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June 6th, 2023
Today -
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These are timely past interpretive resourse issues. If you want a copy (sent as a PFD) just send me an e-
Extreme climate change (projected left -
Visit my new Climate Crisis/interpretation Resource Center:
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6 June 2023 Hi and welcome to my first June 2023 blog. I have a lot going on for 2023-
http://www.heritageinterp.com/economics-
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of new Egyptian discoveries. About 2000 attended.
More being offered in different states and cities.
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Check out my new MUFON page: http://www.heritageinterp.com/jv-
I 'm training to become a formal UFO Investigator in Michigan.
Visit the website page for more details.
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Our May/June Issue -
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InterpNEWS – May-
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Mummies -
In this very special issue interpreting mummies: stories from the afterlife.
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Marco Margaritoff | Edited By Erik Hawkins
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Charlotte Edwards
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If you’d like to subscribe to InterpNEWS for 2023 (only $20.00) and receive this new issue you can visit the InterpNEWS website for an overview of past 2022 (free) issues and the issues planned for 2023 and subscribe to InterpNEWS at the bottom of the page.
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Updated two climate courses for 2023. Start a course anytime -
Climate change summer surprises?
1. Interpreting the Climate Crisis -
2. Interpretive Planning for Programs, Exhibits, Panels and Related Services To Help You to Interpret Climate Change and Global Warming Issues to Your Audiences, Communities and Regions.
13 Units, 4 CEU's $250.00. Our Climate Change special resource issues will be included.
Interpretive Planning for Climate Change (heritageinterp.com)
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New June Interpretive Stories to Share
Looking for a good story to interpret? JV working at Al Ula, Saudi Arabia.
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By Isobel Whitcomb published 13 days ago
The James Webb Space Telescope caught Saturn's icy moon Enceladus spraying a 'huge plume' of watery vapor far into space — and that plume may contain chemical ingredients for life.
An illustration of NASA's Cassini orbiter soaring through a giant vapor jet over the moon Enceladus (Image credit: NASA/JPL-
Scientists caught Saturn's icy moon Enceladus spraying a "huge plume" of watery vapor far into space — and that plume likely contains many of the chemical ingredients for life.
Scientists detailed the eruption — glimpsed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in November 2022 — at a conference at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore on May 17.
"It's immense," Sara Faggi, a planetary astronomer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said at the conference, according to Nature.com. According to Faggi, a full research paper on the massive plume is pending.
This isn't the first time scientists have seen Enceladus spout water, but the new telescope's wider perspective and higher sensitivity showed that the jets of vapor shoot much farther into space than previously realized — many times deeper, in fact, than the width of Enceladus itself. (Enceladus has a diameter of about 313 miles, or 504 kilometers.)
Scientists first learned of Enceladus' watery blasts in 2005, when NASA's Cassini spacecraft caught icy particles shooting up through large lunar cracks called "tiger stripes." The blasts are so powerful that their material forms one of Saturn's rings, according to NASA.
Analysis revealed that the jets contained methane, carbon dioxide and ammonia — organic molecules containing chemical building blocks necessary for the development of life. It's even possible that some of these gases were produced by life itself, burping out methane deep beneath the surface of Enceladus, an international team of researchers posited in research published last year in The Planetary Science Journal.
Water is another piece of evidence in the case for possible life on Enceladus. Enceladus is totally encrusted in a thick layer of water ice, but measurements of the moon's rotation suggest that a vast ocean is hidden beneath that frozen crust. Scientists think the spurts of water sensed by JWST and Cassini come from hydrothermal vents in the ocean floor — a hypothesis supported by the presence of silica, a common ingredient in planetary crusts, in the vapor plumes.
NASA scientists are discussing future return missions to seek out signs of life on Enceladus. The proposed Enceladus Orbilander would orbit the moon for about six months, flying through its watery plumes and collecting samples. Then, the spacecraft would convert into a lander, descending on the surface of the icy moon. Orbilander would carry instruments to weigh and analyze molecules, as well as a DNA sequencer and a microscope. Cameras, radio sounders and lasers would remotely scan the moon's surface, The Planetary Society reported.
