and a particular type of light are what make some types of fish appear to essentially invisible in the open water, a new study funded by the US Navy and published in the latest edition of the journal Science has discovered.
According to National Geographic, University of Texas, Austin biologists Molly Cummings and Parish Brady constructed a slowly-spinning device similar to a weather vane with four arms. One of the arms was equipped with a high-tech camera that monitored a net used to catch fish on the opposite side—where it took photographs of actual ocean fish.
Experts had already suspected that certain types of fish, including the lookdown and the bigeye scad, could reflect light using their skin. However, by placing their device in the waters near the Florida Keys and Curaçao, the authors of the new study were able to confirm that these fish had tiny structures in their skin known as platelets that could reflect polarized light (light that moves along a single plane), rendering them all but invisible.
Scientists had previously detected these platelets, but had previously been able to confirm if they were used to help the fish hide in polarized light. Not only do they provide camouflage, the study authors found, but they do a better job of it than previously anticipated, particularly in the bigeye scad, which showed less contrast than near-shore fish and mirrors held in the fish nets.
Natural camouflage could be used in next-gen stealth tech
The UT-Austin team’s research was funded by the Navy as part of the military’s effort to learn how some fish are able to hide so well in plain sight underwater, and how this ability might be used in order to develop next-gen stealth technology, according to theWashington Post.
As Brady told the newspaper, the Navy has been searching for ways to hide vessels in the deep open waters for several years. The new research brings them a step closer to achieving that goal, he added, but precisely when and how such technology could come about remains unclear.
“If we can identify that process, then we can improve upon our own camouflage technology for that environment,” Cummings told the Post, calling the research “a great example of how human applications can take advantage of evolutionary solutions and the value of evolutionary biology. It’s important for people to recognize that we take advantage of evolutionary processes and solutions all the time and that even our military does.”
She and Brady studied the fish from more than 1,500 angles, and found that they were hardest to see in what they refer to as “chase angles” of 45 degrees from head or tail, which predators use to pursue their intended victims and which the fish themselves use to hunt prey. The next step, they said, will be to see if the fish can enhance these abilities by intentionally moving platelets.
These genetically modified mosquitos could end malaria for good
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
Scientists from the Universities of California’s Irvine and San Diego campuses have come up with a way to potentially end the scourge of malaria—a disease the CDC estimates killed half a million people in 2013— with the genetically modification of mosquitoes.
According to CNN and Engadget, mosquitoes that spread malaria typically do so because they are infected with parasitic bacteria from the genus Plasmodium. Scientists were previously able to breed mosquitoes resistant to this bacteria, but in the new study, they discovered how to spread this resistance to the rest of a population through DNA manipulation.
As they explain in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors used the CRISPR-9 gene editing technique to insert a pair of genes which are responsible for encoding resistance to the parasitic bacteria onto the chromosomes of an Anopheles stephensi mosquito, a known vector for the disease.
Their method guarantees that the genes will be passed along to offspring, and they reported a 99.5 percent success rate in spreading the resistance to future generations. If these mosquitoes were to be released into the wild, they said, the bacteria-resistant genes would spread much more quickly than the vulnerable genes, effectively keeping the bugs from spreading malaria to humans.
A ‘significant first step’ in the fight against the disease
Additional testing and possible large scale field studies are required, and the scientists emphasize that there are also ethical and regulatory obstacles to overcome before their approach can be used in real-world conditions. However, as they told CNN, this is a significant first step.
“This opens up the real promise that this technique can be adapted for eliminating malaria,” said Anthony James, a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, as well as microbiology and molecular genetics, at UC Irvine. “We know the gene works. The mosquitoes we created are not the final brand, but we know this technology allows us to efficiently create large populations.”
James and his colleagues have been working on modifying mosquitoes in order to prevent them from spreading diseases for nearly two decades. In 2012, he demonstrated that antibodies from a mouse’s immune system that impair the biology of the parasite could be adapted and introduced into mosquitoes, but this trait would only be inherited by roughly half of future insects.
The new breakthrough comes with the help of UCSD biologists Ethan Bier and Valentino Gantz, who came up with a method to generate mutations in both copies of a gene in fruit flies using the CRISPR-associated Cas9 nuclease enzyme. The two groups joined forces and together developed a genetic “cassette” they injected into mosquito embryos to insert antimalaria antibodies.
Blue Origins successfully lands its reusable rocket before Elon Musk’s SpaceX
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
For the first time, a rocket has traveled to space and made a soft-landing upon its return, allowing it to be reused for future missions. But it wasn’t SpaceX—the Elon Musk-led company that’s been attempting to accomplish the feat for more than a year—that pulled it off.
Rather, as Engadget and The Verge reported on Tuesday, Blue Origin—the privately-owned and operated aerospace development and manufacturing company established by Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos—took off from a West Texas location and reached a target test altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) before returning to its launch pad and successfully landing.
In a statement, Bezos said that Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft “flew a flawless mission”. It made it to its target height before “returning through 119-mph high-altitude crosswinds,” then completed “a gentle, controlled landing just four and a half feet from the center of the pad. “We can’t wait to fuel up and fly again,” he added.
SpaceX could be set to try again in December
Named in honor of Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space, the New Shepard is a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle capable of carrying six crew members to altitudes of more than 100 kilometers—the internationally-recognized boundary of space.
According to Engadget, during Tuesday’s test flight, the rocket and crew capsule separated after it made it to a suborbital altitude of 100.5 km (62 miles). The capsule then separated and used a parachute to touch down, while the rocket itself descended to an altitude of approximately 5,000 feet. It then fired its rockets and made a controlled vertical landing at a velocity of 4.4 mph.
The technique used to land New Shepard is called a propulsive landing, The Verge explained, and while it is similar to the method used by SpaceX, the latter hopes to have its Falcon 9 land vertically on an autonomous floating spaceport in the ocean, the website noted. Unlike Bezos’s team, however, Musk hopes to have his rocket reach orbital, not suborbital, altitudes.
Both rockets separate at a height of about 50 miles, Engadget said, but the Falcon 9 does so at a speed of close to Mach 10 while the New Shepard travels just Mach 3.7. Musk’s program had a major setback following its last attempt, when the Falcon 9 exploded while trying to land on its floating landing platform. However, USA Today reported that SpaceX plans to try again during its next launch, which may come as early as next month.
Volcanoes didn’t really affect dinosaur extinction, study says
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills
Volcanoes may have had less of an impact on the extinction of the dinosaurs than previously thought, according to a new study out of the University of Leeds.
Before, asteroid impacts and long-term volcanic reactions were both considered major players in early mass extinction events, propelling gas and dust into the atmosphere that altered the climate for years. But the repercussions of volcanic sulfur dioxide emissions wasn’t entirely sure—until now.
The study, which is published in Nature Geoscience, provides the first quantitative estimate of the impact these gases had on the Earth’s climate.
“At the time when the dinosaurs reigned, numerous long-lasting eruptions took place over the course of about a million years,” explained lead author Dr. Anja Schmidt, from the university’s School of Earth and Environment, in a statement. “These eruptions, called ‘continental flood basalts’ were not like volcanic eruptions we often see today, with lava gushing from the ground like a curtain of fire.
“Each eruption is likely to have lasted years, even decades, and eruptions were separated by periods without volcanic activity. The lava produced by an eruption of average intensity would have filled 150 Olympic-size swimming pools per minute.”
This certainly seems like something that would bring about the dinos’ demise—but the study found otherwise. Instead, the computer simulation created by the researchers found that the effects were far less devastating.
Volcanoes not very impactful
After inputting information on the duration and intensity of these continental flood basalt eruptions, the simulation was able to estimate the climactic and environmental changes that occurred thanks to the sulfur dioxide emissions. Researchers discovered that these eruptions did, in fact, make the Earth cooler, by as much as 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
However, assuming that climate feedbacks were similar to what we see today, these temperature changes only lasted for about 50 years before returning to normal—making the impact much less enduring than expected.
“Perhaps most intriguingly, we found that the effects of acid rain on vegetation were rather selective. Vegetation in some but not all parts of the world would have died off, whereas in other areas the effects would have been negligible,” said Schmidt.
Which means that, in light of this study, previous theories concerning mass extinctions and volcanoes will have to be re-examined for their accuracy.
“We now need to better understand how long both the individual eruptions and the periods without volcanic activity lasted,” Schmidt added.
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Feature Image: Michelle Parks (University of Iceland)
New drug uses stem cells to heal bones more efficiently
Written By: Shayne Jacopian
Emily Bills
Researchers at the University of Southampton in the UK are currently developing a drug that manipulates stem cells and makes broken bones heal more quickly and more completely, according to a statement from the university.
Inspired by amphibians that can regrow lost limbs—such as salamanders—the drug activates the “Wnt” molecular pathway in bone, causing a bone sample’s stem cells to divide and create more bone cells.
Futurity reports that the Wnt pathway is found in everything from sponges to humans and significantly influences an animal’s growth. It also controls the growth of stem cells that help to restore injured tissue, so manipulating the pathway with a drug to spur the production of more stem cells makes for a speedier and more complete recovery.
“Bone fractures are a big problem in society, especially in older people,” says Dr. Nick Evans, Ph.D., associate professor of bioengineering at the university and the lead author of the study.
“Through our research, we are trying to find ways to chemically stimulate Wnt signaling using drugs. To achieve this, we selectively deliver proteins and other molecules that change Wnt signaling specifically to stem cells, particularly in the bone. This may help us find cures for many diseases, including bone disease, and speed up bone healing after fracture.”
Drug will prevent complications in elderly
Dr. Evans notes that if the pathway is chemically activated for too long, the regenerative effects can be lost or reversed, highlighting the importance of timed and targeted delivery of Wnt stimulating drugs and explaining how that was a major focus in the team’s research.
Dr. Evans says that this drug will prevent many of the complications that can arise from bone fractures, especially in the elderly.
“It is getting worse as more people get older and their risk of fracture increases. Most fractures heal completely by themselves, but a surprising number, around 10 percent, take over six months to heal, or never heal at all. In the worst cases this can lead to several surgical operations, or even amputation.”
The research is published in the journal Stem Cells.
New Horizons time lapse image shows a day in the life of Pluto
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
Images taken both of the dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon during New Horizons’ recent flyby of the system near the edge of the solar system have been combined to offer a sneak-peak at a day-in-the-life of both objects, NASA officials announced on Friday.
According to CNET and Astronomy Magazine, the pictures were taken on the US space agency spacecraft’s approach this past summer and were captured from distances ranging from 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) and 400,000 miles (645,000 kilometers). Once combined, they show Pluto and Charon each completing a full rotation—a process that takes 6.4 Earth days.
The images were taken using New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera between July 7 and July 14. Fuzzier images that were taken from a greater distance show the heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio, and those showing the greatest detail depict what NASA’s mission team refers to as the “encounter hemisphere”.
Like Pluto, Charon was photographed from a variety of distances, but since it lacks the dramatic surface features of its planet, it is more difficult to differentiate between what is being featured in each image. However, as CNET pointed out, close examination reveals variations some light and dark areas, as well as canyons that rotate out of view as the moon’s day progresses.
Time lapse images just some of the data provided by New Horizons
In addition to the pictures used to create the time lapse photos, New Horizons also beamed back images last week that will be used to improve makes of other regions, the Daily Mail reported on Saturday. One of those pictures showed more details of the prominent dark spot known as Krum Macula, while another highlighted the color differences of Pluto’s different areas.
Data obtained by the spacecraft has found what may be giant ice volcanoes on the South Pole of the dwarf planet’s surface, including one (Wright Mons) thought to be between 1.8 and 3.1 miles (3.0 to 5.0 kilometers) high and another (Piccard Mons) up to 3.5 miles (6 kilometers) high. Both of these structures have deep depressions and may have been active relatively recently.
