A human jawbone found in a cave on the Tibetan plateau has revealed new details about the appearance and lifestyle of a mysterious ancient species called Denisovans.
The 160,000-year-old fossil, comprising a powerful jaw and unusually large teeth, suggests these early relatives would have looked something like the most primitive of the Neanderthals. The discovery also shows that Denisovans lived at extremely high altitude and, through interbreeding, may have passed on gene adaptations for this lifestyle to modern-day Sherpas in the region.
Is microdosing mushrooms going mainstream?
Rosie has just returned from the school run. She drops a bag of groceries on to her kitchen table, and reaches for a clear plastic cup, covered by a white hanky and sealed with a hairband. Inside is a grey powder; her finely ground homegrown magic mushrooms.
“I’ll take a very small dose, every three or four days,” she says, weighing out a thumbnail of powder on digital jewellery scales, purchased for their precision. “People take well over a gram recreationally. I weigh out about 0.12g and then just swallow it, like any food. It gives me an alertness, an assurance. I move from a place of anxiety to a normal state of confidence, not overconfidence.”
Over the last 12 months, I have been hearing the same story from a small but increasing number of women. At parties and even at the school gates, they have told me about a new secret weapon that is boosting their productivity at work, improving their parenting and enhancing their relationships. Not clean-eating or mindfulness but microdosing – taking doses of psychedelic drugs so tiny they are considered to be “subperceptual”. In other words, says Rosie: “You don’t feel high, just… better.”
It’s a trend that first emerged in San Francisco less than a decade ago. Unlike the hippies who flocked to the city in the 60s, these new evangelists of psychedelic drugs were not seeking oblivion. Quite the opposite. While a “full” tripping dose of LSD is about 100 micrograms, online forums began to buzz with ambitious tech workers from Silicon Valley eulogising the effect of taking 10 to 20 micrograms every few days. Others used magic mushrooms. While both drugs are illegal in the US and the UK, increasing numbers claimed that tiny amounts were making them more focused, creative and productive.
Why you should turn your lawn into a meadow
y garden sings its own song. It starts after the dawn chorus with the honeybees, followed by the heavier buzz of the bumbles, punctuated by the hoverflies’ higher pitch. You can even sometimes hear the rustle and creak of beetles as evening comes. To lie among it, eyes closed, is to hear something exquisite.
My garden sings this song because it is allowed to. I have long been a proponent of neglecting lawns to nurture nature, as Margaret Renkl recently made the case for in the New York Times – and there isn’t a manicured strip of green that doesn’t ache to do the same.
Most lawns have been silenced by the regime of a lawnmower, leaving just a few species of grass. They are biodiversity deserts, barren of beetle and bee, contributing to a vanishing insect population – and worse still, we pursue this. There are aisles in garden centres promising ever-greener sward, with no moss and weeds. Let there be no misunderstanding: these are chemicals that silence the soil.
There is another way. Your lawn is already a wildflower meadow – every inch of soil is waiting for its moment to burst forth. Those weeds are some of the best insect food, growing despite the weather, endlessly repeat blooming, rich in nectar and pollen. A seed bank is already there – it might even contain orchids. Oh, and perhaps plenty of moss, essential stuff for nests and nature of all sorts.
Science Daily
What happens when schools go solar? Overlooked benefits
Sunshine splashing onto school rooftops and campuses across the country is an undertapped resource that could help shrink electricity bills, new research suggests.
The study, published in the April issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters, shows taking advantage of all viable space for solar panels could allow schools to meet up to 75 percent of their electricity needs and reduce the education sector's carbon footprint by as much as 28 percent.
At the same time, solar panels could help schools unplug from grids fed by natural gas and coal power plants that produce particulate matter, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides -- air pollutants that can contribute to smog and acid rain as well as serious health consequences including heart attacks and reduced lung function. "This is an action we can take that benefits the environment and human health in a real, meaningful way," said Stanford behavioral scientist Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, an author of the study.
Deadly box jellyfish antidote discovered using CRISPR genome editing
Researchers at the University of Sydney have discovered an antidote to the deadly sting delivered by the most venomous creature on earth -- the Australian box jellyfish.
The Australian box jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri) has about 60 tentacles that can grow up to three metres long. Each tentacle has millions of microscopic hooks filled with venom.
Each box jellyfish carries enough venom to kill more than 60 humans. A single sting to a human will cause necrosis of the skin, excruciating pain and, if the dose of venom is large enough, cardiac arrest and death within minutes.
An evolutionary rescue in polluted waters
The combination of a big population, good genes and luck helps explain how a species of fish in Texas' Houston Ship Channel was able to adapt to what normally would be lethal levels of toxins for most other species, according to a study to be published May 3 in the journal Science.
