Check out this cutie: New species of Galapagos tortoise discovered

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 21, 2015 Last Edited: October 21, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Galapagos tortoises, best known as the largest species in their family and as the creatures that helped inspire Charles Darwin to develop his theory of evolution, are actually two separate types of creatures, according to a new genetic analysis led by Yale University scientists.

According to research published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, senior author Adalgisa “Gisella” Caccone, a research scientist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale, found that several hundred tortoises living on one side of Santa Cruz Island were distinct from another group.

Dr. Caccone’s team explained that they had noticed differences in the carapaces (shells) of the two giant tortoise populations, but initially believed that these could be explained by variations within the same species. An in-depth genetic analysis proved otherwise, however, revealing the existence of two distinct species that just happened to share the same island.

“We analyzed a few fragments of the mitochondrial and nuclear DNA,” she told redOrbit via email, “and found that they are as genetically divergent from the species living on the western side of the same island as species living on different Galapagos islands. Moreover, the closest relative of this new species is a species from the neighboring island to the East.”

First new Galapagos tortoise species in 100 years (and there may be more!)

The species to which Dr. Caccone was referring is known as Chelonidis chatamensis, and it is native to the island of San Cristobal. More to the point, she added, the discovery of this new type of giant tortoise indicates than Santa Cruz was colonized by a pair of distinct lines of tortoises at different times – a discovery that may shed new light on the tortoise family as a whole.

Dr. Caccone told redOrbit that the discovery could provide new insight into the “evolutionary and ecological processes that produced the genetic and morphological diversity” that we see in this iconic group of creatures today. It also indicates that just because two different species live in relatively close proximity to one another, doesn’t mean they necessarily share common ancestry, nor is it a given that their divergence happened on the island.

The new species was given the name “donfaustoi” in honor of Fausto Llerena Sanchez, a retired ranger Galapagos National Park who worked tirelessly during his career to preserve the tortoises. She explained that the name was chosen in honor of Sanchez’s nickname, Don Fausto, and was “particularly appropriate” in light of “his contributions to preserving these species.”

This is the first species of tortoise ever to be names after a person from the Galapagos islands, according to Dr. Caccone. Furthermore, she pointed out that this is the first species of giant Galapagos tortoises to be identified and named by scientists in more than a century.

Is there a chance that there may still be other unique members of this tortoise family living on the islands?

“Possibly,” Dr. Caccone told redOrbit. “We are using genomic based tools to look at the genetic divergence of some tortoise populations from both extant and extinct ones and I think we have some more ‘surprises’ coming out. Stay tuned.”

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Feature Image: Washington Tapia

Science

These four presidential elections forever changed US politics

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 21, 2015 Last Edited: October 21, 2015

Christopher Pilny

While every presidential election has a significant impact on the US and on American politics in particular, four played the greatest role in shaping the 20th century, a University of Washington historian argues in a new book. These were the elections of 1912, 1932, 1968, and 1992.

Margaret O’Mara, associate professor of history at the university and author of Pivotal Tuesdays: Four Elections that Shaped the Twentieth Century, explained that all four of those elections took place at transformational moments in terms of economics and cultural change (farms to factories, prosperity to depression, establishment to counterculture, manufacturing to technology).

The new media outlets and technologies that emerged following those elections, from radio to TV to cable news, also helped to define them, O’Mara said. They also demonstrated the ways in which the core issues and the constituencies of the two major parties changed over the years, according to Futurity.

1912: The first election where charisma mattered

The 1912 election was the first to feature the modern style of campaigning, in which charisma and a candidate’s likeability started to become as important as their views on the issues when it came to winning over the American public. Theodore Roosevelt was the first candidate to have to truly connect with the public in order to win, O’Mara told UW News.

“The proverbial ‘smoke-filled rooms’ where deals got done were still around, but now candidates themselves took a central role in presenting their platform to the voters,” she said. “Personality mattered more. Issues and ideology mattered more. The rise of newspapers as a mass media contributed greatly to this. A candidate needed to be able to drop pithy quotes to reporters and make big speeches on the road that would get written up in local papers that evening.

“Teddy Roosevelt excelled at this candidate-centered campaigning like no other before him. By 1912 the Rough Rider, ex-President, and global adventurer was the biggest celebrity in America,” the author added, noting that this ultimately helped Roosevelt win as a third party candidate. “Today, presidential elections revolve so much around personality and ‘likability.’”

How ad executives helped Nixon, and why Trump is succeeding

Skipping ahead to 1960, once again O’Mara credits media as having played a key role in the outcome of the battle between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Nixon, she said, had a rather “lackluster, sometimes disastrous television presence” which she described as “stern in manner, flat in delivery, and sweaty and combative under the hot lights of live debates.”

When he ran again in 1968, he hired advertising executives to help him better handle this media, using carefully scripted TV appearances, hand-picked questions, along with music, video editing techniques, and voiceovers to present himself as a more polished candidate. Nixon also delivered a message that began building the white, conservative constituency that remains the core of the Republican Party today by addressing those puzzled by ongoing social change.

When asked about Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign, she credited his success to his status as “the classic outsider candidate,” something which “builds upon a suspicion of centralized government power that’s been in place since this country’s founding.” While he’s not the first candidate to present himself as a Washington outsider, O’Mara said, “What’s really interesting this cycle is that a lack of any political experience is now a virtue rather than a liability.

“It’s too early to tell how long Trump will endure,” she added. “He has stuck around longer than many pundits expected (partly, of course, because pundits keep writing about him). It is clear that he has struck a chord with a certain segment of voters who –like the Debs and Roosevelt voters in 1912 and the Wallace voters in 1968 – are angry about how things are changing and want leaders who can deliver some bold solutions.”

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Feature Image: Stuart Seeger/Flickr

Space

What’s up with this huge hole in the sun?

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 21, 2015 Last Edited: October 21, 2015

Christopher Pilny

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, a probe that has been monitoring our sun over the past five years, recently captured a stunning image of a coronal hole—a region on the surface of the star where the magnetic field is exposed, emitting high-speed solar winds.

This hole in the sun was spotted by the SDO on October 10, and the coronal material it ejected caused a geomagnetic storm close to the planet which led to several nights of auroras, NASA explained. The observatory captured the picture in wavelengths of 193 Angstroms, which is typically bronze in color by invisible to the human eye.

According to Space.com, the hole is roughly 50 Earths in size, and the particles being emitted in the solar wind are traveling up to 500 miles (800 kilometers) per second. A geomagnetic storm watch has been issued from Wednesday through Friday, the Huffington Post added, and experts are monitoring the particle-carrying solar wind as it heads towards the Earth.

So what the heck are coronal holes, anyway?

Coronal holes, NASA explained, are large, dark areas on the surface of the sun that appear when it is viewed in extreme ultraviolet or x-ray wavelengths. These solar features may last for several weeks or even months, and can sometimes even be as large as one-fourth of the sun’s surface.

These unusual features are “rooted in large cells of unipolar magnetic fields” on the surface of the sun. These field lines “extend far out into the solar system,” which allows a “continuous outflow of high-speed solar wind,” NASA added. Coronal holes typically occur most often in the first few years following a solar maximum, or the period of greatest activity.

Coronal holes are indicative of cooler regions on the sun, and are thus frequently the source of unusually fast solar winds, the Huffington Post reported. These areas have a reduced density of solar material and weaker magnetic field lines, which makes it easier for solar winds to escape and increases the changes that it will reach Earth and cause atmospheric disturbances.

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Feature Image: NASA

Science

Study traces ancient origin of dogs to Central Asia 15,000 years ago

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 21, 2015 Last Edited: October 21, 2015

Christopher Pilny

In an attempt to finally put an end to the debate over when and where dogs first originated, a Cornell University-led team of researchers analyzed the DNA of 549 canines representing 38 different countries and found that they most likely first arrived in Central Asia.

Specifically, man’s best friend probably evolved somewhere near modern-day Nepal and/or Mongolia at least 15,000 years ago ABC News and the New York Times reported on Monday. These weren’t house pets, however, but “village dogs” that freely roamed the streets.

The study, which has been published by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), contradicts previous research that suggested canines first appeared in Europe, the Middle East, Siberia, or China. It did not focus on the date of their arrival, looking instead for genetic signals to trace their roots to a specific part of the world.

Cornell researchers Adam Boyko and Laura Shannon examined three different kinds of DNA in both purebred dogs and free-roaming village dogs, marking the first time such an extensive analysis has been performed on such a diverse group of canines. The results all pointed towards Central Asia.

People will still debate findings

In addition to concluding that this region, particularly the area near Mongolia and Nepal, was the birthplace of all modern day dogs, the study – which did not determine the precise date of canine arrival – found that dogs have been around for at least 15,000 years.

Even so, Boyko told ABC News that he was doubtful that his team’s findings would put an end to the debate over canine origins, stating, “I’m not pretending my study alone is enough to rally the community together.” Almost right on cue, UCLA’s Robert Wayne, who in 2013 conducted a similar study that led him to propose a European origin for dogs, disputed the findings.

Wayne questioned Boyko’s use of modern-day genetic material, as did fellow dog expert Greger Larson from Oxford University. Larson, however, called the new study “a major step forward” and said that, with Central Asia now established as a candidate, “everyone with a favorite region can point to at least one paper that supports their suspicions.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Otzi the Iceman has 19 living relatives: Could you be one of them?

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 21, 2015 Last Edited: October 21, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Nineteen men living in the Alpine regions of Italy and Austria are related to Otzi, the 5,000 year old mummy found by German tourists on the border between the two nations back in 1991, DNA analysis conducted by researchers from Innsbruck Medical University has revealed.

According to LiveScience and The Telegraph, scientists compared samples taken from Otzi with DNA obtained from 3,700 blood donors, and found a match in a specific genetic mutation that all 20 individuals shared with a common ancestor who lived between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago.

“In that sense, those 19 are closer related to the Iceman than other individuals,” Walther Parson, a scientist at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Austria and co-author of a study published in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics, told LiveScience. “These data demonstrate that DNA can also be used to trace relatives much further back in time.”

The discovery was reportedly made during a broader study into determining the origins of those currently living in the Alpine region. Donors provided blood samples, family history, and place of birth, The Telegraph said. Relatives of the iceman have not yet been told of the genetic link.

Shared lineage discovered in the male chromosomes

Otzi has been extensively researched to the point where scientists have been able to determine where he lived, how old he was when he died, and even the contents of his last meal. He is believed to have been 45 years old when he was died due to a blow to the back of the head, leading some to speculate that he was murdered on the mountain.

His clothes and a quiver of arrows were also preserved by the ice, The Telegraph said, providing scientists with a unique opportunity to learn more about his 5,000 year old culture. Parson noted that the search for relatives will now turn to Switzerland and Italy, as he and his colleagues hope to find additional subjects that share a common, distant ancestor with the iceman.

He explained to LiveScience that he analyzed DNA from the Y chromosome—the male chromosome only passed on by the father. They found that Otzi and the 19 other men shared a genetic lineage known as G-L91, and it there was a slight chance that one of the men could be a direct descendant of the several thousand year old mummy.

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Feature Image: South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology

Technology

MIT’s scary-smart computer algorithm outperforms 2/3 of humans

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 20, 2015 Last Edited: October 20, 2015

Christopher Pilny

While computers have gotten incredibly adept at churning through large amounts of data, human intuition is usually needed to analyze that information and to put it in context. Well, for the moment, at least, but researchers from MIT are working on an algorithm that could change all that.

According to Gizmodo and Slashgear, Max Kanter and colleagues from the institute’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory are working on a new computer system capable of detecting interesting or unusual patterns hidden in massive databases. Early tests of the computer show that it is more than a match for human intuition.

In fact, when matched against people in a trio of big-data analysis contests, MIT’s so-called Data Science Machine outperformed its flesh-and-blood counterparts, achieving better scores than 615 of the 906 teams in the competition. It was 94 and 96 percent as accurate as humans in two of the three games, and while it was only 87 percent as accurate in the third, it needed only a fraction of the time to complete its analysis (2-12 hours compared to months for the human teams).

“We view the Data Science Machine as a natural complement to human intelligence,” Kanter, whose master’s thesis in computer science inspired the Data Science Machine, explained in a statement. “There’s so much data out there to be analyzed. And right now it’s just sitting there not doing anything. So maybe we can come up with a solution that will at least get us started on it, at least get us moving.”

Algorithms could help speed up big data analysis

Kanter and his thesis adviser Kalyan Veeramachaneni, a research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), used several different techniques to give the Data Science Machine the ability to simulate human intuition, Slashgear said. For instance, it uses structural relationships in databases as hints to find relationships between information.

The researchers are currently using the technology to deal with problems such as learning which students are most likely to drop out of online courses. When it comes to predicting the dropout rate, the machine determined that two key indications were how long before a deadline students began working on a problem set, and the amount of time spent on a course website compared to other students in the same class. Neither statistic is officially recorded, but both can be inferred.

“What we observed from our experience solving a number of data science problems for industry is that one of the very critical steps is called feature engineering,” said Veeramachaneni. “The first thing you have to do is identify what variables to extract from the database or compose, and for that, you have to come up with a lot of ideas.”

While Kanter and Veeramachaneni admit that it is unlikely that this algorithm will ever be able to fully replace human intuition, it could speed up analyses of large collections of data, according to Gizmodo.

As Kanter explained, “There’s so much data out there to be analyzed, and right now it’s just sitting there not doing anything. So maybe we can come up with a solution that will at least get us started on it, at least get us moving.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Beachgoer unearths awesome prehistoric arrowhead on Jersey shore

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 20, 2015 Last Edited: October 20, 2015

Christopher Pilny

A stroll along the beach lead to the discovery of an ancient artifact for one New Jersey woman: a rare spearhead that’s at least 10,000 years old, and experts believe it could hold clues about what prehistoric life might have been like in North America.