Another proposed mission involves sending an autonomous "snake robot" into the watery depths below Enceladus' surface. The robot, dubbed the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, features cameras and lidar on its head to help it navigate the unknown environment of Enceladus' ocean floor.
https://www.livescience.com/space/extraterrestrial-
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2,000-
An ancient financial transaction from Jerusalem that was "set in stone"
dates to the Early Roman period.
The 3.5-
(Image credit: Eliyahu Yanai/City of David)
These days, most receipts are made of paper, but about 2,000 years ago, an important financial record was recorded on a much heavier material: stone.
Archaeologists found the inscribed proof-
"At first glance, the list of names and numbers may not seem exciting, but to think that, just like today, receipts were also used in the past for commercial purposes, and that such a receipt has reached us, is a rare and gratifying find that allows a glimpse into everyday life in the holy city of Jerusalem," the study authors, archaeologists Esther Eshel, a professor at Bar-
The legible parts of the receipt's text include names with numbers written next to them. For instance, one line has Shimon, a popular biblical male name during the early Roman period (37 B.C. to A.D. 70), the researchers said. Following the name is the Hebrew letter mem, an abbreviation of ma'ot — Hebrew for "money."
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/2000-
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By Donavyn Coffey( lifes-
The chemicals that make food spicy don't target taste receptors,
but rather temperature receptors in the tongue.
Spicy food can be painful. (Image credit: DigiPub via Getty Images)
Not everyone likes it hot. That's because eating spicy food can literally be a painful experience, which raises some questions: What makes certain foods spicy, and why do only some people like them?
Spiciness is related to temperature sensation, which is why it doesn't make the list of classic tastes alongside sour, bitter, sweet, salty and umami. In addition to its taste receptors, the tongue hosts different temperature receptors, some of which are triggered by spicy foods to create a literal burning feeling. So it's not an exaggeration to say that Indian or Thai food packs some "heat."
The "spicy" chemical that ignites your tongue is called capsaicin. It comes from chili peppers, which evolved the chemical as a secondary metabolite to protect them from being eaten by predators, John Hayes, director of the Sensory Evaluation Center at Penn State, told Live Science.
Capsaicin fits into a temperature receptor on the tongue called TRPV1. Normally, TRPV1 is set off by temperatures around 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) and higher. But when we eat something spicy with capsaicin, the molecule binds to the receptors and lowers their activation energy. In other words, capsaicin tricks the receptor into sending burning signals to the brain at just 91 F (33 C), Hayes said. So your mouth feels as if it's burning even though it's at mouth temperature, or roughly 95 F (35 C), he said.
Piperine in black pepper and the low pH of vinegar can also trigger TRPV1's "burning" pathway. While allicin in garlic, wasabi and mustard oil all interact with a separate temperature receptor called TRPA1.
There are several theories as to why humans enjoy spicy foods despite the sometimes-
How the risk-
Spicy food consumption may also come down to a personality trait that's reinforced in some social groups or cultures. A 2015 study in the journal Food Quality and Preference found that men in Pennsylvania were more susceptible to external or social motivations for spicy food than women. So there may be some link between spicy food liking and perceived masculinity. Some of the first studies on spicy food preference hypothesized that spicy food consumption was related to the idea of machismo. However, they did not find a difference in spicy food preference between men and women in the Mexican sample.
Another theory postulates that spicy food may have offered an evolutionary benefit in hot environments, Nolden said. Some experts have hypothesized that spicy food was valuable in these areas because it caused perspiration and thus had a cooling effect, she said.
https://www.livescience.com/health/food-
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Strange star system may hold first evidence of an
ultra-
In a distant star system, a sunlike star orbits an invisible object that
may be the first example of a 'boson star' made of dark matter, new research suggests.
An illustration of a supermassive black hole at the center
of a galaxy. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-
Astronomers long thought that a peculiar star system observed by the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite was a simple case of a star orbiting a black hole. But now, two astronomers are challenging that claim, finding that the evidence suggests something far stranger: possibly, a never-
The system itself consists of a sunlike star and, well, something else. The star weighs a little less than the sun (0.93 solar mass) and has roughly the same chemical abundance as our star. Its mysterious companion is much more massive — around 11 solar masses. The objects orbit each other at a distance of 1.4 astronomical units, about the distance at which Mars orbits the sun, making a complete orbit every 188 days.
