Welcome to Sott.net
Sat, 23 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Science & Technology
Map

Info

Neanderthal kids brains grew more slowly than humans

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Thu, 21 Sep 2017 23:54 UTC
Skeleton of the Neanderthal boy
© Paleoanthropology Group MNCN-CSIC
Skeleton of the Neanderthal boy recovered from the El Sidrón cave in Asturias, Spain.
The brains of Neanderthal children developed more slowly than those of anatomically modern humans, according to an analysis of a 49,000 year-old juvenile skeleton found in a cave in northwestern Spain.

The analysis was conducted by a team led by palaeobiologist Antonio Rosas of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, and published in the journal Science.

The scientists found that the Neanderthal child, reliably established to have been 7.7 years old at death, had a brain that was about 87.7% the size of an adult. Human children have a brain 95% of adult size by the same age.

The team also found that some of the child's vertebrae had not fused, while in humans the same bones are fully fused between the ages of four and six.

The skeleton was recovered from the El Sidron cave system in Asturias in Spain, a hotspot for Neanderthal research that has so far produced more than 2,500 remains of seven adults and six juveniles.
      Read More...
Comet 2

Unique 'ring comet' discovered by Hubble telescope


ESA/Hubble Space Telescope
Wed, 20 Sep 2017 23:47 UTC
Ring Like Comet
© ESA/Hubble
With the help of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a German-led group of astronomers have observed the intriguing characteristics of an unusual type of object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter: two asteroids orbiting each other and exhibiting comet-like features, including a bright coma and a long tail. This is the first known binary asteroid also classified as a comet. The research is presented in a paper published in the journal Nature today.

In September 2016, just before the asteroid 288P made its closest approach to the Sun, it was close enough to Earth to allow astronomers a detailed look at it using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope [1].

The images of 288P, which is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, revealed that it was actually not a single object, but two asteroids of almost the same mass and size, orbiting each other at a distance of about 100 kilometres. That discovery was in itself an important find; because they orbit each other, the masses of the objects in such systems can be measured.

But the observations also revealed ongoing activity in the binary system. "We detected strong indications of the sublimation of water ice due to the increased solar heating - similar to how the tail of a comet is created," explains Jessica Agarwal (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany), the team leader and main author of the research paper. This makes 288P the first known binary asteroid that is also classified as a main-belt comet.
      Read More...
Telescope

NASA's Hubble spots 'unique' binary asteroid between Mars and Jupiter


RT
Thu, 21 Sep 2017 19:54 UTC
Binary star
© hubblesite.org/NASA
Astronomers, with the aid of the Hubble Space Telescope, have discovered a unique binary object lurking in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The object, an asteroid first discovered by Spacewatch back in 2006, was reexamined again last September. Hubble took a number of images of the asteroid, designated 288P, just before it made its closest approach to the sun.

Upon studying the images, boffins realised that it was not one but two asteroids of roughly the same size and mass, orbiting each other at a distance of about 60 miles, sporting a comet-esque tail, making 288P the first known binary asteroid that is also classified as a main-belt comet.

      Read More...
Comet

A solar eruption 'photobombed' the Mars encounter with Comet Siding Spring


Phys,org
Thu, 21 Sep 2017 00:00 UTC
meteor shower Mars CSS
© Don Davis / IUVS Team
An artist's conception of the martian meteor shower due to Comet Siding Spring. The comet has passed the planet in this image, and is shown left and above the planet, heading towards the outer solar system. The planet's atmosphere is exaggerated to highlight the presence of a coherent group of meteors due to the comet's debris stream.
When Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) passed just 140,000 kilometres from Mars on 19th October 2014, depositing a large amount of debris in the martian atmosphere, space agencies coordinated multiple spacecraft to witness the largest meteor shower in recorded history. It was a rare opportunity, as this kind of planetary event occurs only once every 100,000 years. However, scientists analysing the data have found that a very powerful Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) launched by the Sun also arrived at Mars 44 hours before the comet, creating significant disturbances in the martian upper atmosphere and complicating analysis of the data. Results describing the combined effects of the comet and the CME throughout the martian atmosphere are being presented in a special session at the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) 2017 in Riga on Thursday, 21st September.
      Read More...
Snowflake Cold

Data shows massive Arctic Ice gain over past five years

Tony Heller
The Deplorable Climate Science Blog
Mon, 18 Sep 2017 19:35 UTC
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" - Richard Feynman

Arctic sea ice extent is up 40% from this date five years ago.
Ice gain loss arctic
© National Snow and Ice Data Center
Sea extent ice comparisons: 2012 2017

Greenland's surface gained ten times as much ice as it did five years ago, and was the fifth highest on record.
greenland ice cover
© polarportal.org

Comment: The real story is more nuanced. It is possible to have both Arctic ice gain and melting permafrost, if you don't try to ascribe them to the same mechanisms.

Melting permafrost is associated with methane pockets bubbling up to the surface. This implies heating from within, such as undetected movements of magma and, there can still be a general cooling trend if one looks to solar activity as a driver, instead of man's puny effect on the atmosphere.

      Read More...
Archaeology

Neanderthals may have died out due to competition with homo sapiens for food resources


The Economic Times
Wed, 20 Sep 2017 16:36 UTC
neanderthal neandertal
© Martin Meissner/Associated Press
The findings showed that just like the Neanderthals, early modern humans or our ancestors had mainly mammoth and plants on their plates, creating a battle for food that Neanderthals lost.
Early modern humans and Neanderthals shared a similar diet -- consisting mainly of mammoth and plants -- and also competed for food which led to their downfall, new research has claimed.

