Here's the most gorgeous space news you need to catch up on. A time lapse sequence at Jupiter's South Pole. Gerald Eichstädt/JunoCam Travel Pictures Quick, what were you doing on February 7, between 10:21 a.m. and 11:01 a.m.
By Ritu Aneja, Professor of Biology, Georgia State University and Padmashree Rida, Research Scientist, Georgia State University. African-American women at a breast cancer awareness walk in New Jersey.
Our fingerprints are all over this week’s record-breaking heat. Temperatures across the United States on Wednesday, February 21, 2018 at 3 pm. NOAA Summer came early to New York City on Wednesday, as temperatures soared to a record 76 degrees Fahrenheit — more than 30 degrees warmer than the average February high.
The world's oldest known cave art was crafted by Neanderthals more than 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe, showing that our extinct cousins were capable of symbolic thinking just like us, international researchers said Thursday.
The report in the journal Science is based on new technology that reveals the most accurate age yet of ancient cave paintings at three different archeological sites in Spain.
"This is an incredibly exciting discovery which suggests Neanderthals were much more sophisticated than is popularly believed," said co-lead author Chris Standish, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton.
"Our results show that the paintings we dated are, by far, the oldest known cave art in the world."
Since they were created some 64,000 years ago -- at least 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe from Africa -- "they must have been painted by Neanderthals," he added.
Using mainly red pigments and sometimes black, groups of animals, hand stencils, engravings, dots, discs and geometric designs are depicted in the cave paintings at La Pasiega in the northeast, Maltravieso in the west and Ardales in the south of Spain.
These symbolic renderings point to an intelligence that was previously thought to be uniquely the realm of modern humans.
"The emergence of symbolic material culture represents a fundamental threshold in the evolution of humankind," said co-lead author Dirk Hoffmann of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
"It is one of the main pillars of what makes us human."
- New technology -
Plenty of evidence already exists to debunk the myth that Neanderthals were knuckle-dragging brutes, and instead were capable of decorative impulses and rituals, like burying their dead.
But cave paintings were one of the last bastions that appeared to differentiate anatomically modern humans from Neanderthals, who died out some 35,000 years ago.
"Recent years have seen studies that show Neanderthals made extensive use of ornamental objects, potentially built structures, and on the whole, appear far more capable of symbolic cognitive processes than has historically been regarded," Adam Van Arsdale, associate professor of anthropology at Wellesley College, told AFP.
"These results suggest that cave painting, also, fails to distinguish Neanderthals and modern humans," said Van Arsdale, who was not involved in the study.
He said the findings reflect "some impressive technical developments in dating techniques in cave contexts, issues that have always posed a challenge for our understanding the timing of key events in human evolution."
He added: "As a new and technically challenging method, it will be good to see these results replicated by others."
- To date but not destroy -
Until now, figuring out the age of cave drawings without destroying them has been difficult.
The new approach is based on obtaining a minimum age for cave art "using Uranium-Thorium (U-Th) dating of carbonate crusts overlying the pigments," explained Hoffman.
The technique of U-Th dating is based on the radioactive decay of uranium isotopes into thorium.
It can determine the age of calcium carbonate formations going back as far as 500,000 years, much further than the widely used radiocarbon method, said the report.
More than 60 tiny samples, less than 10 milligrams each, were analyzed from the three caves.
A second study, also published this week by Hoffmann and colleagues, determined the age of an archaeological deposit located at the Cueva de los Aviones, a sea cave in southeast Spain.
"This cave contained perforated sea shells, red and yellow colorants and shell containers including complex mixes of pigments," said the report.
U-Th dating found the flowstone covering the deposit to about 115,000 years, older than similar finds in south and north Africa associated with Homo sapiens.
The dating shows they came from a time when Neanderthals lived in western Europe.
"According to our new data Neanderthals and modern humans shared symbolic thinking and must have been cognitively indistinguishable," said Joao Zilhao, a researcher from the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Barcelona who was involved in both studies.
Future studies could reveal many more caves where art was likely done by Neanderthals, said study co-author Paul Pettitt of Durham University.
