Proving that stunning, otherworldly nature is never far away, these images have been selected as finalists in this year’s International Garden Photographer of the Year (IGPOTY) competition.
Above is a composite shot of the trio by Barry Webb. Cribularia Slime mold was found next to a rotting pine log in a forest in Buckinghamshire, England, after weeks of searching. Webb’s initial motivation to simply photograph slime molds evolved into a “relentless quest” to document as many slime molds as possible, “always creating images that captured the otherworldly beauty of slime molds.” “I try to do that,” he says.
Measuring only a few millimeters, these organisms were once classified as multicellular fungi, but are now considered to be a unique type of unicellular protozoa in their own right. They became known as slime molds when they fused together while hunting together for food, sometimes forming slimy clumps and sometimes pinhead-like clumps. will be done.
These “heads” are CribulariaThe fruiting bodies of slime molds, which resemble small watermelons, are formed when food is scarce, and spores are released from them to begin the life cycle again.
Mycena mushroom
Jay Birmingham/IGPOTY
a Misena The photo above, taken by Jay Birmingham in Dorset, UK, shows a mushroom sprouting from a pine cone. This type of fungus is found throughout the UK and is characterized by its bell-like cap. Both images were selected as finalists in the contest’s “The World of Fungi” category.of IGPOTY exhibition will be shown at Kew Gardens in London until March 10th.
For more information about fungi, see Can mysterious marine fungi save us from antibiotic resistance?
During the 2016 Summer Olympics, my family and I were on a hiking holiday in Yorkshire in the north of England. And in the evening, after a meal and a few drinks at the pub, we sat and watched the biggest sports broadcasts. What’s my favorite? Tracking my cycling.
A bunch of athletes with thighs thicker than a supermodel’s hips race at ridiculous speeds around polished wooden tracks on giant one-gear bikes with no freewheel or brakes. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. It is a sport that the British are particularly good at.
We even have track cycling’s “golden couple” in Jason Kenney and Laura Trott, who were planning to get married at the time. Sir Jason and Dame Laura Kenny (I made up that word) were knighted and dammed respectively in 2022, but between them they have an incredible 12 Olympiads between them. There’s a gold medal.
On this special night of competition, Laura had already completed all the events and was rooting for Jason to win his third and final Rio gold medal. As we sat in the crowd and in a small hotel room in Yorkshire yelling at Jason as he crossed the finish line, Laura tweeted: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Naturally, this aroused the interest of geneticists in me. Really, what are the odds? Will their future offspring become a sports superstar, or will he be with us on the couch watching the 2024 Paris Olympics?
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Although it was an off-the-cuff comment, there is ample reason for Laura to have high expectations. If she combines her and Jason’s genes, she has a much higher chance of producing a child who not only has better athletic ability, but also has the potential to become an Olympian than other people.
It’s the same way fast bowler Stuart Broad had a better chance of becoming a star cricketer because his father Chris batted for England. Or British middleweight boxing champion Chris Eubank Jr., who has a better chance of becoming a top boxer than his school friends. Or distance runner Eilish McColgan, who credits her Olympic medalist mother Liz for her athleticism. Similarly, Jason and Laura’s descendants (they have two children) will have a huge genetic head start.
However, while there are some human traits that can be traced down to a single gene (hair color, lactose intolerance, ability to tan, etc.), it is clear that this is not the only case for potential Olympic athletes. . .
My own area of expertise is the genetics of weight, which has been shown to involve over 1,000 genes. Let’s consider some of the characteristics needed to become an elite cyclist. It requires the right combination of “fast-twitch” and “slow-twitch” muscle fibers, good balance, high aerobic capacity, fast recovery rate, high pain threshold, and concentration, just to name a few.
One can only imagine the genetic complexity underlying the fusion of these multiple traits. With so many genes involved, it’s currently impossible to predict exactly how talented Jason and Laura’s children will be.
These complex traits are always determined by an ideal combination of genes and environmental factors, as well as a little bit of luck.
nature and nurture
Growing up in a household with two multi-gold medal winning cyclists will have a huge influence on their children. They will grow up in a competitive environment and will be heavily involved in sports in their daily lives.
Similarly, the kind of food such children eat will be better than most children. Two Olympians like Laura and Jason have nutritional advisors coming out of their ears, so they’re unlikely to feed their kids junk.
But no matter how helpful or unhelpful our environment is, we need the right genes to thrive. That’s why in every area of life we see glorious examples of genetics being passed down through generations. Musical parents often have musical children, and beauty is passed down from parent to child.
The question is what the child will do with the genes they are given. They can use it to their advantage or not. If we compare poker hands, there can be good hands and bad hands depending on genetics, but the only people you can blame are your own family. However, depending on how you play the game, you can win with a bad hand or lose with a good hand.
So nothing is certain, and probably within the next 20 years, we will learn more about how genes make us fat or thin, fast or slow, and how they control how we look, act, and behave. The day will come when we will understand in detail.
But for now, there’s no doubt that Jason and Laura’s children will have a huge head start, both genetically and environmentally, and they probably won’t want to line up their children with them at sports day. Sho.
Early dinosaurs were faster and more dynamic than their competitors, according to a study led by University of Bristol researcher Amy Shipley.
By adopting more diverse limb morphologies and styles, dinosaurs may have been able to occupy more terrestrial habitats and greatly diversify extinction events. Image credit: Sergey Krasovskiy.
In their study, Shipley and colleagues compared the limb proportions of a wide range of Triassic reptiles. The Triassic period is the period from 252 million years ago, when dinosaurs first appeared and became famous, to 201 million years ago.
They determined which of these ancient beasts were quadrupedal (quadrupedal) or bipedal (bipedal), and also examined the cursority index, a measure of running ability.
Researchers found that not only were dinosaurs and their relatives bipedal from the beginning, meaning they had limbs adapted for running, but they also We found that it showed a much wider range of running styles. pseudostia.
Pseudonesians also included the ancestors of modern crocodiles. Although there were some small bipedal animals that ate insects, most were medium to large carnivores or herbivores, and they were diverse throughout the Triassic.
The authors believe that dinosaurs and their relatives bird metatarsal maintained a higher range of motor modes throughout this period.
“When the crisis hit 233 million years ago, the dinosaurs won,” Shipley said.
“At that time, the climate changed from wet to dry and there was severe pressure on food.”
“For some reason, dinosaurs, which had been living in small numbers for 20 million years, appeared, but no pseudo-dinosaurs appeared.”
“Like many reptiles and birds today, early dinosaurs may have been good at conserving water.”
“However, our evidence shows that their high adaptability during walking and running played an important role.”
“After the mass extinction at the end of the Triassic period, dinosaurs expanded again,” added Professor Mike Benton from the University of Bristol.
“With the exception of the crocodile ancestors, most of the pseudodinosaurs went extinct in mass extinctions, and we found that these surviving dinosaurs once again expanded their range and took over many of the niches that had been vacated.”
“When we looked at the rate of evolution, we found that dinosaurs were not actually evolving particularly rapidly,” said co-author Dr Armin Elsler, a researcher at the University of Bristol.
“This was a surprise because we expected to see rapid evolution in ornithopods and slower evolution in pseudopods.”
“What this means is that while dinosaur locomotion style was advantageous for dinosaurs, it was not the driving force behind intense evolutionary selection.”
“In other words, when the crisis happened, they were in a better position to take advantage of the opportunities after the crisis.”
“We always think of dinosaurs as large, mobile animals,” says co-author Dr Tom Stubbs, also from the University of Bristol.
“This reminds us that dinosaurs actually started out as nifty little insect-eaters.”
“The first dinosaurs were only a meter long and walked bipedally with their legs raised high. Their leg posture meant they could move quickly and capture prey while fleeing from larger predators. I meant it.”
“And of course, dinosaurs' postural diversity and focus on fast running mean that dinosaurs could diversify given the opportunity,” said co-author Suresh Singh, also from the University of Bristol. the doctor said.
“After the mass extinction at the end of the Triassic period, truly gigantic dinosaurs emerged, over 10 meters long, some with armor, many quadrupedal, but many still bipedal, like their ancestors. Walking.”
“Their diversity of posture and gait means they are highly adaptable, and this ensured their great success for a long time on Earth.”
of study It was published in the magazine Royal Society Open Science.
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Amy E. Shipley other. 2024. Archosauromorph migration and early Mesozoic success. R. Soc. Open Science 11(2):231495; doi: 10.1098/rsos.231495
Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers observed seven interacting galaxies with long tadpole-like tidal tails of gas, dust, and numerous stars. Hubble’s exquisite clarity and sensitivity to ultraviolet light led to the discovery of 425 clusters of newborn stars along these tidal tails. Each cluster contains up to a million newborn blue stars.
As seen in this Hubble image, galaxy AM 1054-325 has been distorted from its usual pancake-like spiral shape into an S-shape by the gravity of its neighboring galaxies. As a result, clusters of newborn stars form along tidal tails stretching across thousands of light years, resembling strings of pearls. Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/Jayanne English, University of Manitoba.
Tidal tail star clusters have been known for decades. When galaxies interact, gravitational tidal forces pull out long streams of gas and dust.
Two commonly used examples are antennas and rat galaxy It has elongated finger-like projections.
In a new study, astronomer Michael Rodrak of Randolph-Macon College and his colleagues combined new observational data with archival data to determine the age and mass of the tidal tail cluster.
Researchers discovered that these star clusters are very young, only 10 million years old.
And they appear to be forming at the same rate along a tail that extends over thousands of light years.
“It’s surprising that there are so many young objects in the tail,” said Dr Rodrak, lead author of the paper. paper Published in Royal Astronomical Society Monthly Notices.
“It tells us a lot about cluster formation efficiency.”
“With tidal tails, a new generation of stars will be built that otherwise would not exist.”
Tidal tails look like spiral arms of galaxies extending into space.
The outer part of the arm is pulled like taffy by the gravitational tug of war between a pair of interacting galaxies.
Before the merger occurred, galaxies may have been rich in dusty clouds of hydrogen molecules that simply remained inert.
However, during the encounter, the clouds swayed and clashed.
This compressed the hydrogen and triggered the firestorm of star birth.
“The fate of these strung star clusters is uncertain,” the astronomers said.
“They remain intact under gravity and can evolve into globular clusters that orbit outside the plane of the Milky Way.”
“Alternatively, they could disperse and form a stellar halo around their host galaxy, or be thrown off and become stars that wander between galaxies.”
“This pearly star formation may have been more common in the early Universe, when galaxies were colliding with each other more frequently.”
“These nearby galaxies observed by Hubble are proxies for what happened in the distant past, and are therefore laboratories for studying the distant past.”
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michael rodrak other. 2023. Star clusters in tidal dust. MNRAS 526 (2): 2341-2364; doi: 10.1093/mnras/stad2886
A woman who was undergoing surgery for colon cancer has been the victim of a wrongful death lawsuit in Florida this week. The lawsuit alleges that a robotic device caused damage to Sandra Sulzer’s small intestine, which led to her death. This happened after she experienced abdominal pain and fever following the surgery in September 2021. The extra procedures to close her lacerations were not enough to save her life, as she died in February 2022 due to small bowel injuries.
Sandra’s husband, Harvey Salzer, is seeking damages from Intuitive Surgical, the manufacturer of the device. The lawsuit claims that the company knew about the insulation problems in the robot that could cause internal organ burns, and yet failed to inform the users about the risk nor to disclose it to the public. It also asserts that Intuitive Surgical doesn’t properly train surgeons who use the device, the da Vinci, and that hospitals lack experience with robotic surgery.
According to the complaint, Intuitive has received thousands of reports of da Vinci-related injuries and defects, but “systematically underreports” injuries to the Food and Drug Administration. The company also stated in a 2014 Financial Report that it was a defendant in approximately 93 lawsuits at the time.
Many doctors support robotic surgery as a safe method, but there are discussions about whether it is more effective than traditional surgery. The technology aims to make procedures precise and less invasive, potentially leading to faster, less painful recovery.
