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Ancient Moon Metstone, 23.5 Billion Years Old, Bridges 100 Million-Year Gap in Lunar History

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The examination of North West Africa (NWA) 16286 reveals a lunar metstone with a distinctive chemical profile, offering new perspectives on the evolution of the moon’s interior and emphasizing the enduring nature of its volcanic activity.

Backscattered electron images of NWA 16286 samples. Image credit: Joshu Asu Nape/University of Manchester.

Discovered in Africa in 2023, NWA 16286 is one of only 31 moon basalts officially identified on Earth.

The distinct composition of the 311-gram metstone, featuring melted glassy pockets and veins, indicates it was likely impacted by an asteroid or metstone on the lunar surface before being ejected and eventually landing on Earth.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Manchester supports the theory that the moon has maintained internal heat production processes responsible for lunar volcanic activity across various stages.

Lead isotopic analyses suggest that these rock formations are the youngest basalt lunar metstones identified on Earth, dating back approximately 2.35 billion years, a time when lunar samples are scarce.

The sample’s unique geochemical profile distinguishes it from those brought back by previous lunar missions, indicating that its chemical characteristics likely result from lava flows that solidified after ascending from the moon’s depths.

“While the moon rocks returned from sample return missions provide valuable insights, they are limited to the immediate areas around those landing sites,” stated Dr. Joshua Snape from the University of Manchester.

“In contrast, this sample could originate from impact craters located anywhere on the moon’s surface.”

“Thus, there is a unique coincidence with this sample. It fortuitously landed on Earth, unveiling secrets about lunar geology without the need for an extensive space mission.”

The sample contains notably large crystals of olivine and is classified as olivine basalt, characterized by medium titanium levels and high potassium content.

Alongside the atypical age of the samples, researchers found that the lead isotopic composition of the rocks—geochemical signatures preserved when the rocks formed—originates from internal lunar sources with unusually high ratios of uranium and lead.

These chemical markers can assist in identifying the mechanisms behind the moon’s prolonged internal heat production.

“The sample’s age is particularly intriguing as it fills a billion-year gap in the history of lunar volcanism,” Dr. Snape noted.

“It is younger than the basalts collected during the Apollo, Luna, and Chang-E 6 missions, yet significantly older than the more recent rocks retrieved by the Chang-E 5 missions in China.”

“Its age and composition indicate that volcanic activity persisted throughout this entire timeframe, and our analysis suggests a potentially continuous process of heat generation from radioactive elements that generates heat over extended periods.

“Moon rocks are a rarity, making it always exciting to acquire samples that stand out from the norm.”

“This specific rock presents new constraints on the timing and nature of volcanic activity on the moon.”

“We still have much to learn about the lunar geological history. Further analyses to trace surface origins will inform where future sample return missions might be directed.”

The researchers presented their results today at the Goldschmidt Conference 2025 in Prague, Czech Republic.

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Joshua F. Snape et al. Northwest Africa 16286: An investigation into the age and origin of new moon basalts. Goldschmidt Conference 2025

Source: www.sci.news

Efforts to Bridge the Gap Between Teens and Phone Experts Conclude in Debate

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Are teenagers at risk of harm from their smartphones? Experts disagree

Drazen Zigic/Getty Images

Efforts to achieve a scientific agreement concerning the potential risks associated with smartphones and social media among youth have sparked ongoing debates among researchers. This lack of consensus highlights the challenges policymakers face in relying on current evidence to regulate these technologies.

Valerio Capraro from Italy’s University of Milano Bicocca, alongside over 100 colleagues from various disciplines, has launched a “consensus statement” addressing the adverse effects of smartphone usage on teenagers. “Instead of prolonging the debate, we aimed to find common ground among different viewpoints,” Capraro explains.

The team evaluated 26 specific assertions concerning the impact of smartphone use on teens’ mental health. These included concerns that extensive mobile phone use may result in sleep deprivation and behavioral addiction, drawn from the book Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. While this work has significantly shaped discussions surrounding smartphones at New York University, it has also faced substantial criticism. Haidt is a co-author of the statement.

Researchers individually rated their agreement with each assertion and evaluated the robustness of the supporting evidence. Notably, 99% concurred that adolescent mental health has worsened significantly in the US, with similar trends observed in other Western nations. Additionally, 98% acknowledged a strong correlation between heavy smartphone use and sleep disorders. Over 94% identified specific challenges faced by young girls, such as peer comparison, pressure to appear perfect, and exposure to online sexual harassment.

Despite high agreement on these points, experts noted that the evidence merely indicates correlation and not causation. Many believe that further rigorous research, including longitudinal studies tracking smartphone users over time, is necessary to establish causality. In total, over 90% affirmed that there are issues affecting young people, yet only 52% supported implementing policy measures like age restrictions or limitations in schools.