According to ABC News and NJ.com, 58-year-old Audrey Stanick of Lanoka Harbor and was out for a walk along a Seaside Heights beach on October 6 and searching for sea glass after a storm when she spotted a dark object hidden amongst a pile of broken clamshells.

She told reporters that she spotted it because her sister, who collects shark teeth, trained her to keep her eye out for dark objects. Believing she had found an arrowhead, she contacted the New Jersey State Museum, where assistant curator of archaeology and ethnography Gregory Lattanzi analyzed her find and discovered that it was from the Middle Paleoindian period.

The arrowhead, which was made from flint, has been dated to between 10,000 and 11,000 years old. Its edges have been smoothed, indicating that it spend a considerable amount of time in the ocean, and while the discover is not super rare, Lattanzi called it significant, saying it may provide new insights into the early inhabitants of New Jersey.

One of the oldest Paleo-Indian artifacts found in the state

Lattanzi told NJ.com that he was trying “to plot” this find and other like it to see whether or not they are “all from the same time period meaning possibly from the same site.” There could be “a buried site somewhere that we have to keep an eye out for,” he also told the website.

Museum officials are uncertain how the artifact wound up on the Jersey shore. It may have been unearthed by recent beach replenishment, which gathers sand from the ocean floor and places it on the beach. One such project is taking place on Long Beach Island, south of Seaside Heights. Alternatively, it might have been uncovered during the storm that preceded its discovery.

Regardless, Lattanzi called it one of the oldest artifacts he had seen from the Paleo-Indian period, telling ABC News that the spearhead was probably used by semi-nomadic natives who kept such stones sharp to hunt deer and caribou. Because of all the work required to make an artifact like this, they were passed down from one generation to the next, he added.

For now, Stanick said that she intends to keep the spearhead, which she said she currently has in her purse so she can show it to others. “If I do ever end up donating it,” she added, “I want to donate it to a New Jersey museum because I found it here and it belongs here. But for now, I’m going to keep it. Trust me, these places have a lot of artifacts, and I don’t think they’re going to miss mine.”

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Feature Image: New Jersey State Museum

Health

The smell of death triggers fight-or-flight response in humans

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 20, 2015 Last Edited: October 20, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Just like with other types of animals, the smell of death triggers an unconscious fight-or-flight response in humans, researchers from the University of Kent School of Psychology and the Arkansas Tech University Department of Behavioral Sciences have discovered.

In four different experiments, Dr. Arnaud Wisman from the Canterbury, UK school and his US-based colleague Ilan Shrira exposed people both consciously and unconsciously to putrescine, a foul-smelling chemical compound partially responsible for the stink of decomposing flesh.

As reported in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, exposure to the chemicals was found to initiate a person’s instinctive threat-management responses, and that even short-term exposure to putrescine increased awareness, resulting in a readiness to either escape or defense oneself.

Their research is the first to demonstrate that an odor emanating from a specific type of chemical compound (in this case, putrescine) could be perceived as threatening, the study authors said in a statement. All previous chemosignal evidence had been transmitted through perspiration.

In addition, Dr. Wisman and Shrira believe their paper is one of the first to demonstrate that a specific chemical compound could directly lead to overt behavioral changes in humans. Their findings could help determine specifically which brain and sensory pathways are involved in the detection and processing of chemosensory threats.

Smell of death is a warning sign of perceived threats

In the first of four experiments used to test putrescine’s impact on threat management systems in humans, the researchers found that it increased vigilance, as measured by a reaction time task. In the second, they discovered that exposure to the chemical compound caused people to exit out of the exposure site more quickly than exposure to ammonia or an odorless control scent.

The third experiment found that putrescine caused implicit cognitions associated to a threat and to escape mechanisms, while the final one showed that exposure to trace amounts of putrescine (less than could be consciously detected) increased hostility towards third parties. The results are the first to demonstrate that people can process the smell of death as a warning sign that serves as a catalyst to protective responses to perceived threats.

These findings suggest that the smell of putrescine activates a neurological pathway similar to the one used to prepare fight-or-flight responses to perceived threats. That pathway involves the central nucleus of the amygdala, the midbrain periaqueductal gray, the hypothalamus, and the brainstem, which combine to trigger a physiological reaction.

Additional research on the topic, they said, could include measurements of blood pressure, heart rate, and other physiological functions to test the observed effects of putrescine on subjects. Also, the authors noted that future studies could attempt to understand the precise nature of the threat produced by the chemical compound – whether it is microbial, predatory, or something else.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Space

Look up! Orionid meteor shower peaks this week

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 20, 2015 Last Edited: October 20, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Heads up, stargazers: The annual Orionid meteor showers are expected to peak this week, with NASA reporting that activity will be at its highest point during the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 21 through the early morning hours of Thursday, Oct. 22.

The Orionids, which are the result of the Earth’s orbit taking it through a region of space littered with debris from Halley’s Comet, typically peak between Oct. 20 and Oct. 22 every year, according to Weather.com. Pieces of debris from the comet appear in the atmosphere, putting on a show before disintegrating.

Unfortunately, projections are that the meteor shower won’t be much of a spectacle in 2015, as Bill Cooke of the NASA Meteoroid Environments Office is calling for weak activity with probably only a dozen meteors per hour when viewing conditions are ideal.

According to The Guardian, the Orionids (which are named after the constellation Orion) are a modest shower that typically produce between 10 and 20 meteors per hour, each of which will be traveling at a blistering 41 miles per second. At those speeds, about half of them will leave a gas trail behind them that will be visible for a few seconds are the meteor disappears.

When, where, and how to watch!

NASA points out that the best time to see the Orionid meteors this year will be just before the sun rises on Thursday, when the Earth comes in contact with the densest part of Halley’s debris stream. Viewing conditions are described as favorable this year, with the light from the gibbous moon setting by around 2am EDT, enabling us watchers to get a good look.

Even though the activity will be moderate at best, stargazers shouldn’t need a telescope. For those unable to see the meteor shower for any reason, there will be a live Ustream broadcast from the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama starting at 10pm EDT on Oct. 21. If conditions are ideal, the Orionids may be visible on the feed as early as 11:30pm EDT, but again, the pre-dawn hours will contain the most activity.

“The display will be framed by some of the prettiest stars in the night sky,” NASA said. “In addition to Orionids, you’ll see the Dog Star Sirius, bright winter constellations such as Orion, Gemini, and Taurus, and the planets Jupiter and Venus. Even if the shower is a dud, the rest of the sky is dynamite. Set your alarm, brew some hot chocolate and enjoy the show!”

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Feature Image: Mike Lewinski/Flickr

Science

This weird-looking dolphin-like marine reptile had 4 nostrils

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 19, 2015 Last Edited: October 19, 2015

Emily Bills

Researchers from the Stuttgart Museum of Natural History in Germany have identified an odd new species of dolphin-like marine reptile with a super unique nose, according to research published in the journal Papers in Palaeontology.

Found in the Paja Formation of Colombia, the creature was an ichthyosaur believed to be from the Early Cretaceous period, or Muiscasaurus catheti, study author Erin Maxwell and her colleagues wrote. Although it was identified using only partial remains of a skull, it differs from other ichthyosaurs in its nasal cavity openings, rostrum, and postorbital region.

As BBC Earth explained, each of the creature’s nostrils was split into two separate openings, and Maxwell’s team also reported that it had a slender rostrum, narrow postorbital region, and gracile dentition. This large-eyed, slender-jawed, small-toothed marine reptile would have lived roughly 130 million years ago and likely sustained itself on a diet of small fish.

Juvenile fossil indicative of moderate Cretaceous diversity

Maxwell told the BBC that it’s difficult to determine exactly what M. catheti might have looked like due to the limited amount of fossils recovered. However, her team’s analysis concluded that the specimen they discovered was most likely a juvenile that was about three meters in length.

“I could tell it was a juvenile based on the size of its eyes relative to the rest of the skull,” she said. “In reptiles, babies have very big eyes and heads compared to their body.” In addition, the bones of the creature were porous, indicating that it was likely still growing. Adult members of the species likely grew up to five meters, although the shape of their bodies remains uncertain.

Maxwell was also excited to find the fossil in the tropics, a region which is currently rich in marine vertebrate biodiversity but one where few species from the early Cretaceous have been identified. This discovery could help reveal “if the tropical seas always were biodiversity hotspots, or if this was a relatively recent phenomenon,” she said.

In fact, the authors reported that M. catheti is only the second confirmed species of ichthyosaur to have originated from the Paja Formation. Its identification suggests that there was likely moderate taxonomic and ecological ichthyosaur diversity in this region of the world during the Early Cretaceous, the period between 145 million and 100 million years ago.

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Feature Image: Erin Maxwell

Health

Alzheimer’s FDA-approved blood test may soon be on the way

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 19, 2015 Last Edited: October 19, 2015

Emily Bills

Alzheimer’s disease is one of the leading causes of death in the US, and while there is currently no FDA-approved blood test for the neurodegenerative condition, new research from the Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine suggests that one may soon be on the way.
As Dr. Robert Nagele explained Sunday at the Osteopathic Medical Conference & Exposition in Orlando, he and his colleagues are nearing development of a blood test that can accurately tell if the disease is present in a patient, enabling doctors to treat the condition in its earliest stages.
Their test makes it possible to detect Alzheimer’s before symptoms emerge by using autoantibodies as biomarkers in the blood. These autoantibodies can not only detect the presence of the disease, but also the stage to which it has progressed, enabling those patients who have the Alzheimer’s biomarkers to make lifestyle changes that could slow the disease’s development.
“Many of the same conditions that lead to vascular disease are also significant risk factors for Alzheimer’s,” Dr. Nagele said in a statement. “People found to have preclinical disease can take steps to improve their vascular health, including watching their diet, exercising and managing any weight and blood pressure issues to help stave off or slow disease progression.”
Autoantibodies could enable detection before symptoms arise
While Alzheimer’s disease affects more than five million Americans, the cause is unknown. It is clear, however, that maintaining a healthy blood-brain barrier can go a long way to preventing it, the researchers explained. Diabetes, stroke, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and an excessively high BMI all endanger vascular health.
As a person ages, the blood vessels in their brains become weak or more brittle, causing them to leak and allowing brain-reactive autoantibodies and other plasma components to reach the brain. Once there, these autoantibodies can bind to neurons, causing the accumulation of beta amyloid deposits–one of the telltale signs of impending Alzheimer’s–to accelerate.
Since Alzheimer’s-related brain changes typically occur years before the first symptoms emerge, the new blood test would enable at-risk patients to make lifestyle choices or begin being treated by their doctors before becoming symptomatic, Dr. Nagele’s team said. Ideally, this would allow people with preclinical Alzheimer’s to delay or completely avoid the worst of the symptoms.
“As osteopathic physicians, we constantly tell patients that a healthy lifestyle is the best medicine for preventing disease,” said Dr. Jennifer Caudle, an assistant professor of family medicine at Rowan University. “I can’t think of a single patient who wouldn’t take steps to prevent the progression of Alzheimer’s if they could directly affect their prognosis.”
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Feature Image: Wellcome Images/Flickr

Technology

Amazon planning to sue over 1,000 fake reviewers

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 19, 2015 Last Edited: October 19, 2015

Emily Bills

Users who posted false or misleading product reviews on Amazon in exchange for payment may soon regret doing so, as the online retailer is reportedly planning filed lawsuits and claiming that such posts have damaged its brand.

According to BBC News and The Telegraph, Amazon filed papers in a Seattle-based courtroom accusing 1,114 not-yet-identified “John Does” of tarnishing its reputation by offering to provide “false, misleading and inauthentic” reviews of products in exchanges for compensation.

The fake reviews are part of a scam in which Amazon users provide glowing five-star reviews in exchange for payments of as little as $5. The lawsuit is specifically targeting individuals who had been offering their services on the website Fiverr.com and follows a similar lawsuit the company filed back in April against several websites which paid users for reviews.

In a complaint filed on Friday, Amazon wrote that even though these paid reviews were “small in number”, they could “significantly undermine the trust that consumers and the vast majority of sellers and manufacturers place in Amazon, which in turn tarnishes Amazon’s brand.”

Will the lawsuit even do anything?

Amazon, who emphasized that it was working with Fiverr and would not be targeting the website in its lawsuit, said that its internal investigation found that clients had purchased fake reviews on the marketplace from people who promised five-star ratings. The company added that it observed fake review sellers using multiple accounts and IP addresses to try and avoid detection.

In its lawsuit, Amazon said that it was “bringing this action to protect its customers from this misconduct, by stopping defendants and uprooting the ecosystem in which they participate.” In a similar move, TripAdvisor told The Telegraph that it would also pursue legal action in order to shut down fake review providers and solicitors, and to expose those engaging in the practice.

Robert Taraschi, CEO of the consulting firm Milestone Ideas, told the Boston Herald that while the lawsuit would shine a light on the buying and selling of fake reviews, he did not believe that it would effectively stop the process from taking place. While Taraschi said he believed it would be “good that there’s a lawsuit”, he didn’t believe that this activity could be prevented.

Jon Hurst of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, added that the lawsuit would prove to be “an interesting test,” but that it was ultimately up to Amazon to get better at detecting phony reviews. “I think it falls into the lap of those that actually host these review sites doing a better job at looking for these paid campaigns and policing better,” he told the Herald.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Space

Crystals reveal questioned lunar and Earth impact dates

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 19, 2015 Last Edited: October 19, 2015

Emily Bills

Widely accepted but never actually proven, the massive collision that caused material to be ejected from the Earth to form the moon may not have happened 50 million years after the planet’s formation, experts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison now claim.

Likewise, the late heavy bombardment, a wave of impacts which could have caused hellish conditions on the surface of the young world, may not have occurred four billion years ago, despite longstanding claims by the scientific community. It’s not that researchers behind the study doubt the events occurred; rather, it’s the dating process they call into question.

