Ancient ants leaving a modern trail

Map of historical land connectivity.

Past land connections, as well as current climate, are shown to be of primary importance in determining ant diversity patterns.

It is thought that ants evolved about 150 million years ago and have risen to dominance in the past 60 million years. They are now everywhere and while they are not always welcome on your kitchen counter, they are critical to ecosystems around the world for many roles, including seed dispersal and decomposition. There are a variety of factors that can impact diversity in geographically-clustered ant communities, but it can be difficult to decipher the most important biogeographic influences on these ant populations. Patricia Wepfer, Dr. Benoit Guénard (currently at the University of Hong Kong), and Prof. Evan Economo from the Biodiversity and Biocomplexity Unit at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) unravelled the web of biogeographic components to find the influences that most significantly affect ant communities. They recently published their results in the Journal of Biogeography.

"I was interested in how different these communities could be across Asia," Patricia Wepfer, first author and OIST Ph.D. student said. "We wanted to know how a community [of ants] is composed in different places and why it is composed in that way."

The team assembled a large dataset of ant species occurrence records for 159 areas in Asia ranging from the Ryukyu Islands to Taiwan and coastal regions of South Korea. From this data, they determined which ants existed where and what factors may be affecting the communities.

They then analysed whether the climate -- temperature, rainfall -- and/or space -- geographical distance, water barriers -- made more of a difference to the composition of ant communities. The researchers also looked more closely to see whether historical land connections significantly affect ant communities. During the Last Glacial Maximum in the Pleistocene Epoch, approximately 26,000 years ago, many areas and islands in Asia were connected. As the land moved, the ocean began to cover these areas and create separate land masses. Surprisingly, ant population configurations of today are very much influenced by these past land connections that existed in the Pleistocene.

"Interestingly, the past land connections during the Last Glacial Maximum are more important in explaining the existing ant community patterns, than the way land is configured now," Wepfer said. "This may be due to the fact that historical land connections existed for a much longer time than the connections that we have today and ants take a long time to distribute."

While historical land connections are the most surprising factor in determining the make-up of a geographically-clustered ant community, ecologists also have to consider current and recognized influences, such as the temperature. From the data, the team determined that the temperature played the largest role in the differentiation between ant communities. With the advent of climate change, this may have many implications on ant ecosystems, as well as the ecosystems they work to sustain.

"Temperature is the dominant factor and plays a major role in shaping ant communities," Wepfer said. "Climate change will likely change these ant communities."

It is well-known in ecology that temperature is of the utmost importance in shaping species distributions, but it is important to keep in mind the spatial influence upon ant communities.

"In order to understand why species are where they are, we need to think about the current climate and land connections between areas," Economo said. "But also what the connections between areas were during the Last Glacial Maximum, which is when the sea levels were very low."

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Names recommended for elements 115, 117 and 118

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) opened a public comment period Wednesday for the recommended names of elements 115, 117 and 118.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia (JINR) were credited late last year for discovering elements 115 and 118. LLNL, JINR, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Vanderbilt University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas were credited with the discovery of element 117.

Moscovium (Mc) is provisionally recommended for element 115 in recognition of the Moscow region and honoring the ancient Russian land that is home to JINR. Moscow is the capital of the region.

Tennessine (Ts) is proposed for element 117, recognizing the contribution of Tennessee research centers ORNL, Vanderbilt and the University of Tennessee to superheavy element research.

The provisional name for element 118 is Oganesson (Og) in recognition of the pioneering contributions of Yuri Oganessian to superheavy element research. Oganessian's vision and determination created this opportunity for the significant expansion of the periodic table and knowledge of superheavy nuclei.

The provisional names will undergo a statutory period for public review before the names and symbols can be finally approved by the IUPAC Council -- likely later this year.

"I'm proud of all of the hard work that this group has done over the years performing these experiments," said Dawn Shaughnessy," LLNL's principal investigator for the Heavy Element Group. "It's a huge accomplishment for the entire group that we are recognized for our efforts in accomplishing these highly difficult experiments and for the years of work it takes to successfully create a new chemical element."