Da Vinci Xi Surgical System.Provided by: Intuitive
A 2018 NBC News analysis revealed over 20,000 da Vinci-related adverse events over the past 10 years, as per reports from the FDA’s MAUDE database. More than a dozen patients spoke to NBC News about burns or injuries during procedures using da Vinci.
Intuitive defended the device’s safety, referring to scientific evidence supporting its effectiveness in over 15,000 studies.
Albanian mine where hydrogen naturally seeps through rocks
FV.Donze
The largest flow of natural hydrogen gas ever recorded has been measured deep in an Albanian mine. The discovery could help locate underground reserves of this clean fuel.
“The lather is really intense,” he says. Laurent Truche Researchers at France’s Grenoble-Alpes University measured gas in a pool of water about a kilometer underground. “It’s like a jacuzzi.”
Companies are currently searching for natural hydrogen deposits around the world as a source of clean fuel, but there is scant evidence that this “golden hydrogen” has accumulated in large quantities. Most claims about vast subsurface hydrogen deposits rely on extrapolation rather than direct measurements.
In search of more substantive evidence, Truche and his colleagues descended on Albania’s Balkizekromite mine. There, hydrogen gas escaping from the rocks has caused several explosions. The mine is also located in an outcrop of iron-rich rocks known as ophiolites. In other places, such as Oman, water is known to react with such rocks to produce hydrogen.
The researchers found that more than 80% of the gas bubbling out of the pool was hydrogen, mixed with methane and small amounts of nitrogen. That gas was flowing at a rate of 11 tons per year, almost an order of magnitude more than any other gas. Flow of hydrogen gas measured from a single point source elsewhere on the Earth’s surface.
To determine the source of the gas, the researchers also modeled various geological scenarios that could produce such flows. They found that the most likely scenario is that the gas is coming from a deeper reservoir of hydrogen accumulated in faults beneath the mine. Based on the geometry of the fault, they estimate that the reservoir contains at least 5,000 to 50,000 tons of hydrogen.
“This is one of the largest amounts of natural hydrogen ever measured,” he says. Eric Gaucher an independent geochemist focused on natural hydrogen.
But he says it’s still not a huge amount. Jeffrey Ellis At the U.S. Geological Survey. But evidence of stable hydrogen accumulation supports the idea that there is more hydrogen stored underground, he says. “We need to look deeper.”
Hawk moths are less likely to visit flowers if air pollution changes their smell.
Image courtesy of Floris van Brugel
Insects may have a hard time finding flowers because air pollutants are breaking down the chemicals responsible for the flowers' attractive scent.
“In recent years, there has been increasing interest in 'sensory pollution,'” he says. Jeff Riffel at the University of Washington in Seattle. This pollution resulting from human activities can change wild animal behavior by changing or introducing new stimuli, he says.
For example, we know that noise pollution affects bird songs and may be linked to an increase in whale strandings. Light pollution, on the other hand, can disorient a variety of animals, including migratory birds and sea turtles.
However, little is known about how human activities affect animals' sense of smell. Riffel and colleagues therefore investigated the effects of anthropogenic pollutants on plant pollinators.
They focused on ozone and nitric acid radicals, which are pollutants produced by the interaction of vehicle exhaust and gases in the atmosphere. Both are known to react with compounds emitted by flowers to change their scent.
The research team discovered pale evening primrose (evening primrose), a desert flower found in North America. Both pollutants degraded aroma compounds, but nitrate radicals did so more completely.
To study whether this led to changes in the behavior of the flowers' main pollinators, the researchers exposed species of hawk moths, including the hawk-moth sphinx.Hyles Lineata), flowers that emit a natural floral scent, or flowers that have been engineered to emit a degraded scent.
Primroses that emitted degraded scents were visited 70% less frequently than flowers that emitted naturally delivered scents. This decline in visitors could affect the hawkmoth's health, Riffel said. Researchers estimate that reduced moth visitation could reduce the amount of fruit plants produce by 28 percent, potentially having ripple effects on the broader ecosystem.
The researchers' models show that since the Industrial Revolution, the distance at which hawk moths can detect flowers has shrunk from about two kilometers to just a few hundred meters.
“This is another reason why we need to switch to energy sources that do not involve combustion,” say team members. Joel Thornton, also at the University of Washington. “Reducing nitrogen oxide emissions would be a win not only for air quality, but also for ecosystem function and agriculture.”
On February 8th, lava erupted near Grindavik, Iceland.
Iceland Civil Defense/Handout/Anadolu, via Getty Images
Prior to the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland, the influx of magma into the 15-kilometre-long fissure occurred at the highest rate of its kind ever observed anywhere in the world.
“Higher eruption rates can occur in very large eruptions,” he says. Freistein Sigmundson at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. “But I don't know of any higher estimates for magma flowing into cracks in the surface.”
Sigmundsson is part of a team that is monitoring recent volcanic activity beneath Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula using ground-based sensors and satellites. It started when magma built up several kilometers beneath the Svartsengi region, the site of a geothermal power plant that supplies hot water to the tourist attraction Blue Lagoon Spa.
On November 10, 2023, a giant fissure several kilometers deep and 15 kilometers long formed nearby. When the magma opened, some of the accumulated magma flowed into it at a speed of 7,400 cubic meters per second, according to the researchers' calculations.
This is about 100 times faster than the magma flow that occurred during the 2021, 2022 and 2023 eruptions in the nearby Fagradalsfjall region, Sigmundsson said.
The magma inside the crack is at most 8 meters wide, so it can be visualized like a piece of paper, he says. This crack formed because Iceland is located on the boundary where the tectonic plates are moving apart.
On December 18, a so-called fissure eruption began along part of this terrain and lasted for three days. Another lava wave that lasted two days began on January 14, with some of the lava reaching the evacuated town of Grindavik.
Sigmundsson said the lava flow destroyed only a few buildings, but cracks in the ground caused extensive damage to roads and pipes, and created underground cavities.
On February 8, another eruption began a short distance from Grindavik. Lava from here flowed across pipes carrying hot water from the Svartsengi geothermal power plant. This means heating is cut off in some neighborhoods, and most buildings in Iceland rely on geothermal water for heating.
Dazzling new photos from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope show the brilliant blue compact galaxy ESO 185-IG013 in the constellation Telescope.
This Hubble image shows ESO 185-IG013, a brilliant blue compact galaxy located approximately 260 million light-years away in the constellation Telescopium. Image credit: NASA / ESA / R. Chandar, University of Toledo / Gladys Kober, NASA and Catholic University of America.
ESO 185-IG013 is located about 260 million light-years away in the small constellation Telescopium in the south.
Also known as LEDA 63618, this galaxy is classified as a luminescent blue compact galaxy (BCG).
All stars in ESO 185-IG013 have a combined mass of more than 7 billion solar masses.
“BCG is a nearby galaxy that exhibits intense bursts of star formation,” Hubble astronomers said in a statement.
“It is unusually blue in visible light, distinguishing it from other high starburst galaxies that emit more infrared light.”
“We study BCG because it provides a relatively close equivalent to galaxies in the early universe.”
“This means BCG can help us learn about the formation and evolution of galaxies as they may have occurred billions of years ago.”
Astronomers imaged ESO 185-IG013 at ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths, revealing details about its past.
“There are hundreds of young star clusters in our galaxy, many of which are younger than 100 million years,” the astronomers said.
“Many star clusters are only 3.5 million years old – relatively infants compared to the time scale of our universe.”
“Scientists predict that many of these youngest clusters will not survive because young clusters often outgas so much that they can disappear.”
“The large number of young star clusters indicates that ESO 185-IG013 was part of a recent galaxy collision and merger.”
“Disturbances in the galaxy's structure, likely caused by intense interactions between gas and dust during the collision, are another sign.”
“This merger provided the system with large amounts of fuel for star formation, which continues today.”
“ESO 185-IG013 also contains a tidal shell, and the diffuse light surrounding its bright center is a common signal of galaxy mergers,” the researchers said.
“We think that in galaxy mergers, the smaller of the two interacting galaxies is blocked by the larger galaxy and loses most of its material.”
“This causes matter to be ejected and then pulled back in by the gravity of the larger galaxy.”
“The dense region where material rearranges is called a shell, and it contains many star clusters. In addition to the shell, ESO 185-IG013 boasts a tail of gas to the northeast.”
of Sturtian “Snowball Earth” Ice Age (717 million to 661 million years ago) is considered the most extreme icehouse period in Earth’s history. In a new study, geologists from the University of Sydney and the University of Adelaide used plate tectonics modeling to identify the most likely cause of the Staats Ice Age.
Artist’s impression of “Snowball Earth”. Image credit: Oleg Kuznetsov, http://3depix.com / CC BY-SA 4.0.
“Imagine if the Earth almost completely froze over, which is exactly what happened about 700 million years ago,” said lead author Dr. Adriana Dutkiewicz, a researcher at the University of Sydney. .
“The Earth was covered in ice from the poles to the equator, and temperatures plummeted. But what caused this to happen is an open question.”
“We think we have now solved the mystery. Historically, volcanic carbon dioxide emissions have been low, driven by the weathering of large volcanic rock mountains in what is now Canada. It’s a process that absorbs carbon dioxide.”
Named after Charles Sturt, a 19th-century European colonial explorer of central Australia, the Sturtsian Ice Age spanned 717 million to 660 million years, long before dinosaurs and complex plants existed on land. It continued until ten thousand years ago.
“There are many possible causes for the trigger and end of this extreme ice age, but the most mysterious one is why it lasted 57 million years. It’s hard for humans to imagine,” Dr. Dutkiewicz said.
Dr. Dutkiewicz and his colleagues used a plate tectonics model that simultaneously shows the evolution of continents and ocean basins after the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Rodina.
They connected it to a computer model that calculates the outgassing of carbon dioxide from submarine volcanoes along mid-ocean ridges, where plates diverge and new oceanic crust is born.
They soon realized that the beginning of the Starch Ice Age correlated precisely with the lowest ever levels of volcanic carbon dioxide emissions.
Additionally, carbon dioxide flux remained relatively low throughout the ice age.
“At that time, there were no multicellular animals or land plants on Earth,” Dr. Dutkiewicz said.
“Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere were determined almost entirely by carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes and by the weathering processes of silicate rocks that consume carbon dioxide.”
“At that time, geology ruled the climate,” said co-author Professor Dietmar Müller, a researcher at the University of Sydney.
“We think the Staats Ice Age began with a double whammy: plate tectonics realigned to minimize volcanic degassing, while at the same time Canada’s continental volcanic belt began to erode, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Consumed.”
“As a result, atmospheric carbon dioxide has fallen to levels that could begin an ice age. This is estimated to be less than 200 parts per million, less than half of today’s levels.”
The team’s current research raises interesting questions about the long-term future of the planet.
Recent theories suggest that over the next 250 million years, Earth will evolve toward Pangea Ultima, a supercontinent hot enough to wipe out mammals.
However, the Earth is currently on a trajectory where volcanic carbon dioxide emissions decrease as continental collisions increase and plate velocities decrease.
So perhaps Pangea Ultima will snowball again.
“Whatever the future holds, it is important to remember that geological climate changes of the type studied here occur very slowly,” Dr. Dutkiewicz said.
“According to NASA, human-induced climate change is occurring 10 times faster than ever before.”
Adriana Dutkiewicz other. The period of the Sturtian “Snowball Earth” ice age is associated with unusually low gas emissions at mid-ocean ridges. geology, published online on February 7, 2024. doi: 10.1130/G51669.1
A 40-year-old nuclear fusion reactor in the UK has set a world record for energy output in its final run before permanent shutdown, scientists have announced.
The Joint European Taurus (JET) in Oxfordshire began operations in 1983. During its operation, it briefly became the hottest point in the solar system, reaching 150 million degrees Celsius.
The reactor's previous record was in 2021 for a reaction that lasted five seconds and produced 59 megajoules of thermal energy. However, it surpassed this in its final test in late 2023, using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel to sustain the reaction for 5.2 seconds, reaching an output of 69 megajoules.
This corresponds to an output of 12.5 megawatts, enough to power 12,000 homes, Mikhail Maslov of the UK Atomic Energy Agency said at a press conference on February 8.
Today's nuclear power plants rely on nuclear fission reactions, in which atoms are shattered to release energy and small particles. Fusion works in reverse, pushing smaller particles together into larger atoms.
Nuclear fusion can produce more energy without any of the radioactive waste produced by nuclear fission, but there is still no practical way to use the process in power plants.
JET trains atoms of two stable isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, together in a plasma to create helium, releasing a huge amount of energy at the same time. This is the same reaction that powers our sun. This is a type of fusion reactor known as a tokamak, which uses rings of electromagnets to contain plasma in a donut shape.
Scientists conducted the final experiment using deuterium and tritium fuel on JET in October last year, and other experiments continued until December. However, the machine is now permanently closed and will be decommissioned over the next 16 years.
Juan Matthews Researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK say many secrets will be revealed during JET's dismantling. For example, how the reactor lining deteriorated from contact with the plasma, and where in the machine the precious tritium, worth around £30,000 a gram, is embedded. You can recover. This will be important information for future research and commercial reactors.
“It's great to have a little bit of a bang,” Matthews said. “It has a noble history. Now that it has served its purpose, we plan to squeeze out more information during the decommissioning period as well. So it's not sad. It's something to be celebrated.”
France's larger, more modern replacement for JET, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), is nearing completion, with first experiments scheduled to begin in 2025.
ITER construction project deputy director Tim Luce told a news conference that ITER plans to expand its energy output to 500 megawatts and possibly 700 megawatts.
“These are what I normally call power plant sizes,” he said. “They are at the lowest level of cost required for a power generation facility. Moreover, to obtain high fusion power and gain the timescale needs to be extended to at least 300 seconds, but from an energy production point of view it is probably less than an hour. So what JET has done is exactly a scale model of what we need to do with the ITER project.”
Another reactor using the same design, the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) device, recently succeeded in sustaining a reaction for 30 seconds at temperatures above 100 million degrees Celsius.
Other approaches to creating practical fusion reactors are also being pursued around the world, such as the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. It fired a very powerful laser into the fuel capsule, a process called inertial confinement fusion, and was able to release almost twice the energy that was put into it.
Lenses featuring a trippy spiral design could be an alternative to traditional multifocal lenses. It seems to produce clearer images than standard multifocal lenses, even in dimly lit areas.
The lens was created by the inventor Laurent Galinier.when bertrand simon He met Galinier through a scientific collaboration at the Institute of Optics Graduate School in France, and he immediately wanted to test lenses in the lab.
They are round lenses like traditional contact lenses, but the surface is carefully turned into a spiral using a lathe. This spiral shape changes the path that light rays take through the lens. That is, the lens does not have a single focal point, but several focal points, some closer to the lens and some farther from it.
It's unclear exactly how the spiral shape does this, but Simon said it appears to twist the light rays and create vortexes of light (like small tornadoes of light) that somehow influence each other. ing.
In the lab, Simon and his colleagues analyzed laser light passed through a spiral lens and simulated the process on a computer. In direct comparison with traditional multifocal lenses, the spiral lenses provided more clarity and detail when more light passed through them, and performed better in dim light conditions.
Therefore, spiral lenses may be suitable under various lighting conditions. For example, it could be useful for people who use multifocal lenses while driving at night, Simon said. He tried the spiral contact lenses himself and said that while the hard material was uncomfortable in contact with his eyes, it saved him the hassle of removing his glasses to look at his cell phone. With the spiral lens, I could see the screen clearly.
james wolfthorn According to researchers at Aston University in the UK, many people experience problems focusing on nearby objects, even if their distance vision is corrected. Innovations like spiral lenses are promising, but only clinical trials can prove how much of a difference new technology will actually make for people, he says.
Simon says it's possible to create a more compact camera by replacing part of the lens with a spiral lens version, but the team will first investigate the science behind spiral light. We would like to do further testing.
For example, as recently announced in the UK, users of the NHS app will now be able to collect medicines from pharmacies without having to visit a medical centre, and the usual paper slip given by a doctor will now be replaced by a barcode within the app. will be replaced by
Innovations like these have brought tremendous benefits to millions of patients. However, these benefits of digitalization are not evenly distributed. According to his Ofcom report in 2023: 1 in 13 households do not have access to the internet And a similar proportion do not have a computer at home. But even within connected households, the so-called ‘digital skills gap’ means many people may still struggle.
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Imagine this typical case. Dorothy and Bill are retired factory workers in their mid-70s. They have their home computer connected to their TV and have a machine that allows them to (almost) send e-mails to their daughter who lives abroad.
It’s hard to use, but I love watching my family’s news come through the TV screen. However, I don’t use my computer much for other purposes because websites take a long time to load. Bill has a smartphone and receives photos of his grandchildren through an instant messenger app, but he doesn’t know how to send them back.
Prompted by a text message from their doctor, the couple confirms they have internet access and enters their email address. A few weeks later, I received a message inviting Bill for his annual checkup and treatment for shingles. However, subject lines are unclear and long messages are impersonal and difficult to understand.
The couple had only ever received emails from their daughter, so they thought the message from their doctor was spam and deleted it. As a result, Bill neglected medical checkups, ran out of blood pressure medication, and was left susceptible to shingles.
digital skills gap
The problem is that entry-level home computing is primarily designed for basic gaming and simple email exchange, and it’s not easy to interact with data-intensive web platforms or send high-resolution images of body parts. It is not intended for this purpose. The same goes for budget-level data bundles offered by mobile phone providers.
For people like Dorothy and Bill to navigate the digital health space, they need not only better technology, but also technical skills to interact with technology, such as comfortable typing, using a mouse, and navigating drop-down menus. Skills are also required.
Also important is “information literacy.” This is the ability to recognize when information is needed (such as an old address or login code) and how to provide it. Second, health literacy, or the ability to find, understand, and use health information and online health services.
Generally, individuals are either digitally equipped, technologically proficient, information literate, and health literate, or they simply are not. There is very little in between. And as A major analysis from the University of Oxford found that, the more indicators a person has of a disadvantage (low income, older age, preference for a language other than English, to name a few), the harder it is to access digital services. Several of these factors combine to make it even less likely that these disadvantaged patients will be able to connect to health services through digital means.
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Unfortunately, such inequalities are nothing new. In fact, it was 53 years ago that British physician Julian Tudor Hart first proposed the Reverse Care Act, a principle that was developed to protect people who need health care the most: the poor, the less educated, It was argued that people (older people and people with frequent illnesses) are healthier. It is the least likely that you will receive it. There is no easy solution to the “digital reverse care” method. A person who lacks the necessary digital skills may be willing to go to the local library for computer training, but with an empty bucket he can safely “replenish” the complex skills he has missed. You shouldn’t think about it.
What is the solution?
What should NHS organizations do to ensure everyone gets a fair contract in today’s digital world?
First, digitally supported services should be designed or improved primarily for patients who have difficulty accessing them. A service that works for someone who is not familiar with or unable to use a computer or smartphone will almost certainly work for someone else. “Digital navigators” – human staff who can help patients find directions about services if needed – can be a big help here.
Second, healthcare providers need to look beyond the binary when assessing people’s digital connectivity and skills. Instead of asking patients if they have an internet connection, you should ask them to describe what they are actually comfortable doing with technology and customize their care package accordingly.
Third, for the most disadvantaged patients, those with complex health and social care needs, there is no need to use technology at all, especially when their needs are not adequately met by technology. Keep in mind that your approach may be the most appropriate. technology. For these patients, their records can be marked with electronic flags that remind busy staff to use no technology or provide a technology-free option.
And finally, we need to see digital exclusion first and foremost as a moral issue. NHS founder Nye Bevan said: “No society can legitimately be called civilized if the sick are denied medical assistance because of lack of means.”
Feedback is promising a bonanza of new pharmaceutical, medical and lifestyle product launches that propose boosting hyaluronic acid levels for everyone. Hyaluronic acid is a substance recently found to provide some protection to naked mole rat cells from inflammation and early death.
Marketers who specialize in mass inflammation cannot afford to miss this situation. Journal of Experimental BiologyFeeling grateful for hyaluronic acid. Under the heading is “Anti-aging secrets from underground burrowing rodents” says the magazine. “Most cells live within a blanket of molecules and minerals called the extracellular matrix. In naked mole rats, this blanket is woven from a thicker fabric. Naked mole rats produce the heavier, larger molecule hyaluronic acid, which is the backbone of this extracellular matrix.
“This extra padding protects cells from inflammation and premature death, as shown by Andrei Seruanov and Vera Gorbunova's team at the University of Rochester in the US.”
The report ends with this almost poetic wink. “The fountain of youth may be embodied in the heavy hyaluronic acid of the naked mole rat, a nearly blind rodent with many wrinkles and yellowed teeth.”
Anarchist Cookbook Tips
Books can pose dangers in unexpected ways.
Feedback reminds you to be careful when using anarchist cookbook. If you don't cook your anarchist to the right temperature, you can run into problems.
similarly shredded vegan chef. Not shredding your vegan chef properly can cause pain.
After Mallard's gay necrophilia became known to the world 20 years ago, many more reports of “Davian behavior” entered the public record. A quick update here.
This topic received a lot of attention in 2003 when Dutch ornithologist Keith Moeliker won an award. Ig Nobel Prize His now famous paper “The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in Mallard Ducks” Anas Platyrhynchus”. Mr. Mauliker talked about two ducks that encountered the Davian bird. The necrotic behavior is called “Davian” here because American ornithologist Robert W. Dickman published a paper in 1960. This is because he gave the necrotic act a new name: “Davian.''Ground squirrel's “Davian behavioral complex”” was published. mammal journal.
High-profile, hard-hitting reports sometimes take a literary turn, like a 2015 paper about South American snakes.The sexual appeal of corpse brides: unusual mating behavior of Helicops carinicaudus (Dipsadidae)”, by Raíssa Siqueira and colleagues at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. They write: “We observed a young male mating with a headless female by fully inserting her hemipenis. Specimens were collected, dissected and measured.”
Some medical papers have very intriguing and frightening titles. For those who like horror novels, the title will almost make you want to skip reading the study itself.
Why avoid a complete study? Because when a person's imagination is overstimulated, it can conjure up strange things. By comparison, the actual details you can go and see for yourself may seem mundane, dull, and even relatively boring. Reading them can lead to literary disappointment and dissatisfaction, and in some cases even death of curiosity.
In feedback, if you find an unexpected title for a published scientific report, please submit it. Please include a full citation and link to the paper. Send to: “Very scary title” feedback.
Mark Abrahams hosted the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founded the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Previously, he was working on unusual uses of computers.his website is impossible.com.
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A 40-year-old nuclear fusion reactor in the UK has set a world record for energy output in its final run before permanent shutdown, scientists have announced.
The Joint European Taurus (JET) in Oxfordshire began operations in 1983. During its operation, it briefly became the hottest point in the solar system, reaching 150 million degrees Celsius.
The reactor's previous record was in 2021 for a reaction that lasted five seconds and produced 59 megajoules of thermal energy. However, it surpassed this in its final test in late 2023, using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel to sustain the reaction for 5.2 seconds, reaching an output of 69 megajoules.
Inside the JET fusion reactor
eurofusion
This corresponds to an output of 12.5 megawatts, enough to power 12,000 homes, Mikhail Maslov of the UK Atomic Energy Agency said at a press conference on February 8.
Today's nuclear power plants rely on nuclear fission reactions, in which atoms are shattered to release energy and small particles. Fusion works in reverse, pushing smaller particles together into larger atoms.
Nuclear fusion can produce more energy without any of the radioactive waste produced by nuclear fission, but there is still no practical way to use the process in power plants.
JET trains atoms of two stable isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, together in a plasma to create helium, releasing a huge amount of energy at the same time. This is the same reaction that powers our sun. This is a type of fusion reactor known as a tokamak, which uses rings of electromagnets to contain plasma in a donut shape.
