Million year old European tooth found

Scientists in Spain say that they have found a tooth from a distant human ancestor that is more than one million years old.

The tooth, a pre-molar, was discovered on Wednesday at the Atapuerca site in northern Spain's Burgos Province. It represented western Europe's "oldest human fossil remain", a statement from the Atapuerca Foundation said.

The foundation said it was awaiting final results before publishing its findings in a scientific journal.

Several caves containing evidence of prehistoric human occupation have been found in Atapuerca. In 1994 fossilised remains called Homo antecessor (Pioneer Man) - believed to date back 800,000 years - were unearthed there.

Scientists had previously thought that Homo heidelbergensis, dating back 600,000 years, were Europe's oldest inhabitants. Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, co-director of research at the site, said that the newly discovered tooth could be as much as 1.2 million years old.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ BBC Science News.

Yes, we're back in business!

After almost a year without updates, Sciotecha is slowly reviving...

Start of November last year, I just stopped updating Sciotecha. Why? Well, not only had I got a new job at a place called Free Radical Design in Nottingham, UK -- but I also had once again got hooked on a great MMORPG called World of Warcraft.

Well, I'm still at Free Radical, but recently I stopped playing Warcraft as it was taking up far too much of my time. So suddenly I have spare time again, and amongst other things, I've decided to post again to Sciotecha.

Not sure it'll ever be as frequently updated as it has been, and sadly I have missed informing you of many months of very interesting science and discovery news. If I find myself looking back on any of those old articles, I promise to post them up here.

I'm sure all the old Sciotecha readers have moved on now, but maybe you'll consider coming back -- and maybe we'll find some new readers too? :)

Incas in Scandinavia?

Norwegian arhaeologists are puzzled by a find which indicates an Inca Indian died and was buried in the Oestfold city of Sarpsborg 1000 years ago.

The remains of two elderly men and a baby were discovered during work in a garden, and one of the skulls indicates that the man was an Inca Indian.

- There is a genetic flaw in the neck, which is believed to be limited to the Incas in Peru, says arahaeologist Mona Beate Buckholm.

The Norway Post suggests that maybe the Vikings travelled even more widely than hitherto believed? Why could not the Viking settlers in New Foundland have strayed further down the coast on one of their fishing trips?

Meanwhile, more digging will be made in Sarpsborg, in an attempt to try to find an answer to the puzzle, NRK reports.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ The Norway Post.

Did Neanderthals give us our Big Brains?

Neanderthals may have given the modern humans who replaced them a priceless gift -- a gene that helped them develop superior brains, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

And the only way they could have provided that gift would have been by interbreeding, teams at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Chicago said.

Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides indirect evidence that modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred at some point when they lived side by side in Europe.

“Finding evidence of mixing is not all that surprising. But our study demonstrates the possibility that interbreeding contributed advantageous variants into the human gene pool that subsequently spread,” said Bruce Lahn, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher at the University of Chicago who led the study.

[Comment: Fascinating news! How apt it would be if we could prove that the only surviving evidence of interbreeding between us and Neanderthals left us with the big brains we have today. Apt because Neanderthals have previously been seen as so brutish and unkempt.

This could also explain evidence for a Human "cultural explosion" that occured either before, after or exactly at this time.

So perhaps after breeding our way into it, us modern humans radiated out of Europe and West Asia with this brain-enhancing gift from our Neanderthal cousins. Simply fascinating; especially after so much recent news about the discovery of possible hybrid Neanderthal-Sapiens.

Looking forward to reading more about this. ~ Ed.]

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ Reuters.

'Lucy's baby' found in Ethiopia

The 3.3-million-year-old fossilised remains of a human-like child have been unearthed in Ethiopia's Dikika region.

The female bones are from the species Australopithecus afarensis, which is popularly known from the adult skeleton nicknamed "Lucy".

Scientists are thrilled with the find, reported in the journal Nature. They believe the near-complete remains offer a remarkable opportunity to study growth and development in an important extinct human ancestor.

Juvenile remains of early human ancestors are vanishingly rare. The skeleton was first identified in 2000, locked inside a block of sandstone. It has taken five years of painstaking work to free the bones.

"The Dikika fossil is now revealing many secrets about Australopithecus afarensis and other early hominins, because the fossil evidence was not there," said dig leader Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

[Comment: Wow! ~ Ed.]

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ BBC Science News, Nature.com & NewScientist.com.

Tenth (dwarf) planet named for goddess of discord

A large icy object that helped spark the debate over Pluto's status has officially been named Eris, after the Greek goddess of discord.

The object had been known as 2003 UB313 since its discovery was reported in 2005 by Mike Brown of Caltech in Pasadena, US. It is slightly larger than Pluto, which prompted Brown and others to refer to it as the 'tenth planet' and generated debate about what should be considered a planet.