LLNL teamed with JINR in 2004 to discover elements 113 and 115 (Japan was credited with the discovery of element 113). LLNL worked again with JINR in 2006 to discover element 118. The LLNL/JINR team then jointly worked with researchers from the Research Institute for Advanced Reactors (Dimitrovgrad), ORNL, Vanderbilt University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to discover element 117 in 2010.

This discovery brings the total to five new elements reported by the Dubna-Livermore team (114, 115, 116, 117 and 118, the heaviest element to date).

The new elements and nuclei will complete the seventh row of the periodic table, and provides evidence for the long sought "island of stability" for superheavy elements. Two members of the team, JINR and LLNL, were previously credited with the discovery of elements 114 (flerovium) and 116 (livermorium).

The concept of the "island of stability" was originally proposed in the 1960s. It predicts increased stability for superheavy nuclei at higher neutron and proton numbers. The new nuclei produced in this research exhibit substantially increased lifetimes consistent with approaching the island.

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Universe's first life might have been born on carbon planets

Our Earth consists of silicate rocks and an iron core with a thin veneer of water and life. But the first potentially habitable worlds to form might have been very different. New research suggests that planet formation in the early universe might have created carbon planets consisting of graphite, carbides, and diamond. Astronomers might find these diamond worlds by searching a rare class of stars.

"This work shows that even stars with a tiny fraction of the carbon in our solar system can host planets," says lead author and Harvard University graduate student Natalie Mashian.

"We have good reason to believe that alien life will be carbon-based, like life on Earth, so this also bodes well for the possibility of life in the early universe," she adds.

The primordial universe consisted mostly of hydrogen and helium, and lacked chemical elements like carbon and oxygen necessary for life as we know it. Only after the first stars exploded as supernovae and seeded the second generation did planet formation and life become possible.

Mashian and her PhD thesis advisor Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) examined a particular class of old stars known as carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars, or CEMP stars. These anemic stars contain only one hundred-thousandth as much iron as our Sun, meaning they formed before interstellar space had been widely seeded with heavy elements.

"These stars are fossils from the young universe," explains Loeb. "By studying them, we can look at how planets, and possibly life in the universe, got started."

Although lacking in iron and other heavy elements compared to our Sun, CEMP stars have more carbon than would be expected given their age. This relative abundance would influence planet formation as fluffy carbon dust grains clump together to form tar-black worlds.

From a distance, these carbon planets would be difficult to tell apart from more Earth-like worlds. Their masses and physical sizes would be similar. Astronomers would have to examine their atmospheres for signs of their true nature. Gases like carbon monoxide and methane would envelop these unusual worlds.

Read more at Science Daily

Epic Galactic 'Rainstorm' Feeds Monster Black Hole

It was always assumed that supermassive black holes consumed hot gas slow and steady -- but one black hole is about to binge-eat a massive cold gas dinner.

Supermassive black holes are the most massive objects in the universe and they are known to occupy the cores of most galaxies. They can "weigh in" at millions or even billions of times the mass of our sun, but it's not entirely clear how they came to be so huge.

But after staring deep in the core of the Abell 2597 galaxy cluster, around one billion light-years away, astronomers using the monster Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile had a surprise insight to the eating habits of one particular galaxy, wonderfully named "Abell 2597 Brightest Cluster Galaxy."

ALMA's key advantage is that it can detect the emissions emanating from some of the coldest molecular clouds in the universe. These clouds are key to the birth of stars and, in this case, possibly a key component of a supermassive black hole's diet. While observing this particular galaxy, ALMA detected cold and dense molecular clouds condense out of hot intergalactic gas in the galaxy cluster. Then, like an ultra-violent rain storm, the cold gas down-poured onto the black hole.

"This very, very hot gas can quickly cool, condense, and precipitate in much the same way that warm, humid air in Earth's atmosphere can spawn rain clouds and precipitation," said astronomer Grant Tremblay, of Yale University and lead author on a new paper to be published in the journal Nature on June 9. "The newly condensed clouds then rain in on the galaxy, fueling star formation and feeding its supermassive black hole.