These cataclysmic events are dated using exceptionally durable crystals called zircons, Aaron Cavosi of UW’s NASA Astrobiology Institute and his colleagues explained. Many of the details of both events were discerned from the analysis of zircons collected by Apollo astronauts on the moon four decades ago, and the researchers believe there may be issues with this method.

Specifically, they write in the journal Geology, the lunar zircons are “ex situ” (meaning that the minerals were removed from the rocks in which they formed). This is problematic since it means that geoscientists are unable to review other evidence that could corroborate the impacts.

Zircons may reveal age not of impacts, but of surrounding rocks

“While zircon is one of the best isotopic clocks for dating many geological processes, our results show that it is very challenging to use ex situ zircon to date a large impact of known age,” noted Cavoisie. While many zircons show evidence of shock, he said, “once separated from host rocks, ex situ shocked zircons lose critical contextual information.”

A zircon’s so-called “clock” occurs as lead isotopes accumulate during the radioactive decay of uranium, the UW researchers explained. Using precise isotope measurements based on the half-life of uranium, scientists can calculate how long lead has been accumulating. If the lead was all lost during impact, it resets the clock and should reveal how long ago a collision took place.

Using this technique, the date of the late heavy bombardment was placed at between 3.9 billion and 4.3 billion years ago. However, Cavosie and colleagues collected and tested zircons from an impact site in South Africa, and found that while the zircons contain signs of shock deformation, they recorded the age of the rocks they formed in, which were about one billion years older than the impact itself. The discovery could force a re-evaluation of the planet’s early history.

“For a long time people have been saying if zircon is really involved in a major impact shock, its age will be reset, so you can date the impact,” explained UW-Madison geoscience professor John Valley. “Aaron has been saying, ‘Yes, sometimes, but often what people see as a reset age may not really be reset.’ Zircons are the gift that keep on giving, and this will not change that, but we need to be a lot more careful in analyzing what that gift is telling us.”

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Feature Image: Apollo 17/Nicholas E. Timms

Technology

How accurate are solar flare detection technologies?

Written By: Shayne Jacopian

Published Date: October 18, 2015 Last Edited: October 18, 2015

0

Brian Galloway

A new study from the Tihany Magnetic Observatory in Hungary has explained why solar weather indicators wouldn’t have been able to predict the Carrington Event, a large solar storm that occurred in 1859, according to a press release from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT).

Predicting solar flares is important for keeping power supplies and communication networks safe, as the flairs can disrupt or even damage electronics.

However, the methods currently used to predict solar storms aren’t perfect.

One method used for measuring geomagnetic storms is the Disturbance storm time (Dst) method. Every hour, the data from four different sources is averaged—the observatories are in Hermanus (South Africa), Kakioka (Japan), Honolulu (Hawaii, United States), and San Juan (Puerto Rico), according to the source.

Another method, called SYM-H, measures the horizontal component of Earth’s magnetic field using more observatories and taking measurements more frequently—once every minute.

Neither method was able to predict a solar storm that occurred in October 2003– a storm that burned transformers at Swedish and South African power plants.

This made researchers question whether modern instruments would’ve been able to predict the Carrington Storm.

“One of the conclusions is that the indices commonly used by scientists—such as Dst or SYM-H, which are based on an overall perspective of the Earth and obtained by calculating averages—failed to detect such an important event, and they most likely would have failed to detect the Carrington Event as well,” explains Consuelo Cid, the lead author of the study, which is published in the Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate.

The study explains that positive and negative magnetic disturbances may cancel each other out and not show up on instruments.

“A Carrington-like event may occur more often than we expect; actually, it might have already happened without us even realizing it,” Cid notes.

This demonstrates a need for the development of more reliable methods of predicting solar weather and new instruments to execute those methods with.

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Image credit: NASA

Science

Racist drivers might keep you from crossing the street, study says

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: October 18, 2015 Last Edited: October 18, 2015

Brian Galloway

How long do you have to wait at a crosswalk before the passing traffic pauses to let you go? It appears that the answer doesn’t just depend on the kindness of the drivers, but also on their inherent racial biases, according to a new study from the University of Arizona and Portland State University.

The study, which is published in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behavior, examined the results from 88 pedestrians and 173 driver-subjects. After controlling for age, clothing, and other socioeconomic factors of the pedestrians, they discovered that black pedestrians had to wait 32% longer than whites before drivers chose to yield. Further, the black pedestrians were twice as likely to be passed by multiple vehicles as they waited.

“We were surprised at just how stark the difference was,” said Arlie Adkins, an assistant professor in the UA School of Landscape Architecture and Planning and a transportation planning expert, in a press release.

“It was not a very large study, so we weren’t sure the amount of data collected would be enough to reach statistical significance, so we were surprised to see how quickly the significance showed up. Drivers were clearly displaying behaviors consistent with implicit racial bias.”

Subtle causes

Of course, this does not mean the average driver is overtly bigoted, but rather something a little more insidious. Similarly to why emails signed with “black-sounding” names get fewer responses, many people hold unconscious biases against various groups of people.

“That’s what makes contemporary forms of bias so pernicious — we may not be aware that we have these biases,” said Portland State University researcher Kimberly Kahn, an assistant professor of social psychology and principal investigator. “That’s where implicit bias comes from in the first place. So, you can think you’re just driving to work and won’t even notice that you were differently stopping for one pedestrian over others.”

These tendencies manifest themselves quietly, and are often unnoticed—but leave indelible effects.

“You can imagine how, if you are constantly experiencing these disparities, you might choose to avoid walking or force the right of way when cars are not stopping, potentially putting yourself in dangerous situations,” Kahn said. “That may play into these shocking statistics.”

“While implicit bias does not explain the disparity in safety outcomes, it may be a contributor,” added Adkins. “These microaggressions in different contexts add up to become a very negative situation for some people. It is a problem if people feel threatened, or if they are treated unequally.”

“We want this work to continue, and it will be very important to see if there are disparities in other parts of the country.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Health

Researcher wants to turn farsighted eyes into tiny TVs

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: October 18, 2015 Last Edited: October 18, 2015

Brian Galloway

It’s what most people can expect starting around age 40: Presbyopia, or the inability to read and see up close. What usually follows are endless pairs of reading glasses and stubbornly holding a menu at arm’s length for 40 more years. However, a University of Leeds researcher may have come up with a permanent, glasses-free solution—made from what comprises LCD TVs.

You’d never stop watching TV

The main problem with the aging eye is flexibility and elasticity. “As we get older, the lens in our eye stiffens, when the muscles in the eye contract they can no longer shape the lens to bring close objects into focus,” explained Devesh Mistry, a postgraduate research student in the School of Physics and Astronomy, in a press release.

But he has an interesting solution to this issue: “Using liquid crystals, which we probably know better as the material used in the screens of TVs and smartphones, lenses would adjust and focus automatically, depending on the eye muscles’ movement.”

Using such liquid crystal-based materials, Mistry aims to create a synthetic replacement for weak and diseased eye lenses—such as those affected by cataracts. His goal is to have a prototype by the end of his doctorate, in 2018. Should he accomplish this goal, we could see these lenses being implemented within a decade.

Such a procedure would only require a quick and simple surgery using local anesthesia. Doctors would make an incision in the cornea, and then use ultrasound to disintegrate the old problematic lens. Following that, the liquid crystal lens would be inserted, once again restoring near sight.

“Liquid crystals are a very under-rated phase of matter,” Mistry told The Times. “Everybody’s happy with solids, liquids and gases and the phases of matter, but liquid crystals lie between crystalline solids and liquids. They have an ordered structure like a crystal, but they can also flow like a liquid and respond to stimuli.”

Thanks to Mistry, however, liquid crystals may start getting more recognition of their potential. It’s estimated that the first commercially-available liquid crystal lens will be on sale between six and ten years from now.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Health

Ebola upgraded to STD status, found to be infectious for longer than previously thought

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 17, 2015 Last Edited: October 17, 2015

Brian Galloway

The Ebola virus can remain in the semen of male survivors much longer than previously thought, and genomic analysis has confirmed that the disease can be sexually transmitted, a pair of studies published in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine have revealed.

According to BBC News and AFP reports, the first study found that 65 percent of men still had Ebola in their semen up to six months after infection, and that the virus’s genetic material could still be found in the sperm of 26 percent of them between seven and nine months later.

Previous research found the virus could only remain in semen for 82 days after the first symptoms and while the researchers said that they did not yet know whether or not testing positive meant that the men were infectious, the findings raised new concerns.

In the other study, US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases scientists, along with colleagues from the Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research confirmed a suspected case of sexually-transmitted Ebola using genomic analysis, providing molecular evidence that it was passed from a male survivor of the disease to his female partner through intercourse.

Experts advising condom use to protect partners

Bruce Aylward, the World Health Organization’s special representative on the Ebola response, told AFP that the findings “come at a critically important time” and served as a reminded that “while Ebola case numbers continue to plummet, Ebola survivors and their families continue to struggle with the effects of the disease.”

Taken together, the two studies provide “evidence that survivors need continued, substantial support” for a period of at least six months, and that steps needed to be taken “to ensure their partners are not exposed to potential virus,” he added. Currently, an outbreak of Ebola can be declared over 42 days after the resolution of the last case, the WHO said, but in light of these findings, some experts are calling for that period to be extended to at least 90 days.

WHO director Margaret Chan and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Professor David Heymann both told BBC News that precautionary measures in the form of contraceptives should be taken by survivors in order to protect their partners. While the global health group also said that sexual transmission of Ebola from women to men is rare, but possible.

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Technology

Help save the environment by wearing this water-cleaning bikini

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 17, 2015 Last Edited: October 17, 2015

Brian Galloway

Even wanted to head to the beach and help the environment at the same time? One group of engineers at the University of California, Riverside have heeded your call, and they’ve invented a new bikini capable of cleaning up oil spills and desalinizing water while you swim.

According to Mashable and Slashgear, the bathing suit in question is made out of a 3D printed material known as Sponge, and it has the ability to repel water while absorbing and storing toxic materials within the fabric. In short, that means that you can help clean up the world’s oceans by simply doing the backstroke or the doggy paddle the next time you hit the beach.

Sponge was developed by doctoral candidate Daisy Patino and Ph. D graduate Hamed Bay, both from the UC-Riverside Bourns College of Engineering, and it is made from heated sucrose, the duo explained in a statement. The porous, hydrophobic, recyclable material can absorb up to 20 times its own weight in pollutants, releasing them only when heated to 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Pads can be used 20 times, recycled and replaced

Furthermore, Mihri Ozkan, an electrical engineering professor at UC-Riverside, said that Sponge is “a super material that is not harmful to the environment and very cost effective to produce.” It could also be used in paints for satellites and airplanes, or as part of an electromagnetic shield for use on drones, the engineering team added.

Patino, Bay and their colleagues said that Sponge remains effective for 20 to 25 uses, after which time it should be replaced. Wearing a bikini that absorbs toxins may sound somewhat unsanitary, but the UC-Riverside team explains that the contaminants are trapped in the pores and will not at any time come in direct contact with the skin.

The bathing suit is designed by 3D printing a bikini cage using an elastomer which is strong, but also flexible enough to fit the contours of a woman’s body, Slashgear explained. The pads can be replaced with new ones when needed, and the material could be used to make various other types of garments as well, including swimming caps, wetsuits, or swimming trunks for men.

According to the university, the design won first place at the Reshape 15 Wearable Technology Competition and was be recognized at the Maker Faire in Rome on Friday. Officials at the UC-Riverside Office of Technology Commercialization have filed for a patent for the materials.

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Image credit: University of California/Eray Carbajo

Science

University of Virginia renovations reveal Jefferson-era chemistry lab

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 17, 2015 Last Edited: October 17, 2015

Brian Galloway

Architects working on renovations at the University of Virginia’s Rotunda, one of the oldest buildings on the Charlottesville campus, have made a startling discovery: a chemistry lab that was constructed in the 1800s and which was boarded up since at least the 1840s.

According to the UVA student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, the lab dates back to founder Thomas Jefferson’s time at the university and it was hidden behind a lower-level wall. It consists of a brick hearth, a complex ventilation system, and several controls designed to manipulate the flow of heat, and is believed to be part of what had been a larger chemistry classroom.

The lab also contained five workspaces where students would have conducted experiments, and Popular Science speculates that the facility was built for the university’s first professor of natural history, John Emmet. Emmet, the website added, also wound up teaching chemistry (along with several other subjects) and went on to publish several papers on the topic.

Most of the lab was thought destroyed in an 1895 fire

Brian Hogg, senior historic preservation planner in the Office of the Architect for the university, called the discovery “ a surprise” and a “very exciting” one at that. “This may be the oldest intact example of early chemical education in this country,” he added in a statement.

While university officials were aware that the lab had existed at one point, based on references to it in correspondence between Jefferson and Emmet, Hogg told the student newspaper that it was believed to have been destroyed in an 1895 fire that severely damaged the original Rotunda. Part of the lab had been found in 1970, and at the time it was thought that nothing else survived.

The hearth was constructed in a semi-circular niche in the northern end of the Lower East Oval Room, UVA said in a statement. A pair of fireboxes, one which burned wood and the other a coal-burning furnace, were used to provide heat while underground tunnels built from brick were used to provide workstations and fireboxes with fresh air. Fumes and smoke were carried away by flues, and the students used portable hearths at workstations cut into stone countertops.

“The hearth is significant as something of the University’s early academic years,” Mark Kutney, an architectural conservator in the university architect’s office, said. “The original arch above the opening will have to be reconstructed, but we hope to present the remainder of the hearth as essentially unrestored, preserving its evidence of use.”

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Image credit: Dan Addison/The Cavalier Daily

Space

George Mueller, the ‘Father of the Space Shuttle’ dies at age 97

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 17, 2015 Last Edited: October 17, 2015

Brian Galloway

George Mueller, a former associate administrator of the NASA Office of Manned Space Flight and the man credited as the “Father of the Space Shuttle,” passed away on Monday following a brief illness, the US space agency and family sources confirmed on Thursday.

