Palaeontologist discovers new species of 200 million-year-old 'British' marine reptile

Cast of a Mesozoic Ichthyosaur

A new type of ichthyosaur, an extinct marine reptile alive at the same time as the dinosaurs, has been identified by a Manchester palaeontologist from a fossil found in an old quarry in Nottinghamshire.

Similar-shaped to dolphins and sharks, ichthyosaurs -- often misidentified as 'swimming dinosaurs' -- swam the seas of Earth for millions of years during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The Nottinghamshire fossil is from the earliest part of the Jurassic Period -- 200 million years ago -- and only a handful of ichthyosaur species are known from this period, making the discovery very significant. It is also the first time a species of this geological age has been found outside of Dorset and Somerset.

Dean Lomax, a Palaeontologist and Honorary Scientist at The University of Manchester, examined the specimen after seeing it on a visit to Leicester's New Walk Museum, which acquired the fossil in 1951, and spotted some unusual features. The specimen is relatively complete, consisting of a partial skeleton including a skull, pectoral bones, limbs, pelvis bones, ribs and vertebrae. However, the bones are disorderly -- it appears that the carcass 'nosedived' into the seabed before it became fossilised, which may have restricted previous study.

"When I first saw this specimen, I knew it was unusual," said Dean. "It displays features in the bones -- especially in the coracoid (part of the pectoral girdle) -- that I had not seen before in Jurassic ichthyosaurs anywhere in the world. The specimen had never been published, so this rather unusual individual had been awaiting detailed examination."

Dr Mark Evans, Palaeontologist and Curator of Natural Sciences at New Walk Museum, said: "Parts of the skeleton had previously been on long-term loan to ichthyosaur specialist and former museum curator Dr Robert Appleby, and had only returned to the museum in 2004 after he sadly passed away. He was clearly intrigued by the specimen, and although he worked on it for many years, he had identified it as a previously known species but never published his findings."

Dean has named the new species Wahlisaurus massarae in honour of two palaeontologists (Professor Judy Massare and Bill Wahl) who have contributed significantly to the study of ichthyosaurs, and who first introduced Dean to studying them.

"Both Judy and Bill have been tremendous mentors for me. They have significantly contributed to palaeontology, especially the study of ichthyosaurs, and I cannot think of a better way to remember them by naming this new ichthyosaur in their honour. Their names will be set in stone forever, pun intended!"

Read more at Science Daily

Mammal Dads Matter More Than Previously Thought

When a mammal dad provides fatherly care, such as feeding hungry young and toting sons and daughters, he usually gets more matings with mom as well as larger litters, finds an extensive new study.

This means that fatherly care goes hand in hand with the reproductive success of mothers, according to the research, which is published in the journal Nature Communications.

While the study doesn't name the top dads among mammals, co-author Isabella Capellini offered some possibilities.

"Anecdotally we can say that in wolves, foxes and other dog-like species, males provide a substantial amount of care, such as providing food; while in New World monkeys, like marmosets and tamarinds, males carry their offspring for long periods of time even when the young become very heavy," said Capellini, a senior lecturer in vertebrate zoology at the University of Hull.

Capellini and co-author Hannah West, also from the University of Hull, analyzed fatherly care -- or lack thereof -- among 529 mammal species. Only 10 percent of all mammals have males that either directly or indirectly help to care for their little ones, leading to the deadbeat dad reputation of the rest.

This is often not the case for non-mammals.

"In other animals, such as most birds, males contribute substantially in raising the offspring," Capellini said. "In some frogs and fish, only one parent provides care, with fish having several species where only the father cares for eggs and hatched offspring."

For mammals, it appears that there are significant drawbacks associated with being a caring father. These can include missed mating opportunities with other females, greater risk of predation, loss of precious time and energy and more, the researchers note.

The benefits of being what we would consider to be a good dad, on the other hand, include a higher probability of offspring survival and less running around to find a mate. The doting dads in the study engaged in behaviors such as carrying their young, offering food to moms and babies, huddling with their family and grooming them.