"According to our results, Neanderthals and the early modern humans were in direct competition in regard to their diet, as well -- and it appears that the Neanderthals drew the short straw in this contest," said Dorothee Drucker, biogeologist from the University of Tubingen in Germany.

The first representatives of Homo sapiens colonized Europe around 43,000 years ago, replacing the Neanderthals there approximately 3,000 years later.

"Many studies examine the question of what led to this displacement -- one hypothesis postulates that the diet of the anatomically modern humans was more diverse and flexible and often included fish," added Herve Bocherens from the University of Tubingen.
      Read More...
Brain

A world never imagined: Human brain is full of multi-dimensional geometrical structures operating in up to 11 dimensions

Signe Dean
ScienceAlert
Tue, 13 Jun 2017 00:00 UTC
Human brain network
© Blue Brain Project
Conceptual illustration of brain networks (l) and topology (r)
Neuroscientists have used a classic branch of maths in a totally new way to peer into the structure of our brains. What they've discovered is that the brain is full of multi-dimensional geometrical structures operating in as many as 11 dimensions.

We're used to thinking of the world from a 3-D perspective, so this may sound a bit tricky, but the results of this new study could be the next major step in understanding the fabric of the human brain - the most complex structure we know of.

This latest brain model was produced by a team of researchers from the Blue Brain Project, a Swiss research initiative devoted to building a supercomputer-powered reconstruction of the human brain.

The team used algebraic topology, a branch of mathematics used to describe the properties of objects and spaces regardless of how they change shape. They found that groups of neurons connect into 'cliques', and that the number of neurons in a clique would lead to its size as a high-dimensional geometric object (a mathematical dimensional concept, not a space-time one).

"We found a world that we had never imagined," says lead researcher, neuroscientist Henry Markram from the EPFL institute in Switzerland.
      Read More...
Satellite

Herschel Space Observatory: Discovering the cosmic water trail


PhysOrg
Wed, 20 Sep 2017 23:39 UTC
Taurus Molecular Cloud Herschel Observatory
© ESA/Herschel/NASA/JPL-Caltech, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; Acknowledgement: R. Hurt (JPL-Caltech)
This mosaic combines several observations of the Taurus Molecular Cloud performed by ESA's Herschel Space Observatory. Located about 450 light-years from us, in the constellation Taurus, the Bull, this vast complex of interstellar clouds is where a myriad of stars are being born, and is the closest large region of star formation.
During almost four years of observing the cosmos, the Herschel Space Observatory traced out the presence of water. With its unprecedented sensitivity and spectral resolution at key wavelengths, Herschel revealed this crucial molecule in star-forming molecular clouds, detected it for the first time in the seeds of future stars and planets, and identified the delivery of water from interplanetary debris to planets in our solar system.

Water is essential to life as we know it on Earth. It covers over 70 percent of our planet's surface and is present in trace amounts in the atmosphere. While it may seem abundant, especially if we're looking at the blue-hued stretch of a lake, sea or ocean, water is only a minor component of the total mass of Earth.

In fact, it is not at all clear whether the water that is currently present on our blue planet was there around the time of its formation, 4.6 billion years ago, or it is was delivered by later impacts of smaller celestial objects.

According to one of the leading theories to explain how the solar system came into being, Earth and the inner planets were extremely hot and dry for the first several hundred million years after their formation. In this scenario, water was delivered to these planets only later by violent impacts of small bodies such as meteorites, asteroids, and/or comets - the remaining debris of the protoplanetary disc out of which the planets and their moons took shape.
      Read More...
Blue Planet

'Brains' of the plant world: Tree roots can probe hundreds of feet deep in search of water

Todd B. Bates
Rutgers Today
Wed, 20 Sep 2017 00:00 UTC
plant roots search water
© Credit: Ying Fan Reinfelder/Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Searching for water, some tree roots probe hundreds of feet deep and many trees send roots through cracks in rocks, according to a new study led by a Rutgers University-New Brunswick professor.

Moreover, the depth of plant roots, which varies between species and soil conditions, will play a key role in plants' adaptation to climate change, said Ying Fan Reinfelder, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Department of Environmental Sciences.

"Charles Darwin once wrote, in effect, that the tips of plant roots are like the brains of plants," Reinfelder said. "Roots sense the environment. They sense the water, where there's more nutrients, and they go for these resources. Roots are the smartest part of the plant."

Reinfelder and colleagues published their findings online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study demonstrated the relationship between plant roots and water availability. It shows, through observations and modeling, that soil hydrology is the key force driving local and global patterns of root depths.
      Read More...
Fish

'City'-like area constructed by octopuses discovered in Australian bay


RT
Wed, 20 Sep 2017 20:27 UTC
octopus
© Peter Godfrey-Smith
Octopus in 'Octlantis'
The discovery of an underwater city built by octopuses, dubbed Octlantis, has led researchers to conclude the mysterious mollusks aren't the loners we thought they were.

Octopuses have long been thought solitary creatures, with mating typically the only meeting between the two sexes. The creatures always go their separate ways afterward.

However in Jervis Bay, off the coast of New South Wales, Australia, researchers recently discovered a 'city' built by octopuses on rocky outcrops using piles of old shells.

Comment: Cephalopods are very intelligent creatures

      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts