Lamprey Eels Fall From Sky Over Alaska

Several foot-long lampreys have apparently fallen out the sky recently in Fairbanks, Alaska. They’ve been found in a shopping center parking lot and on lawns, and residents are unnerved by the creepy, toothed eel-like fish.

According to a story in the Alaska News-Miner, “Adult Arctic lampreys have fallen from the sky four times this week in Fairbanks, including at the Value Village parking lot, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. That’s unusual for a fish that’s seldom seen in the water up here.”

While some news outlets had fun sensationalizing the story (a “New York” magazine headline blared that “Horrifying Fish Monsters Are Falling from the Sky” and another noted that “‘Vampire Fish’ Fall From the Sky in Alaska”) it’s a weird enough story on its own.

The phenomenon of small animals (such as worms, fish, or frogs) falling mysteriously from the sky has been reported for centuries. Waterspouts or tornadoes crossing over a lake or river can pick up debris, including lightweight aquatic animals, and carry them for miles before raining them down on a puzzled populace. There were no reported tornadoes or waterspouts in Fairbanks, however.

It could be a prank, but the most likely explanation for the falling lampreys was offered by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game: they’re dropped from the air by seagulls. Seagulls can often be seen feeding on lampreys and small fish in and over the water, but they don’t always eat their prey on the spot. Sometimes they fly away with their marine lunch in their beaks, and on occasion the birds will accidentally drop their meal before it’s consumed.

In those cases a lamprey may be found some distance from its aquatic home, and unless a person happens to be watching a seagull as the bird drops its meal, a lamprey would appear to fall from the sky (or be found on a sidewalk) without any apparent origin.

A grand total of four lampreys have been found over the past week—hardly a deluge—and the fact that dead lampreys are rarely seen up close by the general public (being difficult to catch and not sold commercially in the area) may have added to the unnerving effect.

Read more at Discovery News

Are Bumblebees Getting Alzheimer's?

It’s no secret that bees are in crisis right now -- a recent 40 percent decline in bee populations has been blamed on harmful pesticides and mite infestations, but researchers have now identified yet another potential threat to the pollinators: aluminum.

According to a new joint study from Keele University and the University of Sussix, bumblebees are now suffering from troubling amounts of aluminum contamination, which could be the cause of debilitating cognitive dysfunction.

“Aluminum is a known neurotoxin affecting behavior in animal models of aluminum intoxication. Bees, of course, rely heavily on cognitive function in their everyday behavior and these data raise the intriguing specter that aluminum-induced cognitive dysfunction may play a role in their population decline: are we looking at bees with Alzheimer’s disease?” said Keele’s Chris Exley in a press release.

Exely and his colleague Dave Goulson tested the aluminum levels of pupae from bumblebee colonies. Whereas an aluminum level of 3ppm would be harmful to human brain tissue, some pupae were found to have aluminum levels as high as 200ppm.

The excess aluminum has a variety of origins, according to Exely and Goulson. “Human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels resulting in ‘acid rain,’ intensive agriculture producing acid sulphate soils and the mining of aluminum ores to make aluminum metal and salts have all contributed to the burgeoning biological availability of this non-essential metal,” they wrote.

Previous research has already linked high levels of aluminum exposure to the death of fish in acid lakes and low crop productivity in acidified soils.

From Discovery News

Once-Abundant Bird Being Eaten to Extinction

A bird that was once one of the most abundant in Europe and Asia is being hunted to near extinction because of Chinese eating habits, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The population of the yellow-breasted bunting has plunged by 90 percent since 1980, all but disappearing from eastern Europe, Japan and large parts of Russia, said the study, published in the Conservation Biology journal.

Following initial population declines, China in 1997 banned the hunting of the species, known in the country as the “rice bird.”

However, millions of these birds, along with other songbirds, were still being killed for food and sold on the black market as late as 2013, said the study.

It said consumption of these birds has increased as a result of economic growth and prosperity in East Asia, with an estimate in 2001 claiming one million buntings were consumed in China’s southern Guangdong province alone.

The birds breed north of the Himalayas and spend their winters in warmer southeast Asia, passing through eastern China where they have been hunted for more than 2,000 years, according to the conservation group BirdLife International.

At their wintering grounds, they gather in huge flocks at night-time roosts, making them easy prey for trappers using nets, the group said.

The songbird, which nests on the ground in open scrubs, is distinctive for its yellow underparts.

The paper in Conservation Biology drew parallels between the migratory bird and the North American passenger pigeon, which became extinct in 1914 due to industrial-scale hunting.

“The magnitude and speed of the decline is unprecedented among birds distributed over such a large area, with the exception of the passenger pigeon,” the paper’s lead author, Johannes Kamp from the  University of Munster, said in a statement released by BirdLife International.

Read more at Discovery News

Tracking Titanosaurs in Argentina

Dinosaurs aren't just tracked down in movies like "Jurassic World." Scientists in Argentina are tracking titanosaurs -- the largest sauropod dinosaurs and among the last to walk the Earth.

Researchers uncovered at least one footprint so clear it can be matched for the first time to skeletal remains of a new species of titanosaur that's found in the same region of Argentina.

The hundreds of new titanosaur tracks found at the Agua del Choique site, in the Mendoza Province, are revealing secrets about how titanosaurs walked. The tracks also provide clues about other dinos, which strolled along muddy paths near the shores of a small, new sea that grew to become the Atlantic Ocean.

The most telling titanosaur track discovered at the site belonged to an animal estimated to have been a mid-sized titanosaur: some 7 1/2 feet (2.29 meters) high at the hip and 40 to 45 feet (12 to 14 meters) long. The largest-known titanosaurs, Argentinosaurus, are thought to have ranged from 100 to 130 feet (30-40 meters) long and up to 24 feet (7.3 meters) high.

“Most sauropod tracks simply look like post holes,” said paleontologist Spencer Lucas, curator at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque who was not involved in the discovery. “Tracks in which you can see digit imprints are rather rare, so (it's) a remarkable tracksite for sauropod tracks.”

“Although other studies have documented impressions of digits or claws in titanosaurs, they are poorly defined” and don't reveal much useful information that can be compared to fossil bones, explained Bernardo Javier González Riga of Argentina's National University of Cuyo.

Riga and his colleagues are publishing their discovery of the matching track and fossil in the August 2015 issue of the Journal of South American Earth Sciences.

The fossil bones the remarkable track matched were found just 150 miles (250 kilometers) away, in the same red rocks.

“Anatomically, the record of (intact) and complete (hind feet) is really scarce in titanosaurs,” Riga reported. In fact, of the 65 species of titanosaurs known worldwide, only three have intact fossils of their feet, he writes.

That's not to say that the bones belonged to the same individual that made the tracks -- they're not only far apart in space, but also in time. But they do belong to a similar titanosaur.

“Not all tracks can be matched to specific skeletons because foot structures do not vary that much in some dinosaur groups,” Lucas said. “Relatively few dinosaur tracks have been matched with certainty to a dinosaur (type). Sometimes, the bones from one rock formation are claimed to represent the trackmaker of tracks in the same formation, but even this is not often a certain link.”

Among the other things revealed by the trackways are just how fast some of the titanosaurs walked across the muddy ground they encountered in the late Cretaceous.

Read more at Discocvery News

America's First 'Casino' Found in Utah Cave

Long before Las Vegas, people were apparently gambling in what might be America’s first casino — a cave on the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake.

Archaeologists exploring the site, known simply as Cave 1, have unearthed hundreds of carved sticks, hoops, dice and darts dating back to about 700 years ago. They believe there could be up to 10,000 gambling pieces in the cave.

According to John “Jack” Ives, an archaeologist at the University of Alberta who has been researching the cave for years, at least two or three forms of dice games were played.

Other entertainments included the hoop and dart game, consisting in throwing a dart through a hoop to score different points, and a stick game, in which a marked stick was hidden among others.

“Also, we found bone hand game pieces. Contestants had to guess in which hand a marked bone object had been concealed,” Ives told Discovery News.

The cave was used as a social space to an obscure culture known as the Promontory that lived along the shores of the Great Salt Lake in the 13th century.

“The wide distribution and variety of games in the cave affirm that we are looking at a migrating Apachean population,” Ives said.

He believes the Promontory people migrated into the area after a long journey from their native land in the Canadian Subarctic.

The cave was first excavated in the 1930s by Julian Steward from the University of Utah, but not until recently its importance was fully understood.

Ives and colleagues at Brigham Young University are now studying the gambling artifacts in relation with other objects unearthed in the cave in previous excavations. These included pilies of butchered bison, elk bones and hundreds of animal-skin moccasins ranging from a small child’s size to an adult’s.

“Because there are so many moccasins in the caves, and because this became an important game for Apache and Navajo people, it possible the moccasin game was played in Cave 1,” Ives said.

The game consisted of guessing where an object was concealed in one of four or eight moccasins.

The cave was intensively occupied between 1240 and 1290 A.D., a time when the Promontory people was thriving and other cultures, like the nearby Fremont, were struggling to survive.

“In North America, the 13th century saw perhaps unprecedented turmoil, brought about by complex environmental and social factors, one of them apparently being a severe drought in the last quarter of the 13th century,” Ives told Westerndigs.org.

“But the Promontory Culture cave inhabitants were well clothed and well fed. As nearly as we can tell, surrounding Fremont populations were not doing well and were likely to be disintegrating,” he added.

Ives and colleagues believe gaming was in Cave 1 is was a luxury for people who had time and resources to spend for such a form of entertainment.

Most of the game pieces unearthed are dice, made from split pieces of cane, with cut or burned lines on one side and the other side plain.

The majority were found near the entrance of the cave around a large central hearth. According to Ives, they were typically played by women for low stakes.

“At Promontory women did a great deal of work. It does seem likely that the fun and excitement of games played could break up the monotony of that work,” he said.

But gambling wasn’t just a matter of recreational, low stakes play by the fire. In certain cases, it involved higher stakes and physical activity between men of different social groups.

Read more at Discovery News

Rome Colosseum Unveils Wild Beasts Trapdoor

It was the last thing they would see: a trapdoor opening in the floor of the Colosseum to unleash a snarling lion or bear, which sprang for the jugular as the crowds roared.

Where prisoners sentenced to a grisly death in ancient Rome’s most barbaric playground once quaked in their sandals, today tourists can explore the cage that carried their killers thanks to a reconstruction in the ancient arena.

The seven-meter high (23-foot) wooden machine, powered by slaves deep in the stadium’s belly, could lift a load weighing 300 kilograms and brought wolves, boars and even antelopes to do battle with the empire’s fiercest gladiators.

“This unique project began with a meeting with the (American) director Gary Glassman” in 2013, the site’s director Rossella Rea said.

Glassman wanted to recreate one of the arena’s 28 lifts for a documentary entitled “Colosseum, Roman Death Trap,” and Rea persuaded him to use original materials and methods to reconstruct one which would remain there for tourists.

Now visitors to the passageways under the 2,000-year-old monument can see where eight slaves straining to rotate a vast windlass would, through a system of lead weights and pulleys, slowly winch the cage to the surface and open the trapdoor.

Up to 80,000 spectators at a time would throng to the Colosseum to see greats such as Carpophores — who reportedly defeated a bear, lion, leopard and rhinoceros in one battle — or cheer on sea battles held in the flooded arena.

- ‘Roman Genius’ -

Rome’s rulers “had to enthral them, for the good of the empire,” said Francesco Prosperetti, superintendent for Rome’s Archaeological Heritage, adding that some 120 days of festivities were put on a year to keep the plebeians happy.

The idea was keep the baying audience on its toes: sometimes the trapdoor in the sand would creak open to reveal a surprise, from bare-breasted female gladiators to elephants, or sometimes even common garden chickens.

Building the cage, which measures 180 by 140 centimeters (71 by 55 inches), took 15 months and cost the production company some 200,000 euros ($223,000).

Read more at Discovery News

How the Brain Remembers Colors

When you bring home the wrong color of paint from the hardware store, it may not be your foggy memory at fault. A new study finds that while the human brain can distinguish between millions of colors, it has difficulty remembering specific shades.

For example, most people can easily tell the difference between azure, navy and ultramarine, but when it comes to remembering these shades, people tend to label them all as blue, the study found. This tendency to lump colors together could explain why it’s so hard to match the color of house paint based on memory alone, the researchers said.

Many cultures have the same color words or categories, said Jonathan Flombaum, a cognitive psychologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “But at the same time, there’s a lot of debate around the role those categories play in the perception of color,” he said.

In the study, Flombaum and his colleagues conducted four experiments on four different groups of people. In the first experiment, they asked people to look at a color wheel with 180 different hues, and asked them to find the best name for each color. The exercise was designed to find the perceived boundaries between colors, the researchers said. In a second experiment, the scientists showed different people the same colors, but this time they asked them to find the “best example” of a particular color.

For a third experiment, the researchers showed participants colored squares, and asked them to select the best match on the color wheel. In a fourth experiment, another group of participants completed the same task, but there was a delay of 90 milliseconds between when each color square was displayed and when they were asked to select the best match on the color wheel.

The results revealed that categories are indeed important in how people identify and remember colors. The participants who were asked to name the colors reliably saw five hues: blue, yellow, pink, purple and green. Most of the colors were given one name, butambiguous colors got two labels, such as blue and green. “Where that fuzzy naming happened, those are the boundaries” between colors, Flombaum told Live Science. In addition, people tended to choose the same shades as the best example of each color.

But what was really striking was how the people in the memory experiment remembered the colors they saw, the scientists said.

The researchers expected that the participants’ responses for what colors they had seen would reflect a bell curve centered on the correct color. But instead, they found that the distribution of responses was skewed toward the “best example” of the color they had seen, not the true color.

Read more at Discovery News

Solar Sail Spacecraft Back From the Dead

Ground control teams hope to get confirmation early Monday that an experimental spacecraft successfully deployed its solar sail, a key milestone to prepare for an operational mission next year.

Engineers working on the privately funded LightSail project wrestled with a computer software glitch and a troubled battery before the tiny spacecraft’s motor began unfurling an extremely thin 340-square-foot sail on Sunday afternoon.

The Planetary Society, a California-based non-profit space advocacy group, is keen to demonstrate an alternative space propulsion system known as solar sailing. The technology uses the pressure of photons of sunlight bouncing off a very thin film sail to generate forward motion, similar to how a boat’s sail can harness the wind.

LightSail-A hitched a ride into orbit on May 20 aboard an Atlas 5 rocket that carried the military’s X-37B miniature robotic shuttle.

Two days after launch, LightSail, which is about the size of a loaf of bread, fell silent, the victim of a computer software glitch. After more than a week, a stray cosmic ray hit rebooted LightSail’s computer and engineers proceeded with deployment of the spaceraft’s solar panel.

Then another problem, believed to be with the battery, halted operations on Wednesday, before engineers could deploy the spacecraft’s sails, the primary goal of the mission.

After three days of silence,  LightSail transmitted data on Saturday showing its batteries were changing for the first time since solar panel deployment.

“LightSail is back in business,” Planetary Society wrote on its website.

With battery levels appearing to continue to increase, project managers proceeded with the sail deployment at 3:47 p.m. EDT Sunday as the spacecraft flew off the coast of Baja California, Mexico.

Read more at Discovery News

Unlocking nanofibers' potential

Nanofibers -- polymer filaments only a couple of hundred nanometers in diameter -- have a huge range of potential applications, from solar cells to water filtration to fuel cells. But so far, their high cost of manufacture has relegated them to just a few niche industries.

In the latest issue of the journal Nanotechnology, MIT researchers describe a new technique for producing nanofibers that increases the rate of production fourfold while reducing energy consumption by more than 90 percent, holding out the prospect of cheap, efficient nanofiber production.

"We have demonstrated a systematic way to produce nanofibers through electrospinning that surpasses the state of the art," says Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, a principal research scientist in MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratories, who led the new work. "But the way that it's done opens a very interesting possibility. Our group and many other groups are working to push 3-D printing further, to make it possible to print components that transduce, that actuate, that exchange energy between different domains, like solar to electrical or mechanical. We have something that naturally fits into that picture. We have an array of emitters that can be thought of as a dot-matrix printer, where you would be able to individually control each emitter to print deposits of nanofibers."

Tangled tale

Nanofibers are useful for any application that benefits from a high ratio of surface area to volume -- solar cells, for instance, which try to maximize exposure to sunlight, or fuel cell electrodes, which catalyze reactions at their surfaces. Nanofibers can also yield materials that are permeable only at very small scales, like water filters, or that are remarkably tough for their weight, like body armor.

The standard technique for manufacturing nanofibers is called electrospinning, and it comes in two varieties. In the first, a polymer solution is pumped through a small nozzle, and then a strong electric field stretches it out. The process is slow, however, and the number of nozzles per unit area is limited by the size of the pump hydraulics.

The other approach is to apply a voltage between a rotating drum covered by metal cones and a collector electrode. The cones are dipped in a polymer solution, and the electric field causes the solution to travel to the top of the cones, where it's emitted toward the electrode as a fiber. That approach is erratic, however, and produces fibers of uneven lengths; it also requires voltages as high as 100,000 volts.

Thinking small

Velásquez-García and his co-authors -- Philip Ponce de Leon, a former master's student in mechanical engineering; Frances Hill, a former postdoc in Velásquez-García's group who's now at KLA-Tencor; and Eric Heubel, a current postdoc -- adapt the second approach, but on a much smaller scale, using techniques common in the manufacture of microelectromechanical systems to produce dense arrays of tiny emitters. The emitters' small size reduces the voltage necessary to drive them and allows more of them to be packed together, increasing production rate.

At the same time, a nubbly texture etched into the emitters' sides regulates the rate at which fluid flows toward their tips, yielding uniform fibers even at high manufacturing rates. "We did all kinds of experiments, and all of them show that the emission is uniform," Velásquez-García says.

To build their emitters, Velásquez-García and his colleagues use a technique called deep reactive-ion etching. On either face of a silicon wafer, they etch dense arrays of tiny rectangular columns -- tens of micrometers across -- which will regulate the flow of fluid up the sides of the emitters. Then they cut sawtooth patterns out of the wafer. The sawteeth are mounted vertically, and their bases are immersed in a solution of deionized water, ethanol, and a dissolved polymer.

Read more at Science Daily

Researchers design the most precise quantum thermometer to date

Researchers from the UAB and the University of Nottingham, in an article published in Physical Review Letters, have fixed the limits of thermometry, i.e., they have established the smallest possible fluctuation in temperature which can be measured. The researchers have studied the sensitivity of thermometers created with a handful of atoms, small enough to be capable of showing typical quantum-style behaviours.

The researchers characterized these types of probes in detail, devices which could provide an estimation of the temperature with a never before seen precision. To do so, they combined thermodynamic tools with quantum metrology, which deals with ultra-precise measures in quantum systems.

The physicists searched to find the maximum precision which could be achieved in a real situation, in which measuring time could be very brief given unavoidable experimental limitations. In the research, they also observed that these thermometers could maintain a constant sensitivity in a wide range of temperatures by sacrificing some of their precision.

For the authors of the research, "finding a nanothermometer sensitive enough at this scale is a great step forward in the field of nanotechnology, with applications in biology, chemistry, physics and even in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases."

From Science Daily