palaeontology – Australian Science

Weekly Science Picks

Markus — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 00:04:28 +0000

I’m loath to begin a weekly roundup on a low note, and I’m truly sorry to have to, but this most certainly needs to be discussed. It’s been a turbulent week this week in the science blogging world. Turbulent and full of raised concerns over the state of things for those in a science communication career. Basically, there have been two sexual harassment scandals in the news – the first concerning Urban Scientist Danielle Lee and her terrible treatment by an editor at biology online, and the second around playwright and author Monica Byrne and some downright shameful behaviour on the part of Bora Zivkovic, blogs editor at Scientific American.

Both women, after being given rather distasteful treatment, decided to go public with the matter. This has rightfully sparked some quite heated discussions across the online science writing community. The entire matter is summarised quite well by Priya Shetty at the Huffington Post and Laura Helmuth at Slate. I’d recommend reading Dr Isis’ perspective on all of this too. My personal opinion is that the behaviour of “Ofek” at biology online (who has been fired since the incident in question) and of Zivkovic (who has since resigned from the board of directors and Science Online) is an utter disgrace and humiliation to all of us involved in the science communication community. While it’s reassuring to know that neither of these recent events has occurred without repercussions, it raises the huge concern of precisely how often events like these occur and simply go unreported.

I feel it’s of prime importance to all of us to show our support to Lee and Byrne, not only for their sake but for the sake of all others out there who’ve been similarly marginalised. They need to know that they have our support and that we will listen if they choose to make the remarkably difficult decision to speak out about experiences like these. That is, after all, what a community is all about. Personally, I’d like all of online scicomms to be an open and welcoming forum for discussion of all kinds. I’m not sure if I feel it can be, knowing that things like this are occurring beneath the surface, but I truly hope that such nasty incidents can someday be a thing of the past.

Now… Scandals aside, there have also been some rather remarkable happenings this week in science.

Perhaps most remarkable is the news that amputees may be able to have their sense of touch restored with technology. Much like Luke Skywalker in The Return of the Jedi, people left disabled due to amputations may soon be able to not only control prosthetic limbs directly with their brains, but also feel them. Needless to say, the implications of this are just wonderful!

Prosthetic wired to the brain could help amputees feel touch

In my lab at the University of Chicago, we’re working to better understand how the sensory nervous system captures information about the surface, shape and texture of objects and conveys it to the brain. Our latest research creates a blueprint for building touch-sensitive prosthetic limbs that one day could convey real-time sensory information to amputees and tetraplegics via a direct interface with the brain.

Recognising threats is a vital skill in the natural world, and has been a mainstay of evolution in animals since the Precambrian era. And some creatures have evidently gone to great lengths. Latest research shows that the rainbowfish, a fairly humble seeming species, can smell predators when they’re still embryos, a mere 4 days after fertilisation!

The nose knows: Rainbowfish embryos ‘sniff out’ predators

Jennifer Kelley, a scientist with the University of Western Australia, explains that predator recognition is required at such an early age because responding to predator cues is absolutely crucial for early survival. For example, detection of “alarm cues” suggests that other fish in the vicinity have been attacked by predators.

Seeming like something taken straight out of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, blood has been discovered inside a fossilised mosquito for the first time ever. While most likely not from a dinosaur, it’s fascinating to finally have concrete proof of such an audacious science fiction concept.

First Blood-Filled Mosquito Fossil Makes Jurassic Park Feel More Real

Even if it doesn’t bring us closer to getting an amusement park of death and delight, this is a pretty exciting discovery. We never knew that blood could last so long inside of a mosquito! What other kinds of surprises are hiding underneath Montana?

And finally, as an avid Instagram user myself, I find it rather interesting that a study has found that photographing your dinner can actually make the meal less enjoyable. While this doesn’t look to be a particularly big study, it exposes an interesting little facet of human psychology. And for the record, no, I don’t normally Instagram my food. Though I know a few people who do.

New research shows how ‘Instagramming’ a meal can ruin your appetite

Basically, when we look at photos of say, fish and chips over and over before we eat it, our senses become ‘bored’. The photos ruin your appetite by making you feel like you’ve already experienced eating the fish and chips before… This sensation is measured in levels of satiation, a scientific term for the ‘drop in enjoyment with repeated consumption’. Consumption, in this case can just be viewing a photo of food, not actually eating a food.

And finally, let’s end with something pretty. For some gorgeous botanical images, Botanartist is a brand new blog full of some really rather charming photographs of plants, both close up and extremely close up through a microscope. If you want to enjoy some cool macro photography and scientific explanations of what you’re seeing, you’ll probably find all of this just as marvellous as I do!

