Phantm

Ancient Maya developed super highways network more than 1,000 years ago Roads of more than 240 kilometers long designed, traced and built by the ancient Maya have been discovered in Guatemala, near the border with Mexico. El Mirador is a late Maya preclassic city, located in Guatemala, in the heart of the Petén jungle, and it was recently revealed that the first network of super highways in the world was made there by this ancient civilization. This was concluded in the framework of the “Cuenca Mirador” archaeological project, in which more than 700 square kilometers have been analyzed by experts. In addition, Richard Hansen, director of this program explained that this a one-of-a-kind study ever to be conducted in Mesoamerica. In total, it is estimated that El Mirador, also known as the the “Kan” Kingdom, covers an area of 2,158 square kilometers within the Maya Biosphere Reserve and is also one of the most important environmental lungs in all the American Continent. As part of this research, it has been determined that Guatemala has the privilege of being the cradle of the Maya civilization, and has the highest pyramids, in addition to the aforementioned unique road. Within the analyzed area, experts have discovered cities, pyramids, terraces, canals, walls and the network of 17 roads measuring more than 240 kilometers long by 40 meters wide – which were used for freight transport. The project was carried out with a high-precision radar called LIDAR, which scans the terrain with a laser that can penetrate the vegetation at a rate of 560,000 points per second, and has allowed the identification of unique archaeological features using 2D and 3D images. According to Hansen, this was the first state in all of the Americas, and in its time could have been the largest in the world, both in size and population, as it is estimated that at least 1 million people lived there before it collapsed, around the year 150 BC. Tikal is currently the largest excavation site in America and contains some of the most incredible archaeological remains of the ancient Mayan civilization. It is also Guatemala’s most famous natural and cultural reserve, declared a national park in 1955 and a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1979, however “El Mirador” has bigger cities than Tikal, only that they are still uncovered. The research will continue with the aim of discovering more data on this fascinating civilization within this magnificent city, and for that, Hansen urges the governments of Guatemala and Mexico – as far as “El Mirador” extends – to support protecting the area and boosting sustainable tourism. http://www.theyucatantimes.com/2017/01/ancient-maya-developed-super-highways-network-more-than-1000-years-ago/

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Moon rocks reveal that we were very wrong about the age of the Moon Thanks to rocks collected during the Apollo 14 mission, researchers say they’ve finally pinpointed the exact age of the Moon, and it turns out, our lunar neighbour is an incredible 4.51 billion years old. These findings suggest that the Moon was formed roughly 60 million years after the Solar System first formed, making it up to 140 million years older than previous estimates. "Establishing the age of the Moon is critical to understanding Solar System evolution and the formation of rocky planets, including Earth. However, despite its importance, the age of the Moon has never been accurately determined," reports the team, led by Melanie Barboni from the University of California, Los Angeles. In case you need a refresher, the Moon is thought to have formed from the leftover matter that was sheared off Earth after a collision with Theia - a planet-sized object that existed in the early Solar System - or perhaps a bunch of smaller objects. The impact that formed the Moon could have been large enough to wipe out any living thing on Earth, so knowing when that collision occurred is important if we hope to understand the evolution of our own planet, and when early life took root here. And the new research suggests that it happened earlier in the timeline of the Solar System than we thought - just 60 million years after our star system's birth, compared to previous estimates of 150 to 200 million years afterwards. To come up with the new lunar age estimate, the team analysed Moon rocks taken from the lunar surface during the Apollo 14 mission. The reason we've never been able to accurately date the age of the Moon in the past is that there's very few well-preserved Moon rocks left on its surface. Most of the rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts are breccias - mixes of different rocks that have been mashed together by the meteorite strikes that plague the Moon, thanks to its lack of atmosphere. So instead of trying to find chunks of rock that had been there since the early days, the team instead turned to zircon - a mineral that would have formed as the Moon was cooling from its fresh, molten state into the rocky satellite we see today. Once formed, zircon crystals stay perfectly intact as little time signatures of geological events. Studying zircon allows researchers to see when parts of the rock solidified, which is exactly what they needed to figure out when the Moon had fully formed. "This mineral is just the king when you try to understand any processes, because it is amazingly sturdy," Barboni told Loren Grush at The Verge. The team performed a process known as uranium-lead dating on zircon samples that were extracted from the Apollo 14 space rocks. This required them to liquefy the zircon samples in acid, destroying the space rock artefacts. But inside the zircon, the team was able to pull out four different elements: uranium, lead, lutetium, and hafnium. Since uranium - a radioactive element - eventually turns into lead after long periods of time, the researchers could analyse how long the lead had been forming, giving them an accurate date of the Moon’s birth. The ratios of lutetium and hafnium in the zircon also indicated how long the mineral had been around for. Combining these analytical techniques, the team found that the Moon is 4.51 billion years old, making it far older than we previously thought, and providing us with a more accurate picture of how our Solar System formed. "The evolution of Earth could only have started after this impact," Barboni told The Verge. "And that’s why it’s so important to date this impact, because you want to know when Earth started to evolve into the beautiful planet we all know today." While the new measurement is the most precise to date, some outside researchers have said that the act of dissolving the zircon in acid might have changed some of the results slightly, but Barboni says they accounted for these concerns. "We were able to correct for everything that was a problem before, the reasons people said zircon couldn't be used," she told Mike Wall at Space.com. Hopefully, as these measurements become more and more precise, we will gain a full understanding of how the Moon - and the rest of the Solar System - formed, giving us more details about life on Earth, and the possibility of life on other planets. http://www.sciencealert.com/we-finally-know-the-precise-age-of-the-moon-thanks-to-apollo-14-moon-rocks

