Jingszo !

Conservationists at Persepolis, Iran's most iconic ancient site, are waging a delicate battle against an unlikely adversary: tiny but persistent lichens eroding the millennia-old monuments.

The fight, which began years ago, is aimed at stopping the threat to the integrity of the site's structures and its intricate carvings from lichens, organisms that grow on surfaces like stone and can slowly break them down over time.

Built in the 6th century BC by Darius I, Persepolis has withstood destruction, looting, earthquakes, fires and harsh weather. It remains a source of pride for Iranians and a major tourist destination.

Around 252 million years ago, the world suddenly heated up. Over a geologically brief period of tens of thousands of years, 90% of species were wiped out. Even insects, which are rarely touched by such events, suffered catastrophic losses. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction, as it’s known, was the greatest of the “big five” mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

Scientists have generally blamed the mass extinction on greenhouse gases released from a vast network of volcanoes which covered much of modern day Siberia in lava. But the volcanic explanation was incomplete. In our new study, we show that an enormous El Niño weather pattern in the world’s major ocean added to climate chaos and led to extinctions spreading across the globe.

At a shelter for big cats in Brazil, a vet gingerly dresses wounds on a jaguar that was caught in wildfires raging in the world's largest tropical wetland.

While the animal is expected to heal, her home in the Pantanal continues to burn.

The Pantanal, south of the Amazon in Mato Grosso do Sul state, has the world's highest density of jaguars. It is also home to millions of caimans, parrots and giant otters.

Brazil has been parched by a historic drought that experts link to climate change and which has sparked what authorities have called a "fire pandemic." So far this year, some 6.7 million hectares (16.6 million acres) have burned in the Brazilian Amazon, amounting to 1.6 percent of the rainforest.

Tipping point

On one side, more accurate data and a better understanding of the systematic uncertainties in the measurements could return us to the reassuring comfort of the standard model. Out of its past troubles, the model may emerge not only vindicated, but also strengthened, and cosmology will be a science that is both precise and accurate.

But if the balance tips the other way, we will be ushered into uncharted territory, where new physics will have to be discovered. This could lead to a major paradigm shift in cosmology, akin to the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the universe in the late 1990s. But on this path we may have to reckon, once and for all, with the nature of dark energy and dark matter, two of the big unsolved mysteries of the universe.

The living coelacanth Latimeria (Sarcopterygii: Actinistia) is an iconic, so-called ‘living fossil’ within one of the most apparently morphologically conservative vertebrate groups.

We describe a new, 3-D preserved coelacanth from the Late Devonian Gogo Formation in Western Australia. We assemble a comprehensive analysis of the group to assess the phylogeny, evolutionary rates, and morphological disparity of all coelacanths.

We reveal a major shift in morphological disparity between Devonian and post-Devonian coelacanths. The newly described fossil fish fills a critical transitional stage in coelacanth disparity and evolution.

Since the mid-Cretaceous, discrete character changes (representing major morphological innovations) have essentially ceased, while meristic and continuous characters have continued to evolve within coelacanths.

Considering a range of putative environmental drivers, tectonic activity best explains variation in the rates of coelacanth evolution.

Researchers believe that the specimen might be an example of Gallotia goliath, an extinct species of giant lizard species that lived long before humans reached the Canary Islands.

Retired botanist Arnoldo Santos-Guerra stumbled across the remarkably intact lizard fossil two years ago while searching for snail shells.

The 42-pound sandstone block containing the specimen also contained a second lizard—one perhaps smaller or just more juvenile—but in a much worse state of preservation.

The researchers believe that the two lizards may have perished together in a sand dune.

The fact that the larger lizard is so well preserved—with its skeleton in life position rather than scattered in pieces—suggests it likely died and was buried suddenly, protecting it from decay and scavenging.

Back around when worms wriggled out of saltwater and into freshwater, they experienced a cataclysmic rearrangement of their genetic material.

This event ripped once functioning genes asunder, including some of those involved in critical cell division processes, leaving earthworms, leeches, and their other clitellate relatives with the most scrambled genomes known.

Three groups of researchers have now independently reached this same conclusion, upending a long held assumption that there's a certain level of genetic stability required for animal species to avoid extinction.

Evolutionary biologist Carlos Vargas-Chávez, also from CSIC-UPF, and colleagues discovered gene loss is about 25 percent higher in the line of worms that became clitellata, compared to their other relatives.

They suspect the worm's genomes scrambled in response to shifts into new habitats, but have yet to determine which came first, the worm's ventures into freshwater and land or their genes' adventures into new positions in their genetic molecules (chromosomes).

Head of SETI reveals how they search for life in space

A new study posits a very surprising answer to one of history's great mysteries—what killed off the Neanderthals?

Could it be that they were unadventurous, insular homebodies who never strayed far enough from home?

Highlights

• We present the discovery of a Neanderthal body and its genome

• It is one of the last representatives of these populations in Eurasia

• It belongs to an unknown lineage, isolated for 50 ka

• It is similar to Gibraltar Neanderthals, with whom it forms a specific branch

Summary

Neanderthal genomes have been recovered from sites across Eurasia, painting an increasingly complex picture of their populations’ structure that mostly indicates that late European Neanderthals belonged to a single metapopulation with no significant evidence of population structure. Here, we report the discovery of a late Neanderthal individual, nicknamed “Thorin,” from Grotte Mandrin in Mediterranean France, and his genome. These dentognathic fossils, including a rare example of distomolars, are associated with a rich archeological record of Neanderthal final technological traditions in this region ∼50–42 thousand years ago. Thorin’s genome reveals a relatively early divergence of ∼105 ka with other late Neanderthals.

Thorin belonged to a population with a small group size that showed no genetic introgression with other known late European Neanderthals, revealing some 50 ka of genetic isolation of his lineage despite them living in neighboring regions.

These results have important implications for resolving competing hypotheses about causes of the disappearance of the Neanderthals

Was a lack of get-up-and-go the death of the Neanderthals?

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-lack-death-neanderthals.html

An experiment here on Earth has just replicated one of the most extreme astrophysical processes in miniature.

Physicists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have succeeded in creating collimated jets that resemble those that erupt from baby stars and feeding black holes.

Our lab version is nowhere near as large or powerful as those in space, which can extend for millions of light-years. But the results have revealed for the first time a long-hypothesized plasma instability that can help us understand how these eruptions form and launch into space at speeds close to that of light.

Researchers working on the site found the body - which had been buried on a hill - was pressed into the ground by stones laid across its torso. Polish officials added that the child appeared to have been decapitated before it was buried, with the collection of details suggesting superstitious locals had feared the presence of a "demonic entity".

One year earlier at the same site, they had uncovered the remains of a woman who had a sickle pressed to her torso, another superstitious rite thought to prevent "vampires" from making an unwelcome return. The remains of the vampire child, archaeologists said, were found alongside those of another child who received a "normal" burial dating from the same period. Mr Wira explained: "Both burials are dated from the Early Middle Ages - 13th century. The dead were buried without coffins."

Archaeologists now plan to carry out a selection of tests on the two skeletons so they can determine how old the two children were when they died. The two, they believe, likely aren't the only ones present on the site of the bishop's garden, with others expected to be nearby.

Astronomers from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun have discovered a new planet in the constellation of the Great Bear. It has a mass as much as 11 times that of Jupiter, orbits its star in 14 years and has a temperature of no more than minus 100 degrees Celsius.

An inconspicuous star with a massive planet

The astronomers are dealing with an extremely massive exoplanet—as much as 11 times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. It orbits its parent star in 14 years, and is six astronomical units away from it.

Tracking Advanced Planetary Systems (TAPAS) with HARPS-N VIII. A wide-orbit planetary companion in the hot-Jupiter system HD 118203

https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2024/08/aa51084-24/aa51084-24.html

Scientists have estimated the size of an extinct flying reptile called a pterosaur, based on fragments of a fossil finger bone discovered in southern England in June 2022. These results reveal it to be the largest British pterosaur yet described, and the second-largest Jurassic pterosaur worldwide.

This 149 million-year-old fossil, known as EC K2576 and nicknamed “Abfab” by the researchers, was found in Abingdon, Oxfordshire – and it is fabulous. They have since attempted to work out what type of pterosaur it was – its taxonomy – and how big the animal was.