Now, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has settled on an official definition of planet, which demotes Pluto to a new category of "dwarf planets".

The IAU has now approved Brown's suggested name, Eris, for the dwarf planet formerly known as 2003 UB313. In Greek mythology, Eris caused a fight over a golden apple, which led to the Trojan War.

The IAU has also approved Brown's suggested name of Dysnomia for Eris's satellite, which is about a tenth Eris's size (see Moon discovered orbiting tenth planet). Dysnomia is the goddess of lawlessness and Eris's daughter in Greek mythology.

[Comment: Yes, I'm finally back posting again... ~ Ed.]

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientistSpace.com.

Evolution's human and chimp twist

Humans and chimpanzees may have split away from a common ancestor far more recently than was previously thought.

A detailed analysis of human and chimp DNA suggests the lines finally diverged less than 5.4 million years ago. The finding, published in the journal Nature, is about 1-2 million years later than the fossils have indicated.

A US team says its results hint at the possibility that interbreeding occurred between the two lines for thousands, even millions, of years. This hybridisation would have been important in swapping genes for traits that allowed the emerging species to survive in their environments, explain the scientists affiliated to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Harvard Medical School.

And it underlines, they believe, just how complex human evolution has been.

[Comment: Wow! Oh and yes... I'm back. Sorry again for the downtime. Chances are high I won't keep it as updated as before though, but we'll see. :) ~ Ed.]

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ BBC Science News.

Apologies for lack of updates

Hi all!

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. Basically, I was made redundant at work, and so I have had other things on my mind..

Normal service will resume soon. :)

Ash

Whale song reveals sophisticated language skills

Humpback whales use their own syntax – or grammar – in the complex songs they sing, say researchers who have developed a mathematical technique to probe the mysteries of whale song

The team adds that whales are the only other animals beside humans to use hierarchical structure in language, in which phrases are embedded in larger, recurring themes.

This concept echoes scientific suggestions from the 1970s, but the new computer analysis claims to confirm this and provides an objective measure of the songs’ structure and complexity.

Male humpback whales produce songs that last anywhere from about six to 30 minutes. These vocalisations vary greatly across seasons, and during breeding periods they are thought to help attract female partners. Their eerie sound and patterns have captured the attention of marine biologists for decades.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientist.com.

Mayan underworld proves researchers' dream

The ancient Maya once believed that Mexico's jungle sinkholes containing crystalline waters were the gateway to the underworld and the lair of a surly rain god who had to be appeased with human sacrifices

Now, the "cenotes," deep sinkholes in limestone that have pools at the bottom, are yielding scientific discoveries including possible life-saving cancer treatments.

Divers are dipping into the cenotes, which stud the Yucatan peninsula, to explore a vast underground river system.

Hefting air tanks, guidelines and waterproof lamps, they have so far mapped 405 miles of channels that form part of a huge subterranean river delta flowing into the Caribbean sea, and they are only just starting.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ news.yahoo.com.

World's largest ice-age footprint site uncovered in Australia

At Australia's Willandra Lakes, TIME’s Lisa Clausen Visits the site of the world's largest repository of ice-age human footprints.

They were in the wrong place, but Steve Webb's archaeology class decided to stay anyway. A colleague had mistakenly taken them to a site they'd never visited before, a nondescript-looking claypan lost among the pale dunes in the Willandra Lakes region of far western New South Wales. Luckily, Webb thought it would still make good practice fieldwork for his Aboriginal students after a week of classes in the nearby town of Mildura. He was walking behind one of them, 26-year-old Mary Pappin Jr., when she called out that she'd seen something. What she'd spotted on the wind-blown surface looked like a footprint. "We'd all been walking over it," her mother Mary says proudly. "But that little one saw it."

What she'd chanced upon is still hard to believe - not only the first Ice Age fossilized human footprints found in Australia, but the largest collection ever found anywhere. "You just don't get this sort of archaeological signature," says Michael Westaway, executive officer of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area. "This is a story, really, for everybody." Today the prints look as sharp as if their makers had just hurried over the top of the nearest dune. "Almost as good as a footprint in wet sand," Webb says. Since the 2003 find, which was announced last December, his team has uncovered around 460 human prints crisscrossing the site like the traces of a peak-hour crowd, many deeply impressed in the sediment, clearly showing where mud once squished between toes. From their size and the distance between them, Webb and his team have formed a rough picture of 23 individuals who traversed what would have been a wet landscape between 19,000 and 23,000 years ago. A child wanders alone, a little way off from a group. Intersecting their paths is a one-legged man whose confident pace gives no clue as to how he propelled himself, and four tall men running fast, their heels skidding as they sped - were they hunters or prey?