A superbug resistant to every available antibiotic has killed a woman in the US A woman in Nevada died in September from an infection that resisted every kind of antibiotic in the US. The incident, which the CDC reported Thursday, is part of the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, which is on track to kill 10 million people by 2050. "I think it’s concerning. We have relied for so long on just newer and newer antibiotics. But obviously the bugs can often [develop resistance] faster than we can make new ones," Alexander Kallen, a medical officer at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of health care quality promotion told Stat News. That’s in part because it takes a long time to develop antibiotics, and even those that have made it through development face stumbling blocks. As an unfortunate result, many major pharmaceutical companies have stopped developing new antibiotics altogether. Last year for example, the FDA turned down Cempra Pharmaceuticals‘ new antibiotic, a drug designed to fight a type of bacterial pneumonia called solithromycin, citing too little information on how the drug might impact the liver. That additional trial would require testing out the antibiotic on 9,000 people. Why it's so hard to get new antibiotics approved Despite these roadblocks, biotech company Paratek Pharmaceuticals is currently working on a new antibiotic called omadacycline. So far, the approval process for the drug has taken roughly two decades. The drug would treat skin infections, pneumonia, and urinary tract infections, and the company expects results from phase 3 trials looking at skin infections and pneumonia by July 2017. "After 21 years of investment … we will have the pivotal data," Paratek President Evan Loh told Business Insider at the JPMorgan healthcare conference on Thursday. From the time the drug went into human trials to when it could theoretically get on the market, 15 years will have passed, he said. So why does it take so long? Part of the problem is just tricky science: sorting through different compounds to figure out what antibiotic might work can take time. But it also has a lot to do with the companies running the trials staying afloat financially, said Loh. And at that point, sometimes legislation can come in handy. Loh said the GAIN Act helped Paratek "save the company" by extending Paratek’s patents on its antibiotic by five years. The act, which passed in 2012, aimed to incentivise companies to develop antibiotics by giving them extra time under patent protection to make money before facing generic competition. If approved, Paratek’s new drug could be added to the arsenal of medicines designed to take on resistant bacteria, which will be key as more deaths attributed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria occur. "In the pre-antibiotic era, people were dead by the time they were 30 because of infections. Can you ever imagine that scenario where we get back to that situation?" Paratek Chief Commercial Officer Adam Woodrow asked Business Insider. "There was once this time where we were keeping up. Now we’ve sort of fallen behind," said Woodrow. "And the group of antibiotics that should be there to combat these pathogens have just disappeared." http://www.sciencealert.com/a-us-woman-has-been-killed-by-a-superbug-resistant-to-every-available-antibiotic

Incredibly rare ruby sea dragon has been caught on camera for the first time It's even more beautiful than we imagined. A type of seadragon known only from museum specimens has been seen in the wild for the first time in deep water off Western Australia. Two ruby seadragons were observed for nearly 30 minutes, uncovering new details about their anatomy, habitat, and behaviour. The researchers from the University of Western Australia, the Western Australian Museum, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography used a mini-remotely operated vehicle in waters more than 50 meters deep near the Recherche Archipelago off Esperance. This latest discovery confirms that ruby seadragons lack ornate leaf-like appendages, a feature that scientists had considered to be distinguishing characteristics based upon the two known species, the common and leafy seadragons. Both use their leafy appendages as camouflage in seaweed and kelp meadows where they tend to live. Seadragons are related to seahorses and pipefish. Last year, Scripps Oceanography marine biologists Josefin Stiller and Greg Rouse, and Nerida Wilson of Western Australia described the previously unknown ruby seadragon from preserved specimens misidentified as common seadragons, one of which was collected nearly 100 years ago. The researchers believe the ruby seadragon lost its appendages through evolution and that its red colour acts as a camouflage in the deeper, dimly lit waters where it lives. Whether they evolved a curly tail independently from their pipefish ancestors, or simply retained it while the other seadragons lost it, will require further study. Nerida Wilson from UWA and the Western Australian Museum says there are so many discoveries still waiting in southern Western Australia. "Western Australia has such a diverse range of habitats, and each one is deserving of attention," Wilson says. http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-incredibly-rare-ruby-sea-dragon-caught-on-video-for-the-first-time

