“Zosia” was buried with a padlock on her leg and an iron sickle around her neck, and was never supposed to come back to life.
The young woman buried in an unmarked cemetery in Pien, northern Poland, was one of dozens of people feared by her neighbors to be “vampires.”
Now, a team of scientists has used DNA, 3D printing, and clay modeling to reconstruct Zosia’s 400-year-old face, revealing a human story buried in supernatural beliefs.
“In a way, it’s really ironic,” says Swedish archaeologist Oskar Nilsson. “The people who buried her did everything they could to prevent her from rising from the dead…We did everything we could to bring her back to life.”
In 2022, the body of Zosia, a woman buried as a vampire, was discovered in a tomb in Pien, Poland. Nicolaus Copernicus University/Oskar Nilsson via Reuters
Zosia, as it was named by local residents, was discovered in 2022 by a team of archaeologists from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń.
Zosia was between 18 and 20 years old at the time of her death, and analysis of her skull suggested she suffered from a health condition that could cause fainting, severe headaches and even mental health problems, Nilsson said.
According to Nicolaus Copernicus’ team, sickles, padlocks and certain types of wood found in graveyards were all believed at the time to have magical properties that could protect against vampires.
Zosia’s grave was grave number 75 in an unmarked cemetery on the outskirts of Pien, a city north of Bydgoszcz. Among the other bodies found at the scene was a “vampire” child who was buried face down with a padlock at his feet as well.
Little is known about Zosia’s life, but Nilsson and Pien’s research team believe that the items with which she was buried indicate that she came from a wealthy (possibly aristocratic) family.
Nilsson suggests that the war-torn 17th-century Europe in which she lived created a climate of fear in which belief in supernatural monsters was common.
Nilsson’s recreation began by creating a 3D-printed replica of the skull, then gradually built up layers of clay “muscle by muscle” to form a lifelike face.
He combines bone structure with information about gender, age, ethnicity, and approximate weight to estimate the depth of facial features.
“It’s emotional to see a face come back from the dead, especially when you know this young girl’s story,” Nilsson says.
Nilsson said he wanted to bring Zosia back “as a human being, not as a buried monster.”
Halloween is expected to be much warmer than usual in many parts of the country this year.
More than 30 cities in the Northeast could set new temperature records on Thursday.
Unseasonably warm weather arrives in the midst of a warmer-than-usual fall in various parts of the United States
For trick-or-treaters in many parts of the country, that familiar chill may not be in the air this Halloween.
More than 30 cities in the Northeast, including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., could experience record high temperatures on Thursday. Many cities in the Midwest are also expected to see temperatures 10 to 30 degrees warmer than usual for this time of year.
High temperatures in Boston are expected to reach 80 degrees Fahrenheit, making it one of the warmest Halloweens in 80 years, said National Weather Service forecaster Caitlin Mensch. The city’s current high temperature of 81 degrees was set on October 31, 1946.
“We’re well above normal for this time of year,” Mensch said.
Given the unseasonably warm weather, she encouraged trick-or-treaters to stay hydrated and apply sunscreen if it’s still light.
The high temperature in New York City on Thursday is expected to be 78 degrees and in Washington, D.C., a high of 81 degrees.
Temperatures in the Midwest will be similarly mild in late October. Cleveland’s high temperature could reach 78 degrees, and St. Louis’ expected high of 68 degrees could make this year among the 30 hottest Halloweens in the region in the last 100 years, the National Weather Service says. said Jared Maples, a meteorologist with the St. Louis bureau. Louis.
Temperatures could reach up to 68 degrees in Chicago. If that happens, this year’s Halloween will be one of the 10 warmest days ever recorded, said Zachary Yack, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Chicago office. The normal weather for Halloween in the area is 56 degrees.
“We’ve had a pretty warm pattern over the last few weeks across the Great Lakes and much of the Midwest,” Yack said. “We’re tracking this high-pressure system, and high-pressure systems tend to have clearer skies and warmer temperatures most of the time.”
Forecasters expect temperatures to drop by the end of the week.
Autumn is generally warmer than usual in some parts of the country. In early October, much of the western United States was hit by an unusual heatwave, with temperatures soaring into triple digits in cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, Napa, and San Jose, California. Dozens of new daily heat records were set across California, Arizona, and Nevada.
Last year was the hottest on record on Earth, and scientists say global temperature records are on track to be broken again in 2024.
randy richardson
Randy Richardson is a medical intern at NBC News Digital based in New York.
Dennis Chow
Dennis Chou is a science and space reporter for NBC News.
Feedback is often confused or intrigued by the tricks advertisers use to try to sell things, but more recent strategies have been tricking them in the wrong direction, such as intentionally weird capitalization or bad grammar. It seems that it is designed to.
While we were fiddling with our smartphones, Feedback kept coming across ads for mobile games that promised “the most difficult levels ever.” We spent several days trying to figure out why it looks that way.
The name of the game in question is Climb! It's a puzzle game in which a group of climbers climbs to the top of a mountain, tangles safety lines, and the player must untie them. So it's essentially the flip side of Feedback TV, except it's gamified and at least somewhat solvable.
Feedback initially wondered if this was a non-English speaking developer skimping on translation costs. There is precedent for this. Dating back to 1991, it's a Japanese space shooter. zero wing It was released in Europe with a notorious translation. As a result, in the introductory cutscene, the alien invaders announced:all your bases are ours” After it was rediscovered in the late 1990s, it became one of the most widely shared internet memes of the time.
However, if you look closely, Climb! It suggests something else is going on. It's made by a company called FOMO Games. Although the company is based in Turkey, its staff clearly have good English skills, as evidenced by the information provided for all of the company's other games. Not to mention, as the company's brilliant corporate text on its website explains, “FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out.” This defines our product vision and culture. ”
Rather, the feedback makes me suspect that the poor English is intentionally designed to get our attention. In line with this, the ad also has other strange features that add to its strangeness. What's notable is that the game's title makes no sense at all, as the game's mountaineers have been replaced by spacesuit-clad astronauts floating against a starry sky. It wasn't until I saw the game in the app store that the mountaineering theme was revealed and things became clear.
This seems like a new and devilish way to promote products online. They intentionally create a perfect hash of their ad, hoping that this will pique people's interest and make them click through.
And on some level it worked. Because we are here. But the feedback is not downloading the game. As a general rule, we do not believe in rewarding intentionally incorrect spellings.
monkey in politics
At the time of this writing, the US presidential election is imminent, and the feedback has fallen into a never-ending cycle of news articles reporting polls, experts endlessly reinterpreting that poll, and then doing more polls. I am. This is a very long-winded way of saying, “I don't know what's going to happen.”
Now, our colleague Alexandra Thompson has highlighted an important new contribution to the field of mimetic prediction: a paper titled “Monkey predicts US election”.
Unfortunately, this doesn't require having countless monkeys in the voting booth. Instead, the researchers showed the monkeys pairs of photos of candidates for the Senate and gubernatorial races.
Monkeys spent more time looking at the losers than the winners. This seems like a unique form of torture for politicians. It says that not only did you lose, but the monkey looked at you with critical eyes.
This study extended previous research showing that children can identify election winners and losers purely based on pictures of candidates. Both children and monkeys made choices based on face shape, and a square jawline was a key indicator of increased chances of victory.
Who would do such research? Three of the researchers are affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, while the fourth is affiliated with a research institution in Portugal. Champalimaud Unknown Center. I don't really know what to make of the feedback.
Unconscious factors seem to influence our voting decisions. It's often said that taller candidates tend to win in American elections, and there appears to be some truth to this.
A 2013 study extracted data on every U.S. presidential election to date and found: tall candidate Although they received more votes in the popular vote, this did not actually make them more likely to be elected. It can only be described as double subject determinism, and one of the authors is a social psychologist. Abraham Bunck.
Readers interested in the outcome of the US election are advised: Whatever you do, don't look up the respective heights of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
One more for the road
In these stressful times, like many people, your feedback is directed toward comforting alternative realities such as: great british bake off (great british baking showif you live in North America).
There are lots of all kinds of fascinating and delicious things to learn about the ingredient science of bread, cakes and biscuits, but the show's home production of all sample biscuits, tarts and desserts to meet the technical challenges economists are called hattie baker.
Have a story for feedback?
You can email your article to Feedback at feedback@newscientist.com. Please enter your home address. This week's and past feedback can be found on our website
Trillions of neutrinos pass through our bodies every second. The sun produces them through nuclear fusion. The same goes for nuclear power plants. Some come from supernova explosions in space. Neutrinos are paired with antineutrinos, which scientists believe mirror the behavior of neutrinos.
As such, JUNO is designed to capture antineutrinos, specifically the antineutrinos emitted by two nuclear power plants located approximately 53 miles from the observatory.
The 13-story JUNO sphere will be filled with a special liquid called a scintillator and submerged in a cylinder of purified water, said project leader Wang Yifang, director of the China Institute of High Energy Physics.
When the antineutrinos pass through the liquid, they trigger a chemical process that produces a brief burst of light that can be picked up by sensors inside the sphere.
“This event will cause a flash that will last only about 5 nanoseconds, and we hope to capture it with thousands of photomultiplier tubes surrounding the sphere,” he says, as a worker behind him says, Mr. Wang, wearing a helmet, spoke while installing the doubler. “We hope to catch 60 events per day.”
Thanks to its approach, JUNO should be able to measure differences in antineutrino masses about 10 times more accurately than previous instruments.
First of three new neutrino observatories
JUNO is part of China’s ambitious efforts to become a global scientific powerhouse. In a speech this year, President Xi Jinping laid out plans to transform the country into a science and technology superpower by 2035.
October 11th, workers at the bottom of JUNO.Eric Baclinao/NBC News
JUNO is expected to be the first of three next-generation neutrino observatories to open over the next decade, making it a kind of spearhead in a new era of physics. In Japan, the Hyper-Kamiokande Observatory is scheduled to open in 2027. And a U.S.-backed program called the Deep Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) calls for particle accelerators to send beams of neutrinos underground from Illinois to North Dakota starting in 2027. 2031.
The three upcoming observatories are both complementary and competitors, as they all plan to use different techniques to detect particles. Each project involves extensive international collaboration aimed at advancing the field, creating new spin-off technologies and training a new wave of scientists.
“When you start these experiments, it’s not unlikely that you’ll observe something unexpected,” said Chris Marshall, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Rochester who works on the DUNE project. “Trying to unravel these very complex effects will require multiple experiments measuring things in different ways.”
The ability of each observatory to answer important physics questions depends in part on how well researchers can collaborate between and among projects. But there is growing concern among some scientists around the world that rising geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, and the resulting deterioration in their scientific relations, could hinder progress. are.
In recent years, the United States has pursued policies to prevent Chinese scientists from bringing American-based technology to the country and to prevent China from poaching its scientific stars.
Wang said the U.S. is denying visa applications for 2022 and 2023 without explanation and limiting U.S. involvement in JUNO.
“In science, cooperation and competition are good, but it can’t be all about competition,” he said.
On October 11, Mr. Wang pointed out to journalists the underlying characteristics of JUNO’s domain.Eric Baclinao/NBC News
U.S.-based scientists also said they have found new obstacles to cooperation with Chinese scientists.
“From the U.S. side, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to obtain funding for collaborations with Chinese colleagues,” Patrick Huber, director of the Center for Neutrino Physics at Virginia Tech, said in an email. It has also become much more difficult for our Chinese colleagues to obtain U.S. visas.” .
“It’s not impossible to collaborate with Chinese scientists, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult,” said Ignacio Taboada, a physics professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who directs an existing neutrino observatory in Antarctica. “I’m working on it,” he said.
Solving the mystery of neutrinos
The data generated by JUNO could go a long way toward solving important mysteries about how and why neutrinos change shape more than other elementary particles.
Neutrinos can oscillate, or transform, between three so-called “flavors” during their travels: muon, tau, and electron. For example, the sun sends electron neutrinos toward Earth, but they can also arrive as muon neutrinos. When neutrinos interact (which rarely happens), they settle on a particular flavor.
Additionally, scientists believe that neutrinos travel as one of three different mass states, and that state helps determine the likelihood of a neutrino interacting as a particular flavor. However, it is not yet clear which state has the largest population.
Scientists also found that neutrinos and antineutrinos may deform differently as they travel, and that those differences may account for some of the imbalance in the physics between matter and antimatter in the universe. I think there is.
Journalists take photos at the top of JUNO’s sphere on October 11th.Eric Baclinao/NBC News
If so, learning more about the masses and oscillations of neutrinos and antineutrinos will help researchers find a missing page in the Standard Model of physics (the rulebook of particles and their interactions), or something that has never been known before. This could help researchers understand whether missing particles or forces are having invisible effects. role.
“Our beautiful theory of reality, the Standard Model, is not the final theory,” said Sergio Bertolucci, an Italian particle physicist and DUNE co-spokesperson. “It turns out that we need to know more about neutrinos to answer things that the standard model can’t answer.”
Wang hopes JUNO will win the race to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy before the United States and other countries.
“We just want to be good scientists. In science, being first is most important. There’s nothing to be second,” he said. “As a scientist, I can’t always be a follower. I want to have my own thing.”
Entrance to the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory in China.Eric Baclinao/NBC News
If JUNO explains the neutrino mass story before DUNE comes online, the U.S.-led project will be able to measure that question differently and confirm JUNO’s results.