Scientists conducted the final experiment using deuterium and tritium fuel on JET in October last year, and other experiments continued until December. However, the machine is now permanently closed and will be decommissioned over the next 16 years.
Juan Matthews Researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK say many secrets will be revealed during JET's dismantling. For example, how the reactor lining deteriorated from contact with the plasma, and where in the machine the precious tritium, worth around £30,000 a gram, is embedded. You can recover. This will be important information for future research and commercial reactors.
“It's great to have a little bit of a bang,” Matthews said. “It has a noble history. Now that it has served its purpose, we plan to squeeze out more information during the decommissioning period as well. So it's not sad. It's something to be celebrated.”
France's larger, more modern replacement for JET, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), is nearing completion, with first experiments scheduled to begin in 2025.
ITER construction project deputy director Tim Luce told a news conference that ITER plans to expand its energy output to 500 megawatts and possibly 700 megawatts.
“These are what I normally call power plant sizes,” he said. “They are at the lowest level of cost required for a power generation facility. Moreover, to obtain high fusion power and gain the timescale needs to be extended to at least 300 seconds, but from an energy production point of view it is probably less than an hour. So what JET has done is exactly a scale model of what we need to do with the ITER project.”
Another reactor using the same design, the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) device, recently succeeded in sustaining a reaction for 30 seconds at temperatures above 100 million degrees Celsius.
Other approaches to creating practical fusion reactors are also being pursued around the world, such as the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. It fired a very powerful laser into the fuel capsule, a process called inertial confinement fusion, and was able to release almost twice the energy that was put into it.
Devastating wildfires break out in Chile following January's heat wave and drought
Javier Torres/AFP via Getty Images
Temperature records continue. According to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Agency, January this year was the hottest on record, with temperatures 1.7 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.
This means there were 12 months in which the Earth's average surface temperature was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the average between 1850 and 1900, the pre-industrial reference point.
“2024 begins with another record month,” Samantha Burgess of the Copernicus Climate Change Service said in a statement. She said: “Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are the only way to stop global temperatures from rising.”
At the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, countries pledged to work to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Climate scientists will not consider this limit to have been breached until the Earth's long-term average temperature exceeds this level for many years.
The long-term average is now 1.25°C warmer than before the industrial revolution. Richard Betts At the Met Office, the UK's National Weather Service. However, carbon emissions are still increasing, and by this standard it seems certain that the 1.5°C limit will be breached soon, perhaps around 2030.
Long-term global averages are rising in line with climate model predictions. However, the extremely rapid warming over the past year or two has far exceeded expectations. Among other records, in 2023 he recorded for the first time a day warmer by 2 degrees Celsius than the average from 1850 to 1900.
It remains unclear why there has been such rapid warming over the past year or so, and how long it will continue. Factors that may have accelerated warming include the 2022 eruption of Tonga Volcano, which pumped large amounts of water into the stratosphere, and reduced aerosol pollution from ships.
For practical reasons, climate scientists have defined pre-industrial temperatures as the average from 1850 to 1900, since there are few records of temperatures before then. However, using this as a baseline could mean that the level of warming due to fossil fuel emissions is being underestimated.
One 2017 survey This indicates an error of approximately 0.2°C. Another announcement this week put the difference at 0.5°C, based on analysis of sponges, meaning we have already breached the 1.5°C limit, but other climate scientists They are not satisfied with this.
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have obtained a surprising new perspective of spiral galaxy UGC 3912.
This Hubble image shows UGC 3912, a small spiral galaxy located 63 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. Image credit: NASA / ESA / C. Kilpatrick, Northwestern University / Gladys Kober, NASA and The Catholic University of America.
UGC 3912also known as IRAS 07315+0439 or LEDA 21303, lies. 19.3 megaparsecs It is located in the constellation Canis Minor (63 million light years) from Earth.
“UGC 3912 is classified as a spiral galaxy, but you wouldn't know it from this detailed Hubble image,” said Hubble astronomers.
“This galaxy's distorted shape typically indicates a gravitational encounter with another galaxy.”
“When galaxies interact, meaning they bump into or collide with each other's gravitational fields, their stars, dust, and gas can be pulled into new paths.”
“UGC 3912 may have once been an organized-looking spiral, but now it appears to have been bent out of shape by a giant thumb.”
“Fortunately, when galaxies interact, individual stars and objects orbiting them remain intact, even though their orbits change dramatically and the shape of the galaxy as a whole changes.”
“That's because the distances between stars in galaxies are so great that they simply keep moving along new orbits without colliding with each other.”
Astronomers are studying UGC 3912 as part of their investigation into supernova activity. Supernova activity is when a star at least eight times the size of the Sun explodes at the end of its life.
“Hubble studies hydrogen-rich phenomena known as supernovae, one of several types of supernovae. Type II supernova” they explained.
“Although enough Type II supernovae have been observed, they exhibit highly variable properties in brightness and spectroscopy and are not well understood.”
An intensive search for ancient marine vertebrates in Mammoth Cave National Park's paleontological resource inventory has yielded a wealth of new fossil data. To date, paleontologists have identified marine vertebrate fossils from four major formations within the park, two of which are the first of marine vertebrate fossils to occur in those formations. It's a record. The Mammoth Cave ruins have yielded more than 70 species of ancient fish, approximately 90% of which are cartilaginous fish (sharks and related species), including two new species: I am. Troglocladodus trimbley and Grikmanius Care Forum.
Reconstruction of a new Ctenacan shark discovered in Mammoth Cave National Park and northern Alabama: Grikmanius Care Forum Two people can be seen swimming in the foreground. Troglocladodus trimbley swimming above. Image credit: Benji Paynose.
Mammoth Cave National ParkLocated in central Kentucky, it is home to the longest cave system in the world.
To date, more than 685 km (426 miles) of corridors within 214 km have been mapped.2 It forms a park. In addition, within the boundaries of the park there are more than 500 small caves.
These cave passages date back 340 to 325 million years and were formed by dissolution by underground rivers, streams, and other drainage channels that cut through a series of limestones covered with durable sandstone. I did.
These passages opened up unique views of these limestones. Limestone is a time capsule containing a wealth of information about the ancient marine environment at the time of its deposition.
From these layers, invertebrate fossils such as horned corals, fan-like bryozoans, brachiopods, gastropods, shelled cephalopods, and a variety of echinoderms are found throughout the various strata that form the cave. It has been.
“Every new discovery at Mammoth Cave is made possible because of collaboration,” said Superintendent Barclay Trimble.
“Our parks team is proud to collaborate and collaborate with the National Park Service Paleontology Program and now the University of Alabama Department of Geological Sciences to make this latest announcement possible.”
Restoration of the St. Louis Shallow Marine Environment and its Fauna Genevieve Formation, Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky. Image credit: Julius Csotony.
The two new species are stenacanto shark, Troglocladodus trimbley and Grikmanius Care Forumlikely hunting in an ancient coastal habitat that covered Kentucky and Alabama more than 325 million years ago.
This region was once an ancient sea route connecting what is now eastern North America, Europe, and North Africa, but it later disappeared with the formation of the supercontinent Pangea.
Troglocladodus trimbley It was identified from adult and juvenile teeth found in St. Louis and St. Louis. Genevieve Formation and Bangor Formation of Mammoth Cave.
The ancient shark is estimated to have reached about 3 to 3.7 meters (10 to 12 feet) in length, about the same size as the oceanic white shark.
Grikmanius Care Forum It was mainly identified from teeth in St. Louis, St. Louis.Genebabe and Haney Formations in Mammoth Cave, Hartselle and Bangor Formations in Alabama, but a partial set of jaws and gills from a young specimen Grikmanius Care Forum It was also discovered in Mammoth Cave.
The body length of this species was 3-3.7 meters. The shape of its jaws suggests that it had a short head with a powerful bite to hunt small sharks, bony fish, and right-cone-shaped creatures like squid.
“This discovery pushes the origin of the Ktenacanto shark back more than 50 million years earlier than expected,” the paleontologists said.
of study It was published in the magazine park management forum.
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JM Hodnet other. 2024. Sharks in the Dark: Paleontological inventory reveals multiple contiguous populations of Mississippian cartilaginous fishes (chondrichthyes) in Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky. park management forum 40(1); doi: 10.5070/P540162921
It is perhaps surprising that fruits with blue pigments are less common, since many visually guided fruit eaters have eyes highly adapted to blue sensitivity. However, some fruits do not contain blue pigment. In a new study, scientists from the University of Bristol and elsewhere investigated dark fruits with wax blooms, such as blueberries, plums and juniper cones, and found that structural color mechanisms are involved in their appearance. Did.
The structural color of the wax bloom gives the fruit a blue appearance across a wide range of accessions. (A) Undamaged highbush blueberries growing on the plant. (B) Blueberry (i) unmodified wax, (ii) mechanical wax removal, (iii) chloroform wax removal, (iv) surface application of (approximately) index-matched oil, (v) surface application of water; (vi) peeling off the outer skin to expose the pulp; (vii) the underside of the peeled skin; (C) Transmission light microscopy of a blueberry peel peeled from the inner edge showing red pigmentation of epidermal cells. Scale bar – 200 μm. (D) (i and ii) Plum selection (Plum) Fruits with different cell pigmentation, (i) with wax intact and (ii) with wax removed.Image credit: Middleton other., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adk4219.
“You can't 'extract' the blue color from blueberries by crushing them, because blueberries are not present in the highly pigmented juice that can be squeezed from the fruit,” said lead author Dr Rocks Middleton, a researcher at the University of Bristol.
“That's why I knew there had to be something strange about this color.”
“So we removed the wax and recrystallized it on the card. In doing so, we were able to create a completely new blue UV coating.”
This ultra-thin colorant is about 2 microns thick, has a low reflectance, but looks blue and reflects UV well, potentially paving the way for new colorant methods.
“This shows that nature has evolved to use a very neat trick: an extremely thin layer of a vital colorant,” Dr Middleton said.
Most plants are covered with a thin layer of wax, which has multiple functions, many of which are still unknown to scientists.
They know that it is highly effective as a hydrophobic, self-cleaning coating, but only now have they realized how important this structure is for visible coloration.
Now Dr. Middleton and colleagues plan to look at easier ways to recreate and apply the coating.
This could lead to the development of more sustainable, biocompatible, and even edible UV- and blue-reflecting paints.
Additionally, these coatings may have multiple functions similar to natural biological coatings that protect plants.
“It was really interesting to discover that there was an unknown coloration mechanism just beneath the surface of the popular fruit that we grow and eat all the time,” Dr Middleton said.
“It was even more exciting to be able to recreate that color by taking wax and creating a new blue coating that no one had ever seen before.”
“Our dream is to incorporate all the functionality of this natural wax into a man-made material.”
of result It was published in the magazine scientific progress.
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Rocks Middleton other. 2024. Self-organized disordered structural colors from fruit wax blooms. scientific progress 10(6); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adk4219
Killer whale trapped in ice off the coast of Japan
NHK/Screenshot
A pod of more than a dozen killer whales has gone missing after languishing in Japan's icy waters for nearly a day, trying to escape being trapped in an ice floe. It is unknown what happened to them, but they may have died.
Fishermen near Hokkaido first noticed the pods struggling in the thick mud early Tuesday morning. Images and drone video show at least 12 orcas. Several boys struggle in a small space It was trapped in heavy ice about 1 km offshore.
As of Wednesday morning, The containment area was empty.Japanese news outlet NHK said it gave hope that the animals may have escaped to the open waters of the Sea of Okhotsk.
However, late Tuesday afternoon, a pod of 17 orcas was found trapped on an ice floe 2 kilometers northeast of their original location. NHK reporting.
“Orcas are not ice-adapted whales. They are not comfortable in this area.” colin galloway at the University of Manitoba, Canada. “So they are definitely experiencing the stress of confinement and are more likely to be starving.”