"Although it has been a major theoretical prediction in recent years, this is one of the first unambiguous pieces of observational evidence for a chaotic, cold rain feeding a supermassive black hole," he added. "It's exciting to think we might actually be observing this galaxy-spanning rainstorm feeding a black hole whose mass is about 300 million times that of the sun."

The cosmic weather report, as illustrated in this artist's concept, calls for condensing clouds of cold molecular gas around the Abell 2597 Brightest Cluster Galaxy.

Tremblay's team have detected three separate clumps of material, each with a mass of around a million solar masses, measuring tens of light-years across. They are currently speeding toward the black hole at nearly a million kilometers per hour. These particular clouds could only be detected as they are passing in front of the stars in the core of the galaxies, so ALMA was able to gauge their mass and speed by studying the clouds' shadows.

Follow-up observations by the NSF's Very Long Baseline Array have shown that these clouds are very close to the black hole at a distance of only 300 light-years. If these clouds were a hurricane, it would be about to make landfall.

Read more at Discovery News

Mammals Thrived Long Before Dinos Died

The prevailing theory that mammals only flourished after an asteroid strike wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago is doubly wrong, according to a study published Wednesday.

Our warm-blooded predecessors thrived and spread over millions of years even as Tyrannosaurus and other flesh-ripping monsters lorded over the planet, researchers reported.

Moreover, these mammals took a big hit when the asteroid slammed into Earth, creating a hemispheric firestorm followed by a prolonged, bone-chilling drop in global temperatures.

"The traditional view is that mammals were suppressed during the 'age of dinosaurs'," and thus held in check, said co-author Elis Newham, a doctoral student in evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago.

"However, our findings were that therian mammals -- the ancestors of most modern mammals -- were already diversifying considerably before the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event," also known as the K-Pg boundary.

The researchers pulled together dozens of studies that challenged and chipped away at the old theory.

But key to the new conclusion, they said, was teeth.

An analysis of hundreds of molars from mammals alive during the 20 million years before the K-Pg boundary revealed a huge variety of shapes -- a telltale sign of varied diets and species diversity.

The scientists were surprised to find a sharp decline in the number of mammals after the asteroid crash.

"I didn't expect to see any sort of drop," said lead author David Grossnickle, also of the University of Chicago.

"It didn't match the traditional view that after the extinction, mammals hit the ground running."

Once again, teeth told a story, this time revealing which mammals made it across the K-Pg boundary, and which did not.

Those with molars indicating a specialised diet -- only bugs or only plants, for example -- were less likely to weather the disaster than those with all-purpose chompers ready to eat whatever was available.

The findings, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, may hold a lesson for today's world, Grossnickle said.

Scientists say Earth is experiencing another mass extinction event, driven mainly by climate change -- only the sixth in the last half billion years, he pointed out.

"The types of survivors that made it 66 million years ago, mostly generalists, might be indicative of what will survive in the next hundred years, or the next thousand," Grossnickle said in a statement.

Read more at Discovery News

700,000-Year-Old Tiny Humans Found at Hobbit Homeland

Reconstruction of Homo floresiensis by Atelier Elisabeth Daynes.

Remains of at least three tiny humans dating to 700,000 years ago have been found on the Indonesian island of Flores, which was the homeland of Homo floresiensis, aka "Hobbit Humans," according to two new papers in the journal Nature.

The newly found early humans, represented by a partial right jaw and some isolated teeth, predate the Hobbits by more than half a million years, the papers report. Their presence on the island suggests that the small individuals were part of a population that later gave rise to the Hobbits, whose fossils were previously discovered at Flores' Liang Bua cave.

"We cannot be sure about their actual body size because we only have the mandible and teeth," Yousuke Kaifu, co-author of the first paper, told Discovery News, "but their sizes suggest that these 700,000-year-old hominins (early members of the genus Homo) were as small as Homo floresiensis from Liang Bua."

The Hobbits were about 3.3 feet tall.

Partial right jaw excavated on the island of Flores, Indonesia.

700,000-year-old tooth from a member of the genus Homo and excavated from the island of Flores, Indonesia.

Kaifu, an anthropologist at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Japan, along with lead author of the first paper Gerrit van den Bergh and their colleagues, analyzed the new remains. They were excavated from layers of sedimentary rock at a site called Mata Menge, located approximately 43.5 miles away from Liang Bua. The researchers believe that the fossils came from early Homo floresiensis and belonged to at least one adult and two children.

When the Hobbit remains were first found in 2003, many scientists were completely baffled by the population's diminutive size. Some even thought that the individuals were members of our species who were pathologically dwarfed or diseased.

Van den Bergh, however, said that the latest discovery "quashes once and for all any doubters that believe Homo floresiensis was merely a sick modern human."

The second paper, with research led by Adam Brumm of Griffith University and the University of Wollongong, describes the geology of Mata Menge and confirms that the Hobbit predecessors lived at least 700,000 years ago. It said that stone tools were also found at Flores and date to approximately 700,000 to 1 million years ago.

Taken together, all of the finds suggest that a population of small individuals lived perhaps continuously as a lineage on the island from about a million years ago to at least around 38,000–60,000 years ago. As for where they came from before settling on Flores, Kaifu suspects that "a large-bodied Homo erectus population got there and dwarfed on the island."

A model of the face of an adult female Homo erectus.

He added, "Rather than claiming that such extreme body and brain size dwarfism cannot occur (on a widespread scale), we now have accepted that that happened and can shift to the next question as to why that happened and on what mechanism."

Aida Gómez-Robles, a scientist at George Washington University specializing in human evolution, explained that one theory about the Hobbits says they shrunk in size by a process called island dwarfing. This refers to an extreme reduction in size due to the absence of predators and to resource scarcity that is typical of island ecosystems.

When the Hobbit remains were first found, the researchers also discovered evidence for a pygmy elephant, suggesting that a pachyderm also underwent island dwarfing at Flores.

Gómez-Robles told Discovery News that the two new papers are important because "they demonstrate that the origin of Homo floresiensis is very old, which confirms that this is a totally valid species with old evolutionary roots."

Read more at Discovery News

Computer simulations shed light on the Milky Way's missing red giants

New computer simulations from the Georgia Institute of Technology provide a conclusive test for a hypothesis of why the center of the Milky Way appears to be filled with young stars but has very few old ones. According to the theory, the remnants of older, red giant stars are still there -- they just aren't bright enough to be detected with telescopes.

The Georgia Tech simulations investigate the possibility that these red giants were dimmed after they were stripped of 10s of percent of their mass millions of years ago during repeated collisions with an accretion disk at the galactic center. The very existence of the young stars, seen in astronomical observations today, is an indication that such a gaseous accretion disk was present in the galactic center because the young stars are thought to have formed from it as recently as a few million years ago.

The study is published in the June edition of The Astrophysical Journal. It is the first to run computer simulations on the theory, which was introduced in 2014.

Astrophysicists in Georgia Tech's College of Sciences created models of red giants similar to those that are supposedly missing from the galactic center -- stars that are more than a billion years old and 10s of times larger in size than the Sun. They put them through a computerized version of a wind tunnel to simulate collisions with the gaseous disk that once occupied much of the space within .5 parsecs of the galactic center. They varied orbital velocities and the disk's density to find the conditions required to cause significant damage to the red giant stars.

"Red giants could have lost a significant portion of their mass only if the disk was very massive and dense," said Tamara Bogdanovic, the Georgia Tech assistant professor who co-led the study. "So dense, that gravity would have already fragmented the disk on its own, helping to form massive clumps that became the building blocks of a new generation of stars."

The simulations suggest that each of the red giant stars orbited its way into and through the disk as many as dozens of times, sometimes taking as long as days to weeks to complete a single pass-through. Mass was stripped away with each collision as the star blistered the fragmenting disk's surface.

According to former Georgia Tech undergraduate student Thomas Forrest Kieffer, the first author on the paper, it's a process that would have taken place 4 to 8 million years ago, which is the same age as the young stars seen in the center of the Milky Way today.

"The only way for this scenario to take place within that relatively short time frame," Kieffer said, "was if, back then, the disk that fragmented had a much larger mass than all the young stars that eventually formed from it -- at least 100 to 1,000 times more mass."

The impacts also likely lowered the kinetic energy of the red giant stars by at least 20 to 30 percent, shrinking their orbits and pulling them closer to the Milky Way's black hole. At the same time, the collisions may have torqued the surface and spun up the red giants, which are otherwise known to rotate relatively slowly in isolation.

Read more at Science Daily

Origin of extraordinary supernovae

Using data obtained through the Optical and Infrared Synergetic Telescopes for Education and Research (OISTER) in Japan, Masayuki Yamanaka, a Taro Hirao Foundation Researcher at Konan University, demonstrated that the origin of extraordinary supernovae can be explained by the 'accretion scenario.' The researchers discovered an anomalously strong infrared emission from 'the extraordinary supernova' SN 2012dn, which has never been observed in other Type Ia supernovae to date. Through detailed analysis, the researchers concluded that the infrared emission comes from the material ejected from the progenitor system.

Astronomers using the OISTER telescope consortium in Japan have uncovered new information about the origin of 'extraordinary supernovae' explosions, which are brighter than normal ones. This new information will help improve measurements of the Universe's expansion, and of the Dark Energy which controls the final fate of the cosmos.

Type Ia ("One-A") supernovae are a type of exploding star which are used as references when studying the Universe. What makes these supernovae useful is that the physics governing their evolution ensures that they all change from a stable state to an explosion at almost exactly the same point in their evolution. This means that the brightness of a Type Ia supernova explosion is consistent from one star to the next. By using the known brightness of these supernovae, astronomers can use them to calibrate observations. For example, in the late 1990's, the accelerating expansion of the Universe was discovered by using the properties of Type Ia supernovae. Drs. Perlmutter, Riess, and Schmidt were awarded the Novel Prize in Physics in 2011 for this work.

But it turns out there's a problem with this method. In addition to normal Type Ia supernovae, astronomers have discovered 'extraordinary supernovae' which are much brighter than they should be. These 'extraordinary supernovae' may be contaminating the samples used for cosmological research, thereby skewing the calibration. To correctly measure the expansion of the Universe and understand the Dark Energy driving the expansion, it is important to determine the origins of both typical supernovae and 'extraordinary supernovae' so that the latter can be more accurately excluded from the sample.

Despite three decades of debate, astronomers still haven't agreed on the origin of these supernovae. There are two popular scenarios, 'accretion' or 'merger', as the path to the supernova explosion. Both scenarios consider a 'binary system,' i.e., two stars orbiting around each other. The 'accretion' scenario uses binary systems composed of one white dwarf and one normal star, and the 'merger' scenario uses binary systems formed by two white dwarfs.

When the 'extraordinary supernovae' candidate SN 2012dn was spotted, Masayuki Yamanaka, a Taro Hirao Foundation Researcher at Konan University, and his colleagues observed it using 11 telescopes in Japan through OISTER (Optical and Infrared Synergetic Telescopes for Education and Research). The observations continued until 150 days after the supernova was first observed. As a result of this observing campaign, they discovered an anomalously strong infrared emission for this object which cannot be seen in typical supernovae. The groups performed detailed analysis of the infrared emission, and concluded that material ejected recently from the progenitor system is responsible for this emission.

Read more at Science Daily

Great Pyramid of Giza Gets High-Tech Scan

For the past 23 years researchers have been trying to unlock the mysteries of the Great Pyramid in Giza using tomb-raiding robots. Now scientists have turned to subatomic particles known as muons to scan the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum. The aim is to detect voids that might point to hidden chambers and tunnels.

The full scan of the iconic monument is one of several ambitious steps of ScanPyramids, a project carried out by a team from Cairo University's Faculty of Engineering and the Paris-based non-profit organization Heritage, Innovation and Preservation (Hip Institute) under the authority of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.

In April the team was able to reveal for the first time the internal structure of the Bent pyramid at Dahshur, using cosmic particles.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the ScanPyramids team detailed three non-invasive techniques employed at Giza. The results of the survey will be shared with several committees representing different scientific disciplines. One of them will gather a number of Egyptologists led by the former minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass.

"Our team is trying to get evidence from the field that some voids exists. Then it will be the role of historians, Egyptologists, architects, to tell why those voids are there," Mehdi Tayoubi, co-director of the ScanPyramids mission, told Discovery News.

Built for the pharaoh Cheops, also known as Khufu, the Great Pyramid is the last remaining wonder of the ancient world.

The monument is the largest of a family of three pyramids on the Giza plateau, on the outskirts of Cairo, and has long been rumored to have hidden passageways leading to secret chambers.

Archaeologists have long puzzled over the purpose of four narrow shafts deep inside the pyramid since they were first discovered in 1872.

Two shafts extend from the upper or "King's Chamber" exit into open air. But the lower two, one on the south side and one on the north side in the so-called "Queen's Chamber" disappear within the structures, deepening the pyramid mystery.

Widely believed to be ritual passageways for the dead pharaoh's soul to reach the afterlife, these 8-inch-square shafts remained unexplored until 1993, when German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink sent a robot through the southern shaft.

After a steady climb from the heart of the pyramid, the robot came to a stop in front of a mysterious limestone slab adorned with two copper pins.

In 2002, Hawass explored the southern shaft on live television. As the world held its breath, a robot pushed a camera through a hole drilled in the copper pinned door — only to reveal what appeared to be another door.

The following day, Hawass sent the robot through the northern shaft.

After crawling for 213 feet and navigating several sharp bends, the robot came to an abrupt halt in front of another limestone slab.

As with the Gantenbrink door, the stone was adorned with two copper pins.

In the attempt to finally solve the mystery, Hawass established in 2011 the Djedi project, a joint international-Egyptian mission (Leeds University, Dassault Systèmes). The project began with the exploration of the southern shaft, which ends at the so called "Gantenbrink's door."

The robot was able to climb inside the walls of the shaft while carrying a bendy camera, small enough to fit through a small hole in a stone door at the end of the tunnel.

This gave researchers a clear view into the chamber beyond. It was at that time that the micro snake camera sent back images of 4,500-year-old markings believed to be engineering numbers.

The project was then halted following the Egypt revolution.

"I dedicated my whole life to study the secrets of the Great Pyramid. My goal is to finally find out what's behind these secret doors," Zahi Hawass told Discovery News in a past interview.

He will now have another chance with the ScanPyramids's innovative and non destructive technologies.

Tayoubi explained to Discovery News that the first of the three employed techniques relies on muons. These cosmic particles permanently and naturally rain on Earth and are able to penetrate any material very deeply.

Overall, 80 emulsion films made by Nagoya University, Japan, have been placed inside the Great Pyramid at different places, in the Queen's chamber, Queen'schamber niche, and lower chamber.

"They will be exposed to the muons' natural flow for 40 days," Tayoubi said.

The films will then be analyzed to generate muon radiographies images, potentially revealing hidden chambers in the pyramid.

"In case a void is detected, the images generated from the emulsion film analysis show a contrast difference," Tayoubi said.

"It is a very accurate but very long process," he added.

Read more at Discovery News

Bones From 6,000-Year-Old Massacre Found in France

Archaeologists said Tuesday they had discovered the remains of victims from a 6,000-year-old massacre in Alsace in eastern France that was likely carried out by "furious ritualized warriors".

The corpses of 10 people were found outside Strasbourg in one of 300 ancient "silos" used to store grain and other food, a team from France's National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) told reporters.

The Neolithic group appeared to have died violent deaths, with multiple injuries to their legs, hands and skulls.

 The way in which the bodies were piled on top of each other suggested they had been killed together and dumped in the silo.

"They were very brutally executed and received violent blows, almost certainly from a stone axe," said Philippe Lefranc, an Inrap specialist on the period.




 The skeletons of five adults and one adolescent were found, as well as four arms from different individuals.

The arms were likely "war trophies" like those found at a nearby burial site of Bergheim in 2012, said Lefranc.

He said the mutilations indicated a society of "furious ritualised warriors", while the silos were stored within a defence wall that pointed towards "a troubled time, a period of insecurity."

Read more at Discovery News