Meuller, who headed up the OMSF from September 1963 until December 1969, was a tireless advocate for a reusable transportation systems as a way to lower the costs associated with space travel, and also played a key role in the development of Skylab, according to CollectSpace.

His work on Skylab and the Space Shuttle

In 1966, he came up with a concept for an orbital workstation built out of components from the Apollo program, sketching out his idea during a meeting in August. Those drawings served as the basis for Skylab, which became NASA’s first space station and helped the agency test how long-duration space exposure would affect people. Work on the shuttle began shortly thereafter.

“We set up Skylab really to test long-duration exposure of man to space,” Mueller later recalled, according to Space.com, “and that was about the same time we started the studies on the space shuttle, because in order to get to Mars we needed to have some ways of getting into space more cheaply than we were doing, and with a lot more energy than we had at the time.”

“So we started the two programs almost together in their studies phases,” he added. “One of the things that we did was to look at what we needed to do in order to get into space really, and that’s what led to the space shuttle. It became clear that if you’re going to really exploit the space environment, you had to have… an inexpensive means of getting into space and out of space.”

Mueller’s other accolades and accomplishments

The St. Louis native did not stick around to see NASA approve the shuttle in 1972 or launch Skylab in 1973, however. He resigned from the space agency in 1969, four months after the first moon landing. He told reporters that he felt it was a good time to step down, due to the termination of the Apollo program and the need to earn more money to support his family.

Mueller, who had won the National Medal of Science in 1971, became the senior vice president of General Dynamics and chairman and CEO of System Development Corp. (SDC) following his six year stint with NASA. In 1995, he took the reins of commercial spaceflight company Kistler Aerospace (later Rocketplane Kistler), a position he held until 2004, CollectSpace reported.

Mueller was also a former president of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the International Academy of Astronautics and was awarded NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal, the National Space Trophy and the National Air and Space Museum Trophy. He is survived by his second wife, Darla, and was the father of four children, they added.

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Mueller, pictured center, laughs with colleagues while working on Apollo 11. Image credit: NASA

Space

Will Europe and Russia colonize the moon?

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 17, 2015 Last Edited: October 17, 2015

Brian Galloway

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) are planning to send a lunar lander to an unexplored area of the moon’s south pole in the first of a series of missions designed to assess conditions for a possible settlement.

According to BBC News, which broke the news of the proposed collaboration between the two space agencies, the mission will be called Luna 27 and will assess whether or not there is enough water and raw materials there to make fuel and oxygen. It is scheduled to launch in 2020.

The project is said to be one of several Roscosmos-led missions designed to return astronauts to the moon, the UK news organization reported. Luna 27 will pick up where Soviet-era projects of the 1970s left off, Professor Igor Mitrofanov of the Space Institute in Moscow explained.

“We have to go to the Moon. The 21st Century will be the century when it will be the permanent outpost of human civilization,” Mitrofanov, the lead scientist on the mission, told the BBC. “Our country has to participate in this process… [and] we have to work together with our international colleagues,” including the ESA and the US space agency NASA, he added.

Missions to hunt for usable water-ice, other resources

Likewise, Bérengère Houdou, head of the lunar exploration group at the ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), said that he and his colleagues “have an ambition to have European astronauts on the Moon.” Houdou also confirmed to the BBC that the agency was involved in “discussions at international level… on how to go back to the Moon.”

The ESA has been mulling over the possibility of building a moon base for three years, and when Johann-Dietrich Wörner took over as the head of the agency, one of the first things he brought up was his desire to recruit international partners to construct such a facility on the lunar dark side.

Reports indicate that the early missions will be unmanned, and that Luna 27 will be landing on the outskirts of the South Pole Aitken (SPA) basin. The south polar region on the moon is dark nearly all of the time, and is among the coldest places in the Solar System, which means that it could be rich in water and other chemicals that have been shielded from the sun’s heat.

Dr. James Carpenter, lead scientist on the project for the ESA, told BBC News, “The south pole of the Moon is unlike anywhere we have been before… Due to the extreme cold there you could find large amounts of water-ice and other chemistry… which we could access and use as rocket fuel or in life-support systems to support future human missions.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Technology

Was Shakespeare friends with Sir Isaac Newton? New site explores social networking in early modern England

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: October 16, 2015 Last Edited: October 16, 2015

Brian Galloway

In 2012, Google launched a tool to help you determine a celebrity’s “Bacon number”—the number of degrees of separation you are from Kevin Bacon. (The internet is pretty swell, isn’t it?)

Well, now a team from Carnegie Mellon University has created has created a website to help us figure out an entirely different kind of “Bacon number”: It shows users the various connections between the father of empiricism, Francis Bacon, and his early modern friends.

Cheekily called Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, this website actually goes far beyond its namesake; it’s a visual representation of Britain’s enormous social networks between 1500-1700, tracing relationships between figures such as Newton, Shakespeare, and Queen Elizabeth.

The site currently shows around 200,000 relationships between more than 13,000 early modern Brits—most of which were personally discovered by Georgetown University’s Daniel Shore, and Carnegie Mellon’s Jessica Otis from the 62 million-word Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. However, other people can and have added their own research to help grow this network; it’s a sort of early-modern British Wikipedia.

Researchers rejoice!

The sheer size of Six Degrees of Francis Bacon clearly makes it an invaluable resource, both for students, scholars, and bored office workers with internet access alike.

“Are you researching Anne Boleyn to find out if she knew Thomas More, author of Utopia? Now, you can see that in an instant,” said project director Christopher Warren, associate professor of English in Carnegie Mellon University, in a press release. “But not only that, you can see all of the people they knew, thus giving you new ways to consider communities, factions, influences, and sources.

“It’s critical for scholars because even experts have a hard time keeping so many relations in their heads. Meanwhile, newcomers have nearly instantaneous access to contextual information that’s often really difficult to access.”

The team especially hopes that college students and classes will take advantage of all the site has to offer.

“‘Six Degrees of Francis Bacon’ is, perhaps surprisingly, an excellent way to get students to pay close attention to texts,” said Shore. “Every early modern document is a record of complex relations between authors, printers, publishers, booksellers, dedicatees, polemical opponents, and so on. Students can often add to the social network just by studying the relations documented in the title page and front matter of a single 16th-century book.”

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Pictured is Sir Kevin Bacon. Image credit: Thinkstock

Health

Thirsty? You have this brain protein to thank

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: October 16, 2015 Last Edited: October 16, 2015

Brian Galloway

Researchers from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center and Duke University have identified a key protein in the brain responsible for keeping you hydrated—a discovery which could have an enormous impact on how bodily fluid imbalances are detected and treated in the future.

“We have identified what we think is the first protein that could allow the brain to monitor physiological temperature and it is important because this protein contributes to how the brain detects heat and triggers adaptive responses such as thirst,” explained Dr. Charles Bourque, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the Centre for Research in Neuroscience at the Research Institute and at the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University, in a press release.

Balancing body fluids

As published in Cell Reports, the protein, known as ΔN-TRPV1 (that’s a delta out front, for those of you who don’t know Greek letters) physically reacts to physiological heat and cell shrinking—a result of fluid imbalance.

“This protein, which is an ion channel that regulates the flow of ions across the cell membrane, is thought to play a crucial role in balancing body fluids (water, blood, etc.) and sodium (salts) levels, and changes in its regulation could be involved in linking salt to hypertension, and provoking fluid retention following cardiac failure, sepsis or brain trauma.”

Before now, the gene responsible for ΔN-TRPV1 was indicated in body fluid balance and detecting body temperature, but the specifics were unknown.

“Collaborating with Dr. Bourque’s group led to identification of a long sought-after TRPV1 ion channel that functions in neurons, making them sense osmotic pressure and temperature,” said senior co-author Dr. Wolfgang Liedtke, associate professor of neurology, anesthesiology and neurobiology at Duke University.

“This ion channel becomes active during dehydration, switching on the neurons in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which instructs the body to act in order to maintain its fluid balance. This can be achieved by triggering a sense of thirst, and also by the secretion of vasopressin – an antidiuretic hormone that acts to promote the retention of water by the kidneys – to maintain body fluid balance.

“Interestingly, our work also shows that the ion channel is an alternate product of the gene TRPV1 that normally codes for the capsaicin receptor that detects ‘hot’ chili peppers,” he added. “It is like nature has engineered a salt receptor out of a pepper receptor.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

Science

How genetically engineered viruses could improve solar cells

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 16, 2015 Last Edited: October 16, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers have harnessed the phenomenon known as “quantum weirdness” in order to significantly boost the light-collection system often used in solar cells, using a rather unorthodox technique in order to accomplish the feat.

“Quantum weirdness” is a term used to describe the exotic effects of quantum mechanics, such as the ability of a particle to exist in multiple places at the same time, and in a study published this week in the journal Nature Materials, the researchers explained how they used genetically-engineered viruses to provide quantum-based energy transport enhancement.

The goal of the research, mechanical engineering processor Seth Lloyd and his colleagues said, is to mimic natural photosynthesis, a process which has achieved close to 100 percent efficiency over the span of billions of years. In this process, a photon collides with a type of receptor called a chromophore, which in turn produces a quantum particle of energy called an exciton.

This exciton travels across several chromophores until it makes it to a reaction center, where its energy is harvested in order to build life-supporting molecules, Lloyd explained. The path which it travels over, however, is random and inefficient unless it utilizes quantum effects that enable it to take multiple pathways at the same time and select the best ones.

Manipulating chromophores to achieve the ‘Quantum Goldilocks Effect’

The key to efficient exciton movement relies upon the chromophores being arranged in just the right way, with the perfect amount of space separating them – a phenomenon Lloyd refers to as the “Quantum Goldilocks Effect.” Using the engineered viruses, he and his colleagues were able to manipulate artificial chromophores to alter the spacing between them.

They produced several different varieties of the virus, with each causing synthetic chromophores to have slightly different spacings, and were able to use the ones that performed best. Ultimately, they were able to more than double the speed of the excitons and increase the distance they could travel before dissipating, significantly improving the efficiency of the entire process.

The research dates back to 2008, when Lloyd saw a paper by MIT colleague Angela Belcher, an expert on engineering viruses to carry out energy-related tasks, and wondered whether or not her work could be used to help his own quest to artificially induce the quantum effect that help make natural photosynthesis so efficient.

Two weeks after the duo began collaborating, they had developed their initial test version of the engineered virus, and over the next several months, they worked on improving the receptors and the spacing. After engineering the viruses, they used laser spectroscopy and dynamical modeling to observe the light-collecting process and demonstrate that the viruses used quantum coherence in order to enhance the transport of excitons.

While the MIT team emphasizes that their results are only a proof of concept, their technique could ultimately be used to create less expensive, more efficient solar cells. While the viruses can collect and transport energy as light, they cannot yet able to produce power (for solar cells) or molecules (ala photosynthesis), but this could be achieved by adding a reaction center, Lloyd, Belcher and their colleagues added.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Space

NASA releases first New Horizons study, finds the dwarf planet larger, more ice-rich than thought

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 16, 2015 Last Edited: October 16, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Evidence of multiple layers of haze in the atmosphere of Pluto and the discovery that the dwarf planet is both larger and more ice-rich than previously thought were among the findings reported by the New Horizons team in the October 16 edition of the journal Science.

In the study, first author Alan Stern from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), the principal investigator for the New Horizons mission, and his colleagues also detailed that Pluto was home to a wide variety of landforms and terrain ages, as well as an array of different compositions and colors. They also found evidence for a water-ice rich crust and layers of atmospheric haze.

The publication of the paper comes just three months after the NASA probe’s historic July flyby of the Pluto system, during which time it passed within 8,507 miles (13,691 kilometers) from the dwarf planet’s surface at its closest approach. More than 150 New Horizons scientists and NASA personnel were credited as authors of the new study, according to the SwRI.

“The New Horizons mission completes our initial reconnaissance of the solar system, giving humanity our first look at this fascinating world and its system of moons,” Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA HQ, said in a statement. “[It] is not only writing the textbook on the Pluto system, it’s serving to inspire current and future generations to keep exploring.”

Dwarf planet and its moons home to many surprises

Among the findings reported in the newly published paper is the discovery that Pluto’s surface has a substantial amount of variation in terms of color, composition and surface reflectivity (or albedo). Stern and his colleagues also found evidence of tectonic extension, surface volatile ice convection, possible wind streaks, glacial flow and geologically young surface units.

In addition to the haze layer, analysis of Pluto’s atmosphere found that it was highly extended, with trace amounts of hydrocarbons and a surface pressure of about 10 microbars. The dwarf planet and its moon Charon were found to differ by less than 10 percent, which the authors said suggested that their precursor bodies were at most only moderately differentiated pre-collision.

This would have “profound implications” for the timing, duration and accretion mechanisms of the ancestral Kuiper Belt, the researchers wrote. They also found possible evidence that Charon has a heterogeneous crustal composition due to unusual dark terrain in its north pole, and noted that New Horizons collected the first-ever measurements of the sizes and albedo of Pluto’s tiny moons Nix and Hydra. The authors added that no new moon were located in the system.

“The Pluto system surprised us in many ways, most notably teaching us that small planets can remain active billions of years after their formation,” Stern said, adding that he and his fellow researchers also learned “important lessons by the unexpected degree of geological complexity that both Pluto and its large moon Charon display.”

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Feature Image: This high-resolution image captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). Pluto’s surface shows a remarkable range of subtle colors, digitally enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. The bright expanse is the western lobe of the “heart,” informally known as Tombaugh Regio. The lobe, informally called Sputnik Planum, has been found to be rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane ices. Pluto’s diameter is 1,473 miles (2,372 kilometers). (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

Health

Skin-like material could allow prosthetics to simulate touch

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 16, 2015 Last Edited: October 16, 2015

Christopher Pilny

In research that brings science one step closer to adding a sense of touch to prosthetic limbs, a team of engineers from Stanford University have developed a plastic skin-like material capable of detecting pressure and delivering an electric signal to living brain cells.