I hope everyone has a great week. Until next time, DFTBA and stay curious!

Cite this article:
Hammonds M (2013-10-20 00:04:28). Weekly Science Picks. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/news/weekly-science-picks-51/

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The Oldest Fossils in the World

Markus — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:05:16 +0000

Life has existed on planet Earth for a long time. Precisely how long, however, is a question which many are still searching for an answer to. The most recently discovered piece in that puzzle may put us another step closer to finally answering that. Discovered in Pilbara, Western Australia, are what are quite probably the oldest fossils discovered on Earth so far!

At approximately 3.49 billion years old, these fossils come from a time long before complex organisms like us existed. Before evolution forged living things into the structures we recognise around us today, and before distinctions like “plant” and “animal” had even been drawn, our world was populated by bacteria and other single celled life. In fact, on a cosmological timescale, this wasn’t long after our planet had formed.

Being left by bacteria, these fossils appear as little more than patterns left behind in sandstone, but after careful analysis they’ve been found to very definitely be fossils and not simply mineral formations. Discovered in some of the best preserved sedimentary rocks on Earth, at Strelley Pool in Pilbara, these fossils offer a fascinating glimpse at some of the oldest known life on Earth. Excitingly, as well as the discovery of this life, these is some evidence that it may have had some organisation to it as well.

Found preserved in quartz sand grains, the fossils show several cell-like structures all of a similar size, much like bacterial colonies still found on Earth today. The age of these fossils can also be estimated with some precision, due to the rocks in which they were found. These particular rocks were formed between two volcanic successions, which means that their age can be determined down to a few tens of millions of years!

Interestingly enough, any life this old would have been living without any oxygen – oxygen wasn’t abundant in Earth’s atmosphere until around 2.4 billion years ago. It’s quite likely then, that these bacteria had a metabolism based around sulfur, just like bacteria found in marshes and other oxygen-poor environments in the world today.

The most exciting implications behind this find are those for life on other planets. If life could form so soon on planet Earth, it means that life might well have existed on other planets in the solar system too. Venus before it developed its hellish greenhouse effect and Mars before it lost all of its water, may have been home to similar primitive life. While few are hopeful of finding life on our neighbouring planets today, it still gives hope of discovering fossils as we continue to explore them. For astrobiologists hoping to find life on planets outside our solar system, it means that where life develops, it may occur quite soon after planets form.

Image credits: Top – D. Wacey/UWA, Bottom – Abigail Ailwood

Cite this article:
Hammonds M (2013-01-08 00:05:16). The Oldest Fossils in the World. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/research-2/the-oldest-fossils-in-the-world/

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Weekly Science Picks

Markus — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 00:40:04 +0000

Doesn’t time fly? I don’t know about anyone else, but my week has absolutely flown past. As I take a moment to relax and consider picking a few favourite topics from this week’s news, I realise that perhaps this is because it’s been an exciting week, full of interesting discoveries and unusual events. In fact, I’ve had quite a lot to choose from, but I eventually managed to trim it down to these few articles which particularly caught my eye…

First and foremost, a planet has been discovered in our neighbouring star system, Alpha Centauri. This is something which I find thrilling for various personal reasons. An interesting discussion of the discovery itself and some of its implications are given by Paul Gilster in the blog Centauri Dreams:

There was a sense of exhilaration in the air on Tuesday as the buzz around an Alpha Centauri planet built, and when the embargo was lifted, reports of the find filled the social media as the early articles began to appear online. Just how big a deal is Centauri B b? A skeptic could point out that while finding an Earth-mass planet is significant, it must still be confirmed, and in any case, this is an Earth-mass planet that is nothing like a clement, habitable world.

From a neighbouring star to a neighbouring planet, the Curiosity rover has been finding some very curious shiny objects in the martian soil. Wired Science gives a brief overview of what’s been happening on the red planet:

NASA’s Curiosity rover took three scoops from a small Martian sand dune and found several bright particles in the soil. Scientists think these are unrelated to the odd bright object that Curiosity saw last week, which turned out to be plastic that fell from the probe, and are probably indigenous Martian mineral flecks.

Closer to home, this week saw a world record being broken by Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner, who leapt from a balloon at an altitude of 39 km. A fantastic achievement and a daredevil stunt! However, could more of an effort have been made to add some depth to the stunt and give us all some more background about it? Science historian Amy Shira Teitel at Vintage Space takes a detailed look at the full background and a few tricks which were missed with respect to communicating the science behind such a stunt:

In the 1960s, pilots were pushing the envelope of supersonic flight at high altitudes. But this was a dangerous approach. While it’s easy to fly fast in the thin upper atmosphere it’s harder to control an aircraft. With no air for control surfaces to push against, aircraft tend to tumble, and when aircraft tumble pilots tend to eject. Tests with dummies showed that when falling from high altitudes, human bodies tended to get into a flat spin. It would be like rolling down a hill really fast but without the hill, and the G-forces would certainly be fatal.