New Horizons is currently en route to a tiny Kuiper Belt object called 2014 MU69. This 30 mile wide object was selected as the probe’s next target in object, and while it is believed to be up to 10 times larger than the average comet, it is just one percent the size of Pluto. New Horizons will arrive at MU69 sometime in 2019, according to media reports.
These weird sea creatures inspire body armor with built-in optics
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
A team of MIT researchers are drawing inspiration from a type of aquatic creatures known as chitons—who have miniature eyes embedded directly in their hard protective shells—to develop new body armor with built-in optics that could be used to monitor surroundings.
MIT professor Christine Ortiz, as well as colleagues from the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based institute, Harvard University and elsewhere, reported in the latest edition of the journal Science that the chiton Acanthopleura granulata possesses “an integrated sensory system” that “includes hundreds of eyes with aragonite-based lenses,” providing both sight and protection.
These ceramic-plated eyes, the authors explained in a statement, could potentially be adapted to protective gear for soldiers or individuals working in hazardous environments. During a series of experiments, the researchers demonstrated that the chitons’ eyes are functional enough to form a focused image, allowing it to monitor its environment without sacrificing their safety.
The rest of Acanthopleura granulata’s shell is opaque, MIT graduate and Harvard postdoc Ling Li noted. Only the eyes are transparent, and through the use of high-resolution X-ray tomography and theoretical models, the team was able to discover that they are capable of focusing light and forming images in the photoreceptive chamber both in the water and in the air.
Not too small to form images after all
Chitons, which are about the size of a potato chip, tend to be more flexible than other mollusks due to the fact that their shells are comprised of eight separate plates overlapping each other, the MIT researchers explained. They live in the intertidal zone—meaning that they can be underwater or exposed to the air at different times—and can be found in many parts of the world.
Using equipment located at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, Ortiz, Li, and their fellow scientists examined the 3D architecture of the creatures’ eyes, which are less than one-tenth of millimeter in diameter. They also used material characterization techniques to figure out the size and the orientation of the crystalline grains that make up their lenses—something that Li said is essential to better understanding their optical capabilities.
They were able to successfully demonstrate for the first time that these tiny eyes were capable of forming focuses images and were not merely basic photoreceptive units. While some experts had believed that the eyes were too small and that such a tiny lens would be unable to form an image, the MIT team said that they were able to isolate some of them and prove otherwise.
Their findings could eventually result in the development of biologically-inspired materials that could provide both physical protection and optical visibility simultaneously, Li said. Peter Fratzl, a professor of biomaterials at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces not involved in the work, said that the eyes were “a truly impressive example of a multifunctional material.”
The demise of one of its moons may one day mean that Mars wind up with Saturn-like rings of dust and debris, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and the City College of New York reported in Monday’s edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.
According to Popular Science and the Washington Post, previous research has revealed that the Red Planet’s gravitational forces are slowly causing its moon Phobos to crumble. What the latest study reveals, though, is that the moon’s complete destruction, which will take place in about 20 to 40 million years, could end up with its remains floating in orbit around Mars.
In their study, geologist Benjamin Black and graduate student Tushar Mittal explained that these rings could form quickly once the moon begins to break apart—and could remain around Mars for a period of between one million and 100 million years. The other alternative, they noted, is that it will simply crash into the planet’s surface, but that appears to be the less likely scenario.
Phobos is currently just 3,700 miles from the Red Planet (compared to the nearly 240,000 miles separating the Earth and Moon) and it is moving about six feet closer each century, said Popular Science. Based on the fact that the interior of the satellite is weakly held together, the researchers believe that gravity will eventually pull it apart, causing particles to form a ring.
Weak internal structure could spell doom for Phobos
Black and Mittal wrote that they analyzed the different potential outcomes based on geologic, spectral, and theoretical constraints, and found that since Phobos is made up of heavily damaged materials, its weakest parts would disperse tidally as it continued migrating towards the surface of Mars. The resulting rings would be similar in some ways to Saturn’s.
“Compared to Saturn’s rings, we expect a future Martian ring to be much smaller and contain much less material,” Black said to Popular Science. “But because that material will be spread over a smaller ring area, we predict that the initial density of a ring formed from the breakup of Phobos could rival or exceed the density of Saturn’s rings.
“Any large fragment of Phobos that is strong enough to escape tidal breakup will eventually collide with Mars in an oblique, low-velocity impact,” he and Mittal wrote. “Our analysis of the evolution of Phobos underscores the potential orbital and topographic consequences of the growth and self-destruction of other inwardly migrating moons, including those that met their demise early in our Solar System’s history.”
Should any catastrophic breakup take place, it would happen between 300 and 3,000 miles above the planet’s surface, the authors added. They suggest that future missions to the moon could shed new light on its composition and structure, and thus what ultimately will happen to it as it moves closer and closer to Mars’ surface.
So, researchers just made tiny robots modeled after pine cones
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Emily Bills
Plants don’t always need sunshine to get the energy necessary to move; sometimes humidity supplied by the air is all they need. Now, researchers from Seoul National University have co-opted this technique into tiny robots, allowing them to move without a battery, the sun, or any other electrical methods—meaning these robots could work almost perpetually, and in areas without electrical supply.
In certain plants and seeds, this technique of motion is fairly simple.
“Some seeds consist of a head that contains all its genetic information, along with a long appendage called an ‘awn’ that is responsible for locomotion — just like an animal’s sperm,” explained co-author Ho-Young Kim, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Seoul National University, in a statement.
“Awns are composed of two tissue layers: one that swells with humidity (active), and another that’s insensitive to humidity change (inactive).”
So, as humidity increases, the active layer swells, causing the two tissue layers (otherwise known as the bilayer) to bend together. When the humidity drops, the bilayer unbends, and over time, the seeds end up with a slow wriggling motion that helps propel them into the soil.
“We mimicked the bilayer structure to make an actuator that can generate motions by using environmental humidity change,” said Kim.
So as the active layer of the robot swells, its bilayer bends, propelling it forward.