The exceptional survivor story of the Gulf killifish was one scientists at the University of California, Davis, Baylor University and their co-authoring colleagues wanted to unveil so they could learn more about what other species may need to adapt to drastically changed environments.
The minnow-like Gulf killifish are an important part of the food web for a number of larger fish species in coastal marsh habitats.
Science
In Search of Blue
Mas Subramanian's most celebrated discovery came out of the blue.
As a solid state chemist at the chemical giant Dupont, Subramanian had put his name on hundreds of publications and dozens of patents. He identified a new superconductor and found a more environmentally friendly route to produce the chemical fluorobenzene. When he left the company to work at Oregon State University here in 2006, he set out to develop a multiferroic, a material with a combination of electronic and magnetic properties that could lead to faster computers.
Following one of Subramanian's ideas, graduate student Andrew Smith one day mixed indium oxide, manganese oxide, and yttrium oxide and heated the mixture in the oven. The resulting material, it turned out, didn't have any special magnetic or electric properties. It was just very blue.
Subramanian's first thought was that Smith, who had recently switched from marine biology to chemistry, had made a mistake. His second thought was something that someone at Dupont had once told him: Blue is really hard to make.
Imported wolves settle in as Lake Superior island teems with moose
Thirteen new radio-collared wolves are now scouting Isle Royale in Michigan and feasting on moose, whose numbers this winter reached 2060—the second highest estimate since ecologists began to study predators and prey on the island in 1958. The new wolves, imported to help restore the U.S. national park from overbrowsing by moose, are largely avoiding the territory of the remaining two wolves of the original population.
Twenty female moose are also sporting radio collars, allowing biologists to watch both wolf and moose movements online. After 8 years essentially unfettered by predation because wolf numbers were so low, the moose population has been booming at 19% a year, according to data released today by Michigan Technological University (MTU) in Houghton.
The new wolves are expected to check moose numbers and help restore balsam fir and other plants, according to National Park Service (NPS) planners. And the flood of GPS data is revealing “stuff we’ve never seen before,” says MTU wildlife ecologist Rolf Peterson, such as where moose congregate to feed on new spring growth. Peterson and his colleagues plan to chemically analyze the specific balsam fir trees moose eat to determine whether they choose twigs with compounds that may have anti-inflammatory properties.
Nature
Cannabis used in US research differs genetically to the varieties people smoke
The cannabis that’s used for research in the United States is genetically different to the stuff people are smoking, says a recent study1. The finding suggests that research investigating the plant’s biological effects might not completely replicate the experience of people using commercially available strains ― something researchers have long suspected.
Scientists studying cannabis in the United States must source it from the National Center for Natural Products Research at the University of Mississippi in University. The facility holds the only licence from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to grow and distribute cannabis for research purposes, and it has a contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to give researchers access to its products.
Critics have long complained that NIDA’s pot is weaker than strains typically sold in dispensaries in states where the drug is now legal, or available on the street. The agency’s strongest variety contains more than 10% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive chemical responsible for marijuana’s ‘high’. Some street varieties contain more than 20% THC.
How China is redrawing the map of world science
On a freezing November morning, Ashraf Islam is 3,000 kilometres from his family in balmy Bangladesh, but the weather is far from his mind as he gushes about the science opportunities he has encountered in Beijing.
“We have good facilities at home, but the facilities here are nothing like what I’ve used before,” says Islam, who is working towards a PhD in China researching techniques to remove organic matter from wastewater, an acute problem in Bangladesh.
Htet Aung Phyo, a PhD student from Myanmar, is using his Chinese-funded fellowship in Beijing to develop ways to use bacteria to extract copper from low-grade ore. If his project succeeds, it could help to extend the lives of copper mines in Myanmar, some of which are operated by a Chinese company. A breakthrough would also mean more jobs in his own country. “This is why I am here,” he says proudly.
Mashable
Feast your eyes on this spectacular Hubble photo of a spiral galaxy
The Hubble telescope has captured a dazzling new photograph of a spiral galaxy, NGC 2903.
NGC 2903 is part of the constellation Leo, located roughly 30 million light-years from Earth. NASA used the powerful orbital telescope to explore it along with over 100 other disc galaxies in the region.
Spiral galaxies comprise the majority of galaxies in space at over 75 percent. Our own Milky Way galaxy was thought to be one until the 1960s, when it was reclassified as a barred spiral (a spiral galaxy with a distinct center bar in addition to spiral arms). Spiral galaxies' arms are full of stars (and solar systems) as well as cosmic dust and gas bursts.
A Western Revival What's happened since a devastating fire ripped through Malibu
The church survived and so did the train depot. But the rest of Paramount Ranch is a mangled yard of twisted metal and charred wood. The National Park Service fenced off the ruins of the replica 19th-century Western town, which throughout its 70-year history in the Malibu hills has served as a classic set for the likes of HBO’s Westworld, countless Hollywood westerns, and weddings. When I visited the rubble in April, a man in his 60s stood beside me, peering through the metal fence at the leveled buildings. “Our daughter got married out here,” he said, wearily.