Image: AP Photo/Red Bull Stratos, Luke Aikins

And finally, there was a rather informative little discussion piece by Dave Hone in the blog Lost Worlds. In emphasising some of the difficulties faced in palaeontology, he poses a rhetorical question – did Tyrannosaurus Rex have feathers?

Note that there is a rather important scientific distinction here, no facts have changed since the 70s, but we have many more facts. And the best interpretation of all of the available data is now a little different to that which we had before. The fossil record is incomplete and we have to extrapolate from the available evidence and apply parsimony the best way we can.

I hope you’re having a good weekend!

Cite this article:
Hammonds M (2012-10-21 00:40:04). Weekly Science Picks. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 03, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/news/weekly-science-picks-6/

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The post Weekly Science Picks appeared first on Australian Science.

Weekly Science Picks

Markus — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:48:37 +0000

It’s been an interesting week for science news, and I’ve been lucky enough to be asked to give this week’s science picks! This made me spend a little while sipping contemplatively on a cup of vanilla iced coffee and wondering where to even start…

The articles I’ve selected are, of course, slanted towards my own (rather geeky) interests, but all the same I hope you find them all as fascinating as I did!

First up, the news that Star Trek style warp drives may actually be possible, at least in theory, made me exclaim “Oh wow!” out loud. Fortunately, people who spend any time with me are generally used to me talking to myself while staring at a computer screen…

Warp Drive May be More Feasible than Thought

“Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light. But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light.”
– Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar

Artists impression of Mimivirus, the first giant virus to be discovered. Image Credit: InvaderXan/Wikimedia Commons

From the vastness of space to life under the microscope, biologists have been debating for years whether or not viruses qualify as a form of life. The latest evidence is that they may indeed be a life form in their own right, and an old one at that!

Giant Viruses are Ancient Living Organisms

They found that many of the most ancient protein folds in living organisms were present in the giant viruses, which “offers more evidence that viruses are embedded in the fabric of life,” Caetano-Anollés said.

Heritage Daily had a fascinating article about the archaeology of the future, and what precisely our distant descendents may one day think of us and the way we lived…

The Archaeology of the Future

The point is that most of what survives will not be determined by conscious decisions on our part. This may not be for want of trying, as shown by the current popularity of time capsules. The most impressive of these must be the KEO satellite, due to be launched in 2014 and to return to Earth 50,000 years later.

And speaking of what we know of the past, it’s been shown again and again that our primitive relatives, the neanderthals, were likely not the brainless savages they’re often depicted to be. Evidence suggests that neanderthals liked to collect bird feathers as ornaments.

Neanderthals Used Feathers as ‘Personal Ornaments’

“I think this is the tip of the iceberg,” said Prof Finlayson: “It is showing that Neanderthals simply expressed themselves in media other than cave walls. The last bastion of defence in favour of our superiority was cognition.” Neanderthals, he said, may have been “different”, but “their processes of thinking were obviously very similar”.

Curiosity self-portrait. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

As the Curiosity rover settles into its new home in Gale Crater on our neighbouring planet, one small worry is growing in the backs of the minds of certain NASA scientists. Could a blunder on the part of some engineers lead to Curiosity contaminating the surface of Mars with Earth life?

Drill Bits on Rover Could Contaminate Mars

John D. Rummel, a professor of biology at East Carolina University, said, partly in jest: “It will be a sad day for NASA if they do detect ice or water. That’s because the Curiosity project will most likely be told, ‘Gee, that’s nice. Now turn around.’ “

And finally, planet hunters are scouring the sky for exoplanets. Astrobiologists are hoping to soon be able to look into the atmospheres of those planets in search of life signs, in the form of certain molecules created by living organisms. But could they be fooled by those molecules coming from somewhere else?

Meteors Might Add Methane to Exoplanet Atmospheres

One key gas astrobiologists looking for extraterrestrial life would concentrate on would be oxygen […] Another possibility would be methane, a colorless, odorless, flammable organic gas that microbes on Earth produce. Seeing both together in an exoplanet’s atmosphere might be an especially significant sign of life, since they would both ordinarily remove each other from the atmosphere without something like life to constantly replenish them.

Have a good weekend!

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