Oldest Polar Bear in US Dies

The oldest polar bear in the United States was put to sleep on Friday after a sudden deterioration in her condition, Philadelphia Zoo said.

Klondike, who at 34 was beyond the typical lifespan for her species, went downhill fast in the last two weeks, zookeepers said, including having difficulty standing and walking after lying down. She also recently had a urinary tract infection.

"We are very sad for this loss. Klondike was a very popular resident at Philadelphia Zoo," said Kevin Murphy, general curator.

"She received great care from her keepers and the veterinary staff during her long and very healthy life here. She will be greatly missed by our staff.

"In addition to the joy she brought guests over more than three decades, she has been an important ambassador to wild polar bears, who are increasingly threatened by climate change and resulting shrinkage of polar ice."

Philadelphia Zoo is home to an additional female polar bear, Coldilocks, who is also 34 and who arrived and lived with Klondike.

A typical lifespan for polar bears in zoos is about 24 years, according to the zoo.

Discovery

Patricia—the strongest hurricane on record—rapidly weakened to a tropical storm overnight

Hurricane Patricia made landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast last evening with sustained winds of 165 miles per hour. Between Wednesday and Friday, the storm made a sudden, hulk-like transformation from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane. 

Patricia not only made it into the strongest category for hurricanes on the Saffir Simpson scale, but it became the strongest hurricane, period—or at least, the strongest one ever recorded.

 The scale tops out at 5, which describes storms with sustained winds of greater than 157 mph. Patricia’s 200-mph winds yesterday afternoon, according to some experts, would have warranted a Category 7 ranking if the scale were continuous. Abnormally warm waters in the eastern Pacific helped fuel the terrifying growth spurt. The magnitude was impressive even from space—Astronaut Scott Kelly, aboard the International Space Station, tweeted a warning (below).

But almost as quickly as it began, the storm weakened rapidly overnight and is once again Tropical Storm Patricia, with 50-mph winds. "The first reports confirm that the damage has been less than that corresponding to a hurricane of this magnitude," President Enrique Peña Nieto said in a televised message. The governor of the state of Jalisco, one of three under a state of emergency, told the New York Times that there have been no "irreparable damages" reported there so far.

 Flooding and mudslides continue to be a concern as the storm moves northeast, but let's hope it's finished blowing us away with its stats.

On Earth

Battle of the Ants Which is the most notorious ant species on earth?

Do you think you could win a fight with an ant?

Ants are very small. Ants seem innocuous. But what if you were confronted by an ant that was known to act, well, a little crazy?

What if you realised that the ant could bite? And not only bite, but inflict so much pain upon you that it would feel like your skin was on fire?

Visit BBC to read this wonderful article. You will be amazed!

Aspirin trial to examine if it can stop cancer returning

The world's largest clinical trial to examine whether aspirin can prevent cancers returning has begun in the UK.

About 11,000 people who have had early bowel, breast, prostate, stomach and oesophageal cancer will be involved.
Uncertainty about the drug's possible anti-cancer qualities has led to fierce medical debate in recent years.
If it is proven to work, scientists say it would be "game-changing", by providing a cheap and effective way to help more patients survive.
During the study, funded by the charity Cancer Research UK and the NIHR - the research arm of the NHS - patients will take a tablet every day for five years.

'Toughest experiences'

Researchers will compare groups of patients taking different doses of aspirin with people taking dummy (placebo) pills and check for any recurrences of cancer.
Dr Fiona Reddington from Cancer Research UK said: "The trial is especially exciting as cancers that recur are often harder to treat so finding a cheap and effective way to prevent this is potentially game-changing for patients."

The trial will run across 100 UK centres, involving patients who are having or have had treatment for early cancer, and will last up to 12 years.
But scientists warn that aspirin is not suitable for everyone and should not be used without medical advice.
Taking the drug every day comes with a serious health warning as it can cause side effects such as ulcers and bleeding from the stomach, or even the brain.

Clear proof sought

Prof Ruth Langley, lead investigator on the trial, said: "There's been some interesting research suggesting that aspirin could delay or stop early stage cancers coming back but there's been no randomised trial to give clear proof.

"The trial aims to answer this question once and for all.
"If we find that aspirin does stop these cancers returning, it could change future treatment - providing a cheap and simple way to help stop cancer coming back and helping more people survive."
Alex King, 51, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2009 and has been given the all-clear, said: "Having cancer was one of the toughest experiences of my life.
"Any opportunity to reduce the chance of cancer coming back is incredibly important so patients can rest more easily."
Many people are already prescribed daily, low-dose aspirin as a heart drug.

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BBC

Crocodiles sleep with one eye watching

Crocodiles can sleep with one eye open, according to a study from Australia.

In doing so they join a list of animals with this ability, which includes some birds, dolphins and other reptiles.
Writing in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the researchers say the crocs are probably sleeping with one brain hemisphere at a time, leaving one half of the brain active and on the lookout.

New Research Shows Individual Brain Activity Is As Unique As Fingerprints

These brain “connectivity profiles” alone allow researchers to identify individuals from the fMRI images of brain activity of more than 100 people, according to the study published October 12 in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

“In most past studies, fMRI data have been used to draw contrasts between, say, patients and healthy controls,” said Emily Finn, a Ph.D. student in neuroscience and co-first author of the paper. “We have learned a lot from these sorts of studies, but they tend to obscure individual differences which may be important.”

