Use of Data ESA's Gaia mission Astronomers have discovered a number of metal-poor stars that are more than 13 billion years old and in orbits similar to our sun.
Rotational motion of a young (blue) and an older (red) star similar to the Sun (orange). Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt / SSC / Caltech.
“The Milky Way has a large halo, a central bulge and bar, and thick and thin disks,” said Dr Samir Nepal of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam and his colleagues.
“Most of the stars are found in a thin disk of the so-called Milky Way galaxy, which revolves regularly around the galactic center.”
“Middle-aged stars like our Sun, which is 4.6 billion years old, belong to a thin disk that is generally thought to have begun to form between 8 and 10 billion years ago.”
Astronomers used the new Gaia data set to study stars within about 3,200 light-years of the Sun.
They found a surprisingly large number of very old stars in the thin disk orbit, most of which are over 10 billion years old, with some being over 13 billion years old.
These ancient stars show a wide range of metal compositions: some are very metal-poor (as expected), while others have twice the metal content of the much younger Sun, indicating that rapid metal enrichment occurred early in the evolution of the Milky Way.
“These ancient stars in the disk suggest that the formation of the Milky Way's thin disk began much earlier than previously thought, around 4 to 5 billion years ago,” Dr Nepal said.
“This study also reveals that the Galaxy underwent intense star formation early on, leading to rapid metal enrichment in its inner regions and the formation of a disk.”
“This discovery brings the Milky Way's disk formation timeline into line with that of high-redshift galaxies observed with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA).”
“This shows that cold disks can form and stabilize very early in the history of the universe, providing new insights into the evolution of galaxies.”
“Our study suggests that the Milky Way's thin disk may have formed much earlier than previously thought and that its formation is closely linked to an early chemical enrichment in the innermost regions of the galaxy,” said Dr Cristina Chiappini, astronomer at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam.
“The combination of data from different sources and the application of advanced machine learning techniques has allowed us to increase the number of stars with high-quality stellar parameters, which is an important step leading our team to these new insights.”
Samir Nepal others2024. Discovery of local counterparts of disk galaxies at z > 4: The oldest thin disk in the Milky Way using Gaia-RVS. A&Ain press; arXiv: 2402.00561
Pakdipthes hakataramea Body size would have been similar to that of modern humans Little Blue Penguin (Eudyptula minor)It is approximately 40-45 cm (15.7-17.7 in) in length.
Artist image Pakdipthes hakatarameaPhoto courtesy of Tatsuya Niimura / Ashoro Museum of Paleontology
Pakdipthes hakataramea It lived in New Zealand about 24 million years ago (Late Oligocene Epoch).
This new species was very small, about the size of a little blue penguin. World's smallest — They have anatomical adaptations that allow them to dive.
“Pakdipthes hakataramea “This fossil fills the morphological gap between modern and fossil penguins,” said Dr. Tatsuro Ando, a paleontologist at the Ashoro Museum in Ashoro Town.
“In particular, the shape of the wing bones is very different, and it was unclear how penguins' wings acquired their current shape and function.”
“The humerus and ulna show how penguins' wings evolved.”
“To my surprise, Pakdipthes hakataramea It was very close to the condition of modern penguins, but the elbow joint was very similar to that of older types of fossil penguins.
“Pakdipthes hakataramea This is the first penguin fossil to be found in this combination and is a key fossil that will shed light on the evolution of penguins' wings.”
Fossilized remains Pakdipthes hakataramea The fossils were discovered by palaeontologists Craig Jones and Professor Euan Fordyce during a series of field expeditions in the Hakataramea Gorge in South Canterbury in 1987.
“Analysis of internal bone structure compared with data from modern penguins shows that these penguins had microanatomical features indicative of diving behaviour,” said Dr Carolina Lock, a palaeontologist at the University of Otago.
Modern penguins have excellent swimming abilities, thanks mainly to their dense, thick bones that provide them with buoyancy when diving.
in Pakdipthes hakatarameaAlthough the medullary cavity containing the bone marrow was open, the cortical bone was quite thick, similar to that seen in modern little blue penguins, which tend to swim in shallow waters.
ability Pakdipthes hakataramea Their ability to dive and swim depends on a unique combination of bones.
“Penguins evolved rapidly from the late Oligocene to the early Miocene. Pakdipthes hakataramea “This is a significant fossil from this period,” Dr Locke said.
“Their small body size and unique bone combination may have contributed to the ecological diversity of modern penguins.”
Discovery Pakdiptes hakataramea teeth, paper In Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
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Tatsuro Ando othersA new small penguin fossil discovered from the Late Oligocene of New Zealand and morphofunctional changes in penguin wings. Journal of the Royal Society of New ZealandPublished online July 31, 2024, doi: 10.1080/03036758.2024.2362283
Planetary scientists have identified layers of graphene formed alongside complex minerals in lunar regolith samples collected by China's Chang'e-5 probe, a discovery that provides new insight into the origins of the Moon and supports the hypothesis that it contains carbon.
Structural and compositional characteristics of few-layer graphene in lunar soil samples from Chang'e-5. Image courtesy of Zhang others., doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwae211.
“Graphene's novel physical phenomena and extraordinary properties have revolutionized research in condensed matter physics and materials science,” said Professor Zhang Wei of Jilin University and his colleagues.
“It plays an increasingly important role in a wide range of fields, including planetary and space sciences.”
“It is estimated that about 1.9% of all interstellar carbon exists in the form of graphene, and protosolar graphene has been identified in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites.”
The researchers analyzed an olive-shaped lunar soil sample measuring about 2.9 millimeters by 1.6 millimeters, collected by the Chang'e-5 mission in 2020.
Using a specialised spectrometer, they discovered iron compounds in the carbon-rich parts of the sample that are closely related to the formation of graphene.
The researchers then used advanced microscopy and mapping techniques to determine that the carbon content within their samples was made up of “flakes” of two to seven layers of graphene.
The scientists propose that few layers of graphene could have formed during volcanic activity in the Moon's early existence, catalysed by solar wind stirring up the lunar soil and iron-containing minerals, prompting a change in the structure of carbon atoms.
Meteorite impacts creating high temperature and pressure environments may also have led to the formation of graphene.
“The first study to confirm the presence of native few-layer graphene in lunar soil samples by examining its microstructure and composition,” the authors said.
“Our discovery provides new insight into the origin of the Moon and supports the hypothesis that the Moon contains carbon.”
“Moreover, graphene's unusual properties depend strongly on its structure and environment.”
“Further investigation of the properties of natural graphene could provide more information about the geological evolution of the Moon.”
“Consequently, the formation of natural graphene by mineral catalysis sheds light on the development of low-cost, scalable synthesis techniques for high-quality graphene.”
“This will therefore propel a new lunar exploration program forward, with some exciting breakthroughs in the future.”
New genus and species of monophenestratan pterosaur named Propterodacillus frankellae It documents the transition from the older rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs to pterodactyloids.
The holotype Propterodacillus frankellaeImage credit: Frederik Spindler, doi: 10.26879/1366.
Propterodacillus frankellae It lived about 150 million years ago, during the Kimmeridgian stage of the Late Jurassic Period.
This flying reptile had a moderately long skull, about 9 centimetres (3.5 inches) long, and an estimated wingspan of about 55 centimetres (21.7 inches).
This species also had a very short tail and a small but functional fifth finger with two phalanges.
Propterodacillus frankellae a kind of Monophenestratan (Monofenestrata) is a large group of pterosaurs that includes the family Turconopteridae and the suborder Pterodactyloidea.
“As the earliest actively flying vertebrate lineage, pterosaurs were highly successful in evolution throughout the Mesozoic Era.” Dr. Frederick Spindler “The dinosaur museum's Altmühlthal writes in the new paper:
“For most of the long history of research, every specimen could be classified as belonging to one of two major types: the more ancestral long-tailed Rhamphorhynchioidea and the derived short-tailed Pterodactyloidea.”
“The rare anurognathids, the only short-faced pterosaurs, have similarly short tails but otherwise look like rhamphorhynchids and are therefore generally thought to have been deep-nesting rhamphorhynchids.”
“True intermediate, and therefore plausible transitional, forms between the major types were unknown until the discovery of the Curculionoptera.”
The fossil, named the Painten protterosaur, was discovered beneath the Rigol limestone quarry near Painten in Bavaria, Germany.
The specimen consists of a complete and fully articulated skeleton with soft tissue remaining in the radial fibrils of the torso and wings.
“Propterodacillus frankellae It is contemporary with the oldest Archaeopteryx “It came from a nearby basin,” the paleontologists wrote in their paper.
According to Dr Spindler, the discovery fills one of the largest knowledge gaps in the evolution of pterosaur morphology.
“Propterodacillus frankellae “It's a near-perfect mix of rhamphorhynchoid, curcunopteroid and derived pterodactyloid pterosaur features,” he said.
“Similarities with the derived Pterodactyloidea include the shape of the skull and the short tail.”
“For example, the ancestral traits shared with the Turconogopteridae family are Propterodactyl The most distinctive features of this pterosauroidea animal are its functional fifth toe and long caudal snout.”
“Intermediate conditions apply for neck extension, metacarpal extension, and shortening of the fifth toe.”
of paper Published online in the journal Palenitrogy Electronica.
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Frederick Spindler. 2024. Pterosaur articulation from the Late Jurassic of Germany. Palenitrogy Electronica 27(2):a35; doi:10.26879/1366
Peru’s Kecheke Glacier is retreating due to global warming
Emilio Mateo/Aspen Global Change Institute
Andean glaciers are almost certainly smaller than they have been for at least the past 130,000 years, a study of rocks exposed by melting ice has found.
“Frankly, this came as a shock to us.” Andrew Golin “We believe this is clear evidence that at least one part of the world has moved away from the comfortable climatic conditions that have fostered the development of human civilization,” said the University of California, Berkeley researcher.
The Andes are so high that many permanent glaciers exist in the tropics. In fact, almost all of the world’s tropical glaciers are found in the Andes.
For decades it has been clear that global warming is causing these glaciers to thin and retreat, but it has been unclear how this compares to what happened in the more distant past.
Gorin and his colleagues analyzed 20 samples of rocks recently exposed by the retreat of four tropical glaciers in the Andes. They looked at carbon and beryllium isotopes, which form when exposed rocks are hit by cosmic rays, and can reveal when a glacier last retreated beyond a particular point.
Similar studies in the world´s north have found that glaciers were at their smallest thousands of years ago, in the middle of the current interglacial period, because changes in Earth´s orbit caused more sunlight in the north during winter, causing glaciers to retreat, Gorin said.
Although the northern glacial retreat during the Interglacial Period was a regional rather than global phenomenon, the researchers expected to find a similar phenomenon in the Andes at the time, but the levels of the isotype they found were so low they were barely detectable.
“This is a wake-up call,” Gorin said. “It’s like a canary in the coal mine for any mountain glacier.”
“We’re quickly passing climate milestones that we thought were decades away,” he says, “and we chose the specific locations on these glaciers that we sampled with the implicit assumption that these glaciers are smaller than they’ve ever been in human history.”
The results of the study directly show that these glaciers have never retreated as much as they are today in the past 11,700 years – prior to this point, the entire planet was in a global ice age, and work by other research teams has shown that the tropics were colder at that time.
Although the study does not say so, Gorin agreed when asked that this means Andean glaciers have shrunk to their smallest size since at least the last interglacial period, about 130,000 years ago.
“I would be willing to bet everything you say that these glaciers are currently at their smallest since the last interglacial period is true,” he says, “but the limitations of the techniques we used to address this problem mean we can’t definitively prove that’s the case, so we don’t say so in the paper.”
“This is a shocking study.” Liam Taylor “Science now conclusively shows that Andean glaciers are in a state not seen since the Holocene epoch that began 11,700 years ago, and this is the direct result of climate-altering human activities,” researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK said.
Taylor said the retreat of glaciers is already affecting agriculture, drinking water supplies, sanitation and hydroelectric power in the region because the glaciers act as reservoirs, storing snowfall in the winter and releasing meltwater in the summer.
“Many of the glaciers in the region are now past ‘peak water level,’ meaning that the meltwater that provides freshwater downstream is drying up,” he said.
Tens of thousands of people have died in Peru over the past century from floods caused by lakes formed by retreating glaciers. Stephen Harrison Researchers from the University of Exeter in the UK have warned that more similar disasters are likely around the world as mountain glaciers retreat.
Climate models predict that mountain glaciers will lose more than 90 percent of their ice by the end of the century, leaving only a few small glaciers in the highest regions, he says.
The two galaxy clusters, known as MACS J0018.5+1626, contain thousands of galaxies each and are located billions of light-years away from Earth. As the clusters hurtled towards each other, dark matter traveled faster than normal matter.
This artist's conceptual illustration shows what happened when two massive clusters of galaxies, collectively known as MACS J0018.5+1626, collided. The dark matter (blue) in the clusters moves ahead of the associated hot gas clouds, or regular matter (orange). Both dark matter and regular matter feel the pull of gravity, but only the regular matter experiences additional effects like shocks and turbulence that slow it down during the collision. Image courtesy of W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko.
Galaxy cluster mergers are a rich source of information for testing the astrophysics and cosmology of galaxy clusters.
