Ancient humans used complex hunting techniques to ambush and kill antelopes, gazelles, wildebeest and other large animals at least two million years ago. The discovery – made by anthropologist Professor Henry Bunn of Wisconsin University – pushes back the definitive date for the beginning of systematic human hunting by hundreds of thousands of years.
Two million years ago, our human ancestors were small-brained apemen and in the past many scientists have assumed the meat they ate had been gathered from animals that had died from natural causes or had been left behind by lions, leopards and other carnivores. |  |
Bacteria replicate close to the physical limit of efficiency
The common gut bacterium Escherichia coli typically takes about 20 minutes to duplicate itself in good conditions. Could it do it any faster? A little, but not much, says biological physicist Jeremy England at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. In a preprint1, he estimates that bacteria are impressively close — within a factor of two or three — to the limiting efficiency of replication set by the laws of physics.
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Researchers reveal the dark side of beneficial soil bacteria
It's a battleground down there—in the soil where plants and bacteria dwell.
Even though beneficial root bacteria come to the rescue when a plant is being attacked by pathogens, there's a dark side to the relationship between the plant and its white knight.
According to research reported by a University of Delaware scientific team in the September online edition of Plant Physiology, the most highly cited plant journal, a power struggle ensues as the plant and the "good" bacteria vie over who will control the plant's immune system.
Even though beneficial root bacteria come to the rescue when a plant is being attacked by pathogens, there's a dark side to the relationship between the plant and its white knight.
According to research reported by a University of Delaware scientific team in the September online edition of Plant Physiology, the most highly cited plant journal, a power struggle ensues as the plant and the "good" bacteria vie over who will control the plant's immune system.
Is Belief In Telepathy Unscientific?
Rigorous experiments seem to suggest that ESP and mental telepathy are real, yet these phenomena are rejected as hoaxes by mainstream science, because belief in mind reading would contradict the most basic laws of our understanding of reality. Or would it? Via Reality Sandwich, Chris Carter argues that telepathy and quantum physics go hand-in-hand.
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Mount Kinabalu: Green Stars of the Forest
Not so long ago, gods and witchcraft were the main explanations for natural phenomena. Nowadays scientists and science can explain even the most incredible findings. However, in the night of the tropical rainforest we found something that would make even the most rational scientist wonder about the magical world.
In an expedition such as this, where one has a time window of only two weeks and the ambition to sample as many species as possible of the fungal world, one must walk in the limbo of tiredness and making the most out of this opportunity. |  |
Deadly and Delicious Amanitas Can No Longer Decompose
Amanita mushrooms — like all creatures — rot, but most of them can’t rot other things.
The fact that they don’t rot other things is not news to biologists, who have long known that many, if not most, fungi have become professional partners with trees, plants, or algae.
The fact that they can’t rot other things — as reported in July in PLoS ONE — is news, and provides a clue to how symbiotic partnerships can withstand the temptations of leaving and the sometimes dissonant interests of their symbiotic partners.
The fact that they don’t rot other things is not news to biologists, who have long known that many, if not most, fungi have become professional partners with trees, plants, or algae.
The fact that they can’t rot other things — as reported in July in PLoS ONE — is news, and provides a clue to how symbiotic partnerships can withstand the temptations of leaving and the sometimes dissonant interests of their symbiotic partners.
Whodunit? Crows Ask That Question, Too
Imagine hearing a distant roll of thunder and wondering what caused it. Even asking that question is a sign that you, like all humans, can perform a type of sophisticated thinking known as “causal reasoning”—inferring that mechanisms you can’t see may be responsible for something. But humans aren’t alone in this ability: New Caledonian crows can also reason about hidden mechanisms, or “causal agents,” a team of scientists report Sept. 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s the first time that this cognitive ability has been experimentally demonstrated in a species other than humans, and the method may help scientists understand how this type of reasoning evolved, the researchers say.
Search for Mysterious Lost Da Vinci Aborted
A longstanding Leonardo da Vinci mystery -- the fate of a lost masterpiece known as the Battle of Anghiari –- will remain unsolved.
The ambitious project to find the long-lost artwork has been put on indefinite hold and the massive scaffolding erected for the hunt will be dismantled at the end of the month. The scaffoldings have been standing for nearly 10 months in front of a frescoed wall in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence's 14th-century city hall, in the imposing Hall of Five Hundred. This was a room built at the end of the 15th century to accommodate the meetings of the Florentine Council. |  |
23 Nuclear Plants in Tsunami Risk Zones, Study Finds
In March 2011, a devastating earthquake and tsunami set off a partial meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant on Japan's coast. A recent study led by European researchers found Fukushima is not alone, as 22 other plants around the world may be similarly susceptible to destructive tsunami waves, with most of them in east and southeast regions of Asia.
The 23 facilities on the list (including Fukushima) house a total of 74 nuclear reactors. Thirteen of the plants are active, while the others are either nearing completion or being expanded to house more reactors. The researchers say East and Southeast Asia are at the greatest risk of a nuclear crisis triggered by a tsunami because of the rise of atomic power stations in the region, especially in China, which houses 27 of the world's 64 nuclear reactors currently under construction. |  |
The Archaeology of the Future, Part 2
Following on from Part 1 (Click Here), in which I consider the digital record and how much of it might survive into the near and distant future.
