You’ll never know who spoke the first sentence or what they said, but you can have fun guessing. Perhaps they came from the mouths of Stone Age men who wanted to defeat their rivals and win the affections of young women. He may have crept up to his girlfriend, surreptitiously pointing at his competitors and whispering words in her ear that translated into English to mean “fuck you.”
Is it ridiculous? Not so, if we are guided by the work of linguist Liljana Progovac. She points out that Charles Darwin described language as “half art, half instinct,” but most who study the evolution of language have ignored the creative element. Her research addresses this issue by focusing on the wordplay involved in compound words such as shit-head, skin-flint, and lily-livered, many of which are now written as single words. I’m starting to fix it. She believes these are language fossils that point to a key stage in the evolution of language, the moment when humans realized they could string two words together to create very short sentences.
Moreover, after collecting examples of such phrases, Progovac noticed that they had something surprising in common. “They’re usually dismissive,” she says. And there may be evolutionary reasons for that.
Language is central to the human experience, but its ancient roots are difficult to study because it leaves no archaeological trace, at least until the invention of writing. Nevertheless, judging by the communication systems of other animals, our ancestors could use simple sounds and…
Sex in the future is expected to evolve due to technological advancements. While people will continue to engage in sexual activities, the reasons for doing so may change. The focus may shift from procreation through sex to other methods of reproduction, supported by emerging technologies.
In the past, reproduction mainly relied on natural processes like sexual intercourse. However, with the advent of artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization, the landscape of reproduction started changing. Now, with the development of in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) which involves creating eggs and sperm from skin cells, the possibilities are expanding further.
The idea of creating genetic parents from people of any age, including deceased individuals, raises ethical questions. The potential to generate eggs from male skin cells and vice versa could revolutionize reproduction. With advancements like creating embryos from the same person’s eggs and sperm, the concept of multi-parenting emerges, where genetic contributions come from multiple individuals.
Furthermore, the ability to modify fetal DNA through technologies like CRISPR opens up possibilities to prevent genetic diseases in offspring, although concerns about its misuse for enhancing abilities remain.
Technology Development
Artificial wombs are another field of research that could redefine reproduction. The concept of growing fetuses outside the human body challenges traditional pregnancy norms. While advancements in creating artificial wombs could benefit premature babies, the implications for society are vast. From potentially eliminating the need for pregnancy to growing organs like the uterus, the future of reproduction is full of possibilities.
The evolving landscape of reproductive technologies requires careful consideration of ethical implications and safety concerns. While these advancements offer exciting prospects, ensuring the well-being of babies and embryos remains a top priority in utilizing these technologies responsibly.
A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Reading and the University of Durham has revealed that the increase in relative brain size, known as encephalization, during the seven million years of human evolution was a result of incremental changes within individual species.
Modern humans, Neanderthals, and other recent relatives on the human family tree evolved large brains much more rapidly than earlier species. Image credit: SINC / Jose Antonio Peñas.
“One of the most striking evolutionary changes in human evolution, closely linked to the unique cognitive and behavioral characteristics of humans, is the increase in brain size,” explained lead author Thomas Puschel and his colleagues.
“The question of encephalization in human evolution has been a topic of debate, with various studies comparing the brain capacities of different hominin species and exploring adaptive mechanisms that might have influenced differences in brain size among hominins. Our research proposes
“Some argue for a gradual growth pattern over time, while others suggest a pattern of rapid increases followed by periods of stagnation.”
“Certain studies support a combination of both models, while others claim that they are indistinguishable.”
In their recent study, the authors compiled the largest dataset of ancient human fossils spanning seven million years and utilized advanced computational and statistical methods to identify gaps in the fossil record.
These innovative approaches have provided the most comprehensive understanding to date of the evolution of brain size over time.
“This study has completely altered our perception of how the human brain evolved,” noted study co-author Professor Chris Venditti.
“Previously, it was believed that brain size varied significantly between species, like upgrading to newer computer models.”
“However, our study reveals a pattern of steady, incremental ‘software updates’ occurring within each species over millions of years.”
This study challenges the traditional notion that certain species, such as Neanderthals, remained unchanged and were unable to adapt, suggesting instead that the increase in brain size was a gradual and continuous driving force in evolution. It underscores the significance of changes.
“Major evolutionary shifts do not always require dramatic events,” Pushel stated.
“They can result from making small incremental improvements over time, akin to the learning and adaptation processes observed today.”
The researchers also identified a notable pattern: larger-bodied species tend to have larger brains, but the variation observed within individual species does not consistently correlate with body size.
Hence, the evolution of brain size over long evolutionary timescales spanning millions of years has been influenced by factors distinct from those observed within individual species, underscoring the complexities of evolutionary pressures on brain size. It’s remarkable.
“The reasons behind the evolution of large brains in humans are a key aspect of human evolution,” added study co-author Dr. Joanna Baker.
“Through analyzing the brain and body sizes of various species over millions of years, we have demonstrated that the characteristic large brains of humans primarily emerged through gradual changes within individual species. This became evident.”of study On November 26, 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Thomas A. Puschel others. 2024. The increase in human brain size was revealed by intraspecific encephalization. PNAS 121 (49): e2409542121;doi: 10.1073/pnas.2409542121
Ancient footprints discovered in Kenya belong to two different species of human relatives who walked on the same ground at the same time, a study has found.
This coat of arms is thought to belong to the species Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei.
This discovery raised questions about what kind of relationship and interaction the two species had.
A newly discovered set of footprints in Kenya provides the first evidence that two different species of ancient human relatives walked on the same ground at the same time 1.5 million years ago.
Researchers involved in the discovery say the footprints belong to the species Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei, and were left within hours to days of each other, meaning that when the two crossed paths, reveals new mysteries about what happened.
According to research on this discovery, Published in Science on Thursdaythe footprints were buried in dry mud near a lake in northern Kenya, and were buried in deposits of prominent fossil sites. By analyzing the print shapes and strike patterns, the researchers found that the two sets were different. They concluded that the best explanation was that two different species left the footprints.
This research advances anthropologists and paleontologists’ understanding that ancient human relatives likely interacted and coexisted. This also raises the question of what kind of relationship these species had.
“We think these individuals, the two species that were there, were probably aware that there were members of another species nearby. They saw each other and thought each other was a member of another species. “This raises the question of what that interaction was,” said Kevin Hatala, an associate professor of biology at Chatham University and lead author of the study. “Were they competitors? Were they totally okay with each other there?”
Previously discovered fossil skeletons of Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei indicated that both species lived in the area at some point, but the new discovery provides evidence of a direct duplication.
Research team members excavate to reveal footprints. Neil T. Roach / Harvard University
It also shows that the two species walked on two legs in very different ways.
Although both Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei are related to humans, they have very different characteristics and their fates in the human evolutionary tree took very different paths.
Homo erectus had an anatomy similar to humans from the neck down. This species may have used stone tools and cooked over fire. Its members probably had a varied diet that included meat.
The species eventually spread to Asia, Indonesia, and other regions, and survived for more than a million years after the newly discovered footprints were made.It last appeared in the fossil record just over 100,000 years ago..
“Many have considered themselves to be as good candidates as our direct ancestors,” Hatala said. “They seem to be a very successful species.”
Paranthropus boisei, on the other hand, featured a smaller brain, huge masticatory muscles, and large molar teeth. William Harcourt Smith, an associate professor of anthropology at Lehman College who was not involved in the study, said the species eats difficult-to-eat foods like hard nuts or grinds hard, poor-quality foods like shrubs. It is highly likely that they evolved in this way.
This species did not persist on Earth as long as Homo erectus.
“They probably went extinct not very long after that, within the next few hundred thousand years,” Hatala said, referring to the time of the footprints. He added that no one knows exactly what happened, but it’s possible that environmental changes may have restricted the animal’s specialized diet.
The footprints were first discovered in 2021 at a site called Koobi Fora while researchers were excavating other fossils. This location has become a fossil hotspot. The uplifted rocks expose older sedimentary layers on the surface, giving researchers access to the bones of ancient humans and other animals.
The following year, researchers unearthed about a dozen footprints that appeared to be walking in a line, and later discovered other footprints running at right angles.
“We think these footprints were created in the mud of this lakeshore environment. Something happened that brought sediment on top of it. It could have been deposited by a small flood or by rising water levels. “It’s possible that something was brought in and the footprints were formed and quickly buried,” Hatala said.
The muddy footprints were not trampled by other animals and showed no signs of cracking before being buried in the sand. Researchers said that means they were separated from each other within hours or days.
“The sediment protected them, prevented them from cracking, and allowed them to remain in the geological record,” Hatala said.
He and his co-authors believe that the two species may have been able to coexist in this region because their diets were very different. It is possible that they competed for resources and were in a hostile relationship. This species appears to have lived in the same area for hundreds of thousands of years.
Harcourt Smith, a research paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, said the researchers’ analysis was sound and the site was unique.
“I want to emphasize how unusual it is that a site like this exists, how special it is, and the great opportunity we have to find out more,” he said.
Broadly speaking, over the past seven million years of evolution, it has become increasingly clear that different ancient human species interacted in different habitats, Harcourt-Smith added. The evolutionary path to modern humans is full of side branches and species, such as Paranthropus boisei, which represent evolutionary dead ends.
“Human evolution is complex and messy, and there are many experiments being done. It’s not a straight line,” he said.
Over the past few decades, scientists have developed genetic and archaeological evidence showing that: Humans, Denisovans, and Neanderthals overlapped and sometimes interbred. Although the new study does not mention interbreeding, it does provide a clearer picture that even older species overlapped and had more interactions than previously understood.
The researchers completed their work at the Koobi Fora site, photographing and recording the footprints in a variety of ways before concealing them for future generations, said Craig, another author of the research paper.・Mr. Feibel said.
“The footprints need to be carefully refilled with non-damaging sediment to prevent erosion,” he says.
Footprints thought to have been left by an individual of Paranthropus boisei
Neil T. Roach
Preserved footprints in Kenya appear to record two different species of ancient humans walking along the same muddy lake shore, perhaps within days of each other. This is one of the most dramatic pieces of evidence ever discovered that multiple human species once coexisted in the world.
“It's really unusual to find evidence of two different species walking on that surface,” he says. Kevin Hatala at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
footprints Discovered in 2021 Kobi Fora, Kenya, near the eastern shore of Lake Turkana. They were first discovered by team member Richard Loki. Turkana Basin Research Institute“Originally, there was a team of Kenyans working there,” Hatala says.
The researchers discovered a track consisting of 12 footprints preserved in a layer of dry sand and silt (see image above). This was apparently left behind by one person walking in a straight line. Near the main group were also three isolated prints that appeared to have been made by three different individuals. The lack of mud cracks or signs of overprinting with other tracks indicates that these prints were all made at about the same time. “These sites are probably capturing times ranging from minutes to days,” Hatala says.
This deposit was determined to be approximately 1.52 million years old. Isolated footprints are similar to footprints left by modern humans. Your heel touches the ground first, then your foot rolls forward and you push off with the sole of your foot. Hatala and his colleagues suggest that these may have been fabricated. homo erectusis known to have lived in this area.
In contrast, continuous trajectories were created by flatter-footed hominins. Hatala and his colleagues suggest that this could be Paranthropus boiseianother type of hominin that lived in this area.
The footprint fossil on the left, with its deeper heel marks, is thought to have been made by Homo erectus, and the more flat-footed fossil on the right is thought to have been made by Paranthropus boisei.
Kevin Hatala/Chatham
“With footprints, you can never be 100% sure who made them,” he says. Ashley Wiseman from University College London was not involved in the study but, H. erectus and P.Boisei. They are the only humans whose remains have been found preserved in this area, “so we can make an informed guess that it is these two individuals.”