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ Time.com.

Front wheel on Mars rover stops

One of the wheels on Nasa's Martian rover Spirit has stopped working.

The robotic vehicle is now dragging the wheel as it moves to a slope where it can get maximum sunshine on its solar cells to sustain it through the winter. Spirit's right-front wheel has played up before because of a lubrication problem, but engineers on Earth were able to return it to normal operation.

This time, however, it appears to be the motor that rotates the wheel that has ceased to function.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ BBC Science News.

Earth rocks could have taken life to Titan

Boulders blasted away from the Earth's surface after a major impact could have travelled all the way to the outer solar system, new calculations reveal. The work suggests that terrestrial microbes on the rocks could in theory have landed on Saturn's giant moon, Titan. But whether they could have survived once there remains unclear.

The fact that meteorites from the Moon and Mars have landed on Earth confirms that impacts on solar system bodies can launch rocky debris to other planets. And previous studies have suggested that any life on the rocks could have survived the launch blast and the radiation and chill of the journey through space, assuming it lasted less than a few million years.

Such hardiness raises the possibility that life on Earth itself was seeded from space – a concept called panspermia. But now, researchers led by Brett Gladman of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, have analysed the reverse situation – that life on Earth seeded other bodies in the solar system. Gladman presented the results on Thursday at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, US.

He says only boulders at least 3 metres across could punch out through the Earth's atmosphere and escape the planet's gravity, and that only extremely powerful impacts could achieve this. The cause of such impacts would be comets or asteroids between 10 and 50 kilometres wide, Gladman told New Scientist: "The kind of thing that killed the dinosaurs."

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientistSpace.com.

Big new reservoir of water ice suspected under Mars

A large and previously unknown reservoir of water ice may have been found below the surface of Mars, new radar observations suggest.

Gaping canyons and river-like channels attest to the fact that large amounts of water once flowed on Mars. But today most of that water has disappeared, and finding out where it went is one of the main aims of research on the Red Planet.

Scientists are using the radar antenna onboard Europe's Mars Express spacecraft as a divining rod to scout for any water that may have seeped underground.

MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) works by sending out pulses of radio waves from its main, 40-metre-long antenna and analysing the time delay and strength of the signals that bounce back. Radio waves that penetrate the surface rebound when they encounter a subsurface boundary between materials with different electrical properties – such as rock and water.

The antenna was deployed in June 2005 and quickly detected what appeared to be water ice stretching 1.8 kilometres below the surface of the northern polar ice cap. Now, it has found what looks like water ice extending as deep as 3.5 kilometres below the southern polar cap.

[Comment: Fascinating -- I've been waiting to hear news on the result of this mission, after the uncertainty about whether the antenna could deploy successfully or not! Just the news we need for a Human future on this icy red world. ~ Ed.]

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientistSpace.com.

Europe Mars shot looks to upgrade

Europe's rover mission to Mars faces a key review to decide if the landing vehicle will be accompanied to the Red Planet by an orbiting spacecraft.

Some on the ExoMars mission want its carrier module, which will ferry the rover to Mars, turned into an orbiter. Upgrading the carrier to an orbiter would cut the mission's reliance on an American spacecraft for communications.

European Space Agency (Esa) officials are expected to decide on the matter in late 2006/early 2007. The mission is currently due to launch on a Russian Soyuz craft in 2011.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ BBC Science News.

Aboriginal people built water tunnels

Indigenous Australians dug underground water reservoirs that helped them live on one of the world's driest continents for tens of thousands of years, new research shows.

The study, which is the first of its kind, indicates Aboriginal people had extensive knowledge of the groundwater system, says hydrogeologist Brad Moggridge, knowledge that is still held today.

Some 70% of the continent is covered by desert or semi-arid land, which meant its original inhabitants needed to know how to find and manage this resource if they were to survive.

"Aboriginal people survived on one of the driest continents for thousands and thousands of years," says Brad Moggridge, who is from Kamilaroi country in northern New South Wales.

"Without water you die. They managed that water sustainably."

Moggridge, currently a principal policy officer in the New South Wales Department of Environment and Conservation, did his research as part of a Masters degree at the University of Technology, Sydney.

He based his work on oral histories, Dreamtime stories, rock art, artefacts and ceremonial body painting as well as written accounts by white missionaries, surveyors, settlers, anthropologists and explorers.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ ABC.net.au.

'Naked super-Earth' revealed by microlensing

A chilly “super-Earth” has been spotted in the outskirts of a planetary system 9000 light years away. It is the second known planet of its kind, and suggests these cool worlds are astonishingly common.

