Physicians Report Rare Case of a Patient Sweating Blood

Bleeding discharge from the forehead (A) and lower face (B) of a 21-year-old woman.

A bizarre medical mystery has been making the rounds this week on news sites and social media concerning an Italian woman who literally sweats blood. The story behind the story is even more intriguing.

According to a report published this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, a 21-year-old woman in Florence walked into a medical ward bleeding from her face and hands. The blood appeared to be real — and appeared to be hers — but doctors could find no wounds or lesions.

The woman disclosed that she had been regularly sweating blood for years. The bleeding incidents happened spontaneously, both when awake and sleeping, and could last up to five minutes. She never reported the condition, which had taken a toll on her mental health, leading to isolation and depression.

“Our patient had become socially isolated owing to embarrassment over the bleeding and she reported symptoms consistent with major depressive disorder and panic disorder,” wrote doctors Roberto Maglie and Marzia Caproni.

After examining her skin and taking samples of the fluid, the doctors confirmed that the woman was indeed sweating blood through the pores of her skin. The medical team found no evidence of psychosis or factitious disorder — the clinical euphemism for “faking it.”

Histologic analysis from a bleeding area showed normal skin without any relevant histopathologic changes

The doctors from the University of Florence published details on the perplexing case this week, revealing more layers to the mystery.

In a commentary published with the initial case report, medical historian Jacalyn Duffin of Queen's University in Canada suggests that incidents of spontaneous blood sweat actually span the globe and go back thousands of years.

There's even a name for the condition – hematohidrosis – but it's so exceedingly rare that researchers have essentially ignored the phenomenon. No one had previously connected the dots in the medical literature.

Duffin found more than two-dozen cases of the condition from around the world in the past 15 years. In these modern cases, doctors had used modern methods of diagnosis to confirm that the blood was indeed seeping through the skin.

Duffin discovered reports of spontaneous bleeding going all the way back to the writings of Aristotle. She rooted out more than 40 references from the Middle Ages through to the 19th century. While some of these writings are simple descriptions, others are the equivalent of case reports from physicians of each era.

“When I saw the Italian case, I was really skeptical, quite honestly,” Duffin told Seeker. “There are so many similarities in the clinical presentation that I basically talked myself out of skepticism and I now believe that it's possible and plausiable that it happens.”

Duffin, initially recruited to peer-review the Italian report, said she quickly became fascinated by the topic.

“I got a double whammy on that one, because I'm both a hematologist and a medical historian,” she said.

Duffin believes incidents of hematohidrosis may be underreported. Doctors are hesitant to document or publish when they comes across a condition that isn't in the medical literature. The assumption is often that the patient is faking it, or is somehow deluded.

“That raises the question, are doctors ignoring it?” Duffin said.

Read more at Seeker

The Universe Should Have Destroyed Itself at the Big Bang. Why Didn't It?

According to the standard model of particle physics, the Big Bang should have produced matter and antimatter in equal quantities. By that logic, the universe should have annihilated itself from the very beginning. If you’ve watched enough Star Trek, you know that matter and antimatter cannot exist together in the same place because they tend to destroy one another with a tremendous release of energy.

And yet, here we are, with everything around us made almost entirely of matter. What happened to all the antimatter?

The enigma of matter/antimatter asymmetry is one of the biggest mysteries in particle physics, and scientists have been searching for the answer of what tipped the balance where matter won the battle for domination of the universe.

For decades, physicists have been comparing the fundamental properties of normal-matter particles with their antimatter counterparts, looking for some  infinitesimal difference between them besides their obvious difference in electric charge — with no luck.

Physicists study the subtle differences in the behavior of matter and antimatter particles created in high-energy proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Several properties have been measured to the tiniest detail, and so far, all the experiments have not found a difference.

One measurement that had not been made was what is called the “magnetic moment” of the antiproton. The magnetic moment measures how a particle reacts to magnetic force.  Recently, an international team of researchers at CERN used the Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE) to measure the magnetic moment of an antiproton to incredibly high precision. Their record-breaking results have now been published in the journal Nature.

What they found, however, is that the magnetic moments of both protons and antiprotons are of opposite sign, but they are otherwise identical. This has only deepened the mystery.

"All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist," said first author Christian Smorra in a statement "An asymmetry must exist here somewhere but we simply do not understand where the difference is.”

Antiprotons are artificially generated at CERN and researchers store them in a reservoir trap for experiments. BASE uses a cryogenically-cooled trap that captures the antiprotons with electrical and magnetic  fields,  since no physical container can hold antimatter. This team added an additional trap in an attempt to make the most precise measurements ever, to what scientists call a “parts-per-billion level of uncertainty.”

The team wrote in their paper that “the extraordinary difficulty in measuring [the magnetic moment of an antiproton] with high precision is caused by its intrinsic smallness; for example, it is 660 times smaller than the magnetic moment of the  positron.”

"The measurement of antiprotons was extremely difficult and we had been working on it for ten years,” said Stefan Ulmer, spokesperson of the BASE group. “The final breakthrough came with the revolutionary idea of performing the measurement with two particles.... That created higher precision in the measurements."

They created and captured the antiprotons in 2015 and held them for a record-breaking 405 days in the traps.

The team was able to measure the magnetic force of the antiproton to a level that is 350 times more precise than ever before. They said this is the equivalent of measuring the circumference of the earth to a precision of four centimeters.

Read more at Seeker

Bandit-Masked Dinosaur With Striped Tail Evolved to Escape Tyrannosaurs

Sinosauropteryx in the likely open habitat in which it lived 130 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous

Since the taxon Dinosauria was formally named in 1842, dinosaurs have mostly been depicted as drab-hued beasts. New fossils and high-tech methods for analyzing ancient pigments, however, are now revealing the true colors and bold feather patterns of some of these long-gone animals.

The latest dinosaur to receive a reconstructive makeover is Sinosauropteryx, which according to a paper in the journal Current Biology had a striped tail, feathers of different shades of brown, and a raccoon-like “bandit mask” on its face. All of these features likely helped the slender and wily species, which could grow up to 3 1/2 feet long, to blend visually into its environment.

Senior author Jakob Vinther of the University of Bristol told Seeker that big dinosaurs were also camouflaged while animals this big today are not. “This tells us that the predators back then were scarier than today,” he said. “Jurassic Park would be really scary if it ever was to happen.”

Vinther, lead author Fiann Smithwick, and their team studied the remnants of pigmented feathers from three of the best-preserved specimens of Sinosauropteryx. This was a carnivorous dinosaur that lived around the prehistoric Jehol Lake region in what is now Liaoning, China, around 130 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous. Distribution of the fossilized compound melanin allowed the scientists to reconstruct the dinosaur’s stripes and coloration.

While stripes are easily seen against a bright white or dark background, they can help to camouflage an animal in most natural settings. A dark stripe around the eyes — like a mask — can function in a similar way.

“Mammals often have bandit masks for different reasons than birds,” Smithwick, also from the University of Bristol, explained to Seeker. “Along with anti-glare, mammals tend to use them as warning colors or for social communication, while birds more often use them to hide the eyes as a form of camouflage.”

The best-preserved fossil specimen of Sinosauropteryx from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota of China and an interpretive drawing of the bones, stomach contents, and darkly pigmented feathers. The scale bar represents 50 mm (about 2 inches).

Since today’s birds are essentially living dinosaurs, the scientists believe the latter explanation can apply to Sinosauropteryx.

