Science & Technology

Neanderthals used fire to fashion tools

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 20:22 UTC

Neanderthals living in the Tuscany region of Italy used fire in addition to stone to make tools, archaeologists have revealed.

In a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Biancamaria Aranguren from the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo in Florence, Italy, describes artefacts discovered during the construction of some thermal pools at a location known as Poggetti Vecchi.

The paper recounts the discovery of fragmented wooden and stone tools, together with the fossilised bones of the straight-tusked elephant (Paleoloxodon antiquus). The finds were located in the lowermost of seven archaeological soil layers, and radiometrically dated to about 171,000 years old.

The wooden tools were all made from a species of tree called boxwood (Buxus sempervirens), recognised as a heavy and dense wood. Formed into blunt points at one end with bulbous handles at the other, the metre-long implements were possibly made as digging implements, although the researchers don't rule out a secondary use as weapons.

Planets discovered in another galaxy for the first time

University of Oklahoma
Fri, 02 Feb 2018 05:30 UTC

Norman - A University of Oklahoma astrophysics team has discovered for the first time a population of planets beyond the Milky Way galaxy. Using microlensing-an astronomical phenomenon and the only known method capable of discovering planets at truly great distances from the Earth among other detection techniques-OU researchers were able to detect objects in extragalactic galaxies that range from the mass of the Moon to the mass of Jupiter.

Xinyu Dai, professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, OU College of Arts and Sciences, with OU postdoctoral researcher Eduardo Guerras, made the discovery with data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Chandra X-ray Observatory, a telescope in space that is controlled by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

"We are very excited about this discovery. This is the first time anyone has discovered planets outside our galaxy," said Dai. "These small planets are the best candidate for the signature we observed in this study using the microlensing technique. We analyzed the high frequency of the signature by modeling the data to determine the mass."

12,800 years ago: Global firestorms spread after Earth was struck by a disintegrating comet

Matt Williams
Universe Today
Sat, 03 Feb 2018 00:00 UTC

© NASA / Don Davis
According to a new study, a comet impact triggered massive wildfires and a temporary cooling 12,800 years ago.

According to modern theories of geological evolution, the last major ice age (known as the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation) began about 2.58 million years ago during the late Pliocene Epoch. Since then, the world has experienced several glacial and interglacial periods, and has been in an inter-glacial period (where the ice sheets have been retreating) ever since the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago.

According to new research, this trend experienced a bit of a hiccup during the late Paleolithic era. It was at this time - roughly 12,800 years ago, according to a new study from the University of Kansas - that a comet struck our planet and triggered massive wildfires. This impact also triggered a short glacial period that temporarily reversed the previous period of warming, which had a drastic affect on wildlife and human development.

The study in question, "Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ~12,800 Years Ago", was so large that it was divided into two parts. Part I. Ice Cores and Glaciers; and Part II. Lake, Marine, and Terrestrial Sediments, were both recently published by The Journal of Geography, part of the the University of Chicago Press' series of scientific publications.

Local networks run the world

Deborah M Gordon
Aeon
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 18:41 UTC

Networks regulate everything from ant colonies and middle schools to epidemics and the internet. Here's how they work

We live enmeshed in networks. The internet, a society, a body, an ant colony, a tumour: they are all networks of interactions, among people, ants or cells - aggregates of nodes or locations linked by some relation. The power of networks is in their local connections. All networks grow, shrink, merge or split, link by link. How they function and change depends on what forms, or disrupts, the connections between nodes. The internet dominates our lives, not because it is huge, but because each of us can make so many local links. Its size is the result, not the cause, of its impact on our communication.

Nowhere is the decisive influence of local interactions easier to see than in ants, which I study. The local is all an ant knows. A colony operates without central control, based on a network of simple interactions among ants. These are local by necessity, because an ant cannot detect anything very far away. Most ant species can't see, and all of them rely on smell, which they do with their antennae. The important interactions are when ants touch antennae, smelling each other, or the ground, smelling chemicals deposited by other ants.

Boeing reveals plans for a hypersonic strike aircraft that aims to 'circle the world in 1-3 hours'

RT
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 18:11 UTC

Few details have emerged since the aerospace company Boeing revealed plans for a new hypersonic aircraft with surveillance and strike capabilities. It aims to build it in the next 10-20 years but already faces some competition.

Aviation Week reported that the design for the aircraft, thought to be named "Valkyrie II," was first unveiled at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech forum in Orlando, Florida back in January. Although the project is yet to be officially green-lighted, a statement by the company claims the aircraft can fly across the world "in one to three hours"and carry out airstrikes and reconnaissance missions.

"This is one of several concepts and technologies we're studying for a hypersonic aircraft," said Kevin Bowcutt, Senior Technical Fellow of hypersonics at Boeing Research & Technology. "This particular concept is for a military application that would be targeted for an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, and strike capabilities."

Guatemala: 60,000 Mayan structures discovered buried and preserved in dense jungle

ABC News Austrailia
Sat, 03 Feb 2018 17:31 UTC

Researchers using a high-tech aerial mapping technique have found tens of thousands of previously undetected Mayan houses, buildings, defence works and pyramids in the dense jungle of Guatemala's Peten region, suggesting that millions more people lived there than previously thought.

The discoveries, which included industrial-sized agricultural fields and irrigation canals, were announced this week by an alliance of US, European and Guatemalan archaeologists working with Guatemala's Mayan Heritage and Nature Foundation.

The study estimates that roughly 10 million people may have lived within the Maya Lowlands, meaning that kind of massive food production might have been needed.

"That is two to three times more (inhabitants) than people were saying there were," said Marcello A Canuto, a professor of Anthropology at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Researchers used a mapping technique called LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection And Ranging.

It bounces pulsed laser light off the ground, revealing contours hidden by dense foliage.

Apple downgraded over 'dramatically' slowing iPhone X sales

RT
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 00:41 UTC

Wall Street researchers KeyBanc Capital Markets and Bernstein have lowered their ratings for Apple shares due to slowing iPhone sales. This week, the firm reported weaker than expected iPhone sales for December.

"Soft iPhone sell-through suggests a saturated market and the lack of gross margin upside reduces our view of potential profit growth," KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Andy Hargreaves wrote in a note to clients, according to CNBC.

"This reduces our view of potential upside in the stock and prompts the downgrade," he said, adding that the stock's "fair value" is $178 per share.

Scientists could soon be able to manipulate memories in the human brain

David Williams
NewsTarget
Fri, 02 Feb 2018 00:00 UTC

Scientific research on the human brain has yielded some very interesting results. According to the world's foremost experts on the subject, they have made significant progress on the road to understanding human memories. Soon, they expect to be able to not only understand human memories fully but also to manipulate them at will.

Today's technology is slowly making it possible. And scientists are beginning to realize that, by combining a few different methods, they could come up with radical new solutions to the problem of how to better understand the brain when it comes to handling memories -- how they're made, where they're stored, and how they could be changed in the event that it becomes necessary.

According to Dr. Alison Preston from the University of Texas, memories were always sort of understood -- in the intuitive sense -- even if the mechanisms behind them were still unclear. But now, a number of different approaches might lead directly to open manipulation of memories in the human brain.

Comment: See also:

Why aren't more people lefties?

Thomas Merritt
The Conversation
Thu, 25 Jan 2018 17:40 UTC

© Shutterstock
Our environmental surroundings can pressure us to adopt certain behaviours, like handedness, even if we aren’t genetically wired that way.

In graduate school, I earned beer money by modelling for life drawing classes in various art departments. (Don't judge, grad school doesn't pay well and beer isn't free.) In the long hours standing around, I would survey the room and count how many of the aspiring artists were left-handed. Later in my career, I did the same thing - counting lefties, not standing around naked - in the biology classes I taught.

Funny thing, in any given class, around 10 per cent of the students were lefties. It turns out this is true for all human populations, not only middle-America university classes. Globally, about 90 per cent of people are righties. But why?

For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by handedness - our almost ubiquitous tendency to favour one hand over the other - and maybe a little envious of the rare left-handers. Their rareness gave a certain mystique - and they got to use those funky chair-desks with the desktop on the "wrong" side.

What do we know about the genetics of being right- or left-handed, or even ambidextrous? And how does this help shape our understanding of biology in general?

Comment: For more on handedness see:

Testosterone may protect men from autoimmune diseases

Diana Gitig
ArsTechnica
Fri, 02 Feb 2018 15:00 UTC

Testosterone. Source of prostates and testes, muscles and machismo, chest hair, and according to some, even math skills. Its levels are only one of the biological differences between males and females, but they may help to explain another: the discrepancies in the incidence of autoimmune diseases.

Women are three to nine times more likely than men to suffer from autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS), Grave's disease, celiac disease, systemic lupus erythematous, and rheumatoid arthritis. Not only do women get these diseases at higher rates, they usually get them at younger ages.

Men's higher testosterone levels-about seven to eight times higher than women's-have been shown to be protective for MS in both mice and men. But it was not clear exactly how this worked. Recent work in a mouse model of MS has filled in the downstream effectors that mediate testosterone's protective effects. These effectors might be useful as therapeutics, whereas testosterone use really isn't, especially for women, who are the ones who need it most.

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Science & Technology

Neanderthals used fire to fashion tools

Planets discovered in another galaxy for the first time

12,800 years ago: Global firestorms spread after Earth was struck by a disintegrating comet

Local networks run the world

Boeing reveals plans for a hypersonic strike aircraft that aims to 'circle the world in 1-3 hours'

Guatemala: 60,000 Mayan structures discovered buried and preserved in dense jungle

Apple downgraded over 'dramatically' slowing iPhone X sales

Scientists could soon be able to manipulate memories in the human brain

Why aren't more people lefties?

Testosterone may protect men from autoimmune diseases

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