As for why some mammal dads are more caring than others, the researchers believe that such behavior is likely to evolve when males gain a greater certainty of paternity or when future mating opportunities are scarce.

The researchers suspect that offspring of mammal species where both parents provide care grow up much faster.

"For example," Capellini said, "heavier pups among wolves and dogs are more likely to survive winter than lighter siblings, and the resources provided by the father should allow them to reach a larger size faster."

Charlotta Kvarnemo, a professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Gothenburg, told Discovery News that the results of the new study "are very important to get a better understanding of why male care has evolved in mammals. Next, to understand why it has evolved so rarely compared to other groups, like fish and birds, we need to look more carefully at the various costs to the male of providing such care."

Robert Elwood, a professor emeritus of biological sciences at Queen's University Belfast, reminds that, for the majority of mammal males, fatherly care is literally not in their DNA.

He explained, "Staying with the female and young might appear to be a poor strategy for a male mammal since he is not normally important to the rearing of young because he cannot provide milk."

How all of this relates to humans, however, is a matter of debate. The researchers did not include humans in the study, but Elwood shared his thoughts about our species.

Read more at Discovery News

Bird Brains Packed with Neurons

Scientists have long been baffled by the smarts displayed by some birds with tiny brains.

But a new explanation may turn the term "bird brain" on its head: Birds have more densely packed neurons in their brains than other animals, contributing to cognitive ability on par with that of primates, researchers said on Monday.

A macaw's brain may be the size of a shelled walnut, far smaller than that of a macaque monkey -- which has a brain the size of a lemon -- but the parrot has many more neurons, or brain nerve cells, in its forebrain, a region crucial for intelligence, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers were the first to systematically measure neurons in the brains of 20 bird species ranging in size from the tiny finch to the six-foot (1.8-meter) emu.

"For a long time having a 'bird brain' was considered to be a bad thing," said senior author Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. "Now it turns out that it should be a compliment."

Parrots and crows have cognitive abilities similar to those of primates, the study found.

The birds can make tools and use them to obtain food and solve other problems. They can also recognize themselves in mirrors and plan for future needs, cognitive capabilities only primates were previously thought to have enjoyed.

That is possible probably because the neurons in birds' brains are smaller and more densely packed than those in mammalian brains, the researchers said.

"We found that birds, especially songbirds and parrots, have surprisingly large numbers of neurons in their pallium: the part of the brain that corresponds to the cerebral cortex, which supports higher cognition functions such as planning for the future or finding patterns," Herculano-Houzel said.

"That explains why they exhibit levels of cognition at least as complex as primates."

Read more at Discovery News

Light-matter interplay probed: Physicists achieve quantum Hall state with light

Light and matter are typically viewed as distinct entities that follow their own, unique rules. Matter has mass and typically exhibits interactions with other matter, while light is massless and does not interact with itself. Yet, wave-particle duality tells us that matter and light both act sometimes like particles, and sometimes like waves.

Harnessing the shared wave nature of light and matter, researchers at the University of Chicago led by Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Physics Jonathan Simon have used light to explore some of the most intriguing questions in the quantum mechanics of materials. The topic encompasses complex and non-intuitive phenomena that are often difficult to explain in non-technical language, but which carry important implications to specialists in the field.

In work published online June 6, 2016, in the journal Nature, Simon's group presents new experimental observations of a quantum Hall material near a singularity of curvature in space.

Quantum effects give rise to some of the most useful and promising properties of materials: they define standard units of measurement, give rise to superconductivity, and describe quantum computers. The quantum hall materials are one prominent example in which electrons are trapped in non-conducting circular orbits except at the edges of the material. There, electrons exhibit quantized resistance-free electrical conduction that is immune to disorder such as material impurities or surface defects.

Furthermore, electrons in quantum Hall materials do not transmit sound waves but instead have particle-like excitations, some of which are unlike any other particles ever discovered. Some of these materials also exhibit simultaneous quantum entanglement between millions of electrons, meaning that the electrons are so interconnected, the state of one instantly influences the state of all others. This combination of properties makes quantum Hall materials a promising platform for future quantum computation.