However, the coalescence of clusters produces complex projection signals that are difficult to physically interpret from individual observation probes.
“Imagine a series of sand-carrying dump trucks colliding, and the dark matter would fly forward like sand,” says astronomer Emily Silich of the California Institute of Technology and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
This separation of dark matter and normal matter has been observed before, most famously in the Bullet Cluster.
In this collision, hot gas can be clearly seen lagging behind dark matter after the two galaxy clusters push through each other.
The situation that occurred in MACS J0018.5+1626 is similar, but the direction of the merger is rotated about 90 degrees relative to the direction of the Bullet Cluster.
In other words, one of the giant galaxy clusters in MACS J0018.5+1626 is flying almost straight towards Earth, while the other is moving away.
This orientation gave the researchers a unique perspective to map the speeds of both dark and normal matter for the first time, and unravel how they separate during galaxy cluster collisions.
“Bullet Cluster makes you feel like you're sitting in the stands watching a car race, taking beautiful snapshots of cars moving from left to right on a straight stretch of road,” said Jack Sayers, a professor at the California Institute of Technology.
“For us, it's like standing in front of an oncoming car on a straight stretch of road with a radar gun and measuring its speed.”
To measure the velocity of ordinary matter, or gas, in galaxy clusters, the astronomers used an observational technique known as the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect.
In 2013, they made the first observational detection of the kinetic SZ effect on an individual cosmic object, a galaxy cluster named MACS J0717.
The kinetic SZ effect occurs when photons from the early universe, or the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), are scattered by electrons in hot gas on their way to Earth.
Photons undergo a shift called the Doppler shift due to the movement of electrons in the gas cloud along the line of sight.
By measuring the change in brightness of the CMB due to this shift, astronomers can determine the speed of the gas clouds within the cluster.
By 2019, the study authors had made these motional SZ measurements in several galaxy clusters to determine the velocity of the gas, or ordinary matter.
They also measured the speed of galaxies within the cluster, which gave them an indirect idea of the speed of dark matter.
However, at this stage of the study, our understanding of the cluster orientation was limited.
All they knew was that one of them, MACS J0018.5+1626, was showing signs of something strange going on: hot gas, or regular matter, moving in the opposite direction to dark matter.
“We saw a totally strange phenomenon where the velocities were in opposite directions, which initially made us think there might be a problem with the data,” Prof Sayers said.
“Even our colleagues simulating galaxy clusters had no idea what was going on.”
Scientists then used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to determine the temperature and location of the gas in the cluster, as well as the extent to which it is being bombarded.
“These cluster collisions are the most energetic events since the Big Bang,” Šilić said.
“Chandra will measure the extreme temperatures of the gas, which will tell us the age of the merger and how recently the galaxy cluster collision took place.”
The authors found that before the collision, the clusters were moving towards each other at about 3,000 kilometers per second, roughly 1 percent of the speed of light.
With a more complete picture of what's going on, they were able to work out why dark matter and normal matter appear to be moving in opposite directions.
They say it's hard to visualize, but the direction of the collision, combined with the fact that dark matter and normal matter separated from each other, explains the strange speed measurements.
It is hoped that more studies like this one will be conducted in the future, providing new clues about the mysterious properties of dark matter.
“This work is a starting point for more detailed studies into the nature of dark matter,” Šilić said.
“We now have a new type of direct probe that shows us how dark matter behaves differently from ordinary matter.”
Emily M. Silich others. 2024. ICM-SHOX. I. Methodology overview and discovery of gas-dark matter velocity separation in the MACS J0018.5+1626 merger. ApJ 968, 74; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad3fb5
This article is a version of a press release provided by Caltech.
Is it in the way we live, laugh, love? Or is it our aversion to clichés? Deep inside each of us, there must be something that makes us human. The problem is, after centuries of searching, we haven’t found it yet. Maybe it’s because we’ve been looking in the wrong places.
Ever since researchers began unearthing ancient hominin bones and stone tools, their work has held the tantalizing promise of pinpointing the long-ago moment when our ancestors transformed into humans. Two of the most important fossil discoveries in this quest reach an important milestone this year: 100 years since the first “near-human” was found. Australopithecus Fossils have been discovered in South Africa that have upended previous ideas about human origins, and it’s been 50 years since the most famous fossil was found. Australopithecus Lucy, also known as humanity’s grandmother, emerged from the dusty hills of Ethiopia, and the two fossils have led researchers to believe they can pinpoint humanity’s Big Bang, the period when a dramatic evolutionary wave led to the emergence of humans. Homo.
But today, the story of human origins is much more complicated. A series of discoveries over the past two decades has shown that the beginning of humanity is harder to pinpoint than we thought. So why did it once seem like we could define humanity and pinpoint its emergence, thanks to Lucy and her peers? Why are we now further away than ever from pinpointing exactly what it means to be human?
The phrase “dining on earthworms” intrigues people in a variety of ways (whether or not they are intrigued in the first place). For historians, it can spark debates like this: Political rallies That happened in the German city of Worms in 1521. To nutritionists, the phrase can describe the work of scientists considering whether today's roughly 8 billion humans could all survive, if necessary, on a diet primarily of earthworms.
Henry Miller, James Mulhall, Lou Aino Pfau, Rachel Palm, and David Denkenberger, whom Feedback considers an all-star team in the earthworm nutrition community, recently devoured a mountain of data. After the meal, intellectually speaking, they said:Could harvesting earthworms significantly reduce global hunger in the event of a major disaster?” Published in the journal biomass.
The five researchers analyzed four techniques for efficiently capturing earthworms: digging and sorting, spraying with anthelmintics, making worm noises, and electric shocks.
They asked the “canned” (worm) question: Given the constraints of “scalability, climate-related collection barriers, and pre-consumption processing requirements,” could earthworms collected in these ways feed all of humanity? Their answer, in a word, is “no.”
Their 48-word response reads: “The authors are not aware of any studies on the human health effects of consuming diets high in harvested earthworms. However, in the authors' opinion, there is reasonable evidence that such diets may be harmful and therefore should not be recommended unless starvation is the alternative.”
Earthworm Meal
Miller, Mulhall, Pfau, Palm and Denkenberger are the latest pioneers in a long line of scientists who have come together to study earthworms' feeding habits.
Many others have focused on the feeding habits of the insects themselves.
Charles Darwin achieved some fame through his 1881 book, Formation of vegetable mold by the action of earthwormsNearly a century later, Christian Forchard and Peter Jummers wroteEarthworm diet: a study of the feeding guild of polychaetes” took up 92 pages. Annual Review of Oceanography and Marine Biology.
Forchard and Jumaz include a conversation-ending sentence that's worth memorizing and reciting if you want to impress at a party: “Alciopids are holoplanktonic animals with a muscular, eversable pharynx.”
Other scientists have studied what happens when insects are eaten, particularly by non-humans.
In 2002, Mary Silcox and Mark Teaford examined the teeth of several habitual earthworm eaters. They summarized their observations: Journal of Mammalogy,title”Insect diet: analysis of microwear on mole teeth” “.
“We measured microwear from the shear surfaces of mandibular molars. Parascallops Brewery (a hairy-tailed mole) Scapanus orarius “We compared the genes of (coast moles) with those of other small mammals, including tenrecs, hedgehogs, three species of primates and two species of bats.”
Some of the wear patterns on the mole's teeth “can plausibly be explained by interactions between the inner and outer teeth of the earthworm and the soil,” the researchers wrote.
Silcox and Teaford's mole teeth study may take on new importance if people on Earth choose to live a diet based primarily on earthworms, despite Miller and others' warnings.
Feedback has been received on the news regarding height requirements for certain courses at Vietnam National University’s School of Business Administration (HSB).
Deutsche Welle On July 2nd, the school announced that “this year's admission requirements are 1.58m or above for girls and 1.65m or above for boys,” because “the school aims to develop future leaders and excellent administrators” and “height is a determining factor, especially when it comes to leadership and self-confidence.”
The news report said that following public outcry, “HSB adjusted its admissions criteria” so that “the rule now applies to only one course – management and security.”
Are there schools or other institutions in the science, medical, or technology fields that have strict height requirements for students or employees? If so, please send us a document in Feedback with the subject line “Big/Small Careers.” Some job requirements reasonably specify that applicants must be physically able to use certain job-related equipment. Please do not send such requirements. We are seeking examples in Feedback where numbers, not needs, are prioritized.
Toilet Humor
Inspired by Feedback's collection of abandoned organisation slogans, Ken Taylor has been writing down slogans about abandoned things.
“I live in a very rural area. [the] UK – Cumbria. There are many isolated plots of land that are not connected to the sewer network and so rely on septic tanks, which need to be emptied regularly. I saw one such tanker truck carrying out its duties. The slogan on the side read “Move yesterday’s meal”. Nothing more to add…”
Marc Abrahams is the founder of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founder of the journal Annals of Improbable Research. He previously worked on unusual uses of computers. His website is Impossible.
Do you have a story for feedback?
You can submit articles for Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week's and past Feedback can be found on our website.
From black spheres swallowing people in downtown Seoul to murder on Mars to malevolent pigs, August has something for every sci-fi fan. New books from big-name authors like James S. A. Corey, Josh Malerman, and Neil Asher, as well as new stories from Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time We’ll start our August reading with Janina Mathewson’s story about an apocalypse experienced from a tiny island, followed by Miles Cameron’s vision of a city-sized “Great Ship” traversing the universe. Whatever your favorite genre of sci-fi, there’s plenty to choose from.
This detective story begins in downtown Seoul. A giant black sphere suddenly appears and sucks in Jong-soo’s neighbors. The sphere continues to swallow people, but attempts to stop it fail and it starts to split and multiply, causing panic all over the world. Meanwhile, Jong-soo goes out to look for his aged parents.
This apocalyptic tale takes place in a small island settlement called Black Crag. Sarah wakes up one morning to find the world quiet. No planes cross the sky and the radio is silent. When a silent, traumatized ferryman arrives, whispers of what really happened on the mainland begin to divide the villagers. It has been compared to Emily St. John Mandel’s Valkyrie. Station Eleven This is one of my favorite post-apocalyptic novels.
This is a standalone novel set in Asher’s Owner Universe. Earth is ruled by the “Ruthless Commission”, but when rebel mutant Ottangar is experimented on by Earth’s Inspectors, he discovers he can reach other worlds and meets evolved humans from the distant future. Can he destroy the Commission’s regime?
This looks like a lot of fun – a sci-fi story that spans generations, from Mars in 2034, when the first humans emerge on the Red Planet, to Mars in 2103, a place of division and fear.
Bestselling horror author Bird Box The latest horror film is set on a farm inhabited by a “strangely malevolent pig” named Pearl and her owner, Walter Copple. Walter has been terrified of Pearl for a long time, and as rumors spread throughout town, the locals begin to go mad.
This military science fiction work is Cameron’s Artifact Space I haven’t read “The Great Ships” but they look very interesting and I would like to read both. They are set in a world where Great Ships with city-sized crews transport goods through space and trade “Xenograss” with alien races. Malka M’Baro has always wanted to serve on one of them and now he has his spot. But something in the darkness of space is targeting the ships.
New Scientist Book Club
Do you love reading? Come join our friendly group of book lovers. Every six weeks, we delve into new and exciting titles and members get free access to our book excerpts, author articles and video interviews.
The debut novel features Raffi, a physicist who dreams of a parallel universe where he falls in love with a sculptor named Britt. He wishes he’d been brave enough to say hello to Britt as a child – what would have happened if he had? This question sends Raffi flying through strange alternate universes, but it all leads back to Britt.
It’s a collection of short stories that weaves together ancient Greek mythology and the modern world, exploring things like genetics, how we treat animals, etc. The Minotaur, for example, becomes a tale of maternal love and patriarchy. This is going to be fun, and Haddon is undoubtedly brilliant.
Bestselling Author spread The authors of the series, who write the novels under a joint pen name, have announced a new space opera in which the Calix Empire descends on the isolated human world of Anjin, where its inhabitants are massacred or abducted as prisoners. Dafydd, a scientist’s assistant, is captured along with his team, but will his skills help them escape their captors’ plans?
The punning title sets the stage for this comedy about an alien invasion in the town of Muddy Gap, where pie lover Denver Bryant witnesses a UFO exploding, but they seem to be the only ones who care, and the only one who takes them seriously is handsome new bartender Ezra, who keeps a record of the incident and the investigation on his pie blog.
Biohackers Charlie and Parker live in a near-future London where the climate has collapsed. The world is divided into three groups: the Greens who want to save the world, the Blues who want to do it while they can, and the Blacks who see no hope. When the two are hired by green activists for jobs ranging from robbery to murder, Charlie is reluctant, but Parker wants to take them on, believing they can still make a difference.
This debut collection of short stories about identity in Central America moves from the past to the future, exploring what we would do if we woke up to find our lives had changed forever. Characters range from mango farmers to cyborgs, and tackle everything from “threatening technology” to “unchecked bureaucracy.”
If your child is fascinated with spies, you’re in luck – there are many spy toy sets available. A love for secret agents indicates that your child is inquisitive and starting to show interest in exploration and technology. There are various toy sets on the market that can aid in developing these skills while providing entertainment and nurturing imagination.
Here are some recommended spy toys for curious kids.
The best spy toys and gear for inquisitive kids
KidzLabs Spy Science Secret Message Kit
This comprehensive toy kit from 4M is packed with everything needed to send secret messages. Kids can hone their spy skills with various items included, such as an invisible message writer, a Morse code torch, and materials to create a 20-page spy journal.
The kit also includes a developer, stick code, and message capsule for discovering secret messages, while the cipher wheel and secret code library aid in learning essential skills. A Super Spy ID card is also part of the package for kids to enjoy. It’s an interactive and educational way for kids to engage in a new interest.
Long Range LCD Screen Walkie Talkie
No spy kit is complete without communication devices. Walkie-talkies are ideal for accompanying your child on their adventures. They allow you to stay connected as they uncover secrets and even role-play a spy headquarters.
Toy Zee walkie talkies are designed with kids in mind, featuring a simple and lightweight design suitable for little hands. With a VOX feature for hands-free calling, these walkie talkies have 9 main channels for private communication, reducing the risk of eavesdropping by others on the same channel.
Thames & Cosmos Master Detective Toolkit
BrightMinds kids’ toys aim to make learning fun and accessible, and this kit from Thames & Kosmos introduces children to science and lab work. The detective toolkit includes tools and documentation for learning about crime scene investigation and analyzing evidence like fingerprints, footprints, and tire tracks.
SpyX MicroSpy Gear Set
This spy gear kit encourages kids to explore their surroundings. It includes a utility belt with 4 micro tools – a spy light, invisible ink pen, motion alarm, and micro listener – to elevate kids’ imaginations. Prepare to venture into the outside world with your child using their new gear.
LOGIBLOCS Secret Recorder Kit
The Secret Recorder kit from LOGIBLOCS helps children explore while developing STEM skills. This gadget allows kids to build 7 innovative systems, featuring a voice recorder, message box, light sensor, Morse code, and more to kickstart their tech projects.
A to Z 9300 Spy Set
This A to Z secret mission set brings kids as close as possible to being real-life spies. They can observe their family using spy glasses, binoculars, and periscopes while sending secret messages using a special transmitter. Suitable for children aged 5 and above.
Kasachoy Night Vision Goggles
These spy goggles feature two pop-out LED lights, allowing kids to see in the dark up to 25 feet away. The battery-powered lights emit a cool blue glow, providing a realistic night vision experience and igniting your child’s imagination.
When it comes to choosing gifts for teenagers, gift cards are often the go-to option. With new technology constantly emerging, it can be challenging to find products that are both worth buying and will be loved by your teen.
Our list features a variety of fantastic tech gifts for teenagers, from cutting-edge gadgets for amazing selfies to popular items that can transform a regular bedroom into the ultimate teen hideaway. These products cater to every budget and level of tech knowledge – you don’t have to be a tech expert to enjoy these innovative devices.
These tech gifts are truly inspiring.
If you know a teenager who’s into science, don’t miss out on these amazing science gifts for teens.
Best Tech Gifts for Teens
TP-Link Tapo Smart Wi-Fi Multi-Color Light Strip
Adding a color-changing LED light strip can instantly elevate a dull bedroom into a vibrant, multi-colored space. Perfect for adding a touch of excitement to a sleepover, gaming session, or just a relaxing night at home. This LED light strip may be one of the best tech gifts for teenagers.
Philips Hue Series Tapo is a well-known name in smart LED strips, and this version of Tapo is a great budget-friendly choice.
Setting up is easy – simply stick the strips on shelves, screens, or other bedroom furniture. The strips are five meters long and can be cut to any desired size. Use the Tapo app to select preset lighting moods, effects, and timers to automatically control the multicolored LEDs. It works over standard home Wi-Fi and is compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant for voice control.
For more gift ideas, check out our guide to the best sci-fi games.
Latest Philips Hue Lightstrip deals:
Tapo Light Strip Latest Deals:
Insta360 X3
At first glance, this small gadget may seem expensive, but its impressive features speak for themselves.
The Insta360 X3 features a 5.7K 360° camera with useful functions like image stabilization, horizon lock, and HDR mode. With the extended selfie stick, the camera intelligently edits your footage to provide a unique third-person perspective, almost like having your personal videographer.
Don’t miss out on the best instant cameras for more photo gift ideas.
While the camera captures the action in 360°, you have the freedom to choose the best angle for your video.
Additional features include:
8K quality 360° time lapse video
Automatically saves 15 or 30 seconds of footage before hitting the shutter button
Convenient automated editing and live 360° streaming allow viewers to see from every angle
Focus on a single person, animal, or moving object and keep it centered in the frame.
Waterproof up to 10m, extendable to 50m with a diving case (sold separately)
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Crosley Voyager Portable Turntable
A portable record player like the Crosley Voyager makes a fun and unique gift for teenagers. Music enthusiasts will appreciate having a stylish turntable in their room.
This turntable’s portability is a standout feature – easily pack it up and take your music with you to parties, vacations, and other gatherings.
Despite its vintage look, the turntable is equipped with modern features: Built-in stereo speakers and Bluetooth for streaming music from your phone, plus a headphone jack for private listening. The turntable also offers three speed settings for playing traditional records.
The Crosley Voyager is an affordable turntable option. If you’re unsure about it, explore our top record players currently available.
While you’re here, check out the best sunrise alarm clocks too.
Mini projector
A portable projector is a must-have for sleepovers or movie nights at home. Whether your teen has a TV in their room or not, this gadget will enhance their viewing experience with a projection size of up to 210 inches.
This is also perfect for PlayStation and Xbox enthusiasts.
While projectors can be pricey, this one offers a balance of affordability and quality. Highly rated by customers, it supports Full HD with 7500 lumens and allows you to choose your preferred projection size from 35 inches to 210 inches, from a distance of 3.7 feet from the wall.
Featuring built-in Hi-Fi speakers, it also has an audio-out port for connecting external speakers or headphones. Once set up, you can connect your phone, tablet, laptop, or gaming console to enjoy TV shows, movies, and photos (some devices may require an HDMI cable).
Explore our guide for the best projectors for your home for more options.
Ultimate Ears BOOM 3 Wireless Bluetooth Speaker
There are few speakers that deliver both style and sound quality, but the Ultimate Ears Boom 3 manages to do just that. With its unique “unicorn” appearance, this speaker stands out from the crowd. It also boasts impressive technical specifications.
The Boom 3 is fully waterproof, allowing you to play music underwater for 30 minutes, and it floats to the surface when released, making pool parties even more enjoyable. Moreover, if your recipient or their friends own other Ultimate Ears speakers, you can link up to 150 of them to synchronize music in one location.
This speaker delivers 360° sound and is made with a highly elastic material used in motorcycle jackets and firefighting gear. Ultimate Ears has conducted over 25 durability tests, ensuring it can withstand even the most energetic users.
The rechargeable battery provides up to 15 hours of playtime on a full charge. Power Up Dock for a seamless charging experience. For speaker options, explore our selection of portable speakers, shower speakers, or noise-canceling headphones.
Auraglow LED USB Wall or Tabletop Word Clock
Looking for a great gift under £25? Consider this unique clock from Auraglow. Instead of traditional numbers, this clock displays the time in 5-minute intervals. LEDs light up the relevant letters on a black panel to indicate the time.
The clock comes with a USB cable for connecting to various power sources, and you can add an adapter for more flexibility. It can be wall-mounted with a hanging slot or propped up on a desk or shelf thanks to its flat base.
If black isn’t your style, the clock is also available in copper. Explore our guides for the best wireless phone chargers, power banks, portable chargers, and charging stations for more useful tech ideas.
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Apexel 10-in-1 Cell Phone Camera Lens Kit
For Instagrammers, photographers, or selfie enthusiasts, a smartphone lens attachment is an ideal choice if you want to enhance your phone’s camera capabilities without investing in a new camera. This set, with 10 different lens attachments stored in a convenient pouch, is compatible with most smartphones and tablets, including iPhone, Samsung, Huawei, and Sony models.
The kit includes macro, wide-angle, and telephoto lenses, along with fun accessories like a fisheye lens, a star filter, a kaleidoscope attachment, and even a polarizing filter to reduce glare and reflections for sunny days.
Despite the focus on modern technology like virtual reality and artificial intelligence, it’s important not to overlook the simple joy of traditional entertainment. Remote-controlled helicopters, a classic favorite, now come with a range of new features to enhance the experience.
If you’re in the market for a remote control helicopter, check out our list of top models below. We’ve curated this list based on extensive research and user reviews to cater to every budget.
What to Consider When Buying an RC Helicopter?
With various helicopter options available, it’s crucial to think about these aspects before making a purchase:
Flight Stability is key, so look for helicopters equipped with a gyroscope or stabilization system.
Consider the range of the remote control, especially for outdoor flights, and the battery life to determine how long you can fly before recharging.
Easy access to replacement parts is essential in the event of a crash, which can happen while you’re still getting used to the helicopter.
Top RC Helicopter Models
Blade Nano RC Helicopter S3 RTF
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The Blade Nano S3-RTF is designed for indoor flying, featuring a lightweight yet durable carbon fiber frame and high-performance rotor blades for stable and agile flight.
Equipped with a six-axis stabilisation system and coreless motors, this helicopter offers power and versatility. It also includes a 2.4GHz DSMX transmitter, rechargeable battery, and spare parts available online.
Syma X9 Flying Car
This innovative hybrid can switch between driving and flying modes. During flight, it can perform acrobatic flips using its four blades and features a six-axis gyroscope for smooth flying.
The aircraft also includes red and green LEDs for better visibility in the dark, with a flight time of approximately 6 minutes and USB charging. It has dual-speed modes, extra blades, and a driver for emergencies.
Syma 2nd Edition S107 S107G
The Syma S107G is a mini indoor helicopter with a metal frame, built-in gyro stabilization, and precise three-channel control. Powered by a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery, it offers up to eight minutes of flight time and a 10-meter remote control range.
Laka Walkera V450D03
The Walkera V450D03 is an intermediate RC helicopter with a brushless motor for stability and agility. Its six-axis gyro stabilization system allows for precise maneuvers, with a carbon fiber frame for durability.
This helicopter features a three-bladed main and tail rotor, long flight times up to 16 minutes, and a 100-meter range with its 2.4GHz transmitter.
This SkyRover helicopter features a unique voice command system for firing missiles and controlling the flight. With eight plastic missiles, wireless headsets, and dual blade control, it offers an immersive experience.
Syma TF1001
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This medium-sized Syma helicopter boasts drone-like design and stunt capabilities, including 3D flips and rolls. It features altitude hold technology, dual-speed modes, USB charging, and a durable metal alloy body.
As the UK is currently experiencing another intense heatwave, many are questioning why the high temperatures feel particularly unbearable compared to other parts of the world.
Despite facing the same scorching sun and global warming trends, the heat in the UK seems to have a unique impact, leading some to wonder if there are other factors at play beyond just the temperature on the thermometer.
With temperatures reaching around 30°C, the British heatwave seems extreme when compared to climate change-induced wildfires in the US and Europe.
Before dismissing this as a common British complaint, it’s important to acknowledge that scientific evidence proves the severity of the heatwave in the UK.
“Heatwaves are subjective events, with different countries interpreting them based on people’s average expectations,” explained climate expert Professor Hannah Croke in an interview with BBC Science Focus.
Professor Croke emphasized that factors like humidity, wind speed, and temperature all play a role in how a heatwave is experienced and perceived by individuals.
Something is floating in the air
The UK’s island geography means that it is surrounded by water, which leads many to assume it would help cool down the country. However, the presence of cold water can actually have the opposite effect.
Meteorologists like Dr. Matthew Patterson explain that the UK’s climate, influenced by moist marine air, affects how heat is lost from the body through radiation, conduction, convection, and evaporation.
Evaporation plays a key role in cooling the body, but high moisture levels in the air can decrease its effectiveness. Wind speed also impacts evaporation, with strong winds aiding in cooling the body.
Indices like Feels Like Temperature and the Universal Temperature Index (UTCI) are used to predict how temperature, humidity, and wind speed will affect individuals during a heatwave.
UK homes not fit for purpose
The design of UK homes, coupled with the lack of standard air conditioning, poses a challenge during heatwaves. The majority of UK homes are not equipped to deal with extreme heat due to their design and age.
Historically, UK homes were built to allow sunlight in, which can lead to higher indoor temperatures. In contrast, European and American homes often have external shutters to block out heat.
As temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, the design and construction of UK homes will need to adapt to better cope with heatwaves. Lack of understanding on how to keep homes cool during hot weather exacerbates the issue.
About our experts
Hannah Croke OBE is a British hydrologist and Professor of Hydrology at the University of Reading. She has received numerous awards for her work in flood forecasting and risk management.
Matt Patterson is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Reading, with interests in atmospheric dynamics, seasonal prediction, and climate change.
COVID-19 could have lasting effects on our mental and physical health
Alexander Davidov / Alamy
There is evidence that people who were hospitalized with COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic still have lower than expected cognitive abilities several years later, forcing them to change jobs.
“What we found is that the average cognitive impairment is equivalent to 10 IQ points, based on what you would expect given age etc.” Maxim Take At Oxford University.