Cetaceans that permanently inhabit the Arctic region, such as narwhals (Monodon Monoceros) and belugas (Delphinapterus leucas), can sometimes become trapped in ice. Killer whale (killer whale) However, they usually avoid heavy ice and avoid getting trapped.
Still, black-and-white marine mammals can end up in icy waters at the wrong time.in 2016 reviewScientists found that since 1840, there have been 17 incidents in the Northern Hemisphere where a total of 100 orcas were trapped in ice. Almost half of them occurred in the Sea of Okhotsk, Japan. Confinement usually ends in the killer whale's death, Galloway said.
Scientists believe that even the reported orcas “broken freedomAfter being trapped in the ice, they can die struggling through further ice drifts while trying to reach the open sea.
Global warming may indeed be playing a role, Galloway says. His team is currently investigating the environmental impact of killer whales' gradual northward migration. But it's also possible that entrapment incidents simply appear to be more common because people are reporting more incidents.
“Just because we've gotten better at detecting, observing, and recording climate warming, and we're more interested in it, it's very difficult to disentangle the relationship between climate warming.” “That's one of the predictions,” he says.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease affects the lungs
Sebastian Kauricki/Science Photo Library
Using inhalable nanoparticles to deliver drugs to the lungs could help treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In mice with signs of the condition, treatment improved lung function and reduced inflammation.
COPD causes the airways in the lungs to gradually narrow and stiffen, blocking airflow and blocking mucus drainage. As a result, mucus builds up in the lungs, attracting bacterial pathogens that further worsen the disease.
This thick layer of mucus also traps drugs, making it difficult to treat infections. So, Zhu Junliang Researchers at China's Dongzhou University have developed inhalable nanoparticles that can penetrate mucus and deliver drugs deep into the lungs.
The researchers constructed hollow nanoparticles from porous silica and loaded them with an antibiotic called ceftazidime. A shell of negatively charged compounds surrounding the nanoparticles blocked the pores and prevented the antibiotic from leaking. This negative charge also helps the nanoparticles penetrate mucus. The slight acidity of the mucus then changes the charge on the shell from negative to positive, opening the pores and releasing the drug.
Researchers used an inhalation spray containing nanoparticles to treat bacterial lung infections in six mice with signs of COPD. A similar number of animals received antibiotics only.
On average, mice treated with nanoparticles had about 98 percent fewer pathogenic bacteria in their lungs compared to mice given antibiotics alone. They also had fewer inflammatory molecules in their lungs and less carbon dioxide in their blood, indicating better lung function.
These findings suggest that nanoparticles could improve drug delivery to people with COPD and other lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis, where thick mucus makes infections difficult to treat. It has said. vincent rotello from the University of Massachusetts Amherst was not involved in the study. However, it is unclear whether these nanoparticles are cleared from the lungs. “If you have a delivery system that accumulates over time, that's a problem,” he says.
Diagram of exoplanet K2-18b based on scientific observations
NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmstead (STScI)
The types of planets thought to be able to support life may actually be covered in hot magma. Previously thought to have oceans of liquid water, the chemistry of these so-called high sea exoplanets may instead indicate oceans of magma.
Oliver Shortle Researchers from the University of Cambridge used observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of the exoplanet K2-18b to reach this conclusion. This world is typically Hycean. This is the name given to a planet with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere above a liquid ocean. These planets also tend to be between Earth and Neptune in size, and the chemicals in their atmospheres suggest the presence of liquid water on their surfaces, making them a prime search for extraterrestrial life. It has become a target.
But recent models of K2-18b's climate suggest it may be hotter than previously thought, hot enough to cause oceans of water to boil away long ago. “From a theoretical perspective regarding the situation here on Earth, it's like the ground is moving beneath our feet,” Schotle says.
The researchers investigated how it would affect Earth's atmospheric chemistry if these oceans were made of magma instead of water. This would be consistent with the expected high temperatures. They found this to be consistent with his JWST observations as well as water bodies.
“These two fundamentally different regimes are very similar,” Schotle says. “Detecting habitable conditions for super-Earths and sub-Neptune-sized planets will be more complex than we expected.”
This means that we probably need more detailed data to tell the difference between a potentially habitable world with oceans of water and a world of burning, inhospitable magma. For K2-18b, Schotle said his additional JWST observations over the next few years should resolve this issue. And when it comes to other Heim worlds, we may need to develop new ideas for how to find liquid water.
From a detailed analysis of Mimas’s orbital motion based on data from NASA’s Cassini mission, planetary researchers from the Sorbonne, the University of Nantes, Queen Mary University of London, Franche-Comte University, and Jinan University have discovered that the heavily cratered They showed that some ice shells hide recently formed ice shells. (less than 2-3 million years ago) global ocean 20-30 km deep.
The surface of Mimas, like the surfaces of other major Saturn moons that do not have atmospheres, is not pure ice but contains some black impurities. Relatively dark markings appear along the lower part of the walls of the 130km-wide Herschel Crater (the crater's central peak is about the same height as Mount Everest); the impact may have all but destroyed the Moon. there is). some small craters. Scientists interpret the darkening as evidence that the impurities have gradually become concentrated as icy material evaporates in areas where they are slowly sliding down the crater walls. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute.
There is growing evidence that some moons may have oceans beneath their surfaces, but such watery worlds are difficult to detect.
Mimas — Saturn's innermost and smallest (radius = 198.2 km, or 123 miles) regular moon — is an unlikely candidate due to the different nature of its surface compared to other icy moons such as Enceladus .
This theory has been challenged by Sorbonne University researcher Valerie Rainey and others who are evaluating Cassini's observations of small satellites.
Previous research suggests two possibilities inside Mimas. It is either an elongated rocky core or a global ocean.
A new study reveals that the small moon's rotational motion and orbit change due to internal influences.
For the solid-state model to apply, the rock core must be elongated and approximately pancake-shaped, which is inconsistent with observations.
Rather, measurements of Mimas' position suggest that the evolution of its orbit is better explained as influenced by an internal ocean.
The researchers calculate that the ocean lies beneath an ice shell about 20 to 30 kilometers deep.
Their simulations suggest that it appeared between 25 and 2 million years ago.
Therefore, signs of such an underground ocean would not have had time to leave traces on the surface.
This result suggests that recent processes on Mimas may have been common during the early stages of the formation of other ice worlds.
“Mimas was a small moon with a cratered surface and no sign of an ocean hidden beneath,” said co-author Nick Cooper, a researcher at Queen Mary University of London. the doctor said.
“With this discovery, Mimas joins an exclusive club of moons with inland oceans, including Enceladus and Europa, but with a unique difference: its oceans are surprisingly young.”
NASA/JPL-California Institute of Technology/Space Science I
Saturn's moon Mimas appears to have a vast global ocean beneath its icy shell, according to detailed measurements of its orbit. If other icy worlds have similar oceans, the number of planets that can support life could increase.
Mimas is the smallest of Saturn's seven major moons. For a long time, it was thought that most of it was composed of solid ice and rock, but in 2014 astronomers observed that the orbit around Saturn was unexpectedly wobbling, suggesting that this could only be explained by either a rugby ball-shaped nucleus or a liquid ocean.
Many astronomers rejected the ocean explanation, as the friction required to melt the ice would have caused visible marks on Mimas's surface. However, recent simulations suggest that this ocean may exist even without such traces.
Looking for more clues? Valerie Rainey Researchers from France's Paris Observatory analyzed observations of Mimas' orbit by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. They found that the orbit around Saturn has shifted by about 10 kilometers over 13 years.
According to the team's calculations, this orbital drift could only have been caused by an ice shell sliding over the ocean, or by wobbles from the physically impossible pancake-shaped core.
The moon's elliptical orbit and lack of surface markings also suggest that the ocean is about 30 kilometers deep and formed less than 25 million years ago. “It was very recent,” Rainey says. “We are more or less witnessing the birth of this global ocean.”
This recent activity could help explain not only the lack of traces on the surface, but also why the moon is so different from its neighbors. Enceladus has a similar shape and orbit to Mimas, and has a global ocean, but it also has a very active surface and giant spout. Rainey said the difference is simply a difference in time, and in a few million years Mimas' ice could melt and it could look similar to Enceladus.
“It would be surprising if that were true,” he says. William McKinnon at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. But he says there are still things that aren't perfectly aligned, such as the vast 80-mile-wide Herschel crater, which was formed by a giant impact. If Mimas' ice shell was truly only tens of kilometers deep, McKinnon said, we would have seen evidence of a distorted crater floor in the impact and aftermath. It's also unlikely, he says, that you'll be able to get a front-row seat at such a short and unique time in Mimas' long history. “I remain a Mimas ocean skeptic,” McKinnon says.
However, if Mimas has a hidden ocean, it suggests that other icy planets and moons in the solar system and elsewhere may have the same, expanding the possibility of life. “It's expanding our vision of what is and isn't a habitable world,” Rainey says. “Mimas teaches us that even a corpse that seems to have no life in it may someday come to life.”
Philadelphia police are investigating the origin of a package containing two preserved fetuses in glass bottles that was sent to the city’s Museum of Medical Sciences.
Museum staff reported receiving the package on Tuesday morning, according to a police statement.
The package was addressed to the museum curator, had no return address, and contained a letter from someone claiming to be a retired doctor, stating that the two specimens were a gift to the museum.
“There is no proper documentation, provenance or information that would allow us to accept it,” says Mütter Museum curator Anna Dodi. told NBC Philadelphia.. “Obviously they looked like human remains, so we had to call the authorities.”
of Mutter Museum It is part of the Philadelphia College of Physicians and features a collection of preserved anatomical specimens, models, and medical instruments.
The museum accepts donations, especially those involving human remains, but the process requires research and a detailed explanation of the object’s history.
Dody, who has been the museum’s curator for nearly 20 years, said the donation was “unusual, unusual and completely inappropriate procedure.” She told NBC News to discourage others from sending such “unsolicited anonymous remains.”
The fetus was handed over to the medical examiner’s office for further investigation. Philadelphia Police will provide additional information as it becomes available.
Blades forming part of the world's largest onshore wind turbine
Sanichi Renewable Energy
The largest onshore wind turbine blade in world history has been manufactured in China. Each foil is 131 meters long, enough to dwarf Big Ben or the Statue of Liberty.
Once installed in central China in the coming months, each structure containing a 15-megawatt turbine and three blades will be more than 260 meters in diameter.
The SY1310A onshore wind turbine blades were manufactured by SANY Renewable Energy at its factory in Bayannur, northern China.
The company said in a statement that the longer blade length increases requirements for stiffness and strength, as well as the need for protection from extreme weather events such as lightning strikes.
“Several advanced innovations have been applied to this blade, including a high-performance airfoil with a thick, blunt trailing edge, an optimized airfoil layout, and increased overall thickness.” .
Peter Majewski Researchers at the University of South Australia say the advantage of such large wind turbines is that the larger they are, the fewer turbines are needed. “But the bigger they are, the more visible they are, so it has to be socially acceptable to build such large structures,” he says.
“These are huge structures that are expensive to build and just as expensive to remove.”
Wind turbine blades may continue to grow in size, but the logistics of transporting such huge blades make their use difficult, Majewski said. It also says manufacturers and society need to consider what will happen to these structures as they age.
Majewski is researching the issue of recycling wind turbine blades.in 2022 surveyHe and his colleagues predicted that tens of thousands of tons of wind farm blades could have to go to landfill by 2050, when existing turbines reach the end of their 20- to 30-year lifespans.
However, he welcomed the use of recycled polyurethane as part of the construction of these newly announced blades.
Imagine your body as a big sugar bowl. At birth, the bowl is empty. Over decades of eating sugar and refined carbohydrates, your bowl gradually fills up. And the next time you eat, the bowl is already full, so the sugar comes in and spills over the sides of the bowl.
The same situation exists in your body. When you eat sugar, your body secretes the hormone insulin to move the sugar into your cells, where it is used for energy. If we don’t burn enough sugar, after a few decades our cells will be completely full and we won’t be able to process it anymore.
The next time you eat sugar, insulin can’t push any more sugar into the overflowing cells, so it floods into your bloodstream. Sugar moves through the blood in a form called glucose, and too much of it (known as hyperglycemia) is the main symptom of type 2 diabetes.
When there’s too much glucose in the blood, insulin doesn’t seem to be doing its normal job of moving sugar into cells. Then you say your body has become insulin resistant, but it’s actually not the insulin’s fault. The main problem is that the cells are flooded with glucose.
High blood sugar is only part of the problem. Not only is there too much glucose in the blood, there is too much glucose in every cell. Type 2 diabetes is an overflow phenomenon that occurs when there is too much glucose throughout the body.
In response to excess glucose in the blood, the body secretes more insulin to overcome this resistance. This forces more glucose into the flooded cells to keep blood levels normal.
This works, but the effect is only temporary because it doesn’t address the problem of excess sugar. The excess was transferred from the blood to the cells, only worsening insulin resistance. At some point, your body can no longer push glucose into your cells, no matter how much insulin you increase.
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What happens in the body if excess glucose is not removed? First, your body continues to produce more insulin to try to get more glucose into your cells. However, this only creates further insulin resistance, creating a vicious cycle.
When insulin levels can no longer keep up with the increased resistance, blood sugar levels spike. At this point the doctor is likely to diagnose her with type 2 diabetes.
Doctors may prescribe drugs such as insulin injections or a drug called metformin to lower blood sugar levels, but these drugs do not rid the body of excess glucose. Instead, they simply continue to take glucose from the blood and return it to the body.
It can then be carried to other organs such as the kidneys, nerves, eyes, and heart, where it can eventually cause other problems. Of course, the fundamental problem hasn’t changed.
Remember that bowl full of sugar? It’s still around. Insulin simply moves glucose from the visible blood into the invisible body. So the next time you eat, sugar will flood back into your bloodstream and you’ll end up injecting insulin to stuff it into your body.
The more glucose your body is willing to accept, the more insulin it needs to overcome its resistance to it. But as the cells swell more and more, this insulin only creates more resistance.
If you exceed the amount your body can produce naturally, drugs can take over. At first, you only need one type of medicine, but eventually the amount of medicine increases to two or three.
And the problem is that diabetes actually gets worse when you increase the amount of medication you take to keep your blood sugar levels at the same level.
Type 2 diabetes is reversible and preventable without drugs
Once you understand that type 2 diabetes is simply too much sugar in your body, the solution is obvious. Remove sugar. Don’t hide it. Let’s get rid of it. There are really only two ways to accomplish this.
Please add less sugar.
Burn off the remaining sugar.
that’s it. That’s all you need to do. The best part? All natural and completely free. No drugs. No surgery. No cost.
Step 1: Reduce the amount of sugar
The first step is to eliminate all sugar and refined carbohydrates from your diet. Added sugar has no nutritional value, so it’s safe to limit your intake. Complex carbohydrates, which are simply long chains of sugar, and highly refined carbohydrates, such as flour, are quickly digested into glucose.
The best strategy is to limit or eliminate bread and pasta made from white flour, as well as white rice and potatoes.
Protein intake should be kept moderate rather than high. When proteins such as meat are digested, they are broken down into amino acids. Adequate protein is necessary for good health, but excess amino acids cannot be stored in the body, so they are converted into glucose in the liver. Therefore, consuming too much protein adds sugar to your body. Therefore, highly processed and concentrated protein sources such as protein shakes, protein bars, and protein powders should be avoided.
What about dietary fat? Natural fats, found in avocados, nuts, and olive oil, which are key components of the Mediterranean diet, have little effect on blood sugar or insulin, and are well-known for their health benefits against both heart disease and diabetes. Masu. Eggs and butter are also good sources of natural fats.
It has been proven that the cholesterol contained in these foods has no negative effect on the human body. Eating dietary fat does not lead to type 2 diabetes or heart disease. In fact, it’s beneficial because it helps you feel full without adding sugar to your body.
To reduce the amount of sugar you put into your body, stick to natural, unprocessed whole foods. Eat a diet low in refined carbohydrates, moderate amounts of protein, and high in natural fats.
Step 2: Burn off the remaining sugar
Exercise (both strength training and aerobic training) has beneficial effects in type 2 diabetes, but its power to reverse the disease is much less than dietary intervention. And fasting is the easiest and surest way to force your body to burn sugar.
Fasting is just the flip side of eating. If you are not eating, you are fasting. When you eat, your body stores food energy. When you fast, your body burns food energy. And glucose is the most easily ingested food energy source. Therefore, a longer period of fasting allows you to burn stored sugar.
It may sound harsh, but fasting is literally the oldest diet known and has been practiced throughout human history without incident. If you are taking prescription medications, you should seek medical advice.
But the important question is: Will my blood sugar levels drop if I don’t eat? of course. Can you lose weight if you don’t eat? of course. So what’s the problem? I can’t see anything.
A common practice is to fast for 24 hours two to three times a week to burn off sugar. Another common approach is fasting for 16 hours five to six times a week. The secret to reversing type 2 diabetes is now in our hands.
All you need is an open mind to embrace new paradigms and the courage to challenge conventional wisdom.
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This text was extracted from Diabetes Norm: Prevent and reverse type 2 diabetes naturally by Dr. Jason Huangon sale now (£14.99, Greystone Books).
Google is lagging behind in artificial intelligence. While OpenAI’s innovative Dall-E AI art image generator was released two years ago, Google only recently released its competing product.
The software, known as ImageFX, is backed by one of the largest technology companies and a substantial amount of data. So how is this data accumulated?
In brief, ImageFX has produced some impressive images that rival the best. But how does it work? Can it be accessed now? And have major problems in the AI art world been solved?
How to use Google ImageFX
Google ImageFX is currently available in countries like the United States, Kenya, New Zealand, and Australia.
If you attempt to access the site in a country like the UK, you’ll see a warning stating, “This tool is not yet available in your country.”
To access it from any of the currently available countries, visit Google’s AI Test Kitchen. Then create an account. Once everything is set up, your new prompt will be ready for use.
Even if you’re not in one of the listed countries, the website is still worth visiting. Google allows you to sign up for notifications about when the platform becomes available in your area.
How good is Google ImageFX?
There’s no denying that Google is late to the game. OpenAI’s Dall-E was released in January 2021, and Midjourney was released a year later. So did Google’s delay pay off in terms of quality?
Two images generated by ImageFX. On the left is a room with an art desk, and on the right is a painting of a vampire – Credit: ImageFX
The images released so far demonstrate that ImageFX is capable of producing content at a very high level. Detailed and contextual, ImageFX is an unsurprisingly capable image generator.
But that’s expected. AI art has made significant progress over the years, and Google’s main competitors are producing similarly high-quality work and have been doing so for much longer.
The significant advantage of ImageFX at the moment is that it’s free (in select countries). Both Midjourney and Dall-E are mainly behind paywalls or restricted services, so it’s worth making the most of ImageFX before any changes.
ImageFX also includes a unique feature called the “Expressive Chip.” This allows users to quickly edit the prompt and try a different search. For example, if you request a portrait of a woman, you can quickly switch this to an abstract, hand-drawn, or even oil painting.
How does it work?
Basically, Google ImageFX works like any other AI art generator. This involves several steps, starting with obtaining an image database large enough for training.
Google has not disclosed the source of its training data, but it likely includes a combination of internal sources, collaborations, and possibly web scraping and user-generated content.
Once the database is built, a model is trained on these images to learn the relationships between the words and visual concepts in the images, possibly through a diffusion model.
These models start with random noise in the image and are refined based on information from both the data and the accompanying text description. By repeating this process, you essentially learn the relationships between words, images, and context.
This training helps ImageFX and other AI image generators understand the prompts asked because it understands what words are associated with the images.
How is it linked to Google Bard?
Google Bard is probably the biggest competitor to the AI chatbot ChatGPT. Google has been working on the chatbot for some time and was released publicly in 2023.
If ImageFX is photography, Bard is understanding words and context. The goal is to combine the two to create the ultimate AI model, similar to OpenAI’s combination of ChatGPT and Dall-E (OpenAI’s image generator).
Google Bard is currently in testing but will soon be fully operational with the recently announced Google Gemini system.
This could theoretically mean a platform that asks models to create a board game and returns both the rules and lore, as well as all images, boards, and content. Or you could write a series of books with illustrations to go along with it.
Does ImageFX produce bad images?
There’s a problem with AI art…people. When trained on artwork from a human population and then utilized again by humans, less appropriate parts of the human brain tend to enter.
Previous AI art generators displayed sexist, biased, and sometimes intensely graphic images. This is a problem that all major technology companies are trying to tackle, including Google with ImageFX.
“All images generated with ImageFX are marked with SynthID, a tool developed by Google DeepMind that adds digital watermarks directly to the content we generate.” Google says:.
“SynthID watermarks are imperceptible to the human eye but can be detected for identification. Additionally, all images contain metadata, so when you encounter an AI-generated image, You can get more information.”
In addition to this, Google announced that it has improved the safety of its training data, reducing problematic output such as violent, offensive, or sexually explicit content. This extends to a reduced ability to create images of real people.
New insights from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope overturn theories about how black holes shape the universe, reversing the classical theory that black holes formed after the first stars and galaxies appeared. It challenges our understanding. In fact, black holes may have accelerated the birth of new stars during the universe's first 50 million years.
This artist's impression shows the evolution of the universe, starting with the Big Bang on the left and continuing with the emergence of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The formation of the first stars ends the Dark Ages of the universe, followed by the formation of galaxies. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“We know that these monster black holes exist in the centers of galaxies near the Milky Way, but now the big surprise is that they were also present at the beginning of the universe, and that they were like building blocks or seeds of early galaxies. It was something,” he said. Professor Joseph Silk, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University and the Sorbonne Institute of Astrophysics;
“They've really enhanced everything, including giant amplifiers for star formation. This completely overturns what we previously thought was possible, and how galaxies form. It has the potential to completely shake up our understanding of what happens.”
“The distant galaxies observed by Webb in the early universe appear much brighter than scientists expected, revealing an unusually large number of young stars and supermassive black holes.”
“Conventional wisdom holds that black holes formed after the collapse of supermassive stars, and that galaxies formed after the first stars illuminated the dark early universe.”
But the team's analysis suggests that for the first 100 million years, black holes and galaxies coexisted, influencing each other's fate.
“We argue that the outflow of the black hole crushed the gas clouds and turned them into stars, greatly accelerating the rate of star formation,” Professor Silk said.
“Otherwise, it's very difficult to understand where these bright galaxies came from, because they are typically smaller in the early Universe. Why on earth did they become stars so quickly? Do I need to create one?”
“A black hole is a region of space where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape its attraction.”
“Thanks to this force, they generate powerful magnetic fields that cause violent storms, eject turbulent plasma, and ultimately act like giant particle accelerators.”
“This process may be why Webb's detectors found more black holes and brighter galaxies than scientists expected.”
“We can't fully see these ferocious winds and jets so far away, but we know they must exist because many black holes have been seen in the early universe. I am.”
“The huge wind blowing from the black hole crushes nearby gas clouds, turning them into stars.”
“This is the missing link that explains why these first galaxies are much brighter than we expected.”
According to the research team, there were two stages of the young universe.
In the first stage, star formation was accelerated by high-velocity outflow from the black hole, while in the second stage, the outflow slowed down.
“Hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, a supermassive black hole magnetic storm caused gas clouds to collapse and new stars to form at a rate far exceeding that observed in normal galaxies billions of years later,” Professor Silk said. Ta.
“These powerful outflows moved into energy conservation states, reducing the amount of gas available to form stars within the galaxy, thus slowing star formation.”
“We originally thought that galaxies formed when giant gas clouds collapsed,” Professor Silk said.
“The big surprise was that there was a seed in the middle of that cloud, a large black hole, that helped rapidly turn the inside of that cloud into a star at a much faster rate than we expected. So the first galaxies are incredibly bright.”
of study Published in Astrophysics Journal Letter.
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joseph silk other. 2024. Which came first, a supermassive black hole or a galaxy? Insights from JWST. APJL 961, L39; doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ad1bf0
A genus and species of sauropod, a titanosaur mimicking rebachisaurid, measuring over 15 meters (50 feet) in length, has been unearthed in Patagonia, Argentina.
rebuilding the life of Inawentu Osratus. Image credit: Gabriel Rio.
The newly discovered dinosaur roamed the Earth during the late Cretaceous period, about 86 million years ago.
dubbing Inawentu Osratusthe animals were of the following types: titanosaurusa diverse group of long-necked sauropods that lived from the Late Jurassic period (163.5 million to 145 million years ago) to the end of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago).
They are known for their large body size, long necks, and wide stance, and include species ranging from the largest known land vertebrates to “dwarfs” as large as elephants. Some species had osteoderm (armor plate).
“During the late Mesozoic Era, sauropod dinosaurs constituted the main herbivores in all terrestrial ecosystems of polar Gondwana,” said paleontologist Leonardo Filippi of Argentina's Municipal Museum of Urquiza and his colleagues.
“Quadrupedal locomotion and a gravitational posture, a proportionately small cranio-body ratio, and a common bow plan consisting of a series of elongated necks and tails made sauropods capable of large size, locomotion, defense, physiology, and feeding. They have evolved a variety of notable adaptations related to food and behavior.”
“They represented, in terms of diversity and abundance, the major medium- to large-sized herbivore component of the fauna in most of these southern landmass.”
partially completed specimen Inawentu Osratus It was recovered from fluvial deposits at the La Invernada archaeological site, part of the Bajo de la Carpa Formation in the Neuquen Basin of Patagonia, Argentina.
“The recovered human bones were found interlocked within a horizon of massive reddish solidified mudstone covered by a thin layer of sand (30 cm thick) associated with flood deposits of the river bank. ' explained the researchers.
Inawentu Osratus It shows remarkable convergent properties of the skull anatomy. rebatisauridae sauropodaccording to the author.
“Inawentu Osratus “It belongs to the square-jawed titanosaur clade and was restricted to the final stages of the Late Cretaceous of South America,” the researchers said.
“The discovery of new materials and different datasets providing new morphological information allows us to provide better support in future phylogenies confirming the existence of this square-jawed titanosaur clade. Become.”
“Inawentu Osratus And perhaps other members of this clade have obvious nutritional adaptations seen in preceding rebatisaurid sauropods, such as broad snouts and relatively short necks. ”
“In this connection, a series of shortened cervix Inawentu Osratus This may be consistent with low browsing feed behavior. ”
“This could have paleoecological implications, such as a zoological alternation in the Gondwanan ecosystem since the Turonian period or a low-browsing diet in two distinct lineages of sauropod dinosaurs.”
team's findings It was published in the magazine Cretaceous research.
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Leonardo S. Filippi other. 2024. Rebachysaurid-mimic titanosaurs and evidence of faunal disturbance events in southwestern Gondwana during the Late Cretaceous. Cretaceous research 154: 105754; doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2023.105754
Despite being a phenomenon known for hundreds of years, there is still much to learn about the placebo effect, which improves health after receiving dummy treatments like sugar pills. It is thought that behind this is the expectation of a positive outcome, and that negative expectations are responsible for the opposite undesirable phenomenon, the nocebo effect, which worsens symptoms. But questions remain about how the mind influences the body in this way and why some people feel its influence more strongly than others.
Luana Colloca are among those grappling with such questions. Colloka, a neuroscientist and director of the Placebo Beyond Opinion Center at the University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore, and colleagues have shown how certain genetic variations shape the extent to which a person responds to a placebo. Ta. They are now studying how best to harness such effects to relieve pain, which could reduce the use of prescription opioid drugs and the risk of addiction to them. They are also exploring the use of virtual reality, with results published last year showing that virtual reality can effectively reduce levels of perceived pain and anxiety.
Colloca shares all of the latest discoveries about the placebo and nocebo effects in her book, which she co-edited. Placebo effect from a translational research perspective.she spoke new scientist About her research on pain relief, whether the placebo effect can help treat mental health conditions, and how it affects our lives…
A wheeled robot released on a college campus has discovered how to roll around the real world and open all kinds of doors and drawers.
Robots have adapted themselves to new challenges, paving the way for machines that can independently interact with physical objects. “We want the robots to be able to operate autonomously, without having to rely on humans to keep giving them examples of all new kinds of scenarios during testing,” he says. Deepak Pathak at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pennsylvania.
Pathak and his colleagues initially trained the robot through imitation learning, which provided visual examples of how to open objects such as doors, cabinets, drawers, and refrigerators. They then unleashed it around CMU's campus, opening doors and cabinets they had never encountered before. This required the robot to adapt to each new object using artificial intelligence that rewards the robot for understanding things.
The robot typically spent 30 minutes to an hour learning how to open each object consistently. Haoyu Shion CMU Ph.D. built a robot to scout various testing locations on campus. The team included his 12 training objects for practice, and then he included eight additional objects to test the robot's abilities.
Initial success rates averaged about 50%, but the robot sometimes completely failed to open new objects when first started. Eventually, that success rate increased to about 95%.
In addition to learning on the fly, he said he had to be able to physically handle heavy doors. Russell Mendonca At C.M.U. Achieving both goals will cost him $25,000, which he says is much cheaper than other robotic systems with adaptive learning capabilities.
Demonstrating the robot outside the lab “represents a concrete step towards more general robotic manipulation systems,” he said. Yunju Lee At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Opening a door or a drawer is a seemingly simple task for humans, but it's actually surprisingly difficult for robots,” he says.
NGC 4753’s remarkable and complex network of dust lanes winding around its galactic core defines its “peculiar” classification, and was probably the result of the galaxy’s merger with a nearby dwarf galaxy about 1.3 billion years ago. It is thought that there is.
This image from the Gemini South Telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, shows NGC 4753, a lenticular galaxy about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Image credits: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. Miller, International Gemini Observatory and NSF’s NOIRLab / M. Rodriguez, International Gemini Observatory and NSF’s NOIRLab / M. Zamani, NSF’s NOIRLab.
NGC4753 is a lenticular galaxy located approximately 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.
This galaxy, also known as LEDA 43671, UGC 8009, and IRAS 12498-0055, discovered It was proposed by German-born British astronomer William Herschel on February 22, 1784.
NGC 4753 is a member of the NGC 4753 group of galaxies in the Virgo II cloud, a series of at least 100 galaxy clusters and individual galaxies that extend away from the southern edge of the Virgo Supercluster.
“There is an astonishing number of galaxies in the observable universe, with recent estimates putting the number between 100 billion and 2 trillion,” Gemini astronomers said in a statement.
“And just like snowflakes, no two are exactly alike. However, they can be divided into four broad classes based on their appearance and physical characteristics: elliptical, lenticular, irregular, and spiral. , with many subclasses in between.”
“However, galaxies are dynamic objects that evolve over time while interacting with their surrounding environment, meaning that an individual galaxy can fall into multiple classifications over its lifetime. ”
In 1992, Indiana University astronomer Tom Steiman-Cameron and colleagues published A detailed study of NGC 4753 reveals that its complex shape is likely the result of a merger with a small companion galaxy.
“Galaxies that swallow other galaxies often look like train wrecks, but this is a train wreck galaxy,” said Dr. Steiman-Cameron.
Galactic mergers occur when two or more galaxies collide, mixing their material and significantly changing the shape and behavior of each galaxy involved.
In the case of NGC 4753, the once-standard lenticular galaxy is thought to have merged with a nearby gas-rich dwarf galaxy about 1.3 billion years ago.
The dwarf galaxy’s gas, combined with the burst of star formation caused by this galactic collision, injected large amounts of dust into the system.
The galaxy’s gravitational inward spiral spread out the accumulated dust into a disk. And this is where the story gets interesting.
Astronomers have discovered that a phenomenon known as differential precession is responsible for NGC 4753’s tangled dust lanes.
Precession occurs when a rotating object changes its axis of rotation, like a spinning top that loses momentum and wobbles. And differential means that the speed of precession is different depending on the radius.
For a dusty accretion disk orbiting around a galactic nucleus, the rate of precession is faster toward the center and slower near the edges.
This fluctuating wobble-like motion is due to the angle at which NGC 4753 and its former dwarf companion collided, and is responsible for the strongly twisted dust lanes that we see today wrapping around the galaxy’s luminescent core. It becomes.
“For a long time, no one knew what to make of this strange galaxy,” said Dr. Steiman-Cameron.
“But by starting with the idea that the accreted material fills the disk and analyzing the three-dimensional geometry, the mystery was solved.”
“Thirty years later, we are now incredibly excited to be able to see this highly detailed image with the Gemini South Telescope.”
Studies have shown that although climate change is not expected to increase the number of hurricanes, rising ocean temperatures will make hurricanes more intense. Warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, leading to heavier rainfall and flooding from these storms.
Therefore, as long as global warming continues, we can expect more intense storms on Earth.
Researchers found that from 1980 to 2021, five storms in the past nine years had maximum wind speeds exceeding 192 miles per hour, which could have been classified as Category 6 storms. Their study also used models to explore how different climate scenarios could affect hurricanes and other large storms around the world. They found that if the Earth warmed by 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the risk of Category 6 storms could double in the Gulf of Mexico and in Southeast Asia and the Philippines.
The researchers also highlighted that even the relatively low global warming target of the Paris Agreement, aiming to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, could significantly increase the likelihood of Category 6 storms.
These findings will continue the debate about how to better communicate the threat of extreme weather events and how climate change increases that threat. For example, scientists pointed out that the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale cannot convey some of the most destructive aspects of hurricanes, such as storm surge, rainfall, and flooding. Adding a sixth category to the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale may raise awareness of the increased risk of major hurricanes due to global warming. The National Hurricane Center has also announced new experimental forecasts to better communicate the risk of inland winds during extreme weather events.
Paleontologist at Flinders University brian chu and his colleagues described a new genus and species of Devonian tetrapod fish based on several nearly complete skulls and postcranial skeletons.
rebuilding the life of Harajikadectes zumini. Image credit: Brian Choo, Flinders University.
“Tetrapodomorpha “It consists of tetrapods and their closest fish relatives, the oldest records of which are from the Pragians of China,” said Dr Chu and co-authors.
“This group diversified greatly in both marine and freshwater habitats during the Middle to Late Devonian, giving rise to several distinct lineages, including the earliest quadrupeds.”
“Tetrapods flourished after the Devonian limbless fish tetrapods experienced a marked decline in diversity during the Carboniferous, but only survived into the early Permian before disappearing from the fossil record. There were only a handful of representative animals.”
This new species of tetrapod lived about 380 million years ago and was up to 45 to 50 centimeters long.
with scientific name Harajikadectes zuminithis fish is particularly distinctive for its large opening at the top of its skull.
“These spire-like structures are thought to facilitate air breathing at the surface, and modern African bichir fish have similar structures for taking in air at the surface,” said Dr Chew. Ta.
“This feature appears in multiple tetrapomodorf lineages at about the same time during the middle to late Devonian period.”
“In addition to Harajikadectes zumini Large spiracles also appeared from central Australia. gogonathus El Pisto Stegarian from Western Australia Tiktaalik — are the closest relatives of four-limbed quadrupeds. ”
“And it shows up in unrelated places.” Pickeringius Western Australian stingray fin fish first described in 2018. ”
with Dr. Chu Harajikadectes zumini fossil. Image credit: Flinders University.
Professor John Long from Flinders University said: “This synchronous emergence of air-breathing adaptations may have coincided with a period of reduced atmospheric oxygen during the mid-Devonian.”
“The ability to supplement gill breathing with oxygen from the air may have provided an adaptive advantage.”