Around 170 extrasolar planets have been discovered so far, most of them gas giants like Jupiter circling nearby stars. The majority have been found because their gravity makes their parent stars wobble.

The new planet was discovered by an alternative technique called microlensing which detects planets around much more distant stars. Microlensing can occur when one star passes directly in front of another, as seen from Earth. The gravity of the foreground star briefly magnifies the light of the background star, and if the foreground star has a planet in orbit around it, the planet can create a telltale brightness blip.

In April 2005, an astronomical collaboration called OGLE noticed a bright microlensing event in the central bulge of the Milky Way. Two other teams – the Microlensing Follow-up Network (MicroFUN) and RoboNet – joined in the observations, which monitored the event using five telescopes in the US, Chile and New Zealand.

Analysis of nearly 1500 images suggests the lensing (foreground) star is about half as massive as the Sun and has a Neptune-mass planet in tow. The planet lies about 2.7 times as far from its star as the Earth lies from the Sun, and the astronomers estimate that its temperature is a frigid -200°C.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientistSpace.com.

Comet Wild 2 made from 'fire and ice'

Pristine dust from a comet that formed in the icy region beyond Neptune contains material that was once heated to a scorching 1100°C, a preliminary analysis of NASA's Stardust mission reveals.

The surprising finding suggests that some material in the outer solar system was transported there from the blisteringly hot region near the Sun – or perhaps from another star entirely. The results were presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston on Monday.

The discovery comes just two months after a capsule containing dust from the Comet Wild 2 parachuted back to Earth. After studying about two dozen of the million or so dust grains captured from the comet, scientists found minerals – such as olivine, pyroxene and spinel – that form at "red-hot" or "white-hot" temperatures in excess of 1000°C.

"Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice," says principal investigator Don Brownlee of the University of Washington in Seattle, US. "In the coldest part of the solar system, we have found samples that formed at high temperature."

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientistSpace.com.

Hidden Garden of Eden wilts as Earth warms

A paradise world of undiscovered species and tropical glaciers in the mountains of New Guinea is disappearing faster than it can be explored. So says a climate scientist who has discovered that global warming there is happening 20 times faster than previously thought.

The highlands of the giant Asian island are among the most isolated places on the planet. They are rarely visited by local tribes and are virtually invisible to satellites because they are constantly shrouded in cloud.

Last week, researchers from the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, in west London, announced the discovery of an entirely new genus of palm trees in the Wondiwoi mountains in the west of the island, which is part of Indonesia. And in February, the US group Conservation International unveiled a host of new species of butterflies, frogs, birds, plants and a tree kangaroo (pictured) found in the mist-shrouded Foja mountains.

All of this might be threatened, says Michael Prentice of Plymouth State University, New Hampshire. On recent visits to the island he uncovered a mass of previously unpublished meteorological data among the records of mission stations, coffee plantations and the mining companies that have recently moved into the highlands. "We have seven or eight good sets covering the period after the early 1970s. They show a real step change, with warming of 0.3 °C every decade," he says. This is five times the previous estimated warming for the region, and among the fastest in the world.

[Comment: Sad. ~ Ed.]

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientist.com.
Previous Sciotecha coverage of New Guinean "Eden".

Liquid water found on Saturn's moon Enceladus

One of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, is spewing out a giant plume of water vapor that is probably feeding one of the planet's rings, scientists said on Thursday.

The findings, published in the journal Science, suggest that tiny Enceladus could have a liquid ocean under its icy surface which in theory could sustain primitive life, similar to Jupiter's moon Europa. The plume was spotted by Cassini, a joint U.S.-European spacecraft that is visiting Saturn.

"We realize that this is a radical conclusion -- that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

"However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms."

Scientists have long known that many of Saturn's moons have water. They took an especially close look at Enceladus because it seemed to have a smooth surface -- suggesting recent geological activity that, in turn, could mean liquid water.

Liquid water is a key requirement for life. Several moons have been found to have evidence of liquid water and the chemical elements needed to make life, including Europa. But scientists are far more intrigued by the plume itself, a gigantic geyser of water vapor and tiny ice particles.

"It's basically this giant plume of gas coming out of the south pole of Enceladus," Candy Hansen of NASA'S Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California said in a telephone interview.

"The plume is half the size of the moon. It's huge," said Hansen, a planetary scientist. "Water is being spewed out of this moon. It solves some real mysteries that we have been struggling with over the years."

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ Reuters.com, Nature.com and UniverseToday.com.

Genome's knowledge "avalanche"

Dr Francis Collins, the scientist leading the Human Genome Project, says he expects important new gene sequences governing aspects of personality, such as intelligence and behaviour, to be known very shortly.

