Rebecca Enzor

I’m not entirely sure what happened to last week, Aledans, and this week seems to be going in the same direction. I do know I’m on vacation next week, though, so things should normalize around here for a bit. Even though today’s Science News is a day late I hope it’s not a dollar short. In fact, the first article alone should make up for the wait. It’s amazing.

Before Babel? Ancient Mother Tongue Reconstructed: “We can trace echoes of language back 15,000 years to a time that corresponds to about the end of the last ice age,” said study co-author Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom….In other words, if modern-day humans could somehow encounter their Stone Age ancestors, they could say one or two very simple statements and make themselves understood, Pagel said.

This has got to be the coolest scientific thing I’ve read since the mega-volcano that ripped apart Pangea and killed half of the Earth’s species back in March.

Arctic Ocean ‘Acidifying Rapidly’: They say even if CO2 emissions stopped now, it would take tens of thousands of years for Arctic Ocean chemistry to revert to pre-industrial levels.

Nanoparticle Tech Could Bring Clean Water to Rural Poor: A water purification system that uses nanotechnology to remove bacteria, viruses and other contaminants may be able to deliver clean drinking water to rural communities for less than $3 a year per family, according to a new study.

Exposure to Fire Retardants During Pregnancy Linked to Hyperactivity, Lower IQ: Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are chemicals that have been used to lower the risk of fires in items like baby strollers, carpets and electronics. Because of known health risks, the chemicals have mostly not been used in items on sale in the U.S. since 2004. However, since they are not very biodegradable, PBDEs may still exist in older products that people may have or continue to exist in the tissue of people who were exposed to the chemicals.

Scientists Identify New Dog-sized Dinosaur: The discovery of the Acrotholus Audeti touched off further investigation that suggested the world’s dinosaur population was more diverse than once believed.

Pet Dino anyone?

Tongue Erections Help Bats Sop Up Nectar: Nectar-eating bats lap up the sweet liquid by engorging their tongues with blood, which, in turn, makes hairlike projections on the tongue stand at attention, new research finds. Together, the erect hairs, called papillae, act like a mop that grabs more liquid than a smooth surface could alone.

Admit it, that title made you giggle.

Bizarre Mars Mountain Possibly Built by Wind, Not Water: Many scientists suspect that the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) Mount Sharp formed primarily from layers of lakebed silt, which is one of the main reasons that the mountain was selected as Curiosity’s ultimate destination. But the new study holds that wind probably did most of the heavy lifting.

Europeans All Closely Related, Gene Study Shows: For more than a decade, researchers calculated theoretically that all people shared common ancestors fairly recently.

To test that theory, Coop and his colleagues analyzed 500,000 spots on the genome of Europeans, from Turkey to the United Kingdom. To untangle European ancestry, they calculated the length of shared segments of DNA, or the molecules that contain the genetic instructions for life. When two people share a longer stretch of identical DNA, they are likely to share a more recent common ancestor, since over time those gene segments evolve and diversify.

The researchers found that all Europeans shared a common ancestor just 1,000 years ago.

Um….WHAT? That doesn’t seem long enough.

Ancient DNA Found Hidden Below Sea Floor: The DNA, from tiny, one-celled sea creatures that lived up to 32,500 years ago, is the first to be recovered from the abyssal plains, the deep-sea bottoms that cover huge stretches of Earth. In a separate finding published this week, another research team reports teasing out plankton DNA that’s up to 11,400 years old from the floor of the much shallower Black Sea. The researchers say that the ability to retrieve such old DNA from such large stretches of the planet’s surface could help reveal everything from ancient climate to the evolutionary ecology of the seas.

Plant Seedlings Thrive by Talking with Friends: The research adds to growing evidence that plants “talk” via sound. Gagliano already has shown that fennel, which transmits nasty chemicals to curb competing plants, also shuts down seedling growth when its chemical signaling is cut off via a sealed box. Evidence abounds for acoustic signaling between plants and insects, such as orchids that release pollen only for the high-frequency buzz of a certain bee. And scientists are tracking drought by listening to hydraulic pops in drying tree and plant leaves.

Scientists Discover New Species of Bass in Florida: After confirming the initial discovery, scientists searched for the DNA profile in bass caught in nearby rivers to determine the bass’ range. They found the Choctaw bass in coastal rivers in Alabama and along the western Florida panhandle, including the Choctawhatchee River.

Greenland’s Glacial Ice Melt May Slow: According to the model, which looked at four swiftly shrinking outlet glaciers, today’s breakneck retreat will soon hit the brakes, thanks to natural processes like narrow fjords that choke glacial retreat and increased iceberg production that cools warm ocean water. But that doesn’t mean Greenland’s overall ice loss will stop, Nick warns.

Giant Gas Clouds Found in Void Between Galaxies: The discovery comes from a new survey of the dark, starless void between the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33), which revealed that the giant clouds of hot ionized hydrogen gas that could provide a fresh influx for star birth.

50-Year-Old Flouride Mystery Closer to Being Solved: The study suggests that fluoride works by reducing the ability of bacteria to stick to teeth, making the germs easier to wash away with saliva, brushing and other activities.

When fluoride bonds with tooth enamel, bacteria probably cannot hold onto it as strongly, said study researcher Karin Jacobs, a physicist at Saarland University in Germany.

Water on Earth and Moon May Have Same Source: The findings hint that water may have existed on Earth before the giant impact the planet received that created the moon, and that the moon possessed water from its earliest moments, scientists added. It remains a mystery exactly how water found within the moon survived this violent collision, though.

Hubble Telescope Discovers ‘Polluted’ Dead Stars: “We have identified chemical evidence for the building blocks of rocky planets,” researcher Jay Farihi of the University of Cambridge said in a statement Thursday (May 9). “When these stars were born, they built planets, and there’s a good chance that they currently retain some of them. The signs of rocky debris we are seeing are evidence of this — it is at least as rocky as the most primitive terrestrial bodies in our solar system.”

Submarine Ridge off Brazil: Piece of Sole Original Continent? After a month long expedition using a research submarine, the scientists say the so-called Rio Grande Elevation, a rise on the ocean floor about 1,500 km (932 miles) southeast of Rio de Janeiro, features granite and minerals, including iron, manganese, and cobalt, that differentiate it from the rest of the surrounding seabed.

Jerusalem’s Ancient ‘City of Quarries’ Reveals City-Building Rocks: The first-century quarry, which fits into the Second Temple Period (538 B.C. to A.D. 70), would’ve held the huge stones used in the construction of the city’s ancient buildings, the researchers noted.

Archaeologists also uncovered pick axes and wedges among other artifacts at the site in the modern-day Ramat Shlomo Quarter, a neighborhood in northern East Jerusalem.

Synthetic Spider Venom Makes a Kinder, Safer Antidote: Because it’s non-toxic, the synthetic “venom” might even be suitable for vaccinating people. “If they get bitten, they’ll already have antibodies capable of neutralising the most harmful effects of the venom,” says Chávez-Olórtegui.

Blood Hormone Restores Youthful Hearts to Old Mice: The protein, known as growth differentiation factor 11 (GDF11), circulates at high levels in the blood of young mice but declines with age. In a study published this week in Cell¹, the researchers report that elderly mice treated with the protein experience a reversal of tissue aging in the heart.

Disease Threatens Florida’s Citrus Industry: Although the disease, citrus greening, was first spotted in Florida in 2005, this year’s losses from it are by far the most extensive. While the bacteria, which causes fruit to turn bitter and drop from the trees when still unripe, affects all citrus fruits, it has been most devastating to oranges, the largest crop. So many have been affected that the United States Department of Agriculture has downgraded its crop estimates five months in a row, an extraordinary move, analysts said.  

Welcome to Science Tuesday, Aledans! Let’s get right to your weekly fix of science news.

 

Monster Saturn Hurricane Spied by NASA Probe: The stunning new images and video of the Saturn hurricane, which were taken by NASA’s Cassini probe, show that the storm’s eye is 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide — about 20 times bigger than typical hurricane eyes on Earth. And the Saturn maelstrom is more powerful than its Earth counterparts, with winds at its outer edge whipping around at 330 mph (530 km/h).

Parking Lot with Medieval Knight’s Skeleton May Also Hold His Family: “This site just keeps getting more and more interesting, it is turning out to be a real treasure trove of archaeology,” Ross Murray, a former student at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement. “These new finds look likely to be the possible relations of the suspected Medieval knight we found earlier this year. The skull of the skeleton found immediately beneath the location of the knight looks like that of a female and the remains found on the other side of the ornate slab belong to an infant from the same period.”

Fish Use ‘Sign Language’ to Help Out Hunting Buddies: Both types of fish, grouper and coral trout, are known for hunting cooperatively with other kinds of animals. Whereas the grouper hunts with giant moray eels and a fish called the Napoleon wrasse, coral trout partner up with octopuses to snag prey. A study published last week in the journal Nature Communications found that the fish are able to “point” their heads toward prey, to help out their hunting buddies.

Honey Good for Bee Immunity: Beekeepers often feed bees to get them safely through the winter. Honey may be ideal, but corn syrup is cheaper, so most beekeepers feed bees artificial sweeteners, Evans said.

Dear Everyone: STOP IT WITH THE CORN SYRUP. SERIOUSLY.

Sincerely, a person who is allergic to processed sugars (including corn syrup).

Mediterranean Diet Might Help Stave Off Dementia: Eating fish, chicken, olive oil and other foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids while staying away from meats and dairy — the so-called Mediterranean diet — may help older adults keep their memory and thinking skills sharp, a large new U.S. study suggests.

This is my diet already…well, except for all the cheese I eat

World’s Largest Infrared Space Telescope Shuts Down Forever: The $1.4 billion Herschel Space Observatory has exhausted the vital supply of liquid helium coolant that allowed it make the most sensitive and detailed observations of the cosmos in infrared light, ESA officials announced Monday (April 29).

Kinda sad that it’s floating in space now, all alone and dead

Dinosaur Lineage Traced to Africa: “Nyasasaurus is either the oldest known dinosaur or the closest known relative of dinosaurs, but we can’t completely rule out either option because the material is rather fragmentary,” said Angielczyk, who is Associate Curator of Paleomammalogy at the Field Museum of Natural History.

Protected Areas Help Green Sea Turtles: Until now, it wasn’t clear where these green sea turtles went after nesting and how much they might use nearby reserves. In this case, the animals spent much of their time in the nearby Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary eating sea grasses and algae.

Groundbreaking Surgery for Girl Born Without Windpipe: Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, a specialist in the field of regenerative medicine who developed the windpipe and led the complex nine-hour operation, said the treatment of the Korean-Canadian toddler, Hannah Warren, made him realize that this approach to building organs may work best with children, by harnessing their natural ability to grow and heal.

For Sand Tiger Sharks, a Deadly, Cannabalistic Battle Inside the Womb is Part of Evolution: Now scientists have concluded that this is not just a response to crowded conditions but represents an evolutionary strategy that allows the most aggressive male sharks to father the successful baby and thereby outcompete sexual rivals.

Astronomer Sleuths Solve Civil War Mystery of “Stonewall” Jackson’s Death: Olson has used astronomy to solve other historical whodunits before. For example, he calculated the direction of moonlight on the night of Paul Revere’s ride in 1775 to explain why Revere wasn’t spotted by British sentries on a nearby ship, and exposed how moonlight allowed soldiers on the Japanese I-58 submarine to see, and sink, the USS Indianapolis in 1945.

Insect’s Eyes Inspire New Digital Camera with Unique Imaging Capabilities: This class of technology offers exceptionally wide-angle fields of view, with low aberrations, high acuity to motion, and nearly infinite depth of field.