His team looked at 475 British people who had been admitted to and discharged from hospital with COVID-19 up to March 31, 2021.. All of the participants had undergone psychiatric and cognitive evaluations six months after they were discharged, as part of a separate study. Take's team asked them to be reassessed two to three years later and found that, on average, symptoms of depression, anxiety, and fatigue had worsened. “More people get worse than they get better,” Take says.
Overall, those suffering from moderate to severe depression increased from 34% at six months to 47% at the second assessment, and those suffering from moderate to severe fatigue increased from 26% at the first test to 40%. Smaller changes were seen in the proportion of those suffering from moderate to severe anxiety, increasing from 23% to 27%.
It's not clear why so many people's symptoms worsened, but the team found that people whose symptoms were more severe in the initial tests tended to get worse over time. One participant said he'd had shortness of breath for three years and it was hard for him not to fall into depression, Take said.
The team also found that more than a quarter of participants changed jobs after hospitalization, half of whom said they did so because of poor health. The researchers found a strong association between changing jobs and declining cognitive function, but not with depression, anxiety, or fatigue. This suggests that many people are changing jobs because they can no longer cope with the cognitive demands of their previous jobs, rather than for a lack of energy or interest, Take says.
He acknowledges that the study has some major limitations: Only a fifth of those invited to take part actually did so, so it's not clear how representative the study is, and because participants weren't tested before being admitted to hospital, there's no baseline to compare it to, team members say. Paul Harrison also conducted at Oxford University. Instead, the conclusion that people lost 10 IQ points on average was based on what would be expected for people of the same age, sex and education level, British Intelligence Test.
Some young people are on their cell phones until late at night.
Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
Two recent studies have linked “problematic smartphone use” among teenagers to increased symptoms of anxiety, depression, and insomnia. But is this really a problem, and how much, if anything, should we be worried about?
What is ‘problematic smartphone use’?
Researchers in both studies defined smartphone use as “problematic” if people lose a sense of control over their use, become addicted to their device at the expense of meaningful activities, and feel stressed when they are unable to use it. Use becomes problematic when it interferes with work, school, or relationships. John Elhai The researcher, from the University of Toledo in Ohio, was not involved in either study.
“Problematic smartphone use” is not recognized as a diagnosable condition by public health agencies such as the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the UK’s National Health Service.
Two studies found links to certain conditions, and the researchers said further research is needed to confirm whether smartphone use could be causing such health problems. Nicolas Kalk Researchers at King’s College London were involved in both studies.
What did the two studies find?
In one study, Kalk and his colleagues surveyed the smartphone use of more than 650 young people between the ages of 16 and 18. They used a “smartphone addiction scale,” which asks, for example, whether smartphone use blurs your vision or makes you feel irritable when you’re not holding your phone. The scale produces a score between 10 and 60, with a score above 30 considered problematic.
Nineteen percent of participants met the definition of problematic smartphone use, and these people were twice as likely to report moderate anxiety symptoms and almost three times as likely to report moderate depressive symptoms compared to their peers.
On average, problematic smartphone users spent 29 more minutes per day on Instagram and 22 more minutes on TikTok than non-problematic smartphone users. There was no association between problematic smartphone use and other apps such as Snapchat or WhatsApp.
The research team took into account factors that could have influenced the results, such as the amount of time participants spent on their smartphones each day. [also] The impact of [general] “Screen time is protective against the effects of problematic smartphone use, and screen time is not associated with anxiety or depression, but problematic smartphone use is,” Kalk said.
In a second study, a different team looked at smartphone use and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and insomnia in 69 young people aged 13 to 16. The researchers found that 44% of participants met the definition of problematic smartphone use, based on the same addiction scale.
When the research team resurveyed the 62 participants one month later, they found that increased severity of problematic smartphone use over that period was associated with greater symptoms of anxiety, depression, and insomnia.
Should you be worried about “problematic smartphone use”?
The studies are small and don’t prove that problematic smartphone use actually leads to poorer mental health in teenagers, he said. Sunny Shun Liu At Stanford University.
Kalk and Ben Carter Researchers from King’s College London who took part in both studies acknowledge that young people who are already experiencing these symptoms may be using their smartphones in more problematic ways than those without mental illness. “There may be a bidirectional link, but we don’t yet know if there is a causal relationship,” they said. Jay Olson At the University of Toronto, Canada.
For example, people with depression may be more likely to rely on their mobile phones than those without depression because they find comfort in communicating with loved ones, and people with insomnia may be more likely to turn to their mobile phones to stave off boredom in the middle of the night.
In the second study, participants who showed signs of problematic smartphone use were five times more likely to say they wanted to cut down on their device use than those without such use. The fact that these teens want to cut down on their phone use makes the results “both worrying and positive,” Carter said.
If you are worried, how can you cut down on your smartphone usage?
The first study found that 95% of people surveyed tried to limit their smartphone use: They said the most effective strategies were to occasionally put their devices on “do not disturb” mode, turn off notifications, and keep them in another room at bedtime.
Kalk said that rather than restricting teens’ cell phone use, parents and schools should talk to them about what aspects of smartphone use are beneficial and what aspects are harmful. For example, some teens reported that they enjoyed using their smartphones to stay in touch with loved ones, but also reported that smartphones were sometimes distracting.
A large-scale study has identified poor eyesight and high cholesterol as two new risk factors for dementia. The study claims that eliminating these factors, along with 12 other previously recognized factors, could prevent almost half of all dementia cases worldwide. However, some of these factors are difficult to eliminate, and genetics and advanced age remain the biggest risk factors for developing dementia.
“Dementia may be one of the most significant health threats facing the nation.” Gil Livingston “The possibility of changing this and significantly reducing the number of people suffering from depression is crucial,” said researchers from University College London. [this] disease.”
A 2020 study identified 12 potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia, including hearing loss, depression, smoking, high blood pressure, heavy alcohol consumption, obesity, air pollution, traumatic brain injury, diabetes, social isolation, physical inactivity and lack of education.
Livingstone and 26 other dementia experts from around the world updated the list based on the latest evidence, retaining the 12 risk factors but adding two new ones: high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) “bad” cholesterol before age 65 and untreated vision loss in later life.
The researchers included high LDL cholesterol based on several new findings, including: Analysis of 17 studies The study followed around 1.2 million British participants under the age of 65 for over a year.
The results showed that for every 1 millimole per liter (mmol/L) increase in LDL cholesterol, the incidence of dementia increased by 8 percent. In another study of similar size, High LDL cholesterol (above 3 mmol/L) has been linked to a 33% increased risk of dementia, on average, and this risk is most pronounced in people who had high LDL cholesterol in midlife. “So it really does matter how long you have it,” Livingston says.
The researchers suggest that this association may mean that excess cholesterol in the brain increases the risk of stroke and contributes to dementia. Cholesterol has also been linked to the buildup of beta-amyloid protein plaques in the brain, which is linked to Alzheimer's disease.
Untreated vision loss can: Analysis of 14 studiesThe study, which involved more than 6.2 million older adults who were initially cognitively healthy, showed a 47% increased risk of developing dementia over 14.5 years. In another analysis, the risk The decline in vision was mainly due to cataracts and complications from diabetes. [loss] “There's a risk because you're reducing cognitive stimulation,” Livingston said, even though some research suggests that such stimulation may make the brain more resilient to dementia.
The researchers then used their model to estimate what percentage of dementia cases worldwide could be prevented if each of 14 modifiable risk factors were eliminated. They found that hearing loss and high cholesterol had the greatest impact, each contributing about 7 percent of dementia cases, while obesity and excessive alcohol consumption had the least impact, each contributing 1 percent. If all factors were eliminated, the team estimated that about 45 percent of dementia cases could be prevented.
But just because these factors are associated with dementia doesn't mean they cause it, he said. Dylan Williams“So even if we target interventions at them, they may not prevent as much disease as we would hope,” said researcher David L. Schneider of University College London, who was not involved in the report.
These estimates are only population averages and don't capture individual-level risk, Williams says. So removing all factors from your life wouldn't necessarily halve your risk of dementia, which is heavily influenced by genetics and age. Eliminating many of these risk factors, like air pollution or lack of education, would also require public health interventions rather than individual changes, Williams says.
Scientists have widely accepted that complex life first appeared on Earth around 635 million years ago (during the Ediacaran Period). However, an international team of paleontologists from Cardiff, Toulouse and Poitiers universities and China Nonferrous Metals (Guilin) Geological Mining Co., Ltd. has discovered evidence of a much older ecosystem more than 1.5 billion years ago in the Franceville Basin near Gabon on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa.
Artist's impression of a lobe-like macrofossil that lived in a shallow inland sea formed by the collision of two continents 2.1 billion years ago. Image by Abderrazak El Albani, University of Poitiers.
“The availability of phosphorus in the environment is thought to have been a key factor in the evolution of life on Earth, particularly in the transition from simple single-celled organisms to complex organisms such as animals and plants,” said Dr Ernest Chi-Ful, from Cardiff University.
“We already know that elevated marine phosphorus and oxygen concentrations in seawater are linked to an evolutionary event about 635 million years ago.”
“Our study adds an even older event to the record, going back 2.1 billion years.”
Scientists have widely debated the validity of the fossils of megafauna from the Ediacaran period, the oldest of their kind in the geological record.
But Dr Chi Hulu and his colleagues identified a link between changes in the environment before their emergence and increased nutrients, which may have triggered their evolution.
Geochemical analysis of marine sedimentary rocks dating back 2.1 billion years has shed new light on this unusually large fossil assemblage in the Franceville Basin.
A 2.1 billion year old lobe-like macrofossil from the Franceville Basin. Image by Abderrazak El Albani, University of Poitiers.
“We think that after the Congo and San Francisco cratons collided and sutured together, undersea volcanoes further restricted water in this area and even cut it off from the global oceans, forming a nutrient-rich shallow inland marine sea,” Dr Chi-Hulu said.
“This created a localized environment of abundant cyanobacterial photosynthesis for extended periods, leading to oxygenation of local ocean waters and the generation of large food resources.”
“This would have provided enough energy to fuel the increased body size and more complex behaviors seen in the primitive, simple animal-like life forms found in fossils from this period.”
However, the restricted nature of this body of water, combined with the harsh conditions that existed beyond this environmental boundary for billions of years afterward, likely prevented these enigmatic life forms from colonizing the entire planet.
The study suggests that these observations may indicate a two-stage evolution of complex life on Earth.
Step 1 followed the first significant increase in atmospheric oxygen content 2.1 billion years ago, and step 2 followed a second increase in atmospheric oxygen levels about 1.5 billion years later.
“While the first attempt failed to catch on, the second attempt led to the creation of the diversity of animals seen on Earth today,” Dr Chi Hulu said.
of result Published in the journal Precambrian Studies.
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Ernest Chi-Ful others2024. Hydrothermal seawater eutrophication triggers a localized macrobiological experiment in the 2100 Ma Paleoproterozoic Franceville Subbasin. Precambrian Studies 409: 107453; doi: 10.1016/j.precamres.2024.107453
The basic idea of a warp drive is that rather than directly exceeding the speed of light in a local frame of reference, a “warp bubble” contracts space-time in front of it and expands it behind it, allowing travel over distances faster than the speed of light as measured by a distant observer.
Craft othersWe propose a formalism for the dynamical study of warp drive spacetime and generate the first fully consistent numerical relativistic waveforms for the collapse of a warp drive bubble.
Although warp drive has its origins in science fiction novels, according to Miguel Alcubierre, an astrophysicist at the University of Wales, warp drive is explained in detail in the general theory of relativity. Be the first to propose A space-time metric that supports faster-than-light travel.
Real-world implementation has many practical barriers, such as the need for a special type of material that has negative energy, but computationally, given an equation of state describing the material, it is possible to simulate changes over time.
In a new study, theoretical astrophysicists investigated the signatures that could result from a “containment failure” of a warp drive.
“Warp drives are purely theoretical, but they are clearly described in Einstein's general theory of relativity, and numerical simulations allow us to explore the effects of warp drives on space-time in the form of gravitational waves,” said Dr Katie Clough, researcher at Queen Mary, University of London.
“The results are fascinating: the warp drive collapse produces a unique gravitational wave burst — a ripple in space-time that can be detected by gravitational wave detectors that typically target merging black holes and neutron stars.”
“Unlike chirp signals from merging objects, this signal is a short, high-frequency burst that would be undetectable by current detectors.”
“But there may be higher frequency devices in the future, and although the money hasn't been put into those devices yet, the technology exists to build them.”
“This raises the possibility that we could use these signals to look for evidence of warp drive technology, even if we can't build it ourselves.”
“In our study, the initial shape of spacetime is the warp bubble described by Alcubierre,” said Dr Sebastian Kahn, a researcher at Cardiff University.
“Although we demonstrate that an observable signal could, in principle, be found by future detectors, the speculative nature of this work is not sufficient to drive instrument development.”
The authors also take a detailed look at the energy dynamics of a collapsing warp drive.
In this process, waves of negative energy matter are released, followed by alternating waves of positive and negative energy.
This complex dance results in a net increase in energy throughout the system and, in principle, could provide another signature of collapse if the emission waves interacted with ordinary matter.
“This is a reminder that theoretical ideas can inspire us to explore the universe in new ways,” Dr Clough said.
“I'm skeptical that we'll see anything, but I think it'll be interesting enough to be worth a look.”
“For me, the most important aspect of this work is the novelty of accurately modelling the dynamics of negative energy space-time and the possibility that the technique can be extended to physical situations that could help us better understand the evolution and origin of the universe or processes at the centre of black holes,” said Professor Tim Dietrich of the University of Potsdam.
“While warp speed may still be a long way away, this research is already pushing the boundaries of our understanding of extra-dimensional space-time and gravitational waves.”
“We're going to try different models of warp drive to see how that changes the signal.”
Katie Clough othersThe year is 2024. A phenomenon no one has seen before: gravitational waves caused by warp drive collapse. Open Astrophysics Journal 7;doi:10.33232/001c.121868
Their ambitious mission was initially planned for just one week, but now, after 56 days on the International Space Station, the two NASA astronauts remain in orbit, awaiting a safe return journey in the Boeing spacecraft.
The troubled Starliner capsule is facing issues with its propulsion system, including a leak in its helium and failure of five thrusters. Despite the leak being detected before launch, mission managers believed it wouldn’t impact the safety of the astronauts or the flight.
Over the weekend, NASA and Boeing engineers conducted a crucial “hot fire test” of the Starliner, which is set to carry veteran astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore on its first crewed flight on June 5.
The test involved firing 27 of the capsule’s 28 jets in less than 1.2 seconds while evaluating their performance and checking for helium leaks. Preliminary results from the test were positive.
In a blog post published by NASA on Tuesday, it was stated that all thrusters performed well during the test.
NASA confirmed that the propulsion system of the Starliner remains stable, and the helium leak rate is not significant enough to endanger the return to Earth. The agency plans to recheck the system before the capsule separates from the space station.
A high-temperature burn test was also conducted with astronauts Wilmore and Williams inside the Starliner capsule as part of preparations for the return journey. The thrusters play a vital role in maneuvering the spacecraft during docking and undocking from the space station.
Overall, the progress made during the hot fire test is a positive sign for the upcoming crewed flight of the Starliner and the safe return of the astronauts.
Is it in the way we live, laugh, love? Or is it our aversion to clichés? Deep inside each of us, there must be something that makes us human. The problem is, after centuries of searching, we haven’t found it yet. Maybe it’s because we’ve been looking in the wrong places.
Ever since researchers began unearthing ancient hominin bones and stone tools, their work has held the tantalizing promise of pinpointing the long-ago moment when our ancestors transformed into humans. Two of the most important fossil discoveries in this quest reach an important milestone this year: 100 years since the first “near-human” was found. Australopithecus Fossils have been discovered in South Africa that have upended previous ideas about human origins, and it’s been 50 years since the most famous fossil was found. Australopithecus Lucy, also known as humanity’s grandmother, emerged from the dusty hills of Ethiopia, and the two fossils have led researchers to believe they can pinpoint humanity’s Big Bang, the period when a dramatic evolutionary wave led to the emergence of humans. Homo.
But today, the story of human origins is much more complicated. A series of discoveries over the past two decades has shown that the beginning of humanity is harder to pinpoint than we thought. So why did it once seem like we could define humanity and pinpoint its emergence, thanks to Lucy and her peers? Why are we now further away than ever from pinpointing exactly what it means to be human?
A new study led by Western Washington University suggests that sister city relationships have been around for longer than we thought.
Jack H. McBride and Tesla A. Monson conducted a comprehensive study of primate offspring numbers using life history data from 155 primate species and offspring numbers from an additional 791 mammal species. Image by Jason Brougham.
“Nearly all primates give birth to a single litter,” say Tesla Monson, a professor at Western Washington University, and Jack McBride, a doctoral student at Yale University.
“However, some genera, such as marmosets, tamarins, lemurs, lorises, and galagos, regularly give birth to twins or triplets.”
“Although humans most often give birth to singletons, twin pregnancies occur naturally at a rate of approximately 1.1-1.5% worldwide.”
“Advances in assisted reproductive technology have increased twin birth rates to around 3% in some areas over the past 50 years.”
“There is an urgent need to understand the impact of twins on pregnancy, mothers, and newborns.”
In this study, the authors collected data on reproduction and body size from nearly 1,000 different mammalian species to investigate the evolutionary history of twinning in primates.
The traits they analyzed included offspring size (number of offspring), gestation period, body size, and lifespan.
Contrary to previous assumptions, the analysis demonstrates that the earliest primates likely gave birth to twins.
The researchers also found that birth size and gestational age (the length of pregnancy) were closely related.
“Animals that give birth to more pups on average tend to have shorter gestation periods,” Professor Monson said.
“This also applies to humans. In the United States, full-term twins are considered to be born at 38 weeks, not 40 weeks, and many twins are born earlier than that.”
“This may be related to maternal energy limitations.”
“The next step is to look more broadly at offspring number across mammals and see which other reproductive, brain, and body size traits are associated with twinning.”
“We are particularly interested in understanding the relationship between twinning and tooth morphology.”
Shackleton Crater on the south pole of the moon is an area in permanent shadow
LROC/Shadowcam/NASA/KARI/ASU
A backup of Earth-based life could be safely stored in a permanently dark spot on the Moon’s surface, without the need for power or maintenance, and could potentially be restored if life becomes extinct.
Mary Hagedorn Researchers at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, DC, and their colleagues proposed building the lunar biorepository as a response to extinctions occurring on Earth.
The plan has three main goals: to protect the diversity of life on Earth, to preserve species that may be useful for space exploration, such as those that can provide food or biological materials for filtration, and to preserve microorganisms that may be needed in the future to terraform other planets.
Hagedorn said the team wanted to identify a place that wouldn’t require people or energy to store cryogenically frozen living cells at temperatures below minus 196 degrees Celsius, the temperature at which nitrogen becomes liquid and all biological processes stop.
“There’s no place on Earth cold enough to put passive storage, which has to be kept at minus 196 degrees Celsius, so we thought about space or the moon,” Hagedorn said.
She said the team chose the lunar south pole because of a deep crater with a cold area that’s permanently in shadow. Burying the samples about two meters below the surface would also protect them from radiation, she said.
Previous attempts to build safe biovaults have met with mixed success. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway is located in the Arctic and was built to be permanently kept at or below -18 degrees Celsius by the surrounding permafrost, but climate change and rising temperatures threaten its long-term safety.
Biorepository facilities in other parts of the world, especially those located close to cities, are human-power dependent and vulnerable to geopolitical upheaval.
Andrew Pask David B. Schneider, a researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia who is building an Australian seed repository, is enthusiastic about the idea: “We want to look at the same samples in the same facility to ensure their safety, and at the moment the Moon seems like the safest place,” he says.
but Rachel Lapin A researcher from Monash University in Melbourne says there are many challenges and disadvantages to using the Moon, especially the difficulty of accessing it to add or remove samples. She says it might be better to store samples on Earth with lots of redundancy, so that if one repository fails, others are available.
“I want to see compelling evidence that storage will be available if needed,” she said.
Even if this moon vault is not used, Alice Gorman Researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, see value in preserving human remains in space, and believe they might one day be accessible to extraterrestrial civilizations.
“Whether it’s cryogenically frozen biological tissue or DNA, or the full text of Wikipedia stored on a high-density nickel disk, the repository will be similar to the Voyager Golden Records,” Gorman says, referring to the metal disks containing humanity’s story attached to the spacecraft currently leaving the solar system.
After months of speculation about whether the water in the Seine was clean enough for Olympic athletes to compete in, authorities have determined after last-minute testing that the river’s water is safe for swimming.
After tests of the Seine’s water quality came back positive on Wednesday morning Paris time, the men and women will swim in back-to-back races as part of a triathlon, starting at 8 a.m. local time. The men’s race was originally scheduled for Tuesday but was postponed after the Seine’s water failed tests.
“The latest water quality analysis results, received at 3:20 a.m., have been assessed by World Triathlon as meeting the standards and clearing the way for the triathlon to go ahead,” World Triathlon, the organisers and governing body of the Paris Games, said in a statement.
People cool off under a bridge over the Seine during the sweltering heat at the Paris Olympics on Tuesday. Maya Hitidji/Getty Images
After the race, Team USA triathlete Taylor Spivey said he “swallowed a ton of water” during the triathlon swim in the Seine, a river that has historically been so polluted that swimming in it has been illegal for the past century.
Spivey, who finished 10th in the race, told NBC News that his biggest concern wasn’t the water quality, but the “exceptional” and “shocking” strength of the current, which he said was so strong that the race could have been canceled.
“The flow was incredible,” she said. “It felt like I was on a treadmill in one place.”
When asked about the quality of the water, she added, “I’ve been taking lots of probiotics for the past month. We’ll see how it goes.”
Cassandre Beaugrand of France won the gold medal ahead of Julie Delong of Switzerland, who took the silver medal, while Beth Potter of Great Britain took the bronze medal.
The Seine’s water quality has caused a bit of a stir in the run up to the events, as organizers rush to clean up the polluted waterway for prime-time attention. For months, France has been testing samples from the river for the presence of pathogens such as E. coli and enterococcus. High levels of E. coli put swimmers at risk of developing gastrointestinal illness.
The Seine has not passed these tests after wet weather, when storms can send runoff and sometimes sewage into the river.
Swimming in the Seine has been banned for more than a century because it was deemed too polluted, but the city of Paris led a $1.5 billion effort to clean up the river and strengthen waste-treatment systems ahead of the Olympics.
As the first event approached, organizers were hoping for sunny weather that would reduce overall pollution and allow ultraviolet light to inactivate some bacteria.
But the weather rarely cooperated.
last year, Test Event Triathlon rehearsals were canceled due to concerns about water quality after the rains.
The opening ceremony, which included a boat parade on the Seine, took place in pouring rain on Friday, which continued into Saturday.
Pollution from the rain forced organisers to cancel two days of swimming training on Sunday and Monday, then postpone the men’s triathlon originally scheduled for Tuesday morning.
There were no spectators at the swimming venue for the Olympic triathlon along the Seine river in Paris on Tuesday. Thibaut Moritz/AFP – Getty Images
“I’m just trying to focus on what I can control,” U.S. triathlete Kirsten Kasper told NBC News on Tuesday. “We swim in a lot of cities and water quality is often an issue, but I just have to trust that the race organizers are doing the testing and doing what it takes to make sure we’re safe.”
Water experts said the difficulty of keeping the Seine clean enough could draw attention to a broader problem of environmental pollution shared around the world.
“In large cities, it’s very difficult to control the amount of human waste that you see,” said Katie Graham, an assistant professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Engineering. “The public assumes that a lot of these problems have been completely solved, but that’s by no means the case.”
NBC News is a unit of NBCUniversal, which owns U.S. media rights to the Olympics through 2032, including the 2024 Paris Games, which begin July 26.
Evan Bush reported from Seattle and Alexander Smith from Paris.
Studies have found that wildfire smoke can have adverse effects on brain health.
New research suggests that increased exposure to smoke may increase the risk of dementia.
As wildfires become more frequent and intense due to climate change, more people are being exposed to smoke and the associated health risks.
Parts of California, Oregon and Montana have been hit by several massive wildfires, including the Park Fire in Northern California, the fifth-largest in state history, and air pollution has reached unhealthy levels.
Smoke from wildfires can travel hundreds, even thousands, of miles, making it a danger to people nearby as well as those far away.
The fine particles in the smoke are not only bad for your lungs, but a series of studies in recent years have shown that they also have a negative impact on brain health, increasing the risk of dementia, cognitive impairment and mental health problems.
“Much of the research on wildfire smoke has historically focused on the lungs and the heart,” said Stephanie Cleland, an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University who studies the health effects of wildfire smoke. “It's only recently that we've seen a focus on cognitive function and brain health.”
Adding to this body of evidence is a study presented Monday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference suggesting that wildfire smoke may increase the likelihood of a dementia diagnosis.
The study analyzed health records of more than 1.2 million Southern California adults aged 60 and older from 2009 to 2019.
The researchers looked at where people lived and their exposure to fine particles from wildfire smoke and other pollutants, and found that for every extra microgram per cubic meter of fine particulate matter from smoke that participants were exposed to over a three-year period, their odds of developing dementia increased by 21%.
In contrast, a similar increase in exposure to fine particulate matter from other sources, such as cars and factories, was associated with a 3% increased odds of developing dementia.
Study author Dr. Holly Elser, a neurology resident at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, said the evidence is still preliminary but supports that chronic exposure to wildfire smoke contributes to cognitive decline.
But, she said, “the threshold at which wildfire smoke begins to pose a risk to dementia is unclear.”
a A study published in August Similarly, higher exposure to fine particulate matter from a variety of sources, including wildfires, was also found to be associated with higher incidence of dementia.
Climate change is making wildfires more frequent and more intense, and it is also increasing people's exposure to smoke. Between 2003 and 2023, the frequency of major wildfires is expected to more than double, Recent research has shown that.
Scientists believe that wildfire smoke affects the brain because the tiny particles it contains can penetrate the barrier between the bloodstream and the brain, causing inflammation in the central nervous system. The particles can also travel directly from the nose to the brain, which can affect people's ability to think, learn, and remember.
Dementia isn't the only potential impact. Research in 2022 Adults who had recently been exposed to wildfire smoke performed worse on brain-training games that measure abilities such as memory, attention, flexibility, processing speed and problem-solving skills, a study has found.
“People's alertness is significantly reduced within hours to days of exposure to wildfire smoke,” said Cleland, one of the study's authors.
other A study published in the same year Exposure to wildfire smoke during the school year has been shown to lower students' test scores compared to smoke-free years.
“The more smoke you're exposed to, the worse your test scores are,” said Marshall Burke, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of global environmental policy at Stanford University. “The impact on individual students is probably pretty small, but when you add it up across students and across schools, it adds up to a pretty significant overall learning loss.”
But Mr Burke said he had doubts about the dementia study findings published this week because wildfire smoke and other pollution “cannot be equated”.
Elser acknowledged that many questions remain about how smoke affects the brain — for example, it's unclear whether smoke causes dementia in healthy people or only in those who are already at risk.
“That's a really interesting question as to whether this is creating new cases of dementia that never would have occurred before, or whether it's simply hastening the onset of clinically evident dementia,” she said.
Other questions remain about the relationship between wildfire smoke and mental health. February Survey Exposure to smoke from wildfires in the western United States has been linked to increased emergency room visits for anxiety. depression and Psychosis like schizophrenia.
Elser said wildfire smoke can change the neurochemistry in people's brains, which can lead to depression and anxiety, but it's also possible that the anxiety and stress of experiencing and living through a wildfire can independently lead to mental health issues.
Other health effects of wildfire smoke are fairly well understood: Scientists have known for decades that inhaling smoke particles can travel deep into the lungs or enter the bloodstream, increasing the risk of asthma, stroke, heart attack, lung cancer, and low birth weight in newborns.
Cleland said it's not just people in fire-prone areas of the U.S. who have to worry about these risks, as the Canadian wildfires that blanketed parts of the Midwest and Northeast in smoke last summer showed.
“Last summer completely changed our discussion of who is exposed to wildfire smoke,” she says. “Oregon, California, Washington and British Columbia are actually getting a lot of wildfire smoke, but that doesn't mean places like the northeastern U.S. and Ontario aren't affected.”
To reduce exposure to wildfire smoke, experts recommend that people living in areas with high levels of wildfire smoke: Air Quality Index Reading If your count is over 100, avoid outdoor activities, close all windows, run indoor air purifiers, and wear an N95 mask if you must go out.
I lost to a cyborg. When I played the online game WebGrid, using my finger on my laptop’s trackpad to click squares that appear unpredictably on a grid, I was able to beat him at 42 beats per minute. When Noland Arbaugh, a self-described cyborg, played the game, using a chip implanted in his brain to send telepathic signals to a computer, his speed was 49.
Arbaugh was paralyzed from the neck down in 2016. In January, he became the first person to be surgically implanted with a chip made by Neuralink, a company founded by Elon Musk. Since then, Arbaugh has been able to use his mind to control his phone and computer, surf the web, and play games. civilization And chess.
But Neuralink is not the only company using brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to blend the human brain with machines. Thanks to a series of trials, many people paralyzed by spinal cord injuries, strokes and movement disorders are regaining lost abilities. These successes have surprised some researchers, says Jamie Henderson, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University in California. “It’s been an incredible advance.”
Where that will take us remains to be seen. Musk recently mused about developing bionic implants that could compete with artificial superintelligence. Others see deeper implications: “In the future, we will be able to manipulate human perception, memory, behavior and identity,” says Rafael Yuste of Columbia University in New York.
But while BCIs are undoubtedly impressive, as Arbaugh’s WebGrid scores show, the relationship between brain activity, thoughts, and behavior is incredibly complex. Memory…
First names are social tags that are attached to us early in life. Previous studies have shown that an individual's facial appearance is indicative of their name. A new study explores the origins of this face-name matching effect – whether names are given based on innate facial features or whether an individual's facial appearance changes to match their name over time. Findings using both humans and machine learning algorithms show that while adults show a match between facial appearance and name, this pattern is not seen in children or in children's faces digitally aged to an adult appearance.
Zwebener othersThey investigated the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy effect, whereby an individual's facial appearance over time begins to resemble the social stereotype associated with their name. Image credit: Zwebner others., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2405334121.
“George Orwell famously said, 'By the time you're 50, everyone has a suitable face,'” said Reichman University researcher Yonat Zwebner and his colleagues.
“Research supports Orwell's observations and suggests that changes in facial appearance over the years may be influenced by a person's personality and behaviour.”
“Our current study aims to explicitly test developmental aspects of facial appearance by focusing on social processes by taking advantage of a recently identified effect, the face-name congruency effect. The face-name congruency effect suggests that names can be manifested in the appearance of a face.”
In the study, the authors asked 9- to 10-year-old children and adults to match people's faces with names.
The findings revealed that both children and adults correctly matched adult faces to their corresponding names at rates well above chance.
However, when it came to children's faces and names, participants were unable to make accurate associations.
In another part of the study, a large database of images of human faces was fed into the machine learning system.
The computer recognized that facial representations of adults with the same name were significantly more similar to each other than to facial representations of adults with different names.
Conversely, no significant similarities were found when comparing children with the same name to children with different names.
The researchers concluded that the similarities between people's faces and names are the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Facial appearance changes over time to conform to the social stereotypes associated with names.
These stereotypes can form in a variety of ways, such as when a name is associated with a famous person or because of the connotations that biblical names have.
“Our study highlights the broader importance of this surprising effect – the profound influence of social expectations,” Dr Zwebner said.
“We have demonstrated that social construction, or structuring, does in fact exist, something that has been almost impossible to verify empirically until now.”
“Social constructs are so powerful that they can affect how people look.”
“These findings may suggest the extent to which other personal factors, such as gender and ethnicity, that may be even more important than a name, may shape a person's personality as they grow up.”
of result This month is Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Yonat Zwebner others2024. Does a name shape the appearance of a face? PNAS 121 (30): e2405334121; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2405334121
If you’ve been browsing the internet recently, you’ve likely come across advertisements for Lionsman Mushroom supplements that claim to enhance health and prevent illness. But are these claims and products scientifically supported, or are they just a passing trend?
What exactly is a Lionsman mushroom?
The lion’s mane mushroom, scientifically known as Yamabushitake mushroom, is a sizable, hairy edible mushroom with a sweet taste and soft texture. It is used in gourmet cuisine and has a lengthy history in traditional medicine, attracting attention from both Western scientists and modern marketers.
There have been numerous studies on Lionsman mushrooms, with at least 410 research papers published in the last decade. However, only about a quarter of these studies have been conducted on humans, with the rest utilizing model systems like rodents or cell cultures. There have been a total of seven human clinical trials to date.
Is Yamabushitake good for your health?
Heart Health
Around one in three adults in the UK suffers from high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol levels increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases. Lionsman extract has been studied for its potential to improve blood lipid levels, reduce oxidation, and possibly act as an anticoagulant.
Diabetes
Research suggests that Lionsman mushrooms may help control blood sugar levels, but this has only been demonstrated in rodents and cell studies, not in humans, especially those with diabetes.
Cancer Prevention
Studies have identified substances in lion’s mane mushrooms that may inhibit the growth of various cancer cells. However, more research is needed to determine if these effects translate to human consumption.
Mental Health and Cognition
Studies have shown that Lionsman extract can promote nerve cell growth, reduce oxidation and inflammation, and improve brain health. Small-scale studies have indicated potential benefits for memory and cognitive function.
Immunity and Inflammation
Lionsman compounds have been shown to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, but their effects on immunity in humans are yet to be fully understood.
Supports Gastrointestinal Health
Lionsman mushrooms have shown promise in limiting the growth of harmful bacteria and reducing the severity of gastrointestinal disorders in animal models. Human studies are still ongoing to confirm these effects.
So, can Lionsman mushroom supplements be beneficial for humans?
Most Lionsman products on the market focus on extracts, capsules, and powders, as these are easier to study than the whole mushroom. Dosage recommendations are challenging to determine due to the variability in products and the lack of conclusive data.
Are there any side effects?
Lionsman supplements are generally well-tolerated but may cause gastrointestinal upset, nausea, and skin rashes. It is important to consult with a healthcare provider before taking them, especially if you are on other medications.
A recent study published in July suggests that Egypt’s oldest pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Djoser, may have been constructed using advanced technology. The study proposes that a hydraulic lift system was used during the construction of the pyramid to raise the massive blocks needed for its construction.
The Step Pyramid of Djoser was built as the final resting place of King Djoser, the first or second pharaoh of Egypt’s Third Dynasty during the Old Kingdom, around 4,700 years ago. The pyramid rises in six tiers to a height of 62 meters above the Saqqara plateau, equivalent to the height of a 14-storey building.
If proven true, the existence of this hydraulic lift system would offer an explanation for how the ancient Egyptians were able to construct such monumental structures with the technology available at the time. The study also suggests that a nearby enclosure, known as Gisr el-Mudir, may have served as a “check dam” to capture water and sediment, supporting the hydraulic system.
Map of the Saqqara plateau showing the waterway from the Gisr el-Mudir Dam to the water treatment facility near the Pyramid of Djoser. The water is then routed to the pyramid’s pipe network to power the hydraulic elevators. – Image courtesy of Paléotechnique, Paris, France
The study proposes that a sophisticated system of water treatment plants outside the pyramid combined with the Gisr el-Mudir and a ditch controlled water quality and flow. Water would flow into a shaft inside the pyramid where a float system potentially carried building stones to their needed locations. A plug system at the base of the shaft could then drain the water for the process to start again.
Xavier Landreau, president of Paleotechnique and lead author of the study, emphasizes the importance of this discovery in questioning established historical narratives and the technical knowledge possessed by the ancient Egyptian architects. The study also raises the intriguing question of whether the same hydraulic system used to construct the pyramid could have been used to bury the king in his final resting place within the pyramid.
About the Experts
Xavier Landreau: President of Paleotechnique and lead author of the study. Paleotechnique is a research practice that combines hydrology, geotechnical engineering, physics, mathematics, materials science, and history to explore the origins of civilization.
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have obtained stunning new images of the dwarf elliptical galaxy IC 3430.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the dwarf galaxy IC 3430, located about 45 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. The color image includes both visible and near-infrared observations by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The image is based on data obtained through two filters. The colors are obtained by assigning a different hue to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Sun.
IC3430 It is located in the constellation Virgo, about 45 million light years from Earth.
This dwarf galaxy discovered It was discovered on February 15, 1900 by German astronomer Arnold Schwassmann.
Also known as LEDA 41294, UGC 7643, and VCC 1273, it is just 25,000 light-years in diameter.
The IC 3430 is Virgo star cluster is rich in galaxies of all sizes, many of which are very similar in type to this dwarf galaxy.
“IC 3430 is a dwarf galaxy, well reflected in this Hubble Space Telescope image, more accurately known as a dwarf elliptical galaxy, or dE galaxy,” Hubble astronomers said in a statement.
“Like its larger cousins, this galaxy has a smooth oval shape with no visible arm or bar features, and it lacks gas to form many new stars.”
“Intriguingly, IC 3430 contains a hot, massive, blue stellar core, a rare phenomenon in elliptical galaxies, indicating recent star formation activity.”
“We believe that shock pressure from a galaxy punching through the gas in the Virgo Cluster ignited remaining gas in IC 3430's core, forming several new stars.”
“Dwarf galaxies are actually galaxies with a small number of stars, typically fewer than a billion, but still often enough to replicate the same shapes as larger galaxies on a smaller scale,” the astronomers said.
“There are dwarf elliptical galaxies like IC 3430, dwarf irregular galaxies, dwarf spheroidal galaxies, and even dwarf spiral galaxies.”
“The so-called Magellanic spiral galaxies are also a type of dwarf galaxy, the best example of which is the well-known dwarf galaxy, the Magellanic Clouds.”
Ozempic has the potential to treat many diseases, not just type 2 diabetes and obesity.
MySkin/Shutterstock
Another study showed that semaglutide (a drug found in Ozempic and Wegovi – It may help treat addiction: Researchers found that people prescribed the drug to treat type 2 diabetes were less likely to seek medical attention for smoking than those taking other diabetes medications.
Semaglutide helps treat obesity and type 2 diabetes by mimicking hormones that suppress appetite and regulate blood sugar levels. Previous studies have also shown that semaglutide reduces the incidence of diabetes. Cannabis Use Disorder and Alcoholism.
To find out the effect of semaglutide on tobacco addiction, Ron Shu Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio collected data from the electronic medical records of about 223,000 people in the US with type 2 diabetes and smoking habits, about 6,000 of whom had been prescribed semaglutide, and the rest were using one of seven other diabetes medications.
The researchers then tracked whether participants met with a health care provider about smoking or received smoking cessation counseling within a year of starting to take the smoking cessation medication.
After taking into account variables such as age, sex, race and certain health conditions, the team found that people using semaglutide were, on average, less likely to receive tobacco-related medical care than people taking other medications, which the researchers took to be an indication that these people may be more successful in quitting smoking.
For example, semaglutide users were 32% less likely to receive the treatment. Insulin 18% lower than users Metformin user.
People taking semaglutide may be less likely to seek medical care for their smoking, even though they didn’t necessarily stop using such products. But Xu said that because they all sought tobacco-related medical care at similar rates before they started taking type 2 diabetes medication, semaglutide may actually have helped them.
The study was not a randomized controlled trial, which is the highest level of medical evidence, so the results do not conclusively show that semaglutide is behind the effect, he said. Patricia Grigson Kennedy At Pennsylvania State University, however, other studies have shown that semaglutide reduces activity in areas of the brain involved in reward processing and craving, so there may be a causal relationship.
In a new study, a team of scientists from Virginia Tech investigated the extent to which exposure to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of COVID-19, was widespread in wildlife communities in Virginia and Washington, DC, between May 2022 and September 2023. They documented positive detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in six species: deer mice, Virginia opossums, raccoons, groundhogs, cotton-tailed bats, and eastern red bats. They also found no evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was transmitted from animals to humans, and people should not fear general contact with wildlife.
Goldberg othersThis suggests that a wide variety of mammal species were infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the wild. Image credit: Goldberg others., doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-49891-w.
“SARS-CoV-2 could be transmitted from humans to wild animals during contact between humans and wild animals, in the same way that a hitchhiker might jump to a new, more suitable host,” said Carla Finkelstein, a professor at Virginia Tech.
“The goal of a virus is to spread in order to survive. It wants to infect as many humans as possible, but vaccination protects many of us. So the virus turns to animals, where it adapts and mutates to thrive in a new host.”
SARS CoV-2 infections have previously been identified in wild animals, primarily white-tailed deer and wild mink.
This new research significantly expands the number of species investigated and improves our understanding of virus transmission in and between wild animals.
The data suggest that exposure to the virus is widespread among wild animals and that areas with high human activity may be contact points for interspecies transmission.
“This study was prompted by the realization that there were significant and important gaps in our knowledge about the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the broader wildlife community,” said Dr. Joseph Hoyt of Virginia Tech.
“Most studies to date have focused on white-tailed deer, but we still don't know what's going on with many of the wildlife species commonly found in our backyards.”
For the study, the researchers collected 798 nasal and oral swabs from animals that had been caught live and released from the wild, or that were being treated at a wildlife rehabilitation center, as well as 126 blood samples from six animal species.
These sites were chosen to compare the presence of viruses in animals across different levels of human activity, from urban areas to remote wilderness.
The scientists also identified two mice with the exact same mutation on the same day and in the same location, indicating that they either both got infected from the same person, or one had transmitted it to the other.
How it spreads from humans to animals is unknown, but wastewater is a possibility, but trash cans and discarded food are more likely sources.
“I think the biggest takeaway from this study is that this virus is everywhere. We're finding it in common backyard animals that are testing positive,” said Dr. Amanda Goldberg of Virginia Tech.
“This study highlights the potentially broad host range of SARS-CoV-2 in nature and how widely it may actually spread,” Dr Hoyt said.
“There is much work to be done to understand which wildlife species, if any, are important in the long-term maintenance of SARS-CoV-2 in humans.”
“But what we've already learned is that SARS CoV-2 is not just a human problem, and we need multidisciplinary teams to effectively address its impacts on different species and ecosystems,” Professor Finkelstein said.
Parapontoporia The common dolphin, an extinct genus of long-nosed dolphins that lived along the Pacific coast of North America from the late Miocene to the Pliocene, was likely able to hear in a narrow band of high-frequency sounds, a new analysis has found. Parapontoporia The bony labyrinth.
The last known Chinese river dolphin, Qiqi. Image by Roland Seitre / CC BY-SA 3.0.
“Whales, dolphins and porpoises (cetaceans) represent one of the most dramatic transitions in the history of mammals: a return from land to water,” said researchers Dr. Joyce Sanks of Vanderbilt University and Dr. Rachel Racicot of the Senckenberg Institute and the Natural History Museum.
“As a result, this group acquired a series of aquatic adaptations, such as moving their nostrils to the top of their heads and streamlining their bodies.”
“Echolocation developed early in the evolutionary history of Oligocene toothed whales (Odontoceti), and all modern toothed whales possess this ability.”
“The biosonar clicks produced by most extant toothed whales typically cover a wide frequency spectrum, from tens of kilohertz to 150-170 kHz.”
“Conversely, certain toothed whales emit characteristic biosonar clicks that have narrow bandwidth but high centroid frequencies.”
“These distinctive clicks have a peak frequency of 125-140 kHz and a bandwidth of 11-20 kHz.”
Using high-resolution x-ray CT scans, the authors examined the inner ears of three people. Parapontoporia Two specimens, Parapontoporia sternbergii and Parapontoporia pacifica From the collection of the San Diego Natural History Museum.
With the help of 3D models, the team was able to prove that these creatures already had narrow-band, high-frequency hearing during the Miocene epoch, about 5.3 million years ago.
“Echolocation, as used by animals, also developed quite early in evolutionary history,” Dr Racicot said.
“The animals emit sound waves that bounce off objects and send back echoes, providing information about the object's distance and size. All toothed whales currently use this natural sonar system.”
“Echolocation is a rational hunting and communication strategy, especially in the ocean, where sound travels five times faster than in air, and where visibility is often reduced.”
“What's particularly interesting is that these dolphins have once again changed habitat, leaving the marine environment to colonize rivers.”
There are still a few dolphins living in the river today, with all six species now extremely rare and endangered.
As a relative Chinese river dolphin (Lipotes vexilifer) Last recorded in 2002, Parapontoporia It provides insight into the transition from marine habitats to freshwater environments.
“We speculate that this early and widespread evolution of echolocation in the dolphins we studied was driven by selective pressure or ecological advantage,” Dr Racicot said.
“River systems are spatially complex habitats, and this form of orientation and communication would likely have been advantageous for long-nosed dolphins.”
“Further research into toothed whales' sensory organs could be an important tool for studying the influence of habitat on cetacean hearing and for understanding the evolutionary dynamics of marine mammals.”
of result Published in this month's journal Anatomy record.
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Joyce Sanks & Rachel Racicot. Biology and prediction of hyperacusis. Parapontoporia – The extinct fin whale. Anatomy record Published online July 15, 2024; doi: 10.1002/ar.25538
Ice 0 is Ice Shape If it is possible to induce the formation of ice crystals in supercooled water, University of Tokyo.
Ice nucleation in water nanodroplets at 180 K (minus 93.15 degrees Celsius, minus 135.76 degrees Fahrenheit). Image courtesy of G. Sun & H. Tanaka, doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-50188-1.
“Ice crystallization, known as ice nucleation, usually occurs heterogeneously, in other words, on solid surfaces,” said University of Tokyo researchers Gan Song and Hajime Tanaka.
“This is typically expected to occur at the surface of a container of water, where the liquid and solid meet.”
“But our study shows that ice crystallization can also occur just below the water surface, in contact with the air.”
“Here, ice nucleates around a small precursor that has the same characteristic ring-like structure as ice-0.”
“Simulations show that under isothermal conditions, water droplets are likely to crystallize near the free surface,” Dr Sun added.
“This settles a long-standing debate about whether crystallization occurs more easily on the surface or in the interior.”
The precursor to ice-0 has a structure very similar to supercooled water, which allows water molecules to crystallize more easily without having to form directly into the structure of regular ice.
These form naturally as a result of the negative pressure effect caused by the surface tension of water.
When crystallization begins from these precursors, the ice-0-like structure rapidly rearranges into the more typical ice-I.
“Our discovery of the mechanism behind water surface crystallization is expected to make significant contributions to various fields, such as climate research and food science, where water crystallization plays an important role,” said Dr. Tanaka.
“Understanding ice in more detail and how it forms can provide valuable insights into many different fields of research.”
“This work may be particularly important in meteorology, because the formation of ice from precursors such as ice-0 may have a much more pronounced effect on tiny water droplets such as those found in clouds.”
“Understanding ice also has benefits in technology, from food science to air conditioning.”
Team paper Published online in the journal Nature Communications.
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G. Sun & H. Tanaka. 2024. Surface-induced water crystallization driven by precursors formed in a negative pressure region. Nat Community 15, 6083; doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-50188-1
This article is based on a press release from the University of Tokyo.
Extinct giant aquatic arthropods called sea scorpions (Eurypterids) were apex predators. A new study suggests that early species of carcinosomatoids, with their scorpion-like spiny limbs, fed on trilobites, while later species preferred armored fish. Carcinosomatoids evolved into scorpions, but not the giant scorpion-like creatures that lived 400 million years ago. Preactorus and Brontoscorpio which is published in Walking with monsters (TV series) was probably a crustacean.
Reconstruction Pentecopterus (170 cm long), the oldest known sea scorpion (Eurypteridae), from the Ordovician Period (467 million years ago) of Iowa, USA. Image by John Alexander.
Sea scorpions (family: Ophiocephalidae) are ancient aquatic creepies (arthropods, meaning they have segmented bodies, exoskeletons, and jointed legs) that lived from 467 million years ago until about 253 million years ago.
Some pterygian Eurypterids can grow to lengths of nearly 2.6 metres, making them the largest insects ever to have lived. Eurypterids also include the predatory carcinosomatoids, namely the megalograpts, carcinosomatoids and mixopterids, which have long spiny limbs and can grow to lengths of up to 2 metres.
Carcinosomatoids used their long, spiny limbs to catch prey and burrow into the mud, and computer models suggest that they were slow swimmers who preferred to live close to the sea floor as ambush predators.
New research on fossils found alongside megalograptids suggests that they were primarily associated with trilobites, a diverse group of extinct marine arthropods.
Carcinosomatids tend to live in symbiosis with lightly armoured phyllocallid crustaceans and lingulid brachiopods (lamp shells).
Mixopterid fishes tend to coexist with more heavily armoured fishes such as therodonts, osteostracans and pteraspids.
Fossilized feces (coprolites) prove that they ate trilobites, armored fish, and even their own kind (cannibals).
The idea that nudibranchs influenced the evolution of armored fishes in the predator-prey arms race is often dismissed.
The study suggests that mixopterids and pterygians had some influence on their evolution (and on our very ancient ancestors).
Megalograptus is interpreted as being more primitive than previously thought, which means that early (Ordovician) crinoid diversity has been overestimated.
Scorpions are thought to have evolved from a Mixopteridae-like ancestor, evolving claws (palps), stingers, and comb-like sensory pecten on their undersides.
Giant scorpions may be the creatures of your nightmares, but they actually existed in Scotland's Carboniferous period. Pulmonoscorpiusand Gigantoscorpio.
Reconstruction PulmonoscorpiusA giant scorpion (70 cm long) from the Carboniferous period of Scotland (330 million years ago). Image by Junnn11 / CC BY-SA 4.0.
Even longer (1 meter) scorpions PreactorusThis dinosaur, which lived in Herefordshire, England, is also thought to have lived 412 million years ago.
However, the grooves on its shell, the pustular ornamentation, and the recurved first segment suggest that it is in fact a crustacean.
Bennett TaltraThey come from the same layer and region and may be related (or slightly smaller) Preactorus.
BrontoscorpioIt is an estimated 86cm long (400 million years old) scorpion featured in a BBC television series. Walking with monstersOnly a small portion of the claws are known, and it is probably a crustacean. Image courtesy of Impossible Pictures.
Brontoscorpio(86cm long), discovered in Worcestershire, England (400 million years ago) and featured in an award-winning BBC television series. Walking with monsters Possibly a crustacean too.
So giant scorpions, along with giant millipedes measuring two metres in length and giant dragonflies with wingspans of 75 centimetres, didn't come into existence until the Carboniferous period 70 million years later.
Modern scorpions gradually acquired their modern characteristics: early scorpions had more primitive legs and eyes, and lacked an anterior mouth cavity for feeding on land, so were probably aquatic or amphibious.
The oldest known scorpion Palioscorpio It was discovered in Wisconsin from the Early Silurian (437 million years ago) but has been reinterpreted as a trilobite-like arthropod.
The oldest scorpion is now Dolichophonus (433-438 Ma) Originating from Scotland.
this the study Published in New Jarlbuch in Geology and Palaeontology.
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Braddy, S.J. 2024. Palaeoecology and phylogeny of carcinosomatid eurypterids: ichnolog- y and palaeoassemblages. New Jarlbuch in Geology and Palaeontology; doi: 10.1127/njgpa/2024/1206
Bronze Age Europeans earned and spent money in much the same way we do today, indicating that the origins of the “market economy” are much older than expected.
That’s the controversial conclusion of a new study that challenges the view that elites were the dominant force in Bronze Age economies and suggests that human economic behaviour may not have changed much over the past 3,500 years or more.
“We tend to romanticize European prehistory, but the Bronze Age was not just a fantasy world where townsfolk and peasants served their needs as a backdrop for great lords,” he said. Nicola Ialongo “It was a very familiar world, with family, friends, social networks, markets, jobs, and ultimately having to figure out how to make ends meet,” says Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Bronze Age Europeans, from 3300 to 800 BCE, were not meticulous bookkeepers like people in other ancient societies, such as those in Mesopotamia. But Ialongo and Giancarlo Lago Researchers at the University of Bologna in Italy suggest that the treasure trove of metal they left behind may hold important insights into their daily lives and the roots of modern economic behavior.
