In a first-of-its-kind study, scientists have used ancient DNA to reconstruct the family trees of dozens of individuals who lived in a small German valley around 4,000 years ago.
The genealogies point to social inequality within individual households, which encompassed both high-status family members and unrelated, low-status individuals — possibly servants or even slaves — as well as mysterious foreign females related to no one else.
Such insights could never have been made without using ancient DNA, says Philipp Stockhammer, an archaeologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany, who co-led the study. “For me, this is the future of archaeology,” he says. “We are now forced to see social inequality and complexity on a completely different scale, that we haven’t taken into account for the deep past.” The team published its results in Science on 10 October.
Interesting Engineering: People Eating Home-Cooked Meals Have Lower Levels of Harmful Chemicals in Their Bodies by Marcia Wendorf
In a report just published by the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, four scientists from the Silent Spring Institute have analyzed the content of restaurant and fast food meals and determined that they contain chemicals that have been linked to cancer.
The chemicals are polyfluoroalkyls (PFASs). They are found in greaseproof and water-resistant packaging, and they are commonly found in:
- Food packaging, such as microwave popcorn bags and fast food wrappers
- Stain-resistant carpets, rugs, and furniture, including Scotchgard®, and waterproof clothing including GORE-TEX®
- Non-stick cookware, including Teflon®
- Outdoor gear that has a "durable water repellent" coating
- Firefighting foams and ski wax.
The types of PFAS are:
- Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)
- Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS)
- Perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA)
- Perfluorodecanoic acid (PFDA)
- Perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS)
- Perfluordecanoic acid (PFDeA).
ScienceDaily: Humans have salamander-like ability to regrow cartilage in joints
Contrary to popular belief, cartilage in human joints can repair itself through a process similar to that used by creatures such as salamanders and zebrafish to regenerate limbs, researchers at Duke Health found.
Publishing online Oct. 9 in the journal Science Advances, the researchers identified a mechanism for cartilage repair that appears to be more robust in ankle joints and less so in hips. The finding could potentially lead to treatments for osteoarthritis, the most common joint disorder in the world.
"We believe that an understanding of this 'salamander-like' regenerative capacity in humans, and the critically missing components of this regulatory circuit, could provide the foundation for new approaches to repair joint tissues and possibly whole human limbs," said senior author Virginia Byers Kraus, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the departments of Medicine, Pathology and Orthopedic Surgery at Duke.
Kraus and colleagues, including lead author Ming-Feng Hsueh, Ph.D., devised a way to determine the age of proteins using internal molecular clocks integral to amino acids, which convert one form to another with predictable regularity.
Phys.org: How remote working can increase stress and reduce well-being by Stephanie Russell
Remote working is becoming more popular than ever. A study released by the Swiss office provider IWG found that 70% of professionals work remotely at least one day a week, while 53% work remotely for at least half of the week. Some multinationals have their entire staff working remotely, with no fixed office presence at all, which can result in having employees situated all over the world.
New technology makes all this possible. While there are certainly benefits, there are also a number of pitfalls. As remote working becomes the new normal for many, it's important companies adapt and put the right policies in place to ensure their employees feel part of the team and don't burn out.
Nearly 70% of millennials would be more likely to choose an employer who offered remote working according to one study. The benefits are important. Employees value the flexibility it gives them, particularly if they have childcare commitments. People also appreciate escaping long commutes and avoiding office distractions.
At the present time, I work in the same building that I live. The situation has its virtues as well as its drawbacks. For example, I do miss commuting to work on a regular basis. And while this isn’t the case presently, I don’t particularly like my employer having sort of a leash on me but...there are times when too much is going on in the office to get anything substantial and important done...I do like working from home with those types of special projects.
Phys.org: National Audubon report claims two-thirds of North American birds at risk due to climate change by Bob Yirka
A team of researchers working for the National Audubon Society has found evidence that suggests approximately two-thirds of North American breeding birds are at risk of extinction from climate change over the next century. The group has published the results of their analysis in Conservation Science and Practice.
Last month, scientists released evidence of a massive decrease in bird populations in North America over the past half-century—as much as one-third of all birds (approximately 3 billion) have disappeared since the 1970s—most from loss of habitat, pesticides, collisions with man-made structures and feral housecats. Now, it appears that the future looks even worse for remaining birds, and this time, the culprit is climate change.