Nevertheless, researchers argue that this does not justify inaction from policymakers. “While obtaining high-quality causal evidence for effective policymaking may take years, decision-makers often need to act quickly in a rapidly evolving landscape with limited data,” they emphasize.

However, scholars not involved in the consensus statement are challenging its findings. It has also drawn backlash over its stance on social media. For instance, Pete Etchells from Bath Spa University in the UK highlighted that out of the 288 invited experts, only approximately 120 engaged in the process. He suggests that those inclined to believe in the negative impact of smartphones are more likely to participate, potentially skewing the results. “I want to clarify the biases present in the expert dataset,” he notes. “I don’t believe this is intentional.”

Etchells, who has also authored a book on the topic, questions the selection process for the invited experts. Sonia Livingstone from the London School of Economics criticizes the chosen researchers for the consensus. “The extensive list was meant to ensure balance, but it predominantly reflects one side of the debate. If science lacks balance, it loses its integrity,” she argues.

Capraro defended the diversity of the panel, stating that “countless individuals are researching these topics worldwide,” making it impractical to reach out to all of them.

Concerns regarding participation have also arisen from Livingstone’s critiques. “The problem lies in the biased nature of the questions posed. They don’t consider,” she points out, “[whether] social media can enhance mental health, friendships, or a sense of belonging?” Capraro maintains that the study aimed to present as many perspectives as possible on this “highly debated topic.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Private Organizations Rise to Fill the Science Gap Left by Trump Administration Cuts

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Following the rejection of numerous authors by the Trump administration for the upcoming national climate assessment, two scientific organizations have embarked on initiatives to publish special collections of climate change research.

Earlier this week, researchers were informed that their contributions would no longer be needed for the national climate assessment.

The future of this assessment is uncertain, and some authors have voiced concerns that its integrity is compromised, lacking scientific rigor or the ability to adequately convey the risks associated with climate change.

Robert Kopp, a professor of Earth and Planetary Science at Rutgers University and one of the authors affected by the recent decisions regarding the National Climate Assessment, commented:

In response to the administration’s actions, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) announced on Friday their plans to curate a special collection focused on climate research, as stated in press releases from both organizations.

As per the news release, this collection will span over 20 peer-reviewed journals and aims to “sustain momentum” in the work relevant to the National Climate Assessment, in light of the author and staff rejections.

AGU President Brandon Jones noted in a statement that this special collection is not meant to serve as an “alternative” to the national climate assessment but represents “a unique opportunity to publish new research and reviews that could support climate assessments focused on the U.S.”

The White House has not commented on the rationale behind the rejection of National Climate Assessment authors or the administration’s plans moving forward.

The 1990 Global Change Research Act mandates the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) to submit reports to the President and Congress every four years, with national climate assessments previously satisfying this obligation. These reports summarize the best available science on climate change physics, its effects on the U.S., and societal adaptations. They also include localized climate forecasts for various regions to inform the public about community risks.

The latest assessment, published in 2023, comprised around 2,200 pages across 37 chapters. It highlighted that the lower 48 states have experienced an average warming of 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970, alongside increasingly severe weather events and costly disasters.

“If you’re a state official, business leader, or a member of the public looking to understand the impacts of climate change on the economy, coastal areas, or human health,” Kopp stated:

The National Climate Assessment is a culmination of the efforts of hundreds of researchers volunteering their time, although it is organized by USGCRP staff. In April, the White House ceased funding for this organization.

“I have no insight into the plan; I don’t think anyone does,” Kopp remarked. “They have let go of all the authors and staff of the Global Change Research Program, leaving some government positions currently unfilled.”

The USGCRP website currently states, “We are reviewing the operation and structure of USGCRP.”

Kopp mentioned that the authors of the National Climate Assessment had dedicated about a year to summarizing the chapters intended for their 2027 report and evaluating relevant themes. This summary has already been submitted for review to the federal agency, and the authors are now considering how best to proceed with it.

“We cannot replicate the NCA unless there is an organization prepared to take charge and staff up,” Kopp concluded.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

Key gap in pterosaur evolution filled by fossil dating back 150 million years

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New genus and species of monophenestratan pterosaur named Propterodacillus frankellae It documents the transition from the older rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs to pterodactyloids.

The holotype Propterodacillus frankellaeImage credit: Frederik Spindler, doi: 10.26879/1366.

Propterodacillus frankellae It lived about 150 million years ago, during the Kimmeridgian stage of the Late Jurassic Period.

This flying reptile had a moderately long skull, about 9 centimetres (3.5 inches) long, and an estimated wingspan of about 55 centimetres (21.7 inches).

This species also had a very short tail and a small but functional fifth finger with two phalanges.