The recreation of this dinosaur’s appearance negates a prior reconstruction attempt by another research team. In the earlier version, Sinosauropteryx was depicted as having a dark blotch on its legs and lower underside.

Smithwick said that the artist of this older drawing “appears to have mistaken the internal organs preserved in the fossil for original colors…Many of the fossils have dark organic remains in the abdomen because internal organs also contain melanin, as does the eye.”

2010 digital reconstruction of Sinosauropteryx. New research has eliminated the black underside and legs and has changed the recreation in other respects.

For the new study, Smithwick and his team created 3D models of the striped, masked dinosaur and photographed them under different lighting conditions to determine how the visual features could have best hidden the animal from potential predators. The images support that Sinosauropteryx was active during the day and must have spent a lot of time in direct sunlight.

The images further show that the dinosaur was countershaded, meaning that its feathers were darker on the top than on the sides and underbelly. Existent animals living in open habitats, such as savannahs, tend to have lighter coloration higher up on their sides than do forest dwellers.

Application of these principals to Sinosauropteryx indicates that the dinosaur lived in a savannah-type habitat with minimal vegetation.

A prior study led by Vinther found that another dinosaur from the Jehol Lake region, Psittacosaurus, exhibited the gradual countershading pattern, suggesting that it lived in a forest.

“So the dinosaurs we find in these lake beds are from different habitats around these lakes,” Vinther said.

“Countershading only works when viewed from the side, as it is about counterilluminating your shadows,” he added. “When viewed from above, your general color on the back should hopefully match the floor pretty well. However, this is all about not being spotted from a distance.”

The reconstructed color patterns of Sinosauropteryx shows its counter-shaded pattern along with the striped tail and bandit mask. The scale bar represents 100 mm (about 4 inches).

Carnivorous dinosaurs, such as relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex, were found in the same deposits as Sinosauropteryx. These included meat-loving species like Dilong and Yutyrannus, both of which were known to have excellent vision. It is therefore likely that Sinosauropteryx evolved its camouflage to escape predation by these larger dinosaurs.

Sinosauropteryx also had very long legs and the longest relative tail length of any known carnivorous dinosaur. Tails can help with balance and fast turns when running, so this dinosaur probably attempted to make hasty getaways when tyrannosaurs approached.

And camouflage can help the hunter as well as the hunted.

“We have direct evidence of predation by Sinosauropteryx, as one fossil has a complete lizard in its stomach representing its last meal — such a substantial one that it almost completely fills the abdominal cavity,” Smithwick said.

“The lizard has limb proportions suggesting it would have been a fast runner and was better suited to running in open areas. So this corresponds well to our results suggesting Sinosauropteryx was fast moving and lived in open areas,” he added.

Read more at Seeker

Mongolian Microfossils Could Be Earth’s First Animals

Assorted microfossils from the Ediacaran Khesen Formation, Mongolia. Each fossil is on the order of 200 microns maximum dimension.

Transitional moments are often hard to pinpoint in evolutionary history. Because changes to species can occur gradually over long periods of time, it is difficult to know exactly when birds diverged from non-avian dinosaurs or when humans branched off from their primate ancestors.

The mother of all such moments — when microbes evolved into animals — is even more challenging to identify given the long-ago age of that landmark event.

A newly found assemblage of microfossils dating to 540 million years ago could help to solve the mystery. The authors of the discovery, writing in the journal Geology, believe it is possible that many of the fossils belong to the putative animal Megasphaera.

“If the fossils do represent an animal, it would be the oldest animal in the fossil record,” lead author Ross Anderson of Yale University and the University of Oxford told Seeker.

He added, however, that “interpretations of the group of organisms which the fossil represents have proved controversial over the last 20 years.”

Some researchers have concluded that similar fossils are of sulphur-oxidising bacteria. Still others think they are the remains of green algae.

Reconstructions showing what many researchers believe is a 600-million-year-old animal embryo undergoing cellular division. The images were based on three-dimensional X-ray views of microfossils found at Doushantuo Formation, South China.

Shuhai Xiao of Harvard University and colleagues, writing in the journal Nature in 1998, were among the first to propose that such fossils are the remains of multicellular animal embryos. Since then, numerous “embryo-like” fossils have been unearthed at the 600-million-year-old Doushantuo Formation of South China.

The Mongolian fossils, discovered at that country’s Khesen Formation to the west of Lake Khuvsgul, are younger. Anderson and his team dated them to 540 million years ago.

The scientists decided to excavate the site in northern Mongolia because it consists of numerous phosphorites, which are sedimentary rocks that contain a high proportion of calcium phosphate. The rocks at Doushantuo are of a very similar composition.

“In terms of the fossils present (at Khesen) there are a lot of similarities” with those at Doushantuo, Anderson said. “The fossils are also preserved in the same manner as those found in the Doushantuo Formation, yielding the exceptional cellular level of preservation.”

He and his colleagues suspect that many of the microfossils preserve different stages of embryonic development whereby cells divide and multiply.

“For example,” he said, “we have specimens with only a single internal cell, but others with up to 100.”

As for how single-celled organisms evolved into multicellular ones, there are many possibilities.

Anderson explained that an increase in the availability of oxygen; genomic evolution, which may provide new biological equipment; changes in nutrient cycling; continental reconfiguration, which opens up new habitats; and greater predation could have been factors.

He added that evaluating these hypotheses requires a good temporally calibrated fossil record to test correlations to environmental change. Since the Mongolian microfossil assemblage extends both the location and timing of Megasphaera, it moves the researchers one step closer to that goal.

Read more at Seeker

First Jurassic ichthyosaur fossil found in India

Articulated skeleton of Ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaur at the excavation site south of Lodai village, situated 30 km northeast of Bhuj town, the headquarters of Ka-chchh District in Gujarat state, western India.

A new near-complete fossilized skeleton is thought to represent the first Jurassic ichthyosaur found in India, according to a study published October 25, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Guntupalli Prasad from the University of Delhi, India, and colleagues.

Ichthyosaurs, literally 'fish lizards' in Greek, were large marine reptiles which lived alongside dinosaurs in the Mesozoic Era. While many ichthyosaur fossils have been found in North American and Europe, in the Southern Hemisphere, their fossil record has mostly been limited to South America and Australia.

Now, the authors of the present study report what they believe to be the first Jurassic ichthyosaur found in India, from the Kachchh area in Gujarat. The near-complete skeleton, nearly 5.5m long, is thought to belong to the Ophthalmosauridae family, which likely lived between around 165 and 90 million years ago. It was found among fossils of ammonites and squid-like belemnites, and its tooth wear patterns suggest it predated such hard, abrasive animals.

While the authors have not yet been able to pinpoint the ichthyosaur's species, they believe that a full identification could inform on possible ophthalmosaurid dispersal between India and South America. They hope that unearthing more Jurassic vertebrates in this region could provide further insights into the evolution of marine reptiles in this part of the globe.

Lead author Guntupalli Prasad notes: "This is a remarkable discovery not only because it is the first Jurassic ichthyosaur record from India, but also it throws light on the evolution and diversity of ichthyosaurs in the Indo-Madagascan region of the former Gondwanaland and India's biological connectivity with other continents in the Jurassic."

From Science Daily

'Mega-carnivore' dinosaur roamed southern Africa 200 million years ago

Fabien Knoll, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, lies next to the new exceptionally large carnivorous dinosaur footprints found in Lesotho.

An international team of scientists has discovered the first evidence that a huge carnivorous dinosaur roamed southern Africa 200 million year ago.