Six months earlier, the Woolsey Fire ripped through the mock town’s saloons, mining shops, and Sheriff’s buildings. The blaze burned nearly 100,000 acres and scorched 88 percent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which is home to Paramount Ranch. It was the largest fire in the park’s history, and it left a scar that is easily visible from space. The Woolsey Fire followed in the footsteps of 2017’s nearby Thomas Fire, which for eight months held the title as the biggest wildfire in California history — until, that is, it was eclipsed by yet another giant blaze, the Mendocino Complex fire.
And yet, the land now thrives. A procession of winter storms, born over the Pacific Ocean, has breathed life into this scorched world. It is earth renewed. Amid the telltale signs of a violent 1,000-degree inferno — blackened trees and singed shrubs — lush, even head-high plants have shot up from the ground. “It’s quite a comeback,” said Mark Mendelsohn, a National Park Service biologist who has spent the last month trudging through the phenomenal regrowth. “You’ve got black shrub skeletons and a verdant green carpet.”
Gizmodo
Evidence of Arsenic-Breathing Microbial Life Found in Pacific Ocean
Researchers working off the coast of Mexico have discovered evidence of arsenic-breathing life in oxygen-starved waters. These resilient microbes are a vestige of Earth’s ancient past, but they could also be a sign of things to come under the influence of climate change.
Billions of years ago, when the Earth was still very young, the first organisms to emerge did not have the benefit of abundant oxygen. Instead, these pioneering microbes likely exploited other elements to get their energy, including nitrogen, sulfur, and, perhaps surprisingly, arsenic—a compound typically associated with poison. Eventually, our planet became rich in oxygen owing to the effects of photosynthesizing organisms, which converted carbon dioxide into oxygen.
NASA Says Fraudulent Supplier Caused It to Lose Two Climate Satellites, Wasting Over $700 Million
NASA has found its loss of two 92-foot Taurus rockets—as well as the climate-monitoring satellites they were carrying—in 2009 and 2011 was due to a supplier that falsified test data about frangible joints that were supposed to split and release the rockets’ fairings, according to Quartz.
According to a NASA Launch Services Program (LSP) report released on April 30, agency engineers have determined that Oregon aluminum extrusion manufacturer Sapa Profiles, Inc. (ISP) had doctored failed test results, swapped out measurements from acceptably-made batches, or altered the conditions of testing to ensure a favorable result. They then shipped out the poorly-made parts to clients, one of which was Orbital Sciences (now Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems), the manufacturer of Taurus rockets. As a result, NASA determined, the clamshell-style nosecones of the rockets carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory and Glory satellites failed to fall off on command due to SPI’s faulty frangible joints surviving explosive charges.
Both Taurus rockets then plummeted to their doom in the ocean, with NASA LSP writing in their report that the “combined cost of both mission failures was in excess of $700,000,000.”
Narwhal Genome Reveals Another Way That Narwhals Are Weird
One of the most recognizable animals of the sea, the narwhal, is even more unique than their looks would suggest, according to a new study of their genetics released this week.
It found that the genetic diversity of these horned whales is astonishingly low compared to similar animals living in the arctic waters. Yet, despite this low genetic diversity, long considered a harbinger of a species’ pending doom, narwhals have thrived for a million years and even rapidly grown in population recently, with no signs of stopping soon—at least if we humans don’t threaten their existence with climate change.
Though some DNA evidence from narwhals, or Monodon monoceros, had earlier suggested these animals were light on genetic diversity, there hadn’t been a deep dive into their genetic structure, or genome. So Danish researchers at the Natural History Museum of Denmark (affiliated with the University of Copenhagen) sequenced and studied the genome of a narwhal living in West Greenland. They also compared these genes to those of other marine animals that reside in the Arctic, such as beluga whales (a close cousin), polar bears, and walruses.
The New York Times
An Emperor Penguin Colony in Antarctica Vanishes
The Antarctic’s second-largest colony of emperor penguins collapsed in 2016, with more than 10,000 chicks lost, and the population has not recovered, according to a new study.
Many of the adults relocated nearby, satellite imagery shows, but the fact that emperor penguins are vulnerable in what had been considered the safest part of their range raises serious long-term concerns, said Phil Trathan, the paper’s co-author and head of conservation biology with the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England.
“That means that these places aren’t as safe as we thought previously,” Dr. Trathan said. The colony at Halley Bay has all but disappeared, the research team at the British Antarctic Survey said in a statement.
A Violent Splash of Magma That May Have Made the Moon
The moon is far more than a largely dead orb. Our planet’s pale satellite is the creator of tides, the catcher of meteors and the only other world in the starry ocean where humanity has set foot. But scientists are still not entirely clear how it was made. Solving this mystery would not only reveal the moon’s origins, it would also help explain our own planet’s evolution.