Finn and co-first author Xilin Shen, under the direction of R. Todd Constable, professor of diagnostic radiology and neurosurgery at Yale, compiled fMRI data from 126 subjects who underwent six scan sessions over two days. Subjects performed different cognitive tasks during four of the sessions. In the other two, they simply rested. Researchers looked at activity in 268 brain regions: specifically, coordinated activity between pairs of regions. Highly coordinated activity implies two regions are functionally connected. Using the strength of these connections across the whole brain, the researchers were able to identify individuals from fMRI data alone, whether the subject was at rest or engaged in a task. They were also able to predict how subjects would perform on tasks.

Finn said she hopes that this ability might one day help clinicians predict or even treat neuropsychiatric diseases based on individual brain connectivity profiles.

Data for the study came from the Human Connectome Project led by the WU-Minn Consortium, which is funded by the 16 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Institutes and Centers that support the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research and by the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University. Primary funding for the Yale researchers was provided by the NIH.

Publication: Emily S Finn, et al., “Functional connectome fingerprinting: identifying individuals using patterns of brain connectivity,” Nature Neuroscience (2015); doi:10.1038/nn.4135

Sci Tech

Is China spying on your Facebook profile? Here's how to find out

Social network unveils warning system to alert users when 'government-sponsored' hackers target them

Facebook will now alert users whenever they come under surveillance from government-sponsored spooks.

In a blog post, Alex Stamos, chief security officer at Facebook, said the social network will flag up "targeted attacks".

"Starting today, we will notify you if we believe your account has been targeted or compromised by an attacker suspected of working on behalf of a nation-state," he said.

Anyone who comes under attack will be given a warning, advising them their account has been compromised.

They should then check their computer for malware or viruses as well as change their password to lock out spooks or hackers," Stamos continued.

"To protect the integrity of our methods and processes, we often won't be able to explain how we attribute certain attacks to suspected attackers.

"That said, we plan to use this warning only in situations where the evidence strongly supports our conclusion.

"We hope that these warnings will assist those people in need of protection, and we will continue to improve our ability to prevent and detect attacks of all kinds against people on Facebook."

Mirror|UK

Walmart, McDonald’s and 79 Others Commit to Fight Global Warming

They've agreed to a White House-led plan to combat climate change

A consortium of more than 80 American companies including Walmart, Alcoa and Coca-Cola have agreed to a White House-led plan to combat climate change, the Obama administration said Monday, as the president ramps up his climate plan.

The companies have signed a pledge to support the landmark Paris climate negotiations set for the end of this year, reduce their emissions and increase low-carbon investments, according to a White House announcement.

“We recognize that delaying action on climate change will be costly in economic and human terms, while accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy will produce multiple benefits with regard to sustainable economic growth, public health, resilience to natural disasters, and the health of the global environment,” the companies said as part of the pledge.

The 81 companies, which also include American Express, Dell, GE, General Mills, McDonald’s, Nike and other household names, employ over 9 million people and have a market capitalization of over $5 trillion.

Each company is committing to specific goals, like reducing emissions up to 50%, reducing water usage by as much as 80%, purchasing 100% renewable energy and pursuing zero net deforestation in supply chains, the White House said.

The White House has set a goal of cutting nearly 6 billion tons of carbon pollution through 2030, including a reduction of emissions from the energy sector of 32% by 2030.

A new poll by the National Surveys on Energy and the Environment shows that 70% of Americans belief there is solid evidence of global warming, including 56% of Republicans.

President Obama has said he views action against global warming as a central part of his legacy.

Credit: Time

China slaps one-year ban on imports of African ivory hunting trophies

A government official picks up an ivory tusk to crush it at a confiscated ivory destruction ceremony in Beijing, China, May 29, 2015.


China slapped a one-year ban on African ivory hunting trophy imports, the state forestry authority said on Thursday ahead of a trip by President Xi Jinping to Britain, where members of the royal family have urged China to crack down on the ivory trade.

Conservationists say China's growing appetite for contraband ivory imports, which are turned into jewels and ornaments, has fueled a surge in poaching in Africa.

In March, Britain's Prince William urged an end to the trade during a visit to a Chinese elephant sanctuary in the southwestern province of Yunnan.

Xi is scheduled to travel to Britain between Oct. 19-23, where he will stay at Buckingham Palace, home to the royal family.

China's State Forestry Administration said in a statement posted on its website that it would "temporarily prohibit" trophy imports until Oct. 15, 2016 and "suspend the acceptance of relevant administrative permits".

It did not give further details, though the official Xinhua news agency said a government review is under way on whether to extend a separate one-year ban made in February on imports of African ivory carvings.

The policy also follows a deal to enact nearly complete bans on ivory imports and exports made during Xi's September state visit to the United States.

Within China, the trade and sale of ivory carvings are legal if the items were imported before the country joined the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1981, or come from a stock of 62 tonnes of raw-ivory bought from four African countries in 2008 as a one-time exemption.

The government releases a portion of that stockpile each year to ivory carving factories.

China crushed 6.2 metric tonnes (6.83 tons) of confiscated ivory early last year in its first such public destruction of any part of its stockpile. However, the country still ranks as the world's biggest end-market for poached ivory, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

In June, a Tanzanian government minister described elephant poaching as a national disaster, and urged China to curb its appetite for ivory.

Credit: Reuters

Warming Ocean May Be Releasing Frozen Methane

You hear a lot about carbon dioxide’s role in climate change. But methane, which is emitted by both natural sources and human-caused ones such as natural gas production for energy, is actually 25 times more potent as a greenhouse emission than C02, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

That’s why it’s a particularly ominous sign that rising deep ocean temperatures are thawing ancient frozen deposits of methane beneath the sea floor, which are bubbling up toward the surface.