What could that dark companion be? One possibility is that it's a black hole. While that would easily fit the bill in terms of the orbital observations, that hypothesis has challenges. Black holes form from the deaths of very massive stars, and for this situation to arise, a sunlike star would have to form in companionship with one of those monsters. While not outright impossible, that scenario requires an extraordinary amount of fine-
So perhaps that dark orbital companion is something much more exotic, as researchers propose in the new study. Maybe, they suggest, it's a clump of dark matter particles.
Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that makes up the vast majority of the mass of every single galaxy. We still do not have a solid understanding of its identity. Most theoretical models assume that dark matter is smoothly distributed in each galaxy, but there are models that allow it to clump up on itself.
One of these models hypothesizes that dark matter is a new kind of boson. Bosons are the particles that carry the forces of nature; for example, a photon is a boson that carries the electromagnetic force. While we know of only a limited set of bosons in the Standard Model of particle physics, there's nothing, in principle, stopping the universe from having many more kinds.
These kinds of bosons wouldn't carry forces, but they would still soak the universe. Most importantly, they would have the ability to form large clumps. Some of these clumps could be the size of entire star systems, but some could be much smaller. The smallest clumps of bosonic dark matter could be as small as stars, and these hypothetical objects get a new name: boson stars.
https://www.livescience.com/space/black-
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states, health officials advise
By Nicoletta Lanese published 13 days ago
Ohio public health officials raise concern about brain-
amoeba in northern states.
This "brain-
Deadly "brain-
"Increased incidence of N. fowleri [a species of brain-
Naegleria fowleri is a single-
PAM is rare — since 1962, about zero to eight cases have been reported nationwide each year, the case report noted. Most of these infections have been linked to swimming in the South, particularly in Florida and Texas, but since 2010, cases have started to occur in more northern states, including the Midwestern states Minnesota, Kansas and Indiana.
"Ohio public health professionals should take note of the incidence of N fowleri infections in northern states including Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota, as well as common vacation destinations for Ohioans where N fowleri infection has been reported, such as Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida," the new case report noted.
The report describes a case in which a woman in her mid-
During an interview with the woman's spouse, however, a public health nurse learned that the patient and her family had gone to a freshwater lake beach four days prior and she'd submerged her head beneath the water. (PAM symptoms typically arise one to 12 days after N. fowleri enters the nose.)
https://www.livescience.com/health/viruses-
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By Brandon Specktor published 3 June 2023
Radio astronomers have discovered hundreds of long, thin structures
emanating from our galaxy's supermassive black hole.
Radio observations of the Milky Way's center, including hundreds of newly discovered filaments (the smaller, yellowish lines and dots). (Image credit: Farhad Yusef-
Astronomers have discovered hundreds of strange, stringlike structures at the center of our galaxy, possibly tracing the violent path of an ancient black hole eruption.
According to new research published June 2 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, each of these previously unknown "filaments" measures between 5 and 10 light-
When seen together, the hundreds of crackling filaments seem to point directly at our galaxy's central supermassive black hole, suggesting that they may be the unhealed scars of an ancient, high-
"It was a surprise to suddenly find a new population of structures that seem to be pointing in the direction of the black hole," lead study author Farhad Yusef-
The Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, dubbed Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A*), is a cosmic monster with more mass than 4 million suns. Its intense gravitational pull binds our galaxy together — but its monstrous appetite has also resulted in some severe cases of interstellar indigestion.
Prior radio observations of Sgr A* conducted by Yusef-
https://www.livescience.com/space/black-
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France finally solved
By Tom Metcalfe published 2 June 2023
Hurling spear-
loops may have been finger grips.
The latest study proposes that the antler "open rings" were finger loops for wooden spear-
Enigmatic, C-
The discovery was made by using similar crescent-
Although the discovery hasn't been verified by finding a Paleolithic atlatl with the open rings attached, "we've mostly convinced ourselves," said study co-
"The rings come from the kinds of sites where gear maintenance would have been performed, and they look like finger loops and work well as finger loops," Garnett told Live Science in an email. "That said, we should always be cautious when assigning functions to prehistoric artifacts — there's always the chance that we may be mistaken."