While the project to crack our DNA code has been targeted at understanding and eradicating disease, Dr Collins believes the project will provide significant insights into a broad range of heritable aspects.

"We haven't discovered most of those yet, but frankly, we should be prepared for an avalanche of that kind of information coming in the next two or three years," he told the BBC World Service's The Interview programme.

"On top of the Human Genome Project, which laid out the letters of the code in a 'reference DNA sequence' way, we now have a very good encyclopaedia of the variable parts.

"Researchers are using those in very powerful ways, to track down the specific genes involved in very complicated things - including intelligence," said the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ BBC Science News.

Elaborate cave paintings stun scientists

Chilean and French scientists have discovered [..] elaborate pre-Columbian cave paintings by indigenous Alacaluf people on an isolated island in Patagonia.

More than 40 stunning paintings were located inside the so-called "Pacific Cave" on Madre de Dios island, in Chile's far south, expedition head Bernard Tourte of France said.

The Alacaluf, a nomadic and seafaring people indigenous to the area, were not previously known to have produced such art.

"For years, people have insisted that this group did not engage in artistic expression, so now we are seeing that they were more advanced than had been believed," anthropologist Marcelo Aguilera said.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ iol.co.za.

World's oldest ship timbers found in Egyptian desert

The oldest remains of seafaring ships in the world have been found in caves at the edge of the Egyptian desert along with cargo boxes that suggest ancient Egyptians sailed nearly 1,000 miles on rough waters to get treasures from a place they called God's Land, or Punt.

Florida State University anthropology professor Cheryl Ward has determined that wooden planks found in the manmade caves are about 4,000 years old - making them the world's most ancient ship timbers. Shipworms that had tunneled into the planks indicated the ships had weathered a long voyage of a few months, likely to the fabled southern Red Sea trading center of Punt, a place referenced in hieroglyphics on empty cargo boxes found in the caves, Ward said.

"The archaeological site is like a mothballed military base, and the artifacts there tell a story of some of the best organized administrators the world has ever seen," she said. "It's a site that has kept its secrets for 40 centuries."

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ EurekAlert.

Tools 'may be 250,000 years old'

Stone tools found at one of the South's most important early prehistoric sites could date back 250,000 years, archaeologists claim.

The historic finds were uncovered at a former gravel quarry on the Isle of Wight during digs last summer.

Flint axes found near Great Pan Farm, Newport, are thought to be of the sort used by Neanderthal man. Elephant teeth from the same period were also found.

Specialists are now to carry out further investigations of the site.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ BBC Science News.

Early Andean maize unearthed

Ancient finding suggests Peruvians could have been making tortillas 4,000 years ago.

Archaeologists have found the oldest evidence so far of agriculture in the Andes. The discovery shows that ancient Peruvians were growing and eating maize some 4,000 years ago - more than a millennium earlier than previous records had suggested.

Maize was originally cultivated in Mexico, and archaeologists have evidence that the crop was grown as early as 7,000 years ago in Ecuador. But they had previously not known how quickly the practice spread south into the Andes.

The development of agriculture in this area marks a cornerstone in the development of civilization in the Andes: a process that ultimately led to the rise of the Incas, who dominated the region from about 1100 AD until the arrival of European settlers.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ Nature.com.

Jupiter's Next Great Red Spot

Backyard astronomers, grab your telescopes. Jupiter is growing a new red spot.

Christopher Go of the Philippines photographed it on February 27th using an 11-inch telescope and a CCD camera:

The official name of this storm is "Oval BA," but "Red Jr." might be better. It's about half the size of the famous Great Red Spot and almost exactly the same color.

Oval BA first appeared in the year 2000 when three smaller spots collided and merged. Using Hubble and other telescopes, astronomers watched with great interest. A similar merger centuries ago may have created the original Great Red Spot, a storm twice as wide as our planet and at least 300 years old.

At first, Oval BA remained white—the same color as the storms that combined to create it. But in recent months, things began to change:

"The oval was white in November 2005, it slowly turned brown in December 2005, and red a few weeks ago," reports Go. "Now it is the same color as the Great Red Spot!"

"Wow!" says Dr. Glenn Orton, an astronomer at JPL who specializes in studies of storms on Jupiter and other giant planets. "This is convincing. We've been monitoring Jupiter for years to see if Oval BA would turn red - and it finally seems to be happening." (Red Jr? Orton prefers "the not-so-Great Red Spot.")

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ UniverseToday.com.

Cloudy future for ground-based astronomy

Ground-based astronomy may be almost impossible by 2050 as global warming causes a dramatic increase in cloud cover.