"We have examples in three caves 700 kilometers apart, and evidence that it was a long-lived tradition. It is quite possible that similar cave art in other caves in Western Europe is of Neanderthal origin as well," he said.
"Neanderthals created meaningful symbols in meaningful places. The art is not a one-off accident."
The U.S. Southern Plains and Midwest braced for more flooding on Thursday as snow-melting temperatures and heavy rains swelled waterways after claiming the lives of at least two people, including a child, and forcing hundreds of people to evacuate.
Flood advisories were in effect until at least Sunday for low-lying parts of eastern Texas northeastacross the region into southern Ohio and in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, the National Weather Service said.
The flooding forced hundreds of people to place sandbags around their property and flee their homes in small communities like Niles, Indiana and Marseilles, Illinois that sit on rivers, already beyond their flood stages, that were not expected to crest for days.
"We just got to wait for it to go down," Terry Teeter said to WOOD-TV after installing pumps around his house in Mattawan, Michigan. "It’s going to be a couple of days like this."
A one-year-old girl died when she wandered into standing water in a backyard in Central Michigan and a 52-year-old woman was found dead in her car that was submerged in a ditch in Illinois, local media reported.
Rising waters also forced some 19 people to evacuate their homes in Elkhart, Indiana, a community about 110 miles (175 km) southeast of Chicago, the local newspaper reported.
"This city has not seen flooding like this in the last 45 years," Elkhart Mayor Tim Neese said during a news conference, the Elkhart Truth reported.
More rain was expected to fall on Thursday in the Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas where as much as 8 inches (20 cm) fell on Tuesday and Wednesday, closing roadways and schools.
"We are still expecting heavy rain and flash flooding at least through the end of the week," the National Weather Service said in a Tweet regarding the region.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Rising temperatures are shifting bat migration patterns, with possible consequences for farmers. A bat hanging out. Pixabay First, let’s dispense with the myths. Bats aren’t blind. They won’t fly into your hair.
Fossilized footprints provide new insight on ancient lizard behavior Fossilized lizard footprints dating back to the Cretaceous indicate the little scaly beasts could get up and run on two legs. Illustration by Chuang Zhao 110 million years ago, in the late Cretaceous, lizards schlepped through muddy lagoons in what we now call South Korea.
Formidable sexual promiscuity. That's not the teaser for a pornographic video but a serious health threat that humans face. It's the term microbiologists use to describe bacterial sex, the ancient process that contributes to the very modern scourge of antibiotic resistance, which could account for 10 million deaths a year by 2050.
Science has some interesting news. Thanks to technological advancements, some scientists believe the key to immortality is right around the corner, reports Express. Just ask Dr. Ian Pearson, who says the resources to live forever could be available by 2050.
Ketamine, a drug generally used for anesthesia, but also for recreational purposes, is now in the spotlight for its promising results in fighting depression. As shown in previous research, ketamine improves depression's symptoms in a few hours, unlike the rest of anti-depressants, which may take weeks, even months to work.
Archaeologists exploring the word's biggest flooded cave in Mexico have discovered ancient human remains at least 9,000 years old and the bones of animals who roamed the earth during the last Ice Age.
A group of divers recently connected two underwater caverns in eastern Mexico to reveal what is believed to be the biggest flooded cave on the planet, a discovery that could help shed new light on the ancient Maya civilization.
The Yucatan peninsula is studded with monumental relics of the Maya people, whose cities drew upon an extensive network of sinkholes linked to subterranean waters known as cenotes.
Researchers say they found 248 cenotes at the 347-km (216-mile) cave system known as Sac Actun, near the beach resort of Tulum. Of the 200 archaeological sites they have discovered there, around 140 are Mayan.
Some cenotes acquired particular religious significance to the Maya, whose descendants continue to inhabit the region.
Apart from human remains, they also found bones of giant sloths, ancient elephants and extinct bears from the Pleistocene period, Mexico's Culture Ministry said in a statement.
The cave's discovery has rocked the archaeological world.
