Exploring the Evolution of Musical Instruments
The invention of musical instruments came about accidentally, suggests an Australian physicist. Developing instruments depended on the materials available, and sometimes the stimulus came from the clamor of battle.
No one knows where music came from, or who Elvis' singing predecessors were, or even when the first instruments were invented, but Neville Fletcher, a retired scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra who has made a hobby of studying the physics of instruments, thinks the key to the invention of instruments is the materials available in each civilization. The people used what they had. |  |
The Mystery of Human Blood Types
Everyone’s heard of the A, B, AB and O blood types. When you get a blood transfusion, doctors have to make sure a donor’s blood type is compatible with the recipient’s blood, otherwise the recipient can die. The ABO blood group, as the blood types are collectively known, are ancient. Humans and all other apes share this trait, inheriting these blood types from a common ancestor at least 20 million years ago and maybe even earlier, claims a new study published online today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But why humans and apes have these blood types is still a scientific mystery.
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How scientists recreated Neanderthal man
A team of scientists has created what it believes is the first really accurate reconstruction of Neanderthal man, from a skeleton that was discovered in France over a century ago.
In 1909, excavations at La Ferrassie cave in the Dordogne unearthed the remains of a group of Neanderthals. One of the skeletons in that group was that of an adult male, given the name La Ferrassie 1. These remains have helped scientists create a detailed reconstruction of our closest prehistoric relative for a new BBC series, Prehistoric Autopsy. La Ferrassie 1 is one of the most important discoveries made in the field of Neanderthal research. |  |
Raw Food Not Enough to Feed Big Brains
Eating a raw food diet is a recipe for disaster if you're trying to boost your species' brainpower. That's because humans would have to spend more than 9 hours a day eating to get enough energy from unprocessed raw food alone to support our large brains, according to a new study that calculates the energetic costs of growing a bigger brain or body in primates. But our ancestors managed to get enough energy to grow brains that have three times as many neurons as those in apes such as gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans. How did they do it? They got cooking, according to a study published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Ancient DNA sheds light on Maori settlement
Ancient DNA preserved in the teeth of the first known New Zealanders, who died more than 700 years ago, is helping shed new light on the settlement of Polynesia, researchers report.
Scientists think New Zealand was the last major landmass to be permanently settled by humans, drawing to a close a dispersal process that began in Africa around 65,000 years ago. |  |
Meteorite Nazi Buddha Exposed as Likely Fake
The discovery sounded like a sensation: A statue of a Buddha, allegedly 1,000 years old and collected by the Nazis in Tibet, had been carved out of a piece of meteorite. Now, however, it looks as though only the latter detail is true. The work is likely a fake produced at some point during the 20th century.
It was a story that rapidly circled the globe at the end of September. A statue of Buddha, allegedly collected by the Nazis during a late 1930s expedition to Tibet, had been carved out of meteorite. Referred to as the "Iron Man," the 24 centimeter-tall figure with a swastika on its chest was thought to be 1,000 years old. The statue's previous owner, researchers wrote in their Sept. 27 report, had said that it was brought to Germany by the SS expedition led by ethnologist Ernst Schäfer. |  |
Climate linked to conflict in East Africa, study finds
A study relating climate to conflict in East African nations finds that increased rainfall dampens conflict while unusually hot periods can cause a flare-up, reinforcing the theory that climate change will cause increased scarcity in the region. The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Politicians and many scientists have called climate change a security risk, based on the idea that unusual variations in weather are likely to put immense strain on rural societies dependent on farming and livestock for survival. But the results of studies trying to confirm such a hypothesis have been mixed. |  |
Launch Boat to Saturn Moon, Scientists Propose
Titan's allure is many-fold: It has a thick atmosphere—the only moon in the solar system to have one—stable liquid on its surface, and a landscape of lakes, seas, and dunes. So it's no surprise that astronomers are keeping an eye on Saturn's largest satellite.
Scientists now say the Huygens probe that landed on Titan in 2005 did so with a bounce, slide, and wobble, yielding new clues about its Earthlike terrain.
Scientists now say the Huygens probe that landed on Titan in 2005 did so with a bounce, slide, and wobble, yielding new clues about its Earthlike terrain.
Rapid changes in the Earth's core:
The magnetic field and gravity from a satellite perspective
Annual to decadal changes in the earth's magnetic field in a region that stretches from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean have a close relationship with variations of gravity in this area. From this it can be concluded that outer core processes are reflected in gravity data. This is the result presented by a German-French group of geophysicists in the latest issue of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States).
Village Defends Ocean Experiment While Canada Launches Probe
VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Leaders of a tiny, native village off Canada's remote northwest coast on Friday defended their decision to dump 120 tons of iron dust into the ocean as a legal experiment to revive salmon stocks, but Canada said it was investigating a possible breach of environmental law.
The village council conducted its C$2.5 million ($2.52 million) experiment in August in the waters around Haida Gwaii, an archipelago some 130 kilometers (81 miles) off the British Columbian coast.
The village council conducted its C$2.5 million ($2.52 million) experiment in August in the waters around Haida Gwaii, an archipelago some 130 kilometers (81 miles) off the British Columbian coast.
