Science & TechnologyS


Rainbow

Siberian 'unicorn' lived at time of modern humans, wiped out by climate change

Robyn Mills
Phys.org
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 12:00 UTC
siberian unicorn
© W. S. Van der Merwe/Natural History MuseumArtist's impression of Elasmotherium.
New research has shed light on the origin and extinction of a giant, shaggy Ice Age rhinoceros known as the Siberian unicorn because of its extraordinary single horn.

An international team of researchers from Adelaide, Sydney, London, the Netherlands, and Russia, have settled a long-standing debate about the relationship of the Siberian unicorn to living rhinos, and revealed that it survived much later than previously believed, overlapping in time with modern humans.

Published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution and led by London's Natural History Museum, the researchers say the Siberian unicorn became extinct around 36,000 years ago. This was most likely because of reduction in steppe grassland where it lived - due to climate change rather than the impact of humans.

Today there are just five surviving species of rhino, although in the past there have been as many as 250 species.

Comment: Could the Siberian 'Unicorn' have succumbed to similar events which befell the Mammoth? See also:

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Better Earth

Ancestor of modern primates may have come from North America, not Asia, and during a period of global warming

Florida Museum of Natural History
Phys.org
Thu, 29 Nov 2018 12:00 UTC
Teilhardina brandti
© Florida Museum image by Paul MorseTeilhardina brandti, a 56-million year-old primate found in Wyoming, may be older than its Asian cousin, previously thought to be the earliest ancestor of modern primates. Unusual tooth sockets in this lower jaw of Teilhardina brandti helped make the determination.
About 56 million years ago, on an Earth so warm that palm trees graced the Arctic Circle, a mouse-sized primate known as Teilhardina first curled its fingers around a branch.

The earliest-known ancestor of modern primates, Teilhardina's close relatives would eventually give rise to today's monkeys, apes and humans. But one of the persistent mysteries about this distant cousin of ours is where it originated.

Teilhardina (ty-hahr-DEE'-nuh) species quickly spread across the forests of Asia, Europe and North America, a range unparalleled by all other primates except humans. But where did its journey begin?

New research shows that Teilhardina brandti, a species found in Wyoming, is as old or older than its Asian and European relatives, upending the prevailing hypothesis that Teilhardina first appeared in China.

Teilhardina's origins, however, remain a riddle.

Comment: See also:

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Moon

NASA head says US is within 10 years of on-going manned presence on the moon

Tess Bonn
The Hill
Thu, 29 Nov 2018 00:00 UTC
moon colonization
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says the U.S. is within 10 years of having a continuous manned presence on the moon, which will lay the groundwork for expanding space exploration to Mars.

"Right now we're building a space station, we call it 'Gateway,' that's going to be in orbit around the moon - think of it as a reusable command module where we can have human presence in orbit around the moon. From there we want reusable landers that go back and forth to the surface of the moon," Bridenstine told Hill.TV's Jamal Simmons and Buck Sexton on "Rising."

"We think we can achieve this in about 10 years, the idea being prove the capability, retire the risk, prove the human physiology and then go on to Mars," he continued.

Bridenstine joined "Rising" to detail NASA's plans to partner with nine U.S. companies to travel to the moon, a key component of NASA's plan to extend human space exploration.
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Cassiopaea

sPHENIX project to study "soup" that gave rise to the universe


Sputnik
Fri, 30 Nov 2018 15:11 UTC
galaxy
© Courtesy of the European Southern Observatory
Research conducted with the help of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has shown that the original state of the Universe was a "soup" known as quark-gluon plasma, which is an almost ideal liquid.

Its properties are now being studied by the sPHENIX international collaboration involving the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (NRNU MEPhI). Prof. Gunther Rolland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-heads the sPHENIX project, told a collaboration meeting at the NRNU MEPhI about the course of the studies and how they could benefit mankind.

The quark-gluon plasma is a high-temperature state, in which the matter of the Universe existed moments after the Big Bang (after a period of its accelerated expansion, when it reached the size approximately equal to that of the solar system). There are several hypotheses that matter can exist in this state in the center of very dense stars.

Researchers from the sPHENIX collaboration have endeavored for the last 15 years either to confirm or deny these hypotheses, while trying to determine the properties of the quark-gluon plasma.

"We have discovered that this is the most ideal liquid in existence. But it is still unclear how this property is related to the components of quark-gluon plasma. As it follows from its name, it consists of quarks and gluons. But we are yet to clarify how they interact and if there are any new bound states formed of quarks and gluons that can produce such liquidity at the output," Gunther Roland, co-head of the sPHENIX collaboration, told RIA Novosti.

Comment: Plasma is also the driving force behind the structure of the universe, according to the electric universe theory. Although the scientists are starting from the unproven assumption that there was a big bang, perhaps this research will reveal more clues to the electrical nature of the universe. See also: Review: "Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection"

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Sherlock

2.4 million-year-old stone tools turn up in Algeria, further complicating the story of early-human evolution

Ed Yong
The Atlantic
Fri, 30 Nov 2018 14:00 UTC
Oldowan core
© Mohamed SahnouniAn Oldowan core from Ain Boucherit
To the untrained eye, the rock would have looked like any other. But when Mohamed Sahnouni pulled it out of the ground in the summer of 2006, he immediately recognized it as a chopper: a palm-size tool deliberately flaked to create a sharp cutting edge. It looked exactly like something from the so-called Oldowan culture, a style of stone tools that existed between 1.9 and 2.6 million years ago, predate Homo sapiens, and had mainly come from East Africa.

But Sahnouni wasn't in East Africa.

For years, he and his colleagues had been exploring the archaeological site of Ain Boucherit in Algeria's High Plateaus, just an hour's drive from the Mediterranean at the continent's northern edge. This part of the continent has been relatively neglected by archaeologists, and until now, the oldest artifacts from the region were 1.8 million-year-old stone tools that Sahnouni had found at nearby Ain Hanech. But what his team discovered at Ain Boucherit was much older.

After unearthing that first chopper, his team eventually dug up 252 other Oldowan-style tools. They also found 19 animal bones with long indentations that they interpret as cut marks, a sign of prehistoric butchery. The oldest of these tools and bones are 2.4 million years old. "It was a big joy to find them," Sahnouni says.

Comment: It's even more complicated than that: Story of human origins continues to be rewritten in East Asia

See also:

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Fish

Beijing plans deep sea AI base, and more, in the South China Sea

Stephen Chen
South China Morning Post
Mon, 26 Nov 2018 01:01 UTC
Qianlong III UUV robot submarine China
Qianlong III UUV robot submarine China
China is planning to build a deep sea base for unmanned submarine science and defence operations in the South China Sea, a centre that might become the first artificial intelligence colony on Earth, officials and scientists involved in the plan said.

The project - named in part after Hades, the underworld of Greek mythology - was launched at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing this month after a visit to a deep sea research institute at Sanya, Hainan province, by Chinese President Xi Jinping in April.

Xi urged the scientists and engineers to dare to do something that has never been done before. "There is no road in the deep sea, we do not need to chase [after other countries], we are the road," he said.


Comment: Pentagon pledges to continue belligerent operations in South China Sea


The idea of an outpost for deep sea exploration has been a favourite of scientists, engineers and fiction writers for hundreds of years, while the Greek allegory of Atlantis has inspired many "city beneath the sea" stories.

Comment: China is proving itself to be at the forefront of technology, and diplomacy, and has also recently unveiled its plans for space:

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Archaeology

Story of human origins continues to be rewritten in East Asia

Günter Bechly
Evolution News
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 20:30 UTC
Levallois stone tool technology
© Muséum de Toulouse [CC BY-SA 3.0]Levallois stone tool technology
In recent Evolution News articles (Bechly 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2018), I have commented on paleoanthropological discoveries that overturned the cherished out-of-Africa scenario. Now, the rewriting of the story of human evolution continues with undampened enthusiasm. In a special report series, "Rewriting human evolution," the journal New Scientist featured an article "Who are you? How the story of human origins is being rewritten" (Barras 2017) reviewing a lot of this modern research. This summer the article "Asia's mysterious role in the early origins of humanity" (Douglas 2018a) was appropriately added to the series, because indeed many of the revolutionary new discoveries were made in China and the Indian subcontinent.

Rewritings from East Asia

The more recent East Asian rewritings of human prehistory commenced some two or three years ago with the re-dating of two hominid fossils and stone artifacts, from Longgupo cave in Central China, as 2.48 million years old (Han et al. 2015), and the description of 2.588 million year old cut marks on bovid bones from the Siwalik Himalayan foothills in India (Dambricourt Malassé 2016, Dambricourt Malassé et al. 2016a, 2016b). These cut marks are so precise and required such a detailed knowledge of bovid anatomy that an anthropic origin seems the only possible explanation. These two findings are remarkable because they not only predate the previous oldest fossil remains of the genus Homo outside of Africa (from Dmanisi in Georgia about 1.85 million years ago), but even predate most of the oldest Homo fossils from Africa, except for a recently described single jawbone from Ledi-Geraru in Ethiopia (Villmoare et al. 2015), dated to 2.8 million year ago. Therefore, the new discoveries suggest either an earlier origin and migration of our genus Homo to Asia, or a prior migration of australopithecine hominins into Asia, or even an independent development of non-hominin tool-using apes.
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Gear

MI6 architect showcases hidden technology that 'combat terrorists and moped raiders'

Mark Blunden
Evening Standard
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 00:00 UTC
Argon device
Nowhere to hide: the Argon device on show today scans passers-by to reveal any weapons concealed under their clothing
X-ray cameras that can reveal hidden weapons under clothes and bike stands to deter ram raiders are among the next generation of "public realm" defence gadgets on show in London today.

More than 20 features have been built into an urban park - designed by the architects of the MI6 building - at the International Security Expo.

The Protecting Urban Spaces installation is the centrepiece of the two-day Olympia show, featuring concealed technology such as heat-seeking cameras.

The park's designer Neil Bennett, a partner at Marylebone-based Farrells, said London developers were increasingly requesting hidden defensive features. He said "subtle changes" to public and semi-public spaces were being built in to add security.

Comment: Welcome to the wonderfully-for-profit world of high tech public surveillance where our every move will be scanned and scrutinized in the name of 'security'. Health and privacy concerns be damned.

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Cowboy Hat

Chinese scientist attempts to justify creation of genetically modified babies amid ethics backlash

Rob Stein
npr
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 11:15 UTC
He Jiankui, gene-edited babies, GMO babies
© Kin Cheung/APFor the first time in public, He Jiankui, a Chinese scientist, defended his gene-editing research involving twin babies who were born last month. Other scientists rebuked him.
The scientist who stunned the world by claiming he created the first genetically modified babies defended his actions publicly for the first time on Wednesday, saying that editing the genes of the twin girls while they were embryos would protect them from contracting HIV.

He Jiankui of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, addressed hundreds of scientists gathered at an international gene- editing summit in Hong Kong that has been rocked by ethical questions swirling around his research.

Earlier, He surprised the scientists just as they were gathering for the meeting with his claim, which he outlined in a series of YouTube videos. With the announcement, He bypassed scientific norms of first subjecting his experiment to scrutiny by other scientists.

"First, I must apologize that this result was leaked unexpectedly," He told some 700 attendees. "This study has been submitted to a scientific journal for review."

He faced a skeptical, incensed audience at the 2nd International Summit On Human Genome Editing, which was organized to try to reach a global consensus on whether, how and when it might be permissible to create children from genetically altered human embryos.

In yet another unsettling revelation, He said that "there is another potential pregnancy" involving a gene-edited embryo, but that it is still at an early stage.


Comment: Who's your daddy? Scientist behind the CRISPR-Cas9 babies says another could be on the way


Comment: See also:

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Beaker

Who's your daddy? Scientist behind the CRISPR-Cas9 babies says another could be on the way

Isabella Steger
qz.com
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 13:51 UTC
CRISPR9
The Chinese scientist who claimed he helped create a pair of genetically edited twin girls with HIV resistance may have more such babies on the way.

He Jiankui, who was educated at Stanford University and Rice University, revealed today (Nov. 28) there is another "potential pregnancy" at a conference on human-genome editing held at the University of Hong Kong, where an auditorium full of scientists, reporters, and photographers-whose cameras were so loud that they sometimes drowned out his voice-grilled the scientist three days after his controversial claims first came to light.

On Sunday (Nov. 25), the MIT Technology Review and Associated Press both reported that He's experiments resulted in the birth of twin girls named Lulu and Nana. Of the seven couples taking part in his trials, the men are all HIV-positive while the women are not. The couples underwent in-vitro fertilization, in which a sperm is injected in an egg in a petri dish, and then after a few days a living embryo is planted in the mother's womb. In this case, however, there was a small tweak. After the egg was fertilized, He's team injected Crispr-Cas9, a genetic tool that can precisely target and cut a specific gene among 20,000 human genes.

Comment: Not as precise or safe as we thought: CRISPR genome editing can cause big deletions or rearrangements of DNA

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