The discovery, which was detailed in the October 16 edition of the journal Science, marks the first time that “a flexible, skin-like material has been able to detect pressure and also transmit a signal to a component of the nervous system,” lead author Zhenan Bao, a chemical engineering professor at the California-based school, said earlier this week in a statement.

For a decade, Bao and her colleagues have been attempting to fabricate a material which could mimic the skin’s ability to flex and heal, as well as sending touch, pain and temperature signals to the brain. The ultimate goal, the university said, is to create an electronic fabric that could be place over a prosthetic limb and simulate the sensory functions of actual human skin.

With the publication of this new paper, she revealed that her team is one step closer to achieving that goal, as their new skin-inspired organic digital mechanoreceptor can distinguish between the respective pressures of a limp handshake and a firm grip and communicate that to the brain.

Using optogenetics to prove compatibility with neurons

The device consists of a two-ply plastic construct, Bao and her colleagues said. The upper layer creates a sensing mechanism, which the lower layer acts as the circuit, transporting the electrical signals and converting them into biochemical stimuli so they can be detected by nerve cells. The top layer uses sensors that can purportedly detect the same pressure ranges as real skin.

To prove that the electronic signal could be identified by a biological neuron, they used a method known as optogenetics that combines the fields of optics and genetics. They bioengineered a line of neurons designed to simulate part of the human nervous system and translated pressure signals given off by the artificial skin from electronic to neuron-activating pulses of light.

While this proved that the artificial skin was able to generate a sensory output compatible with nerve cells, Bao said that it was used only as an experimental proof of concept. Her team is now working on other ways to simulate nerves for use in actual prosthetic devices, but she admits that they have “a lot of work to do to take this from experimental to practical applications.”

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Feature Image: Stanford chemical engineering Professor Zhenan Bao and her team have created a skin-like material that can tell the difference between a soft touch and a firm handshake. The device on the golden fingertip is the skin-like sensor developed by Stanford engineers. (Credit: Bao Lab)

Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia And Ineffective Sensory Processing. What Are The Facts?

Written By: Mandy Burkholder

Published Date: October 15, 2015 Last Edited: October 15, 2015

admin

Photo: by Wikicommons

Fibromyalgia sufferers are well aware that pain and discomfort can easily be triggered by certain sensory experiences like light, sound, and touch. Sometimes, even the softest noise can sound like pots and pans banging around the kitchen sink. But is this sensory overload a symptom of fibromyalgia? Or is ineffective sensory processing linked to the cause of fibromyalgia? Let’s look at the facts.

Although scientists and doctors have been researching the cause of fibromyalgia for decades, there has been no conclusive evidence that proves the cause of the condition. It’s very frustrating, which is why the researchers continue to look for answers.

One study shows that in people with fibromyalgia, there is an altered central processing response to multi-sensory stimulation. This means that when several sensations hit their brain, instead of each sensation being interpreted correctly, the wires get crossed and confused. For example, a fibromyalgia patient might not be able to tune out the conversation from two tables over while dining with friends, or they might get dizzy while having a conversation when sitting in the passenger seat of a moving car.

This research was gathered from 60 people (35 fibromyalgia patients) who were set up on a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device and tested for sensorial responses. Of the fibromyalgia patients, all were shown to have irregular responses to the stimulations.

This could prove that these neurological irregularities might be a cause of fibromyalgia pain to begin with and might be an important step in proving to doctors that the pain isn’t all in your head. Fibromyalgia has a long history of doctors trying to put the blame on psychological disorders, when that might not be the whole story.

Important research like this study will be the building blocks for doctors and scientists to discover the complexities of this mysterious disease. But in the here and now, we know that fibromyalgia is real and causes uncomfortable pain from many different sensations. Knowing why this happens will help us understand the pain and make us stronger for the future.

Technology

‘Smart’ grenade launcher seeks out enemies hiding behind cover

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 15, 2015 Last Edited: October 15, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Soldiers engaged in a firefight have historically been able to rely upon seeking cover inside a building or bunker or behind an inoperable vehicle, but researchers with the US Army are working on a new smart weapon capable of taking out hidden targets.

The weapon in question is a shoulder-firing grenade launched called the XM25 Counter Defilade Engagement System, and according to Popular Mechanics and Ars Technica, this so-called “anti-defilade” weapon developed by Orbital Sciences uses a laser rangefinder and grenades which can explode in mid-air, allowing troops to target enemies hiding behind walls or in trenches.

The XM-25, which has been in development for nearly a decade, enables a soldier to use the laser rangefinder to determine how far away the hidden target is. Then he uses the weapon’s controls to determine the distance at which he wants the grenade to explode, allowing it to detonate on its own just after penetrating the enemy’s cover.

Field testing could start by 2017

Also known as “The Punisher”, the XM-25 is a five-round grenade launcher originally made by German arms company Heckler and Koch that has been outfitted with a thermal sight, the smart grenades, and the fire control system. Currently, the weapons can fire an explosive airburst round. Armor piercing and non-lethal rounds are coming soon.

Orbital claims that the semi-automatic weapon can accurately hit “point targets” at 500 meters and can also hit targets with area airbursts at distances of up to 700 meters, Ars Technica noted. The XM-25’s design is expected to be finalized shortly, and the military could start field-testing it as early as 2017, company spokesman Jarrod Krull told Defense News on Monday.

In addition, reports indicate that the Army is also testing a Small Arms Grenade Munition round. This 40mm round could be used with the currently-available M203 and M320 grenade launchers, Defense News said, and would be capable of detecting walls and exploding soon thereafter. The Army told the website that these grenades are meant to complement, not replace, the XM-25.

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Feature Image: Heckler and Koch

Health

Magnetic brain stimulation makes you less likely to believe in God

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 15, 2015 Last Edited: October 15, 2015

Christopher Pilny

It has been said that nothing shakes someone’s belief in a higher power more than a personal tragedy, but researchers from UCLA and the University of York have found something which may have close to the same effect–transcranial magnetic brain stimulation.

York psychologist Dr. Keise Izuma and his colleagues conducted an unusual experiment that temporarily halts functions in specific regions of the brain by directing magnetic energy into the posterior medial front cortex–a part of the brain located near the surface of the forehead which has been linked to detecting problems and triggering the appropriate response.

Half of the subjects received a low-level procedure that did not affect their brains, while the other half received enough energy to effectively shut-off the target area. Next, the participants were asked a series of questions about death, their religious viewpoints, and how they felt about immigrants.

As the researchers reported recently in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, those men and women who had activity in their posterior medial front cortex temporarily shut down reported a 32.8 percent reduced belief in God, angels, or heaven. In addition, their feelings towards an immigrant who criticized their country were 28.5 percent more positive.

Switching off brain’s threat-response center made people less negative

“People often turn to ideology when they are confronted by problems,” Dr. Izuma said in a statement. “We wanted to find out whether a brain region that is linked with solving concrete problems, like deciding how to move one’s body to overcome an obstacle, is also involved in solving abstract problems addressed by ideology.”

He said that they wanted to investigate the basis of ideology in the brain, so they focused on the issues of theology and nationalism. They chose to focus on death because previous studies have shown that people turn to religion for comfort when faced with mortality. Switching off activity in the posterior medial frontal cortex, however, made people were less likely to do so.

All subjects were pre-screened to ensure that they were religious prior to the experiments, and each of them were asked to respond to both the negative and positive emotional aspects of both religion and nationalism, the authors said. The experiments also found that magnetic stimulation had a greater affect on people reacting to an essay critical of the US than one praising it.

“We think that hearing criticisms of your group’s values, perhaps especially from a person you perceive as an outsider, is processed as an ideological sort of threat,” Dr. Izuma said.

“One way to respond to such threats is to ‘double down’ on your group values, increasing your investment in them, and reacting more negatively to the critic,” he added. “When we disrupted the brain region that usually helps detect and respond to threats, we saw a less negative, less ideologically motivated reaction to the critical author and his opinions.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Technology

Introducing…the world’s lightest metal (that’s 99.9% air)

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 15, 2015 Last Edited: October 15, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Citing inspiration from the ability of a bone to maintain its strength despite being hollow on the inside, one of the world’s foremost aerospace and defense firms is claiming to have created “the world’s lightest material”–a new metal said to be made out of 99.9 percent air.

According to CNN and The Huffington Post, Boeing announced that this microlattice material is similar to a sponge in appearance and light enough to sit on a dandelion (and to prove their point, the company released a photo of it doing just that), while still being both strong and flexible.

Boeing described the material as an “open cellular polymer structure” made primarily out of hollow tubes. Each tube’s wall is just 100 nanometers thick, or 1,000 times thinner than human hair. This allows the material to stay light weight while maintaining its metallic properties.

Just how light and strong is it? As the Daily Mail reported, Boeing claims it’s 100 times lighter than Styrofoam, and that an egg wrapped in the material would be able to survive a fall of 25 stories. It can also reportedly completely recover from compression of more than 50 percent.

Super-light, strong material could have many uses

The metal was developed by HRL Laboratories, a joint venture involving Boeing and General Motors, and researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of California Irvine. It weighs only one-tenth as much as carbon fiber, Bill Carter, the head of HRL’s Sensors and Materials Laboratory, told CNN.

Carter believes that the material will initially be used to build rockets for NASA’s upcoming space exploration missions in about five years. It will take about 10 years before it can be used in commercial aircraft, he explained to reporters earlier this week.

Once it’s used on commercial jets, it will likely be manufactured into structural components such as sidewalls or floor panels, The Huffington Post added. HRL representatives believe that the cost of manufacturing the metal will need to drop a little more before it could be used on an automobile, and the company added that it could be used to make onboard luggage carriers.

Originally developed for use by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), this unusual material could also be used for battery electrodes and catalyst supports, the Daily Mail added. It could also dampen acoustics, vibration, or even shock energy, and is expected to reduce the mass of future spacecraft by as much as 40 percent!

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Feature Image: Boeing

Space

How a lunar ‘gas station’ could help us get to Mars

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 15, 2015 Last Edited: October 15, 2015

Christopher Pilny

The payload of a manned mission to Mars could be reduced by more than two-thirds if the crew took a detour to the moon to refuel their spacecraft, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reported this week in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets.

According to MIT aeronautics and astronautics professor Olivier de Weck, a vehicle carrying astronauts could make a detour to the lunar surface, where it could use fuel that was created from soil and water ice mined from craters there. By doing so, they could reduce the mass of the spacecraft by as much as 68 percent, based on the study authors’ calculations.

The researchers created a model to determine the best route for a trip to the Red Planet, finding that the most mass-efficient path involved launching from the ground with just enough propellant to reach orbit around the Earth. Then a fuel-producing facility on the moon would launch tankers of fuel into space, placing them into gravitational orbit to be picked up by the Mars crew.

“This is completely against the established common wisdom of how to go to Mars, which is a straight shot to Mars, carry everything with you,” said de Weck. “The idea of taking a detour into the lunar system… it’s very unintuitive. But from an optimal network and big-picture view, this could be very affordable… because you don’t have to ship everything from Earth.”

‘In-situ resource utilization’ would significantly reduce launch mass

Historically, space travel missions have used two different strategies to ensure that the crew had access to an adequate supply of resources. One is the carry-along approach in which the supplies and fuel needed by the crew traveled with them at all times, and the other is a resupply approach in which resources are replenished at regular intervals (the ISS, for example).

This may not be a sustainable approach as humanity ventures further away from Earth, de Weck and her colleagues wrote. They propose that Mars missions, as well as voyages to other far off destinations, require new strategies based on “in-situ resource utilization”. This concept centers around the production and collection of fuel and provisions en route to a destination.

During the in-situ resource utilization approach, materials ordinarily carried into space from Earth would be replaced by those produced in space, MIT explained. For instance, water ice, (which has been found on Mars and the moon), could theoretically be mined and converted into fuel. In their study, the researchers created a variety of different possible routes to Mars to determine if taking a series of pit stops en route to Mars would be more efficient than direct travel.

They found that the lunar-based refueling stop minimized mass that was launched from Earth, but it also assumed a future scenario in which propellant could be processed on and transported from the moon to a point in orbit, and that fuel depots can be established at gravitationally-bound locations in space (also known as Lagrange points). Nonetheless, the team said that their work emphasizes the importance of creating a resource-producing infrastructure in space.

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Feature Image: Christine Daniloff/MIT

Health

Researchers discover how autism affects the ‘social brain’

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: October 14, 2015 Last Edited: October 14, 2015

Christopher Pilny

A research team from UCLA has discovered that brain areas linked to social behaviors in those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are underdeveloped and have substantially fewer network connectivity than in study participants without ASD. The study, which is published in Brain and Behavior, helps to advance understanding of the nature of ASD by pairing the disorder with concrete aspects of the brain.

“The brain controls most of our behavior and changes in how brain areas work and communicate with each other can alter this behavior and lead to impairments associated with mental disorders,” said study author Kay Jann, a postdoctoral researcher in the UCLA Department of Neurology, in a statement.

“When you match physiologic changes in the brain with behavioral impairment, you can start to understand the biological mechanisms of this disorder, which may help improve diagnosis, and, in time, treatment.”

In particular, the researchers were interested in examining the structure and function of neural networks associated with the “social brain”.

Studying the default mode

To study this, the group used an MRI tool known as arterial spin labelling perfusion, which uses magnetically-labelled blood water to trace blood flow—the first time this tool has been used to study ASD.

For the brain in particular, blood flow is a common technique for research. More blood flow to a region indicates that region is using more energy, and that it requires more oxygen than other regions. This in turn signifies that a particular region is active. But the team also used different technology to measure how interconnected various regions of the brains were, as both blood flow and neural networks have been of major interests for those studying neurological disorders.