A study by University of Washington scientists, which appears in a journal published by the American Geophysical Union, reports that numerous bubble plumes observed off the Washington and Oregon coast come from levels where methane hydrate, the frozen stable form of the gas, would decompose because of warming seawater.

The release “appears to be coming from the decomposition of methane that has been frozen for thousands of years,” UW oceanographer H. Paul Johnson said in a university press release.

Although methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, the liberated deep deposits may not be quite as much of a climate threat as it might seem. The scientists say that most of the deep-sea methane is consumed by marine microbes as it rises, which convert it to carbon dioxide. Even so, it still has a harmful impact. The extra C02 results in water with a lower oxygen content and higher acidity, which is less hospitable to aquatic life. That water eventually wells up along the coast and surges into waterways.

“Current environmental changes in Washington and Oregon are already impacting local biology and fisheries, and these changes would be amplified by the further release of methane,” Johnson said.

Another problem is that the release of methane takes it out of seafloor slopes where it acts as a sort of glue, holding the sediment in place.

The study confirms the scenario described in a 2014 study, in which thawing deposits release about 100,000 metric tons of methane per year.That’s close to the amount released by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

Credit: Discovery News

This Power Plant Set Out to Prove Coal Can Be Clean. Did It Work

Canada's Boundary Dam is getting promising results on carbon capture, but success is hardly a guarantee for similar projects.

The Boundary Dam project in Saskatchewan, Canada, rehabbed an old coal power unit with carbon capture and storage technology.

 On a chilly, open plain in Saskatchewan, clean coal is getting its first big trial. The Boundary Dam power plant fired up last October, promising to generate enough electricity for 100,000 homes while capturing and reusing most of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide from its exhaust.

The world is watching. Since most of its electricity comes from fossil fuels, proponents say carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology like Boundary Dam's could be critical in heading off the worst effects of climate change. Can the $1.1 billion Canadian project prove them right?

The results so far are promising, but by no means final. Boundary Dam extracts 90 percent of the carbon from its smokestacks, then injects it into nearby oil wells to goose output. So far, it has captured 400,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to its operator, SaskPower.

When it's at full throttle by the end of this year, that number will go up to one million metric tons annually, SaskPower says—the same as taking more than 200,000 cars off the road. Its emissions would then be about one third that of a comparable new natural gas plant.

SaskPower president and CEO Mike Marsh was upbeat about the plant at an energy conference last week in Washington, D.C., but acknowledged it was still undergoing "a lot of fine-tuning."

Boundary Dam is one of just 14 CCS projects operating worldwide, and the only one attached to a power plant. Another big project, Southern Company's Kemper County Energy Facility in Mississippi, is running more than two years late and $4 billion-plus over budget. The Sierra Club, which sued to stop Kemper,called the plant "dirty, expensive, and unnecessary."

"Did we take on some risk? Absolutely," says SaskPower's Mike Marsh of the $1.1 billion project.

PHOTOGRAPH VIA SASKPOWER CCS

Both Kemper and Boundary Dam rely on lignite, or brown coal, a lower grade fuel especially common in Germany and China, and both will use the carbon from processing that coal to extend the life of oil wells nearby.

Anyone concerned about the climate might ask: Why funnel those billions into extending our dependence on fossil fuels?

"Eliminating coal is a great bumper sticker as a pragmatic climate change option," Thompson says. "It fails miserably.”

Too many fossil fuel plants, especially new ones in China, are already on track to spew greenhouse gas emissions for decades, and they need to be addressed, Thompson says. (Read about how tons of power plant emissions are likely locked inalready.)

"The average person, they think CCS is about coal. It's not," Thompson says, noting that the technology can be used on plants both new and old, coal- or gas-fueled, and also at the many industrial sources of emissions. "You can't replace a steel mill with a windmill."

Unlike the Kemper project, which involves building a new coal gasification plant with different carbon capture technology, Boundary Dam* was a retrofit of a decades-old unit that would have had to close under new regulations Canada passed in 2012

"Did we take on some risk? Absolutely," Marsh says of the decision to go with CCS, which SaskPower made before the new Canadian rules were final. The alternative would have been to shut the plant and repower it with natural gas. Marsh says that CCS gave the company certainty it would meet the pending federal standard while avoiding the risk of higher natural gas prices in the future.

SaskPower's situation with Boundary Dam was unique—too unique, says Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative who focuses on CCS. For carbon capture technology to really take off, he says, countries need to require bigger pollution cuts while also providing the same kinds of financial incentives that renewables have received.

"It all comes down to economics, it’s very simple," Herzog says. "The markets aren’t there for CCS.” The Department of Energy included significant tax credits for carbon capture in its 2016 budget proposal, which he says would spur more projects, but it's unclear whether those will be approved.

Low oil and natural gas prices aren't helping CCS either, particularly in the U.S.: It makes less sense now to pour carbon into mature wells than it did when oil prices hovered near $100 a barrel. Plus, many states can meet pending emissions goals by ramping up natural gas and renewables.

Herzog believes that UN-led climate talks, beginning November 30 in Paris, will lock in current U.S. emissions for the next decade. Still, John Thompson says, CCS can and will be a player as coal ramps up in other countries and the world eventually looks for even bigger, quicker ways to slash greenhouse gases.  

"This is a technology that is going to be the main workhorse over the coming decades," he says. "You may not see it in the first 15 years, but you will see it when it matters."