There are, of course, other historical records. Great works of art and literature are likely to survive for a fair amount of time through replication or conservation, whether or not they are stored digitally. But there are limits to physical preservation, and the destruction of intentionally conserved records tends to be down to human, rather than natural processes. Julius Caesar is thought to have (accidentally) burnt down the centuries old library at Alexandria; in modern day Greece, Iraq, and Egypt political and economic factors have allowed looters to raid important museum collections. |  |
The Blazing Career and Mysterious Death of “the Swedish Meteor”
Sweden has had her share of memorable monarchs. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it seemed that every other ruler crowned in Stockholm was astonishing in one way or another. Gustav Vasa, Gustavus Adolphus, Queen Christina, Charles XI–between them, to the surprise of generations of students who have presumed that the conjunction of the words “Swedish” and “imperialism” in their textbooks is some sort of typographical error, they turned the country into the greatest power in northern Europe. “I had no inkling,” the writer Gary Dean Peterson admits in his study of this period, “that the boots of Swedish soldiers once trod the streets of Moscow, that Swedish generals had conquered Prague and stood at the gates of Vienna. Only vaguely did I understand that a Swedish king had defeated the Holy Roman Emperor and held court on the Rhine, that a Swede had mounted the throne of Poland, then held at bay the Russian and Turk.” But they did and he had.
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The Photographs That Prevented World War III
On October 23, 1962, a U.S. Navy commander named William B. Ecker took off from Key West at midday in an RF-8 Crusader jet equipped with five reconnaissance cameras. Accompanied by a wingman, Lt. Bruce Wilhelmy, he headed toward a mountainous region of western Cuba where Soviet troops were building a facility for medium-range missiles aimed directly at the United States. A U-2 spy plane, flying as high as 70,000 feet, had already taken grainy photographs that enabled experts to find the telltale presence of Soviet missiles on the island. But if President John F. Kennedy was going to make the case that the weapons were a menace to the entire world, he would need better pictures.
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Ancient site needs saving not destroying
Please bear with me as I ask you to briefly use your imagination. Close your eyes. Imagine Machu Picchu at dawn cloaked in fog. Now imagine the fog slowly lifting to reveal an enormous ancient city perched on the edge of a mountain.
Picture a sense of mystery being immersed in thousands of years of history as you walk between antiquated hewn stone structures. There is tranquility in the wind-blown stillness of the primeval site. You feel a renewed sense of kinship with the past and with your ancestors and feel a deep reverence for their lives and accomplishments. |  |
Ancient, sarcophagus-like tombs discovered in Philippines jungle
Archaeologists have unearthed remnants of what they believe is a 1,000-year-old village on a jungle-covered mountaintop in the Philippines with limestone coffins of a type never before found in this Southeast Asian nation, officials said Thursday.
National Museum official Eusebio Dizon said the village on Mount Kamhantik, near Mulanay town in Quezon province, could be at least 1,000 years old based on U.S. carbon dating tests done on a human tooth found in one of 15 limestone graves he and other archaeologists have dug out since last year. |  |
Can private cities save a nation with world's worst murder rate?
Honduras has unveiled a radical free-market plan to establish three "charter cities" in the violence-racked Central American nation.
The government this week signed an agreement with US developers MKG group to begin building the cities – complete with their own governments, laws, courts, police forces and tax systems – from scratch early next year.
The plan's backers say it is the only way to kick start development in Honduras, which has the world's worst murder rate – 68 times higher than the UK's – and where 65 per cent of the 8 million-strong population lives below the poverty line.
The government this week signed an agreement with US developers MKG group to begin building the cities – complete with their own governments, laws, courts, police forces and tax systems – from scratch early next year.
The plan's backers say it is the only way to kick start development in Honduras, which has the world's worst murder rate – 68 times higher than the UK's – and where 65 per cent of the 8 million-strong population lives below the poverty line.
While Arctic melts, Antarctic ice hits record. Is warming debunked?
Distracting from the news that Arctic sea-ice extent reached a record low on Sept.16 is a widely circulating blog article claiming that at the opposite end of the Earth, Antarctic sea ice is more than making up for the losses.
In the post, climate change skeptic and blogger Steven Goddard states that Antarctic sea ice reached its highest level ever recorded for the 256th day of the calendar year on Sept. 12. He reasons that the Southern Hemisphere must be balancing the warming of the Northern Hemisphere by becoming colder (and thus, net global warming is zero). |  |
Vanished Ancient Forest Could Return With Global Warming
Bylot Island, in the Canadian Nunavut territory, is one of the largest uninhabited islands in the world. A study by Alexandre Guertin-Pasquier of the University of Montreal’s Department of Geography reveals that the ancient forests recently discovered on Bylot Island could one day return because of global climate changes.
Guertin-Pasquier presented his findings at the Canadian Paleontology Conference in Toronto on September 21. “According to the data model, climate conditions on Bylot Island will be able to support the kinds of trees we find in the fossilized forest that currently exist there, such as willow, pine and spruce. I’ve also found evidence of a possible growth of oak and hickory near the study site during this period,” Guertin-Pasquier said.. |  |
Roots of Huge Solar Explosions May Lie in 'Coronal Cavities'
Scientists seeking to better understand and predict massive solar eruptions are zeroing in on mysterious cavities in the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona.
These coronal cavities serve as launch pads for billion-ton clouds of solar plasma called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. Understanding the roots of CMEs is a high priority for solar researchers, since blasts that hit Earth squarely can disrupt radio communications, satellite navigation and power grids. "We don't really know what gets these CMEs going," Terry Kucera, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement. "So we want to understand their structure before they even erupt, because then we might have a better clue about why it's erupting and perhaps even get some advance warning on when they will erupt." . |  |
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