"Play It Again God"

Good Deeds, Good News, Good Times

Posts Tagged Science

Discovery Pushes Human Tool Use Back 800,000 Years

Aug 12

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

The timeline of early human evolution needs another revision with the discovery that human ancestors used tools 800,000 years earlier than previously realized.

The finding in Ethiopia, a pair of mammalian fossil bones marred by tool marks, pushes tool use back into the age of Australopithecus afarensis, an early human ancestor that lived in east Africa 3 million to 4 million years ago.

Archaeologists previously believed that early human ancestors, or hominins, started using tools 2.5 million years ago. That’s when evidence shows one of the first Homo species, Homo habilis, began butchering meat with sharpened stones. (Our species, Homo sapiens, didn’t show up until about 200,000 years ago.) But the new find is approximately 3.39 million years old, older than the famous Australopithecus fossil “Lucy,” who lived near the find site 3.2 million years ago.
livescience.com

Tags: ,

Gel could replace fillings

Jul 12

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments


Dentists could soon hang up their drills. A new peptide, embedded in a soft gel or a thin, flexible film and placed next to a cavity, encourages cells inside teeth to regenerate in about a month, according to a new study in the journal ACS Nano. This technology is the first of its kind.

The new gel or thin film could eliminate the need to fill painful cavities or drill deep into the root canal of an infected tooth.

“It’s not like toothpaste,” which prevent cavities, said Nadia Benkirane-Jessel, a scientist at the Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale and a co-author of a recent paper. “Here we are really trying to control cavities (after they develop).”

Tags: , ,

Road Surface Purifies Air by Removing Nitrogen Oxides

Jul 10

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

ScienceDaily-Road surfaces can make a big contribution to local air purity. This conclusion can be drawn from the first test results on a road surface of air-purifying concrete. This material reduces the concentration of nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 25 to 45 per cent, said prof. Jos Brouwers in a recent inaugural lecture at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

The tests were carried out in the municipality of Hengelo, where the busy Castorweg road was resurfaced last fall. As part of the project, around 1,000 square meters of the road’s surface were covered with air-purifying concrete paving stones. For comparison purposes, another area of 1.000 square meters was surfaced with normal paving stones.
sciencedaily.com

Tags: , ,

Urine test for autism?

Jun 3

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments


PARIS – A NEWLY discovered chemical fingerprint could yield a simple urine test to determine if a child has autism, according to a study released on Thursday.

Autism and related disorders affect up to six or seven out of every 1,000 individuals. Symptoms are life-long and can vary widely, but often include impaired social skills, repetitive behaviours, difficulty in expressing one’s emotions, and an aversion to physical intimacy. There is no known cure.

The factors leading to autism are generally present at birth, but the disorder is difficult to diagnose as it can be confused with other behaviour-related problems.
straitstimes.com

Tags:

Good and Evil Deeds Stimulate Surprising ‘Superpowers’

May 4

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

By Rachael Rettner, LiveScience Staff Writer

The mere act of kindness, or one of evil, can boost willpower and physical strength, a new study suggests.

The results, based on three experiments, show that those who performed good deeds, or envisioned themselves acting charitably, were able to hold a weight or squeeze a hand grip significantly longer than those who didn’t perform or think about such deeds.

But evil acts appeared to confer similar and perhaps even greater superpowers.

“When you think of superheroes or super villains, [you think of people] that can possess huge amounts of willpower and are relatively unfazed by pain,” said study researcher Kurt Gray, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. “And because of your stereotype of heroes and villains, you kind of embody that, or transform yourself into your perception of hero and villain,” when you perform good or evil acts, he said.
livescience.com

Tags: ,

Scientists uncover deep ocean current near Antarctica

Apr 26

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

Scientists have discovered a fast-moving deep ocean current with the volume of 40 Amazon Rivers near Antarctica that will help researchers monitor the impacts of climate change on the world’s oceans.

A team of Australian and Japanese scientists, in a study published in Sunday’s issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, found that the current is a key part of a global ocean circulation pattern that helps control the planet’s climate.

Scientists had previously detected evidence of the current but had no data on it.

“We didn’t know if it was a significant part of the circulation or not and this shows clearly that it is,” one of the authors, Steve Rintoul, told Reuters.
reuters.com

Tags:

Japanese gut bacteria gain special powers from sushi

Apr 12

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments


Sushi arms the guts of the Japanese with new digestive powers. A seaweed-eating enzyme seems to have jumped from marine bacteria to the harmless bugs that call the intestines of sushi-eaters home.

This is the first evidence that food bacteria can transfer genes to our own gut bacteria, and could help us extract more energy from food, says Mirjam Czjzek at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Roscoff, France.

Czjzek’s group uncovered the genetic swap while hunting the genes for certain enzymes produced by bacteria. These enzymes break down carbohydrates in the cell walls of the algae that the bacteria feed on.
newscientist.com

Tags: ,

How science could spark a second Green Revolution

Apr 9

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments


To fight poverty and overpopulation, crops need coaxing. Advances in deep-root food plants may trigger a new Green Revolution.

By Gregory M. Lamb

Jonathan Lynch wants to get at the roots of the problem of producing enough food for humanity. Literally.

In projects around the world, the professor of plant nutrition at Pennsylvania State University and his colleagues are trying to develop crops whose root systems can resist drought and take up fertilizer from the soil more efficiently.

With world population expected to grow by nearly 50 percent to more than 9 billion people by midcentury, farmland is going to need to be much more productive. Even today, nearly 1 out of every 6 people in the world – more than 1 billion – are going hungry, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
csmonitor.com

Tags: ,

“Sound Bullets” to Zap Off Tumors?

Apr 6

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments


Popular office toy inspired new acoustic device.

Ker Than
for National Geographic News

A new machine inspired by a common office toy could one day allow doctors to zap cancerous tumors using “sound bullets,” scientists say.

Dubbed an acoustic lens, the device could also be used to create near photo-quality images of internal organs that surpass the resolution of modern ultrasounds.

The design is based on the Newton’s cradle, which features several identically sized metal balls suspended so that the balls barely touch each other.

Due to Newton’s laws of motion, when an end ball is pulled back and released, the ball at the other end swings outward with the same speed, even though none of the middle balls move.

The toy inspired study co-author Chiara Daraio to invent the acoustic lens, which uses 0.95-centimeter stainless steel spheres aligned in parallel chains. But instead of channeling motion, the new machine manipulates sound.
nationalgeographic.com

Tags: , ,

Study suggests toads can detect coming earthquakes

Mar 31

Posted by Ray in Uncategorized | No Comments

By JILL LAWLESS
The Associated Press

LONDON — When it comes to predicting earthquakes, toads – warts and all – may be an asset.

British researchers said Wednesday that they observed a mass exodus of toads from a breeding site in Italy five days before a major tremor struck, suggesting the amphibians may be able to sense environmental changes, imperceptible to humans, that foretell a coming quake.

Since ancient times, anecdotes and folklore have linked unusual animal behavior to cataclysmic events like earthquakes, but hard evidence has been scarce. A new study by researchers from the Open University is one of the first to document animal behavior before, during and after an earthquake.
washingtonpost.com

Tags: ,