* The Boundary Dam project uses Shell Cansolv technology to remove carbon dioxide from its flue gases. Shell is sponsor of The Great Energy Challenge, a special series that explores energy issues. National Geographic maintains autonomy over content.

Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Blue skies and water ice found on Pluto

The first color images of Pluto’s atmospheric hazes, returned by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft last week, reveal that the hazes are blue.

“Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It’s gorgeous,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.

The haze particles themselves are likely gray or red, but the way they scatter blue light has gotten the attention of the New Horizons science team. “That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles,” said science team researcher Carly Howett, also of SwRI. “A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger — but still relatively small — soot-like particles we call tholins.”


Scientists believe the tholin particles form high in the atmosphere, where ultraviolet sunlight breaks apart and ionizes nitrogen and methane molecules and allows them to react with one another to form more and more complex negatively and positively charged ions. When they recombine, they form very complex macromolecules, a process first found to occur in the upper atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan. The more complex molecules continue to combine and grow until they become small particles; volatile gases condense and coat their surfaces with ice frost before they have time to fall through the atmosphere to the surface, where they add to Pluto’s red coloring.

In a second significant finding, New Horizons has detected numerous small, exposed regions of water ice on Pluto. The discovery was made from data collected by the Ralph spectral composition mapper on New Horizons.


Large expanses of Pluto don’t show exposed water ice,” said science team member Jason Cook, of SwRI, “because it’s apparently masked by other, more volatile ices across most of the planet. Understanding why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places, is a challenge that we are digging into.”

A curious aspect of the detection is that the areas showing the most obvious water ice spectral signatures correspond to areas that are bright red in recently released color images. “I’m surprised that this water ice is so red,” says Silvia Protopapa, a science team member from the University of Maryland, College Park. “We don’t yet understand the relationship between water ice and the reddish tholin colorants on Pluto’s surface.”

The New Horizons spacecraft is currently 3.1 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth, with all systems healthy and operating normally.

Source:NASA

Kidney Tissue Grown in Lab Could Boost Transplants

Human kidney tissue grown from stem cells represents a key step toward developing fully functional, lab-made transplant organs.


Scientists said Wednesday they had grown rudimentary human kidney tissue from stem cells, a key step towards the Holy Grail of fully functional, lab-made transplant organs.

The tissue is not a viable organ, but may be useful for other purposes such as replacing animals in drug toxicity tests, the team said.

Kids are able to heal from injuries much faster than adults, thanks in part to one particular protein. As Anthony shows us, scientists are showing remarkable progress in harnessing that protein into a powerful drug enabling the body to regrow tissue.

The researchers from Australia and the Netherlands grew their "kidney-like structure" from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells -- adult cells reprogrammed into a neutral state from which they can be coaxed to develop into other cell types.

Given the critical shortage of donor organs to replace those damaged by accident or disease, it has long been a goal of science to create human organs from stem cells.

But it is a complicated task. Scientists need to prompt stem cells to become kidney, liver or lung cells, which must then recreate the complex anatomy of a real organ in order to function in a human recipient.

The first part of this chain has proved most challenging, especially in organs composed of a multitude of different cell types. The kidney, for example, has more than 20.

In the new study, published in the journal Nature, the team managed to transform iPS cells into two different adult cell types.

The resulting organoids sported different tissue types and were "similar" to the kidney of a human embryo, the researchers reported.

The work represented "an important step towards building stem-cell-derived kidneys," University of Edinburgh anatomy expert Jamie Davies wrote in a comment, also published by Nature.

But he stressed the product was "not a kidney, but an organoid."

"There is a long way to go until clinically useful transplantable kidneys can be engineered," Davies said.

But the organoids may fulfill a completely different medical need -- testing the safety for humans of new drugs.

"The cell types that are most vulnerable to damage by drugs are present in the organoids," said Davies.

Stem cells are primitive cells that, as they grow, differentiate into the various specialized cells that make up the different organs -- the brain, the heart, the kidney, and so on.

Until a few years ago, when iPS cells were created, the only way to obtain stem cells was to harvest them from human embryos. This was controversial as it required the destruction of the embryo.

Other teams of scientists have also reported growing "organoid" stomachs, livers, retinas and brain and heart tissue from pluripotent stem cells in the lab.

Discovery News

Warming Is Causing Global Coral Bleaching

Record ocean temperatures are putting coral reefs at risk, causing a third-ever global coral bleaching effect, NOAA reported this week. The effects of global warming, which are heightened by the current El Nino effect, have exposed about 95 percent of U.S. coral reefs to conditions that cause coral bleaching, which can lead the coral to die off.

The effect has been visible across a wide area of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, NOAA reported.

Global Warming Blamed For Pacific Coral Bleaching

“The coral bleaching and disease ... are the largest and most pervasive threats to coral reefs around the world,” said Mark Eakin, NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch coordinator.

“As a result, we are losing huge areas of coral across the U.S., as well as internationally. What really has us concerned is this event has been going on for more than a year and our preliminary model projections indicate it’s likely to last well into 2016.”

Coral bleaching happens when high temperatures cause the coral to expel symbiotic algae, which gives the coral its color. Short-term bleaching events occur naturally and the coral can recover.

Long-term events, like the one NOAA scientists are observing, cause coral to lose its primary food source and expose it to disease.

The current event follows bleaching in 2014 that widely affected reefs in the main Hawaiian Islands.

“Last year’s bleaching at Lisianski Atoll was the worst our scientists have seen,” said Randy Kosaki, NOAA’s deputy superintendent for the monument. “Almost one and a half square miles of reef bleached last year and are now completely dead.”

Global bleaching first occurred in 1998, during a record El Nino, and a second bleaching event happend in 2010.

Credit: Discovery News

Adopting new technologies key to Africa’s food security

[NAIROBI] Increased adoption of new agricultural technologies and innovations sensitive to climate change will help Sub-Saharan Africa eradicate food insecurity, experts say.
 
Researchers, scientists, policymakers and farmers who attended the 3rd Annual African Food Security and Agri-Extension Conference in Kenya last month (22-23 September) heard that the slow adoption of new agricultural technologies across Africa threatens to accelerate food insecurity on the continent. 

“The biggest challenge to the adoption of these technologies is the perception by farmers that they are very expensive and technically complicated.”

Abraham Maruta, social development arm of the Catholic Church — Caritas

 

“The agricultural sector is the most effective in reducing poverty and fostering food security in Africa,” said Richard Munang, the coordinator, Africa Regional Climate Change Programme of the United NationsEnvironment Programme (UNEP).
 
Munang noted that over 60 per cent of the African youth are unemployed yet the continent holds 65 per cent of the world’s arable land, and thus theagricultural sector could employ young people.
 
The experts told delegates that rapid deployment of new technologies and innovations could attract young people to the agricultural sector where they shy away from.
 
“The future of Africa’s agriculture depends on the ability to tap into the youth and ecosystem services,” Munang noted.
 
The experts also called for empowering women and young people by giving them land rights to help boost food security. They called for a review of the land sector and the development of a comprehensive policythat addresses the challenges of land rights across Africa.
 
Esther Obaikol, executive director of Uganda Land Alliance, asked: “Where is the land that women and young people need to practise agriculture?”
 
She reiterated that strengthening land rights for women and young people has the potential to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty.
 
Abraham Maruta, the deputy director of the social development arm of the Catholic Church — Caritas — in Meru County, Kenya, said some farmers are aware of new technologies and innovations such as new crop varieties and fertilisers in agriculture but shy away from them.
 
“The biggest challenge to the adoption of these technologies is the perception by farmers that they are very expensive and technically complicated,” Maruta explained.

Pascal Kaumbutho, the chief executive officer of the Kenya Network for Draught Animal Technology, said the challenge to produce more food will be more necessary in 2050 than ever in Africa’s history because of the growing population.
 
He added adding that mechanisation with support structures for smallholder agribusinesses favourable to youth and women are needed to foster food security.
 
“Africa needs many agricultural hubs to act as platforms to share innovative solutions for business growth,” Kaumbutho said.


Credit: scidev.net

Mystery solved: How these rocks got their strange hexagonal shape

In many places worldwide, such as Devils Tower in Wyoming and the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland (image), ancient lavas cooled into hexagonal blocks or columns. 

The big geological mystery: Why that particular shape? Using the same sort of computer simulations engineers employ to analyze stresses in bridges and aircraft parts, researchers analyzed the stresses within a thick slab of lava as it solidified.

 They found that as the material at the surface cooled, it shrank more quickly than the underlying lava, which was still warm. That shrinkage led to a random pattern of cracks that typically intersected at 90° angles.

 But as the material cooled and shrank further and cracks grew downward into the solidifying slab, small cracks began to consolidate into large ones and the angles between them gradually shifted toward 120°—the angle at which the most energy is released, the researchers report online this week in Physical Review Letters. 

Those 120° angles—the same angle between two adjacent sides of a hexagon—are generally maintained until the lava completely cools, which leads to the overall shape and pattern of blocks so commonly seen in nature, the researchers explain.

Credit: Sciencemag.org

Two Meteors Hit Ancient Earth at Same Time

An artist's depiction of the dual meteor strike.


It’s not altogether uncommon to hear about double rainbows, but what about a double meteor strike? It’s a rare event, but researchers in Sweden recently found evidence that two meteors smacked into Earth at the same time, about 458 million years ago.

Researchers from the University of Gothenburg uncovered two craters in the county of Jämtland in central Sweden. The meteors that formed the craters landed just a few miles from each other at the same moment, according to Erik Sturkell, a professor of geophysics at the University of Gothenburg and one of the scientists who is studying the newfound craters.

When the meteors slammed into Earth, Jämtland was just a seafloor, about 1,600 feet (500 meters) below the surface of the water. One of the craters left by the meteors is huge, measuring 4.7 miles (7.5 kilometers) across. The other, smaller crater — which is only about 2,300 feet (700 m) across — is located just 10 miles (16 km) from its larger neighbor. [Meteor Crater: Experience an Ancient Impact]

After analyzing information collected from a drilling operation, the researchers determined that the impact craters were formed at the same time. The information revealed identical geological sequences, or layers of rock, inside each crater. The sediment that accumulated inside the craters over the subsequent millennia also dates back to the same time, according to Sturkell.

“In other words, these are simultaneous impacts,” Sturkell said in a statement. The meteors likely crashed to Earth following the collision of two large asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter some 470 million years ago, he added.

When the meteors crashed into Earth, they displaced the water underneath them, leaving two huge, dry pits in the seabed for about 100 seconds, the researchers said.

“The water then rushed back in, bringing with it fragments from the meteorites mixed with material that had been ejected during the explosion and with the gigantic wave that tore away parts of the seabed,” Sturkell said.

This isn’t the first time that scientists in the area have found evidence of ancient meteor impacts in what is now Sweden, though it is the first time they’ve found evidence of two meteors striking the planet at the same moment.

Credit: Discovery News

Squirrel monkeys teach themselves to eat and drink from a cup

It’s not exactly the height of good etiquette, but squirrel monkeys at a research facility in California have learned how to eat and drink from plastic cup-like objects. It’s the first time squirrel monkeys have been observed carrying food and water around in containers, and a large number of the animals learned how to do it – 39 out of 57.

Previously, reports of tool use in squirrel monkeys have been so rare that they were considered incapable of such a feat. The only other non-human primates that seem able to spontaneously begin using containers are captive chimpanzees, orangutans and capuchin monkeys. In the wild, capuchins and chimpanzees have been seen using leaves to access water from tree cavities.

“The cups were meant to be simply for environmental enrichment, for them to handle and play with, so they invented the containment use by themselves,” says Christine Buckmaster of Stanford University, who led a team that studied the behaviour. “It’s pretty remarkable.”

Buckmaster decided to monitor the animals after a colleague happened to notice one of them carrying food in a cup. They watched the monkeys daily and took video recordings over a number of months, in which time they observed 212 acts of carrying using the cups.

The monkeys’ chow comes in chunks too large to eat in one go, so the animals learned to bite off a mouthful while holding the cup to catch the rest. Sometimes, they would also tip the leftovers directly into their mouths. The monkeys typically stored the cups on perches, retrieving them when they intended to feed on the chow on the floor of the enclosure. Each monkey was as likely to pick up a cup he or she had deliberately stored on a perch as they were to use a cup stored by another monkey – so it is difficult to prove that they were planning future use.

Only four of the 39 animals were spotted carrying water, collecting it from a water fountain they could operate and carrying it to a distant perch, then sipping from the cup.
Hedonistic monkeys

“Most of the group appear to understand that cups can trap and hold food, which is actually quite a complex idea even if it seems natural to us,” says Michael Haslam, a primate archaeologist at the University of Oxford. “The ability to move food, tools, liquids and even babies around without having to hold them directly in the hands was a critical development in human evolution, and while these squirrel monkeys have a long way to go to match us, conceptually they seem to be on a similar track.”


“It’s not surprising that at least one of them serendipitously put a piece of chow in a cup, or picked up a cup with chow in it,” says Dorothy Fragaszy of the University of Georgia in Athens, US, who recently reported skilled use of stone anvils by capuchins to crack open nuts. “The unexpected part of the story is that the monkeys that happened to do this developed the habit of doing it routinely, so they now collect a cup when they go to collect chow, and others nearby can learn to perform the same actions as the pioneer.”

Buckmaster and her colleagues even speculate that the monkeys derive pleasure from this different and more leisurely way of consuming food and drink. When non-human primates and other creatures such as birds use tools, the animals perform a task out of necessity – for example, using a stick to prod out otherwise inaccessible insects or grubs from a crevice. But in the Stanford enclosure, the animals had an abundance of food and drink, making the use of the cups an optional activity rather than an essential means of survival.

“We propose that in addition to its functional value, monkeys may engage in cup use because it has some subjective hedonic value,” says Buckmaster. “In other words, it may simply be a pleasurable way to eat chow or drink water.”

Journal reference: American Journal of Primatology, DOI: 10.1002/ajp.22486

Image credit: Christine L. Buckmaster

Credit: newscientist

Giant prehistoric lizards co-existed with humans

Komodo dragon and illustration showing how the osteoderm bone reinforces the scales and acts like body armor. (Photo of the Komodo dragon by Bryan Fry, inset by Gilbert Price)

While the concept of men battling 16–foot prehistoric lizards sounds like something out of a 50’s sci-fi flick, a new discovery in Australia has revealed that such encounters may have occurred. According to a study appearing inQuaternary Science Reviews, researchers from the University of Queensland have found a tiny fossil that belonged to a giant lizard bone 50,000 years ago, indicating that gigantic reptiles and humans once co–existed.

The bone – an osteoderm, which grows under the lizard’s skin and serves as internal body armor – was found in one of the Capricorn Caves near Rockingham, Queensland. According to Queensland University Vertebrate Palaeoecologist Gilbert Price, while the 1 cm bone is tiny, it tells a huge story.

“We were really blown away by this discovery!” he told FoxNews.com. “The significance of our finding is that it shows that these big, cold–blooded killers and Australia’s earliest humans were here at the same time.”

rice and his team used radiocarbon and uranium thorum techniques to date the bone at younger than 50,000-years old. Naming what giant lizard it came from, however, has proved more of a challenge, though they’ve narrowed it down to a few likely candidates.

“Even though the osteoderm is only around 1 cm long, we can tell that it’s from a huge lizard, either the Komodo Dragon or an even bigger species called Megalania Prisca,” Price explained. “Most people might not realize that Komodos used to roam all over Australia - in fact, the oldest fossil records suggest that they actually evolved here, some 3.5 million years ago.”


The now–extinct Megalinia, the bigger of the two species, measured between 11 and 16– feet long and thrived in eastern Australia, roaming its forests and grasslands. Using its sharp, curved teeth, the giant reptile fed on a diet of snakes, birds, other reptiles and large mammals. Naturally, this raises the question of whether or not humans were on its grocery list. Price says that while the human/giant prehistoric lizard relationship is still an unknown, he would be surprised if there weren’t regular encounters.