If the track was really made by humans, P.Boisei Wiseman said the specimen appears to have been walking on two legs. The bones of the skull, arms, and legs are paranthropus“We've never found a skull associated with the rest of the skeleton,” she says, meaning little is known about their bodies beyond their heads, and the way they walk remains a mystery. The trajectory will be changed, saying, “This is clear evidence that it was walking on two legs.''
These two species were very different. H. erectus It was one of the earliest members of our genus, homo. They had larger brains than early humans and were the first clade to travel outside of Africa. in contrast, P.Boisey They had large teeth and jaws, small brains, and were apparently adapted to eating chewy foods like grasses and sedges.
Hatala and his team then looked at other known footprints found in the same area and at the same time and found that they appeared to match either species. “Similar patterns have been seen at other sites, which may span more than 100,000 years,” he says. “These two species appear to have coexisted with each other in this same familiar landscape for a very long time.”
“If they were able to coexist for more than 100,000 years, we speculate that there was probably a low to neutral level of competition,” Hatala says. Previous research suggests that the two people were eating different foods. Unlike P.Boisei, H. erectus It is thought that they had a varied diet, including hunting large animals.
“Both could carve out their own existence within this shared landscape,” Hatala says. Subsequent changes in the environment may have had an effect. P.Boisei Potentially extinct, yet more adaptable H. erectus Survived.
Scientific research revolves around solving complex problems, and so do computer games. In 2008, a group of scientists developed the first video game that allows non-scientists to aid research by solving puzzles based on real scientific data. That’s what they called the game foldit.
Since then, other scientists have developed similar games and contributed to fields such as genetics and physics. These games are collectively called: citizen science games Or CSG. Traditionally, researchers designed CSG games to focus on science elements rather than game elements. However, they report that this approach limits user engagement and primarily appeals to participants who already have a strong interest in science.
To overcome this challenge, a group of researchers from Switzerland, Canada, and the United States developed a CSG using game-first design principles. This means that they prioritized the entertainment aspect of the game before incorporating any scientific questions into it. They used this approach in their next game. borderlands science or BLS. The scientific objective of this game is to help researchers analyze the genome sequences of one million microorganisms from the human digestive system to understand their relationships and functions in human health. Scientifically, the analysis that the player was assisting with is called: Multiple sequence alignment.
The researchers used 953,000 sequenced fragments of genetic material called . 16S rRNA From human stool samples provided by participants. american gut project. These fragments are part of specific regions within the genome that are used to identify and compare different microorganisms. They first grouped the sequences into over 10,000 clusters, then removed outliers, and finally focused on a final set of 9,667 clusters for the game.
They designed puzzles for the BLS game based on sequences within these clusters. Players saw a grid of colorful bricks, each representing a DNA base such as A, T, C, or G. Their goal was to insert gaps between bricks based on unique patterns to improve matching and alignment of different colors and arrangements. – Matching skills used by humans when playing the game. Players had a limited number of moves, each level of the game had a score to clear before moving on to the next level, and players were challenged to find the best placement with as few moves as possible.
The researchers explained that they were not recruiting people to play the game. Instead, they released the game through an existing commercial video game called Borderlands 3. They noted that the game was released in 2020 and the data reported in the paper represents the first 16 months after release.
Researchers collected over 1.4 million puzzle solutions and filtered them based on how well they were ordered and how well they matched other players' solutions to keep only the highest quality ones. Ta. They combined the filtered solutions to create a composite alignment, which they used to construct a family tree showing the evolutionary relationships among gut microbes.
The team validated the results by comparing the alignment and tree to the results of existing alignment and tree construction methods. They showed that player-generated solutions outperformed these existing methods and improved their ability to infer microbial relationships. The researchers also investigated how BLS results can help detect meaningful biological patterns from these microorganisms.relationship. They reported that the BLS alignment grouped gut microbes based on several lifestyle factors, such as diabetes and alcohol intake, that influence the host's digestive health.
Researchers reported that more than 4 million participants have completed real-world scientific tasks since the release of BLS. This is a high retention rate compared to previous CSG efforts. They proposed that this BLS performance demonstrates that scientific tasks can be embedded within video games and achieve high levels of player engagement.
Additionally, the researchers sought feedback from players as part of the game's quality assurance. Players cited curiosity about science as the most common reason for participating. The team argued that a game-first design approach to developing citizen science games like BLS has benefits, including increasing scientific literacy among the public.
The researchers reported that BLS outperformed traditional sequence alignment methods in terms of scientific output without compromising data integrity. They concluded that the results showed that video games can provide the human resources needed to analyze vast amounts of genomic data that would otherwise be completed by small teams of scientists. Ta.
Bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice were used to estimate past temperatures
aldiami/Andreas Alexander/Alamy
Humankind has already caused around 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming since the start of the industrial revolution, according to new estimates based on temperature data collected from air bubbles trapped in ice.
Measuring anthropogenic global warming typically uses the period from 1850 to 1900 as a pre-industrial baseline. This is because this is the time when temperature records began. 2024 is almost certain to be the first year in which average temperatures rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above this baseline. This single-year data is influenced by naturally occurring factors such as the strong El Niño event, which has pushed up global temperatures.
When you remove this natural variation, scientists believe humans alone have caused 1.31°C of warming since the Industrial Revolution. But by 1850, the Industrial Revolution was already underway, and fossil fuel-powered engines were in use around the world.
Andrew Jarvis Lancaster University and Piers Foster Researchers at the University of Leeds, both in the UK, set out to establish a new pre-industrial baseline using data taken from Antarctic ice core samples. The pair analyzed the composition of air bubbles trapped in ice cores to establish atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from 13 AD to 1700, before humans significantly influenced atmospheric temperatures. This CO2 data was then used to establish the average global temperature over the same period, assuming a linear relationship between CO2 and temperature increases.
Using this new pre-1700 baseline, humanity has caused 1.49°C of warming by 2023, meaning the 1.5°C level has been “effectively reached,” the researchers say in their findings. It is written in the paper to be reported. “We have provided a new, scientifically defensible way to derive a pre-industrial baseline for measuring global warming,” Jarvis told reporters at a press conference.
Jarvis said the new method would also help reduce the uncertainty in temperature estimates based on the current 1850-1900 baseline used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Using ice core data to establish a baseline between 1850 and 1900, the researchers say humans caused 1.31°C of warming. This is consistent with existing median estimates, but the range of uncertainty is significantly reduced, the researchers note.
“The problem with just looking at surface temperature observations is that the further back in time you go, the more uncertain those observations become,” Forster says. “We are now much more confident than before that the current temperature is around 1.3°C.”
Jarvis and Forster hope their new method will be adopted by scientists and policymakers as the primary way to judge humanity's progress against global climate goals. “I think there is still room in the policy and scientific communities to rethink the pre-industrial baseline,” Jarvis said. “We know that the estimates for 1850 to 1900 incorporate warming, simply because that was not the beginning of the industrial revolution. We provide a way to operate from a secure baseline.”
However, new methods may not be future-proof. The linear relationship between CO2 concentrations and global temperatures is likely to break down as the climate changes. For example, if a so-called tipping point is triggered in the Earth system that triggers a series of warming events.
The new methods won't change the effects of climate change that are felt on the ground, Forster said. “The impact on human life from Spain and the hurricanes we are experiencing today is exactly the same whether you call it 1.3°C above pre-industrial levels or 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. is” . Influence is influence. ”
Richard Betts The Met Office, the UK's meteorological agency, said the new method “provides a clear and easy way to provide an up-to-date estimate of the current level of anthropogenic global warming”. Part of the reason is that it can produce “real-time” estimates of human-induced warming, rather than relying on 10-year moving averages as current estimates do.
He said the approach could help provide policymakers with a more up-to-date picture of current levels of warming, but changing the baseline used in the assessment would be an “objective” for climate action. It warned that it could be considered as “moving.'' “Even without changing the baseline, it is clear that current warming is much closer to 1.5°C than expected using older 10-year averages,” he says .
A new study led by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, Karolinska Institutet, and Linköping University has revealed a landscape view of the human sense of touch.
Somatosensory diversity arises from heterogeneous dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons. However, the cell body transcriptome, a key piece of information for deciphering the function of individual human (h)DRG neurons, is lacking due to technical difficulties. In a new study, Yu others. They isolated somatic cells from individual hDRG neurons and performed deep RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to detect an average of more than 9,000 unique genes per neuron, identifying 16 types of neurons.
Humans perceive touch, temperature, and pain through the somatosensory system.
The general understanding is that there are specific types of neurons for each type of emotion, such as pain, pleasant touch, or coldness.
But new research casts doubt on that notion and shows that bodily sensations are probably much more complex than that.
“Much of the knowledge we have today about how the nervous system works comes from studies of animals,” said Dr. Wenqing Luo of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues.
“But how similar are mice and humans, for example?”
“Many discoveries made in animal studies have not been confirmed in human studies.”
“One reason for this may be a lack of understanding of how it works in the human body.”
“We wanted to create a detailed atlas of the different types of neurons involved in somatosensation in humans and compare it with neurons in mice and the primate macaque.”
The study involved a detailed analysis of the genes used by individual neurons, so-called deep RNA sequencing.
Neurons with similar gene expression profiles were grouped as one sensory neuron type.
In this way, the researchers identified 16 unique human neuron types.
This study is the first to link gene expression and actual function in different types of neurons.
To investigate the function of neurons, the scientists used microneurography techniques to listen to the signals of one neuron at a time.
Using this technique, skin neurons in awake participants are exposed to temperature, touch, or certain chemicals, and individual neurons are “listened in” to determine how those particular neurons respond and send signals to the brain. You can find out if it is.
During these experiments, the authors made discoveries that would not have been possible if mapping the cellular machinery of different types of neurons had not given them new ideas for experiments.
One such discovery concerns a type of neuron that responds to pleasant touch.
The researchers discovered that this cell type unexpectedly responded to heat and also to capsaicin, the chemical that gives chili peppers their heat.
Scientists were surprised that the touch-sensing neurons responded to such stimuli, since their response to capsaicin is typical of pain-sensing neurons.
Additionally, this type of neuron also responded to cooling, even though it does not produce the only protein known to date that signals the perception of cold.
This finding cannot be explained by what is known about cellular mechanisms and suggests that there are other mechanisms for detecting colds that have yet to be discovered.
The authors speculate that these neurons form an integrated sensory pathway that produces pleasurable sensations.
“We have been listening to the neural signals from these neurons for 10 years, but we knew nothing about their molecular characteristics,” said Dr. Håkan Ólausson from Linköping University.
“This study shows us what kinds of proteins these neurons express and what kinds of stimuli they can respond to, and we can now make connections between them. Moving forward.”
Another example is a type of pain-sensing neuron that conducts very rapidly and has been shown to respond to non-painful cooling and menthol.
“There is a common understanding that neurons are very specialized: one type of neuron detects cold, another type detects specific vibrational frequencies, a third type responds to pressure, and so on.” said Dr. Saad Nagy, also from Linköping University.
“That's how people often talk about it. But it turns out it's much more complicated than that.”
So how do mice, macaques, and humans compare? How similar are we? Many of the 16 types of neurons the researchers identified in their study are largely similar across species.
The biggest difference they found was that conduction in pain-sensing neurons was much faster in response to stimuli that could cause injury.
Compared to mice, humans have more pain neurons, a type of neuron that sends pain signals to the brain at high speeds.
“Our study doesn't answer why this is the case, but we have a theory,” Dr. Ólausson said.
“The fact that pain signals are emitted at a much faster rate in humans compared to mice is probably just a reflection of their body size.”
“Mice don't need such rapid neural signaling. But in humans, the distances are longer and the signals need to be sent to the brain more quickly, before reacting and withdrawing.” You will be injured.”
Regarding this research, paper in diary natural neuroscience.
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H. Yu others. Utilizing deep sequencing of single cell somatic RNA to explore the neural basis of human somatosensation. nut neurosipublished online on November 4, 2024. doi: 10.1038/s41593-024-01794-1
The veil of mystery surrounding the Treasury Monument in Petra, Jordan has been lifted once again.
