Innovation Linked to Human Migration Out of Africa

Tools such as two-sided spearheads along with engraved objects that are about 71,000 years old are among many ancient human artifacts that researchers say signify high-level communication. The geographic distribution of these objects at nine sites in South Africa suggests innovation—not climate change—may have triggered early humans' migration out of Africa, researchers report in an October 2008 study.

Photograph courtesy Chris Henshilwood (National Geographic)

From National Geographic:

Innovation—not climate change—may have triggered early humans' migration out of Africa, a new study suggests.

For early Homo sapiens, periods of population movement coincided with social advances and tool-making innovation, the work found.

By contrast, human movements didn't match as closely with changes in Africa's climate, such as rainfall variation or other weather issues, as previous research had suggested.

The study authors caution, however, that their work doesn't suggest a specific cause-and-effect relationship.

"We see bursts of migration during a period with technological advances, so technology might have led to the migration," said Zenobia Jacobs, lead researcher from the University of Wollongong in Australia.

Alternatively, migration may have spread new ideas and skills throughout various populations.

"It's like the chicken-and-egg argument—did migration lead to innovation or did innovation stimulate migration?" Jacobs said.

The new study appears today in the journal Science.

Read more ....

Wingsuit Base Jumping in Baffin Island (Video)

CSN Editor: This looks so cool.

Oldest Malarial Mummies Shed Light On Disease Evolution

From National Geographic:

The oldest known cases of malaria have been discovered in two 3,500-year-old Egyptian mummies, scientists announced.

Researchers in Germany studied bone tissue samples from more than 90 mummies found in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, now called Luxor.

Two adult mummies from separate tombs had tissues containing ancient DNA from a parasite known to cause malaria, the researchers announced at a conference last week.

In addition, a separate team at University College London recently found that a pair of 9,000-year-old skeletons—a woman and a baby—discovered off the coast of Israel were infected with the oldest known cases of tuberculosis in modern humans.

Both finds contribute to the burgeoning field of paleopathology, or the study of ancient diseases.

Read more ....

Complete Mitochondrial Genome Of 5,000-Year-Old Mummy Yields Surprise

From E! Science News:

Researchers have revealed the complete mitochondrial genome of one of the world's most celebrated mummies, known as the Tyrolean Iceman or Ötzi. The sequence represents the oldest complete DNA sequence of modern humans' mitochondria, according to the report published online on October 30th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. Mitochondria are subcellular organelles that generate all of the body's energy and house their own DNA, which is passed down from mother to child each generation. Mitochondrial DNA thus offers a window into our evolutionary past.

"Through the analysis of a complete mitochondrial genome in a particularly well-preserved human, we have obtained evidence of a significant genetic difference between present-day Europeans and a representative prehistoric human—despite the fact that the Iceman is not so old—just about 5,000 years," said Franco Rollo of the University of Camerino in Italy.

Read more ....

DNA Legacy Of Ancient Seafarers

(Click To Enlarge)

From BBC:

Scientists have used DNA to re-trace the migrations of a sea-faring civilisation which dominated the Mediterranean thousands of years ago.

The Phoenicians were an enterprising maritime people from the territory of modern-day Lebanon.

They established a trading empire throughout the Mediterranean Sea in the first millennium BC.

A new study by an international team has now revealed the genetic legacy they imparted to modern populations.

The researchers estimate that as many as one in 17 men from the Mediterranean may have Phoenician ancestry.

Read more ....

Devastating Tsunami Had A Predecessor

2004 Tsunami

From ABC News (Australia):

A full-sized forerunner to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hit the region between 500 and 700 years ago, a new study suggests.

Two groups of geoscientists report evidence today in the journal Nature that a similar event occurred around 1400 AD.

Until now there has been no historical record of a predecessor to the Indian Ocean tsunami and the associated magnitude 9.2 associated earthquake. More than 220,000 people throughout southern Asia and as far away as the east coast of Africa died in the disaster.

Amy Prendergast from Geoscience Australia in Canberra, Australia and colleagues studied the sedimentary record on an island north of Phuket, Thailand to help pin point the date of ancient tsunamis.

Read more ....

Lost Biblical Copper Mine Found?