A study published on Monday in Nature Geoscience suggests that the moon was forged from the fires of an ocean of magma sloshing over baby Earth’s surface. If correct, this model may solve a longstanding paradox.
Lunar meteorites and samples collected during the Apollo missions show that the moon and Earth have remarkably similar geochemical fingerprints. Scientists suspect that this was likely the result of a giant impactor the size of Mars, known as Theia, that slammed into a young Earth and sent into orbit a spiral of material that coalesced into the moon.
Ars Technica
Study: Leonardo da Vinci suffered from “claw hand,” not post-stroke paralysis
Famed artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci suffered from a crippled right hand late in life, usually attributed to a stroke. In a new paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, two Italian researchers argue that Leonardo more likely suffered from a condition colloquially known as "claw hand." They base their argument on analysis of a 16th-century portrait of en elderly Leonardo.
The quintessential Renaissance man was the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary named Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci. (His mother, Caterina, was a peasant.) Much of what we know about Leonardo's life comes from the writing of the 16th-century painter and historian Giorgio Vasari, in Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.
Historians have also studied Leonardo's drawings and his use of "mirror writing" in his journals, concluding he was almost certainly predominantly left-handed, although he was ambidextrous to some extent. For instance, he wrote and drew with his left hand but never painted with it. Vasari noted that Leonardo in his prime "was physically so strong that... with his right hand he could bend the ring of an iron door knocker or a horseshoe as if they were lead."
Bike lanes need physical protection from car traffic, study shows
There are plenty of good reasons that people should cycle more. People who exercise more are healthier and can score higher on cognitive tests, for one thing. And replacing short car trips with journeys by bike (or on foot) is probably a good thing if we want to try to deal with this whole climate change thing. But that will only work if people feel safe swapping their two-ton deathmobiles for a pair of pedals. And it may well mean providing cyclists with bike lanes protected from vehicle traffic with more than a coat of paint. In fact, a study from Monash University in Australia suggests that merely painting bike lanes onto the roads may be counterproductive.
The researchers conducted an observational study, gathering data from 60 cyclists in Melbourne, Australia. For a week or two, the cyclists were equipped with sensors and cameras to capture data over the course of their riding. GNSS satellite navigation was used for location, ultrasonic sensors measured the passing distances of objects as the cyclists rode, and cameras allowed the researchers to classify passing events—was the bicycle passed by a vehicle, did the pass happen while the cyclist was in a bike lane, and so on. Over the study period (between April and August 2017) there were 422 trips covering a total of 3,294 miles (5,302km), 91 percent of which were on-road.
Study says ancient Romans may have built “invisibility cloaks” into structures
Scientists are hard at work developing real-world "invisibility cloaks" thanks to a special class of exotic manmade "metamaterials." Now a team of French scientists has suggested in a recent preprint on the physics arXiv that certain ancient Roman structures, like the famous Roman Colosseum, have very similar structural patterns, which may have protected them from damage from earthquakes over the millennia.
Falling within the broader class of photonic band gap materials, a "metamaterial" is technically defined as any material whose microscopic structure can bend light in ways it doesn't normally bend. That property is called an index of refraction, i.e., the ratio between the speed of light in a vacuum and how fast the top of the light wave travels. Natural materials have a positive index of refraction; certain manmade metamaterials—first synthesized in the lab in 2000—have a negativeindex of refraction, meaning they interact with light in such a way as to bend light around even very sharp angles.
That's what makes metamaterials so ideal for cloaking applications—any "invisibility cloak" must be able to bend electromagnetic waves around whatever it's supposed to be cloaking. (They are also ideal for making so-called "super lenses" capable of seeing objects at much smaller scales than is possible with natural materials, because they have significantly lower diffraction limits.) Most metamaterials consist of a highly conductive metal like gold or copper, organized in specific shapes and arranged in carefully layered periodic lattice structures. When light passes through the material, it bends around the cloaked object, rendering it "invisible." You can see anything directly behind it but never perceive the object itself.
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
The Big Boy leaves the shop and heads into history
The years-long journey to bring Big Boy 4014 back to life has finally come to an end, and a whole new generation will get to see a living piece of history traveling the rails starting today.
The Union Pacific Big Boy 4014 steam engine arrived in Cheyenne almost exactly five years ago, with the goal of launching just in time for the company’s celebration of the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
The team at the UP Steam Shop in Cheyenne has worked since 2014 to rehab both Big Boy 4014 and the Living Legend 844, the last steam locomotive built for the company. While 844 has been working for UP since its retirement in 1960 in special service, the Big Boy had been sitting idle at the RailGiants Train Museum in California since 1962, right after its retirement.