Beneath an ancient building carved out of rock, archaeologists discovered a hidden tomb containing 12 relatively well-preserved human bones and a vast array of grave offerings.
A similar tomb was discovered more than 20 years ago opposite the famous Treasury Building, also known as Al-Khazneh, one of the Seven Wonders of the World and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Earlier this year, a team of researchers received permission from Jordanian authorities to conduct a week of remote sensing in and around the Treasury, a city center hand-carved into the walls of a desert canyon by the Nabatean people.
“There was always the idea that there might be more graves, but no one has yet been found,” Richard Bates, a geophysicist and professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said in an email. “The hope was to find an intact grave.”
A joint Jordanian-American team, which also included the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and the Amman-based nonprofit American Research Center, used ground-penetrating radar to detect the cavity and pinpoint its location and depth. Instead of digging straight through, which would have cut through solid rock and damaged parts of the building, Bates said they carefully dug by hand into the cavity from the outside.
Richard Bates. Excavation at the Treasury. Kindly provided by Professor Richard Bates, University of St Andrews
Inside, in the original burial site, are 12 human bones, one of which is clutching the top of a broken pitcher, most likely dating from the 1st century BC. Bates said the bodies likely included both men and women and ranged in age from children to adults. Although that is not confirmed yet.
“No complete burial has ever been found here before, so this discovery could potentially tell us more about the Nabataean kingdom,” Bates said.
The discovery could also provide new insights into the Treasury itself, whose purpose is still unknown.
“Despite its fame, the Treasury Department remains a mystery to us in many ways,” Pierce Paul Creesman, director of the Center for American Studies, said in an email. “Anything we can do to understand it more deeply is important.”
Visited by more than 1 million visitors a year, the Treasury is the most famous of Petra’s iconic monuments. In Steven Spielberg’s 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, it was featured as the resting place of the Holy Grail in the film.
The newly uncovered tomb excavation was featured in a two-part episode of the American reality television series Expedition Unknown, which aired on the Discovery Channel.
Bates said there are signs of other cavities in the area that could be graves.
“It’s very likely that more will be discovered, so we need to get the funding back and continue the research,” he said.
Archaeologists excavating Tam Parin (Monkey Cave) in northeastern Laos have discovered some of the earliest fossil evidence homo sapiens Presence in mainland Southeast Asia.
Excavation survey at Thamparin in northeastern Laos. Image credit: Hernandez others., doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2024.108982.
“Using a technique known as microstratigraphy, we were able to reconstruct past cave conditions and identify traces of human activity in and around Tamparin,” said Flinders University's Ph.D. says. Candidate Vito Hernandez.
“This also helped us determine the exact conditions in which some of the earliest modern human fossils found in Southeast Asia were deposited at depth.”
Microstratigraphy allows scientists to study soils in minute detail, identifying structures and features that preserve information about past environments, as well as potential structures and features that were overlooked during the excavation process due to their small size. Even traces of sexual human and animal activity can be observed.
The hominin fossils discovered by archaeologists were deposited in Tamparin Cave between 86,000 and 30,000 years ago.
However, until now, no detailed analysis of the sediment surrounding these fossils has been conducted to understand how they were deposited in the cave or the environmental conditions at the time.
The new findings reveal that conditions within the cave varied dramatically, from a temperate climate with frequently wet ground conditions to a seasonally dry climate.
Dr Mike Morley from Flinders University said: “This environmental change would have affected the topography inside the cave and influenced how the deposits containing hominin fossils were deposited inside the cave.” said.
“How fast! homo sapiens The theory that they were buried deep inside the cave has long been debated, but our analysis of the sediments suggests that the fossils were pushed into the cave as loose sediment and debris that accumulated over time and were washed away by heavy rains. It has been shown that it was likely carried by water from the surrounding hillsides. ”
Researchers have also identified tiny traces of charcoal and ash preserved in the cave's sediments, indicating that forest fires occurred in the area during the dry season, or that humans visited the cave. This suggests that fire may have been used inside the cave or near the entrance. .
“With this study, our team gained unprecedented insight into the dynamics of our ancestors, who dispersed throughout Southeast Asia's ever-changing forest cover and during periods of regional climate instability.” ,” said Dr. Fabrice Demeter, a paleoanthropologist at the National Museum of Nature and Science. University of Copenhagen.
of result Published in a magazine dated October 10th Quaternary Science Review.
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VC Hernandez others. Late Pleistocene–Holocene (52–10 ka) microstratigraphy, fossil taphonomy, and depositional environment of Tam Parin Cave (northeastern Laos). Quaternary Science Reviewpublished online October 10, 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2024.108982
Can AI design chips that are more efficient than those made by humans?
Yuichiro Kayano/Getty Images
Google DeepMind says its artificial intelligence is already helping design chips used in data centers and even smartphones. But some chip design experts are skeptical of the company’s claims that these AIs can plan new chip layouts better than humans.
He said the new method, dubbed AlphaChip, can design “superhuman chip layouts” in hours, rather than relying on weeks or months of human effort. anna goldie and Azaria Mirhoseiniaccording to researchers at Google DeepMind. blog post. This AI approach uses reinforcement learning to figure out relationships between chip components and receives rewards based on the quality of the final layout. However, independent researchers say the company has yet to prove that such AI can outperform expert human chip designers or commercial software tools, and they say they are unable to demonstrate that such AI can outperform expert human chip designers or commercial software tools, and that they believe that current state-of-the-art The company hopes to test AlphaChip’s performance on public benchmarks that include cutting-edge circuit designs.
“If Google provides experimental results for these designs, we’ll be able to make a fair comparison, and we hope everyone will accept the results,” he says. patrick madden At Binghamton University in New York. “Experiments take a day or two to run at most, and Google has nearly infinite resources. The fact that these results aren’t being provided speaks volumes to me.” He declined to comment.
Google DeepMind’s blog post says: update Google for 2021 nature A journal paper about the company’s AI process. Since then, Google DeepMind says AlphaChip has helped design three generations of Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). TPUs are specialized chips used to train and run generative AI models for services such as Google’s Gemini chatbot.
The company also claims that its AI-assisted chip designs outperform those designed by human experts and are steadily improving. AI accomplishes this by reducing the overall length of wire needed to connect chip components. This could reduce the chip’s power consumption and increase processing speed. Google DeepMind also said AlphaChip created the layout for a general-purpose chip used in Google’s data centers, while also helping MediaTek develop a chip used in Samsung’s phones.
However, the code published by Google lacks support for common industry chip data formats, which suggests the AI method is currently more suited to Google’s own chips, it said. . Igor Markovchip design researcher. “We have no idea what AlphaChip is today, what it does or doesn’t do,” he says. “We know that reinforcement learning requires two to three orders of magnitude more computational resources than techniques used in commercial tools, and typically lags behind. [in terms of] result. “
Markov and Madden criticized the original paper controversial Claim that AlphaChip outperforms anonymous human experts. “Comparisons to unnamed human designers are subjective, non-reproducible, and very easily fooled. Although it is possible that the human designer is not trying hard enough or is underqualified. , there are no scientific results here,” says Markov. “Imagine if AlphaGo were reported to have won against an unknown Go player.”
In 2023, independent experts who reviewed Google’s paper revoked his nature An explanatory article that initially praised Google’s efforts. The expert is andrew kern At the University of California, San Diego, Public benchmarking efforts When we tried to replicate Google’s AI methods, we found that they could not consistently outperform human experts or traditional computer algorithms. The best approach was commercial software for chip design from companies like Cadence and NVIDIA.
“Reinforcement learning appears to lag significantly behind the state-of-the-art in every benchmark that would be considered a fair comparison,” Madden says. “I don’t think that’s a promising research direction when it comes to circuit placement.”
The so-called i-motif is a knot-like DNA structure that forms in the nuclei of human cells and is thought to provide important genome control. Garvan Institute of Medical Research Other studies have used immunoprecipitation and next-generation sequencing to identify i-motif structures in human DNA.
Peña Martinez othersIn total, we observed 53,000 i-motifs across three human cell lines (MCF7, U2OS, and HEK293T). Image courtesy of Peña Martínez. others., doi: 10.1038/s44318-024-00210-5.
The I motif is a DNA structure that differs from the iconic double helix shape.
These form when runs of cytosine letters on the same DNA strand pair up with each other to form a four-stranded twisted structure that juts out from the double helix.
In 2018, scientists at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research were the first to successfully directly visualize i-motifs inside living human cells, using new antibody tools they developed to recognise and bind to the i-motifs.
The new study expands on these findings by using the antibody to identify the location of i-motifs throughout the genome.
“In this study, we have mapped more than 50,000 i-motif sites in the human genome that are found in all three cell types we looked at,” said Professor Daniel Crist from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, lead author of the study.
“This is a surprisingly high number for a DNA structure whose presence in cells was once a matter of debate.”
“Our findings confirm that the i-motif is not just an object of laboratory study, but is widespread and likely plays an important role in genome function.”
The researchers found that i-motifs are not scattered randomly, but are concentrated in important functional regions of the genome, including those that control gene activity.
“We found that the i-motif is associated with genes that are highly active at specific times in the cell cycle,” said lead author Cristian David Peña Martinez, PhD, also of the Garvan Medical Institute.
“This suggests that it plays a dynamic role in regulating gene activity.”
“We also discovered that i-motifs are formed in the promoter regions of cancer genes. For example, MYC Oncogenes encode one of cancer’s most notoriously ‘untreatable’ targets.”
“This opens up exciting opportunities to target disease-related genes through i-motif structures.”
“The widespread presence of the i-motif near these 'holy grail' sequences implicated in hard-to-treat cancers opens up new possibilities for novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches,” said study co-author Sarah Kummerfeld, PhD, a researcher at the Garvan Medical Institute.
“It may be possible to design drugs that target the i-motif to affect gene expression, potentially expanding current treatment options.”
Christian David Peña Martinez othersi-motif structures are widely distributed in human genomic DNA. Embo JPublished online August 29, 2024, doi: 10.1038/s44318-024-00210-5
South American lungfish probably has a lot of 'junk' DNA
Katherine Segers/Louisiana State University
The largest sequenced genome on record, containing 90 billion DNA letters, belongs to a South American lungfish.
“Obviously, making this happen was a technical challenge,” he said. Axel Meyer “This is the largest animal genome ever found,” said researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany.
South American lungfish (Lepidosiren paradoxaThere are two copies of the human genome, with a total of 180 gigabases (Gb) of DNA, which would stretch to 55 metres if laid out in a line – 30 times the amount of DNA found in a single human cell (6 Gb).
The South American lungfish has 19 chromosomes, 18 of which are larger than a single copy of the human genome, Meyer said.
His team also sequenced a single copy of the 40 Gb African lungfish genome (Protopterus annectens), the researchers have now sequenced all six species of lungfish found around the world, all of which have unusually large genomes.
“It's really puzzling how these fish can tolerate such large genomes,” Meyer says. The nucleus in each cell must be very large to accommodate so much DNA, meaning each cell is larger than normal, he says. Replicating that much DNA also requires a lot of energy with each cell division.
There's no evidence that this extra DNA does anything useful. Rather, it appears to be the result of a “genetic parasite” replicating itself endlessly. It's probably mostly junk, Meyer says.
His team found that mechanisms that other organisms use to limit the spread of genetic parasites appear to be damaged or missing in all lungfish species, resulting in the South American lungfish genome growing by 3.7 Gb every 10 million years – more than one copy of the human genome.
The reason for sequencing all lungfish species is to get a better understanding of what their common ancestor was like, a close relative of the lungfish that evolved into the first tetrapod land animal.
“Of all fish, lungfish are our closest relatives,” Meyer says. As their name suggests, lungfish breathe air and would drown without it.
They can also live for more than 100 years and regrow fins and tails, Meyer said, and his team hopes to figure out how they do this.
Some plant genomes are even larger than that of the South American lungfish: a small fern found on several Pacific islands is thought to have 321 Gb of DNA per cell, but there are no plans to sequence it.
Is it in the way we live, laugh, love? Or is it our aversion to clichés? Deep inside each of us, there must be something that makes us human. The problem is, after centuries of searching, we haven’t found it yet. Maybe it’s because we’ve been looking in the wrong places.
Ever since researchers began unearthing ancient hominin bones and stone tools, their work has held the tantalizing promise of pinpointing the long-ago moment when our ancestors transformed into humans. Two of the most important fossil discoveries in this quest reach an important milestone this year: 100 years since the first “near-human” was found. Australopithecus Fossils have been discovered in South Africa that have upended previous ideas about human origins, and it’s been 50 years since the most famous fossil was found. Australopithecus Lucy, also known as humanity’s grandmother, emerged from the dusty hills of Ethiopia, and the two fossils have led researchers to believe they can pinpoint humanity’s Big Bang, the period when a dramatic evolutionary wave led to the emergence of humans. Homo.
But today, the story of human origins is much more complicated. A series of discoveries over the past two decades has shown that the beginning of humanity is harder to pinpoint than we thought. So why did it once seem like we could define humanity and pinpoint its emergence, thanks to Lucy and her peers? Why are we now further away than ever from pinpointing exactly what it means to be human?
I lost to a cyborg. When I played the online game WebGrid, using my finger on my laptop’s trackpad to click squares that appear unpredictably on a grid, I was able to beat him at 42 beats per minute. When Noland Arbaugh, a self-described cyborg, played the game, using a chip implanted in his brain to send telepathic signals to a computer, his speed was 49.
Arbaugh was paralyzed from the neck down in 2016. In January, he became the first person to be surgically implanted with a chip made by Neuralink, a company founded by Elon Musk. Since then, Arbaugh has been able to use his mind to control his phone and computer, surf the web, and play games. civilization And chess.
But Neuralink is not the only company using brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to blend the human brain with machines. Thanks to a series of trials, many people paralyzed by spinal cord injuries, strokes and movement disorders are regaining lost abilities. These successes have surprised some researchers, says Jamie Henderson, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University in California. “It’s been an incredible advance.”
Where that will take us remains to be seen. Musk recently mused about developing bionic implants that could compete with artificial superintelligence. Others see deeper implications: “In the future, we will be able to manipulate human perception, memory, behavior and identity,” says Rafael Yuste of Columbia University in New York.
But while BCIs are undoubtedly impressive, as Arbaugh’s WebGrid scores show, the relationship between brain activity, thoughts, and behavior is incredibly complex. Memory…
East Africa contains the world’s most complete record of human evolution, yet scientists know little about how long-term biogeographic dynamics in the region have influenced human diversity and distribution.
An artist’s depiction of early human habitation in Tanzania 1.8 million years ago. Image courtesy of M. Lopez-Herrera / Enrique Baquedano / Olduvai Paleoanthropology and Paleoecology Project.
In the new study, Dr. Ignacio Razaga-Baster from the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (CENIEH) and his colleagues focused on the mammal fossil record of the East African Rift Valley.
“The Late Cenozoic fossil beds of the East African Rift Valley provide the world’s richest, longest and most continuous record of human evolution and its environmental context,” the authors explained.
“As such, the human and faunal records of East Africa have been central to understanding the factors that shaped human evolutionary history.”
“Our study provides a new perspective on how climatic and environmental changes over the past six million years have influenced mammal and human evolution,” Dr Razaghabastar said.
“This study particularly highlights how biotic homogenization – the process by which the faunas of different regions become more similar in composition – has been an important factor in the evolution of ecosystems and the species that live in them.”
“Beta diversity analysis, which shows the relationships between regional and local biodiversity, allows us to trace how changes in vegetation and climate have driven patterns of dispersal and extinction over time.”
The team found that faunas from the Late Miocene and Pliocene (approximately 3 million to 6 million years ago) were primarily made up of endemic species.
The shift towards biotic homogenization, or faunal homogenization, began around 3 million years ago with the loss of endemic species within functional groups and an increase in the number of grazing species shared between regions.
This important biogeographic transition coincides closely with the regional expansion of ecosystems dominated by grasses and C4 grasslands that thrive better in warmer, drier climates.
These environmental changes directly affected the feeding and migration patterns of humans and animals that shared the habitat.
“We are certain that hominoids, like other East African mammals, were influenced by many factors. This study offers a new perspective on the link between environmental and human evolutionary change and, through an integrated approach, provides a framework for future research and to test the hypothesis that hominoids adapted to their environment,” Dr Razaghabastar said.
of study Published in the journal on July 15, 2024 Natural Ecology and Evolution.
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J. Rowan othersLong-term biotic homogenization in the East African Rift Valley during the past 6 million years of human evolution. Nat Ecol EvolPublished online July 15, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41559-024-02462-0
When chimpanzees socialize, they exchange gestures at a rate similar to how humans converse.
The researchers surveyed five wild chimpanzees.Pan troglodytesThe researchers studied 8,559 gestures made by 252 chimpanzees across chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) communities in East Africa — one of the largest studies of its kind. They recorded face-to-face interactions between the apes, recording the timing of one chimpanzee's gestures relative to those of the other.
An analysis of the ape “conversations” found that chimpanzees' signaling intervals are remarkably similar to human interactions, and even a little faster: “On average, it takes 120 milliseconds between the end of one gesture and the start of the next,” the researchers say. Gal Badig “In humans, the average is about 200 milliseconds, so this is very close,” said researchers at the University of St Andrews in the UK.
All chimpanzee groups responded quickly, but the exact timing varied from group to group: for example, chimpanzees from Sonso, Uganda, took a few milliseconds longer to return the gesture than the other chimpanzee groups studied.
Such differences in timing exist in human languages too. For example, Japanese speakers generally Faster turn changes Japanese people have a different conversational style than Danish speakers. “We don't know exactly why,” says Vadig. “As with humans, we don't know if it's a cultural difference, something we've learned over time, or a reaction to our environment.”
Chimpanzees interacting in the Budongo Forest in Uganda
Adrian Soldati
Only 14 percent of the interactions the researchers observed between chimpanzees involved any kind of interaction. Most consisted of a single gesture, such as “go away” or “follow me,” in which the other person ran away or followed. But interactions were more frequent when the chimpanzees were negotiating over food or grooming.
“What's really exciting about this study is that it shows that communication is a cooperative, socially engaged process in non-human animals,” Budig says, “and that the processes involved in human language may have actually evolved much earlier than we thought.”
No one doubts that Albert Einstein had a brilliant mind, but the Nobel Prize winner famous for his theories of special and general relativity wasn’t blessed with a big brain. “Jeremy DeSilva at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.”
This seems surprising. Big brains are a defining feature of human anatomy, something we are proud of. Other species may be faster or stronger, but we thrive using the ingenuity that comes from our big brains. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves. Einstein’s brain suggests that the story is not so simple. And recent fossil discoveries bear this out. In the past two decades, we’ve learned that small-brained hominin species persisted on Earth long after species with larger brains emerged. Moreover, there is growing evidence that they were behaviorally sophisticated. For example, some of them made complex stone tools that could only have been made by humans with language.
These findings turn questions about the evolution of the human brain upside down: “Why would large brains be selected for when humans with small brains can survive in nature?” says DeSilva. Nervous tissue consumes a lot of energy, so large brains must have undoubtedly provided an advantage to the few species that evolved them. But what was the benefit?
The answer to this mystery is beginning to emerge. It appears that brain expansion began as an evolutionary accident that then led to changes that accelerated brain growth. Amazingly, the changes that drove this expansion also explain the recent 10 percent shrinkage of the human brain. What’s more, this suggests that our brains could shrink even further, potentially causing our demise.
TThe notion that highly intelligent robots are extraterrestrial intruders “coming to steal our jobs” reveals significant flaws in our understanding of work, value, and intelligence itself. Work is not about competition and robots are not separate entities competing against us. Just like any other technology, robots are an extension of humanity, emerging from our society much like hair and nails grow from living organisms. Robots are an integral part of our species, blurring the lines between man and machine.
When we treat fruit-picking robots as the “other,” viewing them as adversaries in a zero-sum game, we overlook the real issue at hand: the dehumanization of workers who previously harvested fruit. These individuals were deemed dispensable by farm owners and society when they were deemed unfit for their jobs. This indicates that these human workers were already being treated as non-human entities, akin to machines. With the existing disconnect between individuals, seeing machines as alien entities only exacerbates the problem.
Many concerns regarding artificial intelligence stem from outdated traditions that highlight dominance and hierarchy. However, the narrative of evolution emphasizes cooperation, enabling simpler organisms to come together and create more complex and enduring structures. This collaborative approach has driven the development of eukaryotic cells, multicellular organisms, and human societies. Mutualism has been crucial in enabling progress and scalability.
As an AI researcher, my focus lies not on the “artificial” aspect of AI – computers – but on intelligence itself. Regardless of its form, intelligence thrives on scale. A significant milestone in 2021 was the development of the “Language Model for Dialogic Applications” or “LaMDA,” demonstrating the importance of scale in intelligence. State-of-the-art AI models have since grown exponentially in complexity and efficacy. This trend towards larger models mirrors the evolutionary growth in human brain size and social cooperation.
Human intelligence is a collective endeavor, drawing upon the collaboration of individuals, plants, animals, microbes, and technologies. Ignoring the contributions of these diverse entities and technologies reduces us to mere brains devoid of physicality. Our intellect continues to evolve and expand, becoming increasingly distributed and interconnected. Embracing this broader definition of “human” can aid us in navigating global challenges and fostering collective intelligence.
The concerns surrounding AI dominance are rooted in historical narratives of hierarchy and control. AI models exhibit intelligence comparable to human brains without the need for status-driven competition. These models rely on a symbiotic relationship with humans and the broader ecosystem, signaling a shift towards collaborative intelligence rather than hierarchical dominance.
The narrative surrounding robots as potential threats reflects deep-seated fears of domination and competition. However, the true threat to societal order stems from human inequality rather than robotic interference. Recognizing our interdependence with all beings – humans, animals, plants, and machines – can pave the way for a more harmonious and cooperative future.
The ancient Maya civilization of Central America has captivated researchers for centuries with its amazing astronomical calendar and impressive step pyramids.
Along with their rich culture, they are also connected with a darker aspect: human sacrifice. Recent studies reveal that this is indeed a grim reality.
New genetic analysis from the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza indicates that many of the sacrificial victims were children, with a high number being identical twins.
El Castillo, also known as the Temple of Kukulkan, is the centerpiece of the Chichen Itza ruins in the Yucatan state of Mexico. – Image credit: Johannes Krauss
Published in the journal Nature, the research looked at human remains found in a xultun near the Sacred Cenote.
Radiocarbon dating suggests that the chultun was used between the 7th and 12th centuries AD.
“All individuals in the chultun were children aged three to six,” explained Dr. Rodrigo Barquera, the lead author of the study.
Genetic evidence showed that all 64 individuals tested were male, with about 25% being closely related, including two sets of identical twins.
The occurrence of male identical twins in such a small sample size is unusual.
Barquera noted that twins held significance in Mayan mythology, especially the story of heroic twins defeating the king of the underworld.
This suggests that sacrificing identical male twins was a way to honor the hero twins’ existence.
Detail of the reconstructed stone tzonpantli (skull house) at Chichen Itza. – Image courtesy of Christina Wariner
While this may not have been favorable for identical twins in Maya culture, it was a great honor for their families.
Barquera and his team aim to validate their findings by comparing them with other archaeological sites.
About our experts
Rodrigo Barquera is a postdoctoral researcher in the Archaeogenetics department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. He has authored numerous research papers published in esteemed journals like Nature and Nature Communications Biology.
Have you ever experienced this feeling before? On a blazing hot day, the desire to plunge into a cool stream of water intensifies by the minute. The water appears pristine, clear, and incredibly refreshing. However, in reality, it could be extensively contaminated.
Even the purest rivers can harbor harmful bacteria, including fecal bacteria originating from livestock manure and human waste.
In a recent announcement, the Designated bathing area in the UK, a favored holiday spot, has been a subject of concern due to issues such as being submerged in sewage and incidents of rowers contracting E. coli infections. To address these concerns, we consulted with water and sanitation expert Professor David Werner to provide essential information for safely enjoying wild swimming this summer.
Werner’s research delves into treated sewage, stormwater (untreated sewage overflows following heavy rains), and occasionally illegal sewage disposal in dry weather. These factors impact both human health and ecosystem health. While human waste is discharged into oceans, rivers tend to exhibit higher concentrations of human waste and the accompanying harmful bacteria due to lower dilution levels compared to water bodies, increasing the risk of exposure to harmful substances.
(Notably, a microbiology professor, William Gays, mentioned in BBC Science Focus that rivers have only recently been subjected to the same microbial testing as coastal waters. Moreover, wastewater discharged into the ocean is often subjected to more stringent treatment standards than rivers, including ultraviolet disinfection.)
The following guidelines mainly focus on rivers but are also relevant for coastal swimming activities.
The key takeaway? Avoid swimming after rainfall.
How do diseases enter rivers, and what is the risk of swimming in them?
Fecal contamination doesn’t always mean significant. The majority of people’s stool contains beneficial bacteria essential for our health. However, the stool of an ill individual harbors bacteria responsible for the illness, potentially leading to disease transmission.
According to Warner, the risk of contracting a disease from a river is relatively low, but it escalates if you ingest river water (discouraged but not impossible).
This can result in unpleasant symptoms like infections and diarrhea. The worst-case scenario involves acquiring antibiotic-resistant bacteria, an eventuality deemed highly improbable by Warner.
So, should one abstain from wild swimming altogether? Ultimately, it boils down to whether you are willing to accept the (generally minimal) risk for the mental health benefits, as Warner highlights.
“There is no such thing as absolute safety or zero risk,” he states. “Each time we embark on a car journey, we weigh the trip’s advantages against the accident risks. Similarly, outdoor recreation offers significant mental health perks, particularly for urban dwellers.”
How to safeguard yourself from sewage while swimming
Warner and his team are currently devising a device capable of swiftly testing water for contaminants, akin to a lateral flow corona test, though substantial research is required to materialize this concept.
Until this technology is available, several straightforward methods can help identify sewage presence while swimming in rivers this summer. Here are Warner’s recommendations:
1. Choose your spot wisely
According to Werner, it is crucial to avoid swimming downstream from a sewage treatment plant under any circumstances. While untreated sewage overflows are a common concern, treating sewage does not completely eradicate the risks; it merely diminishes them.
“Treating wastewater significantly reduces the levels of harmful bacteria, possibly by a factor of 1,000, but it doesn’t eliminate them,” Werner explains.
“Hence, if a location is situated immediately downstream of a treatment plant discharge point, one can expect a consistent presence of fecal bacteria due to the continuous discharge.”
Individuals can consult the “Poop Map” and trace their local river upstream to identify any treatment facilities along the route.
2. Check the poop map
UK organizations such as Rivers Trust and Surfers Against Sewage have developed an interactive map showcasing regular treated sewage discharges and anticipated untreated sewage overflows across the UK in 2023.
To locate a wastewater treatment plant on The Rivers Trust map, click the yellow square corresponding to your area or tap the brown circle icon, peruse the cards to pinpoint locations. The phrase “Sewage Discharge – Final/Treated Effluent – Water Companies” typically indicates a wastewater treatment facility.
The Rivers Trust’s interactive wastewater map displaying treated and untreated sewage discharge locations into UK rivers in 2023. – Image credit: Rivers Trust
This year, the charity integrated near real-time data into its maps. “This marks a significant advancement for individuals seeking real-time updates,” remarks Warner. “We strongly recommend utilizing these online resources, offering current information.”
Presently, individuals can ascertain if sewage has been discharged within the last 24 hours, albeit inland data is exclusive to designated bathing locations and rivers within the Thames Basin (Northumbrian Water also provides a County-level map while coastal regions are included).
3. Monitor the weather
Despite the allure of swimming on a sunny day, verify there hasn’t been rainfall for a few days. Swimming post-rainfall significantly heightens the possibility of encountering contaminated water due to sewer overflows and increased water release during heavy downpours.
To compound matters, even as a dry spell seems to prevail and swimming appears safe, hidden risks could lurk upstream. Thunderstorms can unleash localized rainfall, implying that upstream areas may experience heavy showers despite sunshine at your location.
4. Steer clear of small rivers
In addition to potentially turbid waters, small rivers tend to exacerbate the situation as sewage, whether treated or untreated, is less diluted in these settings.
Warner adheres to a safety benchmark stipulating that raw sewage minimal dilution should be 1,000 times for paddling and over 10,000 times for swimming. While calculating these dilution levels is not advised, the underlying principle is straightforward: “A large river with vigorous flow signifies ample dilution,” Werner asserts.
Nonetheless, disparate river segments need not cause undue concern: while one side may seem stagnant relative to the center, the water mixes uniformly.
5. Keep tabs on the paper trail
Exhibit prudence: refrain from swimming if toilet paper is visible. Alarming indicators surpass toilet paper and include wet wipes and sanitary pads crafted from plastic materials that should not be flushed but often are.
According to Werner, unlike toilet paper and human excrement, these items do not disintegrate in swiftly moving waters.
6. Stay informed
“After frolicking in the river, diligently cleanse yourself. Embrace standard personal hygiene,” stresses Werner.
About our experts
David Warner serves as a Professor of Environmental Systems Modelling at Newcastle University. Previously, his research concentrated on sanitation and water quality in low-income countries by utilizing DNA sequencing and assessing microbial hazards in rivers. During travel restrictions amid the pandemic, he shifted his focus to the UK’s rivers. His research on post-rain fecal bacteria levels has been documented in various journals such as Water Science and Technology, Comprehensive Environmental Science, and Environmental Pollution.
William Gays, a Professor of Microbiology at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health within the University of Exeter’s Medical School, conducts research published in journals like International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, Food and Environmental Virology, and Water Research.
Researchers say smiles made from living human skin could one day be attached to humanoid robots, allowing the machines to emote and communicate in a more lifelike way – and the wrinkles could even be useful for the cosmetics industry.
The living tissue is a mixture of human skin cells grown on a collagen scaffold, then placed on a 3D-printed resin base. Unlike previous similar experiments, this skin also contains the equivalent of ligaments, which are embedded in the layers of tissue beneath the skin of humans and other animals and hold the skin in place, giving it incredible strength and flexibility.
Michio Kawai The Harvard researchers call their ligament equivalents “perforated anchors” because they were made by drilling holes in the robot's plastic base and filling the tiny V-shaped cavities with tissue, which helps the robot's skin stay in place.
The team attached the skin to a smiling robotic face a few centimeters wide, which could be moved by rods attached to a base, and to a similarly sized 3D shape in the shape of a human head (see below), which could not be moved.
“As the roles required of robots expand due to developments in AI technology and other factors, the functions required of robot skin are also starting to change,” Kawai said, adding that having human-like skin could make communication between robots and humans smoother.
3D head shape covered with living skin
Takeuchi et al. (CC-BY-ND)
The research could also have unexpected benefits for the cosmetics industry: In tests, the researchers made the tiny robot's face laugh for a month and found that they could replicate the formation of expression wrinkles on the skin, Kawai says.
“If we can reproduce wrinkle formation on a palm-sized research chip, it could also be used to test new cosmetics and skincare products aimed at preventing, delaying or improving wrinkle formation,” said Kawai, who conducted the research while at the University of Tokyo.
Of course, this skin still lacks some of the functionality and durability of real skin, Kawai says.
“They have no sensing capabilities and no blood vessels to provide them with nutrients and water, so they cannot survive long in air,” he says. “To address these issues, our current challenge is to incorporate neural mechanisms and perfusion pathways into the skin tissue.”
Walking on hot red sand is hard work, especially when the temperature exceeds 40°C (104°F). After about 40 minutes you are soaked, dehydrated and exhausted. It is hard to imagine doing this for 40 days with all your gear, including 40 liters of water for five days, on a two-wheeled trolley. But that is exactly what my traveling companions did.
I'm in the Nahud Desert, a vast expanse of sand and rocky wilderness in northern Saudi Arabia, to experience the almost unbearable heat and meet up with 20 other people who are part of an expedition. Deep ClimateHe is dedicated to understanding how humans respond to extreme situations. “The aim is to study how humans adapt to new kinds of environments,” he says. Christian Clotteleader of the expedition and director of the French Institute of Human Adaptation.
This problem becomes even more pressing as the climate gets warmer: even in the most optimistic scenarios, heatwaves exceeding 40°C, as observed in southern Europe and across the United States over the past few months, will become the norm in many parts of the world.
So the question of what happens to our brains and bodies, and how well the human physiology can handle extreme heat, is a question that matters to millions of people. “We're going to see large swaths of densely populated areas rise to unprecedented temperatures that nobody has seen in historical climates,” he said. Tim Renton He is a researcher at the University of Exeter in the UK and recently co-authored a research paper titled “…
The ancient Maya civilization of Central America has fascinated scholars for centuries with its incredible astronomical calendar and magnificent step pyramids.
But alongside their glorious culture, they are also associated with another dark cultural phenomenon: human sacrifice. And according to recent research, very It's certainly dark.
New findings from an analysis of ancient DNA from the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza suggest that many of those sacrificed were children, including a high proportion of identical twins.
El Castillo, also known as the Temple of Kukulkan, is the centerpiece of the Chichen Itza ruins in the Yucatan state of Mexico. – Image credit: Johannes Krauss
Published in a journal NatureThe study looked at human bones found in a xultun, or underground cistern, located near a large sinkhole known as the Sacred Cenote.
Radiocarbon dating (when scientists use decaying radioactive carbon to estimate the age of organic remains) suggests that the chultun was used between the early 7th century AD and the mid-12th century AD.
“The only people in Chultung were children between the ages of three and six.” Dr. Rodrigo BarqueraThe lead author of the study is BBC Science Focus“Until now, we haven't had the opportunity to report the sex of these individuals because when they are that young, you can't determine their biological sex based on the bones alone.”
Moving quickly on from how bleak a hole filled with 100 children looks, DNA evidence revealed that all 64 people tested were male, and about 25% were close relatives, including two sets of identical twins.
The chance of having identical twins is about 1 in 250, so two sets of male twins in such a small sample size is unusual.
Barquera explained that twins had a special meaning to the Mayans because one of their most important myths involves heroic twins who defeat the king of the underworld.
The team believes that unlike other sacrificial rituals that were intended as offerings, the sacrifice of identical male twins may have been undertaken to honour the existence of hero twins.
Detail of the reconstructed stone tzonpantli (skull house) at Chichen Itza. – Image courtesy of Christina Wariner
While that's not great news for identical twins in Mayan culture, as Barquera says, it would have been a huge honor for the family: “It was more like, 'Wow, the gods or the powers that be have chosen us to be the guardians of these children who will one day participate in this magical ceremony.'”
“We know this because the site has been there for over 500 years. This isn't something that happened once or twice; it's been a widely held belief for at least five centuries,” he said.
Next, Barcela and his team hope to confirm their findings by comparing them with other similar archaeological sites.
About our experts
Rodrigo Barquera He is a postdoctoral researcher in the Archaeogenetics department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. He has authored nearly 200 academic research papers, which have been published in such renowned journals as: Nature and Nature Communications Biology.
Studying corpses can provide valuable insights. Observing the decomposition process can enhance our knowledge of the nuances involved, aid in locating and identifying the deceased more accurately, and help determine the time of death.
Following death, the body undergoes a breakdown into simpler organic matter through biological and chemical processes. The duration of this process varies from weeks to years depending on several factors.
Chemical reactions in decomposition accelerate with rising temperatures. Conversely, bodies can remain relatively “fresh” for longer in cold conditions or during winter. Certain factors, like burial or placing the body in a coffin, can slow down decomposition. Insecticides near bodies may not deter insects but can delay their arrival, thus slowing decomposition indefinitely.
A study from Australia’s first ‘body farm’ revealed surprising movement in corpses during decay. Limbs, including arms, were seen to change positions even in advanced decomposition stages. Researchers suggest this movement is linked to the decomposition process as the body mummifies and ligaments dry out.
Stage 1: Rigor begins
The “fresh” phase lasts from days to a week. Pallor after death, where the body turns blue due to poor circulation, is the first visible change. Rigor mortis sets in approximately 2 to 6 hours after death, stiffening the body, then dissipates around 36 hours later.
If left unattended, insects arrive shortly after death, typically within 10 minutes.
Stage 2: Bloating
When gut bacteria multiply due to lack of control, they produce gas that causes bloating. In warm climates, bloating can occur within 2-3 days.
Stage 3: Skin falls off
Internal pressure causes fluid to push between skin layers, leading to skin sloughing off.
Stage 4: Marbling
Absence of oxygen leads hemoglobin to bind with sulfur, resulting in arteries and veins filled with a greenish-black substance – known as “marbling.”
Stage 5: Evacuation of liquefied organs
Increased pressure forces fluids and liquefied organs out of available openings, potentially causing eyeballs to protrude and even body explosions.
Stage 6: Insects multiply.
Chemicals released by the body attract flies, which lay eggs in and around openings, leading to maggot infestation feeding on flesh and organs.
Stage 7: Scavenger arrives
Other insects, beetles, birds, and carrion eaters are attracted to the body for consumption.
Stage 8: Skeletonization
Finally, bones undergo ossification with the complete loss of soft tissue. Bone bleaching and flaking typically begin about 9 months after exposure, with further separation over months and years due to environmental factors.
Traditionally, climate has been thought to be the cause of the emergence and extinction of human species. However, interspecific competition is known to play an important role in most vertebrates. A new study shows for the first time that competition has been the basis of speciation (the rate at which new species emerge) over five million years of human evolution.It also means that our speciation patterns homo The pedigree was different from most others.
a homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. Image credit: SINC / Jose Antonio Peñas.
“We have ignored how competition between species has shaped our own evolutionary tree,” says Dr Laura van Holstein, an anthropologist at the University of Cambridge.
“The effects of climate on the human species are only part of the story.”
“In other vertebrates, species form to fill ecological niches. Darwin's finches, for example, have evolved large beaks for cracking nuts, while others have evolved large beaks for eating certain insects. Some have evolved small beaks to accommodate them. Once their respective resource niches are filled, competition ensues, no new finches emerge, and extinction takes over.”
Dr Van Holstein and Professor Robert Foley from the University of Cambridge used Bayesian modeling and phylogenetic analysis to show that, like other vertebrates, most species of humans formed when competition for resources and space was low. It was shown that
“The pattern seen in many early humans is similar to all other mammals,” van Holstein says.
“The speciation rate increases, then levels off, at which point the extinction rate begins to increase. This suggests that competition between species was a major evolutionary factor.”
However, when the authors analyzed our group, homothe findings were “bizarre.”
for homo The pattern of evolution of the lineage leading to modern humans suggests that interspecific competition actually led to the emergence of even newer species, a complete departure from trends seen in almost all other vertebrates. It's a reversal.
“The more types there are, the more homo The more there are, the higher the rate of speciation,” Dr. van Holstein said.
“So once those niches were filled, something caused more species to emerge. This is almost unprecedented in evolutionary science.”
The closest comparison she found was a species of beetle that lives on the island. On islands, confined ecosystems can produce unusual evolutionary trends.
“The evolutionary patterns we see across species are homo “The direct link to modern humans is more closely related to island beetles than to other primates or other mammals,” Dr van Holstein said.
New archaeological excavations show that the Umm Jirsan lava tubes in Halat Khyber, northwestern Saudi Arabia, have been repeatedly visited by humans from at least the Neolithic period to the Chalcolithic/Bronze Age (10,000 to 3,500 years ago). The stage of residence has become clear.
Photos of Umm Jilsan Cave and its interior.Image credit: Stewart other., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299292.
Intensified field research in northern Arabia over the past decade has highlighted the richness and diversity of the region's archaeological and paleontological record.
Human settlement in northern Arabia during the Pleistocene appeared to be sporadic and associated with periods of improved climate, but by the Holocene people had settled in the area more consistently through dry periods. I was able to.
“Our discoveries at Umm Jilsan provide a rare glimpse into the lives of the ancient peoples of Arabia, revealing repeated stages of human occupation and the pastoralism that once flourished here. It sheds light on people's activities,” said Griffith archaeologist Dr Matthew Stewart. University and the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology.
“This site probably served as an important transit point along pastoral routes, linking major oases and facilitating cultural exchange and trade.”
Rock art and animal records attest to the pastoral use of Umm Jilsan and the surrounding area, providing a vivid picture of an ancient way of life.
Depictions of cows, sheep, goats, and dogs confirm prehistoric livestock practices and herd composition in the area.
Isotope analysis of animal remains collected from lava tubes shows that livestock primarily grazed wildflowers and shrubs, while humans maintained a protein-rich diet and increased their consumption of C3 plants over time. has increased significantly, suggesting the emergence of oasis agriculture.
Professor Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist from Griffith University, the University of Queensland, and the Smithsonian Institution, said: “Subterranean localities are of global importance in archeology and Quaternary science, but our research is the first of its kind in Saudi Arabia. “This is the first comprehensive study.”
This discovery highlights the immense potential of interdisciplinary research in caves and lava tubes, providing a unique window into Arabia's ancient past.
“Umm Jilsan was probably not a permanent settlement, but a valuable transit point for people traveling between oasis settlements,” the authors said.
“Lava tubes and other natural shelters are valuable resources for communities surviving in difficult environments, and further research shows that they are important archaeological sources of information about the history of human occupation in Arabia. ”
“Our research into Arabia's hidden past uncovers thousands of years of human habitation in and around the Umm Jirsan lava tubes, revealing ancient lifestyles and environmental changes in this harsh desert environment. shed light on the adaptation of
team's paper Published in an online journal PLoS ONE.
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M. Stewart other. 2024. First evidence of human occupation of Arabia's lava tubes: Archeology of Umm Jirsan Cave and Surroundings, Northern Saudi Arabia. PLoS ONE 19 (4): e0299292; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299292
Research led by Liangxue Lai from China’s Guangzhou Institute of Biomedical and Health Research has successfully extended the survival time of human stem cells in animal embryos. The team is focused on a five-year project to cultivate human organs for transplantation, bypassing the need for donor organs. To date, no scientist has been able to grow an organ within an animal embryo composed entirely of human cells.
Utilizing pig embryos due to their physiological and developmental similarities to humans, Lai’s team injected human stem cells into pig embryos. By deactivating specific genes in the pig embryos responsible for organ development, human stem cells could replace pig cells during organ growth.
The team also applied a small amount of the antibiotic doxycycline to the embryos, allowing them to control the activation of genes in the stem cells. This antibiotic helped activate genes that enhanced the survival and development of stem cells within the embryo, increasing the likelihood of organ formation.
The research aimed at growing kidneys, which are frequently transplanted organs and among the first to develop in human fetuses. The team implanted about 2,000 pig embryos into 13 surrogate pigs, resulting in kidney development within 20 days. After full growth, the embryos were analyzed for human stem cell content.
Despite efforts to minimize cell death, only a few embryos survived. Genetic testing confirmed the presence of human genetic sequences in the surviving embryos, indicating the potential for organ development from human stem cells within the pig embryos.
While the embryos showed signs of developing human kidneys, compatibility issues were identified, and human cells were found in other parts of the fetus’s body. The researchers concluded that the technique shows promise for growing human-compatible organs in the future.
From T-shirts with changing messages to carpets that can detect your position, the future of smart textiles seems to come straight out of a sci-fi novel.
Researchers now claim they have created a smart fiber that can achieve just that, without the need for a battery pack.
A team of Chinese researchers have developed textile-based electronics that utilize the human body as part of a circuit to harness electromagnetic energy from the environment.
This innovation could pave the way for a “body-bound” fiber electronics technology that functions without electronic chips or batteries and could be applied in various scenarios.
Co-author Chengyi Hou from Donghua University in Shanghai explained, “When electromagnetic energy passes through a fiber, it is converted into different forms of energy, including visible light or radio waves. Therefore, the fiber not only emits light but also produces an electrical signal when in contact with the human body.”
Hou highlighted that these radio signals are programmable by manipulating different aspects of the system, such as the fiber’s contact area with the body and its diameter.
The team stated that this method resolves a major challenge in integrating electronic systems into textiles, which is the necessity of rigid components.
Hou mentioned, “We have successfully achieved mass production of this new type of fiber electronics, which is as thin and soft as traditional fibers. The next step is to implement it.”
The team has created prototypes like a wearable cloth display with a cloth keyboard, intended for individuals with hearing impairments to aid in communication, as well as textile controllers for gaming.
Additionally, they developed a wireless tactile carpet that illuminates underfoot, providing emergency lighting at night and wirelessly transmitting signals to control household devices like lights.
Researchers have created a carpet that can glow underfoot and transmit signals that can be used to control switches in appliances such as lights. Photo: Yang Weifeng
Read more about the study here. The team assures that the fiber is constructed from three layers of inexpensive materials, making it durable, washable, and sweat-resistant.
An accompanying article suggests that this technology can also be utilized in robots, robotic prosthetics, and capturing haptic information to enhance human interactions and object recognition.
Dr. Luigi Occhipinti, a research director at the University of Cambridge specializing in smart electronics, biosystems, and AI, acknowledged the potential of this approach.
He stated, “By being constantly surrounded by various electromagnetic fields, we are developing innovative electronic textiles with skin sensors and unconventional electronics, powered uniquely through energy harvesting. This has the potential to unlock a new realm of self-powered wearable electronics for continuous health monitoring.”
In 2020, researchers in the United States and China conducted a study that involved manipulating genes in nematodes, allowing them to live five times longer than normal. The study focused on C. elegans, a species commonly used for aging research due to shared genetic circuits with humans. The researchers suggested that targeting these conserved genes with drugs could potentially extend human lifespan.
Despite the success in nematodes, it is important to note that worms have a significantly shorter lifespan compared to humans. Therefore, it may not be realistic to expect humans to live to be 500 years old based on these findings.
While our current average lifespan of 73 years is already longer than that of our ancestors, there is ongoing debate about whether we should strive to extend human lifespan even further. Some concerns include potential overpopulation, increased resource consumption, and environmental impact.
However, studies have shown that as life expectancy increases, birth rates tend to decline. This trend has been observed in many countries with advanced healthcare systems. In fact, some regions have seen population decline due to lower fertility rates.
In countries like Japan, where life expectancy is high, the average lifespan has increased while birth rates have significantly decreased. This trend suggests that longer lifespans do not necessarily lead to overpopulation.
Increasing life expectancy in developing countries should also be a priority to ensure that longer lifespans are achieved without compromising quality of life. It is important to consider the ethical implications of prolonging life in regions with existing disparities in healthcare and resources.
Ultimately, the goal should be to promote longevity in a way that prioritizes overall health and well-being for all individuals, regardless of their geographic location or socioeconomic status.
New research led by University of Wyoming Laramie provides additional evidence that tardigrade proteins could ultimately be used to provide life-saving treatments to people for whom refrigeration is not possible and to enhance storage of cell-based treatments.
Sanchez Martinez other. We provide insight into how tardigrades induce reversible biostasis through self-assembly of labile CAHS gels.
First discovered in 1773, tardigrades are a diverse group of microscopic invertebrates best known for their ability to survive in extreme conditions.
Also known as tardigrades or moss piglets, these creatures can live up to 60 years, grow to a maximum size of 0.5 mm, and are best seen under a microscope.
They can survive temperatures as low as -272 degrees Celsius (-457 degrees Fahrenheit) or as high as -150 degrees Celsius (-302 degrees Fahrenheit), and temperatures as low as -20 degrees Celsius for several minutes, and for up to 30 years without food or water. Masu. Minus 4 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit) continues for decades.
Tardigrades can withstand pressures from nearly 0 atmospheres in space to 1,200 atmospheres at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and radiation levels of up to 5,000 to 6,200 Gy.
They survive by entering a state of suspended animation called biostasis, using proteins that form gels within their cells and slow down life processes.
“Surprisingly, when you introduce these proteins into cells, they gel and slow down their metabolism, much like tardigrades do,” says researcher Sylvia Sánchez Martinez, Ph.D., of the University of Wyoming, Laramie.
“Furthermore, just like tardigrades, putting human cells with these proteins into biostasis makes them more resistant to stress, giving human cells some of the tardigrade's abilities.”
“Importantly, our study shows that the entire process is reversible,” said researcher Thomas Boothby, Ph.D., of the University of Wyoming, Laramie.
“When stress is reduced, the tardigrade gel dissolves and human cells return to normal metabolism.”
“Our findings provide an avenue to pursue technologies centered on inducing biostasis in cells and even whole organisms to slow aging and increase shelf life and stability.”
“Ash light” or AL is a faint mysterious glow or hue seen in the night hemisphere of Venus. It is often compared to Earthshine, the reflected light that illuminates the far side of the Moon.
First described by Italian astronomer Giovanni Riccioli in 1643, AL has been observed many times since then, but its faint, ephemeral, and elusive nature has prevented serious research. It’s here.
Even more problematic, AL has so far only been detected by the human eye, and no scientific instruments, either earth-based or space-based, have recorded this phenomenon.
Some authorities have declared this phenomenon to be an illusion, perhaps an eye contrast effect or even an “expectation bias.” Some have suggested that a defect in the equipment could explain the phenomenon. Light scattering, optical aberrations, background sky brightness, weather, etc.
But there are enough reliable reports about AL that some scientists can offer an explanation. These include reflected light from Earth, auroras, “airglow” radiation, lightning, and infrared (thermal) radiation from Venus’ atmosphere.
Most of these explanations are ignored for some reason. However, there is ample evidence that not only ultraviolet light from the sun, but also high-energy solar wind particles can excite oxygen atoms in Venus’ atmosphere.
This creates a pale green glow similar to that seen in the aurora borealis on Earth. However, the process is somewhat different because auroras on Earth are caused by Earth’s magnetic field interacting with solar particles, whereas Venus has no appreciable magnetic field.
It remains to be seen whether this explanation can explain all or some of the AL observations. Therefore, the long-standing mystery of AL may still turn out to be an illusion.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Herman Townsend of Liverpool): “What is Ashen Light?”
If you have any questions, please email us at:questions@sciencefocus.comor send us a messageFacebook,XorInstagramPage (remember to include your name and location).
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The kidney transplant surgery is the first of its kind in a living person.
Michelle Rose/Massachusetts General Hospital
Surgeons successfully transplanted a pig kidney into a 62-year-old man with end-stage renal disease. Recipient Richard Suleiman is recovering well and is expected to be discharged from the hospital soon, just a few days after surgery.
Is this your first pig kidney transplant?
This is the first time a pig kidney has been transplanted into a living human, marking a major milestone in the field of xenotransplantation, or transplanting animal organs into humans.
“This successful transplant is the culmination of decades of hard work by thousands of scientists and doctors.” Tatsuo Kawai At Massachusetts General Hospital statement. “Our hope is that this transplant approach will provide a lifeline to the millions of patients around the world suffering from kidney failure.”
However, strictly speaking, this is not the first time a kidney has been transplanted from a pig to a human. This surgery has been performed five times in the past, each time on a person declared brain dead and placed on life support. The most recent of these was conducted by Robert Montgomery and colleagues at New York University Langone Health in July 2023. The kidney continued to function for over a month with no signs of rejection or infection.
When was the surgery performed?
Kawai and his colleagues performed the surgery on March 16th. reported that the procedure lasted four hours, and shortly thereafter the kidneys began producing urine and the waste product creatinine. new york times. Suleiman was also able to stop dialysis, which is a further indication that his kidneys are functioning properly.
Where do pig kidneys come from?
The organs were donated by the pharmaceutical company EGenesis. The company breeds pigs that are genetically engineered to carry certain human genes and lack a specific set of pig genes that are harmful to humans. These genetic modifications reduce the chance of transplant rejection, where the immune system attacks the organ and causes it to malfunction. Suleiman is also being given a cocktail of immunosuppressants to further reduce this risk. So far, there are no signs of rejection and Suleiman is able to walk on his own. His doctors hope he will be discharged soon.
What do we know about the recipient?
Suleiman has type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney disease. He had previously received a human kidney from a donor in December 2018. However, the organ showed signs of malfunctioning after about five years. He started dialysis in May last year, but complications arose, and he needed to go to the hospital every two weeks. This seriously affected his quality of life while awaiting his second transplant.
is more than 100,000 people in the US They are waiting for organ transplants, and 17 of them die every day. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the experimental transplant for Suleiman due to a lack of other treatment options.
“I saw it as a way not only to help me but also to give hope to the thousands of people who need transplants to survive,” Suleiman said in a statement.
Have xenotransplant surgeries involving other organs been performed?
Only two other people received xenotransplants, and both received genetically modified pig hearts. The first, a man named David Bennett, died two months later from complications believed to be caused by a swine virus called porcine cytomegalovirus. So scientists genetically inactivated a virus similar to the pig virus from which Suleiman's kidneys came.
The second recipient, a man named Lawrence Fawcett, died six weeks later from transplant rejection.
A 1,000-year-old human brain unearthed from a churchyard in Ypres, Belgium.The tissue folds, which are still soft and wet, are stained orange with iron oxide.
Alexandra L. Morton Hayward
Studies of human brains that have been naturally preserved for hundreds or thousands of years have identified 1,300 cases in which the organ survived when all other soft tissue had decomposed. Some of these brains are over 12,000 years old.
“This type of brain is the only one with preserved soft tissue and has been found in sunken ships and flooded graves with only floating bones.” alexandra morton hayward at Oxford University. “It's really, really weird.”
“To be honest, we don't expect the brain to be preserved in any environment,” she says. “As an archaeologist, if you were to dig a grave and find a brain rattling inside a skull, you would be shocked. But you don't expect soft tissue to be preserved, especially in a waterlogged environment. yeah.”
Morton-Hayward first became interested in brain preservation while working as a mortician. “The brain is known to be one of the first organs to decompose after death. I saw it liquefy pretty quickly. But I also saw it preserved.” she says.
Many researchers point out that the human brain is preserved more often than expected and in surprising circumstances, says Morton-Hayward. Now, she and her colleagues are conducting the first-ever systematic study of this phenomenon. They compiled a database of more than 4,400 preserved human brains found around the world.
They also collected and studied many preserved brains themselves. “We actually put it in an MRI machine, and that was a terrible mistake. We didn't know how much iron was in there,” says Morton Hayward.
In most cases, brain preservation can be explained by known processes. For example, the brains of sacrificial Incas buried atop volcanoes in South America around 1450 AD were freeze-dried along with the bodies, Morton-Hayward said.
2,400 years ago, the bodies and brains of swamp people like Tollundman, who was hanged and dumped in a swamp in what is now Denmark, were preserved through a tanning process similar to that used for leather.
Saponification, in which fatty substances are turned into a soap form called grave wax, also preserved the brains of some people who were shot and buried in mass graves in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War.
However, the known process preserves all soft tissue, not just the brain. They do not account for the 1300 cases in which the brain is the only surviving soft tissue.
“This unknown mechanism is completely different,” says Morton-Hayward. “The key feature of this device is that only the brain and bones remain. There is no skin, no muscle, and no intestines.”
For example, St. Hedwig of Silesia was buried in Poland in 1243. When her body was exhumed in the 17th century, it was discovered that her brain was preserved, and at the time it was thought to be due to divine powers.
Alexandra Morton Hayward holds a preserved 1000-year-old brain
graham poulter
Morton-Hayward's working hypothesis is that under certain circumstances, substances such as iron can catalyze the formation of cross-links between proteins and lipids, forming more stable molecules that resist degradation. The nature or ratio of proteins and lipids in the brain may be key.
“The mechanisms are similar to those seen in neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia,” she says. “So if we can understand what happens to the brain after death, we may be able to understand what happens to the brain as it ages during life.”
“It's great news that the data is being made public,” he says. brittany moeller He is one of the researchers at James Cook University in Melbourne, Australia who discovered that: Brain preservation is more common than thought. “This may raise researchers' awareness of the possibility of preserving brain material,” she says.
This is important because preserved brains are often the same color as the surrounding soil. “Therefore, it is very likely that brain material is not recognized for what it is and is frequently discarded during archaeological excavations,” Moller says.
Although this study focused on the human brain, the findings should also apply to animals. Morton Hayward says there are at least 700 examples of animal brains preserved as fossils, the oldest of which he says is an arthropod from 500 million years ago.
Archaeologists have dated ancient stone tools unearthed at the Korolevo site along the Tisza River in western Ukraine to 1.42 million years ago. Therefore, these artifacts are homo erectus — provides the earliest evidence of humans in Europe and supports the hypothesis that the continent was colonized from the east.
Stone tools from Korolevo I, Ukraine.Image credit: Garba other., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3.
“To the east of Europe is the important site of Dmanisi, Georgia, where layers containing human skull remains and stone tools have been reliably dated to approximately 1.85 million to 1.78 million years ago.” said lead author and archaeologist Dr. Roman Garba. Institute of Archeology and Nuclear Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and colleagues.
“The path from Africa to Dmanisi through the Levantine Corridor is consistent with Mode 1 stone artefacts recorded in Jordan's Zarqa Valley, dating back approximately 2.5 million years.”
“The earliest dated evidence of humans in Europe was found at two sites in the southwest: Atapuerca, Spain, the oldest hominin fossils at Sima del Elefante are dated to about 1.2 million years old. and 1.1 million years ago. And in the Valone Cave in southern France, stone artifacts are limited to about 1.2 to 1.1 million years ago.”
“However, the vast spatial and temporal gap separating the Caucasus from southwestern Europe leaves important aspects of the first human dispersal into Europe largely unresolved.”
The Korolebo website is first discovered It was discovered in 1974 by Ukrainian archaeologist Vladislav Gradylin.
It is located near where the Tisza River, a tributary of the Danube, emerges from the eastern Carpathians and spreads southwest across the Pannonian Plain.
“The layers of loess and paleosoil accumulated here are up to 14 meters deep and are known to contain thousands of stone artifacts. Korolevo is an important raw material for their production. ” said co-author Dr. Vitalij Usyk, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
“We have identified seven epochs of human occupation in the stratigraphic strata, and at least nine different Paleolithic cultures have been recorded in the region. I lived here until a year ago.”
Selected stone tools from Korolevo I, Ukraine: (a) chopper core; (b) Flakes with double-sided treatment. (c) Multiplatform Core. (d) Combewa flakes. (e) Flakes with parallel scar patterns. Scale bar – 3 cm.Image credit: Garba other., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3.
The stone tools of Korolevo are oldowan stylethe most primitive form of tool making.
“We applied two complementary dating methods to calculate ages from measured concentrations of beryllium-10 and aluminum-26 of cosmic origin,” said lead author, Czech Academy of Sciences Geophysical Research said Dr. John Jansen, a researcher at the institute.
“However, the most accurate age was obtained from our proprietary method based on mathematical modeling known as P-PINI.”
“This study is the first time our new dating approach has been applied to archeology.”
“We expect our new dating approach to have a major impact on archaeology, as it can be applied to highly fragmented deposits – deposits with lots of erosional voids.”
“In archaeology, we almost always find a fragmentary record, whereas the traditional long-distance dating method, magnetostratigraphy, relies on a more continuous record.”
The First Peoples of Europe: (a) Ruins and dispersal routes mentioned in the text. The maximum extent of the Eurasian ice sheet is indicated by the gray dashed line. Blue arrows indicate possible early human dispersal routes. (b) Korolevo I, Gostly Verv, Ukraine, seen from Beyvar Hill with excavation XIII (red box).Image credit: Garba other., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3.
According to the research team, Korolevo is the northernmost known archaeological site. homo erectus.
“The radiometric dating of the first human presence at the Korolevo site not only bridges the large spatial gap between the Dmanisi and Atapuerca sites, but also shows that the first dispersal pulse of humans into Europe came from the east or southeast. This also supports our hypothesis,'' Dr. Garba said.
“Based on climate models and field pollen data, we identified three possible interglacial warm periods during which the first humans most likely followed the Danube migratory corridor to reach Korolevo. .”
a paperThe survey results were published in a magazine Nature.
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R. Garba other. 1.4 million years ago, humans dispersed from east to west across Europe. Nature, published online March 6, 2024. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3
Crescent Nebula: More complex than the human brain?
Reinhold Wittich/Stocktrek Images/Alamy
Back in 2012, neuroscientist Christoph Koch wrote in his book: Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist The human brain is “the most complex object in the known universe.” This seems intuitive, given that the brain has approximately 86 billion neurons, which are connected in ways that are still beginning to be understood. But when I put it, David Wolpert At New Mexico's Santa Fe Institute, founded in the 1980s as a hub for the budding field of complexity science, he doesn't think so. “It's almost a travesty that we are the most complex system in the universe,” he says. “That question is actually misguided.”
Nevertheless, I persevere. Is there a common measure of complexity that can be applied to complex systems of all kinds? After all, if you squint, galaxy clusters and the filaments that connect them look like intertwined circuits of neurons. Masu. The human brain even has almost as many neurons as there are galaxies in the observable universe. This formal similarity may have something to do with the general laws by which complexity emerges, he says. Ricard Sole At Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. Or maybe not. “By chance, it might show up in both systems, but that doesn't mean anything,” he says.
Moreover, complexity is not defined by components and their interconnections. It's the idea that the whole is more than just something.
Science fiction has often depicted microscopic robots, but these tiny machines have become a reality with a wide range of real-world applications such as disease prevention and building repair.
A Canadian research team is now focusing on using these small robots to target liver cancer in various fields. They are working on using them in conjunction with MRI equipment to treat diseases (source).
A series of small biocompatible robots, made of magnetizable iron oxide nanoparticles guided by an external magnetic field, could potentially deliver medical care in a highly targeted manner.
Despite the potential of this technology, it faces a major technical challenge. The gravity of these microrobots exceeds the magnetic force, limiting their guidance if the tumor is located higher than the injection site.
To address this challenge, Dr. Jill Soules, a researcher at the CHUM Research Center at the University of Montreal, developed an algorithm that combines gravity and magnetic navigation forces to guide the microrobots into the arterial branches that feed the tumor.
This research has the potential to change the way liver cancer is treated with radiation therapy, which is the most common type of cancer causing 700,000 deaths annually worldwide.
Dr. Soulez emphasized the advantages of the magnetic resonance navigation technique, indicating that the tumor is better visualized on MRI than on X-ray.
In an experiment using pigs to recreate anatomical conditions, the researchers successfully navigated the hepatic artery branches of the animals and arrived at their destination using the microrobots.
Furthermore, using an anatomical atlas of the human liver, the researchers were able to simulate microrobot maneuvers on 19 patients treated with transarterial chemoembolization, finding that in more than 95% of cases, the location of the tumors matched the navigation algorithm to reach the targeted tumor.
Despite these significant advances, clinical application of this technology is still in the distant future, as artificial intelligence models need further training and improvements for real-time navigation of microrobots to the liver.
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of at least six people at Gough's Cave in the Cheddar Valley in southwest England. Many of the bones were intentionally broken, and the fragments are covered in cut marks, the result of people using stone tools to separate the bones and remove the flesh.Additionally, 42 percent of bone fragments traces of human teeth. There is little doubt that the people who lived in this cave 14,700 years ago practiced cannibalism.
Today, cannibalism is considered taboo in many societies. We think that's an anomaly, as evidenced by films like . texas chainsaw massacre. We associate it with zombies, psychopaths, and serial killers like the fictional Hannibal Lecter. There are very few positive stories about cannibals. But despite our preconceptions, evidence is accumulating that cannibalism was a common human behavior, so perhaps it's time to reconsider.
Our ancestors have been eating each other for over a million years. In fact, it seems that about one-fifth of society has practiced cannibalism since ancient times. While some of this cannibalism may have been done simply to survive, in many cases the reasons appear to be more complex. For example, in places like Gough's Cave, eating the bodies of the dead appears to have been part of the funerary ritual. Some archaeologists say cannibalism may be a way to show respect and love for the dead, rather than a horrific insult to nature.
Stories of cannibals can be found throughout human history.At Homer's Odyssey,…
After many years and many attempts, a healthy rhesus monkey was finally created by cloning. The clone was born in China on July 16, 2020, but its existence has only now been revealed.
“The cloned rhesus macaque is now 3 years old,” team members say Fallon Lu at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. “So far, no health problems have been found during routine medical examinations.”
However, because the monkeys were cloned from fetal cells rather than adult cells, the embryos had to be provided with a non-cloned placenta. Therefore, despite this progress, primate cloning remains extremely difficult. As a result, apart from ethical and legal issues, it may not yet be technically possible to clone an adult.
Cloning is the creation of an individual that is genetically identical to another individual. Cloning plants is easy, but for most animals it is much more difficult.
Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, was born in 1996. Since then, researchers have attempted to clone many mammalian species, with mixed results.
In some cases, cloning works relatively well.A Korean team created a clone over 1500 dogs For example, so far, success rates remain low, with fewer than 4 percent of cloned embryos leading to live births. In many other mammalian species, cloning either fails completely or produces unhealthy animals.
The main problem is that as cells in the body develop and become specialized, various so-called epigenetic markers are added to the DNA in order to turn certain genes on or off. When adult cells are cloned into empty eggs, they usually contain the wrong epigenetic markers.
Primates (a group that includes apes such as monkeys and humans) have proven particularly difficult to treat. There have been several previous reports of monkey clones, but each case so far has come with major warnings.
For example, the rhesus macaque born in 1999 is sometimes described as the first primate clone, but this individual was created not by cloning adult cells like Dolly, but by creating identical twins. It was created by splitting the embryo, as is done.
The most successful attempt to date was the birth of two long-tailed macaques in 2017. The researchers behind this study used a chemical cocktail to help reset epigenetic markers, but they were still able to clone only fetal cells, not adult cells.
Lu's team tried applying the same cocktail to rhesus macaques, but the only clone produced this way did not survive. The researchers concluded that the abnormalities in the cloned placenta were partially to blame, and decided to transplant the part of the early embryo that turns into a fetus (the inner cell mass) into a non-cloned embryo, where the inner cell mass forms. Developed new technology. Cell clumps were removed.
This means that the cloned fetus develops within a non-cloned placenta that is genetically distinct from it. Theoretically, the resulting fetuses could be a mixture of clonal and non-clonal cells, but the researchers found no evidence of such chimerism.
But even with the help of this complex technique, the researchers have so far only cloned fetal cells and not adult cells. In other words, healthy primates have not yet been created by cloning adult cells.
This means that whether it is possible to clone adults remains an open question. Lu wouldn't speculate on whether his team's technique would help.
“The act of cloning humans is completely unacceptable. We don't think about this,” he says.
Shukrat Mitalipov A professor at Oregon Health & Science University, who also works on cloning but was not involved in the study, says it's unclear whether the technology will help create cloned humans. “Aside from ethical issues, it is unclear whether there is any humanity. [cloned] “The fetus has placental abnormalities,” Mitalipov said.
Lu says the purpose of primate cloning is to advance research. “Rhesus monkeys are important and commonly used non-human primate laboratory animals in cognitive and biomedical research,” he says.
Meanwhile, Mitalipov's aim is to use cloning to generate stem cells that are compatible with individual treatments. “In our case, one day doctors will be able to use non-rejection, genetically compatible embryonic stem cells to replace diseased nerve, muscle, blood and other cells, or to produce eggs for infertility treatment. I hope we can produce it,” he says.
Humans in the future may choose to live extraterrestrial lives on the Moon, Mars, or even Venus. However, the question arises of how they will continue to reproduce and survive once they get there. What happens to their reproductive systems? Is it possible for babies to be born in space?
To find answers to these questions, we interviewed space gynecologist Dr. Varsha Jain. She has published a paper from the University of Edinburgh on women and reproductive health in space.
What Does It Mean to Be a Space Gynecologist?
A space gynecologist is someone who is interested in space medicine and is also a gynecologist. Dr. Varsha Jain, the first person to be awarded this title, began this work about 10 years ago. She focuses on women’s health related to the health of astronauts.
We’ve had some huge breakthroughs for women in space, and that history starts with some pretty amazing myths. Can you tell us a few things about them?
Dr. Jain discussed how early myths caused a delay between the first woman to fly in space (Valentina Tereshkova) and the first American woman to fly in space almost 20 years later (Sally Ride). There was concern over issues like “retrograde menstruation” and how many menstrual products astronauts would need.
Have Attitudes Towards Women in Space Changed?
Dr. Jain noted a significant improvement in attitudes and how NASA supports open access and evidence-based information about female astronauts’ health. They even support the idea of female astronauts freezing their eggs before going into space.
What Happens to Our Reproductive System in Space?
Dr. Jain explained that astronauts’ hormonal cycles do not seem to change in space. Menstruation still occurs, and women can ovulate, potentially leading to fertilization and pregnancy. Although these things may be possible, the focus is currently more on keeping astronauts healthy than finding out if babies can be born in space.
What Do We Know About the Risks to Women’s Bodies and Pregnancy in Space?
Dr. Jain pointed out that radiation in space poses a risk to a developing fetus and that the effects of space travel on the body, including weightlessness and changes in blood volume, could impact pregnancy. Many unknowns still exist around this topic.
Given That There Are Still Many Gaps in Our Knowledge, How Realistic Are Plans to Start an Extraterrestrial Human Colony?
Dr. Jain believes that, while there’s much to learn and research, human curiosity will likely lead to humans colonizing other planets and moons in the future. However, she stressed that extensive research is needed to ensure the safety of such endeavors.
What Impact Could Space Travel Have on What We Know and Don’t Know?
Dr. Jain described the potential for space travel to provide answers about reproductive health and fertility. She believes that space agencies may investigate these questions in the future, potentially leading to new discoveries.
Are Citizens, Scientists, and Nations Racing to Have a Baby in Space?
Although the concept of reproductive health in space may seem fascinating, Dr. Jain emphasized the need for more funding and research in this area. She believes that reproductive health is often underfunded on Earth and that more focus and funding are necessary to understand the effects of the space environment on the human body.
About our experts
Dr. Varsha Jain is a space gynecologist at the University of Edinburgh. Her research has been published in the journals npj Microgravity, International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and Developmental Cells.
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