Lago and Ialongo analyzed more than 20,000 metal objects from Bronze Age burials in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and Germany. These metal objects came in many different forms, but around 1500 B.C. they began to be standardized by weight, which is how they were classified. Many experts These are distinguished as a type of pre-monetary currency.
“The discovery of widespread systems of measurement and weight allows us to model things that have been known for centuries in ways that have never been modeled before,” Ialongo says. “This not only gives us new answers to old questions, but it also gives us new questions that no one has asked before.”
The team found that the weight values in their vast sample followed the same statistical distribution as the daily expenses of a modern Western household: small everyday expenses, represented by lighter pieces, dominated the consumption pattern, while larger expenses, represented by heavier pieces, were relatively rare. This pattern is similar to that found in the average modern wallet, with many small bills and very few large bills.
Lago and Ialongo interpret their find as evidence that the Bronze Age economic system was regulated by market forces of supply and demand, with everyone participating in proportion to how much they earned. This hypothesis contrasts with the influential view put forward by anthropologist Karl Polanyi in the 1940s, who characterized the modern economy, based on monetary gain, as a new phenomenon distinct from ancient economies centered on barter, gift exchange, and social status.
Richard Brunton A researcher from Purdue University in Indiana called the study credible: “I think this argument will stimulate debate among archaeologists and economic anthropologists who have been based for decades on erroneous assumptions about the antiquity of market economies,” he said.
“I think this paper adds useful fuel to that criticism,” Brunton says, “and to me it sheds entirely new light on the function of bronze deposits and the potential use of bronze coins as a unit of exchange.”
but, Erica Schonberger Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland are skeptical of the team’s conclusions. “It’s dangerous to assume that ordinary people in premodern times used money in normal economic activities,” says Schonberger. “For example, medieval English peasants only got money for selling their produce when lords began to demand money in lieu of rents or taxes in kind. They gave most or all of that money directly to the lords. They sold to get money, but they didn’t use it to buy things they needed. We’re still a long way from modern economic behavior.” [in the Middle Ages].”
Lago and Ialongo hope that their work will inspire other experts to carry out similar studies on artefacts from different regions and cultures. They suggest that market economies are a natural development across time and cultures, and that such systems are not something new or unique that has emerged in Western societies over the past few centuries.
“Technically, we haven’t proven that the Bronze Age economy was a market economy,” Ialongo says, “we simply have no evidence that it wasn’t. And we’re just pointing out a contradiction: why is everyone so convinced that there wasn’t a market economy when everything we see can be explained by a market economy model? In other words, if the simplest explanation works well enough, why should we have to imagine a more complex one?”
No turning point in the history of the universe surpasses the birth of the first stars. As stars flickered into existence some 200 to 400 million years after the Big Bang, the energy they emitted ripped apart the atoms of the gas that had cooled the universe, reheating it in a process called reionization. Then, as the stars burned out and died, they created a cocktail of chemical elements that prepared the universe to give rise to galaxies, planets, and eventually life itself.
It's no wonder astronomers are itching to get a glimpse of this first generation of stars. To start with, they were spectacular: huge and blisteringly bright, thought to be 300 times more massive and 10 times hotter than the Sun. But observing them could also tell us a lot about the mysterious early stages of the Universe, particularly how the universe came to be flooded with supermassive black holes in an incredibly short space of time.
Now we may finally be on the brink. Earlier this year, astronomers reported that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), by fixing its excellent field of view on the outer edges of very distant galaxies, may already have seen evidence of the first stars. “The observations we can now make really expand our knowledge,” says Hannah Ubler of the University of Cambridge.
The signal may turn out to be a false alarm, but what's interesting right now is that other researchers are starting to look at different features of the light from the early universe, even suggesting that it might be the first stars.
Corals are being hit hard by global warming, and the only way to save coral reef ecosystems may be to replace native species with more heat-tolerant species from other parts of the world. This is the view of two coral researchers, who call for a thorough evaluation of the benefits and risks of deliberately introducing non-native corals, rather than a quick dismissal.
Living coral is essential to the health of coral reefs and the people who depend on them. Michael Webster Professor at New York University: “Corals are not only beautiful to look at on reefs, they provide habitat for many different organisms, they protect against waves from shorelines, and they make up the sand on tropical beaches.”
But corals cannot tolerate temperatures outside the normal range of their habitat: Global warming has caused ocean temperatures to rise sharply, leading to widespread bleaching, in which corals expel the algal symbionts that provide them with much of their nutrients, and can ultimately lead to their death.
“Coral reefs are being lost at a rapid rate in many places around the world, and attempts to restore them through traditional means have had mixed results,” Webster says.
Webster calls for change in an opinion piece he co-authored with Daniel Schindler of Seattle University in Washington. “You might be able to find corals in a totally different place that are already adapted to the environment that's coming into one place, or that may come into that place in the future — you're trying to find pre-adapted corals,” he says. Many who want to save the reefs are horrified by the idea, but Webster says things are getting worse and it needs to be seriously considered.
For example, two species of branching corals native to the Caribbean are in very poor condition, Webster says. But there are more than 100 species of branching corals around the world, and some of them, if introduced to the Caribbean, could potentially recreate the habitat that the branching corals provided. “They won't necessarily be the same color,” Webster says, “but they're ecologically similar.”
Webster and Schindler acknowledge that there are risks: A worst-case scenario is that devastating diseases or predators are accidentally introduced along with the invasive corals, which could outcompete or hybridize with native species.
But there are also risks in waiting too long to act, Webster says. He thinks that replacing lost species with species that perform a similar role — so-called ecological replacement — is much more realistic than other options currently being considered, such as genetically engineering corals to survive higher temperatures. “The best thing for coral reefs is to maintain the diversity that's there,” he says.
Terry Hughes of James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, disagrees. “The innocuous term 'ecological replacement' is naive, dangerous and stunningly arrogant,” Hughes says. “The authors fail to acknowledge that the accidental or deliberate introduction of invasive species has already caused enormous ecological damage to coral reefs around the world.”
For example, in the 1980s, a previously unknown Pacific disease spread through the entrance to the Panama Canal, wiping out algae-eating sea urchins in the Caribbean and causing an algae bloom that killed millions of corals, Hughes says. “Invasive species are a problem for coral reefs, not a healthy solution.”
Imagine asking your virtual assistant, “Hey Google/Alexa, tell me the lyrics to ‘Beautiful People’ by Ed Sheeran.” Voice User Interface You could possibly receive the information you need within seconds. Cancer doctors and researchers face the challenge of exploring and interpreting cancer genomic data, which resembles a huge library with billions of pieces in different categories. What if you had an Alexa-like tool that could answer questions about the data within seconds?
Traditionally, researchers have used computer programming and interactive websites with point-and-click capabilities to analyze cancer genomic data. Researchers agree that these methods are not only time-consuming, but also often require advanced technical knowledge that not all clinicians and researchers possess. Scientists from Singapore and the United States have collaborated to develop a conversational virtual assistant to navigate the vast library of cancer genomes. They named this assistant Melvin. Their goal was to make relevant information quickly available to all users, regardless of technical expertise.
The scientists described Melvin as a software tool that allows users to interact with cancer genomic data through simple conversations with Amazon Alexa. It incorporates familiar Alexa features, such as the ability to understand and speak everyday English and the ability for researchers to initiate a conversation by saying the name “Alexa.” Additionally, the scientists incorporated a knowledge base containing genomic data for 33 types of cancer from a global cancer database. The Cancer Genome AtlasIt contains a variety of data, including gene expression data, mutations known to increase the risk of developing cancer, etc. It also incorporates secondary information from each database, such as the definition and location of human genes, protein information, and anti-cancer drug efficacy records, to help users effectively interpret the results.
The scientists collected nearly 24,000 pronunciation samples for cancer genes, cancer types, mutations, types of genomic data, and synonyms of all terms in these categories from nine cancer experts at the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore. These experts were from Singapore, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the United States, and India, which was needed to increase the diversity of Melvin’s accents. The scientists said that due to the lengthy data collection time, the pronunciations did not cover all known cancer genes and traits.
The scientists explained that a voice user interface works well if it correctly hears and understands the user, including the context of the conversation. Because cancer terms differ from regular English vocabulary, the researchers trained Melvin to learn cancer vocabulary using a machine learning process that gives meaning to previously unknown words. Out-of-Vocabulary Mapper Service Design.
Additionally, the researchers developed a web portal where users can submit pronunciations of certain cancer features that Melvin may not initially recognize. This will allow Melvin to know what the user means when he hears those words. To address users’ potential security concerns about the recordings, the researchers noted that users can avoid data storage by deleting the recordings by following the instructions in their Amazon Alexa account. The researchers discussed opportunities to expand Melvin’s capabilities through crowdsourcing for pronunciation improvements. The researchers hope that these pronunciations will provide more data to match regional and national accents so that Melvin can understand and speak.
The scientists say Melvin will work with any device that supports Alexa and will be able to ” Gene Name” and “What percentage of lung cancer patients have a mutation in that gene?” Melvin reported that within seconds it processes these questions and returns responses in audio and visual form.
They also reported being able to ask follow-up questions based on previous conversations. They described the difficulty of getting valuable information from a single question and highlighted the value of Melvin’s ability to maintain context through incremental questioning. The scientists asserted that this design makes it easy for users to explore multiple relevant questions in a single conversation. They also demonstrated that Melvin performs advanced analytical tasks, such as comparing mutations of specific genes across different cancer types and analyzing how gene expression changes.
The scientists concluded that MELVIN can accelerate scientific discoveries in cancer research and help translate research results into solutions that clinicians can apply to patients. They acknowledged that while MELVIN’s framework is currently centered on cancer genes, it can be expanded to support more characteristics of cancer. The team plans to enhance MELVIN by adding more valuable datasets and features based on user feedback..
Increasing plant-based food consumption is known to benefit both health and the environment, yet only a few individuals fully commit to a vegan diet.
However, a recent study suggests that following a vegan diet for just eight weeks could potentially reverse one’s biological age. Researchers discovered that participants who adhered to a vegan diet showed a reduction in their estimated biological age, as indicated by DNA methylation, an epigenetic marker.
Dr. Lucia Aronica, along with other co-authors from BBC Science Focus, explains, “DNA methylation and other epigenetic modifications regulate gene activity and expression.” These modifications change in specific ways as we age, allowing scientists to track and understand the aging process.
The study, as detailed in BMC Medicine, involved 21 adult identical twin pairs, where one twin followed a vegan diet while the other maintained an omnivorous diet for eight weeks. Blood samples were taken before and after the study to measure DNA methylation levels and assess the effects of each diet.
Results demonstrated that only the vegan group showed a slowing of the epigenetic aging clock, with some participants appearing almost one year younger by certain measures. A vegan diet was associated with reduced estimated ages of various organ systems, such as the heart, hormones, liver, and inflammatory and metabolic systems.
The average reduction in biological age for the vegan group was a remarkable 0.63 years. However, researchers caution that these findings should be interpreted carefully due to other factors like weight loss, as participants in the vegan group lost an average of 2 kilograms more than those in the omnivorous group.
Despite the promising outcomes, further research is necessary to understand the long-term effects of a vegan diet on aging and to differentiate between the effects of dietary composition and weight loss.
Experts like Dr. Hou Lifang suggest that additional studies are needed to validate these results, emphasizing the need for caution when drawing broad conclusions. While the study provides valuable insights, more research is required to fully comprehend the impact of a vegan diet on aging.
About our experts
Lucia Aronica focuses on epigenetics and gene-environment interactions in health outcomes. She is currently leading epigenetic analysis in the largest low-carb vs. low-fat diet study for weight loss. Aronica teaches nutritional genomics at Stanford University.
Varun Dwaraka is a bioinformatics researcher specializing in aging, epigenetics, and genetics. He has co-authored various publications on DNA methylation, tissue regeneration, and the epigenetic clock.
Hou Li-Fan, MD, MS, PhD, is a Professor of Preventive Medicine, integrating epidemiology with molecular technologies in disease studies focused on molecular markers and disease prevention.
Permafrost is ground that is always frozen, and the possibility of life existing there is believed to be low. However, in recent years, Scientists have discovered an abundance of microorganisms that are still alive despite being frozen in permafrost.
More concerning viruses, such as strains of influenza that caused the 1918 pandemic, have also been discovered. The smallpox virus was found in a 300-year-old Siberian mummy, but the virus was no longer infectious as its genome was degraded.
Scientists have found these microorganisms frozen in the permafrost. – Image credit: Getty
Most viruses cannot survive long outside a host, reducing the likelihood of still-infectious human viruses in permafrost. Rather, the discovery of viruses infecting other microbes, like bacteria adapted to extreme environments, is more probable.
Some living bacteria found in permafrost over a million years old can still cause illness. The anthrax outbreak in Siberia in 2016 killed humans and animals, likely due to melting permafrost exposing the bacteria.
Bacillus anthracis is a type of bacteria that can form spores enabling survival in harsh environments. Climate change-induced permafrost melting may lead to ancient microbe outbreaks, but the emergence of new viruses causing global pandemics from permafrost is unlikely.
This article addresses the question of how a virus can survive in ice for many years, posed by Roy Meddings in an email.
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