Clouds and aircraft condensation trails, or contrails, already hamper astronomy, says Gerry Gilmore, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge. Worries about cloud cover prompted a study, which Gilmore chaired, to look into how global warming and rising air traffic will affect the forthcoming 100-metre-wide Overwhelmingly Large Telescope in Chile. This is one of a planned series of extremely large telescopes designed to observe the skies in unprecedented detail.

Contrails and global warming feed off each other, Gilmore says. "Contrails increase global warming, and global warming helps larger contrails form."

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientistSpace.com.

Wind tunnel tests for space shuttle successor

NASA researchers have begun wind tunnel simulations for the spaceship destined to replace the shuttle – the Crew Exploration Vehicle. The tests are simulating the air flow and temperature changes the vehicle might experience in atmospheric flight.

The wind tunnel tests are using small-scale models of the crew capsule and launch vehicles. Following NASA Administrator Mike Griffin's announcement of the vehicles' basic architecture in September 2005, NASA released a "call for improvements" for the Crew Exploration Vehicle, a 5-metre-long crew capsule that Griffin has dubbed "Apollo on steroids".

The prime contractor bids are due 20 March with amendments due the following month. NASA is expected to select a prime contractor later this fiscal year.

Engineers at Ames Research Center in California, US, are currently testing the models in the 3.4-metre-long Unitary Wind Tunnel. The largest model, about 30 centimetres across, is flown within the test bed, allowing researchers to study different angles and speeds of atmospheric re-entry to better understand the vehicle's performance. Ames invited reporters to view the three models in action on Tuesday.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientistSpace.com.

Why we differ from our primate cousins

The differences between humans and chimpanzees, which are genetically quite similar, may be down to the differences in the activity of individual genes in each species.

That was the theory, but until now little has been known about how gene activity differs in different primates. To find out, Yoav Gilad, a human geneticist now at the University of Chicago, US, and his colleagues prepared a "gene chip" (a large array of genes) containing the same 1056 genes from humans, chimps, orang-utans and rhesus macaques. The researchers used the chip to measure the activity level of each of those genes in the four species. Any given pair of species differed in activity levels for 12% to 19% of the 907 genes for which they had good data for all four species.

In particular, genes coding for transcription factors (proteins that regulate the activity of other genes) tended to be especially active in the human lineage. Gilad speculates that this may underlie the dramatic changes in body form and behaviour of humans compared to the other primates.

The analysis also revealed many genes whose activity level has stayed constant over the 70 million years since the common ancestor of the four species, presumably because these are essential genes in which any deviations would be detrimental to the organisms. Such genes are good places to look for disease-causing mutations, the researchers suggest.

Sourced from NewScientist.com.

Many human genes evolved recently

Human genes involved in metabolism, skin pigmentation, brain function and reproduction have evolved in response to recent environmental changes, according to a new study of natural selection in the human genome.

Researchers at the University of Chicago, US, developed a statistical test to find genomic regions that evolution has favoured over the last 15,000 years or so – when modern humans dealt with the end of the last ice age, the beginning of agriculture, and increased population densities.

Many of the 700 genes the researchers identified – especially those involved in smelling, fertility, and reproduction – are also suspected of having undergone natural selection during the divergence of humans and chimpanzees millions of years ago.

But some of the newly identified genes fall into categories not previously known to be targets of selection in the human lineage, such as those involved in metabolism of carbohydrates and fatty acids.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientist.com.

Build the space station now, use it later

The five international partners building the space station have laid out a new schedule to complete the outpost before 2010, when NASA must retire the space shuttle fleet

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin made it clear during a press conference on Thursday that his goal is to make use of 16 remaining shuttle flights to ensure the half-built station is finished, so fulfilling NASA's international obligations.

By focusing solely on assembly – rather than on using the station for research at the same time – he said the team can have high confidence that it will complete the station using the shuttles and a complement of international vehicles.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientistSpace.com.

Chimpanzees show hints of higher human traits

Our closest relative the chimpanzee is capable of sophisticated cooperative behaviour and even rudimentary altruism, two new studies reveal. The discovery suggests that some of the underpinnings of human sociality may have been present millions of years ago.

"At least some of [those behaviours] are already present in rudimentary forms in chimps – and maybe in the common ancestor of chimps and humans," says Alicia Melis of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "Humans are biologically prepared to develop these kinds of skills."

To study the cooperative ability of chimps, Melis and colleagues put individual chimps at a sanctuary in Uganda in a test cage with a heavy tray of food in plain sight but out of reach through the bars of the cage. A rope threaded through eyelets on the left and right sides of the tray allowed the animal to pull the food within reach – but only by pulling on both ends of the rope simultaneously. Otherwise, the rope merely snaked through the eyelets, leaving the tray in place.