Propterodacillus frankellae a kind of Monophenestratan (Monofenestrata) is a large group of pterosaurs that includes the family Turconopteridae and the suborder Pterodactyloidea.

“As the earliest actively flying vertebrate lineage, pterosaurs were highly successful in evolution throughout the Mesozoic Era.” Dr. Frederick Spindler “The dinosaur museum's Altmühlthal writes in the new paper:

“For most of the long history of research, every specimen could be classified as belonging to one of two major types: the more ancestral long-tailed Rhamphorhynchioidea and the derived short-tailed Pterodactyloidea.”

“The rare anurognathids, the only short-faced pterosaurs, have similarly short tails but otherwise look like rhamphorhynchids and are therefore generally thought to have been deep-nesting rhamphorhynchids.”

“True intermediate, and therefore plausible transitional, forms between the major types were unknown until the discovery of the Curculionoptera.”

The fossil, named the Painten protterosaur, was discovered beneath the Rigol limestone quarry near Painten in Bavaria, Germany.

The specimen consists of a complete and fully articulated skeleton with soft tissue remaining in the radial fibrils of the torso and wings.

“Propterodacillus frankellae It is contemporary with the oldest Archaeopteryx “It came from a nearby basin,” the paleontologists wrote in their paper.

According to Dr Spindler, the discovery fills one of the largest knowledge gaps in the evolution of pterosaur morphology.

“Propterodacillus frankellae “It's a near-perfect mix of rhamphorhynchoid, curcunopteroid and derived pterodactyloid pterosaur features,” he said.

“Similarities with the derived Pterodactyloidea include the shape of the skull and the short tail.”

“For example, the ancestral traits shared with the Turconogopteridae family are Propterodactyl The most distinctive features of this pterosauroidea animal are its functional fifth toe and long caudal snout.”

“Intermediate conditions apply for neck extension, metacarpal extension, and shortening of the fifth toe.”

of paper Published online in the journal Palenitrogy Electronica.

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Frederick Spindler. 2024. Pterosaur articulation from the Late Jurassic of Germany. Palenitrogy Electronica 27(2):a35; doi:10.26879/1366

Source: www.sci.news

The global gender gap in life expectancy is closing.

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Over the past few decades, both men and women have benefited from improvements in medical care.

ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy

Women have historically lived longer than men, but due to lifestyle changes, men may be gradually catching up.

Worldwide, The average human lifespan has increased Over the past century, this trend is expected to continue as countries become richer.Despite this increase, disparities remain persistent. Between the average lifespan of men and women.

You can learn more about david atance del olmo Researchers from the University of Alcalá in Spain analyzed mortality data from 194 countries from 1990 to 2010. These countries can generally be classified into five groups according to longevity trends.

The group with the highest life expectancy consisted of countries with the highest incomes, including Australia, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the rest of Western Europe. Rwanda and Uganda were the only groups with the lowest life expectancy.

Comparing the average life expectancy of men and women in these countries, men in Rwanda and Uganda experienced the largest increase in life expectancy, from just 30.85 years in 1990 to 45.22 years, an increase of 14.37 years in 2010. became. Life expectancy for women in these countries increased by just 0.94 years from 50.37 years to 51.31 years during this period.

Among the group with the longest life expectancy, the average life expectancy in 1990 was 4.84 years, favoring women. This decreased slightly to 4.77 years for her in 2010, but researchers predict that the gap will narrow further, reaching 3.4 years for him by 2030.

The researchers observed the same trends for three other groups of countries.

Although the researchers only looked at data through 2010, they expect similar trends to continue into the present. However, they acknowledge that COVID-19 may have had an impact on human life expectancy, particularly for men.

In recent decades, both men and women have benefited from medical advances and increased awareness of diseases such as AIDS, Del Olmo said. Smoking and alcohol-related deaths, which particularly affect men, were also down, which may have contributed to narrowing the gap in life expectancy between men and women, he said.

“This study is consistent with epidemiological trends that suggest global life expectancy is increasing and gender disparities are narrowing over time,” he says. Brandon Yang at the University of California, San Francisco.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Closing the Gender Pain Gap: A Call to Prioritize Women’s Health

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Our health care system has fundamental flaws that are negatively impacting women.

Systemic gaps and biases have led to women’s pain being less understood and therefore mistreated compared to men’s pain – a phenomenon known as the gender pain gap. This gender pain gap is only expanding, with 11% more women than men feeling their pain is ignored or dismissed compared to 7% in 2022, according to a recent report commissioned by Nurofen.

The report surveyed over 5,000 people, finding that women in the UK take longer than men to seek medical attention for the same type of pain. Additionally, less than half of the women surveyed were diagnosed within 11 months, compared with two-thirds of men. More women still had undiagnosed pain after 12 months or more. A third of women reported that their late diagnoses were due to medical professionals not listening, taking them seriously, or ignoring them.