Researchers worldwide have spent the past 35 years delving into the mysteries of quantum Hall materials, but always in the same fundamental way. They use superconducting magnets to make very powerful magnetic fields and refrigerators to cool electronic samples to thousandths of a degree above absolute zero.

Trapping light...

In a new approach, Simon and his team demonstrated the creation of a quantum Hall material made up of light. "Using really good mirrors that are pointed at each other, we can trap light for a long time while it bounces back and forth many thousands of times between the mirrors," explained graduate student Nathan Schine.

In the UChicago experiment, photons travel back and forth between mirrors, while their side-to-side motion mimics the behavior of massive particles like electrons. To emulate a strong magnetic field, the researchers created a non-planar arrangement of four mirrors that makes the light twist as it completes a round trip. The twisting motion causes the photons to move like charged particles in a magnetic field, even though there is no actual magnet present.

"We make the photons spin, which leads to a force that has the same effect as a magnetic field," explained Schine. While the light is trapped, it behaves like the electrons in a quantum Hall material.

First, Simon's group demonstrated that they had a quantum Hall material of light. To do so, they shined infrared laser light at the mirrors. By varying the laser's frequency, Simon's team could map out precisely at which frequencies the laser was transmitted through the mirrors. These transmission frequencies, along with camera images of the transmitted light, gave a telltale signature of a quantum Hall state.

Next, the researchers took advantage of the precise control that advanced optical systems provide to place the photons in curved space, which has not been possible so far with electrons. In particular, they made the photons behave as if they resided on the surface of a cone.

...near a singularity

"We created a cone for light much like you might do by cutting a wedge of paper and taping the edges together," said postdoctoral fellow Ariel Sommer, also a co-author of the paper. "In this case, we imposed a three-fold symmetry on our light, which essentially divides the plane into three wedges and forces the light to repeat itself on each wedge."

The tip of a cone has infinite curvature--the singularity--so the researchers were able to study the effect of strong spatial curvature in a quantum Hall material. They observed that photons accumulated at the cone tip, confirming a previously untested theory of the quantum Hall effect in curved space.

Despite 20 years of interest, this is the first time an experiment has observed the behavior of quantum materials in curved space. "We are beginning to make our photons interact with each other," said Schine. "This opens up many possibilities, such as making crystalline or exotic quantum liquid states of light. We can then see how they respond to spatial curvature."

The researchers say this could be useful for characterizing a certain type of quantum computer that is built of quantum Hall materials.

Read more at Science Daily

Weird, water-oozing material could help quench thirst

After their nanorods were accidentally created when an experiment didn't go as planned, the researchers gave the microscopic, unplanned spawns of science a closer look.

Chemist Satish Nune was inspecting the solid, carbon-rich nanorods with a vapor analysis instrument when he noticed the nanorods mysteriously lost weight as humidity increased. Thinking the instrument had malfunctioned, Nune and his colleagues moved on to another tool, a high-powered microscope.

They jumped as they saw an unknown fluid unexpectedly appear between bunches of the tiny sticks and ooze out. Video recorded under the microscope is shaky at the beginning, as they quickly moved the view finder to capture the surprising event again.

The team at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory would go on to view the same phenomenon more than a dozen times. Immediately after expelling the fluid, the nanorods' weight decreased by about half, causing the researchers to scratch their heads even harder.

A paper published in Nature Nanotechnology describes the physical processes behind this spectacle, which turned out to be the first experimental viewing of a phenomenon theorized 20-some years ago. The discovery could lead to a large range of real-world applications, including low-energy water harvesting and purification for the developing world, and fabric that automatically pulls sweat away from the body and releases it as a vapor.

"Our unusual material behaves a bit like a sponge; it wrings itself out halfway before it's fully saturated with water," explained PNNL post-doctoral research associate David Lao, who manufactured the material.

"Now that we've gotten over the initial shock of this unforeseen behavior, we're imagining the many ways it could be harnessed to improve the quality of our lives," said PNNL engineer David Heldebrant, one of the paper's two corresponding authors.

"But before we can put these nanorods to good use, we need to be able to control and perfect their size and shape," added Nune, the paper's other corresponding author.

Expectations v. reality

Ordinarily, materials take on more water as the humidity around them increases. But these carbon-rich nanorods -- which the researchers mistakenly created while trying to fabricate magnetic nanowires -- suddenly expelled a large amount of water as the relative humidity inside the specimen holder reached anywhere between 50 and 80 percent.

Water expulsion can clearly be seen in the microscope video. Water is visible as a gray, cloudy haze -- and only emerges from where nanorods intersect. When the team went on to raise the humidity further, the nanorods' weight also increased, indicating they were taking on water again. It was also reversible, with water being ejected and later absorbed as humidity was gradually lowered back down.

The team was further intrigued. They couldn't think of any other material that takes on water at a low humidity and spontaneously releases it at a high humidity. So they dug through the canons of scientific literature to find an explanation.

Old theory, new evidence

They found a 2012 paper in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B that explained how, in certain situations where liquid is confined in a teeny-tiny space (roughly 1.5 nanometers wide), the liquid can spontaneously evaporate. And the authors of a 2013 paper in the (Journal of Chemical Physics described how water can condense into the confines of close hydrophobic materials, which do not play well with water, and quickly turn into vapor due to attractive forces between the surfaces of the two materials facing each other. The 2013 paper gave this phenomenon a very long, technical name: "solvent cavitation under solvo-phobic confinement."

These papers also noted the process was theorized as early as the 1990s by scientists examining crystallized proteins. Back then, scientists noticed they only saw water vapor surrounding hydrophobic sections of protein, while liquid water would surround other areas. The researchers proposed that there was some sort of process that enabled the water caught between hydrophobic protein sections to suddenly vaporize.

Armed with this knowledge, the PNNL team hypothesized water was condensing and forming a bridge between the nanorods, through a process known as capillary condensation. Next, they believe water between rods forms a curved cavity whose surface tension pulls the adjacent rods closer together. When two intersecting nanorods reach about 1.5 nanometers apart, the team reasoned, the water caught between them could be forced to quickly evaporate.

Putting it to good use

Though understanding the nanorods' unexpected behavior is a triumph in itself, the PNNL team also foresees a future where this phenomenon could also improve quality of life. They see their discovery as a potential humanitarian lifesaver, describing it as "a paradigm shift in water purification and separation," in their paper.

Theoretically, large quantities of the water-spitting nanomaterial could repeatedly take on and then eject collected water when a certain humidity level is reached. Such a system could be used in remote deserts, where it would collect water from the air and harvest it for human consumption.

Another vision is to create a membrane that takes on and later expels water as humidity changes. The membrane could be used in jacket fabrics and enable more comfortable outdoor adventures by removing sweat from inside a jacket and emitting it outside as a vapor.

Read more at Science Daily

It's not an illusion: Transforming infrared into visible light

Animated GIF of red laser impinging onto the appearing cluster, inducing a glow and the emission of a white-light laser.

Researchers have developed a compound that can transform near-infrared light into broadband white-light, offering a cheap, efficient means to produce visible light.

The emitted light is also exceedingly directional, a desirable quality for devices like microscopes that require high spatial resolution, or for applications with high throughput, such as projection systems.

Nils Wilhelm Rosemann and colleagues designed their compound of tin and sulfur, and with a diamondoid-like structure, then coating this scaffolding with organic ligands.

When a laser directs near-infrared light into the compound, the structure of the compound alters the wavelength of the light through a non-linear interaction process, producing light at wavelengths that are visible to the human eye.

The authors note that the warm, white-colored light that's emitted is very similar to a standard tungsten-halogen light source (2856 Kelvin), and can be adjusted based on levels of excitation via the laser.

This development could open up new routes for advanced directed illumination technologies, especially since the materials used in this system are cheap, readily available, and easily scalable.

From Science Daily

2,000-Year-Old Butter Found in Irish Bog

Turf cutters working in an Irish peat bog have unearthed a 2,000-year-old lump of butter, the Cavan County Museum announced.

Smelling like a strong cheese, the 22-pound chunk of waxy material was found 12 feet below the surface near the town of Drakerath, some 50 miles north of Dublin.

According to experts, the bog butter is still in excellent condition.

"Bogs are excellent preservative properties – low temperature, low oxygen and highly acidic environment," the museum said in a statement.

It is likely the butter was put in the peat bog as a gift to the gods rather than buried with the aim of preserving it.

Andy Halpin at the National Museum of Ireland, where the butter has been sent to be carbon dated and analyzed, said the creamy dairy product may never have been intended to be dug up.

A ritual burial appears more likely since the butter was not packed when it was interred at the site.

"These bogs in those times were inaccessible, mysterious places," Halpin told Press Association.

"It is at the juncture of three separate kingdoms, and politically it was like a no-man's-land -- that is where it all hangs together," he added.

The finding is not unusual. Hundreds of packages of butter, some placed inside wooden boxes, have been retrieved from Irish bogs, along with exceptionally well-preserved wooden objects, swords and ornaments.

Such preservation is produced by the bogs' unique chemistry. The peat-building Sphagnum moss grows over anything tipped into the bog, embedding the buried material in cold, acid and oxygen-free conditions that immobilize bacteria, preventing decomposition.

The newly found butter is still edible – theoretically.

"But we wouldn't advice tasting it," Halpin said.

From Discovery News

Ancient Cities in Cambodia Revealed by Lasers

Angkor Wat is seen at sunset. The UNESCO World Heritage site, and the largest religious monument in the world, has medieval cities hidden nearby, new laser analysis reveals.

Unprecedented new details of medieval cities hidden under jungle in Cambodia near Angkor Wat have been revealed using lasers, archaeologists said Sunday, shedding new light on the civilisation behind the world's largest religious complex.

While the research has been going on for several years, the new findings uncover the sheer scale of the Khmer Empire's urban sprawl and temple complexes to be significantly bigger than was previously thought.

The research, drawing on airborne laser scanning technology known as lidar, will be unveiled in full at the Royal Geographic Society in London on Monday by Australian archaeologist Damian Evans.

"We always imagined that their great cities surrounded the monuments in antiquity," Evans told AFP.

"But now we can see them with incredible precision and detail, in some places for the very first time, but in most places where we already had a vague idea that cities must be there," he added.

Angkor Wat, a UNESCO World Heritage site seen as among the most important in southeast Asia, is considered one of the ancient wonders of the world.

It was constructed from the early to mid 1100s by King Suryavarman II at the height of the Khmer Empire's political and military power and was among the largest pre-industrial cities in the world.

But scholars had long believed there was far more to the empire than just the Angkor complex.

The huge tranch of new data builds on scans that were made in 2012 that confirmed the existence of Mahendraparvata, an ancient temple city near Angkor Wat.

But it was only when the results of a larger survey in 2015 were analysed that the sheer scale of the new settlements became apparent.

To create the maps, archaeologists mounted a special laser on the underneath of a helicopter which scans the area and is able to see through obstructions like trees and vegetation.

Much of the cities surrounding the famed stone temples of the Khmer Empire, Evans explained, were made of wood and thatch which has long rotted away.

"The lidar quite suddenly revealed an entire cityscape there with astonishing complexity," he said.

"It turned out we'd been walking and flying right over the top of this stuff for ten years and not even noticing it because of the vegetation."

Among the new scans already published are a detailed map of a huge city complex surrounding the stone temple known as Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, a series of iron smelting sites dating back to the Angkor era and new information on the complex system of waterways that kept the region running.

The new data also maps out the full extent of Mahendraparvata, information that will make future digs much more accurate and less time consuming.

"What we had was basically a scatter of disconnected points on the map denoting temple sites. Now it's like having a detailed street map of the entire city," Evans said.

Further maps will be published in the coming months, he added.

Read more at Discovery News

Many with migraines have vitamin deficiencies, says study

A high percentage of children, teens and young adults with migraines appear to have mild deficiencies in vitamin D, riboflavin and coenzyme Q10, say researchers.

A high percentage of children, teens and young adults with migraines appear to have mild deficiencies in vitamin D, riboflavin and coenzyme Q10 -- a vitamin-like substance found in every cell of the body that is used to produce energy for cell growth and maintenance.

These deficiencies may be involved in patients who experience migraines, but that is unclear based on existing studies.

"Further studies are needed to elucidate whether vitamin supplementation is effective in migraine patients in general, and whether patients with mild deficiency are more likely to benefit from supplementation," says Suzanne Hagler, MD, a Headache Medicine fellow in the division of Neurology at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and lead author of the study.

Dr. Hagler and colleagues at Cincinnati Children's conducted the study among patients at the Cincinnati Children's Headache Center. She will present her findings at 9:55 am Pacific time June 10, 2016 at the 58th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Headache Society in San Diego.

Dr. Hagler's study drew from a database that included patients with migraines who, according to Headache Center practice, had baseline blood levels checked for vitamin D, riboflavin, coenzyme Q10 and folate, all of which were implicated in migraines, to some degree, by previous and sometimes conflicting studies. Many were put on preventive migraine medications and received vitamin supplementation, if levels were low. Because few received vitamins alone, the researchers were unable to determine vitamin effectiveness in preventing migraines.

She found that girls and young woman were more likely than boys and young men to have coenzyme Q10 deficiencies at baseline. Boys and young men were more likely to have vitamin D deficiency. It was unclear whether there were folate deficiencies. Patients with chronic migraines were more likely to have coenzyme Q10 and riboflavin deficiencies than those with episodic migraines.

Previous studies have indicated that certain vitamins and vitamin deficiencies may be important in the migraine process. Studies using vitamins to prevent migraines, however, have had conflicting success.

From Science Daily

X-ray snapshot of butterfly wings reveals underlying physics of color

A team of physicists that visualized the internal nanostructure of an intact butterfly wing has discovered two physical attributes that make those structures so bright and colorful.

A team of physicists that visualized the internal nanostructure of an intact butterfly wing has discovered two physical attributes that make those structures so bright and colorful.

"Over millions of years, butterflies have evolved sophisticated cellular mechanisms to grow brightly colored structures, normally for the purpose of camouflage as well as mating," says Oleg Shpyrko, an associate professor of physics at UC San Diego, who headed the research effort. "It's been known for a century that the wings of these beautiful creatures contain what are called photonic crystals, which can reflect light of only a particular color."

But exactly how these complex optical structures are assembled in a way that make them so bright and colorful remained a mystery. In an effort to answer that question, Shpyrko and Andrej Singer, a postdoctoral researcher in his laboratory, went to the Advanced Photon Source at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, which produces coherent x-rays very much like an optical laser

By combining these laser-like x-rays with an advanced imaging technique called "ptychography," the UC San Diego physicists, in collaboration with physicists at Yale University and the Argonne National Laboratory, developed a new microscopy method to visualize the internal nanostructure of the tiny "scales" that make up the butterfly wing without the need to cut them apart.

The researchers report in the current issue of the journal Science Advances that their examination of the scales of the Emperor of India butterfly, Teinopalpus imperialis, revealed that these tiny wing structures consist of "highly oriented" photonic crystals.

"This explains why the scales appear to have a single color," says Singer, the first author of the paper. "We also found through careful study of the high-resolution micrographs tiny crystal irregularities that may enhance light-scattering properties, making the butterfly wings appear brighter."

These crystal dislocations or defects occur, the researchers say, when an otherwise perfectly periodic crystal lattice slips by one row of atoms. "Defects may have a negative connotation, but they are actually very useful in improving materials," explains Singer. "For example, blacksmiths have learned over centuries how to purposefully induce defects into metals to make them stronger. 'Defect engineering' is also a focus for many research teams and companies working in the semiconductor field. In photonic crystals, defects can enhance light-scattering properties through an effect called light localization."

"In the evolution of butterfly wings," he adds, "it appears nature learned how to engineer these defects on purpose."

From Science Daily