The Zen of Technology & Scientific Discovery! (& Robots)

[Jundo]

Every once in awhile there is a science report so elegant that it feels truly spiritual. This podcast episode on the thymus is highly recommended to all, on the miracle of what we are. Perhaps for doctors, this is just nothing new ... but to hear it spoken in this way, truly breathtaking.

In this case, it shows that the "self/not self" divide is vital to our survival ...

My Thymus, Myself

[Radiolab] Today, we go to a spot that may be one of the most philosophical places in the universe: the thymus, an organ that knows what is you, and what is not you. Its mood may be existential, but its role is practical — the thymus is the biological training ground where the body learns to protect itself from outside invaders (think: bacteria, coronaviruses). But this training is not the humdrum bit of science you might expect. It’s a magical shadowland with dire consequences.

Then, we’ll leave the thymus to visit a team of doctors who are using this organ that protects you as a way to protect someone… else. Their work could change everything.
https://radiolab.org/episodes/my-thymus-myself

... and yet, Buddhists leap beyond the self/other divide!

Also, this ...

Scientists have estimated how many ants there are on Earth. Clue: It's a lot

Ants are tiny in size but not in number. There are about 20 quadrillion ants on the Earth at any given time, a new study has estimated. That's 20,000 trillion individuals.

The estimate is two to 20 times higher than previous ones, according to the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/20/w...scn/index.html

Yet, no matter how many ants there are, they are each and all you anting ... and you are them youing, and they are each other you them too ...

... as much as, inwardly, every t-cell and the thymus of your body is you ... and you are the thymus youing ...

... and you are dinosaur fossils too dinosaur fossiling ...

Scientists think they’ve found a rare ‘dinosaur mummy’ in Canada

... A so-called "dinosaur mummy" may be contained within a rocky hill in Canada, according to scientists.

In a statement issued earlier this month by the University of Reading, this rare type of fossil refers to finds where the entire skeleton of the dinosaur may be preserved.A so-called "dinosaur mummy" may be contained within a rocky hill in Canada, according to scientists. ... According to scientists, the exposed parts of the fossil, which include the animal’s tail and right hind foot, indicate it was likely a hadrosaur – a large, duck-billed, herbivorous dinosaur. ... What makes this find even more unique is that exposed parts of the fossil appear to be covered in fossilized skin, according to Caleb Brown, a Ph.D. at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, which will take possession of the find once it is excavated.

"This suggests that there may be even more preserved skin within the rock, which can give us further insight into what the hadrosaur looked like," Brown said.

https://news.yahoo.com/scientists-th...204959750.html

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Not this "water world" ...

Surprise Finding: “Water Worlds” May Be More Common Than We Thought

New analysis finds evidence for many exoplanets made of water and rock around small stars.

Water is the one thing all life on Earth requires. Additionally, the cycle of rain to river to ocean to rain is an essential part of what maintains our planet’s stable and hospitable climate conditions. Planets with water are always at the top of the list when scientists discuss where to search for signs of life throughout the galaxy.

Many more planets may have large amounts of water than previously thought—as much as half water and half rock, according to a new study. The catch? All that water is likely embedded in the rock, rather than flowing as oceans, lakes, or rivers on the surface.

Many more planets may have large amounts of water than previously thought, according to new research. However, much of that water is likely embedded in rock, rather than in surface oceans as depicted in this illustration.

New analysis finds evidence for many exoplanets made of water and rock around small stars.
Water is the one thing all life on Earth requires. Additionally, the cycle of rain to river to ocean to rain is an essential part of what maintains our planet’s stable and hospitable climate conditions. Planets with water are always at the top of the list when scientists discuss where to search for signs of life throughout the galaxy.

Many more planets may have large amounts of water than previously thought—as much as half water and half rock, according to a new study. The catch? All that water is likely embedded in the rock, rather than flowing as oceans, lakes, or rivers on the surface.

“It was a surprise to see evidence for so many water worlds orbiting the most common type of star in the galaxy,” said Rafael Luque. He is first author on the new paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. “It has enormous consequences for the search for habitable planets.”

Because of improved telescope instruments, scientists are finding signs of more and more exoplanets—planets in distant solar systems. With a larger sample size, scientists are better able to identify demographic patterns. This is similar to how looking at the population of an entire town can reveal trends that are hard to see at an individual level.

https://scitechdaily.com/surprise-finding-water-worlds-may-be-more-common-than-we-thought/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Meian]

Just one small tweak? ...



... and did we stand up for ourselves long before we thought? ...



Now, back to the stars, where this all began ...



Gassho, J

stlah

[emoji120][emoji120][emoji120]

Gassho2
stlh

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

[Jundo]

Just one small tweak? ...

What may have given modern humans an edge over Neanderthals, according to new research

From studying fossilized skulls, scientists know that the size of a Neanderthal's brain was the same as, if not slightly bigger than, that of a modern human. However, researchers have known little about Neanderthal brain development because soft tissue doesn't preserve well in the fossil record.

Now, an intriguing study released September 8 has revealed a potential difference that may have given modern humans, or Homo sapiens, a cognitive advantage over the Neanderthals, the Stone Age hominins who lived in Europe and parts of Asia before going extinct about 40,000 years ago. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, said they have identified a genetic mutation that triggered the faster creation of neurons in the Homo sapiens brain. The Neanderthal variant of the gene in question, known as TKTL1, differs from the modern human variant by one amino acid. "We've identified a gene that contributes to making us human," said study author Wieland Huttner, professor and director emeritus at the institute.

... [but not all agree] ...

https://us.cnn.com/2022/09/13/world/neanderthal-vs-human-brain-scn/index.html

... and did we stand up for ourselves long before we thought? ...

A new study reveals that Sahelanthropus tchadensis, the oldest representative species of humanity, was bipedal.

It is believed that the development of bipedalism was a turning point in human evolution. However, there is disagreement over its modalities and age, notably due to the fact there are no fossilized remains. Researchers from the University of Poitiers, the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and its Chadian partners analyzed three limb bones from Sahelanthropus tchadensis, the earliest known representative of the human genus. The study, which was recently published in the journal Nature, supports the hypothesis that bipedalism was developed extremely early in human history, at a time still associated with the ability to move on four limbs in trees. ... Sahelanthropus tchadensis is considered the earliest representative species of humans, dating back 7 million years. Its description goes back to 2001 when the Franco-Chadian Paleoanthropological Mission (MPFT) uncovered the bones of three people at Toros-Menalla in the Djurab Desert (Chad), including a particularly well-preserved cranium. This cranium, particularly the orientation and anterior location of the occipital foramen where the spinal column is inserted, reveals a form of locomotion on two legs, implying that it was capable of bipedalism.

https://scitechdaily.com/7-million-y...nity-revealed/

Now, back to the stars, where this all began ...

Astronomers “Blown Away” by First Breathtaking Webb Space Telescope Images of Orion Nebula

James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) has again demonstrated its incredible power by capturing the most detailed and sharpest images ever taken of the inner region of the Orion Nebula. This stellar nursery is situated in the constellation Orion and is located about 1,350 light-years away from Earth. ... “These new observations allow us to better understand how massive stars transform the gas and dust cloud in which they are born,” said Peeters. She is a Western astronomy professor and faculty member at the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration.

Planet forming disks of gas and dust around a young star. These disks are being dissipated or “photo-evaporated” due to the strong radiation field of the nearby stars of the Trapezium creating a cocoon of dust and gas around them. Almost 180 of these externally illuminated photoevaporating disks around young stars (aka Proplyds) have been discovered in the Orion nebula, and HST-10 (the one in the picture) is one of the largest known. The orbit of Neptune is shown for comparison.

Filaments: The entire image is rich in filaments of different sizes and shapes. The inset here shows thin, meandering filaments that are especially rich in hydrocarbon molecules and molecular hydrogen.

θ2 Orionis A: The brightest star in this image is θ2 Orionis A, a star that is just bright enough to be seen with the naked eye from a dark location on Earth. Stellar light that is reflecting off dust grains causes the red glow in its immediate surroundings.