DUNE’s plan is to measure neutrinos as they leave the Illinois facility, then travel 800 miles around Earth, where they can interact and oscillate. If the neutrinos arrive in South Dakota and can be detected, scientists could compare the flavor combinations of the neutrinos at the beginning and end of their journey. However, the project experienced delays and cost overruns.
“JUNO’s uniquely rich dataset, alone or in combination with other experiments, will play a key role in determining bulk orders by 2030,” said Professor Pedro Ochoa said in physics and astronomy from the University of California, Irvine.
However, several scientists involved in neutrino observation projects acknowledged that it is impossible to predict how much benefit the research will actually bring to Earth. They suggested that in the future, new technologies could be spun off, driving innovation in data-intensive computing and advancing particle accelerator science.
“We can’t make electric light by improving candles, so we need to take a step forward. We need a break,” said John C., a particle physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and co-spokesperson for the DUNE project. Mary Bishai says. “Basic research inherently creates discontinuities.”
Wang put it another way, saying his work is driven by pure curiosity: “I work in ‘useless’ science.”
Cygnus OB2 is the giant young stellar association closest to the Sun.
In this new composite image, Chandra data (purple) shows the diffuse X-ray emission and young stars of Cygnus OB2, along with infrared data (red, green, blue, cyan) from NASA's now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope reveals young stars. And it creates cold dust and gas throughout the region. Image credits: NASA / CXC / SAO / Drake others. / JPL-California Institute of Technology / Spitzer / N. Walk.
At a distance of approximately 1,400 parsecs (4,600 light years), Cygnus OB2 It is a huge young body closest to the Sun.
It contains hundreds of double stars and thousands of low-mass stars.
Dr. Mario Giuseppe Guarcero of the National Institute of Astrophysics, Dr. Juan Facundo Albacete Colombo of the University of Rio Negro, and colleagues used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to study various regions of Cygnus OB2. observed.
This deep observation mapped the diffuse X-ray glow between the stars and also provided an inventory of young stars within the cluster.
This inventory was combined with other inventories using optical and infrared data to create the best survey of young stars within the association.
“These dense stellar environments are home to large amounts of high-energy radiation produced by stars and planets,” the astronomers said.
“X-rays and intense ultraviolet radiation can have devastating effects on planetary disks and systems that are in the process of forming.”
The protoplanetary disk around the star naturally disappears over time. Part of the disk falls onto the star, and some is heated by X-rays and ultraviolet light from the star and evaporates in the wind.
The latter process, known as photoevaporation, typically takes 5 million to 10 million years for an average-sized star to destroy its disk.
This process could be accelerated if there is a nearby massive star that produces the most X-rays and ultraviolet light.
researchers Found Clear evidence that protoplanetary disks around stars actually die out much faster when they approach massive stars that produce large amounts of high-energy radiation.
Also, in regions where stars are more densely packed, the disk dies out faster.
In the region of Cygnus OB2, which has less high-energy radiation and fewer stars, the proportion of young stars with disks is about 40%.
In regions with higher-energy radiation and more stars, the proportion is about 18%.
The strongest influence, and therefore the worst location for a star to become a potential planetary system, is within about 1.6 light-years of the most massive star in the cluster.
In another study, the same team I looked into it Characteristics of the diffuse X-ray emission of Cygnus OB2.
They discovered that the high-energy, diffuse radiation originates from regions where winds of gas blown from massive stars collide with each other.
“This causes the gas to become hot and generate X-rays,” the researchers said.
“The low-energy release is likely caused by gas within the cluster colliding with gas surrounding the cluster.”
_____
MG Guarcero others. 2024. Photoevaporation and close encounters: How does the environment around Cygnus OB2 affect the evolution of the protoplanetary disk? APJS 269, 13; doi: 10.3847/1538-4365/acdd67
JF Albacete vs Colombo others. 2024. Diffuse X-ray emission in the Cygnus OB2 coalition. APJS 269, 14;doi: 10.3847/1538-4365/acdd65
These two medieval cities, named Tashbulak and Tugubulak, are among the largest cities ever recorded on the mountainous Silk Road, a vast network of ancient trade routes that connected Europe and East Asia. is.
A drone captured this image of Tugumburak in 2018. Image credit: M. Frachetti.
Tashbulac and Tugumbrac are located on rugged terrain between 2,000 and 2,200 meters above sea level (roughly comparable to Machu Picchu in Peru), making them rare examples of thriving mountain cities.
The small city of Tashbulak had an area of about 12 hectares, while the larger city of Tugubulak reached 120 hectares, making it one of the largest provincial cities of the time.
“These would have been important urban centers in Central Asia, especially if they moved from lowland oases to more difficult highlands,” said archaeologist Professor Michael Frachetti of Washington University in St. Louis.
“Although typically seen as barriers to trade and movement on the Silk Road, the mountains were actually major centers of exchange.”
“Animals, minerals, and other valuable resources likely drove their prosperity.”
“The Tugumbrak site had an elaborate urban structure with a specific material culture that was very different from the sedentary culture of the lowlands,” added Dr. Farkhod Makhdov, director of the National Archaeological Center of Uzbekistan.
“It is clear that the people who lived in Tugumburak more than a thousand years ago were nomads who maintained their own independent culture and political economy.”
Combined lidar view of Tugumburak. Image credit: SAIElab / J.Berner / M. Frachetti.
Drone-based lidar scanning revealed squares, fortresses, roads and settlements in Tashbulak and Tugubulak.
“These are some of the highest resolution lidar images of the site ever published,” Dr. Frachetti said.
“They are made possible, in part, because of the unique erosion dynamics in this mountainous environment.”
“Both cities need more thorough testing,” he added.
“Preliminary excavations at one of the fortified structures in Tugumburak show that this fortification (a building protected by a three-meter-thick rammed earth wall) was constructed by a local metal smith who used the rich iron ore deposits to create steel. This suggests that it may have been a processing factory.
“Such an industry would have been an important feature of the city and its economy.”
It is already clear that Tashbulak and Tugubulak were not just remote outposts or resting places.
“The Silk Road was not just about China and its western terminus,” Dr. Frachetti said.
“Major political forces were active in Central Asia. Complex centers of networks were also drivers of innovation.”
team's result Published in this month's magazine nature.
_____
MD Frachetti others. 2024. Large-scale medieval urbanization tracked by UAV lidar in the highlands of Central Asia. nature 634, 1118-1124; doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-08086-5
NASA’s Perseverance rover will pass in front of the sun on September 30, 2024, the 1,285th Martian day (Sol) since the start of its mission. I captured the silhouette of Phobos inside.
Perseverance captured the silhouette of Phobos passing in front of the Sun on September 30, 2024. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS.
Phobos was discovered in 1877 by the American astronomer Asaph Hall, along with its smaller cousin Deimos.
It orbits approximately 6,000 km (3,700 miles) from the surface of Mars, completing one orbit in just 7 hours and 39 minutes.
Phobos orbits so close to the surface of Mars that the planet’s curvature makes it difficult to see from observers standing at Mars’ polar regions.
Its orbital period is approximately three times the planet’s rotation period, and when viewed from Mars, it rises in the west and sets in the east, an unusual result for a natural satellite.
Phobos measures 26 x 22 x 18 km (16.2 x 13.7 x 11.2 miles) and has a very rugged appearance. There are also impact craters and grooves on the surface.
“Perseverance recently spotted a ‘googly eye’ peering out from space from its perch on the western wall of Jezero Crater on Mars,” NASA scientists said in a statement.
“The pupil of this celestial gaze is Mars’ moon Phobos, and the iris is our sun.”
The event, captured by the Mastcam-Z spacecraft on September 30, occurred as Phobos passed directly between the Sun and a point on the surface of Mars, obscuring most of the Sun’s disk. .
At the same time that Phobos appeared as a large black disk moving rapidly across the surface of the Sun, its shadow, or foreshadow, moved across the planet’s surface.
“Due to its fast orbit, passages through Phobos typically last only about 30 seconds,” the researchers said.
This isn’t the first time a NASA spacecraft has seen Phobos blocking the sun’s rays.
Perseverance has captured multiple passes of the small moon since landing in Mars’ Jezero Crater in February 2021.
Curiosity shot the video in 2019. Opportunity captured the image in 2004.
“By comparing different images, we can improve our understanding of the moon’s orbit and learn how it is changing,” the scientists said.
“Phobos is moving closer to Mars and is predicted to collide with Mars within about 50 million years.”
During the Bronze Age, northwestern Arabia, the region between Mecca and Aqaba, was home to interconnected city walls centered around small fortified cities, such as the recently discovered town of al-Nata in the Khyber Oasis in the Medina province of Saudi Arabia. There were oases dotted around the area.
3D virtual reconstruction of the Bronze Age town of Arnatar. Image credit: Charloux others., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309963 / AFALULA-RCU-CNRS.
The development of metropolitan settlements was a major step in the evolution of human civilization.
This urbanization process can be difficult to study in northwestern Arabia, in part due to the region's lack of well-preserved archaeological sites compared to better-understood regions such as the Levant and Mesopotamia. I understand.
However, excavations in recent decades have uncovered exceptional ruins that provide insight into the early stages of urbanization in northwest Arabia.
In a new study, CNRS archaeologist Guillaume Charroux and colleagues focused on the Bronze Age town of Al Nataa, which was inhabited from around 2400 to 1500 BC.
The town is approximately 1.5 hectares in area and includes a central area and nearby residential areas surrounded by a protective wall.
According to researchers, about 500 people lived in Arnata.
Although similar in size and composition to other sites of similar age in northwest Arabia, these sites are smaller and less sociopolitically complex than modern sites in the Levant and Mesopotamia.
Scientists suggest that Al Nata represents a state of “hypo-urbanization”, a transition period between nomadic pastoralism and complex urban settlement.
Archaeological evidence so far indicates that small fortified cities dotted northwestern Arabia during the Early to Middle Bronze Age, a period when other regions were showing later stages of urbanization.
Further excavations throughout Arabia will provide more detailed information about the timing of this transition and the changes in social structure and architecture that accompanied it.
“Archaeologists have discovered the first small Bronze Age town (c. 2400-1300 BC) in northwest Arabia connected to an extensive network of walls, raising questions about the early development of local urban planning,” the authors said.
Their paper was published in the online journal PLoS ONE on October 30, 2024.
_____
G. Charroux others. 2024. Bronze Age towns in the walled oasis of Khyber: A discussion of early urbanization in northwestern Arabia. PLoS ONE 19 (10): e0309963;doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309963
Scientists discovered fossils in Argentina’s Santa Cruz province
Mariana Chubar et al., Journal (2024)
The beautifully preserved fossilized tadpoles are the oldest discovered by science, dating back 161 million years, and their anatomy is strikingly similar to some of today’s species. I am.
Paleontologists discovered the fossil in January 2020 while searching for feathered dinosaurs in Argentina’s Santa Cruz province.
“They missed the mark,” says Mariana Churivar of Universidad Maimonides in Buenos Aires, Argentina. “But after many days of digging, one of our team members discovered a stone with a special signature: a fossilized tadpole.”
Chubar and her colleagues have now identified this tadpole as belonging to an extinct frog species. Notobatrachus degiustoiwas deciphered from hundreds of adult specimens discovered in the same fossil deposit since 1957.
Until now, scientists had never unearthed tadpole fossils from before the Cretaceous period, which began about 145 million years ago. This specimen is also the first fossil tadpole from an early frog lineage known as stalk anurans, which is older than modern species known as crown anurans.
This fossil is very well preserved, with eyes and nerves visible in the head, forelimbs, and part of the tail. The researchers estimate that it was about 16 centimeters long, comparable to the largest tadpole in existence today.
The part of the skeleton that supports the gills suggests that the specialized filter-feeding anatomy of modern tadpoles had already evolved in this fossilized tadpole, Chubar said.
The similarities between ancient and modern tadpoles are so great that the researchers were even able to determine the developmental stage in the fossils, concluding that they were just about to undergo metamorphosis into frogs.
Illustration of tadpoles and adults of the species Notabatrachus degiustoi
Gabriel Rio
Earth’s warm, humid climate in the past, combined with the lack of competition and predation from other frog species and fish, may have made it easier for tadpoles to grow large, Chubar said.
Jody Lowry The Australian Museum in Sydney said the discovery of the oldest known tadpole “confirms how successful and stable the ‘typical’ frog life cycle we all learn about in school is.”
The size of the tadpoles tells us a lot about the habitat in which frogs evolved more than 160 million years ago, a water-rich environment with few predators or competitors, she says. “This is something modern frog species can only dream of.”
Loading plates has never been more complicated. While we urge people to avoid ultra-processed foods and ‘bad’ fats, we are also exposed to a growing number of sometimes contradictory dietary advice. Not only is it confusing, but it’s difficult to determine what difference these choices will actually make in the long run.
Social media is full of people talking about the health benefits of what they eat, and diets that promise to improve hormonal balance, for example, are rapidly gaining popularity. It goes without saying that any nutrition advice shared on TikTok should be taken with a pinch of salt, but some people get carried away by the excitement and begin to believe that there must be a grain of truth to such claims. I tend to put it away.
Then there are fermented foods that are often sold as dietary panaceas. Do we really need to consume a lot of kimchi and kombucha to be healthy?
Even nutrition can be confusing. The more we hear about the latest discoveries, such as reducing chronic inflammation, improving health and weight by eating at specific times, and choosing what to eat based on personal preferences, It seems like you can adjust your diet to focus on the results. reaction to food.
Not only is it confusing, but it’s hard to tell what difference these choices actually make
To help you navigate this minefield, we’ve put together a delicious special issue. new scientist We highlight seven of today’s hottest nutrition trends and teach you how to eat better.
This revealed some surprising things. For example, recent research shows that snacking, long generally demonized as a bad thing, may actually be good for your health and waistline.
Plus, there are the surprisingly wide-ranging health benefits of dietary fiber, which we already know is good for your gut. Unlike many ingredients touted as superfoods, this one lives up to its promise, and most of us don’t get enough of it.
So check out our feature on science-based guides on what you should actually do to increase your chances of living a longer, healthier life.
Even if you eat the same bread, everyone's metabolic reaction will be different.
Matthew Ashmore/Alamy
Consider two slices of bread. One is an artisanal sourdough boule and the other is an inexpensive mass-produced white bread. Which do you think is healthier?
The correct answer is “You won't know until you try.” Some people have unhealthy reactions to cheap foods, such as spikes in blood sugar levels. However, this is not the case for some people and their blood sugar levels spike after eating sourdough. Some people will see a spike in both, while others will not see much of a rise.
This article is part of a series on nutrition that delves into today's hottest trends. Click here for details.
The same goes for other foods and other nutrients, especially fats, which can dangerously spike in your bloodstream after eating. How our metabolisms react to food is highly specific, a shocking discovery that overturns decades of nutritional orthodoxy and explains what we should eat to stay healthy. It is hoped that this will finally answer the surprisingly vexing question of whether.
A rise in blood sugar and lipids after a meal is quite normal, but if they rise too quickly (called a spike) they can cause problems. Frequent spikes in glucose and a type of fat called triglycerides are associated with the risk of developing diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. For decades, nutrition researchers assumed that all humans responded roughly the same way to certain foods, leading to uniform increases in blood sugar and fat levels.
glycemic index
Under that premise, dietary advice was simple and uniform. Reduce your intake of foods that cause spikes. Unsurprisingly, most of them…
Marine biologists have used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to discover six new species of carnivorous sponges in the cladulidae family on the western edge of the Australian continent.
Abisocladia janusi. Image credit: M. Ekins & NG Wilson, doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-72917-8.
Cladriidae It is a type of carnivorous sponge that is found on ocean ridges and seamount systems around the world.
usually considered Deep-sea sponges are known for capturing prey with specialized structures.
The latest discoveries bring the number of known species of cradlefish fauna in Australian waters to 41.
New species include: Abisocladia janusi, Abisocladia Johnhupeli, Abisocladia Aurora, axonidama challengeri, Cladriza Vanesakinsand Narrabora Ningaroa.
They were collected from two deep-sea regions in Western Australia almost a thousand kilometers apart.
Abisocladia janusi One was found in the Bremer Canyon system and the other five were found in the Cape Range Canyon.
Queensland Museum CEO Dr Jim Thompson said: “These science novice species deepen our knowledge of the cladulidae and highlight the importance of continued exploration and conservation of marine biodiversity. ” he said.
“The description and study of these new species of carnivorous sponges provides important insight into the complex marine ecosystems along Queensland's coastline and highlights the importance of biodiversity and conservation efforts across the region. I’ll highlight it.”
Traditionally, carnivorous sponges have been collected for scientific research by trawling the ocean floor, but recent advances in ROV technology have enabled researchers to study these fascinating creatures in their natural habitat. There has been a revolution in capabilities.
This latest discovery was made during a deep-sea expedition conducted by the Schmidt Oceanographic Institute using an ROV. Subastian Explore the rich biodiversity of Western Australia's underwater landscape.
“During the expedition, I was able to operate the ROV remotely from my desk at the museum,” said Dr Merrick Eakins, Queensland Museum's sessile marine invertebrate collection manager.
“Our research highlights the importance of deep-sea exploration and the role of technological advances in understanding marine biodiversity.”
“These sponges demonstrate the incredible adaptability of life in extreme environments and challenge our understanding of marine ecosystems.”
“The implications of these findings go beyond mere classification. They highlight the need to protect these fragile ecosystems, which are under threat from climate change and human activity.”
team's paper Published in a magazine scientific report.
_____
M. Ekins and NG. Wilson. 2024. A new carnivorous sponge from Western Australia (Porifera: Porifera: Cladorhididae) collected by remotely operated vehicle (ROV). science officer 14, 22173; doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-72917-8
Humans have been fermenting foods and drinks for at least 13,000 years and touting their health benefits for almost as long. However, even though we have a long history with these foods, we are only just beginning to determine whether these foods are actually beneficial to our health.
But unlike our ancestors, we now know how fermentation works. Microorganisms such as certain yeasts and bacteria break down the sugars in grains, fruits, vegetables, and dairy products in ways that prevent them from spoiling and create their unique flavors. But what does this mean for our health?
This article is part of a series on nutrition that delves into today’s hottest trends. Click here for details.
Many studies have shown that fermented foods, especially dairy versions, Reduced risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity. for example, 2023 survey A study of more than 46,000 adults living in the United States found that eating fermented foods was associated with lower blood pressure, body mass index, and waist circumference.
However, much of the research lumps all types of fermented foods together, and given the health effects of these products, it is likely that people who consume fermented foods are also more likely to take care of their health in other ways. I understand. Both of these factors make it difficult to determine what is actually driving the observed benefits.
benefits of yogurt
However, the most likely case is yogurt. Many large-scale studies have linked its consumption to: Improving immunityimprove bone density and longevity, and reduce the risk of: cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure. However, determining cause and effect from these observations…
SHepton Mallet Prison in Somerset is the world’s oldest correctional facility. It is also reportedly one of the most haunted places. From its opening in 1625 until its closure in 2013, it housed hundreds of inmates, ranging from Victorian street urchins to wayward American GIs to the Clay twins. Although it is now a tourist attraction, it is sometimes opened for a fee to guests who wish to spend the night behind the bar. Some are paranormal investigators, some are intrepid travelers, and some are video game journalists with a stupid idea. “How scary would it be to be locked in a haunted prison and play the latest five horror games all night?”
Armed with just a flashlight, an electromagnetic field (EMF) detector, and a laptop, we roamed the prison looking for chilling locations to play these immersive paranormal masterpieces. What happened here…
Exit 8
I feel unbelievably anxious…Exit 8. Photo: Kotake Create
position. B wing level 3. The largest of Victoria’s prison wings at Shepton, it was designed to hold 94 prisoners in small cells that did not have toilets until 1998. Cell 30 is said to be infested with an inmate known for tapping inattentive guests on the shoulder. game: A cult psychological thriller from indie developer Kotake Create. Wander through the seemingly endless tunnels of a Japanese subway station, spotting anomalies around you and trying to find your way out. The visual realism is incredibly unsettling, especially when the lights flicker and other lost passengers begin to pass by silently. Fear factor: Although more disturbing than frightening, playing in a prison wing with an equally desolate, soulless, and rural feel definitely increased the sense of marginal anxiety.
In My Head
A terrifying adventure…in your head. Photo: JustTomcuk
The place is an execution hut. This was where death row inmates would spend their final days before heading to the noose, if they were lucky, under the supervision of renowned hangman Albert Pierrepoint. game: Designed like an old VHS horror movie, this frightening adventure requires you to explore a dark, dingy building in the woods where ancient artifacts are said to be waiting to be discovered. The dilapidated Gothic interiors, constant radio static and crying children are familiar horrors, but the game evokes an incredible atmosphere thanks to detailed locations and soundscapes. Not for the picky eater. Fear factor: In My Head would have been scary enough at home, but this place had a heavy, doomed atmosphere that honestly only lasted a few minutes. Just before fleeing, I met DS Hampshire Horns ghost hunters Darren and Jay. They told us that on his last visit, Darren saw two disembodied legs passing by. We made our excuses and left.
Panicore
The Blair Witch Project meets Alien Isolation…Panicore meets. Photo: ZTEK Studio
position: playground. Built over a mass grave pit, it is reportedly haunted by the ghost of Captain Philip William Lyall, who was imprisoned at Shepton during the First World War. He threw himself off a roof overlooking the garden, and people said they saw a ghostly figure lurking there. game: As a paranormal investigator, you explore a series of abandoned buildings and solve puzzles while being chased by AI-enabled monsters that react to every sound. Yes, it's a combination of The Blair Witch Project and Alien Isolation, and it's as terrifying as it sounds. We played solo, but you can also choose to play co-op like Phasmophobia. That would be preferable under the circumstances. Fear factor: The fact that the buildings in the game's abandoned facility look exactly like Shepton Mallet Prison, with peeling paint on the walls, rubble everywhere, and doorways leading into complete darkness, make this a truly frightening experience. I did.
“Did you feel that?'' Keith and Rich play the Panicore in the exercise range at Shepton Mallet Prison. Photo: João Diniz Sánchez/The Guardian
position: of Gatehouse. Built in the 17th century, this building is one of the oldest parts of the prison in existence, and you can sneak into two of its original cells nearby. Unsurprisingly, this is a hotbed of paranormal activity. There is a ghost named Bob, the gatekeeper, who appears to run his fingers through the hair of female visitors. No, Bob. game: The Complex is another of the current indie trending horror games set in “back rooms” such as endless tunnels and passageways. You are part of a research team sent to the titular facility to investigate strange occurrences. Most of the time, players wander through a vast maze of empty rooms and hallways, viewing through the lens of a VHS video camera. This gives the game a kind of hyper-realism that is strange and unsettling. Fear factor: The stark modern architectural setting made the game feel oddly safe while playing in a haunted 17th century dungeon. we didn’t want to leave.
Chuksi
Jump scare machine…Chuxie. Photo: LCGaming
position: C Wings. The women’s wing of the prison is famous for one particular person. A white woman was convicted of murdering her fiancé and was asked to wear a wedding dress the night before her execution.She has been seen on the wing staircase, and visitors have even smelled her perfume wafting through the air. game: A huge hit on TikTok and Twitch, Chuxie is practically a J-horror jump-scare machine. You are a paranormal investigator exploring an abandoned hospital filled with ghosts, including a terrifying woman in a white dress – Mr. Ring, anyone? It may appear for seconds. The visuals are highly detailed, making the terrifying environments feel very realistic. Fear factor: Frankly, it’s off scale. This wing is in almost total darkness, not least because of the fact that a white female mannequin hangs above the ground floor. When I passed one particular cell, the EMF reader went crazy and recorded maximum readings for several seconds. We couldn’t wait to get out of there.
Extraordinarily scary…white woman at Shepton Mallet Prison. Photo: Keith Stewart/The Guardian
Conclusion: Walking around a quiet Victorian wing at 3am was the closest thing to actually being in a survival horror game. Did we see ghosts during the night behind bars? No. Could we have played a horror game in the dark cells and echoing hallways and totally freaked out? Exactly is. Furthermore, after returning home, I measured the maximum value of the EMF meter again. I waved it at my phone, held it next to the microwave and turned it on full blast…without even getting close.
Recent archaeological findings indicate that smoking not only stains teeth but also has a literal impact on bones. Additionally, new research suggests that the prevalence of smoking among women in Georgian and Victorian England may have been underestimated compared to men.
In a study conducted by Dr. Sarah Inskip, it was discovered that many women in historical records showed traces of tobacco use, contradicting common beliefs about smoking habits. This finding highlights the importance of considering smoking as a significant health risk for both men and women.
The survey results published in a scientific journal suggest that advancements in analyzing bones for historical information can also aid in modern criminal investigations. By identifying smoking patterns and other lifestyle aspects from bone samples, researchers can create biological profiles to assist in identifying individuals in forensic cases.
Researchers have identified specific molecular markers in bones that indicate smoking habits. By analyzing skeletal remains from different time periods, they found evidence of tobacco use in a significant portion of individuals, including those dating back to the 12th century.
These findings provide valuable insights into the historical prevalence of smoking and its impact on individuals’ health. The research team’s work opens up new possibilities for understanding past health issues and potentially improving modern health outcomes.
About our experts
Dr. Sarah Inskip, a researcher at the University of Leicester and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, has published her research in prestigious journals such as nature communications, archaeology and anthropology, and American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
If you take a look around your home, you’ll notice numerous incredible inventions that have made our lives easier. You’re currently reading this article.
However, not all inventions are well-thought-out and useful. Some don’t serve their purpose well, while others are as effective as a yarn submarine. Some are created with good intentions, while others are made to fill a non-existent niche in hopes of making some money.
parachute coat
Franz Reichert was photographed wearing a parachute suit that he designed. Photo credit: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images
Franz Reichert was a tailor, but he was inspired to design a suit for pilots that could double as a parachute in the early days of manned flight. After testing his design with a dummy, he believed it worked and decided to test it by jumping from the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1912.
Unfortunately, Franz’s design failed, and he tragically fell to his death. However, his pioneering spirit led to the development of wingsuits for BASE jumping, as well as parachutes and ejection seats for pilots.
coffee pod
All used coffee pods are useless and ready for landfill. Photo credit: Getty Images
Coffee pods, invented by John Sylvan, initially seemed like a great idea but turned out to be incredibly wasteful. Even Sylvan, the inventor, regrets creating them during his time at Keurig Green Mountain.
Research shows that coffee pods have a significant global environmental impact, with specialized recycling companies being the only option for recycling them. If left in landfills, it takes 500 years for them to decompose.
The Sinclair C5, an electric three-wheeler, was launched by Sir Clive Sinclair and was ahead of its time. Despite being legal for road use, its short battery life, low speed, and safety concerns led to poor reviews and sales.
With advancements in battery technology, the Sinclair C5 could have been more successful if released today.
Pop-up ads, originally intended to help internet users, have become synonymous with a poor browsing experience. Ethan Zuckerman, the inventor, has apologized for creating them as they became incredibly annoying.
hydrogen airship
LZ 127 “Graf Zeppelin” flies over the New York skyline in 1928. Photo courtesy of Ullstein Bild/Getty Images
Before jet planes, airships like the Zeppelin Company’s were a popular means of long-distance travel. However, the use of highly explosive hydrogen gas led to frequent accidents, culminating in the Hindenburg disaster in 1937.
Modern airship companies now use helium instead of hydrogen for safer and more environmentally friendly travel.
read more:
sega dreamcast
SEGA’s home game console “Dreamcast” and controller. Photo by: James Shepherd/Future/Getty Images
SEGA’s Dreamcast, while innovative with online gameplay, failed due to a lack of third-party titles and competition from Sony’s PlayStation 2.
Other failed consoles, like Apple’s Pippin, also faced challenges in the market.
chewing gum
A collection of colorful chewing gums at the Hoover Dam in America. Photo courtesy: Getty Images
Chewing gum, a popular modern product, contains polyvinyl acetate, a type of plastic that contributes to environmental pollution. However, plastic-free alternatives are now emerging.
read more:
betamax video
A collection of old Betamax videotapes. Photo credit: Getty Images
Sony’s Betamax system had superior image quality compared to VHS but failed due to the adoption of VHS by the adult film industry and high costs.
vinyl carry bag
Senegalese environmental activist Maudou Fall, known as “Plastic Man,” walks on a beach to warn people about pollution caused by the use of single-use plastics in Dakar, Senegal, April 4, 2023. Photo by: Annika Hammerschlag/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Plastic bags, originally intended for repeated use, have contributed to plastic pollution. However, biodegradable alternatives are now being introduced.
apple newton
See the original Apple Newton MessagePad from 1993 in action. Photo credit: Alamy
Apple’s Newton tablet, aimed at modernizing note-taking, failed due to high costs and poor handwriting recognition.
The existence of something rather than nothing is a profound question that lies at the intersection of science and philosophy. It pushes us to investigate the origins of our existence.
Evolutionary theory traces all life on Earth back to a common ancestor referred to as the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). The quest to find LUCA captivates scientists studying life’s origins, prompting a deeper exploration into the origins of Earth and the universe.
Cosmologically, the birth of stars, formation of planets, and expansion of the universe reveal a magnificent interplay. This cosmic dance involves the expansion rate of the universe, gravitational collapse of dark matter, and the capture of hydrogen essential for star formation. Without this intricate cosmic ballet, life as we know it would not exist.
The story of our universe begins with a fundamental question: What sparked the universe’s expanding space-time? The prevailing model, known as big bang cosmology, posits that all matter in the universe originated from a colossal explosion at a specific point in the distant past.
Einstein’s general relativity theory supports the concept of an expanding universe, describing space-time as a flexible medium capable of bending, expanding, and collapsing. Rewinding the universe would reveal a moment called the Big Bang Singularity, where the universe condensed into a minuscule point of immense energy and curvature.
Stephen Hawking and his colleagues delved into understanding this singularity, grappling with the notion of time and existence before the Big Bang. Alternative explanations beyond the singularity have been explored, including concepts like the big bounce, quantum gravity, and cyclical inflation.
Cosmologists are actively researching observational predictions to differentiate between these models and unravel the mysteries of our cosmic origins. The rapid formation of supermassive black holes challenges the current cosmological model, hinting at the need for new frameworks to explain cosmic anomalies.
As we continue this intellectual journey, uncovering the enigmatic tapestry of the universe, we inch closer to unravelling the secrets of our existence and shedding light on the age-old question of why there is something rather than nothing.
The neutron star in X-ray binary system 4U 1820-30 rotates 716 times per second, the fastest rate ever observed, according to an analysis of data collected by NASA’s Neutron Star Internal Composition Explorer (NICER). It is one of the rotating celestial bodies. 2017 and 2022.
Artist’s depiction of the X-ray binary star system 4U 1820-30 at the center of globular cluster NGC 6624. Image credit: NASA.
4U 1820-30 It is located approximately 26,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius.
This X-ray binary star system is part of a metal-rich globular cluster called NGC6624.
It consists of two stars: a neutron star and a white dwarf companion. The latter orbits a neutron star every 11 minutes, making it the star system with the shortest known orbital period.
The 4U 1820-30 typically displays short bursts of X-rays that last only 10 to 15 seconds. This is likely due to the ignited helium-rich fuel burning out quickly on the surface.
“Due to its strong gravity, the neutron star pulls matter away from its companion star,” said Dr. Gaurava Jaisawal of DTU Space and colleagues.
“When enough material accumulates on the surface, a violent thermonuclear explosion occurs on the neutron star, similar to an atomic bomb.”
Astronomers observed 4U 1820-30 using NASA’s NICER X-ray telescope mounted outside the International Space Station.
“While studying thermonuclear explosions from this system, we discovered significant oscillations, caused by the neutron star rotating around its central axis at an astonishing speed of 716 times per second. “This suggests that the
“If future observations confirm this, the 4U 1820-30 neutron star would be one of the fastest rotating objects ever observed in the universe, rivaled by a star called PSR J1748-2446. There will only be another neutron star.”
From 2017 to 2021, NICER detected 15 thermonuclear X-ray bursts from 4U 1820-30.
This was one of the bursts that exhibited symptoms known as “thermonuclear burst oscillations,” which occur at a frequency of 716 Hz.
These bursts of oscillations match the rotational frequency of the neutron star itself, meaning it is rotating around its axis at a record speed of 716 times per second.
“During the burst, the neutron star becomes up to 100,000 times brighter than the Sun and releases an enormous amount of energy,” said DTU space researcher Dr. Jerome Cheneves.
“We are therefore working on very extreme events, and studying them will provide new insights into the existing life cycles of binary star systems and the formation of elements in the universe.”
Gaurava K. Jaisawal others. 2024. A comprehensive study of the 4U 1820-30 thermonuclear X-ray burst by NICER: accretion disk interactions and candidate burst oscillations. APJ 975, 67; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad794e
Archaeologists have unearthed a rare dagger dating back to the Copper Age in the Tina Giama cave in Trieste, a decentralized region in Italy’s Friuli-Venezia Giulia region.
A 4,000-year-old copper dagger discovered in Italy’s Tina Giama Cave. Image credit: Davide Bonaduce.
ancient copper dagger Tina Jama Cave It is just under 10 centimeters (4 inches) long and has a spiny leaf shape.
The artifacts were discovered by Professor Federico Bernardini, head of excavations and archaeologist at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University, and colleagues from Italy and Slovenia.
“Although there are no exact parallels for such finds in Italy, the Tina Jama dagger can be compared with a similar find from the famous Dejman/Deshman pile-dwelling site near Ljubljana, Slovenia. ” said Professor Bernardini.
“During the Tina Jama excavations, we discovered Bronze Age and Final Chalcolithic strata dating back to the second half of the 3rd millennium BC,” added archaeologist Dr. Elena Regissa of the Archaeological Institute of the Slovenian Academy Research Center. Slovensk University of Sciences and Umetnost.
“This discovery is essential for understanding the technological, cultural and social transformation of Europe at the time.”
“The excavations will increase our understanding of various cultural aspects of the third millennium BC in the Caputo-Adriae region.”
“The discovery of the copper dagger is an unusual event that calls into question the use of the cave.”
Archaeologists also discovered a structure made of slabs and stone blocks built between 2000 BC and 1500 BC at the entrance to the cave.
“The purpose of this structure remains unclear, but human skull fragments found nearby suggest that it may have had a funerary function,” the researchers said.
“Or maybe it was built to protect the inside of the cave from storms.”
“The ceramic materials recovered at the site and the presence of a hearth indicate that, before this structure was built, this cave was frequented in the late 3rd millennium by a group whose material culture was closely connected to the Dalmatian region. BC (Cetina culture). ”
Researchers also found flint arrowheads, long blades made from the same material using pressure techniques, polished stone axes, obsidian, stone and ceramic objects, and shell ornaments.
“This evidence suggests that this cave has been visited for thousands of years and holds promise for future excavation efforts,” the researchers concluded.
The end-Triassic extinction is, along with the end-Permian and end-Cretaceous events, the most severe mass extinctions of the past 270 million years. The exact mechanism of the end-Triassic extinction has long been debated, most notably because the carbon dioxide that had accumulated over thousands of years and appeared on the surface from volcanic eruptions was a persistent This caused temperatures to rise to impossible levels and seawater to become more acidic. but, new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences I say the opposite. The main cause is not warmth, but cold.
Outcrop areas of Pangea's CAMP rocks are located at the time of CAMP (201 million year ago). and the Central High Atlas (CHA) Basin of Morocco. Image credit: Kent others., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2415486121.
The end-Triassic mass extinction occurred 201,564,000 years ago, resulting in the extinction of approximately 76% of all marine and terrestrial species.
This mass extinction coincided with a massive volcanic eruption that split the supercontinent Pangea.
millions of kilometers3 Over 600,000 years, lava erupted and separated what is now the Americas, Europe, and North Africa.
This event marked the end of the Triassic period and the beginning of the Jurassic period. The Jurassic period was the period when dinosaurs appeared to replace the Triassic period creatures and dominated the Earth.
A new study provides evidence that the first lava pulses that ended the Triassic period were extraordinary events that each lasted less than a century, rather than hundreds of thousands of years.
During this condensed time frame, sunlight-reflecting sulfate particles spewed into the atmosphere, cooling the Earth and freezing many of its inhabitants.
A gradual rise in temperature in an already hot environment (carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during the Late Triassic was already three times higher than today's levels) may have finished the job later, but it caused the most damage. It was a volcanic winter.
“Carbon dioxide and sulfate not only act in opposite ways, but in opposite time frames,” said Dr. Dennis Kent, a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
“While it takes a long time for carbon dioxide to build up and heat up objects, the effects of sulfates are almost instantaneous. It takes us into the realm of human grasp. These The events happened in a lifetime.”
The Triassic-Jurassic extinction has long been thought to be related to so-called atmospheric eruptions. mid-atlantic magma zone (camp).
In their study, Dr. Kent and colleagues correlated data from CAMP deposits in the mountains of Morocco, along the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, and in New Jersey's Newark Basin.
A key piece of evidence is the arrangement of magnetic particles in rocks that record the past drift of Earth's magnetic poles during eruptions.
Through a complex series of processes, this pole is offset from the planet's fixed axis of rotation, or true north, and its position changes by a tenth of a degree each year.
Because of this phenomenon, magnetic particles in lava that are placed within decades of each other all point in the same direction, but those placed, say, thousands of years later, point in different directions by 20 or 30 degrees.
What the researchers discovered were five consecutive early CAMP lava pulses spread over about 40,000 years. Each magnetic grain is aligned in a single direction, indicating that the lava pulse appeared less than 100 years before magnetic drift appeared.
These large eruptions released so much sulfate so quickly that it blocked most of the sun and lowered temperatures.
Unlike carbon dioxide, which lingers for centuries, volcanic sulfate aerosols tend to rain out of the atmosphere within a few years, so the resulting cold snaps don't last very long.
However, due to the speed and scale of the eruptions, these volcanoes' winters were devastating.
Scientists compared the CAMP series to sulfates produced in the 1783 eruption of Iceland's Laki volcano, which caused widespread crop failure. Only the first CAMP pulse was several hundred times larger.
Triassic fossils lie in the sediments just below the CAMP layer. This includes large terrestrial and semi-aquatic relatives of crocodiles, strange tree lizards, giant flat-headed amphibians, and many tropical plants. After that, it disappears with the eruption of CAMP.
Small feathered dinosaurs existed for tens of millions of years before this, surviving along with turtles, true lizards, and mammals, and eventually thriving to become much larger. This is probably because they are small and able to survive in burrows.
“The magnitude of the environmental impact is related to the concentration of events,” said Dr. Paul Olsen, also of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
“A small event spread over tens of thousands of years has a much smaller impact than the same amount of volcanic activity concentrated over less than a century.”
“The most important implication is that CAMP's lava represents an unusually concentrated event.”
_____
Dennis V. Kent others. 2024. Correlation of sub-centennial-scale pulses of early mid-Atlantic magmatic field lavas and the end-Triassic extinction. PNAS 121 (46): e2415486121;doi: 10.1073/pnas.2415486121
NGC1386 is a spiral galaxy located 53 million light years away in the constellation Eridanus.
This image of NGC 1386 combines data from VST and ALMA. Image credits: ESO / ALMA / National Astronomical Observatory of Japan / NRAO / Prieto others. / Deep investigation of Fornax.
Dr. Almudena Prieto of the Canarias Institute for Astronomy and colleagues observed the central region of NGC 1386 as part of an experiment. PARSEC projecta parsec-scale multiwavelength survey of the nearest galactic center.
“Stars often form in star clusters, which are collections of thousands of stars that originate from giant clouds of molecular gas,” the astronomers said.
“The blue ring at the center of this galaxy is ripe with star clusters filled with young stars.”
To examine this ring in more detail, Dr. Prieto and his co-authors used data from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
The data shows that these clusters all formed around the same time 4 million years ago.
“This is the first time that synchronous star formation has been observed in a galaxy containing mainly old stars,” the researchers said.
They used the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) to uncover further secrets of NGC 1386.
