neanderthals handier than previously thought

Posted on April 1, 2003 by agnieszka

Do you think of Neanderthals as lumbering, slow, and clumsy? Think again, at least in regard to their hands. According to a report in the March 27 Nature, Neanderthals were as manually dextrous as modern humans. Neanderthals were previously thought unable to form the “precision grip” — where the tips of the thumb and index finger touch — necessary for fine manipulation. Researchers from California State University in San Bernardino created a 3-D computer simulation based on scans of Neanderthal hand bones to investigate their range of motion. Even allowing for a small range of joint movement by modern human standards, the simulation showed that Neanderthals could easily achieve the precision grip. Whatever reason the Neanderthals went extinct some 30,000 years ago, it “cannot be attributed to any physical inability to use or manufacture” the stone tools of that era, say the study’s authors.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 4/01/2003.
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mysterious light show in space

Posted on April 1, 2003 by agnieszka

In January 2002, a star named V838 Monocerotis suddenly became 600,000 times brighter than the sun, briefly becoming the brightest star in the Milky Way. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured the explosion in all its glory, showing the reverberation of light — the “light echo” — spreading into space and reflecting off layers of dust surrounding the star itself. (See the images at http://hubblesite.org/news/2003/10.) V838 Mon’s outburst is extraordinary. Unlike a nova, an exploding star that ejects its outer layers and heats up to hundreds of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, V838 Mon has ballooned enormously in size, and cooled to light-bulb temperature levels. Howard E. Bond of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and his colleagues describe the star’s mysterious eruption in the March 27 Nature. Their assessment says it all: “V383 Mon represents a hitherto unknown type of stellar outburst, for which we have no completely satisfactory physical explanation.”

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 4/01/2003.
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ah, the sweet smell of man sweat

Posted on March 25, 2003 by agnieszka

Male armpit sweat seems to be a mood-altering substance for women, according to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. Not only does it make women more relaxed and happy, but it also can affect the length and timing of their menstrual cycles. The researchers took underarm secretions from male volunteers and applied them to the upper lip of 18 women ages 25 to 45. During their exposure to the compound, the women were asked to rate their mood. The majority of women reported feeling less tense and more relaxed. Further testing revealed a shift in blood levels of luteinizing hormone, a reproductive hormone that surges right before ovulation. The researchers believe that the effects arise from exposure to male pheromones, or chemical signals, produced in the underarm. The results of the study, which will be published in the June issue of Biology of Reproduction, can be found on the journal’s website. The power of male foot sweat to clear a room has yet to be tested.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 3/25/2003.
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cosmic rays catch concealed nukes

Posted on March 25, 2003 by agnieszka

With the fear of terrorists using dirty bombs increasing, screening for smuggled nuclear materials has become more important than ever. Physicists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico have invented a device that uses cosmic rays to detect dense materials such as plutonium and uranium, they report in the March 20 Nature. As cosmic rays pass through Earth’s atmosphere, they generate highly penetrating subatomic particles called muons. The researchers have built a detector that can trace the path of the muons as they pass through dense material. The detector uses a computer to gather the information and generate an image. According to the report, the detector could reveal the outline of a block of uranium concealed inside a truck full of sheep. The researchers say their method is harmless and inexpensive compared to X-rays, and could be suitable for scanning trucks and cars for nuclear materials at border crossings.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 3/25/2003.
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did climate collapse culture?

Posted on March 25, 2003 by agnieszka

Famed for their temples, their astronomy, and their human sacrifices, the Mayan civilization’s sudden collapse has always been mysterious. In the eighth century, the Mayan empire, which lasted more than a thousand years, stretched from Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula to Honduras, and had a population of more than 13 million people. But within 200 years, the great cities and temples were deserted. It’s been speculated that drought wiped out the population, and new research published in the March 14 Science states that climate indeed may have played a role. The team of Swiss and US researchers studied sediment cores drilled from the ocean floor, and used titanium levels as indicators of rainfall. (Titanium levels tend to be higher when there is more rain, which washes the metal from the land into the ocean floor sediments.) The researchers discovered that there was a long period of dry weather in the ninth and 10th centuries, as well as three intense droughts, which seemed to match up with the times proposed for the abandonment of the Mayan cities. The Maya depended heavily on reservoirs, canals, and other systems for catching rainwater, so the droughts may have pushed them over the brink.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 3/25/2003.
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yet another end of the world as we know it

Posted on March 18, 2003 by agnieszka

Most people find it depressing to contemplate the ultimate fate of the universe. Will it recollapse in a Big Crunch, or expand forever, becoming cold and dark? Robert Caldwell of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and his colleagues have come up with an even more horrific theory, where the universe ends in a violent, accelerating expansion that rips everything from galaxies to atomic nuclei apart. The universe was born in a Big Bang billions of years ago and has been expanding ever since, driven by a force known as dark energy. Most scientists think the acceleration will stay constant or get weaker over time. But the “Big Rip” theory supposes that the dark energy fueling the acceleration is growing more powerful, creating an expansion so fast that it literally rips apart all matter. Sixty million years before the very end, dark energy will rip apart the Milky Way. A half-hour before the Big Rip, the Earth would fall apart. Finally, molecules and atoms would break apart and time as we know it would end. But buck up: Even if the Big Rip is true, it’s more than 20 billion years away.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 3/18/2003.
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fossilized footprints found

Posted on March 18, 2003 by agnieszka

Footprints more than 300,000 years old have been found along the side of an inactive volcano in southern Italy. Though footprints more than 3 million years old have been discovered in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge, they are thought to have been made by Australopithecus afarensis, a far-distant, primitive ancestor. The tracks in Italy are the oldest known to have been made by fully bipedal humans, according to Paolo Mietto and his colleagues at the University of Padua in Italy, in the March 13 Nature. The footprints, fossilized in volcanic ash deposited by an ancient eruption, are between 325,000 to 385,000 years old. The makers of the footprints walked upright on two feet, and, based on the size of the prints, less than 8 inches in length, they were just under 5 feet tall. Some of the prints show defined heel, arch, and toe indentations. A few palm prints also have been found, suggesting that the walkers used their hands to steady themselves as they descended the steep side of the then-active volcano.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 3/18/2003.
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the microscopic island of dr. moreau?

Posted on March 11, 2003 by agnieszka

Using genetic engineering, British researchers have converted one species of yeast into another. Stephen Oliver of the University of Manchester and his colleagues reported in the March 6 Nature that swapping chunks of genetic material can create different species. Oliver and his team rearranged the chromosomes of common baker’s yeast, also known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, to be identical to the yeast Saccharomyces mikatae, and then left them to mate. Though closely related, the two species of yeast are normally unable to breed successfully. (In animals, plants, and fungi, the ability to interbreed and produce fertile offspring is part of what defines a species.) After the genetic manipulation, however, the two species were able to interbreed, and almost 30 percent of the offspring were fertile. Traditionally, scientists have studied how species develop by focusing on ecological or geographical influences, but these results show that naturally occurring chromosomal reshuffling could do the trick as well.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 3/11/2003.
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giant gas cloud for gas giant jupiter

Posted on March 11, 2003 by agnieszka

A highly sensitive imaging instrument aboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed a massive, doughnut-shaped cloud of gas around Jupiter. The designers of the instrument — physicists from Johns Hopkins University — reported in the Feb. 27 Nature that the 60,000-ton, millions-of-miles-long ring of gas consists of water vapor. The gas is believed to result from the giant planet’s intense radiation bombardment of its moon Europa. The radiation damages the moon’s icy surface, kicking up ice molecules, and disperses them along the moon’s orbit, leaving the huge ring of gas. The researchers believe the gas acts as a source and a sink for radiation particles, and shows that Europa has considerable influence on Jupiter’s magnetic field. Cassini’s next stop is Saturn, which it will begin orbiting in July of next year.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 3/11/2003.
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black cats genetically lucky

Posted on March 11, 2003 by agnieszka

Black cats are luckier than previously thought — lucky for themselves, anyway. An unusually colored animal would seem to be much more likely to go extinct unless the genes responsible for the color provided some additional benefit to help it survive. Researchers believe that the genetic mutations that lead to a black coat color also may make the cats more resistant to disease, according to a report published in the March 4 Current Biology. A team from the National Cancer Institute and the University of Maryland found that a gene called MC1R, when mutated, makes jaguars black. Humans also have an MC1R gene, which is part of a family of genes that regulates what is allowed in through cell membranes. This suggests to researchers that the mutated gene may have something to do with making black cats — and humans — resistant to bacteria and viruses that can infect cells.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 3/11/2003.
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