Science News
New horned dinosaur reveals evolution of nose horn in Triceratops family
Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Scientists have discovered a striking new species of horned dinosaur (ceratopsian) based on fossils collected from a bone bed in southern Alberta, Canada. Wendiceratops (WEN-dee-SARE-ah-TOPS) pinhornensis was approximately 6 meters (20 feet) long and weighed more than a ton. It lived about 79 million years ago, making it one of the oldest known members of the family of large-bodied horned dinosaurs that includes the famous Triceratops, the Ceratopsidae. Research describing the new species is published online in the open access journal, PLOS ONE.
The new dinosaur, named Wendiceratops pinhornensis, is described from over 200 bones representing the remains of at least four individuals (three adults and one juvenile) collected from a bonebed in the Oldman Formation of southern Alberta, near the border with Montana, USA. It was a herbivore, and would crop low-lying plants with a parrot-like beak, and slice them up with dozens of leaf-shaped teeth. Wendiceratops had a fantastically adorned skull, particularly for an early member of the horned dinosaur family. Its most distinctive feature is a series of forward-curling hook-like horns along the margin of the wide, shield-like frill that projects from the back of its skull. The new find ranks among other recent discoveries in having some of the most spectacular skull ornamentation in the horned dinosaur group.
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Evidence Shows Prehistoric South Africans Used Milk-Based Paint 49,000 Years Ago
by Sci-News.com
A group of archaeologists headed by Dr Paola Villa from the University of Colorado Museum, Boulder, Colorado, has discovered a mixture of ochre and casein from milk dating to 49,000 years ago that Stone Age South Africans may have used to adorn themselves with or to decorate stone or wooden slabs.
Ochre powder production and use are documented in Stone Age South African sites but until now there has been no evidence of the use of milk as a binder.
“This is the first time a paint containing milk and ochre has ever been found in association with early humans in South Africa. The milk likely was obtained by killing lactating members of the bovid family such as buffalo, eland, kudu and impala,” said Dr Villa, lead author of the paper reporting the results in the journal PLoS ONE.
“Obtaining milk from a lactating wild bovid also suggests that the people may have attributed a special significance and value to that product.”
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Technology News
BBC Micro Bit computer's final design revealed
By Leo Kelion
The BBC has revealed the final design of the Micro Bit, a pocket-sized computer set to be given to about one million UK-based children in October.
The device - which features a programmable array of red LED lights - includes two buttons and a built-in motion sensor that were not included in a prototype shown off in March.
But another change means the product no longer has a slot for a thin battery.
That may compromise its appeal as a wearable device.
An add-on power pack, fitted with AA batteries, will be needed to use it as a standalone product.
The BBC's director general Tony Hall said the device should help tackle the fact children were leaving school knowing how to use computers but not how to program them.
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Solar Impulse completes epic flight to Hawaii
By Jonathan Amos
Solar Impulse, the aeroplane that is powered only by the sun, has landed in Hawaii after making a historic 7,200km flight across the Pacific from Japan.
Pilot Andre Borschberg brought the vehicle gently down on to the runway of Kalaeloa Airport at 05:55 local time (15:55 GMT; 16:55 BST).
The distance covered and the time spent in the air - 118 hours - are records for manned, solar-powered flight.
The duration is also an absolute record for a solo, un-refuelled journey.
Mr Borschberg's time betters that of the American adventurer Steve Fossett who spent 76 hours aloft in a single-seater jet in 2006.
Despite being in the cockpit for so long, the Swiss pilot told the BBC that he did not feel that tired: "Interestingly, not really.
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Environmental News
Volcanic eruptions that changed human history
Researchers find new evidence that large eruptions were responsible for cold temperature extremes recorded since early Roman times
Desert Research Institute
It is well known that large volcanic eruptions contribute to climate variability. However, quantifying these contributions has proven challenging due to inconsistencies in both historic atmospheric data observed in ice cores and corresponding temperature variations seen in climate proxies such as tree rings.
Published today in the journal Nature, a new study led by scientists from the Desert Research Institute (DRI) and collaborating international institutions, resolves these inconsistencies with a new reconstruction of the timing and associated radiative forcing of nearly 300 individual volcanic eruptions extending as far back as the early Roman period.
"Using new records we are able to show that large volcanic eruptions in the tropics and high latitudes were the dominant drivers of climate variability, responsible for numerous and widespread summer cooling extremes over the past 2,500 years," said the study's lead author Michael Sigl, Ph.D., an assistant research professor at DRI and postdoctoral fellow with the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland.
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Phthalates: 'Safer' replacements for harmful chemical in plastics may be as risky to human health
NYU Langone Medical Center
According to a new series of studies out of NYU Langone Medical Center, two chemicals increasingly used during manufacturing to strengthen plastic wrap, soap, cosmetics, and processed food containers have been linked to a rise in risk of high blood pressure and diabetes in children and adolescents.
The compounds, di-isononyl phthalate (DINP) and di-isodecyl phthalate (DIDP), are both in a class of chemicals known as phthalates. Ironically, the two chemicals were used as replacements for another chemical, di-2-ethylhexylphlatate, or DEHP, which the same researchers proved in previous research to have similar adverse effects.
"Our research adds to growing concerns that environmental chemicals might be independent contributors to insulin resistance, elevated blood pressure and other metabolic disorders," says study lead investigator Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP, a professor at NYU Langone.
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Medical News
Gene therapy restores hearing in mice
Injected virus may someday treat a hereditary form of human deafness
BySarah Schwartz
In a possible step toward treating genetic human deafness, scientists have used gene therapy to partially restore hearing in deaf mice.
Some mice with genetic hearing loss could sense and respond to noises after receiving working copies of their faulty genes, researchers report July 8 in Science Translational Medicine. Because the mice’s mutated genes closely correspond to those responsible for some hereditary human deafness, the scientists hope the results will inform future human therapies.
“I would call this a really exciting big step,” says otolaryngologist Lawrence Lustig of Columbia University Medical Center.
The ear’s sound-sensing hair cells convert noises into information the brain can process. Hair cells need specific proteins to work properly, and alterations in the genetic blueprints for these proteins can cause deafness. To combat the effects of two such mutations, the scientists injected viruses containing healthy genes into the ears of deaf baby mice. The virus infected some hair cells, giving them working genes.
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New cases of Ebola emerge in Liberia
by Tina Hesman Saey
Ebola is back in Liberia more than a month after the country thought it was rid of the virus.
A 17-year-old man died on June 29 of a fever illness that was being treated as malaria. As part of Liberia’s Ebola surveillance, swabs from the young man were collected by a safe burial team. Tests revealed that the young man died of Ebola, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced July 3.
Two of the nearly 200 people who came in contact with the young man have also developed Ebola symptoms and have been found to carry the virus. Other contacts are being monitored.
Liberia was declared Ebola-free on May 9 after 42 days without a new case. It is not known how the young man became infected.
To date 27,573 people have contracted Ebola and 11,246 have died. Most of the cases have occurred in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
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Space News
Biggest explosions in the universe powered by strongest magnets
Some long-duration gamma-ray bursts are driven by magnetars
ESO
Gamma-ray bursts are one of the outcomes associated with the biggest explosions to have taken place since the Big Bang. They are detected by orbiting telescopes that are sensitive to this type of high-energy radiation, which cannot penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, and then observed at longer wavelengths by other telescopes both in space and on the ground.
GRBs usually only last a few seconds, but in very rare cases the gamma rays continue for hours [1]. One such ultra-long duration GRB was picked up by the [Swift satellite] on 9 December 2011 and named GRB 111209A. It was both one of the longest and brightest GRBs ever observed.
As the afterglow from this burst faded it was studied using both the GROND instrument on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla and also with the X-shooter instrument on the [Very Large Telescope] (VLT) at Paranal. The clear signature of a supernova, later named SN 2011kl, was found. This is the first time that a supernova has been found to be associated with an ultra-long GRB [2].
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Dark Matter Dominates Just-Discovered Galaxies
Astronomers have discovered more than 800 so-called "ultradiffuse galaxies" that are virtually invisible because they have relatively few stars and are mostly dark matter.
By Clara Moskowitz
Astronomers have discovered a trove of galaxies that are virtually invisible—because they’re made almost entirely of dark matter. The Subaru telescope in Hawaii spotted 854 of these oddballs, which are referred to as “ultradiffuse galaxies,” by detecting what little light they do produce. They were all found in what’s called the Coma Cluster of galaxies. The report is in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. [Jin Koda et al, Approximately a Thousand Ultradiffuse Galaxies in the Coma Cluster]
Of course, scientists still do not know just what dark matter is. But they can detect its presence through its gravitational effects on the normal matter that we can see. That’s how we know that dark matter seems to be ubiquitous in the universe—especially in these newly found, barely visible galaxies.
Many of these galaxies are about the size of our Milky Way, but contain just a thousandth as many stars. Researchers estimate that dark matter accounts for 99 percent of these galaxies’ mass.
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Doh! News
If you look old on the outside, you're probably old on the inside
Researchers learn to measure aging process in young adults, find some aging 3 times faster than others
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
An international research team from the US, UK, Israel and New Zealand has found a way to measure the aging process in young adults -- a younger population than is usually tested in aging studies. Working with study participants age 26 to 38, the scientists identified factors that can determine whether people are aging faster or slower than their peers, and to quantify both their biological age and how quickly they are aging.
In a paper appearing today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers showed that even among young adults, a person's biological age may differ by many years from their actual chronological age. For example, among 38-year-olds studied, the participants' biological age was found to range from under 30 years old, to nearly 60 years old. That means that some participants' biological age was more than 20 years older than their birth certificates indicated.
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