Finger loops
The first open ring was discovered among Upper Paleolithic artifacts at Le Placard Cave in southwestern France in the 1870s. Since then, 10 more have been found, all in France, as well as one "preform" — an open ring that was in the process of being carved but still attached to the rest of the antler.
Only the preform has been directly dated, showing it was made about 21,000 years ago, by early modern humans of the Magdalenian culture or the Badegoulian culture that preceded it.
Each open ring is an arc a bit more than 1 inch (3 centimeters) high and about 2 inches (5 cm) long; each of the two ends has a horizontal tab, giving it the shape of the Greek letter omega. Some archaeologists suggested that the rings may have been ornaments or fasteners for clothing.
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/150-
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Stephen Hawking's most famous prediction could mean that everything in the
universe is doomed to evaporate, new study says
By Ben Turner published 3 days ago
A new theory has radically revised Stephen Hawking's 1974 theory of black holes
to predict that all objects with mass may eventually disappear.
An artist's illustration of three black holes merging. (Image credit: Shutterstock)
Stephen Hawking's most famous theory about black holes has just been given a sinister update — one that proclaims that everything in the universe is doomed to evaporate.
In 1974, Hawking proposed that black holes eventually evaporate by losing what's now known as Hawking radiation — a gradual draining of energy in the form of light particles that spring up around black holes' immensely powerful gravitational fields. Now, a new update to the theory has suggested that Hawking radiation isn't just created by stealing energy from black holes, but from all objects with enough mass.
If the theory is true, it means that everything in the universe will eventually disappear, its energy slowly bled from it in the form of light.
"That means that objects without an event horizon [the gravitational point of no return beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape a black hole], such as the remnants of dead stars and other large objects in the universe, also have this sort of radiation," lead author Heino Falcke, a professor of astrophysics at Radboud University in the Netherlands, said in a statement. "And, after a very long period, that would lead to everything in the universe eventually evaporating, just like black holes. This changes not only our understanding of Hawking radiation but also our view of the universe and its future."
The researchers published their findings June 2 in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Space-
According to quantum field theory, there is no such thing as an empty vacuum. Space is instead teeming with tiny vibrations that, if imbued with enough energy, randomly burst into virtual particles, producing very-
In a landmark paper published in 1974, Hawking famously predicted that the extreme gravitational force felt at the mouths of black holes — their event horizons — would summon photons into existence in this way. Gravity, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, distorts space-
Because of the uncertainty and weirdness of quantum mechanics, Hawking said this warping creates uneven pockets of differently moving time and subsequent spikes of energy across the field. These energy mismatches make photons appear in the contorted space around black holes, siphoning energy from the black hole's field so they can burst into existence. If the particles then escape the black hole, this energy theft led Hawking to conclude that — over a vast timescale much longer than the current age of the universe — black holes would eventually lose all of their energy and disappear completely.
But if a gravitational field is all that's needed to produce quantum fluctuations and photons, what's stopping any object with a space-
https://www.livescience.com/space/black-
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By Nicoletta Lanese published 3 days ago
An outbreak of dangerous fungal infections has been tied to recent cosmetic procedures at specific clinics in Mexico. Health officials urge anyone who underwent such procedures to seek a medical evaluation right away.
An outbreak of fungal meningitis, likely caused by the fungus pictured here, has been linked to two clinics in Matamoros, Mexico. (Image credit: Rafael Zarate via Getty Images)
The fungus behind an outbreak of dangerous nervous system infections in U.S. residents who underwent cosmetic procedures in Matamoros, Mexico, has been identified.
The culprit is Fusarium solani, a fungal species found in the environment whose genus has been tied to eye infections and fungal meningitis in the past, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Thursday (June 1).
Investigations into the outbreak suggest that many more people may have been exposed to the disease-
The outbreak has affected people in multiple U.S. states, three of whom have died — two with probable cases of the disease and one with a confirmed case, the CDC reported. In total, 547 people in the U.S., Mexico and Canada had procedures done this year at the affected clinics in Matamoros and therefore may have been exposed to F. solani, according to the World Health Organization.