Not Aliens: Brilliant Light Pillars Appear Over Canada Timmy Joe Elzinga captured this image of light pillars in northern Ontario on Jan. 6, 2017, at 1:30 a.m. local time. Credit: Timmy Joe Elzinga Despite appearances, aliens have not descended upon a snowy scape in Ontario, Canada. Rather, an Earthly phenomenon is the cause of a ring of brilliant shafts of pastel-colored lights, captured in the wee hours of the morning by Timmy Joe Elzinga using his smartphone camera. It was 1:30 a.m. local time in northern Ontario on Jan. 6 when Elzinga spotted the phenomenon. "When I first saw these light beams shooting through the sky from my bathroom window, I was sure they were the northern lights," Elzinga told Live Science in an email. "I was able to capture these images both because the lights were so bright and pronounced and because I'm a bit of an amateur photographer." That experience, he said, led him to use "the manual settings on my phone to adjust the time the aperture was open to 8 seconds." Elzinga said he wasn't aware of this light-pillar phenomenon until he saw it firsthand. Light pillars like these seen in northern Ontario can lead to UFO reports. Credit: Timmy Joe Elzinga Ice from high altitudes explains the pillars that Elzinga saw, NASA said. During some cold, wintry nights, flat ice crystals that normally reside higher up in the atmosphere come fluttering closer to the ground, according to NASA. These whimsically wobbling ice crystals are sometimes referred to as crystal fog. When the crystals reflect ground lights from nearby cars and other bits of civilization, the result can be glorious: columns of light called "light pillars." "The pillars are not physically over the lights or anywhere else in space for that matter — like all halos, they are purely the collected light beams from all the millions of crystals, which just happen to be reflecting light towards your eyes or camera," said Les Cowley, a retired physicist and atmospheric optics expert, on his site Atmospheric Optics. The light pillars are so strange-looking that people often mistake them for UFOs, according to EarthSky.org. "There are said to be a lot of UFO reports caused by light pillars over Niagara Falls, where the mist from the rush of descending water interacts with the city's many upward-facing spotlights," EarthSky reported. The beams resemble so-called sun pillars, which appear as columns of light extending from the sun due to light reflecting off ice crystals in the upper atmosphere, according to NASA. And Elzinga saw quite a show. To capture the northern Ontario pillars, Elzinga said he got creative. "I also opened the window and removed the screen so I could get an unobstructed view, and I used the ridges in my bathroom window's track as a make shift tripod so I could avoid motion blur," he said. "I ran outside to see if I could get some more images and even went for a drive, but the light pillars seem[ed] to look best right from my area of town." After 45 minutes or so, the lights were too dim for Elzinga to see them, he said. http://www.livescience.com/57482-light-pillars-photo-ontario.html

Wild Tarantula Eats a Foot-Long Snake in a First A tarantula (Grammostola quirogai) chows down on an Almaden ground snake (Erythrolamprus almadensis) in southern Brazil. Credit: Gabriela Franzoi Dri When scientists in southern Brazil turned over a rock while looking for tarantulas, they came across something they never expected: a spider eating a snake. The tarantula, called Grammostola quirogai, was chowing down on the body of an Almaden ground snake (Erythrolamprus almadensis). It's the first time a tarantula has ever been seen preying on a snake in the wild. "Predation of such a large snake in relation to the size of the spider was extremely surprising to us," said Leandro Malta Borges, a graduate student in biology at the Federal University of Santa Maria in Brazil. Borges and his colleagues reported their shocking discovery Dec. 3 in the journal Herpetology Notes. The researchers were studying tarantulas in the Serra do Caverá, a rocky, grassy region in the far south of Brazil. Under a rock, they discovered a 15-inch (39 centimeters) snake being eaten by an adult female G. quirogai. This species was formally described last year, Borges said, and previously had been known to exist only in Uruguay. Grammostola tarantulas are hand-size arachnids, and one of G. quirogai's close relatives, the Chilean rose tarantula (Grammostola rosea) is a popular aquarium pet. Other Grammostola tarantulas have been induced to eat snakes in captivity, Borges and his colleagues wrote, but the behavior hadn't been seen in the wild. Another species of spider, the Goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi) has fed on a viper, but the encounter between the two species was engineered by researchers. "There are other records of spiders preying on snakes, such as the famous black widow, which has a strong toxin and, besides, rely on the web for capturing," Borges said. But tarantulas don't spin webs to trap prey. The middle and front sections of the half-eaten snake were a gooey, half-decomposed mess when researchers arrived. Credit: Conrado Mario da Rosa Most likely, Borges said, the unfortunate snake simply slithered by the tarantula's rock or tried to use it as a den. The tarantula probably attacked — spiders of this species can have fangs nearly 0.8 inches (2 cm) long — and subdued the reptile. Tarantulas do have venom, but there are no studies of G. quirogai venom, Borges said. Therefore, it's unclear whether its venom would be strong enough to affect a snake. Typically, these tarantulas prey on other spiders and insects or smaller reptiles, amphibians, birds or even mammals. Once the snake was dead, the spider settled in for a feast. Spiders digest their prey by liquefying the insides of the victim's body and then slurping up the juices, which is what the tarantula was in the process of doing when it was found. When the researchers found the pair, the snake's front and middle sections were a gooey mess. http://www.livescience.com/57424-wild-tarantula-eats-snake.html