Giant reptile ruled the Jurassic Seas
It's official: A giant marine reptile that roamed the seas roughly 150 million years ago is a new species, researchers say. The animal, now named Pliosaurus funkei, spanned about 40 feet and had a 6.5-foot-long skull with a bite four times as powerful as Tyrannosaurus rex.
"They were the top predators of the sea," said Patrick Druckenmiller, a paleontologist at the University of Alaska Museum and co-author of the study, published in the Oct. 12 issue of the Norwegian Journal of Geology. "They had teeth that would have made a T. rex whimper.". |  |
Scientists making fishy robots for naval research
An eel undulating through coastal waters, powered by batteries and checking for mines. A jellyfish is actually a surveillance robot, powered by the atoms around it. Fins pick up intelligence while propelling a robot bluegill sunfish.
The Office of Naval Research is supporting baby steps toward making those visions of the future a reality. For instance, the jellyfish work in Texas and Virginia is focused on how the creatures move in water, and how to mimic or even surpass their abilities. The robojellyfish is currently tethered to hydrogen and oxygen tanks, and ONR project manager Robert Brizzolara said he doesn't plan to try making it move autonomously yet.
The Office of Naval Research is supporting baby steps toward making those visions of the future a reality. For instance, the jellyfish work in Texas and Virginia is focused on how the creatures move in water, and how to mimic or even surpass their abilities. The robojellyfish is currently tethered to hydrogen and oxygen tanks, and ONR project manager Robert Brizzolara said he doesn't plan to try making it move autonomously yet.
Antarctic airstrip melting away
AUSTRALIA'S $46 million Antarctic airstrip is melting, leaving the government scrambling to find a new air link to the frozen continent.
The Wilkins runway - carved into ice near Casey station, about 3400 kilometres south-west of Hobart - was commissioned under the Howard government and hailed at its 2008 opening by the then Environment Minister, Peter Garrett. But unexpected surface melt has sharply curtailed use of the summer airstrip. |  |
Biologists record increasing amounts of plastic litter in the Arctic deep sea
Biologists record increasing amounts of plastic litter in the Arctic deep sea: studies confirm that twice as much marine debris is lying on the seabed today compared to ten years ago
Bremerhaven, 22nd October 2012. The seabed in the Arctic deep sea is increasingly strewn with litter and plastic waste. As reported in the advance online publication of the scientific journal Marine Pollution Bulletin by Dr. Melanie Bergmann, biologist and deep-sea expert at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association. The quantities of waste observed at the AWI deep-sea observatory HAUSGARTEN are even higher than those found in a deep-sea canyon near the Portuguese capital Lisbon. |  |
South American land wars: Lot 8 and the mission to protect paradise
It was 12.15am on a Sunday morning last month, in the first floor lobby of an identikit business hotel in north-east Argentina, that a very unlikely deal was done. Two of the last chiefs of that nation's indigenous Guaraní people, hundreds of miles and a world away from their forest home, put their signatures on an A3 print-out of a map, next to those of a local government minister, a lawyer, the young head of an Argentinian logging dynasty and two British conservationists.
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Oldest primate lived in trees after the extinction of dinosaurs
The Cretaceous-age Hell Creek Formation of Montana is best known for the discovery over a century ago of Tyrannosaurus rex. It also has produced some of the best fossils from the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. At that time, the planet experienced a mass extinction that wiped out many species including non-avian dinosaurs. However, for many mammals, including our own ancestors, this marked a beginning rather than the end.
Silvery Fish Elude Predators With Light-Bending
Silvery fish like sardines and Atlantic herring are masters of camouflage. A new study explains how the fish use their silvery skin to stay invisible to predators from nearly every angle.
“What these fish do is get around a fundamental law of reflection,” said Nicholas Roberts, a biologist at the University of Bristol and one of the study’s authors. Typically, when light is reflected from different surfaces, any light that comes off the path of that reflection becomes polarized. That’s why fishermen wear polarized sunglasses. Silver fish avoid this problem because of the unique makeup of their skin, which has alternating layers of cytoplasm, as well as two types of guanine crystals (which refract light). The two types of crystals have different refractive indexes that create a unique reflective property. |  |
TSA removes X-ray body scanners from major airports
The Transportation Security Administration has been quietly removing its X-ray body scanners from major airports over the last few weeks and replacing them with machines that radiation experts believe are safer.
The TSA says it made the decision not because of safety concerns but to speed up checkpoints at busier airports. It means, though, that far fewer passengers will be exposed to radiation because the X-ray scanners are being moved to smaller airports. |  |
Uruguay plans to legalise marijuana under state monopoly
The president of Uruguay, José Mujica, has announced plans to legalise the production and sale of marijuana under a state monopoly, triggering a lively controversy in Montevideo. The relevant bill will soon be tabled in parliament, where the governing centre-left coalition led by the Broad Front (FA) enjoys a majority but is divided on this issue.
Possessing and consuming marijuana was decriminalised in 2000. "There is no question of Uruguay producing and distributing drugs, but the state will control and regulate the market," said interior minister Eduardo Bonomi. |  |
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