Last month, CDC officials reported that five people in Texas had been hospitalized, and one of whom had died, due to suspected fungal meningitis, in which a fungus triggers inflammation in the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. All of the patients had recently undergone cosmetic procedures under epidural anesthesia in Matamoros, Mexico.
Investigators learned that these patients had been treated at two clinics in Matamoros, called River Side Surgical Center and Clinica K-
Now, more possible meningitis cases have been flagged and three U.S. labs and the Mexican national laboratory have confirmed that they detected F. solani in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) — fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord — of patients receiving follow-
In 2006, fungi in the genus Fusarium were linked to an outbreak of an eye infection called fungal keratitis that was associated with a type of contact lens solution. More recently, Fusarium caused a health-
https://www.livescience.com/health/viruses-
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Brain implants developed by Elon Musk's company Neuralink have been approved for human testing. The safety of the devices previously came under scrutiny following reports of "botched surgeries" in animal test subjects.
Neuralink has been cleared to begin the first in-
Elon Musk's brain-
Neuralink aims to use its brain-
Neurons, or nerve cells, communicate via electrical signals to coordinate our thoughts, feelings and behavior. Neuralink's implants, which have only been tested in animals, would theoretically work by interpreting these electrical signals and transmitting the decoded information to a computer via Bluetooth. In the case of helping to restore movement, for example, the computer would then analyze the incoming information and respond by sending signals back to the body, stimulating nerves and muscles to control movement.
The implant is inserted into a small hole in the skull created by a surgery-
Neuralink is not the only company working on BCI technology. For example, in 2022 Synchron implanted its Stentrode system into its first human patient after gaining FDA clearance to begin in-
Musk once reportedly approached Synchron's founder about a potential deal. This approach came just months before a federal investigation into Neuralink was launched to look into potential violations of animal welfare and Neuralink staff raised complaints that the company's animal testing was being rushed, leading to unnecessary animal suffering and deaths, Reuters reported.
An animal rights group, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), filed a complaint in February 2022 that accused Neuralink of "botching surgeries." The group claimed that surgeons had used an unapproved glue on two occasions to fill the holes in the monkeys' skulls, which then leaked onto the animals' brains and ultimately killed them. Separately, based on a PCRM tip, the Department of Transportation is investigating whether Neuralink is taking the required precautions when transporting implants that have been removed from monkey brains.
https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/elon-
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By Nikk Ogasa -
Lake loss is a big problem for people who rely on that water for drinking and irrigation
More than half of the world’s largest lakes shrank over the last three decades, researchers report in the May 19 Science.
That’s a big problem for the people who depend on those lakes for drinking water and irrigation. Drying lakes also threaten the survival of local ecosystems and migrating birds, and can even give rise to insalubrious dust storms (SN: 4/17/23).
“About one-
Using satellite observations from 1992 to 2020, Yao, then at the University of Colorado Boulder, and colleagues estimated the area and water levels of nearly 2,000 freshwater bodies. That work provided a continuous stream of lake volume measurements. The lakes account for 96 percent of Earth’s total natural lake storage and 83 percent of that in reservoirs. The team also used population data to estimate the number of people living by the drying lakes.
About 53 percent of the world’s lakes have clearly shrunk, the researchers found, while only 22 percent made gains. From these bodies of water, roughly 600 cubic kilometers of water were lost over the 28-
The researchers used hydrologic and climate simulations to tease out the processes influencing the fluctuating water bodies. They found climate change and human consumption were the main causes of the decline in natural lakes, while in reservoirs, sediment buildup was the primary driver of storage loss.
Questions or comments on this article? E-
CITATIONS
F. Yao et al. Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage. Science. Vol. 380, May 19, 2023, p. 745. doi: 10.1126/science.abo2812.
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19th century painters may have primed their canvases with beer-
By McKenzie Prillaman
Brewer’s yeast proteins turned up in several works by two of Denmark’s
most famous artists
The 1834 painting The 84-
THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF DENMARK
Beer breweries’ trash may have been Danish painters’ treasure.
The base layer of several paintings created in Denmark in the mid-
Records suggest that Danish house painters sometimes created glossy, decorative paint by adding beer, says Cecil Krarup Andersen, a conservator at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. But yeast and cereal grains have never been found in primer.