“Although giant lizards were still around in Australia at the same as the earliest humans, we don’t yet have direct evidence that people encountered them directly, but we are looking!” Price said. “I’m not sure how delicious a human would have been to a giant Ice Age lizard, but there were plenty of other things on the menu at the time, including massive eight foot–tall kangaroos and these weird wombat-like mega-marsupials called diprotodons - 3 tons of slow-moving muscle.”

It’s worth noting that Komodo dragons, which can measure up to 10 feet and live only on a few Indonesian islands, have been linked to numerous gruesome attacks on humans over the years – Hollywood star Sharon Stone’s then husband was attacked by one of reptiles in 2001, and another killed an eight year–old boy in 2007. However, ancient humans were probably more of a threat to the giant prehistoric lizards than vice versa, as many scientists believe that hunting is what helped kill off many of Australia’s megafauna – giant versions of modern animals, such as the aforementioned eight–foot kangaroo and three–ton wombat.

Price and his team are planning to continue their research and trying to find even younger records of these giant lizards to find out what led to their demise. “The data that we’re collecting is really important for testing hypotheses relating to their extinction,” he said. “It’s that information that helps us build a better picture of Ice Age life, and ultimately can reveal more detailed information about what drives extinctions in general.”

Credit: foxnews

Brain trauma widespread among high school football players, researchers say

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Football is a dangerous sport. Even with the best protective gear, sprained knees, pulled muscles and an occasional broken bone are part of the game. But seven years of research into the impact of head trauma in high school players points to new dangers that parents will find extremely alarming.

"We are seeing changes in brain activity even without a diagnosed concussion, even without any sign or symptoms showing up and that that occurs in a large population of our subjects," Larry Leverenz, a Clinical Professor of Health and Kinesiology at Purdue University.

More than half of the players participating in the trials showed signs of altered neurological function and dramatic changes to the wiring and biochemistry of their brains, according to a series of studies published by the Purdue Neurotrauma Group. They focused their research on pre-concussive head injuries which up until now went largely ignored due to lack of symptoms such as dizziness or disorientation associated with a concussion.  

"It's not just the neurons that get damaged, it's the glial cells, it's the vasculature," said Eric Nauman, Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University.

"Basically in football and woman's soccer about half the team is experiencing these kinds of things, these kinds of changes. Some of them heal and some of them don't by the time they start playing their next season and that was the thing that really got us nervous," he added.

The researchers placed sensors on the athletes to record impact forces and coupled that data with brain scans and cognitive tests to track neurological function over the course of the trial.

They found hits to the head that up until now were considered less dangerous may be the most dangerous of all because they go unnoticed, occur more frequently and cause damage that could result in long lasting neurological problems.

Based on their results, the researchers are developing equipment that better protects the head from high force impacts.

"You're not going to change the game. You are not going to get rid of the game, at least. So how can you make changes that keep the spirit of the game there, keep players enjoying, keep fans enjoying the game but at the same time be safe," said Leverenz.

They say the technology to make these games safer exists. But to get them out of the laboratory and on to the field requires a general consensus that these sports are a lot more dangerous than previously thought.


Credit: reuters.com

Nanoparticulate Carbon Black Found in the Lungs of Smokers

Two new studies identify the black material found in the lungs of smokers who died of emphysema as mostly insoluble nanoparticulate carbon black.

Physicians could only guess – until recently – at the composition of the black material found in the lungs of smokers who died of emphysema.

But research by Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University shows the deposits consist of carbon black nanoparticles that, once embedded in the cells that line the lungs, are impossible to remove.

In new papers in the online publication eLife and the journal Nature Immunology, researchers led by Baylor physicians David Corry and Farrah Kheradmand and Rice chemist James Tour identify the material as mostly insoluble nanoparticulate carbon black, tiny specks that result from the incomplete combustion of such organic material as tobacco. The particles average between 30 and 40 nanometers in size, about half the width of the membrane that surrounds a cell. (By comparison, a human hair is about 75,000 nanometers in diameter.)

Kheradmand, Corry and their colleagues studied the lungs of mice exposed to cigarette smoke and the lungs of human smokers with emphysema. They found the black material accumulates in the dendritic cells that serve as messengers in the human immune system and in the related antigen-presenting cells of mice.

They sent samples of the material to Tour and his students, who identified it. Ran You, a graduate student in Kheradmand’s lab, then introduced pure nanoparticulate carbon black, in roughly the same proportion of that found in the lungs of human smokers, directly into the noses of mice and found that it caused the animals to develop emphysema.

Tour said the finding is not limited to tobacco smoke. Other products, including tires, contain carbon black nanoparticles in significant amounts.

“I am concerned about how this affects industry,” Tour said. “It is going to have to change.” He said workers in industries that use carbon black, such as in rubber and plastics manufacturing, could be affected. “As it gets into the air, for example through tire-tread wear, it could affect the public as well, and it is imperative that risk assessments be conducted.”

While carbon black particles about 15 nanometers wide induced the most severe response, Tour said increasing the size of the particles to about 70 nanometers or oxidizing their surfaces greatly reduced their toxicity, based upon data presented in the eLife paper.

Kheradmand and You found the smaller carbon black particles caused double-stranded breaks in the cell’s DNA, a state that is very difficult to repair, and activated T helper 17 cells, which induced chronic inflammation in the lungs.

“We showed that it’s dose-dependent,” Kheradmand said. “The more you have, the worse it is. It is also size-dependent. The bigger particles do much less damage.”

“You never get rid of this stuff,” Corry said. “It will be important to conduct further studies to fully assess the spectrum of health-risk profile.”