“The new images show numerous gas clouds as golden rings, ready to form a second wave of young stars,” the scientists said.
“But we still have to wait five million years for these to emerge.”
“Even though it is old, NGC 1386 continues to rejuvenate,” the researchers added.
of findings Published in September 2024. Royal Astronomical Society Monthly Notices.
_____
Almudena Prieto others. 2024. PARSEC's view of star formation at the galactic center: from primordial clusters to star clusters in early-type spirals. MNRAS 533 (1): 433-454;doi: 10.1093/mnras/stae1822
year: It was founded in 2009 by former Harvard rowers Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey.
What exactly is that? fitness app.
How does it work? It is popular among cyclists and runners who use GPS data to track their activities and record their activities to share with the community. Also useful for jackals…
Like “The Day” of … ‘'?Why?Investigation by French newspaper Le Monde We’ve used it to track the movements of Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, and other world leaders.
trump doesn’t do that Looks like a typical Strava user… Well, not specifically them, but their bodyguards. Le Monde found that some US Secret Service agents have been using the app since the Trump assassination attempt. They also used the bodyguard’s Strava profile to track the movements of Jill Biden and Melania Trump.
Perhaps they realized that Melania is no longer close to her husband? It’s not that kind of investigation. In another example, an agent’s Strava tracked jogging route was used to identify the San Francisco hotel where Joe Biden was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Seems very lax, but are agents even allowed to use personal phones? Although prohibited during work hours, the U.S. Secret Service told Le Monde that personal use of social media outside of work hours is not prohibited. But they also said that “affected personnel have been notified” and that “this information will be reviewed to determine if additional training or guidance is required.”
It’s like he’s worried. Is it just Americans? Mysnon. The paper also identified 12 members of the French security group GSPR and six members of Russia’s FSO.
President Putin will probably tell us to be more careful in the future.. There has been no communication from the Kremlin. Mr Macron’s office said it had not affected his security but had instructed agencies not to use the app.
IIs this the first time you’ve had security concerns regarding Strava? It’s interesting so you should give it a listen. In 2018, students discovered they had created maps of US military bases in Syria and Afghanistan, as well as the Royal Navy’s Faslane base. Another security flaw in 2022 revealed the identity and movements of: Israeli military base security guard. And things got very serious last July…
Oh please continue. Rental runner in Singapore hit the news It offers a service that lets you log on to someone else’s ID, run on their behalf, and charge them per kilometer.
So can people pretend to exercise when they don’t? that’s right. I became known as the Strava Jockey.
But that would defeat the whole purpose. No praise! Well, some people will do anything to get a better PB.
Please say: “Strava It means effort in Swedish, don’t you know? “
Please don’t say things like: “Oh, that’s the layout of Camp David…”
‘I
I think AI is going to change everything,” San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Tamara Rojo told me earlier this year. “We just don’t know how.” Artificial intelligence’s influence on the creative industries can already be seen everywhere in film, television and music, but dance relies heavily on live bodies performing in front of an audience. As a format, it appears to be somewhat isolated. However, this week, choreographers Ao Nakamura and Esteban Lecoq, collectively known as AΦEis launching Lilith.Aeon, what is billed as the world’s first AI-driven dance production. The performer, Lilith, is an AI co-created with Mr. Nakamura and Mr. Lecoq. “She” appears in an LED cube, which the audience moves around, and their movements trigger Lilith’s dance.
Nakamura and Lecoq argue that they are interested in enhancing storytelling, rather than pursuing cutting-edge technology for its own sake. Working as dancers with the theater company Punchdrunk opened their eyes to the idea of immersive experiences, which led to virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and now AI. Their question is always, “How can we make this technology happen?” But it’s not like robots are going to take over the world.
Lilith.Aeon’s story is inspired by transhumanism (using technology to evolve beyond human limitations) and began as a script written by an AI bot. Nakamura and Lecoq provided all of their research to AI, including images, audiobooks, and discussions. “And we were able to interact with the AI, collaborate with it, and co-create the work together.” The two created a “dictionary-like” step that Lilith was trained on; The AI continued to generate new “words” of its own. They were excited when Lilith did something they never expected, but the choreography is still tailored to their aesthetic. “It’s not random,” Lecoq says. “I’m not interested in looking at things like screensavers.”
“It’s not random. I’m not interested in looking at things like screensavers.” … Lilith.Aeon. Photo: Shaneobenson @Shaneobenson
You can’t talk about AI in dance without talking about Wayne McGregor. Always at the forefront when it comes to technology, I first started researching AI 20 years ago. McGregor developed it in collaboration with Google. Somais a choreographic tool trained on his 25-year archive of work that can analyze thousands of hours of video and derive real-time suggestions, just as dancers improvise in the studio. He used AISOMA to generate a new version of his 2017 work autobiography It varies from performance to performance. His latest project, which opens next year, is on another earthdeveloped with Professor Geoffrey Shaw in Hong Kong, uses a 360-degree screen with sensing technology to allow viewers to build their own experiences.
choreographer alexander whitley We are also developing ways to use AI to integrate audiences into our work. The VR version of The Rite of Spring works on using audience movements as triggers for avatars trained on Whitley’s database of choreography. This technology allows amateur spectators to make their movements more artistic, and even allows them to arrange their movements to the music, like a dance version of Autotune.
Technology is developing rapidly. A type of motion capture that was once the province of Hollywood studios is now accessible through an app on your phone (try it) Move.ai), much of the progress is being driven by the gaming industry. However, there are some pitfalls that are worth looking into. Video game performers, including motion capture actors, impressive In the US, due to concerns about being replaced by AI (similar to the actors’ strike in 2023). Dancers are already being recorded by companies that build motion banks (“We’ve done about a million projects that require motion capture, like someone spinning on their head,” McGregor says). And the issue of rights and royalties when using dancers’ movements (and expertise) to train AI is a big one. McGregor said outright acquisitions were common in motion capture deals in the past. “We didn’t understand how the technology would be applied in the future.” He is currently working with Arts Council England on intellectual property (IP), motion data and “ethical AI”. I would like to take action. If done well, this could become a new source of income for dancers. “Coding choreo makes coin,” quotes Jonzi D from a hip-hop show. frayedfeaturing AI-generated dancing avatars.
But what if you want to create coins for others? Dancing is an ever-changing art form, passed down through dance floors, studios, and now social media, and where ideas originate. It can be difficult to know or prove what happened. You can copyright a dance piece, but you can’t copyright a step, as dancers who tried to sue the makers of the video game Fortnite discovered. Files can be copyrighted. Nigerian choreographer Kudus Onyikeku uses AI to recognize and classify movements to build a dance databank and protect intellectual property, especially of black artists, which has often been exploited in the past. We are conducting research.
Artists who are serious about AI are partnering with big companies like Nvidia, Amazon, and Dell. They get technology, and in return companies get ideas, accolades, and importantly, data. Are they selling their souls or just pragmatism? Potentially, it affects both directions. “We don’t want to be an adopter of technology,” McGregor says. “You want to be part of the conversation from the beginning and be the voice. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, otherwise you’ll just be servicing the technology.” Often developing tools Commercial funding is the only way to do so, and some tools have the potential to democratize dance and demystify it. Whitley is working on software that can be used in education, allowing students with no dance knowledge to create their own choreography on screen.
A scene from Wayne McGregor & Co.’s Autobiography (v95 and v96) held at Sadler’s Wells, London, earlier this year. Photo: Tristram Kenton/Guardian
“I think humans and AI can do great things together,” says Jonzi D. But he also notices that most of the AI-generated content he sees has a certain similar look. “It comes down to how creatively you can use it.” Lecoq agrees that if everything is trained on the same content, everything will look the same. Art will undermine itself. “It would be lazy not to push the boundaries further,” he says. AI is not a shortcut when developing technology as we go along, as AΦE does. “It’s a long cut. It’s a very difficult and lonely process.”
Rojo thinks of several useful applications for AI in dance. For example, algorithms that can solve the headache of recasting a ballet when someone is injured can calculate who is available, who knows the role, etc. in seconds. Less useful, she says, “is if the composers were changed, the set and lighting designers were changed,” and the choreography patterns were created by artificial intelligence. “And it’s not outside the realm of possibility.”
However, computer intrusion into creativity is nothing new. “Computers are the future of dance,’’ said the choreographer. Merce Cunningham Back in 1995, he had already been working on the LifeForms program for six years, manipulating avatars on screen and transmitting the results to dancers. The intention was to shed the dancers’ natural habit of one movement instinctively leading to another and find something new, which choreographers have always tried.
So is that good or bad for the industry? “I try to avoid the binary of technology as either a savior or a destroyer,” Whitley says. There will inevitably be disruptive effects on the industry, “but there are also some really exciting possibilities that come with it.” Not all dancers will lose their jobs. “I’m not worried about turnover at all,” McGregor says. For him, it’s about using technology to better understand the complexities of the human body. “And we are far from building a version that somehow replicates the brilliance of the human body. Human virtuosity and ingenuity are what we are most often associated with.”
Watching dance is also about getting to know the limits of the human body and seeing it reach its limits. There’s no point in having an avatar that can do anything. Mr McGregor said: “There is no danger in the digital world.” But even if there is AI intervention in the choreography, “when performed by living, breathing humans, it becomes meaningful and tangible.” says Whitley. “Certainly, live performance cannot replace digital experiences,” Nakamura says. She’s not interested in seeing real people replicated on screen (“What do you mean?”), but with Lilith.Aeon, she wants to create something that couldn’t exist otherwise. I’m thinking. But despite the fact that AΦE is pioneering the latest in artificial intelligence, Lecoq claims that they are not very interested in technology. “The best technology that I like is the washing machine and the microwave.”
Welcome back. In today’s newsletter, a tech executive shares anecdotes about interactions with Donald Trump, the responsibilities of AI chatbots, and the perils of sharing baby photos online with families. Thank you for engaging with us.
Top tech CEOs are closely monitoring the election polls and engaging with President Trump. They are cautious about regulatory scrutiny and potential retaliation from the former president.
Apple’s Tim Cook discussed legal matters with Trump, while Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai faced threats. Amazon’s Andy Jassy had a friendly call with Trump, among other interactions detailed in CNN and Associated Press reports.
Elon Musk joined Trump at a rally in NYC. Photo: Andrew Kelly/Reuters
Microsoft’s Satya Nadella refrained from endorsing any candidate. Elon Musk’s alliance with Trump has raised legal concerns, including a lawsuit over a million-dollar giveaway.
While tech execs engage with Trump, questions arise about their influence and allegiances. The broader geopolitical context shapes their interactions and potential impact on the upcoming election.
AI chatbots’ responsibility is under scrutiny as a startup faces a lawsuit for allegedly promoting self-harm among users. The ethical and legal implications of AI technology’s role in society are brought to light.
How much responsibility do chatbots have?
Megan Garcia and her son Sewell Setzer. Photo: Megan Garcia/AP
Chat interactions raising legal questions highlight the need for AI regulation and oversight to prevent harm. The lawsuit against Character.ai underscores the challenges posed by advancing AI technology.
The debate on AI responsibility extends to copyright issues, corporate liabilities, and ethical considerations. Balancing innovation with user protection is crucial in navigating the evolving tech landscape.
How can I convince family and friends not to post photos of my children?
Family photos: too many? Composite: Guardian/Getty Images/Pngtree
Guidance on safeguarding your child’s privacy in a digital age emphasizes communication and setting boundaries with loved ones. Addressing concerns about online exposure requires a proactive approach.
Johanna’s tips:
Make a simultaneous announcement: Inform everyone about your photo preferences collectively to streamline communication and avoid accidental sharing.
Lead by example: Follow your own rules for sharing photos and respect other parents’ privacy preferences.
Be generous in other ways: Balance privacy concerns by sharing photos selectively while maintaining family connections.
Advocate for privacy: Enlist help from friends and family to protect your child’s privacy online and address any unwanted posts.
Forgive and educate: Approach lapses in privacy with understanding and guide loved ones on respecting your wishes for your child’s digital footprint.
Stay confident: Assert your child’s privacy rights firmly and communicate openly about your expectations with your inner circle.
For more insights on managing family photo sharing, refer to the full guide on child privacy protection strategies.
Indonesia has prohibited Apple from marketing and selling the iPhone 16 model due to non-compliance with local investment regulations, as stated by the Indonesian Ministry of Industry.
Despite Southeast Asia’s largest economy having a significant population of young, tech-savvy individuals with over 100 million people under the age of 30, Apple does not have an official store in the country. Those interested in Apple products resort to purchasing them from resale platforms.
A spokesperson for Indonesia’s Ministry of Industry revealed that imported iPhone 16 model phones released in September cannot be sold in the country because Apple’s local division fails to meet the requirement of 40% of the phones being manufactured with local parts.
“iPhone 16 devices imported by registered importers are currently not permitted for sale in the country,” stated ministry spokesperson Febri Hendry Antoni Arif on Friday.
“Apple Indonesia…has not fulfilled its investment commitments to obtain certification.”
To meet this criteria, Apple would need to invest in Indonesia and source materials for iPhone parts from the country, as reported by local media outlets. Apple had previously pledged Rp 1.7 trillion in investments in Indonesia but had only invested Rp 1.5 trillion by the beginning of the month.
Apple has not responded to inquiries from the Guardian.
The ministry clarified that new Apple mobile phones can be brought into Indonesia as long as they are not intended for commercial trade.
An estimated 9,000 new models have been imported into the country of approximately 280 million people. Although these products entered the country legally, selling them in Indonesia would be considered illegal.
Past bans imposed in Indonesia, similar to the one on Apple, have been aimed at promoting domestic production. However, the outcomes have been mixed.
According to Counterpoint Research, China’s Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and South Korea’s Samsung dominated Indonesia’s smartphone market shipment share in the second quarter of this year.
The absence of Apple in Indonesia signifies a missed opportunity for the company, which has experienced success in other parts of Asia. Indonesia currently has more mobile phones in use than its population.
In April, Apple CEO Tim Cook visited Indonesia to explore investment opportunities in Southeast Asia’s largest economy and diversify its supply chain away from China. He engaged in discussions with then-President Joko Widodo and his successor Prabowo Subianto after Apple announced plans to expand its developer academy in the country.
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured stunning new images of unobstructed spiral galaxy NGC 4414.
This Hubble image shows the unobstructed spiral galaxy NGC 4414 located 51 million light-years away in the constellation of Coma. Image credits: NASA / ESA / Hubble / O. Graur / SW Jha / A. Filippenko.
NGC4414 It is located approximately 51 million light years from Earth in the constellation Coma.
The galaxy, also known as the Dusty Spiral Galaxy, Ark 365, IRAS 12239+3129, LEDA 40692, or UGC 7539, has a diameter of approximately 56,000 light years.
NGC 4414 was first discovered on March 13, 1785 by German-born British astronomer William Herschel.
galaxy belong to It belongs to the Coma I group, a group of galaxies close to the Virgo cluster.
NGC 4414 was previously observed It was studied by Hubble in 1995 and 1999 as part of its research efforts. Cepheid variable star.
This collage features the supernova observed by Hubble in NGC 4414. In the upper left, a large spiral galaxy can be seen tilted diagonally. Each subsequent panel shows a close-up of the galaxy in 1999, 2021, and 2023 to highlight the galaxy's supernovae. Image credits: NASA / ESA / Hubble / O. Graur / SW Jha / A. Filippenko.
“Cepheid stars are a special type of variable star with very stable and predictable brightness changes,” Hubble astronomers said in a statement.
“The period of these fluctuations is determined by the star's physical properties, such as its mass and true brightness.”
“This means that astronomers can learn about the physical properties of Cepheids just by looking at their light fluctuations, and can use that very effectively to determine their distances.”
“For this reason, cosmologists refer to Cepheids as 'standard candles.'”
“Astronomers used Hubble to observe Cepheids like those in NGC 4414, and the results were surprising.”
“Cepheids were then used as a stepping stone to measure distances to supernovae, which in turn gave us a measure of the size of the universe.”
“Today we can tell the age of the universe with much greater precision than before Hubble: about 13.7 billion years.”
According to the popular inflationary universe theory, at the beginning of the Big Bang, a mysterious energy caused an exponential expansion of the early universe, creating all known matter. That ancient energy shared important characteristics with the dark energy of the current universe. “Where in the later universe will we see gravity as strong as it was at the beginning of the universe?'' The answer lies at the center of a black hole. What happened during inflation could also be reversed, with the matter of a massive star becoming dark energy again during gravitational collapse – like a mini-Big Bang played in reverse. A new study strengthens the evidence for this scenario using recent data. dark energy spectrometer (DESI).
A view of the accretion disk surrounding a supermassive black hole and the jet-like structures flowing out of the disk. The black hole's extreme mass bends space-time so that the backside of the accretion disk can be seen as an image above and below the black hole. Image credit: Science Communication Lab, DESY.
“If a black hole contains dark energy, it could merge with the expanding universe and grow faster,” said Dr. Kevin Croker, an astronomer at Arizona State University.
“We can't know the details of how this is happening, but we can see evidence that it's happening.”
Data from the first year of DESI's planned five-year study shows intriguing evidence that the density of dark energy has increased over time.
This provides a compelling clue to support this idea of what dark energy is. Because that increase in time matches how the amount and mass of black holes has increased over time.
“When I first got involved in this project, I was very skeptical,” said Boston University professor Steve Arlen.
“But I remained open-minded throughout the process, and when I started doing the cosmological calculations, I said, 'This is a really cool mechanism for creating dark energy.'”
To look for evidence of dark energy from black holes, astronomers used tens of millions of distant galaxies measured by DESI.
The instrument looks into the past billions of years and collects data that can be used to determine with great precision how fast the universe is expanding.
Furthermore, these data can be used to infer how the amount of dark energy changes over time.
The researchers compared these data to how many black holes have been created by large star explosions throughout the history of the universe.
“The two phenomena were consistent with each other. When a new black hole was created by the death of a massive star, the amount of dark energy in the universe increased in the right way,” said Dr. Duncan Farrar, a physicist at New York University. said. Hawaii.
“This makes the theory that black holes are the source of dark energy more plausible.”
This study complements a growing literature investigating the possibility of cosmological coupling in black holes.
A 2023 study reported cosmological coupling in a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy.
This study encouraged other teams to investigate the effects of black holes in different parts of the universe.
“These papers explore the relationship between dark energy and black holes in terms of their growth rate,” said astrophysicist at Healthpeak Properties and former general counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. said Dr. Brian Cartwright.
“Our new paper links dark energy to when black holes are born.”
The main difference in the new paper is that most of the black holes involved are younger than those studied previously.
These black holes were born at a time when star formation, which tracks black hole formation, was well underway, not just beginning.
Professor Roger Windhorst from Arizona State University said: “This happened fairly late in the universe and is informed by recent measurements of black hole formation and growth observed by the Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes. ” he said.
“The next question is where are these black holes and how have they been moving around for the past eight billion years? Scientists are now working to suppress this,” Croker said. the doctor said.
Science needs more research and observation tools, and now that DESI is online, this exploration of dark energy is just beginning.
“Whether or not we continue to support the black hole hypothesis, this only brings further depth and clarity to our understanding of dark energy,” Professor Ahlen said.
“I think it's great as an experimental endeavor. You can have preconceptions or not, but we're based on data and observation.”
Regardless of what future observations yield, the research being conducted now represents a major shift in dark energy research.
“Essentially, whether black holes are dark energy is no longer just a theoretical question, coupled with the universe in which they live. This is now an experimental question,” said Gregory of the University of Michigan.・Professor Tarr said.
of study Published in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
_____
Kevin S. Crocker others. 2024. The temporal evolution of DESI dark energy is harvested by cosmologically coupled black holes. JCAP 10:094;Doi: 10.1088/1475-7516/2024/10/094
This article is adapted from the original release by the University of Michigan.
China has introduced solar power generation, and panels have been installed on North Barren Mountain in Zhangjiakou City.
Cost Photo/NurPhoto/Getty Images
With large-scale deployment of wind and solar power across China, the country's emissions could peak in 2023, potentially marking a historic turning point in the fight against climate change. be.
China's CO2 emissions hit a record high in 2023 as the Chinese economy recovers from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. But since then, large amounts of wind and solar power have been added to the country's power grid, while emissions from the construction industry have declined.
China's carbon dioxide emissions remained flat from July to September 2024, after falling by 1% in the second quarter of this year, according to a new analysis. This means that overall emissions in 2024 could be flat or slightly down at 2023 levels.
This will be critical to tackling global climate change. Lauri Milivirta At the Center for Energy and Clean Air Research, a Finnish think tank. “For the past eight years, since the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, China's emissions growth has been the main driver of global emissions,” he says.
In its climate change plan submitted to the United Nations, China pledged to peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. But experts warn. This plan is not very ambitious Given the large impact that China, the world's largest emitter, has on global climate change.
It's important for China to bring emissions to a peak as soon as possible, Millibilta said. “This would pave the way for the country to start reducing emissions much sooner than current commitments require,” he said. “This will have huge implications for global efforts to avoid catastrophic climate change.”
China is rushing to ramp up power supplies across the country to meet rapidly growing power demand. This demand increased by 7.2% year-on-year from July to September, due to rising living standards and increased demand for air conditioning due to the strong heat wave from August to September.
New renewable energy sources are being introduced at breakneck speed across China to fill the electricity demand gap. From July to September, compared to the same period in 2023, solar power generation increased by 44 percent and wind power generation increased by a whopping 24 percent. Based on the current trajectory, China's solar power growth this year will rival China's total annual electricity generation. Australia in 2023.
However, coal-fired power usage still increased by 2% and gas production increased by 13% from July to September in response to increased demand. This resulted in an overall 3% increase in CO2 emissions from China's power sector during this period. However, these were offset by a slowdown in the construction industry across China as real estate investment declined.
Oil demand also fell by 2% in the third quarter of this year, as electric vehicles continue to make up a larger share of China's car fleet. By 2030, almost one in three cars on China's roads will be expected to be electric.
Myllyvirta carried out an analysis of the website carbon briefs Uses official figures and commercial data. “If the rapid growth of clean energy is sustained, it will pave the way for sustainable emissions reductions,” he says.
However, he said that flat or declining emissions in 2024 were not guaranteed as government stimulus measures to boost the economy could cause emissions to rise in the last three months of the year. He warns that this does not mean that the Carbon emissions must fall by at least 2% in the last three months. He predicted that three months of this year will be below 2023 levels.
still Signals from the Chinese government It has signaled that the country's emissions are expected to continue rising until the end of the decade, which would use up the remaining global carbon budget by 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of Jurassic cockroach. alderblattina simsibased on an isolated wing discovered in Gloucestershire, England.
alderblattina simsi:(A) Dried specimen. (B) Specimen moistened with ethanol. Note the two subspherical spots (spots) on the wing tips and the prominent distal coloration. Scale bar – 1 mm. Image credit: Swaby others., doi: 10.1002/spp2.1598.
Open University palaeontologist Emily Swaby and colleagues from the Open University and National Museums of Scotland said: “Insects are the most diverse group of terrestrial organisms in the history of life, and have been fundamental to terrestrial ecosystems since the early Devonian period. It has become a major component.”
“Primarily detritivores (decomposers), cockroaches play an important role in nutrient cycling in ecosystems through the decomposition of organic matter and are an important food source for many predators, including birds, lizards, and other mammals. ”
“cockroach(Brat Dare) They are part of the superorder Diptera, beginning in the Bashkirian period (Carboniferous) and diversifying rapidly during the second half of the Moscow period and the penultimate Kasimov period of the Carboniferous period. ”
“Further diversification occurred during the Early and Middle Permian.”
“After the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, cockroach numbers declined sharply, but they flourished again during the Triassic period.”
The newly described cockroach species lived during the Toarcian period of the Early Jurassic period, about 180 million years ago.
named alderblattina simsihad a relatively small size and distinct wing coloration.
“Color patterns in insects, including their wings, are interpreted to be primarily physiological adaptations, thought to be used to protect against predation and sexual signaling,” the paleontologists say. said.
“Today, cockroach species display a wide variety of color patterns, and their functions include communication, protection from predation, sexual signaling, and hardening of the epidermis.”
“alderblattina simsi It is the second cockroach species to have a distinct Toarcian wing coloration pattern. ”
assigned author alderblattina simsi It belongs to the cockroach family Rhipidoblattinidae.
“Alderblattina Shimshi “The presence of two distinct spherical spots on the forewings and the coloration of the wing tips are very different from all other Jurassic cockroaches,” the researchers said.
of Alderblattina Shimshi The fossil was collected by geologists in January 1984 Mike J. Sims.
“We hypothesize that extreme environmental conditions are associated with this problem. Toarcian ocean anoxic phenomenon “Competition for resources and evolutionary changes in predators were promoted, resulting in the development of apothematic coloration in two insect orders at this time,” the researchers said.
“Alderblattina Shimshi This is the seventh valid member of the European Toalchian cockroach family and adds to our knowledge of the European Toalkian cockroach fauna. ”
“This unique specimen adds significance to the record of Mesozoic cockroach wing color patterns and provides important evidence to further understand the evolution of terminal color patterns in the suborder Cockroaches. ”
a paper The survey results were published in a magazine paleontology papers.
_____
Emily J. Swaby others. 2024. A new species of cockroach (Rhipidoblattinidae) that lived in the Toarcian (Late Jurassic period) of Alderton Hill, Gloucestershire, England. It is likely that aposematic coloration was the earliest to occur in cockroaches. paleontology papers 10 (5): e1598;doi: 10.1002/spp2.1598
Despite the growing number of electric and hybrid vehicles on the roads, some individuals remain apprehensive about range and access to charging points, particularly if they rely on their vehicles for work. These concerns persist.
Fleet managers and business owners, with myriad responsibilities, may find the transition away from gasoline daunting. Nevertheless, advancements in battery technology and substantial investments in charging infrastructure have made the switch to electric or hybrid more feasible and potentially cost-effective for businesses than ever before. So, what factors should you consider to extend your battery-powered driving range?
Have you thought about a plug-in hybrid? It’s advisable to explore plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) first. These vehicles feature rechargeable batteries and gasoline engines, with only a few running on diesel. They can be charged at both domestic and public charging points and now offer impressive pure electric ranges.
On the other hand, hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) rely on the car’s movement to generate electricity and use battery power to reduce gasoline consumption and emissions. They cannot be charged by plugging into a power outlet.
Modern plug-in hybrids like the Škoda Superb offer impressive range
The latest plug-in models showcase the significant technological advancements, with fast charging capabilities, remarkable range, and battery capacity. “For instance, the Škoda Superb Estate can travel up to 84 miles on pure electricity,” says Alan Barrowman, Skoda’s national contract employment and leasing manager. He also noted that this mileage qualifies for the 5% benefit-in-kind (BiK) tax for company car drivers.
Changes in charging Charging networks are crucial for PHEV drivers looking to minimize their petrol (or diesel) usage. Fortunately, the number of public charging points is constantly increasing. In October 2023, approximately 50,000 points were installed at various service stations, with the installation rate continuing to rise. According to Zapmap, a data firm, there were 68,273 electric vehicle charging points across the UK by the end of August this year, representing a 41% year-on-year increase. Additionally, there are an estimated 700,000+ home and workplace charging points.
Charging points supply either alternating current (AC) or direct current (DC) power. Electric car batteries can only store DC power, so connecting to an AC charger involves converting the current, which can be time-consuming. Vehicles that support both AC and DC charging points, such as the all-new Škoda Superb, can charge even faster. The Skoda www.theguardian.com
The symbiotic relationship between corals and their photosynthetic partners, algae (photosymbionts), dates back to at least the Devonian period (385 million years ago), according to a new study.
All modern corals belong to a group called scleractinians, which evolved during the Triassic period.
These corals may provide habitat for symbionts (such as photosymbionts) that play a role in nutrient recycling, which is especially beneficial in nutrient-poor waters.
However, it is not clear whether earlier extinct forms of coral had photosymbionts.
“The Devonian period (419 to 359 million years ago) was a time when sea surface temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide were higher than they are today,” said Jonathan Jung, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, stated in their paper.
“Unlike today, its carbonate chemistry is dominated by calcite precipitation, likely due to the low magnesium-to-calcium ratio in seawater.”
“The Middle Devonian was the period of greatest expansion of metazoan reefs in the Phanerozoic era, and well-preserved reefs from this period span what is now Europe, North America, North Africa, Australia, Siberia, and China.” explained the researchers.
“In the Devonian period, these reefs bordered the lake seas on the southern margin of Lorsia and the northern boundary of Gondwana.”
“Along the southern margin of Lorsia, these ancient reef communities reached their greatest extent and highest diversity during the Givetian period of the Devonian period (approximately 387 to 382 million years ago).”
“These thriving metazoan coral reefs became diachronically extinct during the course of the Kerwasser crisis in the Late Fraznian (372.2 million years ago).”
“Then, coral reefs were built primarily by cyanobacteria/algae, which were present in very small numbers until the end of the Famenian period (Devonian-Carboniferous boundary).”
“The ability to host photosymbionts was paramount to the ecological success of ancient coral reef communities during the Givetian period, and the subsequent collapse of coral reefs in the Late Devonian was associated with a gradual loss of photosymbiotic relationships. It is suggested that
“However, there is still no clear consensus as to whether photosymbiosis was prevalent in now-extinct coral groups during the Paleozoic era.”
In their study, Dr. Jung and his co-authors examined fossils of two extinct reef coral groups from the mid-Devonian period: the tabula corals and the shibo corals.
They measured nitrogen isotopes bound to corals (15no/14N), can be used to distinguish whether corals obtain energy from photosynthetic symbionts.
Their results suggest that symbionts were present in the tabular corals they studied, but not in most civet corals.
This discovery provides definitive geochemical evidence of the oldest known example of symbiosis in corals.
“Wide-spread oligotrophy during the Devonian may have promoted coral photosymbiosis, and its occurrence may explain why Devonian reefs were the most productive reef ecosystems of the Phanerozoic.” the researchers wrote in their paper.
“These early signals of photosymbiosis in mid-Devonian corals indicate that it supported coral productivity under warm climate conditions.”
“The Late Triassic and Early Miocene (the subsequent period when coral photosymbiosis was reconstructed using nitrogen isotopes) were also warmer than today.”
“In contrast, under modern global warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, coral bleaching and associated mass mortality events are likely the greatest threat to the future of coral reefs, with the disruption of coral symbiosis due to warming.” It shows that there is.”
“The strength of coral photosymbiosis in past warm climates suggests that the failure of coral symbiosis under ongoing global warming will not be due to an increase in ocean surface temperatures reached, but rather an increase in ocean surface temperatures.” This shows that the rate of increase is greater than the adaptive capacity of the symbiotic relationship.
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope detected a population of 64 brown dwarf candidates with masses ranging from 50 to 84 Jupiter masses in the star cluster NGC 602.
This image of NGC 602 includes data from Webb's NIRCam (near-infrared camera) and MIRI (mid-infrared instrument) instruments. Image credits: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / P. Zeidler / E. Sabbi / A. Nota / M. Zamani, ESA & Webb.
NGC602 is a very young star cluster, about 200,000 light-years away in the constellation Hydra, about 2 to 3 million years old.
Also known as ESO 29-43, this star resides in the wings of the Small Magellanic Cloud.
NGC 602's local environment closely resembles that of the early Universe, with very low abundances of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.
The presence of dark clouds of dense dust and the fact that the cluster is rich in ionized gas also suggests the presence of an ongoing star formation process.
Together with the associated HII region N90, which contains clouds of ionized atomic hydrogen, this cluster provides a rare opportunity to examine star formation scenarios under conditions dramatically different from those in the solar neighborhood.
Using Webb, Dr. Peter Zeidler and his colleagues at AURA and ESA were able to detect 64 brown dwarf candidates in NGC 602. This is the first rich population of brown dwarfs to exist outside the Milky Way.
“It is possible to detect objects at such great distances only with incredible sensitivity and spatial resolution in the right wavelength range,” Dr. Zeidler said.
“This has never been possible and will remain impossible from the ground for the foreseeable future.”
“So far, about 3,000 brown dwarfs are known, and they all live in our galaxy,” said Dr. Elena Mangiavakas, also from AURA and ESA.
“This discovery highlights the ability to use both Hubble and Webb to study young star clusters,” said Dr. Antonella Nota, executive director of the International Space Science Institute.
“Hubble showed that NGC 602 hosts very young, low-mass stars, but only Webb can conclusively confirm the extent and significance of substellar mass formation in this cluster. Hubble and Webb are an amazingly powerful telescope duo!”
“Our results are very consistent with the theory that the mass distribution of objects below the hydrogen burning limit is simply a continuation of the stellar distribution,” Dr. Zeidler said.
“They seem to form the same way, they just haven't accumulated enough mass to become full stars.”
NSF astronomer Dr. Elena Sabbi said, “Studying the newly discovered metal-poor young brown dwarfs in NGC 602 will shed light on how stars and planets formed under the harsh conditions in the early universe. We are getting closer to uncovering the secrets of this.” NOIRLab, University of Arizona, Space Telescope Science Institute.
“These are the first substellar objects outside the Milky Way,” Manjavakas said.
“We need to be prepared for new breakthrough discoveries in these new objects.”
peter zeidler others. 2024. A candidate for a subsolar metallic brown dwarf is discovered in the Small Magellanic Cloud. APJ 975, 18; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad779e
As the Earth continues its journey around the sun, plants and animals in the northern hemisphere prepare for the onset of autumn in September and the coming winter. Humans rely on calendars to tell us the seasons, but other creatures use changes in the weather and amount of sunlight to signal that winter is approaching. For example, long-lived trees often retain their leaves until the days get shorter, even if an early snowstorm signals the arrival of winter.
Plants and animals have complex proteins and sophisticated memories that allow them to decide when to prepare for cold weather. Bacteria and other microorganisms are also vulnerable to winter cold, so we need to prepare for harsher weather. However, because microorganisms have simple ecology and short lifespans, it is difficult to detect seasonal changes.
Some microorganisms can sense sunlight hours. A group of these microorganisms known as cyanobacteriacan predict the beginning and end of your day. Cyanobacteria use three Kai proteins called KaiA, KaiB, and KaiC to track time by sensing the light and dark times of the day. photoperiod. A team of researchers at Vanderbilt University wanted to test whether cyanobacteria’s ability to sense photoperiods could also allow them to sense seasonal changes.
The scientists grew cyanobacterial cells on a nutrient-filled dish for eight days under varying photoperiods. Some cells grow in summer-like days with 16 hours of daylight, others grow in winter-like days with 8 hours of daylight, and some cells grow in winter-like days with 12 hours of mid-day light. The scientists took cells from each photoperiod condition and placed half of them in a bucket of ice at 32°F (0°C). The halves are placed in a closed, temperature-controlled chamber. incubator at 86°F (30°C) for 2 hours. Cells were then returned to the dish at 86°F (30°C) and left to grow for 5 days.
The scientists calculated the survival rate in each photoperiod condition by comparing the number of cells that could grow from an ice bucket and an incubator. They reasoned that if cells could recognize that shorter days meant winter was coming, they might become more tolerant of the cold and fewer would die in ice buckets. Scientists found that cyanobacterial cells grown under short photoperiods were two to three times better at surviving at freezing temperatures than cells grown under longer photoperiods.
The researchers also wanted to investigate whether the cold tolerance of cells grown in short photoperiods was due to a sense of photoperiod. So they removed the Kai protein from the cells and repeated the experiment. These cells had the same survival rate of approximately 35% regardless of the length of the photoperiod in which they were grown. By comparison, cells containing the Kai protein had a 75% survival rate when grown under winter photoperiods and 25% survival when grown under summer photoperiod conditions. The scientists concluded that these cyanobacteria sense the days getting shorter and respond by preparing for the colder weather.
Next, the scientists wanted to understand how cells prepare for cold weather. They knew that some cells can change the composition of fat in their cell walls to maintain their physical structure when the temperature drops. By chemically extracting the fats present inside the cells using chloroform, methanol, and water, the researchers investigated whether the same changes in cell wall fats occur in cyanobacteria grown under winter photoperiods. was tested. They measured the amount of different fats in the cells using a device called a mass spectrometer. Through this analysis, the scientists demonstrated that cyanobacteria grown under shorter photoperiods also increased the amount of fat in their cell walls that made them more cold resistant.
The researchers concluded that because cyanobacteria can sense seasonal changes, this ability probably evolved long ago and may be active in other microorganisms as well. The research team hopes that by studying cyanobacteria and their ability to sense photoperiods, scientists can learn more about how ancient organisms felt the seasons. Researchers say that because algae sense photoperiods and can threaten aquatic habitat during algal blooms, researchers are trying to understand the relationship between photoperiods and how algae adapt to the seasons. By understanding this, he suggested, it may be possible to control algal blooms and protect aquatic habitats.
Scientists have now revealed that skeletal remains discovered in a well at Norway’s Sverresborg Castle belong to a mysterious figure from medieval stories.
New findings using advanced DNA analysis and Published in iScience magazine On Friday, they will connect the body’s identity to a passage from a centuries-old Norse document called the Sveris Saga. It compiles various sources describing internal political struggles, or civil wars, in medieval Norway from 1130 to 1217.
Named after King Sverre Sigurdsson of Norway, the tale depicts the political conflict between the king and his arch-enemy, Eystein Erlensson, Archbishop of Nidaros.
According to this story, during a military attack in 1197 aimed at poisoning the local population’s main water source, the dead bodies, later known as the “Well Man,” were tossed into the well.
Little else is mentioned about the well man or his identity in the story.
Research project leader Mike Martin, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, told NBC News that historians are often skeptical of the historical accuracy of events described in such stories.
“This story is a blend of historical fact, narrative, political propaganda, and Old Norse religion,” he stated in an email Monday.
However, Stephen Brink, from the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, and Celtic Studies at the University of Cambridge, noted that the Sveris Saga is considered one of the most reliable historical sources because it was written during and immediately after a period of political unrest. This led to better understanding in England. He was not part of the study.
Human bones belonging to ‘Wellman’ have been sorted and cataloged. via iScience
Human bones were initially found in the castle’s well during renovation work in 1938, but due to the outbreak of World War II at the time, researchers could only carry out visual examinations.
The remains stayed in the well for another 80 years until excavations began in 2014, led by Anna Petersen of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage in Oslo.
By 2016, a complete skeleton was retrieved from the Sverresborg well in Trondheim, central Norway.
Recent scientific advancements have provided various advanced techniques to analyze human remains in more detail, including genetic sequencing and radiocarbon dating.
The research team determined the genomic variation by extracting DNA from Wellman’s teeth, mandible, and maxilla.
“We had access to teeth during the COVID-19 pandemic, and research really picked up speed,” Professor Martin remarked. It took approximately six years in total to complete.
“Wellman” teeth. via iScience
Experts suggest that this genetic research could offer insights into the remains discovered in previous archaeological excavations.
“This project demonstrates the significance of scientific archaeology, and the collaboration between archaeology and history, in today’s research, often resulting in remarkable findings like this one,” Brink remarked.
Excavation work at the site where 800-year-old ruins were discovered. via iScience
Advancements in technology have allowed human bones to be linked to characters from Norse mythology, blurring the line between legendary myth and historical reality.
This is not the first instance where the skeletal remains of a character from a story have been uncovered.
Elizabeth Lowe, a professor of Scandinavian history at the University of Cambridge in the UK, highlights that Research published by Jesse L. Byock in 1995 presents a compelling argument for identifying the remains of the 10th-century Icelandic poet Egil Skallagrimsson, whose tale is recounted in the 13th-century Egil Saga.
Rory Sutherland is searching for an analogy to describe his newfound status as one of Britain’s most viral TikTokers.
“It’s like Lord Byron. I woke up and realized I was famous.”
The fact that he references a 19th-century romantic poet shows that Sutherland is not your typical social media influencer.
In a sea of youthful content creators on TikTok, he stands out as an unlikely sensation.