Frog Surprisingly Found to Live Underground: The study found that Iberian frogs can breed and live their entire lives in cavelike chambers, the first time this has been seen for a frog in Western Europe. The creatures were observed breeding in underground drainage compartments built beneath Portugal’s Serra da Estrela Natural Park; aboveground the animals are also found in “small ponds, humid meadows and soaked fields,” the authors wrote in a study.

Extinct Carnivores Lured into Cave of Death: In 1991, miners drilling about 18.7 miles (30 kilometers) outside Madrid, Spain, uncovered animal bones and called in local paleontologists to excavate. They uncovered a series of underground caverns full of animal fossils — including the remains of red pandas, bear dogs and saber-toothed cats, as well as ancient animals related to modern elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses and horses. To date, nearly 18,000 fossils have been recovered from the area.

Starving Settlers in Jamestown Colony Resorted to Cannibalism: Much is still unknown about the circumstances of this grisly meal: Who exactly the girl researchers are calling “Jane” was, whether she was murdered or died of natural causes, whether multiple people participated in the butchering or it was a solo act. But as Owsley revealed along with lead archaeologist William Kelso today at a press conference at the National Museum of Natural History, we now have the first direct evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown, the oldest permanent English colony in the Americas. “Historians have gone back and forth on whether this sort of thing really happened there,” Owsley says. “Given these bones in a trash pit, all cut and chopped up, it’s clear that this body was dismembered for consumption.”

Tiny Winged Fossil Suggests How Hummingbirds and Swifts Evolved: “This particular lineage went off on its own direction, survived a couple of million years–even made it to Europe–and ultimately died out without leaving any descendants,” said Daniel Ksepka of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina. “The other side of the fork led to swifts and hummingbirds.”

 

Secret to Clingfish Suction Power Found: Using tiny hairs similar to those on gecko feet, clingfish are able to strongly and equally adhere to surfaces with a broad range of roughness, new research shows. The fish’s suction powers easily outperform manmade suction cups, scientists say, adding that mimicking their design could lead to a new class of suction devices.

Dawrf Lemurs Hibernate Like Bears: Yoder and colleagues captured several of the lemurs and outfitted them with temperature-sensitive radio collars before they were released. The team found that the lemurs take different sleep strategies depending on which part of Madagascar they live. The ones on the eastern side of the island bury themselves in the soft rainforest floor, maintaining cozy temperatures throughout their hibernation period. Meanwhile, western dwarf lemurs hide out in drafty tree holes, where their body temperature fluctuates with the chancing temperature of the outside air, the scientists found.

Single Gene Swap Helps Bird Flu Virus Switch Hosts: Chen Hualan of China’s Harbin Veterinary Research Institute took a different approach. Instead of focusing on mutations in the hemagglutinin gene, she wondered whether H5N1 might become pandemic by picking up entire genes from H1N1, the human influenza strain that first swept the globe in 2009. The flu genome consists of eight gene segments that strains can readily swap; this exchange can happen, for instance, when a person or an animal is infected with both strains.

Saturn’s Age-Defying Secret Discovered: “Scientists have been wondering for years if Saturn was using an additional source of energy to look so bright, but instead our calculations show that Saturn appears young because it can’t cool down,” Gilles Chabrier, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter, said in a statement.

Superconducting Hose Transmits Magnetic Field: They made a hose from a cylinder of superconducting material filled with a highly magnetic cobalt-iron alloy, then ran a current through a coil at one end to produce a field. The field that leaked out of a crack in the tube 4 cm away was only about 40 per cent weaker than at the centre of the coil. Much longer distances should be possible, they say.

Amazon Plant Discovery Could Yield Green Cash Crop: Bussmann, an ethnobotanist at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis, and Vega, head of the Institute for Sustainable Local Development and Andean Amazon Cultural and Biological Conservation (INBIAPERU) in Trujillo, Peru, had stumbled on a species unknown to science. Now, they hope to transform it into a ‘conservation crop’ that can be raised commercially in the shade beneath the Amazon’s forest canopy, without cutting down any trees.

