Research which finally proves that bones found in Shropshire, England provide the most geologically recent evidence of woolly mammoths in North Western Europe publishes today in the Geological Journal. Analysis of both the bones and the surrounding environment suggests that some mammoths remained part of British wildlife long after they are conventionally believed to have become extinct.
The mammoth bones, consisting of one largely complete adult male and at least four juveniles, were first excavated in 1986, but the carbon dating which took place at the time has since been considered inaccurate. Technological advances during the past two decades now allow a more exact reading, which complements the geological data needed to place the bones into their environmental context. This included a study of the bones' decay, analysis of fossilised insects which were also found on the site, and a geological analysis of the surrounding sediment.
Science & Technology
A University of Colorado at Boulder research team has discovered the first definitive evidence of shorelines on Mars, an indication of a deep, ancient lake there and a finding with implications for the discovery of past life on the Red Planet.
© Earl Conn
Geological map in the Benton County Stone office which shows the focal point of where a meteorite struck millions of years ago.
Geological map in the Benton County Stone office which shows the focal point of where a meteorite struck millions of years ago.
How big was the meteorite? The best guess is that it or perhaps it was a comet ice mass left a circular crater dome measuring about 4 ½ miles in diameter. The entire "disturbed area" is about eight miles in diameter.
The meteorite hit with such force and velocity that, as it plunged into the earth, it lifted Shakopee dolomite (rock resembling limestone from the Ordovician period) up to the planet's surface from some 2,000 feet below. Much of this rock then stood vertically rather than horizontally. Eventually, over the eons, glaciers and water eroded away much of the crater, but still leaving numerous stone outcroppings.
© Zephyr / SPL
A hole in the skull could increase blood flow to the brain
A hole in the skull could increase blood flow to the brain
Decades later, having worked in Soviet Russia and become president of the Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, Moskalenko is back in the UK. Now collaborating with researchers at the Beckley Foundation in Oxford, his work is bearing fruit.
And strange fruit it is. With funding from the foundation, he is exploring the idea that people with Alzheimer's disease could be treated by drilling a hole in their skull. In fact, he is so convinced of the benefits of trepanation that he claims it may help anyone from their mid-40s onwards to slow or even reverse the process of age-related cognitive decline. Can he be serious?
For thousands of years, trepanation has been performed for quasi-medical reasons such as releasing evil spirits that were believed to cause schizophrenia or migraine. Today it is used to prevent brain injury by relieving intracranial pressure, particularly after accidents involving head trauma.
© Unknown
The PTF is designed to search for a wide variety of transient sources with characteristic timescales ranging from minutes to months, giving astronomers one of their deepest and most comprehensive explorations of the universe in the time domain.
The PTF is designed to search for a wide variety of transient sources with characteristic timescales ranging from minutes to months, giving astronomers one of their deepest and most comprehensive explorations of the universe in the time domain.
All of these discoveries will stem from the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) survey, which combines, in a new way, the power of a wide-field telescope, a high-resolution camera, and high-performance networking and computing, with rapid follow-up by telescopes around the globe, to open windows of discovery for astronomers.
The survey has already found 40 supernovae and is gearing up to switch to a robotic mode of operation that will allow objects to be discovered nightly without the need for human intervention.
Geologists at the University of Leicester have shown that an ancient Ice Age, once regarded as a brief 'blip', in fact lasted for 30 million years.
Their research suggests that during this ancient Ice Age, global warming was curbed through the burial of organic carbon that eventually lead to the formation of oil - including the 'hot shales' of north Africa and Arabia which constitute the world's most productive oil source rock.
This ice age has been named 'the Early Palaeozoic Icehouse' by Dr Alex Page and his colleagues in a paper published as part of a collaborative Deep Time Climate project between the University of Leicester and British Geological Survey.
Their research suggests that during this ancient Ice Age, global warming was curbed through the burial of organic carbon that eventually lead to the formation of oil - including the 'hot shales' of north Africa and Arabia which constitute the world's most productive oil source rock.
This ice age has been named 'the Early Palaeozoic Icehouse' by Dr Alex Page and his colleagues in a paper published as part of a collaborative Deep Time Climate project between the University of Leicester and British Geological Survey.
Long-term memory formation in honeybees is instigated by a calcium ion cascade. Researchers have shown that calcium acts as a switch between short- and long-term storage of learned information.
The microscope is under high vacuum and kept exceptionally cold.
While individual atoms' charges have been measured before, the prior method required that the atoms be on the surface of a conducting material.
The new approach used a tiny tuning fork-like device that was deflected minuscule amounts by the attraction or repulsion of the atoms.
The approach will aid in the design of devices such as solar cells.
© unknown
Jack Eddy, Discoverer of the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age.
Jack Eddy, Discoverer of the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age.
...it is with great sadness that I report that Jack Eddy passed away yesterday.
- Dr. Leif Svalgaard in comments today
"My reasons for taking this less-traveled road were many. One is the inevitable thrill of discovery when you wander into new areas. More importantly, you also avoid the danger of being too comfortable in too narrow a niche. I truly believe the sayings that there is no hope for the satisfied man and that without fear there is no learning. Entering a new field with a degree in another is not unlike Lewis and Clark walking into the camp of the Mandans. You are not one of them. They distrust you. Your degree means nothing and your name is not recognized. You have to learn it all from scratch, earn their respect, and learn a lot on your own. But I also think that many of the most significant discoveries in science will be found not in but between the rigid boundaries of the disciplines: the terra incognita where much remains to be learned. It's not a place that's hidebound by practice and ritual. I have always tried to keep moving between fields of study."
- Jack
© Roy Rainford/Robert Harding/Rex Features
The Parthenon would once have been much more gaudy
The Parthenon would once have been much more gaudy
The temple, which tops the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, dates from the 5th century BC. Its carved statues and friezes show scenes from Greek mythology and are some of the most impressive sculptures to survive from ancient Greece.
Pigments are known to have adorned other Greek statues and temples, but despite 200 years of searching, archaeologists had found no trace of them on the Parthenon's sculptures.
So Giovanni Verri, a researcher at the British Museum in London, developed an imaging technique that is ultra-sensitive to traces of an ancient pigment called Egyptian blue.
