Science News
First evidence of farming in Mideast 23,000 years ago
Evidence of earliest small-scale agricultural cultivation
American Friends of Tel Aviv University
Until now, researchers believed farming was "invented" some 12,000 years ago in the Cradle of Civilization -- Iraq, the Levant, parts of Turkey and Iran -- an area that was home to some of the earliest known human civilizations. A new discovery by an international collaboration of researchers from Tel Aviv University, Harvard University, Bar-Ilan University, and the University of Haifa offers the first evidence that trial plant cultivation began far earlier -- some 23,000 years ago.
The study focuses on the discovery of the first weed species at the site of a sedentary human camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was published in PLOS ONE and led by Prof. Ehud Weiss of Bar-Ilan University in collaboration with Prof. Marcelo Sternberg of the Department of Molecular Biology and Ecology of Plants at TAU's Faculty of Life Sciences and Prof. Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University, among other colleagues.
"While full-scale agriculture did not develop until much later, our study shows that trial cultivation began far earlier than previously believed, and gives us reason to rethink our ancestors' capabilities," said Prof. Sternberg. "Those early ancestors were more clever and more skilled than we knew."
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Simulations lead to design of near-frictionless material
DOE/Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne scientists used Mira to identify and improve a new mechanism for eliminating friction, which fed into the development of a hybrid material that exhibited superlubricity at the macroscale for the first time. Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) researchers helped enable the groundbreaking simulations by overcoming a performance bottleneck that doubled the speed of the team's code.
While reviewing the simulation results of a promising new lubricant material, Argonne researcher Sanket Deshmukh stumbled upon a phenomenon that had never been observed before.
"I remember Sanket calling me and saying 'you have got to come over here and see this. I want to show you something really cool,'" said Subramanian Sankaranarayanan, Argonne computational nanoscientist, who led the simulation work at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a DOE Office of Science User Facility.
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Technology News
What Tech Giants Are Spending Millions Lobbying For
Issie Lapowsky
Tech companies already own Silicon Valley, but new lobbying disclosure documents reveal just how much weight they throw around Washington as well.
In the second quarter of 2015, Google spent a whopping $4.62 million on lobbying efforts. That’s just slightly less than the $5.47 million they spent in the first quarter, but it still makes the search giant the third largest corporate lobbyist. Facebook increased its spend from $2.44 million to $2.69 million in the second quarter, while Amazon’s budget grew from $1.91 million to $2.15 million. Meanwhile, Apple spent just $1.23 million of its huge mountain of cash.
But while the these sizable figures themselves are worthy of notice, it’s equally important to consider just what policies these companies are lobbying for. While their policy concerns are not altogether surprising, they do tell a cohesive story about what the tech giants driving the industry consider to be its most pressing issues.
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Which wireless carrier has the best airport data coverage?
Stuck in an airport with an extra-long layover? One wireless-testing firm weighs in on which carrier will keep you going on your smartphone.
by Roger Cheng
If you're a frequent flyer who spends a lot of time at airports in the US, you're better off using Verizon Wireless.
That's the conclusion from wireless testing firm RootMetrics, which released its bi-annual report on the state of mobile coverage in the nation's 50 busiest airport. As with the broader national test, Verizon was the winner. But when it comes to airport, the nation's largest wireless service provider was the clear winner, followed by T-Mobile, then AT&T and last-place Sprint.
It's the third consecutive time Verizon has taken the top position in RootMetrics' study, a testament to the company's focus on network performance. With the competitive landscape in wireless heating up, owning the bragging rights to the best network is a critical edge. That's particularly the case with Verizon, which has long touted the quality of its network as justification for charging a premium over more aggressive rivals.
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Environmental News
Ban lifted on controversial 'neonic' pesticide
By Claire Marshall
The government has temporarily lifted a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides in certain parts of the country.
An EU-wide moratorium was put in place after some studies showed the pesticide caused significant harm to bees.
But following a second emergency application by the National Farmers Union, two neonicotinoid pesticides can now be used for 120 days on about 5% of England's oilseed rape crop.
Environmental and wildlife groups have called the decision "scandalous".
The areas where farmers will be allowed to use neonicotinoids has not yet been decided. According to the NFU, it will be those areas where there are records over the last season or so that the pests - primarily the cabbage stem flea beetle - have inflicted most damage on oilseed rape crops.
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UK income levels severely limit access to natural beauty
By Matt McGrath
Families need an annual income of at least £45,000 to be able to enjoy the natural beauty of their environment.
According to a report, less than half of people living in social housing felt they had the same access to beauty in urban or rural areas.
The study, by think tank ResPublica, says this inequality impacts health and the quality of people's lives.
The authors say the right to beauty should be enshrined in law for "all and not just the privileged".
A growing body of research in recent years has attempted to quantify the impact of nature and beautiful environments on quality of life.
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Medical News
Overeating caused by a hormone deficiency in brain?
Study finds absence of peptide linked to preference for fatty food, eating for pleasure rather than hunger
Rutgers University
If you find yourself downing that extra piece of chocolate fudge cake even though you're not hungry, it might be the absence of a hormone in your brain that's causing you to overeat purely for pleasure.
In a new Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School study published in Cell Reports, researchers found that when the hormone glucagon like peptide-1 (GLP-1) was reduced in the central nervous system of laboratory mice, they overate and consumed more high fat food.
"The mice in which the GLP-1 deficiency was induced ate beyond the need for calories and showed an increase preference for high fat food," says Vincent Mirabella, a medical school and doctoral student who co-authored the study. "Conversely when we enhanced GLP-1 signaling in the brains of mice we were able to block the preference of high fat foods."
GLP-1 peptides are small sequences of amino acids that have many functions, including how our bodies regulate eating behaviors. They are secreted from cells in both the small intestine and the brain and are supposed to let our brain know when we are satisfied and should put down the fork.
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Super-Superbugs: Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria May Be Deadlier
Findings contradict prevailing view that bacteria become less “fit” when they acquire resistance to drugs
By Rachael Rettner and LiveScience
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria may be tougher superbugs than previously thought: Not only are these bacteria harder to treat, they appear to be “fitter” in general, meaning they survive better in the host and cause more deadly infections, a new study suggests.
The findings go against the prevailing view in medicine that when bacteria acquire resistance to drugs, they become less “fit” in some way, for example, they spread less easily. Although scientists have assumed this is true, evidence supporting this view is limited, the researchers said.
In the new study, the researchers examined the effect of genes on antibiotic resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, bacteria that cause lung infections.
They found that mice infected with antibiotic-resistant strains of P. aeruginosa were more likely to die (without any type of treatment) during the study period than mice infected with P. aeruginosa strains that did not have antibiotic resistance. [6 Superbugs to Watch Out For]
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Space News
NASA announcement live: Earth 2.0 planet Kepler 452b discovered by Kepler Telescope
Doug Bolton
NASA has announced the discovery of Kepler 452B by their Kepler space telescope - a planet very similar to Earth in the Milky Way. Here are the latest updates:
It could contain water – "the essential ingredient for life as we know it"
The Kepler telescope, which was launched in March 2009, has previously discovered more than 1,000 planets in space - but Nasa's teasing announcement suggests that this discovery could be its most significant to date.
It would be an astounding achievement, considering the first star-orbiting planet outside the solar system was discovered in 1995.
In a statement, NASA said: "Today, and thousands of discoveries later, astronomers are on the cusp of finding something people have dreamed about for thousands of years - another Earth."
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Astronomers Peer into Internal Structure of ‘Normal’ Galaxies in Early Universe
A team of astronomers – led by Dr Roberto Maiolino from the University of Cambridge, UK – has detected the most distant clouds of star-forming gas yet found in ‘normal’ galaxies in the early Universe.
Sci-News.com
When the first galaxies started to form a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the Universe was full of a fog of hydrogen gas. But as more and more brilliant sources started to shine, they cleared away the mist and made the Universe transparent to UV light.
Astronomers call this the Epoch of Reionization, but little is known about these first galaxies, and up to now they have just been seen as very faint blobs. But now observations using ESO’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are starting to change this.
Dr Maiolino and his colleagues used ALMA to observe distant galaxies that are seen when the Universe was less than 800 million years old.
The scientists were not looking for the light from stars, but instead for the faint glow of ionized carbon coming from the clouds of gas from which the stars were forming.
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Odd News
Chemists Start Web Site Fingering Substances That Ruin Experiments
Bad chemical probes have messed up clinical trials for breast cancer
By Monya Baker and Nature magazine
A band of more than 50 scientists has created a website to help biologists avoid poor-quality chemical reagents that undermine experiments in molecular biology and drug discovery.
“Shitty reagents generate shitty science. They waste money and waste careers,” says biochemist Aled Edwards, head of the Structural Genomics Consortium, a public–private partnership to study proteins important to drug-discovery efforts. Although the literature is rife with reports about the flaws of individual chemical tools, scientists continue to use them, he says. “The current way of doing things can't fix it. There is a systems failure in how we communicate information about molecules.”
The Chemical Probes Portal, which Edwards and dozens of co-authors describe in a commentary published in Nature Chemical Biology on July 21, is an attempt to create a community tool to improve the situation.
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