Mom’s Iodine Levels Tied to Kid’s Poor Test Scores: Severe iodine deficiency during pregnancy is known to cause serious mental disabilities in children, but researchers examined the test scores of nine year olds whose mothers were only slightly iodine deficient during pregnancy and found the kids performed between 6 percent and 10 percent worse than peers born to mothers with sufficient iodine.

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That’s it for this week, Aledans. Stop by again next week for your weekly science fix!

If you want to receive the same daily science emails I do, you can sign up for the Sigma Xi SmartBrief here.

Happy Last Day of April, Aledans! This horrible, crappy month is nearly over and it’s almost time to celebrate Trina’s Day! Before we do that, let’s get our weekly fix of science news.

 

Cloning Takes California’s Ancient Redwood Trees Abroad: Archangel has an inventory of several thousand clones in various stages of growth that were taken from more than 70 redwoods and giant sequoias. NASA engineer Steve Craft, who helped arrange for David Milarch to address an agency gathering, said research shows that those species hold much more carbon than other varieties.

The challenge is to find places to put the trees, people to nurture them and money to continue the project, Jared Milarch said. The group is funded through donations and doesn’t charge for its clones.

Could – and Should – Astronauts Have Babies on Mars? Today (April 22), the nonprofit Mars One organization announced its plan to begin selecting astronauts for one-way missions to Mars. These spacefarers would establish the first Martian colony, with subsequent crews arriving every two years. Eventually, those Mars settlers may want to have families — but can they? Doctors say they don’t know whether humans would be able to become pregnant and give birth in the lesser gravity on Mars (it’s got 38 percent of the gravity on Earth), not to mention how babies would fare under the excess radiation outside of Earth’s protective atmosphere.

Forest Conservation Could Reduce Malaria Transmission: No malaria cases have been reported on the mountain range in the past 30 years, but the primary malaria mosquito in the Atlantic Forest, Anopheles cruzii, lives nearby and could introduce the Plasmodium vivax parasite — associated with an estimated 80–300 million cases of malaria worldwide.

Tumors Fall to Radioactive Bacteria: The notion of using bacteria to attack tumors—often by helping to elicit an anti-cancer immune response or delivering a chemotherapeutic agent to cancer cells—is not new, noted Robert Hoffman, a cancer biologist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the current study. Hoffman’s own research on engineered Salmonella has shown that the bacteria can kill mouse cancer cells, including metastases of pancreatic cancer. And a Listeria strain called CRS-207 that expresses a tumor-associated protein has demonstrated safety and the ability to stimulate an immune response in Phase 1 and 2 trials of cancer patients. But in the new study, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York have paired this technique with a radioactive isotope to selectively kill tumor cells, focusing on the metastatic cells that so often elude current treatment regimens.

Oldest Temple in Mexican Valley Hints at Possible Human Sacrifice: The evidence of such sacrifice is far from conclusive, but researchers did uncover a human tooth and part of what may be a human limb bone from a temple room scattered with animal sacrifice remains and obsidian blades. The temple dates back to 300 B.C. or so, when it was in use by the Zapotec civilization of what is now Oaxaca.

66 Ancient Skeletons Found in Indonesian Cave: The cave is known as Harimaru or Tiger Cave, and also contains chicken, dog and pig remains. Thousands of years ago, the Tiger Cave and other limestone caverns nearby were occupied by Indonesia’s first farmers. They used the caves to bury their dead, explaining the 3,000-year-old cemetery unearthed by Simanjuntak’s team. The ancient farmers also manufactured tools in the caves.

Early Flying Dinosaur Included Fish in its Menu of Prey: “We were very fortunate that this Microraptor was found in volcanic ash and its stomach content of fish was easily identified,” paleontology graduate student Scott Persons said.

This isn’t very surprising, but yay for proof.

Gold-Bedecked Skeleton May Have Been Ancient Queen: The excavation team believes she belonged to the Beaker people, a widespread Neolithic culture that gets its name from the shape of the ceramic pots they left behind. Beaker remains have been found across Europe, but few in Britain have been found with gold ornaments and most contain male skeletons, excavators say.