Young star inside globule: When dense clouds of gas and dust become gravitationally unstable, they collapse into stellar embryos that gradually grow more massive until they can start nuclear fusion in their core – they start to shine. This young star is still embedded in its natal cloud.

https://scitechdaily.com/astronomers...-orion-nebula/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Our great-great-great grandma ...

A shrew-like creature that lived 225 million years ago is the oldest mammal ever identified

he world's oldest mammal has been identified using fossil dental records -- predating the previously confirmed earliest mammal by about 20 million years -- in a new discovery hailed as "very significant" by researchers.

Brasilodon quadrangularis was a small shrew-like creature, around 20 centimeters (8 inches) long, that walked the earth 225 million years ago at the same time as some of the oldest dinosaurs and sheds light on the evolution of modern mammals, according to a team of Brazilian and British scientists. ... Scientists relied on clues provided by fossils of hard tissues such as bones and teeth. This is because mammalian glands, which produce milk, have not been preserved in any fossils found to date.

Until now, the Morganucodon had been considered the first mammal, with isolated teeth showing that it dated back around 205 million years. The Morganucodon had a small gerbil-like body and a long face similar to those of shrews or civets.

The dental records in the study published Tuesday in the Journal of Anatomy date Brasilodon quadrangularis to 225 million years ago -- 25 million years after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event -- the third and biggest mass extinction, when more than 90% of species in the ocean disappeared and 70% of land animals died out.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/06/world/earliest-mammal-teeth-scn-scli-intl/index.html

A kind of genetic Karma ...

Rewriting Our Understanding of Epigenetics: Scientists Reveal We Inherit More Than Previously Thought

A fundamental discovery concerning a driver of healthy development in embryos might rewrite our understanding of what we can inherit from our parents and how their life experiences shape us. The new study reveals that epigenetic information, which sits on top of DNA and is typically reset between generations, is more commonly passed down from mother to child than previously thought.

The research, led by researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, greatly expands our knowledge of which genes have epigenetic information passed from mother to offspring and which proteins are critical for controlling this peculiar process.

Epigenetics is a rapidly expanding field of science that studies how our genes are turned on and off to enable one set of genetic instructions to produce hundreds of different cell types in our body. Environmental factors such as our nutrition can impact epigenetic changes, but these changes do not alter DNA and are not generally passed down from parent to child.

Despite the fact that a small subset of “imprinted” genes may pass epigenetic information down the generations, relatively few other genes have up to this point been shown to be influenced by the mother’s epigenetic state. According to recent research, the supply of a certain protein in the mother’s egg may have an impact on the genes that drive the skeletal patterning of children.

Chief investigator Professor Marnie Blewitt said the findings initially left the team surprised.

“It took us a while to process because our discovery was unexpected,” Professor Blewitt, Joint Head of the Epigenetics and Development Division at WEHI, said. “Knowing that epigenetic information from the mother can have effects with life-long consequences for body patterning is exciting, as it suggests this is happening far more than we ever thought. It could open a Pandora’s box as to what other epigenetic information is being inherited.”

https://scitechdaily.com/rewriting-o...ously-thought/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

What makes humans human ... but maybe at a cost ...

Yale Scientists Discover Clues to What Makes the Human Brain Different

What distinguishes the human brain from that of all other animals — including even our closest primate relatives? Yale researchers identified species-specific — particularly human-specific — features in an analysis of cell types in the prefrontal cortex of four primate species. They reported their findings on August 25, 2022, in the journal Science.

What they found that makes us human may also make us susceptible to neuropsychiatric diseases.

For the study, the scientists looked specifically at the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This is a brain region that is unique to primates and essential for higher-order cognition. Using a single cell RNA-sequencing technique, the researchers profiled expression levels of genes in hundreds of thousands of cells collected from the dlPFC of adult humans, chimpanzees, macaque, and marmoset monkeys.

... “Today, we view the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as the core component of human identity, but still we don’t know what makes this unique in humans and distinguishes us from other primate species,” said Nenad Sestan. He is the lead senior author of the paper, the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Neuroscience at Yale ... To answer this, the scientists first asked whether there are there any cell types uniquely present in humans or other analyzed non-human primate species. After grouping cells with similar expression profiles they revealed 109 shared primate cell types. They also discovered five that were not common to all species. These included a type of microglia, or brain-specific immune cell, that was present only in humans and a second type shared by only humans and chimpanzees.

The human-specific microglia type exists throughout development and adulthood, the researchers found. This suggests that the cells play a role in the upkeep and maintenance of the brain rather than combatting disease.

“We humans live in a very different environment with a unique lifestyle compared to other primate species; and glia cells, including microglia, are very sensitive to these differences,” Sestan said. “The type of microglia found in the human brain might represent an immune response to the environment.”

Another human-specific surprise was revealed in an analysis of gene expression in the microglia — the presence of the gene FOXP2. This discovery raised great interest among researchers because variants of FOXP2 have been linked to verbal dyspraxia, a condition in which patients have difficulty producing language or speech. Other research has also shown that FOXP2 is associated with other neuropsychiatric diseases, such as autism, schizophrenia, and epilepsy. “FOXP2 has intrigued many scientists for decades, but still we had no idea of what makes it unique in humans versus other primate species,” said Shaojie Ma. He is a postdoctoral associate in Sestan’s lab and co-lead author. We are extremely excited about the FOXP2 findings because they open new directions in the study of language and diseases.”

https://scitechdaily.com/yale-scientists-discover-clues-to-what-makes-the-human-brain-different/

R.E.M. ... one of my favorite bands, very imaginative group

When Our Eyes Move During REM Sleep, We’re Gazing at Things in the Dream World: Multiple Brain Regions Coordinate to Conjure Wholly Imagined Worlds

When our eyes move during REM sleep, we’re looking at things in the dream world our brains have created, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The findings shed light not only on how we dream, but also on how our imaginations work.

REM sleep, which is named for the rapid eye movements associated with it, has been known since the 1950s to be the phase of sleep when dreams occur. But the purpose of the eye movements has remained a matter of much mystery and debate.

“We showed that these eye movements aren’t random. They’re coordinated with what’s happening in the virtual dream world of the mouse,” said Massimo Scanziani, PhD, senior author on the study, which was published in the August 25, 2022, issue of the journal Science.

“This work gives us a glimpse into the ongoing cognitive processes in the sleeping brain and at the same time solves a puzzle that’s triggered the curiosity of scientists for decades,” he said.

In the second half of the 20th century, some experts hypothesized that these REM movements may be following scenes in the dream world. However, there was little way to test this theory, and the experiments that could be done (noting a dreamers’ eye direction and then waking them up to ask where they were looking in the dream) provided contradictory results. Many scientists wrote off REM movements as random actions, perhaps to keep the eyelids lubricated. [But the new study was] able to look at “head direction” cells in the brains of mice, who also experience REM sleep. These cells act something like a compass, and their activity shows scientists which direction the mouse perceives itself as heading.

While monitoring the mouse’s eye movements, the team simultaneously recorded data from these cells about its heading directions. Comparing them, they discovered that the direction of eye movements and of the mouse’s internal compass were precisely aligned during REM sleep, just as they do when the mouse is awake and moving around.

...

Scanziani is interested in the “generative brain,” meaning the ability to make up objects and scenarios.

“One of our strengths as humans is this capacity to combine our real-world experiences with other things that don’t exist at the present moment and may never exist,” he said. “This generative ability of our brain is the basis of our creativity.” Scanziani noted that in a dream, you can combine familiar things with the impossible. He described a recurrent dream he had as a young diver, in which he was able to breathe underwater. Invariably, he woke up to find it wasn’t true. “But in the dream, you believe it’s real because there aren’t sensory inputs to bring you back to reality,” said Scanziani. “It’s a perfectly harmonious fake world.”

Scanziani’s research team discovered that the same parts of the brain — and there are many of them — coordinate during both dreaming and wakefulness, lending credence to the idea that dreams are a way of integrating information gathered throughout the day.

How those brain regions work together to produce this generative ability is the mystery that Scanziani plans to continue trying to unravel.

https://scitechdaily.com/when-our-eyes-move-during-rem-sleep-were-gazing-at-things-in-the-dream-world/

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Oh, come one! It looks like a smudge on my car windshield!

Webb telescope captures its first direct image of an exoplanet

The exoplanet, or planet outside of our solar system, is a gas giant about six to 12 times the mass of Jupiter. The planet, called HIP 65426 b, is about 15 to 20 million years old -- just a baby planet when compared to cEarth, which is 4.5 billion years old. It's located about 385 light-years away from Earth.

The planet can be seen in four different bands of infrared light as taken by Webb's different instruments. Webb sees the universe in infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye -- and makes it the perfect space observatory to reveal details about distant worlds. "This is a transformative moment, not only for Webb but also for astronomy generally," said Sasha Hinkley, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, in a statement.

... The exoplanet is about 100 times farther from its host star than Earth is from the sun, which allowed Webb and its instruments to separate the planet from its star. Some of Webb's instruments are armed with coronagraphs, or masks that can block starlight, enabling the telescope to capture direct images of exoplanets.

... While the Hubble Space Telescope was the first to capture direct images of exoplanets, Webb's infrared exploration of exoplanets is just beginning. The telescope has already shared the first spectrum of an exoplanet by detecting a water signature in its atmosphere and found the first clear evidence of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet's atmosphere.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/09/01/world/...scn/index.html

And in other Webb news ...

Hear the Mesmerizing Sounds of the Universe Through the Webb Space Telescope

A team of experts, including scientists and musicians, has created a new way to explore the images and data of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The first two tracks map the prismatic landscapes of the Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula as well as two views of the Southern Ring Nebula. A third track plays the notes of a transmission spectrum, which graphs the atmospheric characteristics of hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-96 b. All of them allow listeners to pick out key features and experience the data in a new way.
... Listeners can enter the intricate soundscape of the Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula, explore the contrasting tones of two images that depict the Southern Ring Nebula, and identify the individual data points in a transmission spectrum of WASP-96 b, a hot gas giant exoplanet.

https://scitechdaily.com/hear-the-me...ace-telescope/

https://youtu.be/AxC94Ct_dc8


https://youtu.be/HFrVNw6LCLg

Hey, the universe turns out to be a jazz fusion fan! Solar galactice fusion Jazz!


Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

As we prepare to head back to the moon, and on to Mars ... we have always been wanderers ...

Vast paleogenetic study reveals insights on migration patterns, the expansion of farming, and language development from the Caucasus over western Asia and Southern Europe from the early Copper Age until the late middle ages.

In a trio of scientific papers, published simultaneously in the journal Science, researchers report a massive effort of genome-wide sequencing from 727 distinct ancient individuals with which it was possible to test longstanding archaeological, genetic, and linguistic hypotheses. They present a systematic picture of the interlinked histories of peoples across the Southern Arc Region from the origins of agriculture, to late medieval times. ...

In the first paper, the international research team investigated the homeland and the spread of Anatolian and Indo-European languages. ... In the first stage, around 7,000-5,000 years ago, people with ancestry from the Caucasus moved west into Anatolia and north into the steppe. Some of these people may have spoken ancestral forms of Anatolian and Indo-European Languages. All spoken Indo-European languages (e.g., Greek, Armenian, and Sanskrit) can be traced back to Yamnaya steppe herders, with Caucasus hunter-gatherer and Eastern hunter-gatherer ancestry, who initiated a chain of migrations across Eurasia around 5,000 years ago. Their southern expansions into the Balkans and Greece and east across the Caucasus into Armenia left a trace in the DNA of the Bronze Age people of the region.

... The second paper seeks to understand how the world’s earliest Neolithic populations were formed around 12,000 years ago. “The genetic results lend support to a scenario of a web of pan-regional contacts between early farming communities. They also provide new evidence that the Neolithic transition was a complex process that did not occur just in one core region, but across Anatolia and the Near East” says Ron Pinhasi. It provides the first ancient DNA data for Pre-Pottery Neolithic farmers from the Tigris side of northern Mesopotamia—both in eastern Turkey and in northern Iraq—a prime region of the origins of agriculture. It also presents the first ancient DNA from Pre-Pottery farmers from the island of Cyprus, which witnessed the earliest maritime expansion of farmers from the eastern Mediterranean.

... The third paper shows how polities of the ancient Mediterranean world preserved contrasts of ancestry since the Bronze Age but were linked by migration. The results reveal that the ancestry of people who lived around Rome in the Imperial period was almost identical to that of Roman/Byzantine individuals from Anatolia in both their mean and pattern of variation, while Italians prior to the Imperial period had a very different distribution. This indicates that the Roman Empire in both its shorter-lived western part and the longer-lasting eastern part centered on Anatolia had a diverse but similar population plausibly drawn to a substantial extent from Anatolian pre-Imperial sources.

https://scitechdaily.com/the-souther...e-development/

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Life in the laboratory, beyond cloning ...

Scientists Grow “Synthetic” Embryo With Brain and Beating Heart – Without Eggs or Sperm

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have created model embryos from mouse stem cells that form a brain, a beating heart, and the foundations of all the other organs of the body. It represents a new avenue for recreating the first stages of life.

The team of researchers, led by Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, developed the embryo model without eggs or sperm. Instead, they used stem cells – the body’s master cells, which can develop into almost any cell type in the body.

By guiding the three types of stem cells found in early mammalian development to the point where they start interacting, the researchers mimicked natural processes in the lab. The scientists were able to get the stem cells to ‘talk’ to each other by inducing the expression of a particular set of genes and establishing a unique environment for their interactions.

The stem cells self-organized into structures that progressed through the successive developmental stages until they had beating hearts and the foundations of the brain They also had the yolk sac where the embryo develops and gets nutrients from in its first weeks. Unlike other synthetic embryos, the Cambridge-developed models reached the point where the entire brain, including the anterior portion, began to develop. This is a further point in development than has been achieved in any other stem cell-derived model.

... "Our mouse embryo model not only develops a brain, but also a beating heart, all the components that go on to make up the body,” said Zernicka-Goetz, Professor in Mammalian Development and Stem Cell Biology in Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. “It’s just unbelievable that we’ve got this far. This has been the dream of our community for years, and major focus of our work for a decade and finally we’ve done it.”

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-...eggs-or-sperm/

Natural and synthetic embryos side by side show comparable brain and heart formation.

[Onrin]

Pretty cool!

Well seeing as homo sapiens have not yet physically evolved as far as one might think, as evidenced by our spinal and hip structure that has some design issues, maybe by the time our spines adapt we will also have gotten over the temptation to do the monkey dance (reference The Gift of Fear book)

[Jundo]

And in space news ...

Scientists developed a colorful and stunning simulation of what the beginning of a star's life looks like. They say previous models could only simulate a small patch of the cloud where a star forms.

https://youtu.be/Gdd0C9qxexs

... and back to the moon ... and beyond ...

For the first time in 50 years, a spacecraft is preparing to launch on a journey to the moon.

The uncrewed Artemis I mission, including the Space Launch System Rocket and Orion spacecraft, is targeting liftoff on August 29 between 8:33 a.m. ET and 10:33 a.m. ET from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Although there is no human crew aboard the mission, it's the first step of the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon and eventually land them on Mars. ... Orion's journey will last 42 days as it travels to the moon, loops around it and returns to Earth -- traveling a total of 1.3 million miles (2.1 million kilometers). The capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on October 10.

See how far our little ability to walk upright has taken us!

(If only we could get beyond the rest of our inner "chimpanzee!")



Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Walking is a magical power ... a key to being human ...

A 7 million-year-old practice set our ancestors on the course to humanity, new study finds

When you walk out the door to start your day, you might not know that you are taking part in something that defines us as human -- and something that our ancestors have been doing for 7 million years, according to new research.

Researchers looked at a femur and two ulna arm bones of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, one of the earliest known human ancestors, and found signs that they walked on two feet -- also known as bipedalism, according to a new study published Wednesday in Nature. "Our oldest known representatives were practicing bipedalism (on the ground and on the trees)," said study author Franck Guy, a research fellow at Université de Poitiers in France. The remnants of the ancient beings show that bipedalism emerged soon after chimpanzees and human ancestors diverged on their evolutionary tracks, he added.

There is even more to be found in these fossils. Their characteristics show that Sahelanthropus tchadensis also maintained the ability to climb trees proficiently, according to the study.

These ancestors were hominins, or species more closely related to humans than chimpanzees, and they mark an early stage in our evolutionary divergence, said Daniel Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology and paleoanthropologist at Harvard University.

... The cranium showed a downward pointing spot where head and spinal cord meet -- a trait which would make it much harder to walk on all fours, Lieberman said....

... the new study "makes quite unlikely that the common ancestor we share with the chimpanzees was looking like a chimpanzee," Guy said

... When the evolutionary paths of humans and chimpanzees diverged, Earth's climate was changing and rainforests in Africa were breaking up, so our ancestors had to travel farther to get food, he said. The hypothesis is that walking on two legs gave them more energy to travel. ...

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/24/w...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Shout out to Takuji Ohigashi of the Photon Factory, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, here in Tsukuba, Japan, one of the paper's authors:

SAMPLES OF ASTEROID RETURNED TO EARTH REVEAL POSSIBLE SOURCE OF WATER AND BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE

New research has revealed important new clues as to how the inner Solar System, including Earth, acquired its water and organic-rich components – the essential building blocks for all life. ... [A] detailed study of eight particles returned to Earth from asteroid ‘Ryugu’ by the JAXA3 spacecraft Hayabusa2 [revealed that] the material contains a lot of water and organic matter. ... It was published on August 15, 2022, in Nature Astronomy.... Because of this study, experts have been able to conclude that materials in primitive asteroids may have acted as ‘cradles’ for organic molecules. This would have helped to preserve them and so provides a potential mechanism for the coupled delivery of water and organics to the early Earth.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01745-5?fbclid=IwAR1Uzkd10aQfxKfba5rngEKUj56piw7W5KF-sSBzr1v3sMK1NejcBC2OUVg

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Jurassic Park, here we come ...

Scientists plan the resurrection of an animal that's been extinct since 1936

(CNN)Almost 100 years after its extinction, the Tasmanian tiger may live once again. Scientists want to resurrect the striped carnivorous marsupial, officially known as a thylacine, which used to roam the Australian bush.

The ambitious project will harness advances in genetics, ancient DNA retrieval and artificial reproduction to bring back the animal.

"We would strongly advocate that first and foremost we need to protect our biodiversity from further extinctions, but unfortunately we are not seeing a slowing down in species loss," said Andrew Pask, a professor at the University of Melbourne and head of its Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research Lab, who is leading the initiative.
"This technology offers a chance to correct this and could be applied in exceptional circumstances where cornerstone species have been lost," he added.
The project is a collaboration with Colossal Biosciences, founded by tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard Medical School geneticist George Church, who are working on an equally ambitious, if not bolder, $15 million project to bring back the woolly mammoth in an altered form.

About the size of a coyote, the thylacine disappeared about 2,000 years ago virtually everywhere except the Australian island of Tasmania. As the only marsupial apex predator that lived in modern times, it played a key role in its ecosystem, but that also made it unpopular with humans. European settlers on the island in the 1800s blamed thylacines for livestock losses (although, in most cases, feral dogs and human habitat mismanagement were actually the culprits), and they hunted the shy, seminocturnal Tasmanian tigers to the point of extinction. The last thylacine living in captivity, named Benjamin, died from exposure in 1936 at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania. This monumental loss occurred shortly after thylacines had been granted protected status, but it was too late to save the species.
https://us.cnn.com/2022/08/16/world/...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Meian]

I only understand a modicum of astrophysics and cosmology, but I really enjoy this thread! [emoji170]

Gassho2
Stlh

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk