Celestial Treats Hide Inside the Summer Triangle

The Summer Triangle is one of the most easily recognized groups of stars in Northern Hemisphere skies.

The Triangle is depicted by the brightest stars of the constellations Cygnus, Lyra and Aquila, and dominates the sky during the warmer months of summer. Within its boundaries, there are some great celestial objects for the novice astronomer -- not only are they bright, but they really pack a punch through the eyepiece so they are well worth hunting down.

The star Vega marks the north-west corner of the Summer Triangle and is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra. If you look to the south-east of Vega you will be able to see a fainter parallelogram of stars and, if you turn even a small telescope between the two southernmost stars, you will find a faint fuzzy blob.

This inconspicuous object is a star that has reached the end of its life and leaves our night sky with a beautiful planetary nebula. It is known as the Ring Nebula, or M57, and as its name suggests, it looks like a stunning celestial smoke ring hovering against the inky black depths of space. Even a small telescope will show respectable views.

Deneb represents the north-east corner of the Triangle and, at the same time, marks the tail of Cygnus the swan. The star at the head of the swan sits at the very center of the Summer Triangle and is known as Albireo. Through small telescopes this stunning binary star resolves into yellow and blue individual stars.

Just under half-way between Altair (the star at the southern tip of the Triangle) and Sadr, the star at the center of the cross in the constellation of Cygnus is another planetary nebula, but one whose appearance differs significantly from the Ring Nebula.

M27, or the Dumbbell Nebula, can just about be detected with binoculars as a fuzzy patch, but telescopes with low to medium power will reveal a fuzzy blob that resembles a dumbbell or bow tie. As aperture is increased, the nebula appears brighter due to the greater amount of light being collected and under dark skies, subtle detail can be seen in the cloud.

Read more at Discovery News

Language and Tool-Making Skills Evolved at the Same Time

Research by the University of Liverpool has found that the same brain activity is used for language production and making complex tools, supporting the theory that they evolved at the same time.

Researchers from the University tested the brain activity of 10 expert stone tool makers (flint knappers) as they undertook a stone tool-making task and a standard language test.

Brain blood flow activity measured

They measured the brain blood flow activity of the participants as they performed both tasks using functional Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound (fTCD), commonly used in clinical settings to test patients' language functions after brain damage or before surgery.

The researchers found that brain patterns for both tasks correlated, suggesting that they both use the same area of the brain. Language and stone tool-making are considered to be unique features of humankind that evolved over millions of years.

Darwin was the first to suggest that tool-use and language may have co-evolved, because they both depend on complex planning and the coordination of actions but until now there has been little evidence to support this.

Dr Georg Meyer, from the University Department of Experimental Psychology, said: "This is the first study of the brain to compare complex stone tool-making directly with language.

Tool use and language co-evolved

"Our study found correlated blood-flow patterns in the first 10 seconds of undertaking both tasks. This suggests that both tasks depend on common brain areas and is consistent with theories that tool-use and language co-evolved and share common processing networks in the brain."

Dr Natalie Uomini from the University's Department of Archaeology, Classics & Egyptology, said: "Nobody has been able to measure brain activity in real time while making a stone tool. This is a first for both archaeology and psychology."

Read more at Science Daily

Weird! Tiny Frog Uses Its Mouth to Hear

A small frog native to the Republic of Seychelles lacks a conventional middle ear and eardrum to hear sounds made by other frogs, but new research suggests these peculiar croakers are not deaf, and can instead use their mouth cavities to pick up on noise.

Gardiner's frogs from the Seychelles islands are one of the smallest known types of frogs in the world. These amphibians are seemingly deaf -- having no middle ear or eardrum to help process sound waves -- but can mysteriously still make their own croaking sounds, and hear the calls of other frogs. In a new study, researchers used X-ray imaging to peer inside the frogs' heads, finding they use their mouth cavities to amplify sounds that travel to the inner ear through connective tissue.

Most four-legged animals have middle ears that contain small, bony ossicles that take vibrations from the eardrum and transmit the sound waves from the air to the fluid-filled cochlea.

"However, we know of frog species that croak like other frogs but do not have tympanic middle ears to listen to each other. This seems to be a contradiction," lead study researcher Renaud Boistel, of the French National Center for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifiqueor CNRS) in Paris, France, said in a statement.

To determine that Gardiner's frogs do, in fact, use sound to communicate with one another, the scientists set up loudspeakers in the natural rain forests of Seychelles and played pre-recorded frog songs. Males in the rain forests promptly answered the songs, signifying they could hear the recording, the researchers said.

Several ideas had been suggested for how the Gardiner's frogs could hear sounds, including extra auditory pathways through the lungs or special muscles in the frogs that connect to the inner ear.

"Whether body tissue will transport sound or not depends on its biomechanical properties," study co-author Peter Cloetens, a scientist at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, said in a statement. "With X-ray imaging techniques here at ESRF, we could establish that neither the pulmonary system nor the muscles of these frogs contribute significantly to the transmission of sound to the inner ears."

By studying X-ray images and numerical simulations, the researchers discovered that Gardiner's frogs receive sound through their heads. The mouth amplifies the frequencies and the sound is transmitted through tissue and bones in the skull to the inner ear.

The X-ray images showed reduced thickness and fewer layers of tissue between the frogs' mouths and their inner ears, compared with other frog species, which suggests these auditory adaptations were likely the result of evolutionary forces in Gardiner's frogs, the researchers said.

Read more at Discovery News

America's Invasive Species 450 Million Years Ago

The rise of the forerunners of the Appalachian Mountains may have opened the gates for invasive species to storm the lost continent that gave rise to North America, new research suggests.

Such research could shed light on how to prevent the modern spread of invasive species, the scientists who studied the issue said.

Scientists investigated 450-million-year-old fossils of marine creatures that once dwelled in Laurentia, the continent North America once was part of. At that time, Laurentia straddled the equator and had a tropical climate.

Shifting of the Earth's tectonic plates during this period gave rise to the Taconic Mountains, forerunners of today's Appalachian Mountains. This left a depression behind the mountain range, flooding the area with cool, nutrient-rich water from the surrounding deep ocean into Laurentia's inland seas.

To learn more about the effects of this mountain-building and cooling water on the evolution of life in this area, researchers investigated the remains of clamlike animals known as brachiopods that dominated Laurentian seas. By analyzing subtle features of 53 species of these fossils, they deduced the family trees of evolutionary relationships linking these creatures to discern how these species evolved from one another.

"Our data show a very clear shift in evolutionary processes that coincides with a shift in Earth systems dynamics," researcher Alycia Stigall, a paleontologist at Ohio University, told LiveScience." In particular, these results shed light on the Earth system controls on how new species form, or speciation."

Invading species

As geological changes slowly unfolded in Laurentia over the course of a million years, the fossils suggest two patterns of survival emerged among the creatures there.

During the early stage of the changes, native organisms became geographically divided, slowly evolving into different species suited for their different habitats. This process, called vicariance, is the typical method by which new species develop on Earth, Stigall said.

However, as these geological changes progressed, species from other regions of Laurentia began to directly invade habitats, a process called dispersal. Although biodiversity increased at first, dispersal reduced biodiversity in the long term, because it permitted a few aggressive species to populate and dominate many sites quickly, Stigall explained.

These findings could yield insights into what drives the dispersal of invasive species, which is currently threatening biodiversity worldwide.

"Only one out of 10 invaders truly become invasive species," Stigall said in a statement. "Understanding the process can help determine where to put conservation resources."

How Earth makes and destroys species

Overall, such research could help shed light on how changes Earth undergoes in turn drives the destruction and creation of new species.

"Scientists, both biologists and paleontologists, have spent a lot of time and effort studying extinction — the process by which the Earth loses species," Stigall said. "We understand many of those controls very well — (meteor) impact, volcanism, ocean acidification, habitat destruction. It is relatively easy to envision ways to reduce a population size to zero and thereby cause a species to go extinct."

"Understanding speciation is much more complex," Stigall continued. "Species form by breakdown of gene flow between populations. This is much harder to study on short timescales and the process is explicitly tied to a geographic place and ancestors, which requires understanding both geography and evolutionary history."

Read more at Discovery News

Quitting Smoking Drops Heart Attack Risk to Levels of Never Smokers

Quitting smoking reduces the risk of heart attack and death to the levels of people who have never smoked, reveals research presented at ESC Congress 2013 by Dr James K. Min and Dr Rine Nakanishi from the USA.

Dr Min said: "Smoking is an established risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Studies have identified that quitting smoking can reduce heart attacks and death but have not examined the relationship of this salutary effect on the presence and severity of coronary artery disease (CAD). Our study aimed to find out what impact stopping smoking had on the risk of cardiovascular events, death and the severity of CAD." The prospective CONFIRM (Coronary CT Evaluation for Clinical Outcomes: An International Multicenter Study) registry of 13,372 patients from 9 countries in Europe, North America and East Asia examined the risk of major adverse cardiac events in 2,853 active smokers, 3,175 past smokers and 7,344 never smokers.

Both active smokers and past smokers had a higher prevalence of severely blocked coronary arteries compared to non-smokers. This was determined using coronary computed tomographic angiography (CCTA), a non-invasive imaging technique that enables direct visualisation of the coronary arteries. Active and past smokers had a 1.5-fold higher probability of severe stenoses in 1 and 2 major heart arteries, and a 2-fold increased probability of severe stenoses in all 3 major heart arteries.

Dr Min, who is director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the Weill Cornell Medical College, said: "Our results show that quitting smoking does not reduce the amount of disease smoking causes in the coronary arteries, but it does reduce the risk of heart attack and death to the levels of non-smokers." After 2.0 years of follow-up, 2.1% of the study patients experienced heart attacks or death. Rates of heart attack or death were almost 2-fold higher in active smokers compared to never smokers. Past smokers had the same rates or heart attack or death as never smokers, despite having a higher prevalence, extent and severity of CAD (see figure). The findings in both active and past smokers persisted even when they were matched with non smokers who were similar in age, gender and CAD risk factors.

Dr Min said: "Our study was the first to demonstrate that the presence and severity of coronary blockages do not go away with quitting smoking, but that the risk of heart attack and death does. Future studies are being pursued to determine how this protective effect may occur."

He continued: "Numerous questions remain and require further study. For example, will the severe blockages observed in patients who have quit smoking provoke adverse events after 2 years (the duration of the present study). Further, does the duration of smoking or the number of cigarettes smoked per day affect the severity of CAD or the prognosis related to quitting smoking. Our team and several others are pursuing such investigations."

Read more at Science Daily

Evidence of Production of Luxury Textiles and the Extraction of Copper from an Unknown Part of a Cypriote Bronze Age City

A Swedish archaeological expedition from the University of Gothenburg has excavated a previously unknown part of the Bronze Age city Hala Sultan Tekke (around 1600-1100 BC). The finds include a facility for extraction of copper and production of bronze objects, evidence of production of luxurious textiles, as well as ceramics and other objects imported from all over the Mediterranean but also from central Europe.

'One of our conclusions is that the Bronze Age culture in Hala Sultan Tekke played a central role in the Eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus served as an important node not only for regional but also for more long-distance trade. We have also realized that the city was larger than previously thought,' says Peter Fischer, professor of Cypriote archaeology at the University of Gothenburg.

Hala Sultan Tekke is located near the Larnaca airport on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus and spans approximately 25-50 hectares, making it one of the largest Bronze Age cities in the Mediterranean region. In 2010, Peter Fischer and his team of archaeologists and students continued the excavations of the city that were initiated in the 1970s by Fischer's former teacher, professor Paul Åström.

The recently excavated part of the city was discovered in 2012 using a ground penetrating radar, which is an electromagnetic equipment that makes it possible to 'see' what's hidden in the ground down to a depth of about two metres. The method also enables archaeologists to get a tomographic image of a limited area under the surface. 'This summer we discovered a residential area with facilities for extraction of copper from copper ore and copper slag. We found remains of melting furnaces and about 300 kilos of ore and slag. In a room nearby, we also found evidence of production of purple textiles, which were among the most valuable commodities during the Bronze Age.'

Next to the copper extraction facility, the archaeologists exposed living quarters where they also found many interesting objects, such as locally produced ceramics of high quality and ceramics from Mycenae (in present-day Greece) and the Levant (the Eastern Mediterranean countries).

The finds also include a complete decorated bronze brooch, probably imported from northern Italy or central Europe around 1200 BC, a decorated faience bowl from Egypt, faience cylinder seals depicting warriors and hunters and figurines of people/gods and animals. All finds can be dated to the period 1400-1175 BC. 'The finds underscore the mobility of Bronze Age people far beyond their immediate surroundings. Their connections with Greece, Turkey, Egypt and the Levant may not come as a surprise, but those with Italy and central and northern Europe are very exciting. These finds lend strength to the hypothesis about major migration taking place around 1200 BC, the so-called Sea Peoples. Recent analyses of Swedish bronze objects from this period, led by Johan Ling, reader (docent) at the University of Gothenburg, suggest that bronze was imported from Cyprus,' says Fischer.

Read more at Science Daily

Paradox of Polar Ice Sheet Formation Solved

The beginning of the last glacial period was characterized in the Northern hemisphere by significant accumulation of snow at high latitudes and the formation of a huge polar ice sheet. For climatologists this was paradoxical, since snowfall is always associated with high humidity and relatively moderate temperatures. Now, a French team coordinated by María-Fernanda Sánchez-Goñi, a researcher at EPHE[1] working in the 'Oceanic and Continental Environments and Paleoenvironments' Laboratory (CNRS/Universités Bordeaux 1 & 4)[2] has solved this paradox.

By analyzing sediment cores dating back 80,000 to 70,000 years, the researchers have shown that during that period, water temperatures in the Bay of Biscay remained relatively high, whereas those in mainland Europe gradually fell. Carried northwards by wind, the humidity released by this thermal contrast appears to have caused the snowfall that formed the polar ice sheet.

This work was published on the Nature Geoscience website on 1 September 2013.

Over the past two million years, Earth has experienced long glacial periods separated by short, warmer intervals known as interglacials. This succession of glacials and interglacials is caused by changes in insolation brought about by cyclical variations in the distance between Earth and the Sun and in the tilt and direction of our planet's rotation axis relative to the Sun. The last glacial period, which ended 12,000 years ago, began between 80,000 and 70,000 years ago. This period was marked by climate variability at the millennial time scale, with short cooling periods alternating with increasingly small improvements in the climate as glaciation set in.

Sea levels dropped by 80 meters following a reduction in insolation 70,000 years ago. This shows that there was a large accumulation of snow at high latitudes, which was the cause of the ice sheet around the North Pole. However, cold temperatures are generally associated with dry weather and scarce precipitation. For snow to fall, the weather needs to be humid and the temperature only moderately low. In these conditions, how can the accumulation of snow at the pole be explained?

To answer this question, the researchers analyzed marine sediment cores collected off Galicia (Spain) and from the Bay of Biscay, containing pollen and foraminifera, microscopic marine organisms with calcareous skeletons. Pollen grains are excellent indicators of the vegetation and temperature of the continent, while foraminifera provide information about the temperature of the ocean.


Read more at Science Daily

Poop Gets Its Close-Up

Beijing may have more excrement than any city in the world, and Paris might have the most interesting sewers, but the world’s leader for breadth and depth of feces is — wait for it — Albuquerque. That’s the opinion, anyway, of New Mexico’s top poop scientist, paleontologist Adrian Hunt of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (NMMNHS).

“New Mexico is the best place in the world for fossil poop,” said Hunt at the museum’s special one day “On the Origin of Feces” event on Sunday, Sept. 1. Because of that special geological distinction the museum’s fossil feces collection is probably second only to that of the Smithsonian Institution’s, he added.

The New Mexico collection is also notable for the span of Earth’s history it covers. New Mexico’s mountains and canyons have yielded coprolites (the polite, scientific name for fossil feces) from as far back as the Permian period (250-300 million years ago) and as recent as a few thousand years ago.

The latter includes mummified dung of mammoths and ground sloths of the last ice age. Hunt has spent much of the last 22 years looking in the middle of that range, specifically at dinosaur feces.

“Nobody has looked at more fossil poop than he has,” said Spencer Lucas, curator of paleontology at the NMMNHS — fully meaning it as a compliment.

Among the many surprising discoveries made as a result of coprolites is the fact, for instance, that duck-billed dinosaurs ate conifers; as in pine trees.

“Nobody thought that duckbill dinosaurs ate conifers,” said Lucas. The lesson there, he said, is that there’s only so much you can deduce about an ancient animal’s diet from from teeth and associated fossils. “At the end of the day you have to identify the gut contents or coprolites to know what an animal ate.”.

As for how “On The Origin of Feces” went as an event, it appears to have been a hit.

“One good thing about this is that it attracts kids,” said Hunt, whose poop-laden table was near another where kids could match images of modern animal dung with various popular candies which they resemble. Kids won candy when they played the game and then impressed their parents by still finding it appetizing.

Read more at Discovery News

Mars Landslides Spawned By Weird Layered Craters

Scientists are a step closer to solving a 40-year-old mystery about some unusual looking craters on Mars.

These features are called double-layered ejecta (DLE) craters, and attracted research attention because their debris patterns do not match the typical understanding of how craters are formed.

Craters are pockmarks that form on the surface of a planet or moon when a high-speed rock smashes into the surface. The fast-moving collision sprays out dirt and other debris in a ring. There are more than 600 craters on Mars that have two layers of this debris, however. A new study suggests a glacial landslide would have created the second layer.

The study by Brown University geology researchers David Weiss and James Head is detailed in the Aug. 7 edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Landslides on ice

The first DLEs came into view during NASA's Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s. The twin spacecraft each carried an orbiter and a lander. While the landers made the first footfalls on Mars, the orbiters remained above for years and mapped much of the planet with their cameras.

In the decades since, scientists then uncovered extensive evidence that water and ice covered much of Mars in the distant past.

The only large deposits of ice on the Red Planet today are at the north and south poles, although icy traces linger in other areas. The DLEs, however, were formed while the Martian surface was covered by a huge sheet of glacial ice, the researchers concluded after examining past climactic studies.

At maximum, this ice sheet reached to the mid-latitudes of Mars and was about 165 feet (50 meters) thick. Ice is slippery, meaning that once the crater was formed and the debris sprayed out, the dirt slid and formed a second layer on top of the first.

Groovy observations

The theory matches up with more detailed observations of DLEs, the authors said. Many of the studied craters have radial striations, or grooves radiating from the crater's epicenter. These are common in Earth landslides, particularly those that take place on glaciers.

Steep slopes are also required to make the scenario work. The scientists calculated that the craters must be smaller than 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) in diameter to form DLEs because anything larger would have too shallow a slope. They next examined hundreds of DLEs on Mars and discovered that almost every one surveyed is that size or smaller.

Read more at Discovery News

Mosquitoes Smell You Better at Night

In work published this week in Nature: Scientific Reports, a team of researchers from the University of Notre Dame's Eck Institute for Global Health, led by Associate Professor Giles Duffield and Assistant Professor Zain Syed of the Department of Biological Sciences, revealed that the major malaria vector in Africa, the Anopheles gambiae mosquito, is able to smell major human host odorants better at night.

The study reports an integrative approach to examine the mosquito's ability to smell across the 24-hour day and involved proteomic, sensory physiological, and behavioral techniques. The researchers examined the role for a major chemosensory family of mosquito proteins, odorant-binding proteins (OBPs), in the daily regulation of olfactory sensitivities in the malarial mosquito. It is thought that OBPs in the insect antennae and mouth parts function to concentrate odorant molecules and assist in their transport to the actual olfactory receptors, thereby allowing for odorant detection. The team revealed daily rhythmic protein abundance of OBPs, having higher concentrations in the mosquito's sensory organs at night than during the day. This discovery could change the way we look at protecting ourselves from these disease-carrying pests.

The team also included Matthew M. Champion, Eck Institute for Global Health Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, who specializes in proteomics.

This study utilized mass spectrometry to quantify protein abundance in mosquito sensory organs, and electroantennograms to determine the response induced by host odorants at different times of the day. The coincident times of peak protein abundance, olfactory sensitivity and biting behavior reflect the extraordinarily fine-tuned control of mosquito physiology. Olfactory protein abundance and olfactory sensitivity are high when needed (at night) and low when not required (daytime).

Samuel Rund, a doctoral candidate in the laboratory of Duffield and a former Eck Institute for Global Health Fellow, and Nicolle Bonar, a visiting undergraduate student from Queens University of Ontario, Canada, were the lead authors on this research. The Notre Dame team also included then-undergraduate student John Ghazi, Class of 2012; undergraduate Cameron Houk, Class of '14; and graduate student Matthew Leming.

Rund noted, "This was an exciting opportunity to bring many people and techniques together to make some really fascinating findings on the mosquito's ability to smell humans, its host. Just think, during the day the mosquito is sleeping and doesn't need to smell you. But when the sun goes down, the mosquito's olfactory system becomes extra-sensitive, and she is ready to smell and then bite you."

The project was a follow-up to their earlier work that utilized genomic tools to reveal 24-hour rhythmic patterns of gene expression, including many genes involved in olfaction.

Rund and Duffield's earlier work with collaborator James Gentile from Notre Dame's Department of Computer Science and Engineering, "Extensive circadian and light regulation of the transcriptome in the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae," helped lay some of the foundation to their findings. The paper, published in BMC Genomics in April, further examined the regulation of rhythms in gene expression at the molecular level, highlighted important differences in biological timing between Anopheles gambiae and the important dengue vector, Aedes aegypti, and highlighted the important role of light in organizing and modifying gene expression.

Read more at Science Daily