SciTech Daily: Surprising Secret Ingredients to Clean Up Environment: Liquid Metals
Forget the laboratory, substances that can solve environmental problems by capturing carbon dioxide, decontaminating water and cleaning up pollutants can be easily created in a kitchen, a University Of New South Wales Sydney study shows.
In a paper published on October 11, 2019, in Nature Communications, University Of New South Wales (UNSW) chemical engineers shone a light on the mysterious world of liquid metals and their role as catalysts to speed up chemical processes using low amounts of energy.
Professor Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh of UNSW’s School of Chemical Engineering says that “anyone with a shaker and a cooktop at home in their kitchen can make catalysts that can be used for CO2 conversion, cleaning water and other pollutants.
“They can do this by using a combination of liquid metals like gallium, indium, bismuth, and tin in alloys that can be melted under 300ºC on a cooktop or in an oven.”
Professor Kalantar-Zadeh and colleague Dr. Jianbo Tang showed that by heating an alloy of bismuth and tin, the metal melted at a point much lower than if you were to heat each metal individually. Substances that behave like this are said to be eutectic.
Scientific American: Mini Gravitational-Wave Detector Could Probe Dark Matter by Jeremy Hsu
Within one second of the big bang, the first newborn black holes may have announced their formation with gravitational waves that stretched and squeezed the fabric of existence as they rippled outward into the expanding universe. Now researchers at Northwestern University have begun planning a tabletop-size sensor that could detect these primordial howls for the first time.
The gigantic $1-billion Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) first measured the spacetime ripples known as gravitational waves in 2016; these phenomena came from the collision and merging of distant supermassive black holes. Since then, massive detectors have also recorded gravitational waves from merging neutron stars. Northwestern's proposed mini detector, which received an influx of funding in July, could measure higher-frequency waves from objects that have never been measured before—such as black holes in the earliest universe.
Science News: With 20 new moons, Saturn now has the most of any solar system planet by Sofie Bates
Saturn now reigns as the solar system’s “moon king,” thanks to 20 newfound moons. That brings the ringed planet’s total known satellites to 82, knocking Jupiter — with 79 moons (SN: 7/17/18) — off the throne, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced October 7.
And it’s not just a phase. Saturn is likely to keep its title, says Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. He estimates that Saturn has about 100 moons — but the remaining ones are so small, under 1 kilometer across, that they’re hard to identify.
As it is, it took Sheppard and his colleagues years to confirm that some of the specks captured in images taken from 2004 to 2007 by the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii were, in fact, moons orbiting Saturn. By comparing the objects’ locations over time, the team found that three of the newfound moons are prograde, orbiting in the same direction that Saturn rotates, while 17 are retrograde, traveling in the opposite direction. Each is between 2 and 5 kilometers wide.
Popular Science: That groundbreaking photo of a black hole has raised some mighty big questions by Neel V. Patel
It’s hard to sneak a peek of a black hole. Not even light—the fastest known thing in the universe—can escape its gargantuan gravitational pull. “You’ve got something that is just designed not to give up its secrets,” says Shep Doeleman, senior research fellow at Harvard University and director of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
In April 2019, Doeleman and his colleagues spilled the beans, revealing to the world the first image of a supermassive black hole. The behemoth in question sits 55 million light-years away in the M87 galaxy in the constellation Virgo. This big reveal could help answer some of our heftiest questions about the universe.
Astrophysicists coined the term “black hole” in 1967, and there’s a reason the elusive beasts have fascinated us for the decades since. Each has a colossally dense center—the one inside M87 is 6.5 billion times the sun’s mass. That creates immense gravitational pull, sucking up practically everything nearby. Around the center, though, is a visible point of no return called the event horizon, where gas and debris create a glowing silhouette. One problem: In the vastness of the universe, black holes are tiny (their density is akin to squeezing a star larger than the sun into New York City). Making out M87’s signature is similar to spotting a quarter on the moon from your backyard.
Phys.org: Vivid gladiator fresco discovered at Pompeii by Ella Ide