“This cyclic motion must be converted into directional motion to create a robot that moves,” said Kim. “So we attached legs to our actuator, which allows only one-directional locomotion. We call the legs ‘ratchets’ and combined them with an actuator to build our bio-inspired robot.”
Robots extra receptive to humidity
Of course, the motion of seeds is quite slow; the amount of change in humidity necessary for flexing often requires the sunrise or sunset. But the researchers designed their robots to be extra receptive to humidity.
“Plants move slowly — one cycle of bending and unbending can take an entire day,” Kim said. “To increase the response speed of the bilayer, we had to develop a novel way to fabricate the active layer. Its response speed increases with the surface-area-to-volume ratio of the layer because humidity can be absorbed more rapidly, so we deposited active nanoscale fibers onto an inactive layer.”
Thanks to this technology, the robots are sensitive enough to be able to walk using the humidity gradient surrounding human skin.
“The concept is that by bending, some part of the robot will move away from the [humid] skin to encounter dry atmospheric air. When it dries, the robot will return to an upright position near the skin,” he said.
Once returned, the robot will swell with humidity again, ratcheting the legs forward, before shrinking in the drier air away from the skin. And the cycle continues again and again.
Which means these robots could have countless uses, including medical ones, “like disinfecting wounds, removing skin wrinkles, and nourishing skin tissues,” Kim said.
By taking the vascular system of living roses and directly merging them with both analog and digital electronic circuits, researchers from Linköping University in Sweden have developed the first-ever cyborg plant, officials from the institution announced on Friday.
Professor Magnus Berggren of the Linköping Laboratory of Organic Electronics (LOE) and his colleagues were able to fabricate wires, digital logic circuits, and even display elements in plants that they believe could lead to new developments in the fields of organic electronics and botany. Their findings were published last week in the journal Science Advances.
“The roots, stems, leaves, and vascular circuitry of higher plants are responsible for conveying the chemical signals that regulate growth and functions,” the study authors explained. “From a certain perspective, these features are analogous to the contacts, interconnections, devices, and wires of discrete and integrated electronic circuits.”
While there have been several previous attempts to augment a plant’s functions with electronic materials, this marks the first time that biology and technology have been directly merged in this manner, Berggren’s team added. They used the xylem, leaves, veins, and signals of the plant as a template to create the four key components of a circuit in their so-called cyborg plant.
Giving a new meaning to the term ‘power plant’
While the researchers explain that plants are complex organisms that depend on the transport of ionic signals and hormones to perform essential functions, they operate on a slower time scale, which makes them more difficult to study and interact with. Using technology, however, electric signals could be used to augment these natural chemical and biological processes.
By integrating electronics into plants—using them to either control or interface with chemical pathways—the scientists hope to create fuel cells that can harvest energy from photosynthesis, as well as find an alternative method of optimizing plants that would reduce or eliminate the need to genetically modify them.
“Previously, we had no good tools for measuring the concentration of various molecules in living plants,” study co-author Ove Nilsson, of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, said in a statement. “Now we’ll be able to influence the concentration of the various substances in the plant that regulate growth and development. Here, I see great possibilities for learning more.”
“As far as we know, there are no previously published research results regarding electronics produced in plants. No one’s done this before,” added Professor Berggren. “Now we can really start talking about ‘power plants’ – we can place sensors in plants and use the energy formed in the chlorophyll, produce green antennas, or produce new materials. Everything occurs naturally, and we use the plants’ own very advanced, unique systems.”
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Feature Image: Laboratory of Organic Electronics
Kids on medications for ADHD more likely to get bullied, study says
Written By: Brett Smith
John
Drugs like Ritalin give children coping with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder a better chance of achieving the same academic success as their peers, but these drugs also make these kids targets for bullies.
According to a study set to be published in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology, kids prescribed medications for ADHD are twice as likely to be bullied by their peers as those who don’t have the developmental condition.
In a statement, the study team said they were particularly interested students who had been prescribed medication for ADHD, but whose medicine had “diverted” to individuals other than the intended recipient and kids with no diagnosis for ADHD.
“Many youth with ADHD are prescribed stimulant medications to treat their ADHD and we know that these medications are the most frequently shared or sold among adolescents,” said study author Quyen Epstein-Ngo, a licensed clinical psychologist at the University of Michigan.
Of those who were prescribed ADHD medications, 20 percent said they were approached regarding selling or sharing them, and about half of them said they did.
Epstein-Ngo said potential for bullying or increased peer pressure should be taken into account when youths are diagnosed with ADHD.
“Having a diagnosis of ADHD has lifelong consequences,” she said. “These youth aren’t living in isolation. As they transition into adulthood, the social effects of their ADHD diagnosis will impact a broad range of people with whom they come into contact.” This shouldn’t discourage parents from the medications
The study author emphasized that her team’s findings shouldn’t discourage parents from giving their kids medication.
“For some children stimulant medications are immensely helpful in getting through school,” Epstein-Ngo said. “This study doesn’t say ‘don’t give your child medication.’ It suggests that it’s really important to talk to your children about who they tell.”
The Michigan researcher also said the study should hopefully increase compassion for those kids who are diagnosed with ADHD.
“I think the biggest misconception about ADHD is that these kids aren’t trying hard enough, and that’s just not the case,” she said. “If these kids could do better they would. With the proper support and treatment they can overcome this.”
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
Even going up twelve stories in an elevator leaves some of us wondering just how reliable this thing is—so if we were heading up into space in an elevator we’d want to know it was made of pretty strong stuff.
That stuff, if such an elevator was ever to be built, could be a new carbon-based wonder material that could rival graphene: diamond nanothreads. The one-dimensional carbon crystals are as strong as a diamond, but could conceivably build a space elevator that doesn’t cost as much as 5 squillion engagement rings (we admit we haven’t quite done the math on this).
The one lab that has so far produced the nanothreads, at Penn State University, hasn’t made it clear how easy it would to be to mass produce the fibers, and there’s a concern they will become increasingly brittle as they get longer (obviously a bit of a worry where space elevators are concerned).
However, according to Gizmodo, a recent modeling study from a team at the Queensland University of Technology shows that when molecular defects are inserted into the otherwise repetitive benzene ring structure of a diamond nanothread, the fiber becomes highly ductile. With the right molecular design, the researchers suggest, the diamond nanothreads could be “ideal for the creation of extremely strong three-dimensional nano-architectures.”
Could a space elevator really happen?
Space elevators are still, of course, a little far-fetched. But a 2015 documentary, Sky Line, details how the idea has been taken seriously at the highest levels, and how a lack of the right material—rather than a failure to grasp the science—has been a major sticking point.
Not long before the idea was described in Arthur C. Clarke’s 1979 novel,Fountains of Paradise, NASA space scientist Jerome Pearson had suggested it more academically in Acta Astronautica.
A quarter century later, in the early 2000s, physicist Bradley Edwards and space entrepreneur Michael Laine were commissioned by NASA to write a paper examining the technical feasibility of a space elevator.
The Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003 and the global financial crisis that began in 2007 both put dampeners on such left field projects and concepts, but the space elevator idea has begun to gain ground once again.
“I believe the space elevator is inevitable,” Sky Line’s director Miguel Drake-McLaughlin said. “It’s the timing that’s hard to predict, since it requires a major materials breakthrough.”
As graphene and now diamond nanothreads prove, materials science is a field in which things are happening fast.
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
Story Image: John Badding Lab / Penn State University
Deforestation threatens extinction of half Amazon tree species
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills
The Brazilian nut tree and the plants that produce produce cacao and açaí palm are among the more than 50 percent of tree species threatened by deforestation in Amazon, according to new research published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
The project, which involved more than 150 researchers from 100 institutions in 21 countries, also found that the number of globally threatened plant species may increase by about 22 percent, and that the number of globally threatened tree species could spike by more than one-third.
“We aren’t saying that the situation in the Amazon has suddenly gotten worse for tree species,” Dr. Nigel Pitman, an ecologist with the Field Museum in Chicago, said in a statement. “We’re just offering a new estimate of how tree species have been affected by historical deforestation, and how they’ll be affected by forest loss in the future.”
Stricter regulations key to limiting losses
Dr. Pitman and his colleagues had previously reported that the Amazon is home to more than 15,000 species of trees. Their new research, based on information from 1,485 two-acre plots of land, estimates that as many as 8,690 of them could face extinction due to deforestation.
Once they had collecting enough data, they created computer simulations based on two different scenarios, the New York Times explained. In one, the “business as usual” model, an estimated 40 percent of the original Amazon forests would disappear by 2050. In the second, which involved a stricter series of regulations, an estimated 21 percent of the forest would meet such a fate.
Furthermore, the team reported that under the first model, 8,690 of current tree species should be considered threatened, while under the second model, only 5,515 should be. Since similar trends are applicable throughout the tropics, Dr. Pitman’s team argues that most of the 40,000-plus tree species in this part of the world are likely also at risk of dying out completely.
While more than half of the Amazon basin is now covered by indigenous territory and protected areas, threatened species can only be saved if they experience no further degradation, they said. As co-author William Laurance from Australia’s James Cook University explained: “It’s a battle we’re going to see play out in our lifetimes. Either we stand up and protect these critical parks… or deforestation will erode them until we see large-scale extinctions.”
As it turns out, Atlantis* wasn’t the only ancient Greek island people lost track of. Ancient records indicate that there were Arginusae islands off the coast of Turkey, but only two exist in modern times, leading to a mystery archaeologists were unable to solve—until recently, that is, because an international team believes they have now found it.
The island—which hosted the ancient city of Kane—was noted in antiquity for being near to the site of the famous naval Battle of Arginusae in 406 BCE. Arginusae was between the two most famous Ancient Greek city-states—Athens and Sparta—during the second Peloponnesian War. Athens won this battle, but lost the war, and was stripped of its democracy until Thrasybulus reinstated it in 403 BCE.
But then, in the centuries following, the island mysteriously vanished. Finally, modern researchers had an interesting idea. Maybe the island still existed, but just in a different form—like in the peninsula that was located near the other two Argunusae islands. After drilling for samples in the ground of the peninsula, as National Geographic reported, the geographical evidence revealed that the peninsula was indeed the lost island; the narrow gap that had existed between it and the mainland had simply filled in centuries ago.
As to when exactly a land bridge formed between the island and the mainland, researchers don’t know for certain. Current evidence shows that it became a peninsula before the late Middle Ages, as a 16th century Ottoman map shows.
It’s guessed that the narrow channel was simply filled in with sediment over time, or perhaps an earthquake triggered the change, but currently the scientists are unsure. Radiocarbon dating will provide a better understanding of how and when it happened.
Citizens in Kane
The small city of Kane on the lost island was once a layover point in a major trade route running from the Black Sea along the southern coast of Turkey, with its large harbor often sought to protect ships from sudden storms.
Pottery previously found on the peninsula suggested its significance in the trade route—although at the time, it wasn’t suspected to be the lost island. New evidence uncovered, however, also points to the peninsula being the island, as the researchers discovered the submerged remains of an ancient seaport dating from the Hellenistic period—a time from approximately 323 to 31 BCE that follows the death of Alexander the Great and leads up to the victory of Octavian (later renamed Augustus) in Actium.
And there is more proof yet to come. “Classical archaeology has become much more complex than, say, 20 years ago,” Felix Pirson, director of the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul, told National Geographic. “We can now incorporate many more subtle techniques of studying environmental influences.
*It’s actually not clear if Atlantis ever existed. The only written record we have of it is from Plato—who loved to use metaphor and allegory to make philosophical commentary. It is very possible Atlantis was invented to prove a point.
Do you like oxygen? Thank this ancient blue-green algae
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Brian Galloway
Some 2.5 billion years ago, Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere emerged on the scene, all thanks to the photosynthesis of blue-green algae, according to a new study from a team of Canadian and American researchers.
For the next 100 million years, the oxygen continued to build, eventually leading to a permanent change in the oxygen levels around 2.4 billion years ago—which is known as the Great Oxidation Event.