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Stars may collide in a stunning “red nova” in 2022 In a first, scientists say they can predict stars colliding. And we all can watch. A probable “red nova” explosion captured in 2002. NASA, ESA and H.E. Bond (STScI) Prediction: In 2022, two stars will collide into one another. That collision will unleash a massive amount of energy. So massive, the two stars — which are now invisible to the naked eye — will increase in brightness by a factor of 10,000. And not only will we be able to see this explosion, in real time, with unaided eyes, it will become one of the brightest objects in the entire sky. Astronomer Larry Molnar of Calvin College is making this prediction today at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas. If he’s right, it will be the first time an astronomer predicted an explosion of two stars merging. “We know these things merge, but we really don’t understand what mechanism that causes them to merge,” he told me. Molnar’s betting that the stars, located some 1,800 light years away, have already exploded. By 2022 (plus or minus a year), the light from the explosion will finally reach Earth. That year, we should be able to see it slowly getting brighter over the course of a few months in the constellation Cygnus (a cross-shaped constellation that lines up neatly with the Milky Way). If he’s right, you’ll be able to look up at the night sky and see this cataclysmic collision for yourself. “If the prediction is correct, then for the first time in history, parents will be able to point to a dark spot in the sky and say, ‘Watch, kids, there’s a star hiding in there, but soon it’s going to light up,’” Matt Walhout, a dean at Calvin College, said in a press statement. That’s cool. And having a time series of data before, during, and after such an explosion will yield new insights about how solar systems form and evolve. How do astronomers know these stars could collide? Scientists have never predicted a binary star system collision. (A binary star system is a solar system that has two stars that orbit one another. Think of the double sunset in the original Star Wars.) But they have seen them before, and have partial data on what the systems look like in the years before a collision. In 2008, Romuald Tylenda, a Polish astronomer, observed such an explosion. Shortly after, Tylenda realized, by coincidence, she had partial data on the stars leading up to the collision. In that data, there was a pattern. The stars — as they got closer to impact — seemed to be growing closer together. The length of time they took to orbit one another was decreasing, like two tether balls getting wrapped up around the same pole. They spun closer and closer, faster and faster, until … bang! That’s when Molnar began his search. He and his students started looking for stars with that same pattern of accelerating orbits. The hope was to find a star system nearing collision, and then capture an enormous amount of data on it in the years before, during, and after the collision. In 2013, he and his students found a star system that showed a similar pattern as the 2008 explosion. Since then, the evidence has only grown stronger. Molnar and his colleagues have observed the orbit of the two stars growing faster every year. That suggests it’s nearing a collision. The orbits “get more extreme every year,” he says. In 2022, he forecasts we’ll see the two stars — one about 40 percent more massive than the sun, the other about a third of its size — get so close that their outer atmospheres will graze one another, and the smaller star will take a dive into the larger one. Most of the energy of the collision will go to forming a new star with an even more massive core. But a lot of energy will blow off the outer layers of the stars. “And that has to go somewhere.” This type of explosion is called a “red nova” because, well, the light that flashed out of it is red in hue. And just how confident is Molnar this will happen? He confident enough to devote a lot of time and resources to the project for the next several years. “At this point we have now made over 33,000 images of the star with Calvin College telescopes on more than 170 nights of observing,” he says. “In a sense, that investment is my bet that this is going to be worthwhile.” But in the end, he says, the prediction is just a prediction. We’ll just have to wait and see if it becomes true. In 2022, Molnar will have devoted around a decade to observing this star system. What will he feel if the prediction is correct? “It would be the most satisfying event of my scientific life,” he says. http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/1/6/14184094/scientists-predict-stars-colliding

Iconic 1,000-year-old Pioneer Cabin tree collapses as deadly storm blasts California The famed Pioneer Cabin tree, known for its hollow center that allowed cars to pass through, collapsed during the intense storm that blasted California with heavy rain. The giant sequoia was located in the Calaveras Big Trees State Park in Calaveras County, about 80 miles southeast of Sacramento. A park volunteer found the collapsed iconic tree on Sunday, Jan. 8. (Facebook photo/Calaveras Big Trees Association/Jim Allday) The tree was a popular tourist site since the 1880s when a group of pioneers carved out the center. It became an iconic part of the state park. Until recently, cars were allowed to drive through. Jim Allday, a park volunteer, found the collapsed tree on Sunday as a major storm barreled over central and northern California. A healthy Pioneer Cabin tree stands in Calaveras Big Trees State Park. (Photo/Amber Rack) "When I went out there (Sunday afternoon), the trail was literally a river; the trail is washed out," Allday said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "I could see the tree on the ground. It looked like it was laying in a pond or lake with a river running through it." The tree has shallow roots and its health has been deteriorating, Allday said. According to the Calaveras Big Trees Association's Facebook page, "the storm was just too much" for the famed Sequoia, that was believed to be possibly more than 1,000 years old. People quickly took to the park's Facebook page to share remorse for the fallen tree. Dozens posted photos of recent visits. Strong winds, torrential rain and mountain snow slammed the northern half of California and western Nevada over the weekend. More than 40,000 lost power in the San Francisco area on Sunday. Winds gusted past 60 mph at times. The heavy rain led to rising rivers and streams. In Carmel Valley, California, a breached levee along the Carmel River forced dozens of nearby residents to evacuate. Evacuations also took place in Carson City, Nevada, on Sunday as the Carson River rose past its banks. One woman was killed on a golf course in San Ramon, California, about 30 miles east of San Francisco, on Saturday after she was hit by a falling tree. Life-threatening flooding will continue to wallop northern and central California into the middle of the week. http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/iconic-1-000-year-old-pioneer-cabin-tree-collapses-as-deadly-storm-blasts-california/70000506