Another study found that 50% of women feel their pain is ignored, particularly when it comes to menstrual health. Additionally, medical professionals often dismiss women’s symptoms as “normal” and attribute them to hormones and stress, leading to women’s pain being ignored and undermining their confidence and authority as patients.

These pain disparities contribute to a shorter healthy lifespan for women, given that they suffer from chronic conditions more than men.

Despite the complexity and multifactorial nature of the gender pain gap, women have historically been underrepresented in medical research and clinical trials, contributing to a lack of understanding of women’s healthcare needs and pain symptoms.

Women continue to struggle to have their pain taken seriously and treated appropriately, resulting in significant impacts on their lives and wellbeing.

About our expert Dr. Marike Bigg

Marike is a science writer with a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge. She argues that medicine is not gender-neutral, from research to diagnosis to treatment in her book, This Doesn’t Hurt: How Women Fail With Medications.

Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Adobe left with a big gap as $20 billion Figma deal falls through

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Adobe and Figma ended their $20 billion takeover dream this morning after regulators signaled tough times ahead. Figma still receives a $1 billion stipend as part of the deal, and as co-design lead, he should stand up well.

But it could be a different story for Adobe. They knew that the product they offered to compete with this company, XD, was not very strong, and they really wanted this company. They sought to use their corporate influence to seize advantageous aspects of their core creator businesses by acquiring market leaders.

But ultimately, the regulatory hurdles proved too much for them, and after more than a year of back and forth in regulatory meetings, both companies realized it wasn’t going to happen and decided to exit. decided.

Adobe put on a brave face their official statement, but I can’t help but be deeply disappointed with this result. “Adobe and Figma have shared a vision to jointly redefine the future of creativity and productivity, and we continue to leverage the huge market opportunity and mission to change the world through personalized digital experiences. We remain in a good position to do so.”

It’s not clear that Adobe could be in such a strong position without Figma, but it’s certainly true that Adobe is willing to pay a hefty price to have it under its wing. They were never able to convince regulators that this was not a blatant power grab by wealthy corporations to use their economic clout to take over the market.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s chief executive officer for competition, has made it clear that she believes this is just such an attempt. her official statement. “By merging these two companies, the proposed acquisition would end all current and stop all future competition between the two companies. Our thorough investigation shows that this We found that this could lead to higher prices, lower quality, or less choice for customers.”

Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research, says this is a major setback for Adobe, forcing it to return to its design collaboration tool, XD. “Adobe realized that in a world of Generative AI, the value is not in content creation, but in coordinating the work of content. This deal takes Adobe back two years and expands the reach of this important market. “This will give us an incentive to revamp XD to cover this,” he said.

Adobe General Counsel Dana Rao told TechCrunch in October that the company has largely dismantled its XD team and is fully committed to meeting its product needs with Figma. “We tried to get in there [collaborative design] I used XD but it failed. We abandoned the product. Basically, our annual revenue never exceeded $15 million to $17 million. “I think he’s down to five full-time employees, but they continue to work according to their contractual requirements,” he said. “So if we’re going to get into the product design space, for us it’s going to be acquiring Figma,” he said at the time.

On the plus side, the company now has a lot of cash on hand that it wouldn’t have had had the deal gone through, and it could probably put it to better use in a post-generation AI world. Brent Leary says. Co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials. “This deal was announced before ChatGPT, and the world has changed dramatically since then. And this could mean that Adobe could take back his $20 billion and adjust and shape the content creation process post-ChatGPT.” It might actually work better because of its gender,” he said.

Wang said the company may also consider acquiring other collaboration startups such as Milo, web flow or invision, which raised $476 million, $335 million, and $356 million, respectively (according to Crunchbase data). None of this would make him a perfect successor to Figma, but perhaps he could give the company a head start in the collaboration space without the kind of scrutiny it received in the Figma acquisition attempt. Sho.

Figma, for its part, hasn’t stopped since this deal was announced, moving forward and planning as an independent company. In fact, this startup has employed 500 people since September 2022. Additionally, we have developed new features including tools. For developers And we have a generative AI layer on top of the popular FigJam whiteboard tool.

John Lilly, an early investor in Figma, said he was enthusiastic about the company remaining independent. “This team is a very special team. Over the last 10 years, they have completely changed the way design works. And this market for designing products is much larger and growing faster.” Lilly told TechCrunch.

If he’s right, that’s exactly why Adobe wanted to buy the company. Now, with Figma continuing to operate on its own and a startup full of the same potential it had before the acquisition was announced in September 2022, Adobe will need to rethink its design collaboration strategy, and perhaps at this point You basically have to start from scratch, not in the position you were in.

Source: techcrunch.com