The team, which includes researchers from The University of Manchester, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, have found several three-toed footprints measuring 57cm long and 50cm wide.

This means the dinosaur would have an estimated body length of around nine metres (30 feet) and be a little less than three metres tall at the hip. That's four times the size of a lion, which is currently the largest carnivore in southern Africa.

The footprints belong to a new species, named Kayentapus ambrokholohali, which is part of the group of dinosaurs called "megatheropod." The term "Megatheropods" describes the giant two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs, such as the iconic Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) which fossil evidence shows was around 12 metres long.

This study, which is published in PLOS ONE, also reveals that these footprints make up the largest theropod tracks in Africa.

The tracks were found on an ancient land surface, known as a palaeosurface, in the Maseru District of Lesotho, a small country in southern Africa. The surface is covered in 200 million years old 'current-ripple marks' and 'desiccation cracks' which are signs of a prehistoric watering hole or river bank.

Dr Fabien Knoll, Senior Research Fellow at The University of Manchester, said: 'The latest discovery is very exciting and sheds new light on the kind of carnivore that roamed what is now southern Africa.

'That's because it is the first evidence of an extremely large meat-eating animal roaming a landscape otherwise dominated by a variety of herbivorous, omnivorous and much smaller carnivorous dinosaurs. It really would have been top of the food chain.'

What makes the discovery even more important is that these footprints date back to the Early Jurassic epoch, when it was thought the size of most theropod dinosaurs was considerably smaller. On average they were previously thought to be around three to five metres in body length, with some records showing they may have reached seven metres at the very most. It is only much later in the Jurassic and during the Cretaceous, which starts 145 million years ago, that truly large forms of theropods, such as T. rex, appear in body and trace fossil records.

Dr Lara Sciscio, postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town, said: 'This discovery marks the first occurrence of very large carnivorous dinosaurs in the Early Jurassic of southern Gondwana -- the prehistoric continent which would later break up and become Africa and other landmasses. This makes it a significant find. Globally, these large tracks are very rare. There is only one other known site similar in age and sized tracks, which is in Poland.'

The ancient surface where these footprints were found is also covered with the tracks of much smaller theropod dinosaurs.

Read more at Science Daily

6,000-year-old skull could be from the world's earliest known tsunami victim

This is the cranium of a person who lived in what's now Papua New Guinea, 6,000 years ago.

Tsunamis spell calamity. These giant waves, caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and underwater landslides, are some of the deadliest natural disasters known; the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed over 230,000 people, a higher death toll than any fire or hurricane. Scientists studying the effects of tsunamis have now shed light on what could be the earliest record of a person killed in a tsunami: someone who lived 6,000 years ago in what's now Papua New Guinea in the southwest Pacific. Their skull was found in geological sediments having the distinctive hallmarks of ancient tsunami activity. This means, scientists posit in a new paper in PLOS ONE, that this skull could be from the earliest known tsunami victim.

"If we are right about how this person had died thousands of years ago, we have dramatic proof that living by the sea isn't always a life of beautiful golden sunsets and great surfing conditions," says John Terrell, Regenstein Curator of Pacific Anthropology at The Field Museum and one of the study's authors. "Maybe this individual can help us as scientists to convince skeptics today that all of us on earth must take climate change and rising sea levels seriously as the threats they truly are."

The skull in question was found in 1929, buried in the ground near the small town of Aitape on the northern of Papua New Guinea, about 500 miles north of Australia. Terrell has been doing archaeological and anthropological research in this coastal region of New Guinea, the second largest island in the world, since 1990. The new PLOS One study is a continuation of that work, contributed to by the University of New South Wales, l'Université de Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Auckland, New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, the University of Papua New Guinea, Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery, and The Field Museum. As a member of this international team, Terrell says he has long wondered what to make of this tantalizing human find.

"The skull has always been of great archaeological interest because it is one of the few early skeletal remains from the area," says Mark Golitko of the University of Notre Dame and The Field Museum. "It was originally thought that the skull belonged to Homo erectus until the deposits were more reliably radiocarbon dated to about 5,000 to 6,000 years. Back then, sea levels were higher and the area would have been just behind the shoreline."

In 2014 Golitko and others went back to the exact place where this skull had been found to look for new clues about what killed this individual. "We have now been able to confirm what we have long suspected," says James Goff at the University of New South Wales in Australia, the report's first author. "The geological similarities between the sediments at the place where the skull was found and sediments laid down during the 1998 tsunami that hit this same coastline have made us realise that human populations in this area have been affected by these massive inundations for thousands of years."

"Given the evidence we have in hand, we are more convinced than before that this person was either violently killed by a tsunami, or had their grave ripped open by one -- leading to their head but not the rest of their body being naturally reburied where it then remained undiscovered in the ground for some 6,000 or so years," explains Goff.

Read more at Science Daily

Alvarezsaurid dinosaur from the late Cretaceous found in Uzbekistan

This is an image of alvarezsauridae gen. et sp. indet., posterior caudal vertebrae.

Bones from an Alvarezsaurid dinosaur were discovered in Uzbekistan and could shed light on the evolution and origin of the species, according to a study published October 25, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alexander Averianov of Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia and Hans-Dieter Sues of the Smithsonian Institution, USA.

Previous studies have described Alvarezsauridae as small, long-legged, bipedal dinosaurs with short forelimbs that featured bird-like hands. Since Alvarezsaurid remains are extremely rare, there is plenty to learn about the evolution of this species.

The authors of this study analyzed previously excavated Alvarezsaurid remains from the Turonian Bissekty Formation of Uzbekistan. They examined the vertebrae, the bird-like bone that fuses the wrist and knuckle known as the carpometacarpus, and pieces of what would be the fingers or toes, known as the phalanx. They then measured and compared the shapes and sizes of these bones with those from similar species from the literature.

The authors state that the characteristics for the Alvarezsaurid bones are so distinctive that it could be identified just from the seven bones collected at the Bissekty Formation. These distinctive features included rounded vertebrae located close to the tail, a large and depressed second metacarpal, and a robust second digit with a claw-like end.

While there are competing theories about where the Alvarezsaurid originated, the authors suggest that the discovery of an Alvarezsaurid at this site in Uzbekistan indicates that this group had an evolutionary history in Asia and provides evidence that this continent could have been where the clade originated.

Lead author Hans Sues says: "Our paper reports the discovery of the earliest known alvarezsaurid dinosaur from the Northern Hemisphere, based on 90-million-year-old fossils from Central Asia. Alvarezsaurids were unusual small predatory dinosaurs that had very short but powerfuly built arms that ended in a single large digit."

From Science Daily

Prehistoric Fossil Teeth Spark Heated Debate Over Human Evolution

Different views of an upper right molar tooth excavated near Eppelsheim, Germany

In a paper shared at the social networking site ResearchGate, Herbert Lutz and his team say they discovered “a new great ape with startling resemblances to African members of the hominin tribe.” The "plausible age” of the fossils — an upper left canine tooth and an upper right first molar — is 9.7 million years, they say.

If confirmed, that would make the teeth around 6 million years older than fossils for the early human African ancestor Australopithecus afarensis, aka Lucy, and emerged over 9 million years before anatomically modern humans were thought to have migrated out of Africa.

The fossil teeth potentially provide evidence that a human lineage evolved outside of Africa, and before major African human lineages first emerged.

Michael Ebling, the mayor of Mainz, added to the intrigue by telling the German media site Merkurist, “I would suggest that we must start rewriting the history of mankind after today.” 