When they could retrieve the food themselves, the eight juvenile chimps tested almost always did so and ignored a second chimp locked in an adjoining cage. But when the tray was widened – and the two ends of the rope became too far apart for a single chimp to grab both ends simultaneously – all the animals quickly learned to unbar the door and let the second chimp in to help.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientist.com.

Were ancient Minoans centuries ahead of their time?

A geometrical figure commonly attributed to Archimedes in 300 BC has been identified in Minoan wall paintings dated to over 1,000 years earlier.

The mathematical features of the paintings suggest that the Minoans of the Late Bronze Age, around 1650 BC, had a much more advanced working knowledge of geometry than has previously been recognized, says computer scientist Constantin Papaodysseus of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and his colleagues.

The paintings appear in a building that is still being excavated and restored in the ancient Minoan town of Akrotiri on the island of Thera. A catastrophic eruption of the volcano on Thera, now known as Santorini, around 1650 BC, is thought to have dealt a fatal blow to the Minoan culture. The blast covered Akrotiri, on the island's southern coast, in a thick layer of ash that preserved many buildings and artefacts.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ Nature.com.

Tambora 'Pompeii of the East' is uncovered

The eruption of Mount Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa in 1815, the largest volcanic eruption in human history, killed 117,000 people and extinguished the tiny kingdom of Tambora.

After 20 years of research, a scientist from the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography has located the first remnants of a Tamboran village under 10 feet of ash and has unearthed the first clues about its culture.

In a six-week archaeological dig in the summer of 2004, URI Professor Haraldur Sigurdsson and colleagues from the University of North Carolina and the Indonesian Directorate of Volcanology excavated a Tamboran home where they found the remains of two adults as well as bronze bowls, ceramic pots, iron tools and other artifacts. The design and decoration of the artifacts suggest that the Tamboran culture was linked to Vietnam and Cambodia, and its language was related to that of the Mon-Khmer group of languages that are now scattered across Southeast Asia.

“There’s potential that Tambora could be the Pompeii of the East, and it could be of great cultural interest,” said Sigurdsson, who believes the village includes a large wooden palace that he hopes to find on a future expedition. “All the people, their houses and culture are still encapsulated there as they were in 1815. It’s important that we keep that capsule intact and open it very carefully.” (Pompeii was similarly wiped out by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and a treasure trove of artifacts from the Roman culture were discovered encapsulated in the ash.)

During the eruption, Mount Tambora ejected up to 100 cubic kilometers of magma and pulverized rock, and it spewed ash and 400 million tons of sulfurous gases 44 kilometers into the atmosphere. The gases that lingered in the atmosphere caused a year of global cooling in 1816 that is now known as “the year without a summer” and which caused disease epidemics and worldwide food shortages due to crop failures. The growing season in New England declined by 100 days that year, which led to the start of a movement by farmers to abandon farming in the region and move west.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewsWise.com.

Mars probe poised for 'hair-raising' orbit entry

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is preparing for a "hair-raising" entry into orbit around the Red Planet on 10 March, mission managers say. If successful, the spacecraft will spend seven months spiralling towards the planet until it skims just 300 kilometres from its surface – where it will study the planet's geology and climate in unprecedented detail.

The spacecraft has travelled 459 million kilometres (285 million miles) – 95% of the way to Mars – since its launch from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, US, in August 2005. It has already fired its thrusters twice to correct its course towards Mars. Those firings were so successful that mission managers cancelled two further trajectory tweaks that had been scheduled.

"We're right on the money now, heading towards our encounter at Mars on the 10th," James Graf, the mission's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US, said at a press briefing on Friday.

But that encounter is very risky, he said: "We're starting to enter into the realm where we've lost two spacecraft in 15 years." NASA's Mars Observer spacecraft fell silent in 1993 when it approached the planet – probably because of a leak caused when its propulsion system was pressurised.

And the Mars Climate Orbiter is thought to have broken up in the planet's atmosphere in 1999 due to the accidental use of both metric and Imperial units by collaborating teams, which scuppered a critical manoeuvre.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientistSpace.com.

Memory aided by meaning

Ever struggled to recall something you knew you ought to remember? Part of the problem might be that your brain just wasn't ready to store the memory in the first place.

Neuroscientists have discovered that how successfully you form memories depends on your frame of mind not just during and after the event in question, but also before it.

"People didn't realize that what the brain does before something happens influences the memory of that event," says Leun Otten of University College London, UK, who led the research. "They looked just at the response."

But it turns out that if your brain is 'primed' to receive information, you will have less trouble recalling it later.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ Nature.com.

Chinese fossil gives clearer view of Pleistocene humans

In 1984 researchers working at a site called Jinniushan, near the town of Yinkou in northeastern China, found the fossilized remains of a woman who lived roughly 260,000 years ago.

Though the climate may have been milder then, she still lived near the edge of human existence in a time before fire. Now a fresh analysis of the specimen confirms that human brains were growing larger during this era and indicates that she was adapted to the cold.

The Jinniushan fossil is "the first thing that we have that has a body size and a brain size estimate from one individual," notes anthropologist Karen Rosenberg of the University of Delaware, whose team conducted the new study. "Other estimates are made from bones that come from different specimens: body size based on a bunch of long bones and brain size from a bunch of skulls. That wouldn't be such a bad thing if we had big samples, but these were tiny samples."

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ SciAm.com.

Jurassic 'Beaver' find stuns scientists

The discovery of a new, remarkably preserved fossil of a beaver-like mammal that lived 164 million years ago is shaking palaeontologists’ understanding of early mammals.

Looking as if it was put together from pieces of platypus, river otter, and beaver, the creature was nearly half a metre long and weighed about half a kilogram. This makes it the largest mammal ever found in the Jurassic Period, from 200 million to 145 million years ago.

The fossil of the semi-aquatic mammal Castorocauda lutrasimilis was discovered in the middle Jurassic Jiulongshan formation in Inner Mongolia, China, by Qiang Ji at Nanjing University, and colleagues. It boasts the oldest fossil fur ever found.

Palaeontologists had long thought the mammals living under the feet of the dinosaurs were tiny shrew-like animals. But recent discoveries have challenged this notion.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ NewScientist.com and Nature.com.

Neanderthals disappeared faster than we thought

The ancestors of modern man moved into and across Europe, ousting the Neanderthals, faster than previously thought, a new analysis of radiocarbon data shows.

Rather than taking some 7,000 years to colonize Europe from Africa, the reinterpreted data shows the process may only have taken 5,000 years, scientist Paul Mellars from Cambridge University said in the science journal Nature on Wednesday. "The same chronological pattern points to a substantially shorter period of chronological and demographic overlap between the earliest ... modern humans and the last survivors of the preceding Neanderthal populations," he wrote.

The reassessment is based on advances in eliminating modern carbon contamination from ancient bone fragments and recalibration of fluctuations in the pattern of the earth's original carbon 14 content. Populations of anatomically and behaviorally modern humans first appeared in the near eastern region some 45,000 years ago and slowly expanded into southeastern Europe.

Previously it was thought that this spread took place between 43,000 and 36,000 years ago, but the re-evaluated data suggests that it actually happened between 46,000 and 41,000 years ago -- starting earlier and moving faster. "Evidently the native Neanderthal populations of Europe succumbed much more rapidly to competition from the expanding biologically and behaviorally modern populations than previous estimates have generally assumed," Mellars wrote.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ Reuters.com and Nature.com.

We learn best on an empty stomach

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found evidence that a hormone produced in the stomach directly stimulates the higher brain functions of spatial learning and memory development, and further suggests that we may learn best on an empty stomach.

Published in the February 19 online issue of Nature Neuroscience by investigators at Yale and other institutes, the study showed that the hormone ghrelin, produced in the stomach and previously associated with growth hormone release and appetite, has a direct, rapid and powerful influence on the hippocampus, a higher brain region critical for learning and memory.

The team, led by Tamas L. Horvath, chair and associate professor of the Section of Comparative Medicine at Yale School of Medicine, and associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences, and Neurobiology, first observed that peripheral ghrelin can enter the hippocampus and bind to local neurons promoting alterations in connections between nerve cells in mice and rats. Further study of behavior in the animals showed that these changes in brain circuitry are linked to enhanced learning and memory performance.

Because ghrelin is highest in the circulation during the day and when the stomach is empty, these results also indicate that learning may be most effective before meal-time.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ ScienceDaily.com.

Great apes found to be rich in culture

The evidence is mounting that great apes are a cultured lot, researchers heard at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in St. Louis this week.

It is well established that apes are clever: gorillas lift electric wires with sticks to slip underneath; orang-utans can crack nuts open with rocks; and chimpanzees have been spotted elegantly sipping water from a sponge of crumpled leaves.

But these tool-using apes also show signs of cultural traditions that vary from group to group, just as some customs are passed down from one generation to another in human societies. According to a trio of researchers at the AAAS, recent work has underscored the rich cultures of our nearest relatives.

In unpublished work, Tara Stoinski of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Atlanta surveyed zoos about their gorillas and turned up more than 40 cultural behaviours, such as hand clapping as an invitation to play, that varied from group to group. This hints that traditions are passed between apes. Even separate groups within the same zoo could vary, Stoinski found.

Only part of the text from this article have been posted -- read more @ Nature.com.