“In neurocognitive or neuropsychiatric disorders, these two crucial properties — functional organization of the brain and its accompanying energy demands — are often found to be altered,” explained study senior author Danny J.J. Wang, an associate professor of neurology at UCLA.

Focusing on these two key components, the researchers studied something known as the default mode network in 22 typically developing children and adolescents, as well as 17 youths with high-functioning ASD. These two groups were matched by age, sex, and IQ scores.

“[T]he default mode network has become a focus of such research, because it is important for social and emotional processes, self-referential thought, and in ‘Theory of Mind,’ which is the ability to attribute mental states to one-self and to others,” Wang explained. “These are cognitive processes that are to some extent impaired in persons with autism spectrum disorders.”

Blood flow shows delayed social regions

The tests revealed significant differences between the two groups. The youths with ASD displayed hyper-perfusion—widespread increased blood flow. This blood flow was linked with increased oxygen metabolism in the frontal bran areas, which are responsible for social interactions.

Such blood flow is generally reduced as the brain develops—as exemplified in the typically developing children—so this continued hyper-perfusion in participants with ASD suggests that these frontal “social” regions may have had delayed development.

Moreover, the team found that the children with ASD had reduced long-range connectivity between certain default network nodes (conjunction points in the network). The nodes were located in the front and back of their brains, meaning information cannot flow as freely between distant areas of the brain, and this may explain the typical impairment in social responsiveness.

“The architecture of the brain follows a cost efficient wiring pattern that maximizes functionality with minimal energy consumption,” Jann said. “This is not what we found in our ASD participants.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Way to go: Scientist takes first-ever photo of rare bird, then kills it

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 14, 2015 Last Edited: October 14, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Moments after taking the first photograph ever of a creature so rare it has been described as a “ghost bird”, one researcher tracked down the rare bird and immediately killed it–an act he claims was for science, but one which has outraged some conservationists.

The man at the center of the controversy is Chris Filardi, the director of Pacific Programs at the American Museum of Natural History, and the creature in question is called the male mustached kingfisher–a bird that can only be found in the Solomon Islands, according to Yahoo News.

The male mustached kingfisher had not been seen for more than half a century until Filardi found one living on the isle of Guadalcanal, the New York Daily News reported on Monday. According to Filardi, he killed the creature to study it as a specimen. The practice, known as “collecting”, is frequently used to study more common species of birds.

“Although sightings and information about the bird are rare in the ornithological community, the bird itself is not,” he told reporters. “As I wrote from the field, this is a bird that is poorly known and elusive to western science – not rare or in imminent danger of extinction.” The IUCN Red List, however, disagrees and calls it an endangered species, stating that less than 1,000 adults remain.

Ecologists, activists call Filardi’s actions “cruel” and “horrific”

Nonetheless, the move sparked outraged from many animal conservation groups, as well as the general public, many of whom have compared Filardi’s actions to the recent killing of Cecil the Lion by American dentist and big-game hunter Walter Palmer. Among the groups condemning his actions is PETA.

In an email sent to the Daily News, PETA Senior Director Colleen O’Brien said that it was a “tired and nonsensical, self-serving claim that you must kill some animals in the name of research so as to study them enough to save them. This argument is as daft as Walter Palmer saying he shot Cecil the lion with a high-powered crossbow to save other lions.”

O’Brien added that it was “perverse” and “cruel” to track down and find “an animal of a rare species… only to kill him.” In a defense published by the Audubon Society, Filardi wrote his decision to collect the specimen was “neither an easy decision nor one made in the spur of the moment” and emphasized that it “was not a ‘trophy hunt.” Rather, he said that his goal was to document the species and to advance a conservation strategy to help protect it.

In a piece for the Huffington Post, University of Colorado ecology and evolutionary biology professor Marc Bekoff wrote, “Killing ‘in the name of conservation’ or ‘in the name of education’ or ‘in the name of whatever’ simply needs to stop. It is wrong and sets a horrific precedent for future research and for children. Imagine what a youngster would think if he or she heard something like, ‘I met a rare and gorgeous bird today… and I killed him.’”

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Feature Image: Rob Moyle/Kansas University

Space

How electrons help create brilliant, pulsating auroras

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 14, 2015 Last Edited: October 14, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Using a combination of ground-based videos and satellite measurements, researchers from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have discovered that electrons falling towards the surface of the Earth play a role in forming a type of atmospheric lights known as pulsating auroras.

These pulsating auroras, so named because they regularly appear to flicker on and off, have been observed by humans for several thousands of years. However, scientists are only just now starting to understand what causes this unusual phenomenon.

In the new study, which has been published by the Journal of Geophysical Research, Goddard’s Marilia Samara and her colleagues combined ground-based observations of pulsating auroras and satellite measurements of the quantities and energies of electrons plummeting from the magnetic bubble (magnetosphere) surrounding the Earth to the surface of the planet.

They found that a decrease in the number of low-energy electrons, long believed to have little to no effect on these atmospheric lights, actually corresponded with unusually quick changes in the shape and structure of pulsating auroras. This link would not have been discovered had the team not used both ground and satellite data, Samara said in a statement.

Lower-energy appear to influence these kinds of aurora

While all types of auroras are caused by electrons or another form of energetic particles falling at high speeds into the atmosphere and colliding with atoms and molecules in the air, different types of auroras have electrons from different sources. Active auroras (those that stream across the sky in elongated arcs) occur when a dense wave of solar material hits the magnetosphere.

Conversely, pulsating auroras occur when electrons are sent spinning towards the surface by a series of complicated wave motions in the magnetosphere. These wave motions can take place at any time, and do not necessarily need to be preceded by the impact of a solar material wave.

“The hemispheres are magnetically connected, meaning that any time there is pulsating aurora near the north pole, there is also pulsating aurora near the south pole,” explained Robert Michell, a space physicist at Goddard and co-author of the study. “Electrons are constantly pinging back and forth along this magnetic field line during an aurora event.”

The electrons that travel between the hemispheres are lower-energy secondary electrons, which means that they are slower than those that originally speed in from the magnetosphere. This type of electron is typically flung in all directions following an initial collision from the original, high energy electrons, NASA said, and it’s these particles that influence pulsating auroras.

When observing videos of the atmospheric lights, the research team found that the most distinct changes in their shape and structure occurred when fewer of the secondary electrons were fired back upwards towards the hemispheric magnetic field lines. Based on this discovery, Samara and her colleagues believe that these electrons may play a key role in creating pulsating auroras.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Story Image: A time lapse of the pulsating aurora in Alaska. Credit: NASA

Science

Rising seas could displace up to 30 million Americans by 2100

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 14, 2015 Last Edited: October 14, 2015

Christopher Pilny

US and German climate scientists warn that failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next several decades could cause global sea levels to increase by more than 14 feet, forcing between 20 and 31 million Americans from their homes due to flooding.

According to Reuters, the research, published online Monday by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that this doomsday scenario could take place if the global average temperatures increase by 5.9 degrees Fahrenheit from pre-industrial levels by 2100. The areas that will be most affected are South Florida, California, and the East Coast.

In order to keep these currently inhabited areas from being reclaimed by the oceans, lead author Benjamin Strauss from Princeton-based Climate Central and his colleagues wrote that emissions would need to be reduced by more than what the UN and more than 140 other members of the United National have proposed as part of an upcoming climate change agreement.

Based on their statistics, every one degree of Celsius of warming over pre-industrial levels that the planet experienced between now and the end of the century will result in approximately 2.3 meters of long-term sea level rise, according to The Washington Post. While this will take place over the course of millennia, it will also have noticeable short-term affects, they added.

More than a dozen large cities could be at risk

In a high-emissions scenario, indicating that little to no action is taken to address climate change, the current locations of more than 26 million US homes could be engulfed by the rising tide, and the residential districts of at least 1,500 American cities could find themselves underwater.

Even with some action towards cutting emissions, current and expected emissions from existing infrastructure could result in at least half the population of more than 600 cities or towns winding up underwater by 2100, flooding the homes of at least nine million people, the Post added. Up to 14 US cities with populations of more than 100,000 could be at risk, the study authors said.

“Our actions today determine sea-level rise tomorrow,” Strauss told Reuters Monday. “We can act… or we can delay and leave a legacy of irreversible rising seas that threaten to destroy some of our nation’s most iconic cities.” To drive home the point, he and his Climate Central partners have developed an online tool for people to see where or not their cities will be at risk.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Technology

DARPA developing ‘vampire’ drones that disappear in sunlight

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 14, 2015 Last Edited: October 14, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Officials at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are looking for help in creating a new type of drone that is capable of vanishing after being exposed to sunlight.

According to IGN and the Daily Mail, the goal of the project, dubbed the Inbound Controlled Air-Releasable Unrecoverable Systems or ICARUS project, is to create drones that could take medical supplies and other gear to people in war zones without the risk of being intercepted.

These single-use, so-called “vampire” drones would disappear completely within four hours of delivering their payload or within 30 minutes of morning twilight, depending upon which is earlier. Not only would this keep supplies and technology out of enemy hands, but it would eliminate the risk of giving away the recipient’s location as well.

Sources indicate that DARPA envisions several different scenarios in which such a device would be useful. For instance, the UAV could be used by troops to send food and medicine to remote or hard-to-reach areas affected by disasters without needing to worry about recovering the vehicles. The drones could also secretly send supplies to soldiers before seemingly disappearing into thin air.

ICARUS program builds on previous disappearing resources research

In a statement, DARPA officials said that the new ICARUS program would build upon the work of its Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) initiative, which started in 2013 and resulted in the development of self-destructing electronic components. The military research group hopes that this technology can be adapted to the proposed disappearing aerial delivery vehicles.

Troy Olsson, the VAPR and ICARUS program manager, explained that the VAPR program has been working on developing “a lot of structurally sound transient materials whose mechanical properties have exceeded our expectations,” including small polymer panels that can sublimate directly from a solid phase to a gas phase and self-destructing electronics-bearing glass strips.

When brainstorming potential used for the technology developed by the VAPR team, he and his colleagues came up with the idea for a UAV that could disappear immediately following use. In order to make these drones a reality, DARPA is seeking proposals from those interested in taking part in the two-phase ICARUS program–a 26 month program with an $8 million budget.

“Vanishing delivery vehicles could extend military and civilian operational capabilities in extenuating circumstances where currently there is no means to provide additional support, explained Olsson.

“Inventing transient materials, devising ways of scaling up their production, and combining those challenges with the hard control and aerodynamic requirements to reach the precision and soft-landing specs we need here makes for a challenging and compelling engineering problem.”

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Feature Image: Defense Images/Flickr

Health

Is beet juice the key to ‘beeting’ altitude sickness?

Written By: Shayne Jacopian

Published Date: October 13, 2015 Last Edited: October 13, 2015

Christopher Pilny

A team of researchers from Sweden and Norway has found that drinking beet juice can ease many of the symptoms of altitude sickness, according to a statement from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Aside from the obvious challenges of climbing a really tall, steep slope, the difficulty of mountain climbing is enhanced by the effects that high altitude and low air pressure have on the human body—namely, a decreased ability to take up oxygen.

With this decrease in oxygen comes difficulty for the body in producing nitric oxide, which is required for normal blood vessel function. While this is another area in which the body learns to compensate over time, this is where the researchers hypothesized that nitrate-rich beet juice can help.

It’s the nitrates that help

The research team tested beet juice’s effectiveness at helping the body to acclimate on a 39-day expedition to Kathmandu and the Rolwaling Valley in Nepal.

Previous research has shown that blood vessels contract at high altitudes, but in their study, published in Nitric Oxide: Biology and Chemistry, the team found that test subjects who drank beet juice saw restored normal blood vessel function at high altitudes.

The test subjects included both men and women whose blood vessel function was checked with an ultrasound both before and during the expedition. Some were given beet juice with no nitrate as a placebo, and others were given high-nitrate beet juice. The study participants who drank nitrate-rich beet juice saw restored blood vessel function within 24 hours.

“Next time you plan a trip at high altitude, maybe it is worth carrying a bottle of beet juice in your backpack,” said Svein Erik Gaustad, the study’s corresponding author. “It may be the extra boost your body needs to deliver enough oxygen to your tired muscles and keep you healthy when you are climbing a high mountain.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Scientists gain further insight into how giraffes’ necks got so freakin’ long

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 13, 2015 Last Edited: October 13, 2015

Christopher Pilny

The ancestors of the modern giraffe began developing their super long necks as far back as 16 million years ago, beginning the long process of the giraffe slowly but steadily evolving into the tallest living terrestrial animal, new research has discovered.

In a study published last week in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers from the New York Institute of Technology reported how the examined vertebrae from the backs of more than 70 different animals belonging to 11 different species, and discovered that even before the modern-day giraffe emerged, the basis for its elongated neck was already being formed.

According to the Smithsonian and National Geographic, lead investigator Melinda Danowitz and her colleagues studied the second and third vertebrae in the neck. They discovered that the protogiraffe candidate Prodremotherium and an early giraffe known as Canthumeryx each had developed neck bones that were longer in proportion to their width 16 million years ago.

In fact, the long neck bones appear to pre-date the emergence of giraffidae, the subgrouping for these creatures, from other types of two-toed animals, the study authors wrote. Also around this time, the giraffe lineage split, with the vertebrae of one group shrinking and the vertebrae of the other group lengthening, explaining the different body structures of the giraffe and okapi.

Giraffe neck evolution involved many stops and starts

It wasn’t until approximately 7.5 million years ago that the first truly long-necked, modern-type giraffe emerged, and the process was not a quick one, according to National Geographic. The neck bones of the giraffe ancestors typically grew longer from either the top or the bottom one generation at a time—before the neck of the modern giraffe ultimately elongated in both directions.

“We propose that cervical elongation precedes Giraffidae,” the study authors wrote. “We also believe that cranial lengthening is the first stage of elongation seen in the family, followed by caudal lengthening, which accounts for the extreme Giraffa neck elongation. Mathematical transformation further supports the proposed stages, where both cranial and caudal elongation contribute to the illustrious [modern-day giraffe] G. camelopardalis neck.”

But, the overall development of the giraffe neck was not a smooth and consistent process, with many “starts and stops” as a “small-statured herbivore” developed over time into “a towering, checkered browser.” At least one (and possibly more) giraffe lineages went back to smaller necks, they noted, and long necks was never truly an evolutionary goal.

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Sorry, Watson & Crick: DNA isn’t shaped like a double helix after all

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 13, 2015 Last Edited: October 13, 2015

Christopher Pilny

The shape and structure of supercoiled DNA is far more complex and dynamic than the widely accepted, traditional “double helix” terminology long accepted by molecular biologists indicates, according to new research published Monday in the journal Nature Communications.

The double helix model was first described by Francis Crick and James D. Watson in the 1950s, after the duo used X-ray diffraction and mathematical formulas to describe the structure and the shape of nucleic acids. Now, however, researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Leeds have used cutting-edge technology to make a surprising discovery.

Using powerful microscopy techniques and supercomputer simulations, they found that DNA does not actually have a rigid and static double helix form. Rather, they observed that the acids are fluid and dynamic, morphing into a variety of different shapes, including figure-eights.

“When Watson and Crick described the DNA double helix, they were looking at a tiny part of a real genome, only about one turn of the double helix,” Dr. Sarah Harris of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds explained in a statement. “This is about 12 DNA ‘base pairs’, which are the building blocks of DNA that form the rungs of the helical ladder.”

“Our study looks at DNA on a somewhat grander scale – several hundreds of base pairs – and even this relatively modest increase in size reveals a whole new richness in the behavior of the DNA molecule,” she added. To put that into perspective, there are about three billion base pairs that comprise the complete set of instructions in human DNA.

Discovery could lead to the development of new medicines

Since there is so much molecular information, it needs to be organized and coiled up tightly in order to fit into a cell nucleus, and in order to fully understand the structure of DNA in this state, the researchers needed to replicate this process. Since they could not coil linear DNA, Dr. Harris and her colleagues had to make circles and use the ends to trap the winding.

They wound and unwound the small-scale DNA circles one turn at a time to investigate how this process changed what the circles looked like, and came up with a test to ensure that these minute strands of genetic information behaves the same way as full-length DNA strands in the cells.

To do so, they took an enzyme that manipulates the twisting of DNA and found that it relieved the winding stress from even the most supercoiled of the circles, indicating that the behavior of the DNA in these circles was the same as that encountered by the enzyme in the body. They then used cryo-electron tomography, a technique which involves freezing biologically active material, and finally used a powerful microscope to take three-dimensional images of the results.

They found that coiling the DNA circles caused them to form a variety of unexpected shapes, including sharp bends, figure-eights, handcuffs, or even rods. These images were then compared to those generated in supercomputer simulations, which showed how DNA constantly alters its shape in order to form a vast array of different structures, not just a static double-helix.

Knowing the shape of DNA when it’s in a cell could lead to the development of better antibiotics or cancer-treating medications, “because the action of drug molecules relies on them recognizing a specific molecular shape – much like a key fits a particular lock,” Dr. Harris explained.

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Feature Image: Thana Sutthibutpong

Space

What does a black hole sound like?

Written By: Abbey Hull

Published Date: October 13, 2015 Last Edited: October 13, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Scientists are learning more about black holes every day, and today is no exception: According to a new study published in Science Advances, researchers have discovered that the flickering light of accretion disks surrounding black holes, stellar objects, and white dwarfs can also emit sound.
Discovered by Simone Scaringi, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and his team of fellow researchers, the studying of accretion disks shows that while the mechanics behind this phenomenon are still unknown, stellar objects such as black holes can emit variable amplitudes of sound.
Basically, a black hole sounds like the white noise static of your old radio.
So, what is an accretion disk?
When looking at a photo of a black hole, it is easy to identify the accretion disk as the disk-like structure formed by diffuse material and gas orbiting around the epicenter of the stellar object—in this case, the black hole. However, accretion disks can also form around smaller stars and stellar remnants, and can form on a larger or smaller scale.
You can think of accretion disks like a gramophone record: The needle begins on the very outer edge of the record disk and slowly makes its way inward, increasing its speed the closer it gets to the center of the disk.
Scaringi and his team began studying these accretion disks using observations from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton satellite, and ground-based instruments. The team noticed that the flickering light produced from released energy by material in accretion disks which falls toward the center was found in both the visible brightness of young stellar objects and the light emitted from the accretion process of black holes or white dwarfs.
“The seemingly random fluctuations we see from the black holes and white dwarfs look remarkably similar to those from the young stellar objects—it is only the tempo that changes,” explained Dr. Simon Vaughan, Reader in Observational Astronomy at the University of Leicester’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Taking it to the next level, the scientists found it’s possible to turn this flickering into sound.
Turning light into sound
By using NASA’s Kepler/K2 telescope, Scaringi and his team were able to “listen” to the variations of brightness produced by accretion disks by treating the light flashes’ frequency like a sound wave. Then they had to scale these frequencies into the range of human hearing.
The result? On a small scale we learned that black holes sound like static, similar to the sounds emitted from the accretion disks surrounding other stellar objects.
On a bigger scale, the team established the universality of accretion physics from stars that are still growing to supermassive black holes found at the centers of some galaxies.
As one of the main findings, Scaringi and his team found that the physics of accretion disks can scale up and down and remain for the most part the same, no matter how large the object found at the center of the disk is. The next step would be to uncover the mechanisms behind this universal basic law which can apply to a black hole, a galaxy, or even a young solar system.
“As far as the detailed modeling is concerned, we’re still not there,” Scaringi told Space.com in an interview. “We seem to observe that it turns out that they all seem to scale, but the detailed physics as to why the scaling relation holds is not clear yet.”
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Feature Image: NASA/JPL-CALTECH

Health

Being born in the summer may make you a healthier adult, according to study

Written By: Abbey Hull

Published Date: October 13, 2015 Last Edited: October 13, 2015

Christopher Pilny

To add to the list of reasons why we love summer, a new study published in the journal Heliyon finds that women born during the summer months are more likely to be healthy adults.

Looking at a number of factors, the research team from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, UK found that the birth month affects a number of factors towards a healthy female adult life, such as birth weight, vitamin D exposure, and when a girl starts puberty.

Making a difference in the womb

A womb’s environment, even before birth, can influence a person’s health later in life. Defined as programming, this effect impacts development throughout childhood and later on into adulthood.

“When you were conceived and born occurs largely ‘at random’—it’s not affected by social class, your parents’ ages or their health—so looking for patterns with birth month is a powerful study design to identify influences of the environment before birth,” explained Dr. John Perry, lead author of the study.

Going off of previous studies linking certain effects with birthing season, Perry and his team decided to study more closely the link between birth month and a person’s growth and developments, such as the timing of puberty and its effect on later health.

To begin, researchers studied whether birth month affected birth weight, puberty’s onset, and adult height by comparing the development of approximately 450,000 men and women from the UK Biobank study, a major national health resource intended to provide data towards tracking disease developments.

The results found that children born during the summer weighed slightly more at birth and grew taller as adults. Further, research revealed for the first time that girls born in the summer started puberty later, indicating better health in adult life.

“This is the first time puberty timing has been robustly linked to seasonality,” said Perry. “We were surprised, and pleased, to see how similar the patterns were on birth weight and puberty timing. Our results show that birth month has a measurable effect on development and health, but more work is needed to understand the mechanisms behind this effect.”

Why do seasonal changes tie into biological changes?

While more research is needed, some researchers believe that the differences between summer and winter babies could even lie in the mother’s sun exposure—or the amount of vitamin D exposure—during pregnancy.

“We don’t know the mechanisms that cause these season of birth patterns on birth weight, height, and puberty timing, concluded Perry. “We need to understand these mechanisms before our findings can be translated into health benefits. We think that vitamin D exposure is important and our findings will hopefully encourage other research on the long-term effects of early life vitamin D on puberty timing and health.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

The ‘Buzzing Dead’? Tiny flies turn honeybees into flying zombie drones

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 13, 2015 Last Edited: October 13, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Already struggling due to Colony Collapse Disorder, vampire mites, and difficulties in finding enough food to sustain themselves, one of the world’s most important pollinators is facing a new threat in the form of tiny flies that can turn them into flying zombie drones.

According to the Associated Press, honeybees, particularly those in the western US, have become the victims of a bug that essentially brainwashes them into going out on nighttime flights, at times causing them to hover around porch lights until they die.

This fly had already been known to affect bumblebees and yellow jackets, but seven years ago, a San Francisco State University biology professor named John Hafernik discovered disoriented honeybees outside of his campus office. Shortly thereafter, he noticed pupae emerging from one of the afflicted pollinators, and the discovery inspired him to investigate.

In 2012, Hafernik launched Zombee Watch, a website to allow citizen scientists to report their own sightings and upload images of honeybees enslaved by these unusual flies and their insect masters. Since then, there have been more than 100 confirmed sightings, including some as far east as Vermont and New York, the AP said.

Could these bugs play a role in Colony Collapse Disorder?

The creature responsible for this phenomenon is a parasitic phorid fly, the Apocephalus borealis, Hafernik and colleagues from SFSU, the University of California, San Francisco, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County reported in a January 2012 PLOS One study.

Once a bee is infected, they explained, it abandons its hives during the nighttime and dies shortly thereafter. Then, approximately one week later, as many as 13 phorid larvae emerge from each of the bee carcasses. DNA barcoding revealed that these flies are the same species as those that had been infecting bumblebees, and analysis revealed that the bees typically had been infected with a condition called deformed wing virus and a parasite known as Nosema ceranae.

The flies also tested positive for these pathogens in both their larvae and adult stages, Hafernik and his co-authors wrote, suggesting that the fly was a potential vector of these pathogens. They believe that this discovery could provide new insights into similar hive abandonment issues seen in CCD, but a link between CCD and the zombie bees has yet to be established.

“We’re not making a case that this is the doomsday bug for bees,” Hafernik told the AP. “But it is certainly an interesting situation where we have a parasite that seems to affect the behavior of bees and has them essentially abandoning their hive.”

“We have several other stresses on bees and we don’t want any other stress like this one,” said Ramesh Sagili, an assistant professor of apiculture at Oregon State University. “We have to be cautious, but I’m not alarmed that this parasite is going to create a big problem.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

Earth’s inner core began forming earlier than thought, study says

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 13, 2015 Last Edited: October 13, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Originally believed to have formed as little as 500 million years ago, the Pluto-sized ball of iron at the center of our planet actually came about between 1.0 and 1.5 billion years ago, researchers from the University of Liverpool’s School of Environmental Sciences have discovered.

The core, which is the Earth’s deepest layer, formed when molten iron in the surrounding outer core solidified. Establishing precisely when it originated has been the topic of spirited debate in the scientific community, and as the authors of the new study explained in a recent edition of the journal Nature, the answer was found in the magnetic records of ancient igneous rocks.

Lead author Dr. Andy Biggin, an expert in paleomagnetism, analyzed those records and found a sharp increase in the strength of the planet’s magnetic field which occurred between 1.0 and 1.5 billion years ago. The researchers believe that this is indicative of the first presence of solid iron at the Earth’s center and the point at which the cooling outer core began to “freeze.”

In a statement, Dr. Biggin admitted that this timeline is “highly controversial” but said that it was “crucial for determining the properties and history of the Earth’s interior” and added that it “has strong implications for how the Earth’s magnetic field – which acts as a shield against harmful radiation from the sun, as well as a useful navigational aid – is generated.

“The results suggest that the Earth’s core is cooling down less quickly than previously thought which has implications for the whole of Earth Sciences, the Liverpool researcher added. “It also suggests an average growth rate of the solid inner core of approximately 1mm per year which affects our understanding of the Earth’s magnetic field.”

Explaining why Earth has life and Mars doesn’t

According to Live Science and Discovery News, the original rocky fragments of Earth began to merge a little over 4.5 billion years ago, and for much of its early life, the planet was just a mass of molten rock. Eventually, however, the surface cooled and formed a crust which floated on top of its liquid core, ultimately developing an atmosphere and biological life.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, the molten iron found deep within the planet solidified, but experts have long debated exactly when this process would have taken place. Some argue that it occurred just 500 million years ago, while other believe that the inner core formed roughly 2.0 billion years ago. This new research appears to narrow the timeframe down somewhat.

“The theoretical model which best fits our data indicates that the core is losing heat more slowly than at any point in the last 4.5 billion years and that this flow of energy should keep the Earth’s magnetic field going for another billion years or more, said Dr. Biggin.

“This contrasts sharply with Mars which had a strong magnetic field early in its history which then appears to have died after half a billion years,” he added. The lack of protection from solar radiation could help to explain why Earth is home to a wide variety of living organisms while the Red Planet appears to be devoid of life.

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Feature Image: Kay Lancaster, Department of Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences

Health

Breakthrough! Rerouted nerve surgery restores hand movement in paralyzed patients

Written By: Brett Smith

Published Date: October 12, 2015 Last Edited: October 12, 2015

Christopher Pilny

Surgeons have successfully restored mobility in the arms and hands of people dealing with paralysis, according to a new paper in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

The study described how surgeon’s successfully restored mobility by “rerouting” nerve impulses by linking up healthy nerves to the injured nerves. The study team used nerve-transfer surgery in nine individuals living with paralysis due to spinal cord injuries in the neck, and every patient improved hand and arm function.

“Physically, nerve-transfer surgery provides incremental improvements in hand and arm function. However, psychologically, these small steps are huge for a patient’s quality of life,” study author Ida K. Fox, assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a statement.

“One of my patients told me he was able to pick up a noodle off his chest when he dropped it. Before the surgery, he couldn’t move his fingers. It meant a lot for him to clean off that noodle without anyone helping him.”

The concept behind the procedure was actually developed approximately 25 years ago by the study’s senior author, Dr. Susan E. Mackinnon. It initially was conducted to bring back movement in the arms and legs of patients who had damaged peripheral nerves and lost the capacity move a foot or an arm.

How does it work?

More recently, the same method has been used to bring back limited movement to individuals with spinal cord injuries. In the procedure, surgeons link up functioning nerves in the upper arms to a patient’s affected nerves in their arms and hands. Once a link is created, patients undergo extensive physical therapy to coach the brain to acknowledge the new nerve signals, a regimen that takes approximately 6 to 18 months.

The method focuses on patients with injuries at the C6 or C7 vertebrae—the lowest bones in the neck. It normally does not assist patients who have lost all arm functionality due to more severe injuries in upper vertebrae.

“The gains after nerve-transfer surgery are not instantaneous,” said Mackinnon, director of the Center for Nerve Injury and Paralysis at WUStL. “But once established, the surgery’s benefits provide a way to let individuals with spinal cord injuries improve their daily lives.”

“Our innovations to address spinal cord injuries came directly from a quarter century of nerve-transfer work in nerve injury,” Mackinnon added. “We want to continue building our expertise in this area very carefully. While the surgery itself can be relatively straightforward, the decision-making is complicated. We want to encourage people with spinal cord injury to consider this option when so little is often offered or made available.”

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Feature Image: E. Holland Durando

Health

Move over fingerprints: You could also be identified by your brain waves

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 12, 2015 Last Edited: October 12, 2015

Christopher Pilny

The unique nature of fingerprints and the difficulty required to alter them have historically made them reliable indicators of human identity, but according to new research published in Monday’s edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, they may have some competition.

Emily Finn, a Ph.D. student in neuroscience at Yale University in Connecticut and her colleagues found that a person’s brain activity could be every bit as unique as the impression left behind by the fraction ridges on his or her fingers. They used fMRI images in order to create brain “connectivity profiles” which could then be used to successfully identify people.

Finn explained that most previous studies used fMRI data as a way to compare and contrast patients and healthy controls. While those studies have provided a lot of information, they “tend to obscure individual differences which may be important,” she said in a statement. Along with co-first author Xilin Shen, Finn set out to try a different approach.

Finn, Shen, and their colleagues acquired fMRI state from 126 participants who had undergone a total of six scans over a 48-hour period. During four of the sessions, the participants performed a variety of different cognitive tasks, while in the other two, they simply remained at rest.

Discovery could help detect, treat neuropsychiatric conditions

The research team looked at brain activity in 268 different regions, focusing specifically on the coordinated activity between different pairs of regions. This highly coordinated activity suggests that two regions are functionally connected, the Yale team explained in a statement.

Based solely on the strength of these connections throughout the entire brain, they were able to identify individuals using only fMRI data if the individual was currently engaged in some kind of task or was at rest. Furthermore, they were able to predict how each of the subjects would perform on different duties. Their discovery could help identify those at risk of neuropsychiatric diseases, or help treat these conditions based on a patient’s brain connectivity profile.

The data used in the research came from the Human Connectome Project, an initiative led by the WU-Minn Consortium. Primarily funding was provided to the Yale scientists by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which also funds the WU-Minn Consortium, the university said.

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Feature Image: Michael S. Helfenbein/Yale

Body shape, diabetes risk could be determined by a woman’s genes

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 12, 2015 Last Edited: September 7, 2018

John

These hips don’t lie! Different versions of a genetic variant could determine how and where a woman’s body stores fat, which in turn can help determine her body type and the likelihood she will develop diabetes, researchers from King’s College London have discovered.

Dr. Kerrin Small, head of the university’s Genomics of Regulatory Variation Research Group, and her colleagues reported at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2015 Annual Meeting this weekend that the variant occurs near the KLF14 gene and helps regulate hundreds of other genes that determine how and where fat is stored in the female body.

Specifically, they explained, the different versions or “alleles” of this variant causes fat-storing cells to function differently, and these changes have a direct impact on a woman’s risk of Type 2 diabetes, the research team explained in a statement. While these differences do not directly alter weight or body mass index, they do affect hip circumference, Dr. Small explained.

“Previous studies have shown that on average, women who carry fat in their hips – those with a ‘pear-shaped’ body type – are significantly less likely to develop diabetes than those with smaller hips,” she continued, adding, “Looking at the variant we studied… studies show that women with one allele tend to have larger hips than women with the other one.”

Why is this link only in women?

The gene which this variant is located near, the KLF14 gene, encodes a protein the study authors found to directly regulate the expression of hundreds of other genes in fat tissue. KLF14 is maternally imprinted, they added, meaning that a person’s expression of it (and the impact that it has on fat tissue) are inherited solely from the mother, not the father.

The link between the variant and Type 2 diabetes risk was originally identified through a large-scale, genome-wide association study, and the link was determined to be modest but statistically significant. However, when Dr. Small’s team focused specifically on women who inherited this allele from their mothers, the effect became more widespread. But why?

Dr. Small and her colleagues have discovered that females tend to have higher baseline levels of the KLF14 mRNA transcript, a precursor to the KLF14 protein, than males. What this indicates is that there may be a threshold effect in which men rarely if ever reach the levels required to up the risk of diabetes. Alternatively, a different, sex-specific protein could be interacting with the KLF14 protein, making it either stronger in men or weaker in women.

“If we can identify the genes and protein products involved in diabetes risk, even for a subset of people, we may be able to develop effective treatment and prevention approaches tailored to people in that group,” Dr. Small said. “Eventually, we hope to develop a comprehensive, predictive model of how genes affect risk of Type 2 diabetes in women.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Why wait? Here’s how to get Cortana on Xbox One right now

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 12, 2015 Last Edited: August 30, 2021

Christopher Pilny

Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana, introduced last year on Windows Phone 8.1 and available now on desktops and tablets running Windows 10, isn’t officially due to arrive on the Xbox One until 2016. But some resourceful tech wizards have found a way to access it early.

Cortana, the Redmond, Washington-based company’s answer to Siri, made her debut in the Halo series of Xbox games before becoming real-life virtual assistant, so it’s only fitting for it to come back to the console that first made it famous. However, its release was delayed earlier this month for unspecified reasons (possibly to give the company time to make it work with headsets).

However, as Engadget, The Verge, and WinBeta all reported last week, a handful of users have taken to Reddit to report that Cortana is currently accessible for anyone who is currently testing the preview version of the upcoming Windows 10 for Xbox One interface.

They claim that by going to the Setting tab, moving up once and pushing the A button multiple times, Cortana will be activated and will immediately be snapped to the side of an app or game. It looks identical to the Windows 10 version, according to reports, and while it is not yet able to perform all Xbox functions, it can access information accessible to it on other platforms, such as calendar appointments, news headlines, and stock information.

What else to expect with the New Xbox One Experience

While Cortana’s official release isn’t expected to come until after January, Microsoft will be rolling out the Windows 10 update for Xbox One in November. This new dashboard will come with several new features, including an upgraded store, quicker access to games, and OneGuide for media content.

Initially, when the Xbox version of Cortana was first announced, Microsoft said that Kinect would be required in order for the digital assistant’s speech recognition feature to be utilized, which is what has fueled speculation that its release was delayed so that it could be tweaked to work with headsets. At this point, however, that has not been confirmed.

The upgraded interface, officially known as the New Xbox One Experience (NXOE), started rolling out to testers late last week, and according to Mark Hachman of PC World, “it seems to work pretty well – it’s a little slower than usual, and my login information to Netflix vanished in the update. Otherwise, however, I haven’t noticed any major bugs.”

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Feature Image: Windows

Science

The Day After Tomorrow: Could it actually happen?

Written By: Chuck Bednar

Published Date: October 12, 2015 Last Edited: October 12, 2015

Christopher Pilny

In the 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow, a paleoclimatologist’s predictions of catastrophic climate change come true as a series of sudden and extreme weather events results in large-scale cooling across the Earth, ultimately triggering a new Ice Age.

The film drew mixed reviews from critics, and climate experts criticized the science behind the events that took place during the motion picture, researchers from the University of Southampton explained in a statement, but no one had ever put the scenario to the test using climate models.

In the movie, global warming caused the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) to abruptly collapse, leading to a series of catastrophic events such as New York being flooded, Los Angeles being leveled by tornados, and extreme freezing throughout the entire northern hemisphere.

To test the plausibility of this scenario, Sybren Drijfhout from the university’s Ocean and Earth Science used the ECHAM climate model at the Max-Planck Institute in Germany, and found that if global warming and a collapse of the AMOC were to occur at the same time, the planet would cool for a period of 20 years. After that time, global warming would resume as normal.

Some regions could need 100 years to recover from AMOC collapse

Professor Drijfhout, whose research was published last week in the journal Scientific Reports, explained that “Earth recovers from the AMOC collapse in about 40 years when global warming continues at present-day rates, but near the eastern boundary of the North Atlantic (including the British Isles) it takes more than a century before temperature is back to normal.”

The impact of atmospheric cooling due to an AMOC collapse has been linked to heat flow from the atmosphere into the ocean, which has been observed during the purported climate hiatus that has been taking place over the past 15 years. Other factors, including El Niño and Southern Ocean changes due to shifting and increasing westerlies, are also believed to be factors.

“When a similar cooling or reduced heating is caused by volcanic eruptions or decreasing greenhouse emissions the heat flow is reversed, from the ocean into the atmosphere,” Drijfhout said. “A similar reversal of energy flow is also visible at the top of the atmosphere. These very different fingerprints in energy flow between atmospheric radiative forcing and internal ocean circulation processes make it possible to attribute the cause of a climate hiatus period.”

“It can be excluded, however, that this hiatus period was solely caused by changes in atmospheric forcing, either due to volcanic eruptions, more aerosols emissions in Asia, or reduced greenhouse gas emissions,” the professor added. “Changes in ocean circulation must have played an important role. Natural variations have counteracted the greenhouse effect for a decade or so, but I expect this period is over now.”

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Feature Image: Thinkstock

Science

48-million-year-old horse-like fetus found inside preserved uterus

Written By: Susanna Pilny

Published Date: October 12, 2015 Last Edited: October 12, 2015

Christopher Pilny

An ancient find yields a new first: Inside of an equoid fossil found in Germany in 2000, scientists have uncovered not only the second fossil uterus ever found, but the oldest as well.

As reported in PLOS One, the fossil of this tiny pregnant horse relative (Eurohippus messelensis) was discovered in the Messel Pit, an UNESCO World Heritage Site that has provided us with unique information about mammalian evolution, thanks to the quality of fossils discovered there.

This fossil is no exception. The fetus—which is inside the white oval in the image above—is particularly well-preserved; nearly all the bones are present and connected, although the skull was crushed.

Fossils of pregnant horse-like species themselves are incredibly rare, and when taken into consideration with the fact that fewer than 2% of local finds involving fossilized mammals yielded more than a fragment of a single bone, this find is extraordinary.

A research team has now evaluated the bones and anatomy of the fossil using scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and high-resolution micro-x-ray. Thanks to the preservation of the animals, the researchers have been able to reconstruct the original appearance and position of the fetus. Using this, they were able to estimate that the mare died late in her pregnancy, but before she could give birth. The mare then fell into a lake, where she and her fetus were preserved.

Lake is key player to this extraordinary find

The lake is the key player as to how the rarer bits of soft tissue became preserved. As the horse was decomposing inside the lake, bacteria feasting on the soft tissues released CO2. This CO2 reacted with iron in the water, forming Fe-carbonate. This mineral then coated the bacteria and hardened, forming a mat that matched the lines of the soft tissue.

The researchers discovered parts of this mat around the fetus, including preserved parts of the uteroplacenta and a uterine ligament. From what the researchers have seen, this uterine system within these 48-million-year-old horse relatives actually corresponds largely with those of living mares—meaning the reproductive system that horses have today was already highly developed at least as of 48 million years ago, and was greatly conserved until today.

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Feature Image: Franzen et al. 2015

Health

More than one third of vegetarians eat meat while drunk

Written By: Shayne Jacopian

Published Date: October 11, 2015 Last Edited: October 11, 2015

Christopher Pilny

A U.K.-based survey was released this earlier this week, and it found that over a third of vegetarians eat meat when they’re drunk.

Even better, a third of that third admitted to eating meat every time they were drunk on a night out.

Surveying 1,789 U.K. vegetarians, a research team from the leading U.K. money saving site Voucher Codes Pro asked participants the simple question, “When drunk, do you ever eat meat?”

37 percent of the respondents admitted to eating meat while drunk. Presented with a set of answers to the question of how often, they were then asked to select the response that best applied to them. Of the 37 percent of vegetarians who admitted to consuming meat when consuming alcohol, 34 percent did so “every time [they were] drunk on a night out”, 26 percent did so “fairly often”, 18 percent ate meat when drinking “occasionally”, and 22 percent “rarely” succumbed to their drunk cravings.

Occasionally-meat-eating vegetarians spend, on average, £4.80 (or $7.36 USD) on meat on a drunk night out, with 39 percent favoring kebab meat, and slightly fewer preferring burgers, bacon, and fried chicken—the things that would probably be at the top of the list if this survey was conducted in the United States.

And of course, most don’t tell anyone when they’ve stumbled. While the study doesn’t survey how many vegetarians regret eating meat on a drunken night out, 69 percent of them don’t tell anyone they did so. Of course, this could be out of fear of judgment or a desire to maintain an identity. For the other 31 percent, which may also make up the 34 percent of respondents who eat meat every time they drink, it could just be a part of their routine, and perhaps allowing themselves to cheat under specific circumstances (being tipsy) keeps them grounded the rest of the time.

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Image credit: Thinkstock