In the eLife article, the authors wrote: “These findings largely explain the persistent and incurable nature of smoking-related lung disease. Because no medical means of removing accumulated lung nCB (nanoparticulate carbon black) exists, our findings underscore the need for all individuals and societies to minimize the production of and exposure to smoke-related particulate air pollution and industrial nCB.”

In the Nature Immunology article, Corry built upon eLife findings by studying the role of microRNA-22 as a link in the chain from exposure to carbon black to development of emphysema.

“We used to think of these tiny pieces of genetic material as junk,” Corry said. “Now we know that they are off-switches for protein-coding genes.

“This could be a therapeutic finding. We could design drugs to inhibit the microRNA through inhalation,” he said.

Co-authors of the eLife paper include Lu, Ming Shan, Xiaoyi Yuan, Lizhen Song and Amanda Hendrix, all of Baylor; former Rice postdoctoral researcher Jacob Berlin of the Beckman Research Institute in Duarte, California; and Errol Samuel, Daniela Marcano, Zhengzong Sun and William Sikkema, all of Rice.

Nature Immunology co-authors include You, Antony Rodrigues and Tianshu Yang, all of Baylor; and Samuel, Marcano and Sikkema of Rice. Corry, Kheradmand and Tour were authors on both reports.

The National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development supported the research.

Kheradmand is a professor of pulmonary medicine at Baylor. Corry is a professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Immunology, Allergy and Rheumatology at Baylor. Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of computer science.

Publications:

• Ran You, et al., “Nanoparticulate carbon black in cigarette smoke induces DNA cleavage and T_H17-mediated emphysema,” eLife, 2015; doi:10.7554/eLife.09623
• Wen Lu, et al., “The microRNA miR-22 inhibits the histone deacetylase HDAC4 to promote T_H17 cell–dependent emphysema,” Nature Immunology (2015); doi:10.1038/ni.3292

Credit: scitechdaily

Two New Species of Narrow-Mouthed Frogs Discovered in Western New Guinea

Dr Rainer Günther, a German herpetologist at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and his colleagues from Australia and Indonesia have described two new species of the microhylid frog genus Cophixalus from the Raja Ampat Islands off the western tip of New Guinea. The scientists have documented their discovery in a paper published in the journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.

Cophixalus rajampatensis. Image credit: Günther R et al.

The newly discovered frogs are characterized by small and slender bodies, measuring less than 0.9 inches (2.3 cm) in length.

They are members of the narrow-mouthed frog genus Cophixalus that occurs mainly in New Guinea and northern Australia.

Dr Günther and co-authors decided to name these new frogs Cophixalus rajampatensis and C. salawatiensis.Their description brings the total number of Cophixalus frogs known from New Guinea and surrounding islands to 46, and the total number from western New Guinea (Papua and West Papua Provinces including the Raja Ampat Islands) to 10.

Cophixalus salawatiensis. Image credit: Günther R et al.

The specimens of Cophixalus rajampatensis and C. salawatiensis were collected from lowland rainforests. There the scientists noted that after heavy rains at night the males perched on leaves of bushes and produced sounds, characteristic for each species.

“Curious enough, when dissected one of the male specimens, assigned toCophixalus salawatiensis, revealed a female reproductive system with well-developed eggs,” the researchers said.

“Simultaneously, neither its sound-producing organs, nor its calls differed in any way from the rest of the observed males from the same species. Therefore, it is to be considered a hermaphrodite,” they said.

Reference:

Günther R et al. 2015. Two new species of the genus Cophixalus from the Raja Ampat Islands west of New Guinea (Amphibia, Anura, Microhylidae).Zoosystematics and Evolution 91 (2): 199-213; doi: 10.3897/zse.91.5411

Credit: Sci-news

Fossil could settle the debate over whether early birds really did fly

We know some dinosaurs had feathers but there remains plenty of debate over whether prehistoric birds such as Archaeopteryx could actually take to the air and fly.

A new study in Scientific Reports goes some ways to answering that question with the discovery of new, 125-million-year-old bird from central Spain. The exceptionally well preserved fossil found in limestone from the Lower Cretaceous period has an intricate arrangement of the muscles and ligaments that controlled the main feathers of the wing of an ancient bird – the oldest occurrence of connective tissue in association with flight feathers of birds.

That would support the notion that at least some of the most ancient birds performed aerodynamic feats in a fashion similar to living birds.

"The anatomical match between the muscle network preserved in the fossil and those that characterize the wings of living birds strongly indicates that some of the earliest birds were capable of aerodynamic prowess like many present-day birds," said Luis Chiappe, one of the authors of the study, who is with the National History Museum of Los Angeles County, in a press release.

Guillermo Navalón, a doctorate candidate at the University of Bristol in the U.K. and lead author of the report, said he was so surprised how this ancient bird looked so similar to what we might find in our backyards.

"It is very surprising that despite being skeletally quite different from their modern counterparts, these primitive birds show striking similarities in their soft anatomy," he said, in the press release.

The characteristic features of birds are believed to have evolved slowly about 150 million years ago, and such things as wings and feathers developed over tens of millions of years. Since the 1990s, hundreds, if not thousands, of dinosaurs with feathers have been unearthed in China - helping firm up the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

While the latest find pushes the theory that birds did fly, it remains up in the air as to whether they flew close to the ground or soared over the heads of dinosaurs.

"The new fossil provides us with a unique glimpse into the anatomy of the wing of the birds that lived amongst some of the largest dinosaurs," Chiappe said. "Fossils such as this are allowing scientists to dissect the most intricate aspects of the early evolution of the flight of birds."

Credit:foxnews.com