The excavation at Khirbat en-Nahas where scientists believe they may have uncovered King Solomon's Mine (Photo from The Telegraph)

From Christian Science Monitor:

King Solomon was big on brass accessories. He ordered two enormous brass pillars, plus other brass items, for the temple the monarch commissioned for Jerusalem.

And where might all of this copper – a key ingredient in brass – have come from? Archaeologists from the US, Jordan, Britain, and Switzerland report that they have excavated an industrial-scale copper center in southern Jordan and dated it to the 9th and 10th centuries BC. If the dating stands up to further scrutiny, the peak of its smelting activity would coincide with the reigns of David and Solomon. It also would resurrect a currently discredited time frame for existence of the kingdom of Edom. The smelting center occupies a spot that lies within Edom’s boundaries. In the Old Testament, Edom was one of ancient Israel’s troublesome neighbors.

The results are likely to be controversial. In the 1980s, Bible scholars began to challenge the historical accuracy of accounts of people and events earlier than the 5th century BC, the research team says. In addition, some ceramic and radiocarbon evidence suggested that Edom didn’t emerge until the 7th century.

Read more ....

Designer Babies: Creating The Perfect Child

From CNN:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Bring your partner, grab a seat, pick up your baby catalog and start choosing.

Will you go for the brown hair or blond? Would you prefer tall or short? Funny or clever? Girl or boy? And do you want them to be a muscle-bound sports hero? Or a slender and intelligent book worm?

When you're done selecting, head to the counter and it's time to start creating your new child.

Does this sound like a scary thought?

With rapid advances in scientific knowledge of the human genome and our increasing ability to modify and change genes, this scenario of "designing" your baby could well be possible in the near future.

Techniques of genetic screening are already being used -- whereby embryos can be selected by sex and checked for certain disease-bearing genes. This can lead to either the termination of a pregnancy, or if analyzed at a pre-implantation stage when using In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), can enable the pregnancy to be created using only non-disease bearing genes.

Read more ....

More Hidden Territory On Mercury Revealed By Messenger Spacecraft

Image of Mercury captured by MESSENGER on the probe's second approach. (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington)

From Space Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2008) — A NASA spacecraft gliding over the battered surface of Mercury for the second time this year has revealed more previously unseen real estate on the innermost planet. The probe also has produced several science firsts and is returning hundreds of new photos and measurements of the planet's surface, atmosphere and magnetic field.

The Mercury Surface, Space Environment, GEochemistry, and Ranging, or MESSENGER, spacecraft flew by Mercury shortly after 4:40 a.m. EDT, on Oct. 6. It completed a critical gravity assist to keep it on course to orbit Mercury in 2011 and unveiled 30 percent of Mercury's surface never before seen by a spacecraft.

Read more ....

MIT Scientists Baffled By Global Warming Theory, Contradicts Scientific Data

From Watts Up With That:

Many people have pointed me to this story, I wanted to read about it a bit before posting it. Almost two years ago, when this blog was in its very first month, I posted this story on the puzzling leveling off of global methane concentrations. FYI Methane has a “global warming potential” (GWP) 23-25 times that of CO2.

CDIAC has an interesting set of graphs on methane, the first of which shows that indeed global concentrations of CH4 through 2004 have leveled off:

Read more ....

Scientists To Measure Effects Of Earthquakes, Weather On Ancient Acropolis

From L.A. Times Science:

ATHENS, Greece (AP) _ For thousands of years the Acropolis has withstood earthquakes, weathered storms and endured temperature extremes, from scorching summers to winter snow.

Now scientists are drawing on the latest technology to install a system that will record just how much nature is affecting the 2,500-year-old site. They hope their findings will help identify areas that could be vulnerable, allowing them to target restoration and maintenance.

Scientists are installing a network of fiber optic sensors and accelerographs — instruments that measure how much movement is generated during a quake.

"The greatest danger for our monuments at the moment is earthquakes," Dimitrios Egglezos, chief civil engineer in charge of the Acropolis' defensive circuit wall, told The Associated Press. So understanding how the structures react to the earth's movement is paramount.

Egglezos said six accelerographs are to be installed starting next week at various parts of the Acropolis: at the base of the hill, part of the way up where the geology changes, and on the Parthenon, the Acropolis' most famous monument, built between 447 and 432 B.C. in honor of the goddess Athena.