Andersen had been studying paintings from the Danish Golden Age, an explosion of artistic creativity in the first half of the 19th century, at the National Gallery of Denmark. Understanding these paintings’ chemical compositions is key to preserving them, she says. As part of this work, she and colleagues looked at 10 pieces by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, considered the father of Danish painting, and his protégé Christen Schiellerup Købke.
Canvas trimmings from an earlier conservation effort allowed for an in-
Tests of an experimental primer that the researchers whipped up using residual yeast from modern beer brewing showed that the mixture held together and provided a stable painting surface — a primary purpose of a primer. And this concoction worked much better than one made with beer.
Beer was the most common drink in 1800s Denmark, and it was akin to liquid gold. Water needed to be treated prior to consuming and the brewing process took care of that. As a result, plenty of residual yeast would have been available for artists to purchase, the researchers say.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/painting-
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Spiny mice have armadillo-
By Jake Buehler
Osteoderms are rare in mammals
This 3-
The spiny mouse is an unassuming rodent, but it’s armed with a very special tail.
CT scans show the tail is sheathed in a secret blanket of bony plates. Before the scans, only one other group of modern mammals was known to wield this kind of armor: armadillos. The discovery, reported May 24 in iScience, may mean that the skin bones are more widespread in mammals than previously thought and could shed light on their evolution.
The rodent’s secret was revealed when evolutionary biologist Edward Stanley of the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville put a museum specimen of a spiny mouse (Acomys spp.) in an X-
It was a “nondescript looking” mouse with slightly spiky fur, Stanley says. But in the initial X-
A more detailed CT scan showed the mouse’s whole tail was covered in overlapping bony plates within the skin, under the surface layers.
To understand how the bony plates develop, Stanley and his colleagues teamed with Malcolm Maden, a developmental biologist at the University of Florida. The team scanned the tails of newborn spiny mice up to those that were 6 weeks old. Bony plates form first near the base of the tail and then as the mouse ages, grow down the tail to its tip. CT scans revealed that three other species in the same subfamily as the spiny mouse also have armor-
These bony plates, called osteoderms, may help keep spiny mice and their relatives alive. The rodents’ skin is especially fragile and easily tears off, particularly on the tail. It’s hypothesized that the tearaway skin is a macabre defense, where attacking predators are left with a mouthful or paw full of shed skin. The plates may prevent predators from piercing too deep.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/spiny-
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Antarctica, new study warns
By Ben Turner published 12 days ago
Slippages in sediment beneath the Antarctic seabed could spawn gigantic
tsunamis as oceans warm.
Climate change could unleash gigantic tsunamis in the Southern Ocean by triggering underwater landslides in Antarctica, a new study warns.
By drilling into sediment cores hundreds of feet beneath the seafloor in Antarctica, scientists discovered that during previous periods of global warming — 3 million and 15 million years ago — loose sediment layers formed and slipped to send massive tsunami waves racing to the shores of South America, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.
And as climate change heats the oceans, the researchers think there's a possibility these tsunamis could be unleashed once more. Their findings were published May 18 in the journal Nature Communications.
"Submarine landslides are a major geohazard with the potential to trigger tsunamis that can lead to huge loss of life," Jenny Gales, a lecturer in hydrography and ocean exploration at the University of Plymouth in the U.K., said in a statement. "Our findings highlight how we urgently need to enhance our understanding of how global climate change might influence the stability of these regions and potential for future tsunamis."
Researchers first found evidence of ancient landslides off Antarctica in 2017 in the eastern Ross Sea. Trapped underneath these landslides are layers of weak sediment crammed with fossilized sea creatures known as phytoplankton.
Scientists returned to the area in 2018 and drilled deep into the seafloor to extract sediment cores — long, thin cylinders of the Earth’s crust that show, layer by layer, the geological history of the region.