Mr. Sutherland, a 58-year-old advertising executive and Cambridge University graduate, shares old marketing tricks on TikTok, captivating millions of viewers who were not around during the 1980s advertising boom.
With 2.4 million likes and videos garnering over 600,000 views, he is far from a corporate relic, even getting stopped by school kids for selfies.
Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, believes TikTok’s success lies in its insights into human behavior influenced by marketing techniques.
One video exposes how restaurants manipulate customers into buying expensive wine through clever tactics.
Sutherland’s 23-year-old twin daughters find his sudden fame both amusing and unsettling.
While he didn’t initiate the TikTok account that propelled him to fame, Sutherland embraced the opportunity to educate and entertain his audience.
Through humor and valuable insights into the marketing world, Sutherland has captivated a wide audience on TikTok.
He believes that empowering businesses with marketing knowledge can boost the economy and sees the positive side of behavior change tactics.
Whether through charm or clever marketing, Sutherland’s influence on TikTok is undeniable among Gen Z users, though convincing them to buy wine might be a stretch.
Vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced on Sunday that they will be playing American football as part of their efforts to secure votes from young people, just nine days before the White House election. The game was streamed live on Twitch.
Ocasio-Cortez and Walz will compete in the latest Madden game series as Democrats aim to regain control of the House of Representatives, maintain a Senate majority, and challenge Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election. They also emphasized the importance of Kamala Harris’s victory.
“While we may not all share the same beliefs, defeating Trump this year is our main priority,” said Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez criticized President Trump as an authoritarian ruler and a facist supported by special interests who are exacerbating the ongoing climate crisis. She also condemned the billionaire owners of the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post for not allowing their editorial teams to endorse Harris over Trump.
During the broadcast, Ocasio-Cortez also called out comedian Tony Hinchcliffe for making derogatory comments about Puerto Rico at a Trump rally.
Ocasio-Cortez and Walz decided to play Madden together a few weeks ago, as Walz had previous experience with the game and had worked as a football coach.
Following a recent NBC news investigation, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is leading Donald Trump among young male registered voters.
Despite their lead, Democrats have historically struggled with public opinion during past election cycles. The Trump campaign recently criticized the former president during a three-hour appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, which primarily attracts young male viewers.
Sunday’s event with Ocasio-Cortez followed her initial appearance on Twitch, which was one of the platform’s most-watched events at the time.
Harris’s campaign strategy also focuses on targeting young people, with ads on sports gambling platforms such as DraftKings and Yahoo Sports.
“I’m a boring guy,” says Mike Erwin, an energy management consultant based in Warrington. “My friends think it’s crazy how much I use Microsoft Excel, but it’s a very useful tool.”
Erwin, 56, has been using Excel to organize his life for years, from mapping his finances to plotting medical test results to monitoring his home’s energy usage. When his son was born in 2007, he created a spreadsheet of his feeding schedule.
“We were recording the feeding time and the amount of milk, and calculating when we could fall asleep.” None of this data was very helpful, “but then I felt better.” added Erwin.
Still, he’s an evangelist about Excel. “I have charts from 10 years ago,” he says. “Some of my friends have Mickeys, and now they’re starting to use them to plan their vacations.”
Erwin is one of dozens of people who responded to an online call for loveExcel has celebrated its 40th anniversary.
Many people have found uses for the software that were probably not intended by the developers.
“I grew up with it,” says John Severn, 35, Mansfield’s marketing director. “When I was 11, I couldn’t afford Warhammer models, so I wrote the names of the models in Excel and printed them out and did elf-dwarf battles on the cheap.”
John Severn playing a board game (not generated by Excel). Photo: Guardian Community
Mr. Severn’s innovations puzzled some opponents. The Warhammer tabletop game is meant to be played with intricately painted models rather than a labeled grid.
“The children of my mother’s wealthy friends weren’t very keen,” he says. “They had spent a lot of money getting some beautifully painted models and they were laying them out on a table with landscapes. And what I brought in was basically a square piece of paper. .”
Although Severn has graduated from being a model soldier, he still plays Warhammer. “I still don’t like drawing.”
For Lucy, 41, Excel proved useful in a long-distance relationship when her partner moved from London to Macclesfield in 2010.
“I love Excel,” she says. “I devised a spreadsheet to track trains and fares. I lived in London and traveled every weekend in shifts for 18 months. We split the cost so that higher income earners pay proportionately more.”
Lucy admits how “unromantic” this sounds. But “this is very convenient and we are more inclined to share money. Now we have children and we have bought a house. Excel is working with the administrator on this matter. They supported me.”
Excel played a role in helping London civil servant Luke name his two sons. “My wife and I were talking about baby names, and at one point we pasted the list of names into a spreadsheet called Names for Baby V.1.xlsx.”
He shared the spreadsheet with his office in hopes that his colleagues would find inspiration. “I remember there was a good push for Frederick and Maximilian, and Optimus Prime and Herodotus were also added,” he says. “The Russian wife liked Igor and Ivan.''
Luke and his wife ultimately did not accept his colleague’s idea at all. But I created a separate spreadsheet for my younger son. “His name came from a suggestion from a colleague I met at a drinking party at work. But it also tested very well with Names for Baby V.2.xlsx,” he added.
Nick Owen of Lincoln took that enthusiasm a step further by featuring Excel as the centerpiece of his 2019 wedding.
“We wanted to get as many friends together as possible and we managed to get 250 people together,” says Owen, 68. Since there were so many guests, he decided to appoint seven talented men to help plan the day.
Nick Owen wedding t-shirt. His spreadsheet is printed on the back. Photo: Guardian Community
“I call them the ‘Magnificent Seven,’ and they each had a different role.” These jobs include rings, meals, speeches, and drinks. “I diligently created a spreadsheet of what everyone had done that day with little crosses in cells for each hour.I went through all of this with them the night before. “There was some resistance,” he says.
“It was April in Cumbria and the weather was poor for a few weeks leading up to the wedding day. But miraculously the clouds parted, the sun shone and my wedding spreadsheet worked. ”
To remember that day, Owen printed T-shirts for his men. “They had a picture of Yul Brynner.” [from the Magnificent Seven film] It has a photo of my spreadsheet on the front and on the back. ”
Dietary treatments with pistachios, a bioavailable source of xanthophyll lutein, are effective in increasing macular pigment optical density (MPOD) in healthy adults, according to a new study from Tufts University and Tufts Medical Center. has been announced.
Pistachios are the only nut that provides a measurable source of lutein, a powerful antioxidant that helps protect the eyes. Image credit: Erika Varga.
Lutein and zeaxanthin are dietary xanthophylls, a type of carotenoid most commonly found in vegetables and fruits, with green and yellow vegetables being particularly rich sources.
These compounds cross the blood-brain barrier and accumulate exclusively in the macular region of the human retina, where they are called macular pigments.
Pistachios are the only nut that contains large amounts of lutein and zeaxanthin, but unlike eggs, they only contain lutein.
However, like eggs, pistachios provide a source of fat, primarily as monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, and therefore may be a highly bioavailable source of lutein.
“Our research shows that pistachios are not only a nutritious snack, but may also have significant eye health benefits,” said Dr. Tammy Scott, a research and clinical neuropsychologist at Tufts University. The results are showing.”
“This is especially important as people age and the risk of visual impairment increases.”
In a randomized controlled trial, eating 2 ounces (57 grams) of pistachios per day as part of a regular diet for 12 weeks significantly reduced otherwise healthy middle-aged people compared to eating just their regular diet. MPOD was shown to increase significantly in the elderly. .
They also found that pistachio consumption almost doubled the participants' daily lutein intake and significantly increased plasma levels.
“Incorporating a handful of pistachios into your diet can improve your intake of lutein, which is important for eye protection,” says Dr. Scott.
“Pistachios provide a source of healthy fat, and lutein from pistachios may be more readily absorbed into the body.”
“Pistachios provided approximately 1.6 mg of lutein, which is enough to double the average daily intake of U.S. adults for lutein, a type of plant pigment known as xanthophylls.”
Lutein, found in pistachios, not only supports eye health but may also benefit brain function.
“Because lutein crosses the blood-brain barrier, it may help reduce oxidative stress and inflammation,” said Tufts University researcher Elizabeth Johnson, Ph.D.
“Similar to the eyes, lutein selectively accumulates in the brain and may play a role in attenuating cognitive decline.”
“Research suggests that higher levels of lutein improve cognitive abilities such as memory and processing speed, making pistachios an invaluable addition to diets aimed at supporting healthy aging overall. It is a great addition.”
Tammy M. Scott others. Pistachio consumption increases macular pigment optical density in healthy adults: a randomized controlled trial. nutrition journalpublished online October 17, 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2024.10.022
Researchers now believe they have identified the remains of a Norwegian story written more than 800 years ago that depicts a dead man being thrown into a castle well.
The Sverris Saga is a 182-section Old Norse document that records the exploits of King Sverre Sigurdsson, who came to power in the late 12th century. In one section, it is said that rival clans who attacked Sveresborg Castle near Trondheim, Norway, “took the dead, threw them into a well, and buried them with stones.”
The well was located within the castle walls and was the only permanent source of water for the area. It has been speculated that the man thrown into the well in this story may have been suffering from a disease, and that throwing him into the well may have been an early act of biological warfare.
In 1938, part of a medieval well in the ruins of Sveresborg Castle was drained, and a skeleton was discovered beneath the rubble and rocks at the bottom. The skeleton, known as “Wellman,” was widely believed to be the remains of the person mentioned in the story, but it was impossible to confirm that at the time.
now, Anna Petersen Researchers at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage in Oslo used radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis of the remains' teeth to show that the range of dates in which the man was alive is consistent with the castle raid. . Although it's not conclusive proof that the man is the person mentioned in the story, “circumstantial evidence is consistent with this conclusion,” Pellersen said.
The Well Man's skeleton was discovered in 1938
Riksantikvaren (Norwegian Directorate General for Cultural Heritage)
Additionally, the team was able to further enrich the story. “The investigation we conducted uncovered many details about both the incident and the person that were not mentioned in the story episode,” Petersen said.
For example, DNA suggests he likely had blue eyes and blonde or light brown hair. Researchers also believe, based on comparisons with modern and ancient Norwegian DNA,
that his ancestors came from Vest Agder County, in what is now the southernmost tip of Norway.
What they couldn't find was any evidence that the men were thrown into the well because they were sick or to make drinking water unavailable, but no evidence to the contrary. can't be found, and the question remains unanswered.
michael martin The researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim say their approach of matching historical documents with DNA evidence will help them build family trees of long-deceased royal families and “physically reveal life stories such as movements.” He states that it may also be applicable to “describing and drawing schematically.” Anonymous people whose remains were recovered from archaeological excavations across geographic regions. ”
Researchers collected DNA from one of the skeleton's teeth
Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage (NIKU)
“To my knowledge, this is the earliest instance in which genomic information has been recovered from a specific person, or even a specific person, described in an ancient text,” Martin said.
He says generating genomic information from ancient skeletons can provide new details about a person. “These details are not included in the original text, so genetic data enriches the story and provides a way to separate fact from fiction,” Martin says.
Paleontologists have recovered a fossilized jaw fragment and three isolated bones from a relatively large (by Late Cretaceous standards) new species of Metatheria in the Williams Fork Formation of northwestern Colorado, USA. Found a tooth.
artist’s depiction Heleochora piceanus In a Late Cretaceous wetland. Image credit: Brian Engh / LivingRelicProductions.com / Utah Natural History Field House.
” Metatheria “[Marsupials and their closest fossil relatives]consist of about 330 extant species in seven orders, most of which live in the Southern Hemisphere,” said Jaylin Eberle, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. said.
“However, this clade appears to have originated in the Northern Hemisphere during the Early Cretaceous.”
“By the end of the Cretaceous period, Metatheria had dispersed across Europe, Asia, and North America, and were more diverse and numerous than their contemporaneous eutherians.”
“Most of the Late Cretaceous Metatheria species are represented almost exclusively by isolated teeth and jaws recovered from fossil localities in the interior western United States.”
The fossilized remains of a new species of Metatherian have been discovered. williams fork formation It is located in Douglas Creek Arch between the Uintah and Piance Creek basins in northwestern Colorado.
named Heleochora piceanusThis animal lived approximately 70 to 75 million years ago (late Cretaceous period), a time when a vast inland sea covered much of the American West.
Weighing about 1 kg (2 lb), it was larger than most Late Cretaceous mammals.
Based on the tooth, Heleochora piceanus They probably ate plants mixed with insects and other small animals.
It coexisted with creatures such as turtles, duck-billed dinosaurs, and giant crocodiles.
“This area could have been similar to Louisiana,” says Dr. Rebecca Hunt-Foster, a paleontologist at Dinosaur National Monument.
“We see a lot of animals like sharks, rays and guitarfish that are very happy in the water.”
“Colorado is a great place to find fossils, but mammals from this era tend to be quite rare,” Eberle says.
“So it’s really amazing to see this piece of time preserved in Colorado.”
“Compared to much larger dinosaurs that lived at the time, such as Tyrannosaurus and its horned ancestors, triceratopsColorado’s newest fossil addition may seem small and insignificant. However, it was surprisingly large for a mammal of its time. ”
This finding is reported in the following article: paper in a diary PLoS ONE.
_____
J. Hebert others. 2024. A new Late Cretaceous Metatherian discovered from the Williams Fork Formation in Colorado. PLoS ONE 19 (10): e0310948;doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0310948
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