"I think it's overwhelming. Without a doubt it's the most important underwater archaeological site in the world," said Guillermo de Anda, researcher at Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute (INAH).
De Anda is also director of the Gran Acuifero Maya (GAM), a project dedicated to the study and preservation of the subterranean waters of the Yucatan peninsula.
According to the INAH, water levels rose 100 meters at the end of the Ice Age, flooding the cavesystem and leading to "ideal conditions for the preservation of the remains of extinct megafauna from the Pleistocene."
The Pleistocene geological epoch, the most recent Ice Age, began 2.6 million years ago and ended around 11,700 years ago.
(Reporting by Anthony Esposito & Sharay Angulo; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
Scientists have found a link between autism and a set of proteins in the blood. This could be detected through a blood test, facilitating an earlier detection of the disorder.
Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is still a poorly understood condition. It affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize, but the mechanism through which this happens is still unclear. Rather, autism is generally defined as a broad set of developmental disorders which cover a wide spectrum of behavioral problems. These problems can vary wildly in intensity and how they manifest themselves, potentially including speech disturbances, repetitive and/or compulsive behavior, hyperactivity, anxiety, and difficulty to adapt to new environments.
Since there is such a wide range of ASD symptoms, it can be extremely difficult to diagnose autism, especially at the early stages of development. Suspicious behavior of children can often be explained by natural causes, and symptoms can sometimes be quite subtle. This is why a direct, objective physical test would be extremely useful.
Researchers working in Bologna, Italy, recruited locally 38 children (29 boys and nine girls) who were diagnosed as with ASD, as well as a control group of 31 healthy children (23 boys and eight girls) between the ages of five and 12. Blood and urine samples were taken from all of them.
The team noted the chemical differences in the samples and then inserted them into an Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm. The AI developed a mathematical equation that distinguishes between ASD and healthy controls. The outcome was a diagnostic test better than any method currently available.
Dr. Naila Rabbani at the University of Warwick and lead author of the study said that the discovery could lead to "earlier diagnosis and intervention."
The false positive rate was very low (positive predictive value was 88%), while the overall accuracy was 88%, she told ZME Science in an email. She was also kind enough to detail exactly how the test works.
"The test is based on an optimum combination of markers of damage to protein in blood plasma. The damage is low level and of two main types: oxidative damage – likely linked to low-level inflammation, and damage caused by the reactive carbonyl metabolite, glyoxal – likely linked to increased lipid peroxidation. Similar damage may be occurring in the brain in autism. We also found some disturbance in the handling of the amino acid arginine which supports previous evidence of a genetic association with autism."
She also added that their discovery can lead to a better understanding of the autistic specter, allowing us to understand what causes it and how it manifests throughout the body.
"We hope the tests will also reveal new causative factors. With further testing we may reveal specific plasma and urinary profiles or "fingerprints" of compounds with damaging modifications. This may help us improve the diagnosis of ASD and point the way to new causes of ASD."
So far, the study only analyzed children from age of 5 – 12 years old - the applicability of the test in younger age groups remains to be assessed in future research. But since the test is objective and doesn't require any psychological evaluation, it could be scaled and implemented in clinics around the world
"The test could be widely implemented and provided by well-equipped clinical centers. Our test is an objective, blood-based clinical chemistry test that does not require psychiatric expertise," Dr. Rabbani told ZME Science.
"With further development, this test could help with the diagnosis, care and treatment of children with autism."
ASD is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Genetic factors have been found to account for 30-35% of cases of ASD and the remaining 65-70% can be explained by a combination environmental factors, multiple mutations, and rare genetic variants.
This study is reminiscent of a previous effort which found that autism can be detected even in babies by monitoring brain activity. The idea is somewhat similar - you find the differences in the brains of ASD sufferers and feed them into an algorithm which then predicts autism incidence. The beauty of this approach is that you don't even need to know exactly what you're detecting, you just find enough differences, and that's enough to successfully predict incidence.
With the advent of new satellite technology, researchers have confirmed the theories behind this impressive phenomenon. When it comes to natural shows, it doesn't get much better than the Northern Lights.
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