Homo antecessor: Common Ancestor of Humans and Neanderthals?
Humans and Neanderthals split from a common ancestor roughly half a million years ago. While many anthropologists will tell you we don’t really know who that common ancestor was, others will say we do: the species Homo heidelbergensis, or something very much like it. An even smaller portion will point to another possibility: a controversial species called Homo antecessor.
H. antecessor, which first came to light in the 1990s, is known almost entirely from one cave in northern Spain’s Atapuerca Mountains. While working at the Gran Dolina site from 1994 to 1996, a team of Spanish researchers found 80 fossils belonging to six hominid individuals that lived roughly 800,000 years ago. The hominids’ teeth were primitive like those of Homo erectus, but aspects of the hominid’s face—particularly the shape of the nasal region and the presence of a facial depression above the canine tooth called the canine fossa—were modern, resembling features of modern people. The unique mix of modern and primitive traits led the researchers to deem the fossils a new species, H. antecessor, in 1997. |  |
Newly evolved gene may have changed humans' brains
The completion of human and primate genome sequences (including some close, extinct relatives) reveals a great deal about the evolutionary innovations behind modern humans. All indications are a large collection of relatively subtle genetic changes added up to considerable differences in our brains and anatomy.
So, it was a bit shocking to see a headline claiming a single gene separated us from our fellow apes. The article behind the headline turned out to be wrong, of course. But there was an additional research paper behind that article. The story this told turned out to be rather interesting, even after the hype was stripped away. |  |
Reasoning Is Sharper in a Foreign Language
The language we use affects the decisions we make, according to a new study. Participants made more rational decisions when money-related choices were posed in a foreign language that they had learned in a classroom setting than when they were asked in a native tongue.
To study how language affects reasoning, University of Chicago psychologists looked at a well-known phenomenon: people are more risk-averse when an impersonal decision (such as which vaccine to administer to a population) is presented in terms of a potential gain than when it is framed as a potential loss even when the outcomes are equivalent. In the study, published online in April in Psychological Science, native English speakers who had learned Japanese, native Korean speakers who had learned English and native English speakers studying French in Paris all surrendered to the expected bias when they encountered the question in their native tongue. In their foreign language, however, the bias disappeared. |  |
News crew sets out to debunk amateur UFO film... and ends up confirming it
When a UFO spotter sent a local news team his film of mysterious spacecraft whizzing above Denver, Colorado, they sent their own cameraman out to prove it was a hoax.
But after a few hours of filming from the exact same spot, the team captured footage that, far from debunking the strange sighting, appears to confirm it. The city's Fox-affiliated TV station KDVR have no explanation, even after drafting in an aviation expert in a final bid to disprove the phenomenon. But after reviewing the footage, Steve Cowell told the team: 'That is not an airplane, that is not a helicopter, those are not birds, I can't identify it.'. |  |
Qualcomm scientist gives $3.5M to search for ET
SAN DIEGO — A co-founder and chief scientist of San Diego-based Qualcomm donated $3.5 million to improve the search for life on other planets, the SETI Institute announced Wednesday.
The Mountain View-based organization uses radio telescopes to search for unnatural signals. The gift from Franklin Antonio of Qualcomm will be used to double the sensitivity of an antenna feed from the Allen Telescope Array, a grouping of 350 telescopes about 300 miles north of San Francisco, according to SETI officials. |  |
Earth's orbit tilted by lost star, new theory suggests
WASHINGTON: A new theory the suggests that one young star may yank another's developing solar system has shed light on a long-standing puzzle - why Earth's orbit is tipped 7 degree relative to the sun's equator.
In 1995, Swiss astronomers made the shocking discovery of the first "hot Jupiter," a gas giant circling close to its star.
In 1995, Swiss astronomers made the shocking discovery of the first "hot Jupiter," a gas giant circling close to its star.
Deep space outpost beyond moon could lead to Mars trip
Sending astronauts to a deep-space outpost beyond the moon's far side could help lay the groundwork for more ambitious manned missions to Mars, some researchers say.
Such a lunar effort would take humanity farther from Earth than it's ever been before, allowing scientists and engineers to work their way up to even more distant targets such as asteroids and Mars in a stepwise fashion, advocates say. |  |
Russia and Europe joint Mars bid agreement approved
Europe and Russia are cementing their plans to explore Mars together.
European Space Agency member states have approved the agreement that would see Russia take significant roles in Red Planet missions in 2016 and 2018. The former is a satellite that will look for methane and other trace gases in the atmosphere; the latter will be a surface rover. |  |
Mars Cave-Exploration Mission Entices Scientists
NASA is mapping out a strategy to return bits of rock and soil from the Martian surface to Earth, but the most intriguing Red Planet samples lie in underground caverns, some scientists say.
The space agency's next steps at Mars are geared toward mounting a sample-return mission, which is widely viewed as the best way to look for signs of Red Planet life. Such signs are perhaps more likely to be found in material pulled from the subsurface, so some researchers hope NASA's first Martian sample-return effort won't be its last. |  |
US science could face fiscal cliff doom
The American science programs that landed the first man on the moon, found cures for deadly diseases and bred crops that feed the world now face the possibility of becoming relics in the story of human progress.
American scientific research and development stands to lose thousands of jobs and face a starvation diet of reduced funding if politicians fail to compromise and halt the United States' march towards the fiscal cliff's sequestration of federal funds. |  |
Inside the world’s most ‘impossible’ science project
Reporting assignments in the Middle East often involve great danger - think of Syria and Gaza. Others run into bureaucratic obstruction. But the Sesame science project in Jordan is so bizarre it presented challenges of a wholly unexpected kind.