During the Mesozoic Era, the “age of reptiles” which lasted from 252 to 66 million years ago and which includes the Jurassic period, dinosaurs, pterosaurs and other giant reptiles roamed Earth – with many dwarfing the largest terrestrial animals alive today.

OP : @haritulsidas@masto.ai

Previous dating research indicated that the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is host to some of the oldest known rock art. That work was based on solution uranium-series (U-series) analysis of calcite deposits overlying rock art in the limestone caves of Maros-Pangkep, South Sulawesi.

Here we use a novel application of this approach—laser-ablation U-series imaging—to re-date some of the earliest cave art in this karst area and to determine the age of stylistically similar motifs at other Maros-Pangkep sites.

Painted at least 51,200 years ago, this narrative composition, which depicts human-like figures interacting with a pig, is now the earliest known surviving example of representational art, and visual storytelling, in the world.

Our findings show that figurative portrayals of anthropomorphic figures and animals have a deeper origin in the history of modern human (Homo sapiens) image-making than recognized to date, as does their representation in composed scenes.

Executive Summary

Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun but have orbits that can bring them into Earth’s neighborhood-within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit. Planetary defense encompasses all the capabilities needed to detect and warn of potential 10-meter and larger NEO impacts with Earth, and to either prevent such an event or mitigate the possible effects of an impact.

This National Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan for Near-Earth Object Hazards and Planetary Defense (2023 Planetary Defense Strategy) updates the United States’ first comprehensive Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan, released in 2018. The 2023 Planetary Defense Strategy builds on existing efforts by Federal Departments and Agencies to address the hazard of NEO impacts, includes evaluation of where progress has been made since 2018, and focuses future work on planetary defense across the U.S. government.

The 2023 Planetary Defense Strategy focuses on six goals in total across Federal Departments and Agencies for the decade ahead:

Earthquake scientists detected an unusual signal on monitoring stations used to detect seismic activity during September 2023. We saw it on sensors everywhere, from the Arctic to Antarctica.

We were baffled – the signal was unlike any previously recorded. Instead of the frequency-rich rumble typical of earthquakes, this was a monotonous hum, containing only a single vibration frequency. Even more puzzling was that the signal kept going for nine days.

Initially classified as a “USO” – an unidentified seismic object – the source of the signal was eventually traced back to a massive landslide in Greenland’s remote Dickson Fjord. A staggering volume of rock and ice, enough to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, plunged into the fjord, triggering a 200-meter-high mega-tsunami and a phenomenon known as a seiche: a wave in the icy fjord that continued to slosh back and forth, some 10,000 times over nine days.

Studies of gravity variations at Mars have revealed dense, large-scale structures hidden beneath the sediment layers of a lost ocean. The analysis, which combines models and data from multiple missions, also shows that active processes in the Martian mantle may be giving a boost to the largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons. 

Mars has many hidden structures, such as ice deposits, but the features discovered in the northern polar plains are a mystery because they are covered with a thick and smooth sediment layer believed to be deposited on the ancient seabed.

"These dense structures could be volcanic in origin or could be compacted material due to ancient impacts. There are around 20 features of varying sizes that we have identified dotted around the area surrounding the north polar cap—one of which resembles the shape of a dog."

A research consortium plans to revive geoengineering trials of the controversial iron fertilization technique to pull carbon dioxide from the air, despite public backlash

Scientists plan to seed part of the Pacific Ocean with iron to trigger a surface bloom of phytoplankton that will hopefully suck carbon dioxide out of the air, reviving field trials of a geoengineering technique that has been taboo for more than a decade.

Effects could be varied and wide-ranging.

In a 2009 experiment in the southwest Atlantic Ocean by German and Indian scientists, larger zooplankton ate the smaller phytoplankton—and little carbon actually reached the deep sea.

In an experiment that was conducted in 2006 in the northeastern Pacific by researchers in the U.S. and Canada, toxic phytoplankton species flourished. This has raised fears that fertilization could create “dead zones” where rampant algal blooms would consume all the oxygen in the water, snuffing out other life.

Phytoplankton blooms could also consume nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen that then wouldn’t be available for organisms elsewhere, a phenomenon known as “nutrient robbing.”

In addition, scientists still know little about the deep-ocean ecosystems where the carbon is supposed to be stored. “Most likely [iron fertilization] will affect something that we don’t really understand yet."

Plants can grow with much less light than previously thought, according to a new study on tiny water-based organisms called microalgae that has been published in Nature Communications. The German-led team of researchers lowered light sensors into Arctic water to a depth of 50 metres to test how low light levels must become before plant life ceases to exist, with incredible results.

They found that plants were able to perform photosynthesis – the process in which their leaves convert sunlight into energy – with very little light indeed. 

This discovery offers several exciting possibilities for the field of plant sciences:

1. Extended growing seasons

Many areas around the world receive too little sunlight because they are far from the equator and endure long winters, or are persistently covered by cloud. The UK is affected by cloud cover, for instance: in 2024 it is on the way to having one of the worst periods of total light hours since the 1900s (only the 1930s and early 1990s were worse).

Now that we know how little light is required for photosynthesis, scientists could develop crops that require much less light to thrive in such places by learning from these Arctic microalgae. By unlocking their genetic potential, many crops could benefit by using plant breeding or biotech approaches to alter them accordingly.

In particular, this could help to eke more out of short growing seasons and increase food production. Even in a relatively southerly place like the UK, breeding plants that can photosynthesise with less light would potentially increase crop yields.

2. Sustainable agriculture

There could be additional benefits for growing plants indoors such as in greenhouses, polytunnels or vertical farms (where crops are grown in vertically stacked layers, such as racks of shelves). These systems sometimes rely on artificial lighting, which is both energy-intensive and costly.

3. Space farming

Perhaps one of the most exciting prospects of this research is that it could potentially make it easier to grow plants in space. One of the main challenges for space missions to the Moon, Mars or eventually beyond, is how to feed anyone trying to live in those worlds for any length of time. Sunlight can be limited, so we’ll need highly efficient ways of producing food that don’t use much energy.

Are we all just part of an endless cosmic cycle

• Science’s best guess at how the universe came into being includes the Big Bang followed by a moment of rapid inflationary expansion.

• However, this theory left a few mysteries and quirks in its wake, including the existence of dark matter and conundrums like “the flatness problem.”

• A fringe theory known as non-singular matter bouncing cosmology claims to answer these issues by suggesting that the universe “bounces” between a hot big bang era and the kind of universe we see today.

Answering the question of how everything began was always going to be a difficult one, but humans have made incredible progress—especially considering that, in the cosmological blink of an eye, we’ve gone from writing on cave walls to carrying handheld computers around in our pockets.

Although an intriguing idea, the Big Bang + Inflation model of the universe is still the modern cave man’s best bet at understanding what shaped our universe. But the researchers say it should be possible to figure out if this non-singular matter bouncing cosmology holds any merit as “enhanced curvature perturbations, collapsing to primordial black holes, can induce as well a stochastic gravitational-wave background.”

Life during prehistory was believed to be, as Thomas Hobbes described: "nasty, brutish and short." However, this new study shows these teens were actually quite healthy. Most individuals in the study sample entered puberty by 13.5, reaching full adulthood between 17 and 22 years old. This indicates these Ice Age adolescents started puberty at a similar time to teens in modern, wealthy countries

An assessment of puberty status in adolescents from the European Upper Paleolithic

Highlights

• Provides the first direct evidence for puberty in Upper Paleolithic adolescents.

• Puberty began by 13.5 years in the Mid-Late Upper Paleolithic.

• Puberty data enrich archaeological interpretations of individual adolescents.

• This is the oldest application of peptide analysis for biological sex estimation.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004724842400085X?via%3Dihub

Former National Security Advisor and retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster became the latest official to make eyebrow-raising comments about UFOs, now formally rebranded as “unidentified anomalous phenomena” or UAP.

Asked about UAP during a Sept. 6 appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” McMaster stated that “there are phenomena that have been witnessed by multiple people that are just inexplicable by any kind of science available to us.”

Astoundingly, the Disclosure Act would also require the federal government to take possession of “any and all” recovered UAP and “biological evidence of non-human intelligence” transferred to private defense contractors.

With multiple seemingly credible sources corroborating the existence of such secret programs, it is imperative that Congress pass the legislation without delay.

The Australian researchers analysed a dataset of baleen whale genes and found that two of the largest species, blue and fin whales, have genes associated with a powerful immune system. Genes linked to survival and longevity were also found in all baleen species.

Baleen whales evolved bristly baleen plates instead of teeth, which filter or trap krill, plankton and small fish inside their mouths. The 14 baleen species include the rorqual family – slender, streamlined baleen whales such as fin, sei, humpback and the largest animal that has ever lived, the blue whale.

The ancestors of whales

The land-based, hippo-like predecessors of whales moved slowly to aquatic life. But a 2019 study showed that genes lost during this process helped these animals adapt to life diving deep underwater. For example, the loss of one gene reduced the risk of lung inflammation from diving.

Five genes stand out as different to smaller species (as well as certain DNA sequences that can enhance or switch on genes). These genes have been linked elsewhere to gigantism in whale sharks as well as larger species of fish and land carnivores.

We know from fossil studies the ancient animals that would become whales, Basilosaurus, started to radiate out further into the water 40 million years ago and began to dominate the ocean.

Initially, they ate sedimentary creatures from the bottom of the sea and rivers, as grey whales do today. Later (30-34 million years ago), those whale ancestors that went further into the sea fed on energy-rich, slow-moving prey that lived in large groups.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19665242

Mars Missions May Be Blocked by Kidney Stones

In searching for potential dangers humans would face on a long Mars mission, scientists are leaving no stone unturned—including the ones that show up at weirdly high rates in astronauts’ kidneys.

Healthy kidneys filter blood to balance the body’s water, salts and minerals, expelling waste as urine. When this process goes awry, painful kidney stones—hard accumulations of salts and materials such as calcium—can form in this essential organ. Researchers have theorized that astronauts are prone to kidney stones because bones degrade faster in microgravity, increasing calcium levels in the blood. But these stones’ surprising frequency among space travelers even years after they return to Earth suggests other factors are involved.

Part of the problem with reproducing these ancient recipes is that the tablets are mostly ingredient lists, typically sans further instructions. Presumably, the person writing them assumed that the reader would have sufficient culinary know-how to parse the shorthand. For a modern-day scientist, filling in the blanks requires some serious guesswork.

A vegetarian stew—inexplicably titled on a tablet as “Unwinding”—and a braised lamb stew with beets both turned out surprisingly well. The latter recipe incorporates both sour beer and tallow, both of which were commonly used ingredients at the time.

Babylonian Lamb Stew

Adapted from the Yale Peabody Museum

Prep time: 30 minutes

Cook time: 90 minutes

Total time: 120 minutes

4 servings

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of chopped leek

• 2 cloves of garlic

• 1 pound of diced leg of mutton or lamb

• 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste

• 1 small onion, diced

• 1 teaspoon of ground cumin

• 1 cup of Persian shallots or spring onions, finely chopped

• 1 pound of fresh red beets, peeled and diced

• 1 cup of chopped arugula

• 1/2 cup of chopped fresh cilantro

• 1 cup of beer

• 1/2 cup of water

• 2 teaspoons of dry coriander seed

• 1/2 cup of finely chopped cilantro

• 1/2 cup of finely chopped kurrat (Egyptian leek), ramps, or wild leek

Instructions

• Crush chopped leek and garlic together in a mortar to form a coarse paste. Set aside.

• Heat the fat in a Dutch oven wide enough for the diced lamb to sit in one layer. Season the lamb all over with salt and sear on high heat until all moisture evaporates.

• Add in the onion and sauté until translucent, but not yet brown. Add the Persian shallots and cumin.

• Fold in red beet, arugula, and cilantro. Continue sautéing over medium-high heat until the greens are wilted and the mixture emits a pleasant aroma.

• Pour in the beer and the water. Give the pot a light stir and bring to a boil.

• Reduce heat and add in the crushed leek and garlic.

• Let the stew simmer for about an hour, or until the sauce thickens and the lamb is tender.

• While the stew simmers, pound the coriander seeds, kurrat, and cilantro together into a mortar to make a flavorful paste.

• Ladle the stew into plates and sprinkle it with the kurrat paste. The dish can be served with steamed bulgur or flatbread.