Science & TechnologyS


Cow Skull

Best of the Web: Original 'Fall of Eden'? Agriculture is a "profoundly unnatural activity" and the "worst mistake in human history"

Sanjida O'Connell
Telegraph
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:06 UTC
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© GettyCereal killer: The introduction of agriculture was followed by malnutrition and disease.
Last week, Sir Paul McCartney urged us, amid a blaze of publicity, to curb our carnivorous lifestyles and go meat-free on Mondays, in order to reduce the damage that modern agriculture does to the planet. But for all the recent talk about the pros and cons of farming, and how the methods we use are affecting the environment, a more basic point has been missed that growing crops might be damaging not just to the environment but to the development of our own species. Could it be that rather than being a boon to mankind, the invention of agriculture was, in the words of one academic, "the worst mistake in human history"?

To understand why this extraordinary suggestion could make sense, you need to visit the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies in Cambridge, a shrine to modern anthropology. Its gates resemble a Cubist take on the DNA double-helix and its clouded glass windows are etched with phrases from Darwin's Origin of Species.

According to Prof Diamond, agriculture evolved about 12,000 years ago, and since then humans have been malnourished and disease-ridden compared with their hunter-gatherer ancestors. Worse, because agriculture allows food to be stockpiled and enables some people to do things other than look for food, it led to the invention of more and better weapons, soldiers, warfare, class divisions between those who had access to food and those who did not, and inequality between the sexes. This idea has been picked up again in a recent book, An Edible History of Humanity, by Tom Standage, which argues that agriculture is a "profoundly unnatural activity".

Comment: Check out last week's SOTT Talk Radio show on this very topic:

Paleo food: Staying Healthy in a GMO world

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Gravitational lensing - and a new telescope - reveal ancient starbursts

Matthew Francis
arstechnica.com
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:24 UTC
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© Iztok Bončina/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)Two of the telescopes comprising ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) in Chile.
The galaxies of the Universe's youth worked busily at making stars - that much is certain. However, what did those galaxies look like? How many were there, and how were they distributed in space and time?

Over such huge distances, those galaxies appear faint to us, so it's only within the last decade or so that astronomers have been able to start obtaining a reasonable view of them. The newly inaugurated ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is one of the most promising telescope arrays in the world for making observations of the early Universe.

As reported in a new Nature paper, ALMA scientists measured the distances to 23 early star-forming galaxies in a patch of sky in the Southern Hemisphere. Out of that sample, at least 10 emitted their light when the Universe was less than 1.5 billion years old, placing them among some of the earliest galaxies observed.

Over the last ten years, astronomers discovered that the ratios of galaxy types shifted greatly over time. One particular type of galaxy - known as a dusty starburst galaxy - was nearly 1,000 times more common in the past than it is today. These galaxies, as their name suggests, form stars at a high rate and are swathed in the molecules collectively known as dust. (Lighter molecules, such as hydrogen H2, oxygen O2, or water H2O, behave as gases, whereas heavier molecules can stick together via static electricity, much as dust bunnies gather under your bed.)

Unshielded light from newborn stars is frequently dominated by blue and ultraviolet emission, but dust absorbs most of those wavelengths. This heats the dust, however, making it glow strongly in the infrared. The result: dusty starburst galaxies are intense infrared emitters.
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Telescope

Astronomers find water vapor in atmosphere of distant planet

Ian Sample
Raw Story
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:55 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo
But planet HR8799c unlikely to harbour life, as surface temperature exceeds 1,000C

Astronomers have detected water vapour and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere of a planet 130 light years away from Earth. However, the planet, known only as HR8799c, is devoid of methane, a gas that can indicate life, the researchers said.

Their analysis was performed using the most precise atmospheric measurements ever made of a planet outside our solar system. The levels of gases shed light on how the planet formed, from a cluster of ice crystals tens of millions of years ago.

Since the 1990s, astronomers have detected more than 1,000 planets beyond our solar system. HR8799c is colossal: about seven times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. It circles a star with at least three other planets.

To take their readings, scientists peered at the planet through a telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and used an instrument called Osiris to record incoming infrared light. At only 30m years old, the planet is young, extraordinarily hot, and easy to see in the infrared range.
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Cassiopaea

New data boosts case for Higgs Boson find

Gautam Naik
Wall Street Journal
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:12 UTC
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© APThis image provided by CERN shows a real CMS proton-proton collision in which four high energy electrons, the green lines and red towers, are observed in a 2011 event.
Fresh experimental data bolsters the case that a particle discovered last year is the long-sought Higgs boson, physicists said Thursday.

The Higgs boson is crucial to the current view of how the universe is structured because it is linked to a mechanism that confers mass to elementary particles. It thus helps to explain the presence of stars, planets and other cosmic bodies.

The data collected so far "are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said Joe Incandela, a spokesman for the European particle-physics laboratory CERN, which led the Higgs hunt.

While the data strengthens the likelihood that the elusive Higgs boson has been found, further number-crunching is needed to claim a conclusive discovery.
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Info

Ancient mutation explains missing wisdom teeth

Douglas Main
LiveScience
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:52 UTC
Wisdom Teeth
© Carlos Caetano | Shutterstock
Boston - Many people have suffered from impacted third molars, also known as wisdom teeth. But there are also a lucky few who are missing a wisdom tooth or two (or even all four). Why do some people have wisdom teeth, while others don't?

The answer, partly hinted at in new research presented here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, could also explain why particular ethnic groups, such as the Inuit, have a particularly low occurrence of wisdom teeth.

Some thousands of years ago, a random mutation arose which suppressed the formation of wisdom teeth, a trait that then spread and now accounts for the lack of wisdom teeth among some modern humans, said Princeton University researcher Alan Mann.

The oldest fossils missing third molars hail from China and are about 300,000 to 400,000 years old, suggesting the first mutation may have arisen there, Mann told LiveScience.

Like most mammals, humans' ancestors had four sets of three molars (for a total of 12, with six in both the upper and lower jaw) used to help chew and grind food. Unlike other mammals, however, humans underwent a period of evolution in which the brain greatly expanded in size, Mann said. This created an architectural problem; with a much larger brain case, the jaw had to become narrower so that it could still connect to the lower part of the skull, Mann said.
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Info

Hundreds of dinosaur egg pieces found


LiveScience
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:07 UTC
Sauropod
© J.A. Peñas - SINCThis is an artist's impression of the egg-laying of the sauropod Ampelosaurus.
Researchers in northeastern Spain say they've uncovered hundreds of dinosaur egg fossils, including four kinds that had never before been found in the region, thought to be left behind by sauropods millions of years ago.

Eggs, eggshell fragments and dozens of clutches were nestled in the stratigraphic layers of the Tremp geological formation at the site of Coll de Nargó in the Spanish province of Lleida, which was a marshy region during the Late Cretaceous Period, the researchers said.

"Eggshells, eggs and nests were found in abundance and they all belong to dinosaurs, sauropods in particular," the study's leader, Albert García Sellés from the Miquel Crusafont Catalan Palaeontology Institute, told Spanish news agency SINC this week.

"Up until now, only one type of dinosaur egg had been documented in the region: Megaloolithus siruguei," Sellés added. His team found evidence of at least four other species: Cairanoolithus roussetensis, Megaloolithus aureliensis, Megaloolithus siruguei and Megaloolithus baghensis. Megaloolithus eggs are thought to be associated with sauropods, long-necked dinosaurs that were among some of the largest to roman the planet.
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Bulb

Phallus-shaped worm-like creature sheds light on Earth's biodiversity


Raw Story
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:51 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo
Fossilised forms of a phallus-shaped invertebrate have shed light on a dramatic spurt in Earth's biodiversity that occurred half a billion years ago, Canadian scientists reported on Wednesday.

Remains of 10-centimetre (four-inch) worm-like creatures were found in shale beds in Yoho National Park in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

The sediment dates back to the mid-Cambrian, a period when the number of species exploded and life forms became more complex.
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Scientists map tapeworm DNA


Raw Story
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:47 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
Scientists said Wednesday they had unravelled the genetic code of the tapeworm, unearthing data that should lead to more efficient drugs against the dangerous intestinal parasite.

Tapeworms are among the first known parasites of humans, recorded by Hippocrates and Aristotle as long ago as 300 BC.

Published in the journal Nature, the research highlighted genetic similarities between tapeworms and cancer tumours.

The finding suggests existing cancer drugs that suppress cell division and prevent DNA replication point to a novel cure, which would save time and money in development, the authors said.

"These genome sequences are helping us to immediately identify new targets for much-needed drug treatment," Matthew Berriman of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute said in a statement.
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Question

Mysterious gas in Titan's atmosphere

Sid Perkins
ScienceNow
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:40 UTC
Titan
© NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
A fluorescent glow high in the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, signifies the presence of a gas that astronomers have yet to identify. Data gathered by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini craft during Titan flybys show that the spectral emission is strongest at an infrared wavelength of about 3.28 micrometers.

That wavelength is very near one where emissions of methane, a gas prevalent in Titan's atmosphere, are also strong - one reason that emissions from the unknown gas were previously obscured, the researchers note. The glow appears only on the daytime side of the moon at altitudes between 600 and 1250 kilometers, with the largest intensity occurring at an altitude of about 950 km, the team reports online and in a forthcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters. (Although the gas is present throughout the atmosphere, it doesn't glow on the nighttime side of the moon because the fluorescence is produced only when sunlight strikes the gas molecules.)

Detailed analyses reveal that the glow doesn't stem from a problem with Cassini's sensors, and it isn't associated with methane or any of the other hydrocarbons already identified as constituents of Titan's atmosphere. The yet-to-be-identified compound may belong to groups of molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or heterocyclic aromatic compounds, the researchers suggest, because the 3.28-micrometer emission is characteristic of those substances, all of which contain ring-shaped arrangements of atoms as part of their overall structure.
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Mars

Mars Changes! Rocks indicate relatively recent 'marsquakes', volcanism on Red Planet


American Geophysical Union
Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:36 UTC
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© HiRISE imageScientists have found evidence of relatively recent quakes on the surface of Mars by studying boulders that fell off cliffs, leaving tracks behind.
Images of a martian landscape offer evidence that the Red Planet's surface not only can shake like the surface of Earth, but has done so relatively recently. If marsquakes do indeed take place, said the scientists who analyzed the high-resolution images, our nearest planetary neighbor may still have active volcanism, which could help create conditions for liquid water.

With High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) imagery, the research team examined boulders along a fault system known as Cerberus Fossae, which cuts across a very young (few million years old) lava surface on Mars. By analyzing boulders that toppled from a martian cliff, some of which left trails in the coarse-grained soils, and comparing the patterns of dislodged rocks to such patterns caused by quakes on Earth, the scientists determined the rocks fell because of seismic activity. The martian patterns were not consistent with how boulders would scatter if they were deposited as ice melted, another means by which rocks are dispersed on Mars.

Gerald Roberts, an earthquake geologist with Birkbeck, an institution of the University of London, who led the study, said that the images of Mars included boulders that ranged from two to 20 meters (6.5 to 65 feet) in diameter, which had fallen in avalanches from cliffs. The size and number of boulders decreased over a radius of 100 kilometers (62 miles) centered at a point along the Cerberus Fossae faults.

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