Science & Technology
The Tunguska catastrophe in 1908 evidently led to high levels of acid rain. This is the conclusion reached by Russian, Italian and German researchers based on the results of analyses of peat profiles taken from the disaster region.
From Don Knotts' portrayle of "Mr. Limpet" to the children's favorite "Nemo" and the tuna-pitching character in the "Sorry, Charlie" commercials, we all have seen fish that can talk. But that's just fiction, right? Well ...
Researchers say real fish can communicate with sound, too. And they say (the researchers, that is) that your speech skills and, in fact, all sound production in vertebrates can be traced back to this ability in fish. (You got your ears from fish, too.)
The new study was led by Andrew Bass (we did not make this up) of Cornell University.
The scientists mapped developing brain cells in newly hatched midshipman fish larvae and compared them to those of other species. They found that the chirp of a bird, the bark of a dog and all the other sounds that come out of animals' mouths are the products of the neural circuitry likely laid down hundreds of millions of years ago with the hums and grunts of fish.
"Fish have all the same parts of the brain that you do," Bass explained.
Researchers say real fish can communicate with sound, too. And they say (the researchers, that is) that your speech skills and, in fact, all sound production in vertebrates can be traced back to this ability in fish. (You got your ears from fish, too.)
The new study was led by Andrew Bass (we did not make this up) of Cornell University.
The scientists mapped developing brain cells in newly hatched midshipman fish larvae and compared them to those of other species. They found that the chirp of a bird, the bark of a dog and all the other sounds that come out of animals' mouths are the products of the neural circuitry likely laid down hundreds of millions of years ago with the hums and grunts of fish.
"Fish have all the same parts of the brain that you do," Bass explained.
In studying how animals change size as they evolve, biologists have unearthed several interesting patterns. For instance, most species are small, but the largest members of a taxonomic group -- such as the great white shark, the Komodo dragon, or the African elephant -- are often thousands or millions of times bigger than the typical species.
Now for the first time two SFI researchers explain these patterns within an elegant statistical framework.
"The agreement between our model and real-world data is surprisingly close," says SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Aaron Clauset, who, along with SFI Professor Douglas Erwin, presented the findings in a July 18 Science paper.
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| ©iStockphoto/Jonathan Heger |
| Elephant matriarch cow leading a herd. Most species are small, but the largest members of a taxonomic group -- such as the great white shark, the Komodo dragon, or the African elephant -- are often thousands or millions of times bigger than the typical species. |
Now for the first time two SFI researchers explain these patterns within an elegant statistical framework.
"The agreement between our model and real-world data is surprisingly close," says SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Aaron Clauset, who, along with SFI Professor Douglas Erwin, presented the findings in a July 18 Science paper.
A lone granite boulder found against all odds high atop a glacier in Antarctica may provide additional key evidence to support a theory that parts of the southernmost continent once were connected to North America hundreds of millions of years ago.
Writing in the July 11 edition of the journal Science, an international team of U.S. and Australian investigators describe their findings, which were made in the Transantarctic Mountains, and their significance to the problem of piecing together what an ancient supercontinent, called Rodinia, looked like. The U.S. investigators were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Writing in the July 11 edition of the journal Science, an international team of U.S. and Australian investigators describe their findings, which were made in the Transantarctic Mountains, and their significance to the problem of piecing together what an ancient supercontinent, called Rodinia, looked like. The U.S. investigators were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
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| ©John Goodge / University of Minnesota-Duluth |
| John Goodge and a colleague collecting specimens in the Transantarctic Mountains. |
CAIRO - Archaeologists will excavate hundreds of fragments of an ancient Egyptian wooden boat entombed in an underground chamber next to Giza's Great Pyramid and try to reassemble the craft, Egyptologists announced Saturday.
The 4,500-year-old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces from another pit in 1954 and painstakingly reconstructed. Experts believe the boats were meant to ferry the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid in the afterlife.
Starting Saturday, tourists were allowed to view images of the inside of the second boat pit from a camera inserted through the a hole in the chamber's limestone ceiling. The video image, transmitted onto a small TV monitor at the site, showed layers of crisscrossing beams and planks on the floor of the dark pit.
"You can smell the past," said Zahi Hawass, director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The 4,500-year-old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces from another pit in 1954 and painstakingly reconstructed. Experts believe the boats were meant to ferry the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid in the afterlife.
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| ©Amr Nabil |
| Zahi Hawas, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), right, and Japanese Egyptologist Sakuji Yoshimura, left, from Waseda Universty in Japan, display for the first time the Pharaoh Cheops' second solar boat through a camera put inside the boat pit at the Pyramids site in Giza, Egypt, Saturday, July 19, 2008 which tourists will be able to see for the first time without the pit having to be uncovered again. |
Starting Saturday, tourists were allowed to view images of the inside of the second boat pit from a camera inserted through the a hole in the chamber's limestone ceiling. The video image, transmitted onto a small TV monitor at the site, showed layers of crisscrossing beams and planks on the floor of the dark pit.
"You can smell the past," said Zahi Hawass, director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Anyone who has seen an optical illusion can recall the quirky moment when you realize that the image being perceived is different from objective reality. Now, a team of scientists from MIT, Harvard and McGill has designed a new illusion involving the sense of touch, which is helping to glean new insights into perception and how different senses - such as touch and sight - work together.
Ambiguous visual images are fascinating because it is often difficult to imagine seeing them any other way - until something flips within the brain and the alternative perception is revealed. This phenomenon, known as perceptual rivalry, is of great interest to neuroscience. Because rivalrous illusions produce changes in perception that are independent of changes in the stimulus itself, they may help to understand how the brain gives rise to conscious experience.
"The most familiar illusions involve vision," explains Christopher Moore, a principal investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and an assistant professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. "But we're interested in discovering general principles of perception, and we wanted to see whether similar illusions can occur in the tactile domain."
Ambiguous visual images are fascinating because it is often difficult to imagine seeing them any other way - until something flips within the brain and the alternative perception is revealed. This phenomenon, known as perceptual rivalry, is of great interest to neuroscience. Because rivalrous illusions produce changes in perception that are independent of changes in the stimulus itself, they may help to understand how the brain gives rise to conscious experience.
"The most familiar illusions involve vision," explains Christopher Moore, a principal investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and an assistant professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. "But we're interested in discovering general principles of perception, and we wanted to see whether similar illusions can occur in the tactile domain."
Archaeologists in northwest Russia have discovered a chess piece dating back to the late 14th century, a spokesman for local archaeologists said on Friday.
"The king, around several centimeters tall, is made of solid wood, possibly of juniper," the spokesman said.
The excavations are being carried out at the site of the Palace of Facets, in the Novgorod Kremlin in Veliky Novgorod. The palace is believed to be the oldest in Russia.
"The king, around several centimeters tall, is made of solid wood, possibly of juniper," the spokesman said.
The excavations are being carried out at the site of the Palace of Facets, in the Novgorod Kremlin in Veliky Novgorod. The palace is believed to be the oldest in Russia.
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| ©Unknown |
The enigma began last year when a plain envelope with no return address arrived at the world-famous physics laboratory outside Chicago, addressed simply to "Fermilab."
Inside was a single sheet marked by pen with a bizarre series of hash marks, numbers and alien-looking symbols.
No one at the lab could make sense of the letter. Was it a joke? A threat? A hint at some exotic new theory?
Whatever the meaning, something about the inscription's order and symmetry touched Judy Jackson, the first person to examine the letter. "It was beautiful, kind of like abstract art," said Jackson, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's director of public affairs.
Inside was a single sheet marked by pen with a bizarre series of hash marks, numbers and alien-looking symbols.
No one at the lab could make sense of the letter. Was it a joke? A threat? A hint at some exotic new theory?
Whatever the meaning, something about the inscription's order and symmetry touched Judy Jackson, the first person to examine the letter. "It was beautiful, kind of like abstract art," said Jackson, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's director of public affairs.
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| ©Fermilab |
| This section of the coded message received last year at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia continues to puzzle the online community. |
Disemboweled and decorated with scarlet paint, metal eye plates, and a tattoo, an exquisitely preserved, thousand-year-old mummy has been discovered in Peru. (See photos.)
As anthropologists gingerly removed the layers of ancient textiles swaddling the thirtysomething elite male last month at a Lima lab, offerings both strange and familiar came to light - slingshots, corn, a figurine in identical dress.
Taken together, the artifacts, the mummy, and the excavation site suggest that the mysterious, little-studied Chancay civilization held a surprisingly tight grip on the fertile north-central Pacific coast of Peru during the culture's heyday, between A.D. 1000 and 1500, when it finally fell to the unstoppable Inca Empire, experts say.
As anthropologists gingerly removed the layers of ancient textiles swaddling the thirtysomething elite male last month at a Lima lab, offerings both strange and familiar came to light - slingshots, corn, a figurine in identical dress.
Taken together, the artifacts, the mummy, and the excavation site suggest that the mysterious, little-studied Chancay civilization held a surprisingly tight grip on the fertile north-central Pacific coast of Peru during the culture's heyday, between A.D. 1000 and 1500, when it finally fell to the unstoppable Inca Empire, experts say.
It's the Superman of space rocks. A mysterious meteorite that crashed to Earth last year may have been the toughest of its kind.
The Carancas meteorite struck the town of that name in Peru last September, blowing a hole in the ground 13 metres wide. The fact that locals saw a single object strike suggests a meteorite made of iron, like the one that created a similar crater in 1990 in Sterlitamak, Russia, because stony meteorites normally fragment high above the Earth and spread relatively harmlessly over a wide area. However, the debris found by investigators was stone.
The Carancas meteorite struck the town of that name in Peru last September, blowing a hole in the ground 13 metres wide. The fact that locals saw a single object strike suggests a meteorite made of iron, like the one that created a similar crater in 1990 in Sterlitamak, Russia, because stony meteorites normally fragment high above the Earth and spread relatively harmlessly over a wide area. However, the debris found by investigators was stone.