Australia Wasn’t Found By Accident: The results raise new questions, Williams said, including what prompted the gradual increase in population about 11,000 years ago. Given that the founding population would have numbered in the thousands, the results also require a look at what might have motivated an organized exploration and colonization effort 50,000 years ago.

“Was it climatic? Was it cognitive?” Williams said. “It looks less like an accidental discovery.”

Ancient Europeans Mysteriously Vanished 4,500 Years Ago: “What is intriguing is that the genetic markers of this first pan-European culture, which was clearly very successful, were then suddenly replaced around 4,500 years ago, and we don’t know why,” said study co-author Alan Cooper, of the University of Adelaide Australian Center for Ancient DNA, in a statement. “Something major happened, and the hunt is now on to find out what that was.”

Robot Discovers Burial Chambers in Ancient Temple: In 2011, archaeologists using radar technology discovered a long tunnel marked with mysterious symbols deep beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. The tunnel was largely sealed off about 1,800 years ago.

It was expected that the tunnel would end in a burial chamber — but the Tlaloc II robot instead found three chambers. Archaeologists expect that future explorations, by robots or humans, will reveal the burial chambers of some of Teotihuacan’s leaders.

 

Exotic Cat Prowled English Countryside a Century Ago: A popular theory suggested wild cats appeared in the British countryside after the establishment of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976, which forbade the ownership of potentially dangerous wild animals as pets. But the museum specimen lived well before then, records show. It was shot in the Devon countryside in the early 1900s after it killed two dogs. Its remains were donated to the Bristol Museum, which mislabeled the animal in 1903 as a Eurasian lynx, a close relative of the Canadian lynx.

Jupiter Got a Soaking from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9: I remember when the comet hit – amazing that it spread so much water into the atmosphere.

Rare Meteorite Grains May be from Supernova That Sparked Solar System: Two surprising grains of sand in a pair of meteorites that landed on Earth suggest they were formed in a single supernova that occurred billions of years ago, new research suggests. These grains may even come from the same star explosion that sparked the formation of the solar system, scientists say.

Professor Encourages His Students to Cheat in Order to Teach Them Game Theory: In the end, the students learned what social insects like ants and termites have known for hundreds of millions of years. To win at some games, cooperation is better than competition. Unity that arises through a diversity of opinion is stronger than any solitary competitor.

Earth’s Core 1,000 Degrees Hotter Than Expected: A team of scientists has measured the melting point of iron at high precision in a laboratory, and then drew from that result to calculate the temperature at the boundary of Earth’s inner and outer core — now estimated at  6,000 C (about 10,800 F). That’s as hot as the surface of the sun.

Monkeys Conform to Popular Diet: A study of wild vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops) in South Africa provides proof that primates other than humans adopt and conform to cultural behaviors. Given a choice between two foods, infant monkeys ate only the foods that their mothers ate. And young males that ventured to other groups soon switched to the local diet, researchers report online today (April 25) in the journal Science.

Oldest Maya Sun Observatory Hints at Origin of Civilization: A construction date of 1000 B.C. makes the Ceibal structures about 200 years older than those at La Venta, meaning the Olmec’s construction practices couldn’t have inspired the Mayans, the researchers report Thursday (April 25) in the journal Science. Instead, it appears that the entire region underwent a shift around this time, with groups adopting each other’s architecture and rituals, modifying them and inventing new additions.

New Meat-Eating Dinosaur Found: The reptile’s unusual name — which roughly translates to “lonely little cattle rustler” — is derived from the Malagasy language, “rather than the ‘traditional’ (and Eurocentric) Greek or Latin,” paleontologist and project leader Andrew Farke wrote on a PLOS blog.

Best dinosaur name ever? I think so.

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That’s it for this week, Aledans. Stop by again next week for your weekly science fix!

If you want to receive the same daily science emails I do, you can sign up for the Sigma Xi SmartBrief here.