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Huge Antarctic iceberg poised to break away A huge iceberg, a quarter the size of Wales, is poised to break off from the Larsen C ice shelf An iceberg expected to be one of the 10 largest ever recorded is ready to break away from Antarctica, scientists say. A long-running rift in the Larsen C ice shelf grew suddenly in December and now just 20km of ice is keeping the 5,000 sq km piece from floating away. Larsen C is the most northern major ice shelf in Antarctica. Researchers based in Swansea say the loss of a piece a quarter of the size of Wales will leave the whole shelf vulnerable to future break-up. Larsen C is about 350m thick and floats on the seas at the edge of West Antarctica, holding back the flow of glaciers that feed into it. Researchers have been tracking the rift in Larsen C for many years, watching it with some trepidation after the collapse of Larsen A ice shelf in 1995 and the sudden break-up of the Larsen B shelf in 2002. Last year, researchers from the UK's Project Midas reported that the Larsen C rift was growing fast. But in December the speed of the rift went into overdrive, growing by a further 18km in just a couple of weeks. What will become a massive iceberg now hangs on to the shelf by a thread just 20km long. The rift is about 100m wide but is estimated to be half a kilometre deep Images taken in November last year show the length of the rift "If it doesn't go in the next few months, I'll be amazed," project leader Prof Adrian Luckman, from Swansea University, told BBC News. "There hasn't been enough cloud-free Landsat images but we've managed to combine a pair of Esa Sentinel-1 radar images to notice this extension, and it's so close to calving that I think it's inevitable." Prof Luckman says the area that will break off will be about 5,000 sq km, a size he says that would put the iceberg among the top 10 biggest that have been recorded. The researchers say that this is a geographical and not a climate event. The rift has been present for decades, they say, but it has punched through at this particular time. It is believed that climate warming has brought forward the likely separation of the iceberg but the scientists say they have no direct evidence to support this. However, they are concerned about how any break-off will impact the rest of the ice shelf, given that its neighbour, Larsen B, disintegrated spectacularly in 2002 following a similar large calving event. The collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf which occurred in 2002 followed on from a large rift calving event "We are convinced, although others are not, that the remaining ice shelf will be less stable than the present one," said Prof Luckman. "We would expect in the ensuing months to years further calving events, and maybe an eventual collapse - but it's a very hard thing to predict, and our models say it will be less stable; not that it will immediately collapse or anything like that." As it floats on the sea, the resulting iceberg from the shelf will not raise sea levels. But if the shelf breaks up even more, it could result in glaciers that flow off the land behind it to speed up their passage towards the ocean. This non-floating ice would have an impact on sea levels. According to estimates, if all the ice that the Larsen C shelf currently holds back entered the sea, global waters would rise by 10cm. All that is very much in the future. There are few certainties right now apart from an imminent change to the outline of Antarctica's icy coast. "The eventual consequences might be the ice shelf collapsing in years to decades," said Prof Luckman, "Even the sea level contribution of this area is not on anybody's radar; it's just a big geographical event that will change the landscape there." http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38522954

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Ancient Stonehenge-Like 'Calendar Rock' Aligns With Winter Solstice A 5,000-year-old calendar rock discovered in Sicily sported a man-made hole through which the winter-solstice sun would shine. Credit: Giuseppe La Spina Italian archaeologists have found an intriguing Stonehenge-like "calendar rock" in Sicily. Featuring a 3.2-foot diameter hole, the rock formation marked the beginning of winter some 5,000 years ago. The holed Neolithic rock was discovered Nov. 30, 2016 on a hill near a prehistoric necropolis six miles from Gela, on the southern coast of Sicily, by a team who was surveying some World War II-era bunkers. "It appeared clear to me that we were dealing with a deliberate, man-made hole," archaeologist Giuseppe La Spina told Seeker. "However, we needed the necessary empirical evidence to prove the stone was used as a prehistoric calendar to measure the seasons." Using a compass, cameras and a video camera mounted to a GPS-equipped drone, La Spina and colleagues carried out a test in December at the winter solstice. The idea was to find out if the rising sun at solstice aligned with the distinct hole in the rock feature. According to La Spina, the experiment was "a total success." "At 7:32 am the sun shone brightly through the hole with an incredible precision," La Spina said. "It was amazing." The 23-foot high holed stone would have marked a turning point of the year and the seasons, anticipating some hard and cold time ahead. The moment likely had a ritual importance. In fact, further investigation of the area revealed the site was a sacred place at the end of the third millennium BC. Not far from the holed stone, the researchers found several intact burials known as grotticella tombs. Excavated in the rock, these chamber tombs were the main form of burial for the Castelluccio culture that fluorished in the Sicilian early Bronze Age. Interestingly, on the east of the calendar rock, La Spina and colleagues found what appears to be a menhir, or upright stone. The 16.4-foot-tall stone lay on the ground, but the presence of a pit near its base suggests the megalith was originally standing upright. "It stood at a distance of 26 feet, right in front of the rock's hole," La Spina said. The geological composition of the calendar rock and the menhir are different, indicating the monolite was cut and brought to the site from elsewhere. "This obviously reinforces the sacrality of the site," La Spina said. At least two other holed stones have been found in Sicily in the past. "The newly found calendar rock appears to have been made by the same hand that carved the other two rocks," archeo-astronomy expert Alberto Scuderi, regional director of Italian Archaeologist Groups, told Seeker. Scuderi discovered the two holed stones near Palermo. "One lined up with the rising sun at the winter solstice, the other produced the same effect with the raising sun at the summer solstice," Scuderi said. "For this reason, I believe that another holed calendar stone, marking the summer solstice, may be found near Gela." According to Giulio Magli, professor of archaeo-astronomy at Milan's Polytechnic University, the finding is very interesting, especially when associated to two holed stones found in the past. "More research and scientific measurements must be taken," Magli said. "We should not consider the holed stones as a precise calendars or an instruments to observe the sun's cycle, but rather monuments that provided information on the solstices for practical and agricultural purposes." http://www.livescience.com/57396-ancient-stonehenge-like-calendar-rock-discovered.html#sthash.WTVIH0kp.sfju

A brand-new human organ has been classified Your body now has an extra organ. Researchers have classified a brand-new organ inside our bodies, one that's been hiding in plain sight in our digestive system this whole time. Although we now know about the structure of this new organ, its function is still poorly understood, and studying it could be the key to better understanding and treatment of abdominal and digestive disease. Known as the mesentery, the new organ is found in our digestive systems, and was long thought to be made up of fragmented, separate structures. But recent research has shown that it's actually one, continuous organ. The evidence for the organ's reclassification is now published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology. "In the paper, which has been peer reviewed and assessed, we are now saying we have an organ in the body which hasn’t been acknowledged as such to date," said J Calvin Coffey, a researcher from the University Hospital Limerick in Ireland, who first discovered that the mesentery was an organ. "The anatomic description that had been laid down over 100 years of anatomy was incorrect. This organ is far from fragmented and complex. It is simply one continuous structure." Thanks to the new research, as of last year, medical students started being taught that the mesentery is a distinct organ. The world's best-known series of medical textbooks, Gray's Anatomy, has even been updated to include the new definition. So what is the mesentery? It's a double fold of peritoneum - the lining of the abdominal cavity - that attaches our intestine to the wall of our abdomen, and keeps everything locked in place. One of the earliest descriptions of the mesentery was made by Leonardo da Vinci, and for centuries it was generally ignored as a type of insignificant attachment. Over the past century, doctors who studied the mesentery assumed it was a fragmented structure made of separate sections, which made it pretty unimportant. But in 2012, Coffey and his colleagues showed through detailed microscopic examinations that the mesentery is actually a continuous structure. Over the past four years, they've gathered further evidence that the mesentery should actually be classified as its own distinct organ, and the latest paper makes it official. You can see the new organ illustrated below: And while that doesn't change the structure that's been inside our bodies all along, with the reclassification comes a whole new field of medical science that could improve our health outcomes. "When we approach it like every other organ… we can categorise abdominal disease in terms of this organ," said Coffey. That means that medical students and researchers will now investigate what role - if any - the mesentery might play on abdominal diseases, and that understanding will hopefully lead to better outcomes for patients. "Now we have established anatomy and the structure. The next step is the function. If you understand the function you can identify abnormal function, and then you have disease. Put them all together and you have the field of mesenteric science … the basis for a whole new area of science," said Coffey. "This is relevant universally as it affects all of us." It just goes to show that no matter how advanced science becomes, there's always more to learn and discover, even within our own bodies. http://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-a-brand-new-human-organ-has-been-classified

Eggs of Non-Avian Dinosaurs Took 3-6 Months to Hatch Non-avian dinosaur eggs took a long time to hatch — between 3 and 6 months, according to new research on the teeth of fossilized dinosaur embryos. Herds of female titanosaurs gathered at traditional nesting grounds 80 million years ago in what is now Patagonia, Argentina. Image credit: Luis Rey / Yale University. “Some of the greatest riddles about dinosaurs pertain to their embryology — virtually nothing is known,” said Prof. Gregory Erickson, a researcher at Florida State University and lead author on the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Did their eggs incubate slowly like their reptilian cousins — crocodilians and lizards? Or rapidly like living dinosaurs — the birds?” “We know very little about dinosaur embryology, yet it relates to so many aspects of development, life history, and evolution,” said Dr. Mark Norell, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History and co-author on the study. “But with the help of advanced tools like CT scanners and high-resolution microscopy, we’re making discoveries that we couldn’t have imagined two decades ago. This work is a great example of how new technology and new ideas can be brought to old problems.” Paleontologists had long theorized that dinosaur incubation duration was similar to birds, whose eggs hatch in periods ranging from 11-85 days. Comparable-sized reptilian eggs typically take twice as long — weeks to many months. Because dinosaur eggs were large, researchers believed they must have experienced rapid incubation with birds inheriting that characteristic from their dinosaur ancestors. Prof. Erickson, Dr. Norell and their colleagues decided to put these theories to the test. To do that, the paleontologists accessed some rare fossils — those of dinosaur embryos. They looked at the fossilized teeth of two well-preserved embryos of ornithischian dinosaurs: (i) Protoceratops, a pig-sized dinosaur found by the team in the Mongolian Gobi Desert, whose eggs were quite small at 194 grams; and (ii) Hypacrosaurus, a very large duck-billed dinosaur found in Alberta, Canada, with eggs weighing more than 4 kg. First, the authors scanned the embryonic jaws of the two dinosaurs with CT to visualize the forming dentitions. Then they used an advanced microscope to look for and analyze the pattern of ‘von Ebner’ lines — growth lines that are present in the teeth of all animals, humans included. This work marks the first time that these growth lines have been identified in dinosaur embryos. “These are the lines that are laid down when any animal’s teeth develops. They’re kind of like tree rings, but they’re put down daily. And so we could literally count them to see how long each dinosaur had been developing,” Prof. Erickson explained. Using this method, the team determined that the Protoceratops embryos were about three months old when they died and the Hypacrosaurus embryos were about six months old. This places non-avian dinosaur incubation more in line with that of their reptilian cousins, whose eggs typically take twice as long as bird eggs to hatch — weeks to many months. The study implies that birds likely evolved more rapid incubation rates after they branched off from the rest of the dinosaurs. “The results might be quite different if they were able to analyze a more bird-like dinosaur, like Velociraptor. But unfortunately, very few fossilized dinosaur embryos have been discovered,” the researchers said. The biggest ramification from the study, however, relates to the extinction of dinosaurs. Given that these creatures required considerable resources to reach adult size, took more than a year to mature and had slow incubation times, they would have been at a distinct disadvantage compared to other animals that survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. “We suspect our findings have implications for understanding why dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, whereas amphibians, birds, mammals and other reptiles made it through and prospered,” Prof. Erickson said. http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/eggs-non-avian-dinosaurs-04504.html

1,000 Times Thinner Than Human Hair! Scientists Create Thinnest Electrical Wire The team composed of scientists from Stanford University and the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory published their work in Nature Materials. (Photo : Scott Barbour/Getty Images) A research group has developed the thinnest possible electrical wires, with a size of just three atoms wide using fragments of molecule-sized diamonds, the smallest diamonds we have. The team composed of scientists from Stanford University and the US Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory published their work in Nature Materials. According to Science Alert, the nanowire is made of a string of diamondoids attached to sulphur and copper atoms. Diamondoids occur naturally in petroleum fluids, are small cage-like structures made of carbon and hydrogen. Moreover, because the molecules are attracted to each other, the nanowire assembles itself in unique way --- attaching itself like a like molecular LEGO. This marks the first time self-assemblage has been done with inorganic chemicals. Basically, the needle-like wires have a semiconducting core (copper and sulfur) surrounded by an insulating shell in the form of diamondoids. "Much like LEGO blocks, they only fit together in certain ways that are determined by their size and shape," said Stanford graduate student Fei Hua Li, who played a critical role in synthesizing the tiny wires and figuring out how they grew said in a press release. "The copper and sulfur atoms of each building block wound up in the middle, forming the conductive core of the wire, and the bulkier diamondoids wound up on the outside, forming the insulating shell." Such exceptional property and the miniscule size of the materials use could be useful to fabrics that generate electricity simply through movement, optoelectronic devices that employ both electricity and light, and superconducting materials that conduct electricity without defects, International Business Times reported. "What we have shown here is that we can make tiny, conductive wires of the smallest possible size that essentially assemble themselves," said Hao Yan, a Stanford postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper, added. "The process is a simple, one-pot synthesis. You dump the ingredients together and you can get results in half an hour. It's almost as if the diamondoids know where they want to go." http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/34749/20161230/1-000-times-thinner-human-hair-scientists-create-thinnest-electrical.htm

This Russian Fisherman Catches the Weirdest Fish that Will Make Your Skin Crawl Roman Fedortsov, a deep sea fisherman in Murmansk, Russian, has taken over social media because of his weird-looking creatures. Fedorstov began posting photos of these rare oddities on Twitter early this year. (Photo : Matt Cardy/Getty Images) Have you ever dreamed of swimming with the creatures in the deep blue sea? You might want to think again after seeing these alien-looking fish caught by a Russian fisherman. Meet Roman Fedortsov, a deep sea fisherman in Murmansk, Russian, who had taken over social media because of his weird-looking creatures. Fedorstov began posting photos of these rare oddities on Twitter early this year. My Modern Met notes that the most terrifying feature of the creatures that Fedorstov caught was their teeth. The one below shows what looks like a frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus), a bizzare species discovered in the 19th century and was popularly called "sea serpent" at that time. Despite their strange appearance, Fedorstov handles each creature with braveness and care. http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/34538/20161222/russian-fisherman-catches-weirdest-monstrous-fish-will-make-skin-crawl.htm

Cassini Captures Stunning Image of Saturn's Moons Pandora, Mimas The Cassini spacecraft captured the beauty of Saturn's moons Mimas and Pandora during its recent ring-grazing orbits. (Photo : NASA via Getty Images) NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission is exploring other lesser-explored bodies in the Saturn region including the ringed planet's moons. Recently, the spacecraft managed to capture the beauty of Saturn's moon Pandora. The agency released the high-resolution image taken by Cassini that shows the unobstructed surface of Pandora. The said image is one of the most detailed images taken of the Saturn's moon. Pandora is about 52 miles (84 kilometers) across. The moon orbits the planet near the F-ring. The current ring-grazing orbit of the spacecraft, designed to plunge into the planet's ring to give an unprecedented view of the planet's mysterious rings, allowed the spacecraft to explore the planet's moonlets. The photograph was taken last Dec. 18 during the spacecraft's closest flyby of Saturn's moon Pandora. Cassini managed to get close to Pandora on its third ring-grazing orbit. To produce a high-resolution image, Cassini used green light with its narrow-angle camera from about 25,200 miles (40,500 kilometers) away from the said moon. With the given distance, the spacecraft produced an image with 787 feet (24- meters) per pixel resolution size. Aside from Pandora, Cassini also managed to capture Saturn's moon Mimas crashing into the planet's rings. This was, however, only an optical illusion produced due to the spacecraft's positioning when the image was taken. During this time, the moon Mimas was actually about 28,000 miles (45,000 kilometers) from Saturn's rings. "There is a strong connection between the icy moon and Saturn's rings, though," a NASA official said in a statement. "Gravity links them together and shapes the way they both move," the official added. Although an optical illusion, Mimas, which is about 246 miles (396 kilometers) and it's gravitational pull indeed created a disturbance that affected Saturn's rings. Waves were visible. The gravitational pull of Mimas also created the division between Saturn's A and B rings. The Cassini mission is a collaboration between NASA, ESA, and the Italian Space Agency. The spacecraft is currently performing a series of ring-grazing orbits before its final "death dive" into Saturn. http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/34692/20161227/cassini-captures-stunning-image-of-saturns-moons-pandora-mimas.htm

Universe May Have Lost 'Unstable' Dark Matter What is dark matter? New detector results have left physicists in the dark. The early universe may have contained more dark matter than there is today, new research suggests. The findings could help scientists better understand what the universe was like just after the Big Bang, researchers said Most of the matter in the universe seems to be invisible and largely intangible; it holds galaxies together and only interacts with the more familiar matter through its gravitational pull. Researchers call the strange stuff dark matter, and one of the biggest questions for astrophysicists is what it actually is and how it might evolve or decay. New work by a team of Russian scientists may offer insight into that question. Dmitry Gorbunov, of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology; Igor Tkachev, head of the of the Department of Experimental Physics at the Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia; and Anton Chudaykin, of Novosibirsk State University in Russia considered whether some unstable dark matter might have decayed since the universe's early days, turning from whatever type of particle or particles make up dark matter — that's still unknown — into lighter particles. "We have now, for the first time, been able to calculate how much dark matter could have been lost and what the corresponding size of the unstable component would be," Tkachev said in a statement. Their new calculations suggest that no more than 5 percent of the current amount of dark matter in the universe, could have been lost since The Big Bang. Besides suggesting new properties for the elusive dark matter, the work could be important in helping scientists understand how the universe has changed over time, the researchers said. For example, the findings may show how the universe's rate of expansion has varied and what happened in the universe's first few hundred thousand years, when matter as we know it started to form into atoms. Mysterious matter Dark matter is a kind of matter that has mass, so it exerts a gravitational pull. However, it doesn't interact through electromagnetism with ordinary matter, so it is invisible. That is, it doesn't reflect or absorb light. The lack of electrical charge also makes dark matter intangible. Physicists are still debating what kind of particles make up dark matter, but most researchers agree that the substance accounts for some four-fifths of the matter in the universe. Researchers have said Planck telescope data shows only about 4.9 percent of the universe is ordinary matter, about 26.8 percent is dark matter, and the remaining 68.3 percent is dark energy, which accelerates universal expansion. The finding could be important in helping scientists understand how the universe changes over time. For example, the research could help reveal the change in the rate of expansion and what happened in the first few hundred thousand years of the cosmos, when matter as we know it started to form atoms. That was the first time photons (light) could start moving relatively freely through the universe. Unstable universe In its study, the team looked at data from the Planck space telescope, which studies the cosmic microwave background coming from a point located about 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. The cosmic microwave background is an "echo" of the Big Bang; it's the radiation from photons (light) that first started moving freely through the universe. By studying fluctuations in that radiation, it's possible to calculate the value of different parameters, such how fast the universe was expanding, at the time the radiation was emitted. What they found was that the universe in its early days — about 300,000 years after it formed — behaved a bit differently than it does now. That conclusion comes from measuring the rate of expansion, as well as the number of galaxies in clusters, which are easier to explain if the amount of dark matter was anywhere from 2-5 percent greater than it is today. To get that figure, the researchers compared the real universe with two models: one that assumed dark matter is stable and one that assumed the total amount of dark matter could change. The latter model did a better job of producing something like the universe seen today. So the early universe might have had two kinds of dark matter, the researchers said in a statement: one kind that decays into other particles and another that remains stable over billions of years. "We are not currently able to say how quickly this unstable part decayed; dark matter may still be disintegrating even now," Tkachev said in a statement. In addition, by looking at gravitational lensing – the bending of light by massive objects -- of the background radiation, the researchers found an upper limit for how much of that dark matter had to decay, the scientists said. The study appears in the Journal Physical Review D. http://www.livescience.com/57351-universe-lost-unstable-dark-matter.html

10,000 Metric Tons of Plastic Pollute Great Lakes Annually A new study that inventories and tracks high concentrations of plastic in the Great Lakes could help inform cleanup efforts and target pollution prevention. Nearly 10,000 metric tons of plastic debris enter the Great Lakes every year from the United States and Canada. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Tracking the amount of plastic that enters the Great Lakes has led researchers from the Rochester Institute Of Technology (RIT) to conclude that almost 10,000 metric tons of plastic from the United States and Canada pollute these bodies of water. Publishing his findings in the Marine Pollution Bulletin as the lead author, Matthew Hoffman from RIT's School Of Mathematical Sciences used computer simulations to follow the volume of plastic debris moving across state and international boundaries. "Most of the particles from Chicago and Milwaukee end up accumulating on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan, while the particles from Detroit and Cleveland end up along the southern coast of the eastern basin of Lake Erie," Hoffman shared. "Particles released from Toronto appear to accumulate on the southern coast of Lake Ontario, including around Rochester and Sodus Bay." The study made use of mathematical modeling to extend the scope of the problem over time and spatial scales, going beyond the measures utilized by prior observational studies that concentrated on plastic pollution in the open water, tributaries and along the shorelines. Hoffman and his coauthor, assistant professor of public policy Eric Hittinger from RIT, were able to trace that 5,000 metrics tons or half of the plastic pollution entering the Great Lakes went into Lake Michigan. Lake Erie would receive 2,500 metric tons of plastic while Lake Ontario ended up with 1,400 metric tons of plastic. Lake Huron got 600 metric tons of plastic and Lake Superior got 32 metric tons each year. Hoffman noted that the plastic in the Great Lakes are carried by persistent winds and lake currents to the shore and could turn up in another country or state. This new inventory method is able to give full mass estimates on the entire connected lake system and is finally able to map plastic debris moving between lakes and across interstate and international borders. "This study is the first picture of the true scale of plastic pollution in the Great Lakes." http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/34430/20161221/10-000-metric-tons-plastic-pollute-great-lakes-annually.htm