Co-author Axel von Berg, an archaeologist in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, echoed the excitement when he told Allgemeine Zeitung, “This will amaze experts.”

Lutz, von Berg, and their colleagues report that the teeth exhibit characteristics similar, not only to Lucy, but also to other early hominins such as Ardipithecus ramidus and Ardipithecus kadabba. They estimate that the teeth belonged to an individual who weighed about 33 pounds. In contrast, Lucy is thought to have weighed between 45–110 pounds.

The site where the teeth were unearthed, Germany’s Eppelsheim formation, has previously yielded other important fossils. A femur excavated there in the early 19th century is believed by many to be the world’s first known primate fossil. Excavations between 1934 and 1935 that were directed by scientist Otto Schmidtgen unearthed still more primate fossils with hominoid features. These fossils, all teeth, were somehow lost during World War II, however.

The newly unearthed teeth were found at practically the same spot after 20 years of “painstaking excavations,” the researchers write, adding that, “Both teeth represent a hitherto unknown great ape with startling hominin resemblances.”

The teeth differ from all other known human ancestral remains found in Europe and Asia so far, according to the researchers. The date of the fossils was determined by the geological layer within which they were found and by surrounding microfossils. Radiometric or other more precise methods of dating have not yet been conducted.

Artist’s reconstruction of the face of Australopithecus afarensis

Despite the lofty claims about the teeth, human evolution experts have been largely underwhelmed by the new discovery.

“The possible findings of more evidence of hominids outside of Africa is interesting, especially for deep hominin history, but I don’t think the overall picture of hominid evolution will change much,” Carina Schlebusch, an assistant professor in the Department of Organismal Biology at Uppsala University, told Seeker. “Genetics still point to a relatively recent African origin of the variation in all living humans.”

Anthropologist Monte McCrossin of New Mexico State University offered even more harsh words.

“Sadly, this discovery isn’t at all what it claims to be; it’s fool’s gold,” he wrote in a comment posted on ResearchGate. “This site in Germany has nothing whatsoever to do with human evolution.”

Paleoanthropologist David Begun of the University of Toronto and other scientists suspect that one or more of the fossils found at Eppelsheim could have belonged to a genus of extinct primates known as Pliopithecus, and not hominids.

Skull of the fossil primate Epipliopithecus vindobonensis on display at the Field Museum of Natural History

Begun told Seeker that he and his colleagues theorize that the African ape and human lineages arose from a European or Western Asian ancestor that migrated to Africa about 7–9 million years ago. Some human ancestors are then thought to have migrated back to Europe and Asia, while others continued to evolve in Africa.

The complex back and forth migrations might at first seem “unnecessarily complicated,” he said, but he said similar theories help to explain the evolution of other animals, such as aardvarks and hippos.

Evidence for possible early human presence outside of Africa also goes beyond debates over the Eppelsheim teeth.

In August, it was reported that fossil footprints possibly belonging to a hominin were found on the island of Crete. They date to 5.7 million years ago. According to the authors of the paper, published in the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, the individual who left the prints was bipedal, walked on the soles of its feet, and exhibited other human-like characteristics.

This year, it was also reported that a human-resembling primate, Graecopithecus freybergi, lived in the Eastern Mediterranean around 7.2 million years ago. Madelaine Böhme of the Senckengberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, Begun, and their team analyzed fossils for the primate, nicknamed El Graeco.

The oldest higher primates are known from Asia more than 40 million years ago,” Böhme told Seeker. “But hominids have surely evolved from African hominids. After 14 million years, they first enter Eurasia and diversified into Ponginae — orangutan — and Homininae.”

It is possible that the Eppelsheim individual descended from one of these early migrations. On the other hand, it could belong to a lineage that remained in Asia and Europe.

Various views of the upper left canine tooth found at Eppelsheim

While experts debated the many possibilities, Lutz’s voice and that of his team was notably absent.

“Our paper provoked contradiction, which we take very seriously,” Lutz told Seeker. “We will now first reexamine the finds to see which of the proposed relationships is the most plausible one.”

Relationships refers to how the teeth should be classified.

“Under these circumstances,” he added, “we want to postpone any further comment until we have cleared the situation.”

The initial controversy over the Eppelsheim discovery has fizzled out — for now. But it’s clear that many important questions remain about human evolution, which could significantly impact our lives.

Differences in genetics, for example, can affect medical treatments. Neanderthal heritage, for example, can influence a person’s appearance, behavior, health, and even habits, such as smoking.

Read more at Seeker

Spots on supergiant star drive spirals in stellar wind

Artist's impression of the hot massive supergiant Zeta Puppis. The rotation period of the star indicated by the new BRITE observations is 1.78 d, and its spin axis is inclined by (24 ± 9)° with respect to the line of sight.

A Canadian-led international team of astronomers recently discovered that spots on the surface of a supergiant star are driving huge spiral structures in its stellar wind. Their results are published in a recent edition of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Massive stars are responsible for producing the heavy elements that make up all life on Earth. At the end of their lives they scatter the material into interstellar space in catastrophic explosions called supernovae -- without these dramatic events, our solar system would never have formed.

Zeta Puppis is an evolved massive star known as a 'supergiant'. It is about sixty times more massive than our sun, and seven times hotter at the surface. Massive stars are rare, and usually found in pairs called 'binary systems' or small groups known as 'multiple systems'. Zeta Puppis is special however, because it is a single massive star, moving through space alone, at a velocity of about 60 kilometers per second. "Imagine an object about sixty times the mass of the Sun, travelling about sixty times faster than a speeding bullet!" the investigators say. Dany Vanbeveren, professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, gives a possible explanation as to why the star is travelling so fast; "One theory is that Zeta Puppis has interacted with a binary or a multiple system in the past, and been thrown out into space at an incredible velocity."

Using a network of 'nanosatellites' from the "BRIght Target Explorer" (BRITE) space mission, astronomers monitored the brightness of the surface of Zeta Puppis over a six-month period, and simultaneously monitored the behavior of its stellar wind from several ground-based professional and amateur observatories.

Tahina Ramiaramanantsoa (PhD student at the Université de Montréal and member of the Centre de Recherche en Astrophysique du Québec; CRAQ) explains the authors' results: "The observations revealed a repeated pattern every 1.78 days, both at the surface of the star and in the stellar wind. The periodic signal turns out to reflect the rotation of the star through giant 'bright spots' tied to its surface, which are driving large-scale spiral-like structures in the wind, dubbed 'co-rotating interaction regions' or 'CIRs'."

"By studying the light emitted at a specific wavelength by ionized helium from the star's wind," continued Tahina, "we clearly saw some 'S' patterns caused by arms of CIRs induced in the wind by the bright surface spots!." In addition to the 1.78-day periodicity, the research team also detected random changes on timescales of hours at the surface of Zeta Puppis, strongly correlated with the behavior of small regions of higher density in the wind known as "clumps" that travel outward from the star. "These results are very exciting because we also find evidence, for the first time, of a direct link between surface variations and wind clumping, both random in nature," comments investigating team member Anthony Moffat, emeritus professor at Université de Montréal, and Principal Investigator for the Canadian contribution to the BRITE mission.