The first was the sheer difficulty of grasping that the story was not the figment of someone's imagination but was actually happening. We had come to get a look at a "synchrotron" facility called Sesame - at its heart, a particle accelerator not unlike Europe's Cern - coming together in Jordan. A news story on the Sesame project explains the science it aims to do, but that is not the striking thing about it. |  |
Quantum teleportation between atomic ensembles demonstrated for first time
One of the key components of quantum communication is quantum teleportation, a technique used to transfer quantum states to distant locations without actual transmission of the physical carriers. Quantum teleportation relies on entanglement, and it has so far been demonstrated between single photons, between a photon and matter, and between single ions. Now for the first time, physicists have demonstrated quantum teleportation by entangling two remote macroscopic atomic ensembles, each with a radius of about 1 mm.
3D 'Wiki Weapon' guns could go into testing by end of year, maker claims
Prototypes of what would be the world's first fully 3D-printable plastic weapon could go into testing before the end of the year, the organization behind the controversial project has claimed.
"We're ready," said Cody Wilson, a spokesman for Defense Distributed, the company that hopes to manufacture the "Wiki Weapon". "We're sitting on the logistics, time, resources and money. We're just waiting on a little piece of paper." That little piece of paper is a federal firearms license , the permit that is needed to legally make and manufacture firearms in the United States. |  |
Cambridge to open 'Terminator centre' to study threat to humans from AI
A centre for 'terminator studies', where leading academics will study the threat that robots pose to humanity, is set to open at Cambridge University.
Its purpose will be to study the four greatest threats to the human species - artificial intelligence, climate change, nuclear war and rogue biotechnology. The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) will be co-launched by Lord Rees, the astronomer royal and one of the world's top cosmologists. |  |
Self-filling water bottle takes cues from desert beetle
Biomimicry is the term given to using nature as an inspiration for sustainable technology ideas, and a young company has joined the biomimicry brigade with its prototype self filling water bottle, which mimics the Namib desert beetle. NBD Nano, a startup of four graduates with degrees in biology, organic chemistry, and mechanical engineering, hopes to bring their prototype to market. They say that, like this beetle, their bottle can pull water from the air. Their self-filling water bottle is said to be capable of storing up to three liters every hour.
|  |
Bothered by negative, unwanted thoughts? Just throw them away
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- If you want to get rid of unwanted, negative thoughts, try just ripping them up and tossing them in the trash.
In a new study, researchers found that when people wrote down their thoughts on a piece of paper and then threw the paper away, they mentally discarded the thoughts as well.
On the other hand, people were more likely to use their thoughts when making judgments if they first wrote them down on a piece of paper and tucked the paper in a pocket to protect it.
In a new study, researchers found that when people wrote down their thoughts on a piece of paper and then threw the paper away, they mentally discarded the thoughts as well.
On the other hand, people were more likely to use their thoughts when making judgments if they first wrote them down on a piece of paper and tucked the paper in a pocket to protect it.
Study find world's major rivers under pressure
New research into the world's major river systems has found that too much water is being taken out, and the situation is likely to get worse with climate change.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, reveal that environmental flows are not being met in the Colorado and Orange-Senqu Rivers and that the Murray-Darling and Yellow Rivers remain under pressure despite government intervention. |  |
TOXIC: Garbage Island - Humans Have Finally Ruined the Ocean
There is a Texas-size section of the Pacific Ocean that is irretrievably clogged with garbage and it will never go away. And I have seen it with my own eyes. Case closed. Oh, you want to hear more? OK, fine.
In the middle of the 90s, Charles Moore was sailing his racing catamaran back to California from Hawaii and decided on a lark to cut through the center of the North Pacific Gyre. The Gyre is an enormous vortex of currents revolving around a continuous high-pressure zone—if you think of the rest of the Pacific as a gigantic toilet, this zone would be the part where your poop bobs and twirls before being sucked down. Boats typically avoid it since it’s essentially one big windless death trap, so when Moore motored through it was just him, his crew, and an endless field of garbage. "by the time you get to the point where we’re hoisting creatures out and eating them, you’re looking at entire milk crates’ worth of particles built up in their fat. It’s the cycle of life reimagined as a dystopian sci-fi cliché. We are eating our own refuse" Note: *Warning* Adult Language. |  |
Sea changes harming ocean now could someday undermine marine food chain
Scientists years ago figured out that a group of tiny snail-like sea creatures crucial to marine food webs may one day be an early victim of changing ocean chemistry.
Researchers predicted that pteropods, shelled animals known as sea butterflies, could begin dissolving by 2038 as human-caused carbon-dioxide emissions begin souring the seas in a process known as ocean acidification.
But new research by Seattle scientists concludes that corrosive seas are damaging pteropods right now — decades earlier than expected. And that damage was recorded in the south Atlantic Ocean, where surface pH doesn't dip as low as it has off the Washington coast or in Puget Sound..
Researchers predicted that pteropods, shelled animals known as sea butterflies, could begin dissolving by 2038 as human-caused carbon-dioxide emissions begin souring the seas in a process known as ocean acidification.
But new research by Seattle scientists concludes that corrosive seas are damaging pteropods right now — decades earlier than expected. And that damage was recorded in the south Atlantic Ocean, where surface pH doesn't dip as low as it has off the Washington coast or in Puget Sound..
No comments:
Post a Comment