Read more ....

Searching For Primordial Antimatter

The Bullet Cluster

From Space Daily:

Scientists are on the hunt for evidence of antimatter - matter's arch nemesis - left over from the very early Universe. New results using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Compton Gamma Ray Observatory suggest the search may have just become even more difficult.

Antimatter is made up of elementary particles, each of which has the same mass as their corresponding matter counterparts - protons, neutrons and electrons - but the opposite charges and magnetic properties. When matter and antimatter particles collide, they annihilate each other and produce energy according to Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2.

According to the Big Bang model, the Universe was awash in particles of both matter and antimatter shortly after the Big Bang. Most of this material annihilated, but because there was slightly more matter than antimatter - less than one part per billion - only matter was left behind, at least in the local Universe.

Read more ....

Spiders and Scorpions Among World's Oldest Creatures

Ancient Creepy Crawly
A fossil spider can be seen embedded in amber. The fossil, provided by the Florida Museum of Natural History, was discovered in the Dominican Republic and dates from the Miocene epoch, some five to 23 million years ago.

From Discovery:

Oct. 31, 2008 -- If it seems like spiders, scorpions, ticks and mites have been around forever, it's because they nearly have, according to new genetic research that found these arachnids first emerged at least 400 to 450 million years ago.

The study, published in the latest issue of Experimental and Applied Acarology, extends the known world presence of these creepy crawlies by over 200 million years. The oldest fossil spider is 125 to 135 million years old, while the oldest fossil scorpion is around 200 million years old.

These invertebrates could even have emerged much earlier than this latest study determined.

"A horseshoe crab dating to 475 million years ago provided one of our anchor dates, and this crab actually looked quite modern, as did a Devonian period (416 to 359 million years ago) mite that was one very modern-looking mite," co-author Marjorie Hoy told Discovery News.

Hoy, a University of Florida entomologist, added, "I don't think the individuals just suddenly appeared on Earth, so it's likely these invertebrates are even older than we estimated."

Read more ....

Scientists Prove It Really Is A Thin Line Between Love And Hate

Michael Douglas and KathleenTurner played a couple with a stormy relationship
in the 1989 film War Of The Roses

From The Independent:

The same brain circuitry is involved in both extreme emotions – but hate retains a semblance of rationality

Love and hate are intimately linked within the human brain, according to a study that has discovered the biological basis for the two most intense emotions.

Scientists studying the physical nature of hate have found that some of the nervous circuits in the brain responsible for it are the same as those that are used during the feeling of romantic love – although love and hate appear to be polar opposites.

A study using a brain scanner to investigate the neural circuits that become active when people look at a photograph of someone they say they hate has found that the "hate circuit" shares something in common with the love circuit.

The findings could explain why both hate and romantic love can result in similar acts of extreme behaviour – both heroic and evil – said Professor Semir Zeki of University College London, who led the study published in the on-line journal PloS ONE.

Read more ....

Buzz Aldrin: Mars Pioneers Should Stay There

Buzz Aldrin

From Cosmos:

PARIS: The first astronauts sent to Mars should be prepared to spend the rest of their lives there, in the same way that European pioneers headed to America knowing they wouldn't return home, says moonwalker Buzz Aldrin.

In an interview with reporters, the second man to set foot on the Moon said the Red Planet offered far greater potential than Earth's satellite as a place for habitation.

No coming back

With what appears to be vast reserves of frozen water, Mars "is nearer terrestrial conditions, much better than the Moon and any other place," Aldrin, 78, said in a visit to Paris last week. "It is easier to subsist, to provide the support needed for people there than on the Moon."

It took Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins eight days to go to the Moon – 380,000 km from Earth – and return in July 1969, aboard Apollo 11.

Going to Mars, though, is a different prospect. The distance between the Red Planet and Earth varies between 55 million km and more than 400 million km. Even at the most favourable planetary conjunction, this means a round trip to Mars would take around a year and a half.

"That's why you [should] send people there permanently," said Aldrin. "If we are not willing to do that, then I don't think we should just go once and have the expense of doing that and then stop."

Read more ....

The Real (And Frightening) Ghosts Of The World

From Live Science:

Tonight the neighborhood will be filled with small ghosts roaming around looking for sweets, and the bars will be filled with adult ghosts looking for something else.

The ghost costume for Halloween is a traditional favorite because it costs nothing (grab a sheet out of the laundry) and there's little prep work (throw it over your head, but be sure and cut out two eye holes).

The ghost is also a Halloween favorite because it symbolizes a spirit coming back from the dead, and that's what Halloween is supposed to be about — creatures returning from the beyond to scare the daylights out of everyone.

But in today's Halloween party culture, no one is really scared of someone with a sheet over their head and everybody knows the whole ghost thing is done in jest.

Read more ....

Daylight Saving Time: Why Did We Do It?

From Live Science:

At 2:00 a.m. local on Sunday, most of the United States except Hawaii and Arizona will leave daylight saving time behind and fall back an hour to standard time.

The annoyance of resetting clocks (or forgetting to, and showing up an hour early for appointments on Sunday) may raise the question of why we bother with this rigmarole in the first place.

Daylight saving time is most often associated with the oh-so-sweet extra hour of sleep in fall and the not-so-nice loss of an hour in spring, but some of the original reasons for resetting our clocks twice a year including saving energy and having more daylight hours for retailers, sporting events and other activities that benefit from a longer day.

As far back as the 1700s, people recognized the potential to save energy by jumping clocks ahead one hour in the summer — Benjamin Franklin even wrote about it — although the idea was not put into practice until the 20th century.

Read more ....

Hubble Up And Running, With A Picture To Prove It

This image from the Hubble telescope demonstrates that its wide field planetary camera 2 is working properly. NASA/ESA/M. Livio, STScI

From The New York Times:

After an electrical malfunction caused it to go dormant a month ago, the Hubble Space Telescope is back in business. But the space shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble has been pushed back again, NASA officials said Thursday.

To show this week that the orbiting eye still has the same chops as ever, astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore used Hubble’s wide-field planetary camera 2 to record this image of a pair of smoke-rings galaxies known as Arp 147.

The galaxies, about 450 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus, apparently collided in the recent cosmic past. According to Mario Livio, of the space telescope institute, one of the galaxies passed through the other, causing a circular wave, like a pebble tossed into a pond, that has now coalesced into a ring of new blue stars. The center of the impacted galaxy can be seen as a reddish blur along the bottom of a blue ring.

Read more ....

Phoenix Enters Safe Mode

(Image from NASA)

From Mars Daily:

NASA'S Phoenix Mars Lander entered safe mode late yesterday in response to a low-power fault brought on by deteriorating weather conditions. While engineers anticipated that a fault could occur due to the diminishing power supply, the lander also unexpectedly switched to the "B" side of its redundant electronics and shut down one of its two batteries.

During safe mode, the lander stops non-critical activities and awaits further instructions from the mission team. Within hours of receiving information of the safing event, mission engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and at Lockheed Martin in Denver, were able to send commands to restart battery charging. It is not likely that any energy was lost.

Read more ....

New NASA Capsule Orion Resembles Apollo

Engineers and technician run a structural mass properties test on a test module of the Orion crew exploration vehicle at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base. Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

New NASA Capsule Orion Resembles Apollo
-- L.A. Times

The agency unveils the test module for structural testing at Edwards Air Force Base. The capsule, designed to carry humans to the moon, looks a lot like the one that first did so four decades ago.

Reporting from Edwards Air Force Base -- NASA rolled out its next-generation space capsule here Wednesday, revealing a bulbous module that is scheduled to carry humans back to the moon in 2020 and eventually onward to Mars.

Unlike the space-plane shape of the shuttles, the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle looks strikingly similar to the old Apollo space capsule that carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon and back in 1969, with Armstrong and Aldrin becoming the first humans to walk on the lunar surface.

There is one key difference, however. The test module, unveiled at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, is substantially bigger -- 16.5 feet in diameter compared with Apollo 11's 12.8 feet.

The craft's extra girth will allow it to carry six astronauts instead of Apollo's three.

"This is the same shape as Apollo," said Gary Martin, the project manager for the test program at Dryden. "But the extra space translates into twice as much volume as Apollo."

Still, cramming six astronauts inside will make it "pretty cozy," he said.

Read more ....