“We discovered this new form of lobe-finned fish in one of the most remote fossil sites in all of Australia, the Harajika Sandstone Formation in the Northern Territory, about 200km west of Alice Springs. It dates from the mid-Devonian period. Late period, approximately 380 years ago.'' 1 million years old. ”
“It's difficult to pinpoint the location. Harajikadectes zumini sit in this group of fishes because they appear to have convergently acquired a mosaic of specialized features characteristic of widely separate branches of the tetrapod radiation. ”
of findings will appear in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
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brian chu other. A new species of pedunculated tetrapod fish that lived in the middle to late Devonian period of central Australia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, published online on February 5, 2024. Doi: 10.1080/02724634.2023.2285000
Consider the happiest country in the world. Are you thinking of somewhere in Scandinavia? Well, a new study has brought to light something that may have been overlooked. They are actually the happiest people in the world, but they are often not included in rankings.
In global happiness rankings, such as the World Happiness Report (WHR), researchers typically note a correlation between high levels of life satisfaction and high incomes. However, these rankings often fail to differentiate between small indigenous groups and the overall population of a nation. In some of these communities, money has a minimal impact on daily life and livelihoods.
A new paper suggests that not all happiness is tied to money. In fact, it turns out that some low-income societies, particularly those that rely on nature rather than money, exhibit significantly higher life satisfaction and may even be some of the happiest people in the world.
“The frequently observed strong correlation between income and life satisfaction is not universal and proves that the wealth generated by developed economies is not fundamentally necessary for humans to live happy lives.” – Professor Victoria Reyes Garcia, senior author of the study
Who is the happiest person in the world?
Although not conducted by the same research institute as WHR, this new study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and measured happiness in a similar way. The WHR asks respondents to imagine a ladder with 10 being the best life and 0 being the worst, and then evaluate their life on that scale.
In this study, researchers translated the question into local languages: “Taking all aspects into consideration, how satisfied are you with your life on a scale of 0 to 10?”
The research team collected responses from 2,966 people from 19 indigenous and local communities around the world. Only 64 percent of households surveyed in these communities had any cash income.
These 19 communities had an average score of 6.8, with the lowest score being 5.1. However, four of these communities scored above 8/10 and, if included in the WHR, these small societies would be among the happiest people in the world. In 2023, WHR found that the countries with the highest scores were Finland (7.8), Denmark (7.6), and Iceland (7.5).
The highest scores were reported in Latin America, despite many of these societies having suffered from histories of marginalization and oppression, according to the authors.
Researchers say the findings are positive news for sustainability in the face of climate change, as this research suggests that people can achieve high levels of happiness without the need for resource-intensive economic growth.
They encourage future research to examine specific factors that influence well-being in societies where money is not central, such as family and social support, spirituality, and connection to the natural world.
Sanphodiacaulis densifolia is an extinct tree species that existed in what is now New Brunswick, Canada, between 359 and 347 million years ago (Carboniferous period). The structure consisted of an unbranched 16 cm diameter trunk and compound leaves arranged in a 13 cm spiral and compressed to a vertical trunk length of 14 cm. The compound leaves in the upper 0.75 m of the trunk were over 1.75 m long, with preserved alternating secondary collaterals starting 0.5 m from the trunk. In the lower region of the trunk there were only persistent leaf bases. Sanphodiacaulis densifolia shows that the early Carboniferous vegetation was more complex than expected, indicating that this was an experimental, perhaps transitional, period of diverse growth structures.
Sanphodiacaulis densifolia. Image credit: Tim Stonecipher.
Trees first appeared during the Middle Devonian period (393 to 383 million years ago), but modern woody plants did not appear until about 10 million years later.
Evidence for dendritic structures (tree-like structures) is primarily based on mud moldings, sand moldings, or calcified stumps, or extensive root structures in fossilized soils.
Under unique preservation conditions, these early trees fossilized with roots and crown structures attached to their trunks.
“The method is Sanphodiacaulis densifolia “It has very long leaves around its slender trunk, and it's amazing how many leaves there are on such a short trunk,” said Dr. Robert Gastaldo, a paleontologist at Colby College. he said.
“The morphology of these 350-million-year-old trees looks like ferns or palms, even though palms arose 300 million years ago.”
“However, the functional leaves of ferns and palm trees are clustered at the top and are relatively few in number.”
“in contrast, Sanphodiacaulis densifolia More than 250 leaves have been preserved around the trunk, with each partially preserved leaf extending 1.75 meters from the trunk. ”
“We estimate that each leaf grew at least another meter before it finished.”
“This means that ‘bottlebrush’ had a dense canopy of leaves that were not woody and spread for at least 5.5 meters around a trunk that was only 16 cm in diameter. Amazing to say the least. .”
Sanphodiacaulis densifolia It has compound leaves arranged in a spiral.Image credit: Gastaldo other., doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.01.011.
Dr. Gastaldo and his colleagues examined five fossil specimens. Sanphodiacaulis densifolia.
The fossil was excavated from the Sanford Quarry, part of the Albert Formation in New Brunswick, Canada.
“These fossils were preserved when an earthquake destroyed trees and other vegetation along the edge of a rift lake,” Gastaldo said.
“The first fossil wood was unearthed from a quarry about seven years ago, but it contained only one partial sample.”
“It took several years to find four other specimens of the same plant in close spatial proximity.”
“One of the specimens reveals how the leaves separate from the top of the tree, which makes this tree quite unique.”
“This is one of the few preserved trunks with crown leaves still attached in a fossil record spanning more than 400 million years.”
Actual and reconstructed heights and biostratigraphic ranges of Pennsylvanian trees from the Middle Devonian. Image credit: Gastaldo et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.01.011.
Sanphodiacaulis densifolia It probably relied on its unusual growth form to maximize the amount of light it could capture and reduce competition with other plants above ground.
This discovery provides important insights into the evolution of plants and arboreal growth, that is, plants that grow to the height of a tree, or at least 4.5 m, at maturity.
They also remind us that throughout the history of life on Earth, there have been trees that look like nothing we've ever seen before.
“We all have a mental concept of what a tree looks like, depending on where we live on the planet, and we all have a vision of something familiar,” Dr. Gastaldo said. Ta.
“The fossils we report are unique and represent some of the strangest growth forms in the history of life.”
“This is an evolutionary experiment during a period of forest plant biodiversity, and it appears to be a short-lived form.”
“The history of life on land consists of plants and animals that are different from those that live today,” he added.
“The evolutionary mechanisms that operated in the distant past allowed organisms to survive for long periods of time, but their shape, morphology, growth structure, and life history followed different trajectories and strategies.”
“Rare and unusual fossils like the New Brunswick tree are just a few examples of failed experiments that have colonized our planet.”
a paper The survey results were published in a magazine current biology.
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Robert A. Gastaldo other. A mysterious fossil plant with a three-dimensional tree-like growth structure from the earliest Carboniferous period in New Brunswick, Canada. current biology, published online on February 2, 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.01.011
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an excellent image of the interacting spiral lens galaxy pair Arp 140.
Lenticular galaxy NGC 274 can be seen on the right side of this Hubble image, and barred spiral galaxy NGC 275 can be seen on the left side. Image credit: NASA / ESA / R. Foley, University of California, Santa Cruz / Gladys Kober, NASA and The Catholic University of America.
Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers discovered a habitable zone planet orbiting nearby red dwarf star TOI-715 every 19.3 days and characterized its characteristics. I made it clear. They also demonstrated that a second, smaller exoplanet with a period of 25.6 days may exist, located just inside the outer edge of TOI-715’s habitable zone. This system represents the first of his TESS discoveries to fall within this most conservative and widely applicable habitable zone.
Artist’s impression of the super-Earth exoplanet TOI-715b. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
TOI-715 is an M dwarf star of spectral type M4 located approximately 137 light-years away in the constellation Urae.
The star, also known as TIC 271971130, is about 6.6 billion years old, making it older than the Sun.
TOI-715 includes the super-Earth exoplanet TOI-715b and the smaller terrestrial exoplanet candidate TOI-715c.
“TOI-715b is about 1.5 times wider than Earth and orbits within the habitable zone around its parent star,” said Georgina Dransfield, an astronomer at the University of Birmingham.
“This is the distance from the star that can give the planet the right temperature for liquid water to form on its surface.”
“Of course, for surface water to exist, several other factors have to be in place, especially for us to have a suitable atmosphere.”
“However, the conservative habitable zone (which may be narrower and more robustly defined than the broader ‘optimistic’ habitable zone) is a It ranks first.”
“A smaller planet, TOI-715c, may be only slightly larger than Earth and may exist just inside the conservative habitable zone.”
“TOI-175b joins the list of habitable zone planets that could be scrutinized more closely by Webb, perhaps also for atmospheric signatures,” the astronomers said.
“A lot depends on other properties of the planet, such as how heavy it is and whether it can be classified as a water world. Its atmosphere, if any at all, is more massive, denser, and has an atmosphere. It’s less pronounced than the atmosphere, and much less difficult to detect. Drier worlds are likely to keep their inconspicuous atmospheres close to the surface.”
“If the possibility of a second Earth-sized planet in this system is confirmed, it would be the smallest habitable zone planet ever discovered by TESS.”
“This discovery also exceeds TESS’s initial expectations by discovering an Earth-sized world within the habitable zone.”
This finding is reported in the following article: paper inside Royal Astronomical Society Monthly Notices.
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Georgina Dransfield other. 2024. Earth's habitable zone planet hosted by the M4 star TOI-715 near the ecliptic south pole. MNRAS 527 (1): 35-52; doi: 10.1093/mnras/stad1439
A new genus and species of pterosaur has been identified from fossils found at the site. Kilmalag Formation Originally from the Isle of Skye, Scotland.
Reconstructed by artists Theoptera evansae. Image credit: Mark Witton / Natural History Museum, London.
Professor Paul Barrett of London's Natural History Museum and colleagues said: “The oldest known pterosaur fossils date from the late Triassic period, but the group persisted until extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.''
“Pterosaurs are known on every continent and experienced two major peaks in species richness during the Early-Middle Cretaceous and the Late Cretaceous.”
“However, that distribution is highly influenced by the 'Lagerstetten effect' and other forms of sampling bias.”
“Most of our knowledge about the evolutionary history of pterosaurs is based on material from a small number of archaeological sites with limited spatiotemporal extent.”
The newly discovered species lived in what is now Scotland between 168 and 166 million years ago (during the mid-Jurassic period).
named Theoptera evansaeIt was the first pterosaur named in Scotland and the most complete pterosaur discovered in Britain since its discovery by Mary Anning. Dimorphodon Macronix Early 1800s.
The remains of this flying reptile consist of a three-dimensionally preserved partial skeleton, including the shoulders, wings, legs, and part of the spine.
Many of the bones remain fully embedded in the rock and can only be studied using CT scans.
Theoptera evansae, almost as found (top) and with CT reconstruction using the elements (bottom). Image credit: Martin-Silverstone other.
“Theoptera evansae is part of the pterosaur clade Dalwinoptera'' said the paleontologists.
“The discovery shows that this clade is much more diverse than previously thought and persisted for more than 25 million years, from the Late Late Jurassic to the Late Jurassic.”
The discovery also shows that all of the major Jurassic pterosaurs evolved earlier than previously thought, well before the end of the Early Jurassic.
“Theoptera evansae “This helps narrow down the timing of some key events in the evolution of flying reptiles,” said Professor Barrett.
“Most of its relatives are from China, so its appearance in Britain during the mid-Jurassic period was a complete surprise.”
“This shows that the advanced group of flying reptiles to which it belongs appeared earlier than we thought and quickly acquired a near-global distribution.”
“During that period, Theoptera evansae This period is one of the most important in the evolution of pterosaurs, and it is also the period with the lowest number of specimens, demonstrating its importance,” said Dr Liz Martin-Silverstone, a palaeontologist at the University of Bristol. said.
“We found more bones embedded in the rock, some of which were essential to identifying the type of pterosaur.” Theoptera evansae This was an even better discovery than originally thought. ”
“This brings us one step closer to understanding when and where more advanced pterosaurs evolved.”
elizabeth martin silverstone other. 2024. A new pterosaur and the diversification of early flying reptiles from the Middle Jurassic of Skye, Scotland. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontologyin press.
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