By analyzing the sediment cores, the scientists learned that the layers of weak sediment formed during two periods, one around 3 million years ago in the mid-
"During subsequent cold climates and ice ages these slippery layers were overlain by thick layers of coarse gravel delivered by glaciers and icebergs," Robert McKay, director of the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington and co-
https://www.livescience.com/planet-
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By Ben Turner published 25 May 2023
Firing ultrasound signals into rodent brains puts them in a torpor-
Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) places herself into suspended animation in the 1979 movie Alien. (Image credit: AJ Pics/Alamy Stock Photo)
Scientists have blasted the brains of mice and rats with ultrasound to knock them into a hibernation-
The first-
The results of the animal study could provide researchers with some clues for how hibernation-
"If successfully demonstrated in humans, this technology holds significant potential for medical applications, particularly in life-
When food is scarce or the weather too cold, some mammals, birds, insects, amphibians and fish preserve their energy by involuntarily entering a state known as torpor, a mysterious and temporary condition marked by a drastically-
While in a torpid state, an animal's body temperature and heart rate drop dramatically and its blood flows slower. During hibernation (a voluntary act prepared for ahead of time) animals string together multiple bouts of torpid states. They slow their heart rates from hundreds of beats per minute to a mere handful; breathe once every ten minutes or more; and dim their brain activity until it is undetectable.
In fact, so few unconscious functions are performed during torpid periods that many hibernating animals have to periodically awaken to catch some proper sleep.
Torpor's profound physiological changes drastically reduce the energy that animals need to survive. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that scientists have long been keen to figure out if these benefits could be conferred to humans in critically-
In fact, records of the potential medical usefulness of hypothermia, a normally dangerous drop in body temperature, date as far back as ancient Egypt. It was also observed by Napoleon's chief surgeon Baron de Larrey during the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812. Lerrey packed limbs with ice before amputating them, and noticed that wounded men died quicker by the warmth of the fire than near the cold. In modern times, surgeons use hypothermic states to increase patients' survival rates during heart and brain surgeries.
https://www.livescience.com/health/consciousness/scientists-
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By Harry Baker published 11 days ago
The study reveals new information about the carnivorous dinosaur Irritator challengeri, but the research has been criticized because the fossils may have been illegally removed from Brazil.
An artist's interpretation of Irritator challenegri scooping its extended lower jaw though water. (Image credit: Olof Moleman/Universität Greifswald)
A large predatory dinosaur related to Spinosaurus may have scooped up prey "like a pelican" by extending its lower jaw, European researchers propose in a new study. But the findings have upset some paleontologists who contest that the fossils were illegally taken from Brazil and should be returned to their country of origin.
The dinosaur at the center of the controversy is Irritator challengeri, a member of the family Spinosauridae — a group of bipedal, carnivorous dinosaurs with long, crocodilian-
In the new study, which was published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, researchers digitally reconstructed the skull from the I. challengeri specimen housed in Stuttgart and discovered that the species' lower jaw could spread out to the sides, widening the animal's pharynx, the area behind the nose and mouth. This is similar to how a pelican widens its lower beak to scoop up small fish, suggesting that I. challengeri likely fed in the same way, the researchers wrote in a statement.
The new analysis also revealed that, due to its eye placement, I. challengeri would have naturally inclined its snout at a 45-
Fossil controversy
I. challengeri's journey from Brazil to Germany is a contentious one. The fossils were unearthed by nonscientific commercial diggers and were sold to the Stuttgart Museum before 1990, when Brazil began restricting scientific exports to other countries. As a result, the study's researchers believed that the fossils legally belonged to the Baden-
However, an older Brazilian law dating to 1942 states that Brazilian fossils are federal property and cannot be sold, meaning that the fossil was technically stolen by the commercial diggers who exported it, Juan Carlos Cisneros, a paleontologist at the Federal University of Piauí in Brazil who was not involved in the new study, told Live Science in an email. "And buying something stolen does not make you its owner," he said.
Cisneros and others believe that this issue is an example of scientific colonialism.
"That dinosaur is Brazilian heritage that was used to advance science in a European country," Cisneros said. "It fits the very definition of colonialism — using valuable resources from other countries to the benefit of a rich country." Publishing studies based on illegally taken fossils helps to validate this colonialism and makes it harder for poorer countries to contribute to science, he added.
https://www.livescience.com/animals/dinosaurs/massive-
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Hi folks -
Well, that's it for this blog. Hope you found something of interest. I'll start looking for more unusual stories to provoke you with. Any comments about my blog please feel free to let me know if you like it.
John Veverka -
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