After several decades of puzzling over the potential link between the surface variability of very hot massive stars and their wind variability, these results are a significant breakthrough in massive star research, essentially owing to the BRITE nanosats and the large contribution by amateur astronomers. "It is really exciting to know that, even in the era of giant professional telescopes, dedicated amateur astronomers using off-the-shelf equipment in their backyard observatories can play a significant role at the forefront of science," says investigating team member Paul Luckas from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) at the University of Western Australia. Paul is one of six amateur astronomers who intensively observed Zeta Puppis from their homes during the observing campaign, as part of the 'Southern Amateur Spectroscopy initiative'.

Read more at Science Daily

How Neanderthals influenced human genetics at the crossroads of Asia and Europe

Scientists are examining DNA sequences we have inherited from Neanderthals.

When the ancestors of modern humans migrated out of Africa, they passed through the Middle East and Turkey before heading deeper into Asia and Europe.

Here, at this important crossroads, it's thought that they encountered and had sexual rendezvous with a different hominid species: the Neanderthals. Genomic evidence shows that this ancient interbreeding occurred, and Western Asia is the most likely spot where it happened.

A new study explores the legacy of these interspecies trysts, with a focus on Western Asia, where the first relations may have occurred. The research, published on Oct. 13 in Genome Biology and Evolution, analyzes the genetic material of people living in the region today, identifying DNA sequences inherited from Neanderthals.

"As far as human history goes, this area was the stepping stone for the peopling of all of Eurasia," says Omer Gokcumen, PhD, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences. "This is where humans first settled when they left Africa. It may be where they first met Neanderthals. From the standpoint of genetics, it's a very interesting region."

The study focused on Western Asia. As part of the project, scientists analyzed 16 genomes belonging to people of Turkish descent.

"Within these genomes, the areas where we see relatively common Neanderthal introgression are in genes related to metabolism and immune system responses," says Recep Ozgur Taskent, the study's first author and a UB PhD candidate in biological sciences. "Broadly speaking, these are functions that can have an impact on health."

For example, one DNA sequence that originated from Neanderthals includes a genetic variant linked to celiac disease. Another includes a variant tied to a lowered risk for malaria.

The bottom line? The relations that our ancestors had with Neanderthals tens of thousands of years ago may continue to exert an influence on our well-being today, Gokcumen says.

He led the study with Taskent and Mehmet Somel, PhD, from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Co-authors included Nursen Duha Alioglu and Evrim Fer from the Middle East Technical University, and Handan Melike Donertas from the Middle East Technical University and European Bioinformatics Institute.

Early contact with Neanderthals, but relatively little Neanderthal DNA

In addition to exploring the specific functions of genetic material that the Turkish population inherited from Neanderthals, the study also examined the Neanderthals' influence on human populations in Western Asia more broadly.

The region is thought to be where modern humans first interbred with their Neanderthal kin. And yet, research has shown that people living in this area today have relatively little Neanderthal DNA compared to people in other parts of the world.

The new study supports this finding. The research team analyzed genomic data from dozens of Western Asian individuals, and observed that, on average, with a few exceptions, these populations carry less Neanderthal DNA than Europeans, Central Asians and East Asians.

The differences in Neanderthal ancestry between Western Asian and other populations may be due to the region's unique position in human history, Taskent says.

Tens of thousands of years ago, when modern humans first left Africa to populate the rest of the world, Western Asia was the first stopping point -- the only land-based route for accessing the rest of Eurasia.

People who live in Europe, Central Asia and East Asia today may be descended from human populations that treated Western Asia as a waystation: These human populations lived there temporarily, mating with the region's Neanderthals before moving on to other destinations.

In contrast, the ancestors of present-day Western Asians had a deeper connection to the region: They settled in Western Asia instead of just passing through. These ancient humans had contact with Neanderthals, too, but two factors may have diluted the Neanderthals' influence.

Read more at Science Daily

Older Neanderthal survived with a little help from his friends

The skull of a Neanderthal known as Shanidar 1 shows signs of a blow to the head received at an early age.

An older Neanderthal from about 50,000 years ago, who had suffered multiple injuries and other degenerations, became deaf and must have relied on the help of others to avoid prey and survive well into his 40s, indicates a new analysis published Oct. 20 in the online journal PLoS ONE.

"More than his loss of a forearm, bad limp and other injuries, his deafness would have made him easy prey for the ubiquitous carnivores in his environment and dependent on other members of his social group for survival," said Erik Trinkaus, study co-author and professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Known as Shanidar 1, the Neanderthal remains were discovered in 1957 during excavations at Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan by Ralph Solecki, an American archeologist and professor emeritus at Columbia University.

Previous studies of the Shanidar 1 skull and other skeletal remains had noted his multiple injuries. He sustained a serious blow to the side of the face, fractures and the eventual amputation of the right arm at the elbow, and injuries to the right leg, as well as a systematic degenerative condition.

In a new analysis of the remains, Trinkaus and Sébastien Villotte of the French National Centre for Scientific Research confirm that bony growths in Shanidar 1's ear canals would have produced profound hearing loss. In addition to his other debilitations, this sensory deprivation would have made him highly vulnerable in his Pleistocene context.

As the co-authors note, survival as a hunter-gatherer in the Pleistocene presented numerous challenges, and all of those difficulties would have been markedly pronounced with sensory impairment. Like other Neanderthals who have been noted for surviving with various injuries and limited arm use, Shanidar 1 most likely required significant social support to reach old age.

"The debilities of Shanidar 1, and especially his hearing loss, thereby reinforce the basic humanity of these much maligned archaic humans, the Neanderthals," said Trinkaus, the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor.

From Science Daily

Ancient Icelandic Volcanoes May Have Hastened Ice Age Melting

View of the Svinafell glacier with a glacial lagoon, part of Vatnajökull National Park, in eastern Iceland

A surge of volcanic eruptions from Iceland may have sped up the melting of the ice sheets that covered Scandinavia thousands of years ago as tons of soot fell from the sky.

That thaw would have taken place even as the cloud of ash released from the volcanoes was cooling northern Europe, paleoclimatologist Francesco Muschitiello told Seeker. And it’s a story that has some relevance to current climate concerns.

“You have his cooling effect of volcanic eruptions,” said Muschitiello of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Institute in New York and the Uni Research Climate center at Norway’s University of Bergen. “But at the same time, as you increase the deposition of dust and ash on the ice sheets, you increase the runoff. You increase the melting of the ice. You have these two counteracting effects.”

The story Muschitiello and his colleagues tell in the Oct. 24 issue of Nature Communications unfolded in the waning days of the last ice age, about 13,000 years ago. It’s a tale teased out of layers of sulfur compounds in the clay of what’s now southeastern Sweden.

James Lea (left) and Francesco Muschitiello drill into the ground to sample the sedimentary deposits of an ancient glacial lake in Sweden.

At that time, Scandinavia was buried under an ice sheet that stretched from the British Isles to the Ural Mountains of present-day Russia. But as the glaciers began to recede, the volcanoes beneath them began to stir.

“The ice sheets are getting lighter and lighter, they relieve pressure on top of the Earth’s crust,” Muschitiello said. “And this lightening basically in turn triggers volcanic eruptions, especially in Iceland and North America, in Alaska and Kamchatka.”

Iceland is a volcanic hot spot even today. And at that time, its volcanoes belched sulfuric smoke, soot and ash across the Northern Hemisphere. The sulfur compounds Muschitiello recorded in core samples of Swedish clay match those found in ice cylinders extracted from Greenland’s ice sheets from the same era.

That cloud gradually would have driven temperatures down as they hung in the atmosphere, blocking more sunlight. But the portion that fell onto the ice sheets would have led to a faster melt, as the spots of dark carbon meant the ice absorbed solar radiation it otherwise would have reflected back into space.

Sediments deposited by ice sheet meltwater provide clues about ancient climates, as well as the future effects of global warming.

Using computer models of the climate, Muschitiello’s team tried to reproduce the effects of those eruptions. They found an eruption in the summer would have cooled northern Europe by as much as 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit). Meanwhile, even small changes in the amount of sunlight could have sped up dramatically the amount of water they shed.

“Even though you have sort of a long-term cooling, you have an immediate response of the ice sheet, which increases melting,” he said.

That process may be relevant today, as researchers attempt to project the effects of climate change and its impact on future sea levels.

Read more at Seeker

The World’s First Trees Were More Structurally Complex Than Trees Today

An illustrative transverse plane through a small cladoxylopsid trunk, showing the three naturally-fractured parts.

Life that arose from Earth’s primordial soup hundreds of millions of years ago was usually simple compared to the highly evolved creatures that exist today.

But new research has found that the world’s first trees – the cladoxylopsids – were more complex than their successors, creating a new mystery about the origins of plants that once dominated the globe.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers identified never-before-seen growth patterns in a 374 million-year-old cladoxylopsid trunk discovered in China.

“It’s a new way of being a plant and particularly a new way of being a tree,” Cardiff University paleobotanist and study co-author Chris Berry told Seeker. “That just in and of itself is extremely interesting.”

Rather than growing in the familiar ring pattern that lets schoolchildren determine the age of most felled trees today, cladoxylopsid trunks were hollow. Around the empty core of the trees were 2-inch-thick strands of xylem, or the material that carries water from tree roots to their branches and leaves.

The strands didn’t behave like ordinary xylem, however. Instead, they bore rings like the cores of modern-day trees, as if the cladoxylopsid was a collection of saplings. What’s more, the tree-like strands connected to each other in an extremely sturdy manner that resembled a network of interconnected water pipes, the researchers wrote. While palm trees and other plants also don’t grow rings, their xylem don’t interconnect, Berry said.

Cladoxylopsids grew weirdly, too. The strands developed vertically and thickened. But more didn’t appear once the tree was growing. Instead, the soft wooden tissues between the strands would split apart and heal as the tree’s diameter expanded.

“It builds a skeleton at that point, and it’s sort of fixed,” said Berry. “This skeleton is gradually ripping itself apart to accommodate the expansion. As it does, it repairs itself.”

Capable of growing more than 30 feet tall with diameters of more than a foot, their appearance reflected their primordial environment. “These trees didn’t have leaves in a big, green flat sort of sense,” he said. “They were just twigs, little appendages, sticky things.”

Berry didn’t understand why or how cladoxylopsids grew in their unique way. But they were a monoculture, which could hold clues to their evolution.

“You’d think the oldest tree would be the most primitive and simple,” he said. “I have no explanation for that. The only thing you could argue is that there was no competition. There were no other trees around to complete with.”

Read more at Seeker

Drug can dramatically reduce weight of people with obesity

A new developed drug is highly promising for weight loss.

A drug that targets the appetite control system in the brain could bring about significant weight loss in people with clinical obesity, according to new research.

On average, people lost 5kg (11lbs) over a 12 week period after receiving weekly doses of semaglutide, a compound currently being developed as a treatment for Diabetes.

Most of the weight loss came from a reduction in body fat, researchers at the University of Leeds found after reviewing its effectiveness. The drug reduced food cravings, with people choosing to eat smaller meals and decreasing their preferences for foods with a higher fat content. The study also added to the scientific understanding of how drug therapy can be used to tackle obesity. For the first time, scientists saw the benefit of very specific targeting of receptors or sensors that could affect multiple components of the brain's appetite control system.

John Blundell, Professor of Psycho-Biology at the University of Leeds and lead researcher, said: "What was striking was the potency of the drug's action. We saw results in 12 weeks which may take as long as six months with other anti-obesity medication.

"The drug reduced hunger but also cravings for food and the sensation of wanting to eat -- and these had previously been thought to stem from different parts of the brain."

The research has been published in the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism.

Semaglutide is a new drug being developed by the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk as a treatment for diabetes.

Its chemical structure is very similar to the naturally-occurring hormone GLP-1 which is believed to act on the appetite control centre in the hypothalamus in the brain to reduce feelings of hunger.

Given the close similarity between semaglutide and the body's own appetite-control chemical, the study set out to examine whether the drug could also be used to tackle obesity by acting on the brain's appetite control receptors.

Professor Blundell said: "The potency of the drug is probably due to the action of the GLP-1 protein receptors on broad aspects of the appetite control system including hunger, craving and rewarding aspects of food."

In the study, the drug was given to 28 people with a body mass index (BMI) range of 30 to 45 kg/m2 -- meaning they were very overweight with a lot of body fat.

The participants were split in two groups -- half got semaglutide and the other half a placebo (dummy) substance for 12 weeks. They did not know what they were getting.

At the end of the 12 weeks, they were invited into a testing centre and offered a lunch and evening meal and told to consume as much as they needed to feel 'pleasantly full'. What they were eating was recorded, along with food preferences and their sensations of liking and wanting food. Body weight and body composition -- the percentage of body fat -- were also recorded.

They then repeated the process, with participants who got semaglutide this time getting the placebo and vice versa.

The results were then compared. The research team found that on average the daily energy intake, a measure of the amount of food consumed, was 24 per cent lower with semaglutide.

A further feature of the study was that measured energy expenditure from metabolic processes (the Resting Metabolic Rate) remained roughly the same throughout the experiment suggesting the weight loss could not be due to metabolism becoming more active. Consequently the fat loss produced by the drug could be attributed to better control over appetite.

Professor Blundell added: "A drug that reduces daily food intake by about a quarter with a substantial reduction in body fat will help some people to feel more in control of their lives and will help to prevent the onset of poor health that often arises from obesity" Semaglutide is in the advanced stages of development but is not yet on the market.

Read more at Science Daily

Mongolian microfossils point to the rise of animals on Earth

This is an image of assorted microfossils from the Ediacaran Khesen Formation, Mongolia. Each fossil is on the order of 200 microns maximum dimension.

A Yale-led research team has discovered a cache of embryo-like microfossils in northern Mongolia that may shed light on questions about the long-ago shift from microbes to animals on Earth.

Called the Khesen Formation, the site is one of the most significant for early Earth fossils since the discovery of the Doushantuo Formation in southern China nearly 20 years ago. The Dousantuo Formation is 600 million years old; the Khesen Formation is younger, at about 540 million years old.

"Understanding how and when animals evolved has proved very difficult for paleontologists. The discovery of an exceptionally well-preserved fossil assemblage with animal embryo-like fossils gives us a new window onto a critical transition in life's history," said Yale graduate student Ross Anderson, first author of a study in the journal Geology.

The new cache of fossils represents eight genera and about 17 species, comprising tens to hundreds of individuals. Many of them are spiny microfossils called acritarchs, which are roughly 100 microns in size -- about one-third the thickness of a fingernail.

The Khesen Formation is located to the west of Lake Khuvsgul in northern Mongolia. "This site was of particular interest to us because it had the right type of rocks -- phosphorites -- that had preserved similar organisms in China," Anderson said.

The discovery may help scientists confirm a much earlier date for the existence of Earth ecosystems with animals, rather than just microbes. For two decades, researchers have debated the findings at the Doushantuo Formation, with no resolution. If confirmed as animals, these microfossils would represent the oldest animals to be preserved in the geological record.

The other authors of the study are Derek Briggs, Yale's G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Geology and Geophysics and curator at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History; Sean McMahon, a postdoctoral fellow in the Briggs lab; Francis Macdonald of Harvard; and David Jones of Amherst College.

The researchers said the Khesen Formation should provide scientists with additional information for years to come.

"This study is only the tip of the iceberg, as most of the fossils derive from only two samples," Anderson said. Since the original discovery, the Yale team has worked with Harvard and the Mongolian University of Science and Technology to sample several additional sites within the formation.

From Science Daily

9 Million People Die Prematurely Each Year From Pollution

A tourist wearing a mask visits the Tiananmen Square amid dangerous levels of air pollution on January 23, 2013 in Beijing, China.

Pollution is responsible for more than nine million premature deaths worldwide each year, killing 15 times more people than war and violence, according to a new study published in The Lancet.

Researchers, using World Health Organization (WHO) data from 130 countries, examined ambient air pollution, household air pollution from solid fuels, unsafe drinking water, unsafe sanitation, and lead exposure. Their results show that pollution is responsible for three times more deaths each year than tuberculosis, malaria, and AIDS combined.

“My colleagues and I were stunned by the sheer magnitude of the total numbers of death caused by pollution and by the massive economic costs associated with pollution-related disease,” Philip Landrigan, dean of global health at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and co-chair of the commission that authored the report, told Seeker. “We knew going in that these numbers would be large, but we had no idea how large they would turn out to be.”

Most of the nine million deaths each year occur in developing nations where there are fewer regulations for industries that pollute the environment. Pollution also kills people in developed countries like the US and Japan, however these deaths tend to be concentrated in poor areas.

“Pollution is highly unjust,” Landrigan said. “Ninety-two percent of all pollution-related deaths occur in low and middle-income countries. And in the United States and other high-income countries, pollution-related disease and death are concentrated among minorities and the poor. Think Flint, [Michigan].”

The data shows that air-pollution is the biggest culprit in pollution-related deaths. In 2015, 6.5 million people died from illnesses related to breathing in harmful chemicals like mercury and arsenic, as well as smoke from wood-burning stoves.

Some of the world’s poorest laborers suffer from workplace exposure to carcinogens, like dye factory workers who develop bladder cancer or coal miners who contract lung disease, which account for 800,000 deaths each year. Nearly two million people die annually from contaminated drinking water and unsafe sanitation, which can cause parasitic infections and cholera.

India had the highest umber of deaths from pollution each year at 2.5 million, followed by China with 1.8 million.

“High-income countries need to share the lessons we have learned in pollution control with low-and middle-income countries to help them avoid the mistakes of the past,” Landrigan said.

The report also zeroed in on the monetary consequences of pollution, which is responsible for 1.7 percent of annual health spending in high-income countries like the US and up to 7 percent of health spending in heavily polluted and rapidly developing low-and middle-income countries. The authors estimate that the cost globally of pollutants adds up to approximately $4.6 trillion per year, which is about 6 percent of the global gross domestic product.

While certain types of pollution like contaminated water have decreased in recent years, pollution from some sources, like industry, has increased. This data comes at a time when the Trump administration considers rolling back regulations on industry, vehicles, and power plants.

American views on environmental regulation are deeply partisan, according to a 2017 Pew survey, which found 58 percent of Republicans though they cost too many jobs and hurt the economy. But Landrigan said it’s simply not the case. “The claim that pollution control stifles economic growth, kills jobs, and drags down the economy is false and has repeatedly been proven to be untrue,” he said.

Read more at Seeker

London Pollution Tax Aims to Improve the Air in One of Europe’s Dirtiest Cities

The capital's poor air quality, caused largely by traffic, has seen the UK facing 300m euros in fines for breaching EU targets.

Drivers of the most polluting vehicles face an extra daily charge for driving into central London under a scheme introduced Monday that aims to improve air quality in one of Europe's most polluted cities.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan claimed that with the rollout of the new weekday "toxicity charge" — dubbed the "T-charge" — London had "the world's toughest emission standard."

The £10 (11.20 euro, $13.20) levy is in addition to a daily £11.50 congestion fee and follows an order by the European Union for Britain to cut air pollution.

Khan, who announced the charge in February, said he was "determined to take urgent action to help clean up London's lethal air."

"The shameful scale of the public health crisis London faces, with thousands of premature deaths caused by air pollution, must be addressed," he said.

The levy applies to all petrol and diesel cars registered before the introduction of environmentally friendly Euro 4 emissions standards in 2005.

But Transport for London, which runs the scheme, has said any vehicle registered before 2008 may be liable.

It estimates 6,500 vehicles per day will be covered, about 6.3 percent of around 103,000 that enter the congestion zone.

Even before it came into force, the charge has had a deterrent effect — Khan said there has been a 15 percent reduction in eligible vehicles entering the area since the scheme was announced.

The European Commission in February issued a warning to five member states including Britain, urging them to take action on car pollution or risk being sent to the European Court of Justice.

It said that "persistently high" levels of nitrogen dioxide caused 70,000 premature deaths in Europe in 2013.

The mayor's office said 7.9 million Londoners lived in areas that exceeded World Health Organization guidelines on toxic air quality.

'Easy targets'

The RAC, a British motoring group, said the mayor was right to take action over the oldest vehicles, "because these are more likely to be the most polluting."

But roads policy spokesman Nick Lyes warned that "drivers may also see themselves as an easy target."

London drivers appeared divided by the plans.

"I think it's a good thing (to) keep the air pollution down," said Tony Smith, 53, a waste removal driver whose modern vehicle is unaffected by the new charge.

But George Tamale, 36, a parcel delivery driver also not impacted by the T-charge, said he questioned the motives behind it.

"They just want people to buy new cars. It's not about the environment, it's about economics," he said.

London is the largest city around the world to use congestion charging, alongside Stockholm, Milan, and Gothenburg.

Singapore was the first and now has the most comprehensive road-pricing system, which it plans to upgrade in 2020 by incorporating GPS technology.

Long-stymied plans for congestion charging in New York saw fresh impetus in August after state governor Andrew Cuomo came out in support of the idea for parts of Manhattan.

Studies of the London scheme indicate the number of cars entering the city center has fallen by nearly a quarter since 2000.

Read more at Seeker

Ominous Climate Change Warning Seen in Caribbean Storms 100K Years Ago

In this NOAA handout image, taken by the GOES satellite at 1620 UTC, Hurricane Matthew is seen in the Caribbean Sea heading towards Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba on October 3, 2016.

Scientists from North Carolina are bearing a probably unwelcome but unquestionably vital message for those rebuilding after the recent deadly hurricanes in the Caribbean: You ain’t seen nothing yet.

According to study of rock strata on the Bahamas and Bermuda, as well as a review of other studies on the topic, the Caribbean Islands endured far worse storms when the planet’s climate more closely resembled the conditions that scientists foresee if global warming continues, according to a paper published recently in the journal Marine Geology.

“In the interest of our future world, we must seek to understand the complex set of linked natural events and field observations that are revealed in the geology of past warmer climates,” wrote Retired University of North Carolina at Wilmington environmental scientist Paul Hearty and Coastal Research Scientist Blair Tormey of Western Carolina University in the study.

In other words, if humankind continues to dumping carbon into the atmosphere, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria might become not only commonplace but might someday be fondly remembered as mild disasters compared to things to come, the researchers concludes.

“Our global society is producing a climate system that is racing forward out of humanity's control into an uncertain future,” they wrote.

The image on the left shows eolian (lower) and runup bedding (upper) exposed in a roadcut on Old Land Road on Great Exuma Island (road elevation +23 meters). On the right are thick beds with fenestral porosity, or "beach bubbles," showing that massive waves ran up over older dunes exposed in a roadcut on Suzy Turn Road along the Atlantic Ocean east side of Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands, BWI.

With the help from the National Science Foundation, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and others, the researchers reviewed a millennium approximately 120,000 years ago when temperatures were slightly warmer than today, Earth’s glaciers had melted, and the world’s sea levels were almost 30 feet higher. The scope of the period of the study ruled out tsunamis, said Hearty.

The researchers concluded big waves and wind pushed boulders, rocks, sediment, and other materials from the ocean almost six miles inland on the islands in what were probably epically violent storms.

They looked at boulders as heavy as 1,000 tons that were once underwater but now sit on land that was dry before they arrived, so-called “chevron storm ridges,” or V-spaced lines of sediment pushed inland by rushing water and deposits of beach sedimentation almost 100 feet above sea level.

“Super perfect storms,” said Hearty.

Especially helpful for the research were ooids – or tiny grains of calcium carbonate and other materials plentiful off the islands that quickly harden like cement when out of the water. Layers of cemented ooids are called oolite. One can see oolite layers at many road cuts in the Bahamas and Bermuda, with each one providing a perfectly preserved record of the conditions that created it.

“Every steep road cut that would go over the top of the island, we would look closely and essentially see beach bedding,” said Hearty.

Read more at Seeker

More teens than ever aren't getting enough sleep

The more time young people reported spending online, the less sleep they got, according to researchers.

If you're a young person who can't seem to get enough sleep, you're not alone: A new study led by San Diego State University Professor of Psychology Jean Twenge finds that adolescents today are sleeping fewer hours per night than older generations. One possible reason? Young people are trading their sleep for smartphone time.

Most sleep experts agree that adolescents need 9 hours of sleep each night to be engaged and productive students; less than 7 hours is considered to be insufficient sleep. A peek into any bleary-eyed classroom in the country will tell you that many youths are sleep-deprived, but it's unclear whether young people today are in fact sleeping less.

To find out, Twenge, along with psychologist Zlatan Krizan and graduate student Garrett Hisler -- both at Iowa State University in Ames -- examined data from two long-running, nationally representative, government-funded surveys of more than 360,000 teenagers. The Monitoring the Future survey asked U.S. students in the 8th, 10th and 12th grades how frequently they got at least 7 hours of sleep, while the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey asked 9th-12th-grade students how many hours of sleep they got on an average school night.

Combining and analyzing data from both surveys, the researchers found that about 40% of adolescents in 2015 slept less than 7 hours a night, which is 58% more than in 1991 and 17% more than in 2009.

Delving further into the data, the researchers learned that the more time young people reported spending online, the less sleep they got. Teens who spent 5 hours a day online were 50% more likely to not sleep enough than their peers who only spent an hour online each day.

Beginning around 2009, smartphone use skyrocketed, which Twenge believes might be responsible for the 17% bump between 2009 and 2015 in the number of students sleeping 7 hours or less. Not only might teens be using their phones when they would otherwise be sleeping, the authors note, but previous research suggests the light wavelengths emitted by smartphones and tablets can interfere with the body's natural sleep-wake rhythm. The researchers reported their findings in the journal Sleep Medicine.

"Teens' sleep began to shorten just as the majority started using smartphones," said Twenge, author of iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy -- And Completely Unprepared for Adulthood. "It's a very suspicious pattern."

Students might compensate for that lack of sleep by dozing off during daytime hours, adds Krizan.

"Our body is going to try to meet its sleep needs, which means sleep is going to interfere or shove its nose in other spheres of our lives," he said. "Teens may catch up with naps on the weekend or they may start falling asleep at school."

For many, smartphones and tablets are an indispensable part of everyday life, so they key is moderation, Twenge stresses. Limiting usage to 2 hours a day should leave enough time for proper sleep, she says. And that's valuable advice for young and old alike.

Read more at Science Daily

Mountain glaciers shrinking across Western U.S.

This map shows the elevation change of Mount Rainier glaciers between 1970 and 2016. The earlier observations are from USGS maps, while the recent data use the satellite stereo imaging technique. Glacier surface elevations have dropped more than 40 meters (130 feet) in some places.

Until recently, glaciers in the United States have been measured in two ways: placing stakes in the snow, as federal scientists have done each year since 1957 at South Cascade Glacier in Washington state; or tracking glacier area using photographs from airplanes and satellites.

We now have a third, much more powerful tool. While he was a doctoral student in University of Washington's Department of Earth and Space Sciences, David Shean devised new ways to use high-resolution satellite images to track elevation changes for massive ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. Over the years he wondered: Why aren't we doing this for mountain glaciers in the United States, like the one visible from his department's office window?

He has now made that a reality. In 2012, he first asked for satellite time to turn digital eyes on glaciers in the continental U.S., and he has since collected enough data to analyze mass loss for Mount Rainier and almost all the glaciers in the lower 48 states. He will present results from these efforts Oct. 22 at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Seattle.

"I'm interested in the broad picture: What is the state of all of the glaciers, and how has that changed over the last 50 years? How has that changed over the last 10 years? And at this point, how are they changing every year?" said Shean, who is now a research associate with the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory.

The maps provide a twice-yearly tally of roughly 1,200 mountain glaciers in the lower 48 states, down to a resolution of about 1 foot. Most of those glaciers are in Washington state, with others clustered in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, and in California's Sierra Nevada.

To create the maps, a satellite camera roughly half the size of the Hubble Space Telescope must take two images of a glacier from slightly different angles. As the satellite passes overhead, moving at about 4.6 miles per second, it takes images a few minutes apart. Each pixel of the image covers 30 to 50 centimeters (about 1 foot) and a single image can be tens of miles across.

Shean's technique uses automated software that matches millions of small features, such as rocks or crevasses, in the two images. It then uses the difference in perspective to create a 3-D model of the surface.

The first such map of a Mount St. Helens glacier was obtained in 2012, and the first for Mount Rainier in 2014. The project has grown steadily since then to include more glaciers every year.

The results confirm stake measurements at South Cascade Glacier, showing significant loss over the past 60 years. Results at Mount Rainier also reflect the broader shrinking trends, with the lower-elevation glaciers being particularly hard hit. Shean estimates cumulative ice loss of about 0.7 cubic kilometers (900 million cubic yards) at Mount Rainier since 1970. Distributed evenly across all of Mount Rainier's glaciers, that's equivalent to removing a layer of ice about 25 feet (7 to 8 meters) thick.

"There are some big changes that have happened, as anyone who's been hiking on Mount Rainier in the last 45 years can attest to," Shean said. "For the first time we're able to very precisely quantify exactly how much snow and ice has been lost."

The glacier loss at Rainier is consistent with trends for glaciers across the U.S. and worldwide. Tracking the status of so many glaciers will allow scientists to further explore patterns in the changes over time, which will help pinpoint the causes -- from changes in temperature and precipitation to slope angle and elevation.

"The next step is to integrate our observations with glacier and climate models and say: Based on what we know now, where are these systems headed?" Shean said.

Those predictions could be used to better manage water supplies and flood risks.

Read more at Science Daily