“The onset of Earth’s surface oxygenation was likely a complex process characterized by multiple whiffs of oxygen until a tipping point was crossed,” said co-author Brian Kendall, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Waterloo, in a statement.
“Until now, we haven’t been able to tell whether oxygen concentrations 2.5 billion years ago were stable or not. These new data provide a much more conclusive answer to that question.”
Blue-green oxygen fiends
The data, as published in Science Advances, lends credence to the notion that the sudden burst of oxygen arose thanks to photosynthetic cyanobacteria—or blue-green algae.
“One of the questions we ask is: ‘Did the evolution of photosynthesis lead directly to an oxygen-rich atmosphere? Or did the transition to today’s world happen in fits-and-starts?’” asked co-author Professor Ariel Anbar of Arizona State University.
“How and why Earth developed an oxygenated atmosphere is one of the most profound puzzles in understanding the history of our planet.”
Anbar himself previously studied the matter in 2007, when he and his team found evidence of these oxygen whiffs in black shales that had once been sediment deposited on the ancient ocean floor before the Great Oxidation Event.
These shales contained high concentrations of two chemical elements that are sensitive to the presence of atmospheric oxygen: molybdenum and rhenium. When these elements react with oxygen, they are released into rivers, leading into to the ocean—where they deposit on the ocean floor and eventually become shale.
Now, the same shales were studied again—this time for the presence of osmium isotopes. The ratio of two specific isotopes, osmium 187 and osmium 188, indicates where the osmium came from—either land or an underwater volcano. Osmium sourced from land would indicate that it was pushed into the water by the presence of oxygen.
The ratio of the isotopes indicates that the osmium was deposited in the ocean thanks to oxygen-driven continental weathering—helping to confirm that algae released whiffs of oxygen that eventually led to the Great Oxidation event around 2.4 billion years ago.
Japanese scientists tie brain structure to happiness
Written By: Susanna Pilny
Brian Galloway
Most people want to feel like Pharrell Williams on a daily basis: Happy, and like a room without a roof (whatever that means). Of course, wanting happiness and achieving it are two very different things, but a new study out of Japan may hold the key, as they have tied a specific brain structure to happiness.
The research, conducted by a team from Kyoto University, has concluded that happiness comes from a combination of factors verging on a brain structure known as the precuneus—a part of the brain found in the medial parietal lobe, which has previously been associated with consciousness and sense of self.
These factors were life satisfaction and emotional happiness—which psychologists have linked together before to define the experience of being happy. The exact neural mechanism, however, has been unclear—but understanding it would go a long way toward both objectively studying happiness and increasing it.
Finding the “happy lobe”
And so, the researchers scanned the brains of 51 participants via MRI. The same participants also answered a survey regarding their general happiness, the intensity of their emotions, and level of satisfaction with their lives.
As reported in Scientific Reports, those who scored higher on happiness the survey showed more grey matter mass in the precuneus—meaning those who felt happiness more intensely, sadness less intensely, and were more able to find meaning in their lives had a larger precuneus.
“Over history, many eminent scholars like Aristotle have contemplated what happiness is,” said lead author Wataru Sato in a statement. “I’m very happy that we now know more about what it means to be happy.”
“Several studies have shown that meditation increases grey matter mass in the precuneus,” he added. “This new insight on where happiness happens in the brain will be useful for developing happiness programs based on scientific research.”
New instrument could help make asteroid mining a reality
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
The development of a new generation of gamma-ray spectroscope could bring asteroid mining one step closer to fruition, as it appears to be capable of easily detecting veins of gold, platinum and other precious metals hidden in space rocks, moons, and other floating objects.
The new spectroscope was developed by a team of scientists from Vanderbilt University, along with colleagues from Fisk University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, and was detailed in a paper published last month in SPIE Newsroom, the publication of the International Society for Optics and Photonics.
Planetary gamma-ray spectroscopy is based on the notion that every object in the solar system is constantly pelted by deep-space, high-energy particles called cosmic rays. When these rays hit an object’s surface at relativistic velocities, it produces a shower of neutrons that collide with atoms in the material, producing a type of electromagnetic radiation known as gamma rays.
The new device measures the intensity and the wavelengths of these powerful gamma rays, and the data can be analyzed to determine how much of key, rock-forming elements such as oxygen, magnesium, silicon, and iron are present in an object, as well as the amount of gold and diamonds each contains, the researchers explained in a statement.
More compact and energy efficient than comparable devices
“Space missions to the Moon, Mars, Mercury and the asteroid Vesta among others have included low-resolution spectrometers, but it has taken months of observation time and great expense to map their elemental surface compositions from orbit,” explained Vanderbilt astronomy professor and study co-author Keivan Stassun.
“With our proposed system it should be possible to measure sub-surface elemental abundances accurately, and to do it much more cheaply because our sensors weigh less and require less power to operate,” he added. “That is good news for commercial ventures where cost, power and launch weight are all at a premium.”
What makes the new spectrometer so valuable is its use of a recently discovered material called europium-doped strontium iodide (SrI2), which is a transparent crystal that can efficiently detect gamma rays by giving off flashes of light in the presence of these high-energy particles. While it isn’t as good as high purity germanium (HPGe) detector, the researchers noted that the SrI2 unit is far less bulky, consumes less energy and performs nearly as well as its counterpart.
While it could take several decades for the asteroid mining industry to begin thriving, experts believe that the first commercial mission in what is expected to be a multi-billion dollar market could launch within the next five years. Until then, the new spectroscope will be used to provide scientists with new details about the chemical compositions of asteroids, moons, minor planets and comets, which could enhance our knowledge of the early solar system.
An unusual, neon-blue creature spotted earlier this month on a beach in Queensland, Australia might resemble a tiny Targaryen dragon, but in reality the bizarre lifeform is a type of sea slug commonly called the Blue Dragon.
Video footage captured by locals show the amazing striped creature wriggling around the waters of Queensland’s Broadbent beach, and according to Tech Times and Mental Floss, it is officially named the Glaucus atlanticus. These slugs float on their backs and move using the water’s surface tension, and are typically found in moderate to tropical bodies of water.
The slug feeds on venomous jellyfish, but instead of being harmed by its prey’s toxic sting cells (nematocysts), the Blue Dragon digests them and stores the venom on the outside of its body. It uses this as a defense mechanism against would-be predators or nosy humans, and as one would expect, experts recommend not touching the slug, no matter how incredible it may look.
In addition, G. atlanticus, which typically grows to between 3-4 centimeters (1.18-1.57 inches) in length, uses its strange stripes as camouflage to hide from potential threats from both above and below. As it floats along, its blue underside helps it blend in with the water’s surface, while its silver back creates the illusion of the shimmering surface of its oceanic home.
A ‘beautiful’ but dangerous creature
The Blue Dragon slug featured in the video was discovered by Queensland resident Lucinda Fry on Thursday morning, according to the Gold Coast Bulletin. It was later identified by Kylie Pitt, a professor and marine invertebrates expert from Griffin University in nearby Brisbane.
In addition, atlanticus is a nudibranch, a type of soft-bodied marine creature that initially has a shell, then sheds it following its larval stage, Pitt explained. These gastropod mollusks are typically known for their striking shapes and colors, and according to the World Register of Marine Species, most of the 2,300 known nudibranch species are omnivorous predators and scavengers.
The Dodo, a website dedicated to animal-related stories, said that the Blue Dragons are “rarely seen by humans” but are “probably among the most beautiful animals on the planet.” The video, they added, provides “a fleeting glimpse of one of Earth’s prettiest inhabitants” – an unusual title for a slug to have, if we’re perfectly honest.
New research from the United Kingdom has some interesting results. The findings? There might actually be a blood test that could diagnose the common pain syndrome fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia is a pain condition that causes widespread muscle pain, aches, chronic fatigue, and disturbed sleep. Because fibromyalgia has no obvious cause and is not well understood, it’s very hard for doctors to diagnose and treat the condition. For years doctors weren’t even sure if fibromyalgia even existed, which was so frustrating for sufferers. Although fibromyalgia has a lot of mystery surrounding it to this day, there are luckily researchers out there who are looking for answers.
The researchers at King’s College London created a unique study to test the differences in blood between healthy adults and those with chronic pain conditions. And they did it by studying twins—one with a pain condition and one without.
Their hope is that scientists can use the results of this study to develop a blood test that will diagnose fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions, since they are so hard to diagnose currently.
The study will focus specifically on identifying markers on the outside of DNA that are typically associated with the on/off switch for certain genes. This “switching” is very important because it prevents genes from doing inappropriate processes, or keeps them from having recurring errors.
Because the research will study twins, it’s easy to note these changes in the DNA markers. This is a very effective way for researchers to find differences between healthy adults and those suffering from chronic pain conditions.
Once the results are gathered, scientists can use the noted erroneous DNA markers to develop a blood test to help diagnose the syndromes, as these markers could be an indicator for the diseases.
Dr. Natalie Carter, the head research liaison from Arthritis Research UK (who funded the study at King’s College London), says, “Fibromyalgia is notoriously difficult to diagnose and treat, partly because we know so little about why it occurs and how it progresses. Being able to diagnose it would be a major step forward, and understanding more about the influence of genetics will allow us to develop treatments specifically for people with fibromyalgia in the future.”
The future is looking brighter than ever, now that researchers are paying attention to all the sufferers of fibromyalgia out there in the world.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson discusses getting freaky in space
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Ever watch a sci-fi movie where astronauts end up getting intimate in space, and wonder how that would work in real life? You are not alone, my friend: even some of the greatest minds in the scientific world have pondered the physics of zero-gravity intercourse.
Case in point: Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who earlier this week responded to a fan-submitted inquiry about sex in space during an episode of the National Geographic “Star Talk” program. The fan asked if there was anything different about making love while floating amongst the stars?
The astrophysicist, who clearly has given the topic a lot of thought, and perhaps conducted some research on the matter as well (pure speculation, of course), noted that one thing is very clear: the act of having sex would require couples to find a way to stay close while weightless.
“You’re floating in space and then you move towards someone and they just bounce off,” he said, according to CNET and Mashable. “If you want to get together and stay together, you need something to keep you together during all the normal body movements… So yeah, just bring a lot of leather belts to keep things strapped down and you’ll be just fine.”
Of course, these procedures are only necessary if astronauts are travelling in a zero gravity ship, Tyson explained, trying hard to maintain a serious attitude while discussing the matter. Vehicles that rotate in some way would produce enough artificial gravity for things to function normally, eliminating the need for leather belts (unless, of course, you’re into that sort of thing).
Not the first time that the issue of space-lovin’ has arisen
This is far from the first time that the topic of having sex in space has come up. Back in 2000, reports surfaced that American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts had made love in space as part of research project surfaced. The stories claimed the space travelers did the deed as part of a secret NASA project, but the claims were later discredited and proved to be merely a hoax.
The US space agency, according to reports, has denied any knowledge of astronauts having sex during an actual mission. However, researchers at the Mars Society told Wired that they believe that the topic should not be taboo, and that the issue of procreation should be investigated as part of preparations for a potential mission to the Red Planet.
“If you think about colonies historically, they are at some point supposed to become self-sufficient,” said Dr. Kris Lehnhardt, chief flight surgeon for the organization’s Mars Desert Research Station, a test facility that simulates conditions on the planet. “If you didn’t allow mating, you are not setting up a colony that would populate over time. And, in theory, they would die on Mars because there wouldn’t be a propagation of species.”
“There are basic human drives to have shelter, eat and procreate, so to negate not thinking about one of them, you’re doing a disservice to space exploration,” added Dr. Saralyn Mark, a women’s health specialist who consults with agencies, including NASA.
Helicopter drone may serve as scout for Mars 2020 rover
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
As part of an effort to ensure that the Mars 2020 rover does not share the same fate as one of its predecessors, NASA officials are reportedly planning to send a helicopter-like drone along with the next-gen vehicle to act as a guide during its journey and help it avoid hazards.
According to Popular Science, the US space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) facility in Pasadena, California is currently designing the drone and plans to have it perform reconnaissance for the rover, guiding it to locations of interest and keeping it out of potholes and sand traps.
Not only could this potentially triple the distance the rover could travel in a single day, it would keep it from getting stuck in a hazard, which is what happened to the Spirit rover in April 2009. Unable to gain enough traction to free itself, that rover effectively suffered a premature death.
Outgoing JPL chief Charles Elachi recently told Space News that the helicopter drone was not approved for the mission as of yet, but that researchers were working on technology that would “enable us to actually have a drone which will fly around the rover, survey the area in front of it and enable the rover to basically drive more efficiently.”
Solar-powered copter drone could fly three minutes per day
The drone, Elachi said following a luncheon speech on Capitol Hill, would survey the land and send data to the rover, which would then be able to navigate better as it collected rocks and dirt samples that would be stored for future missions to collect and return to Earth for analysis.
JPL first showed off its Mars helicopter drone in January, but had not previously linked it to the upcoming Mars 2020 project – or any other mission, for that matter. Space News reported that it would be a solar-powered UAV that could fly for up to three minutes each day, and the Pasadena lab is moving forward with proof-of-concept tests involving the drone.
The plan is to have a full-scale, one kilogram helicopter completed by March 2016, Elachi told the website. That drone will then be placed into a chamber and exposed to an exact replica of the Marian atmosphere. “We’ve done some tests,” he said, “and we’re confident it will [fly].”
Due to the thin atmosphere surrounding the Red Planet, however, that is not a given, as Popular Science noted. The drone will likely have to work much harder in order to remain airborne, and only time will tell if it is capable of such a feat. Elachi did state, however, that a full-scale Mars helicopter was successfully flown in a Mars atmosphere chamber earlier this year.
Women could improve their fertility with… a parasitic worm?
Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway
Couples attempting to have a child who struggle with fertility issues often try many unusual thingswith the hopes that they will increase their chances of conceiving: running less, eating a larger breakfast, avoiding specific types of fish, and even sleeping in total darkness.
But parasitic worms? That’s a new one. According to a recent study of more than 980 indigenous women from Bolivia, scientists have found that women infected by a specific species of roundworm were more likely to become pregnant and had an average of two more kids.
Lead author Aaron Blackwell, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues spent nine years studying the isolated Tsimane people residing in Bolivia’s lowlands, analyzing data to determine if these parasites had any impact on female fertility. As BBC News reported on Friday, they discovered that the answer was a resounding yes.
Infection by the roundworm Ascaris lumbricoides altered the women’s immune systems and made it easier for them to become pregnant, Blackwell’s team reported in the latest edition of the journal Science. The findings, they said, could lead to new types of fertility drugs.
Don’t try this at home, though (not yet, anyway)
In a press release, the UCSB researchers explained that they studied two different species of parasitic intestinal worms – hookworms (Necator americanus or Ancylostoma duodenale) and giant roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides) – to determine if either type of helminth had an impact on how soon a Tsimane woman’s next pregnancy would occur.
They found that hookworm infection tended to increase the intervals between births in women of all ages, but that younger females who were infected with roundworms were more likely to have shorter birth intervals than their non-infected counterparts. Over the course of a lifetime, mothers infected by hookworm would have two fewer children than uninfected women, while those with roundworms would have two additional children.
“These opposing effects are likely due to helminth infection affecting the immune system, which in turn affects the likelihood of conception,” Blackwell said in a statement. “Our findings suggest that helminth infections may have substantial effects on demographic patterns in developing populations. Further, these results may also have implications for fertility in developed populations, where many fertility problems are connected to autoimmune disorders.”
However, as he told BBC News, while using roundworms as a way to boost fertility may seem like an “intriguing possibility,” he cautioned that there was far more research that needed to be done “before we would recommend anyone try this.”
Patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia syndrome (or FMS) typically suffer from chronic widespread pain and fatigue. In addition to the pain and fatigue, fibromyalgia patients may also suffer from sleep disorders, morning stiffness, confusion, and bouts of depression and anxiety.
There are several medications that help sufferers deal with the pain on a daily basis. Luckily, for those with low vitamin-D levels, there are ways to help alleviate constant aches and pains without taking medications. This is great because often times patients suffer from loss of employment or a withdrawal of social lives.
Although there is no one cure for fibromyalgia and most medications only treat a few symptoms at a time, there is hope for patients.
A study published in PAIN Magazine hypothesized that vitamin D supplementation might reduce the degree of chronic pain experienced by fibromyalgia suffers who already have low levels of calcifediol.
Lead researcher Florian Wepner, MD, of the Department of Orthopaedic Pain Management, Spine Unit, Orthopaedic Hospital, Speising, Vienna, Austria said, “Low blood levels of calcifediol are especially common in patients with severe pain and fibromyalgia. But although the role of calcifediol in the perception of chronic pain is a widely discussed subject, we lack clear evidence of the role of vitamin D supplementation in fibromyalgia patients.”
He continued, “We therefore set out to determine whether raising the calcifediol levels in these patients would alleviate pain and cause a general improvement in concomitant disorders.”
To test the hypothesis, researchers gave treatment and control groups 20 weeks of oral cholecalciferol (vitamin D) supplements.
And what did they find?
Forty nine weeks after the original dose of cholecalciferol supplements, patients reported a marked reduction in overall pain symptoms, where the placebo group saw no marked differences. Patients also marked significantly better on the question of “morning fatigue.” Unfortunately there were no differences in levels of depression and anxiety in either group.
Wepner stated, “We believe that the data presented in the present study are promising. FMS is a very extensive symptom complex that cannot be explained by a vitamin D deficiency alone. However, vitamin D supplementation may be regarded as a relatively safe and economical treatment for FMS patients and an extremely cost-effective alternative or adjunct to expensive pharmacological treatment as well as physical, behavioral, and multimodal therapies.
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