Evolutionary biologists are using supercomputers to understand the history and evolution of words. Researchers scrutinize sounds and words across cultures to discover the oldest words (I, we, two) and to predict what words are likely to disappear (guts, squeeze, bad). They must have made a mistake because Squeeze isn't going anywhere.
The footprint pictured was made 1.5 million years ago in Kenya, likely by our ancestor Homo erectus. These footprints represent upright walking. Homo erectus was a great traveler - fossils have been found from Africa to China. They are thought to have used complex tools and lived in hunter-gatherer bands. These footprints are an amazing symbol of our past - newly upright humans, with their growing, adrenaline-soaked brains, always moving to survive and banding together in an unforgiving world.
MIT Technology Review lists 10 Emerging Technologies for 2009. Lots of exciting stuff here from racetrack memory to paper diagnostics to nanopiezoelectronics. You can also check out what emerged from their past lists.
Nicholas Wade kicks off a NY Times "Secrets of the Cell" series with an introduction to the intricate and vast epigenome - the heritable cellular programming in addition to and supplementing DNA.
In addition to being very good-looking (see photo) and highly sanitary, the naked mole rat may tell us something about anti-aging. The mole rat lives much longer than other rodents, has a slow aging process and very low cancer rates. Researchers suggest in a new study that the mole rat stays young in part due to very resilient proteins.
Researchers have developed antibodies that cover many strains of the influenza virus. The antibodies, targeted to vulnerable structural commonalities, might provide a more general flu vaccine to replace the current annually engineered vaccines. The antibodies target the neck of the viral infectious spike. Mount Sinai's Dr. Peter Palese referred to the approach as possibly finding "a viral Achilles' heel". There are hurdles of course, but it's exciting research.
On this day in 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick made the breakthrough in establishing the structure of DNA. As the story goes, Watson was arranging cardboard models of the four bases on a desk when he realized that adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine made equivalent pairs. This realization helped finalize their model of the double helix DNA molecule. Announcing their discovery in Nature, Watson and Crick wrote: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material." That humble announcement belied the enormity of their discovery, expressed by Crick in an English pub a week after Watson's revelation, "we have found the secret of life." Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in 1962. Wilkins's colleague Rosalind Franklin created the DNA x-rays that were essential to the discovery. She also gave important critique to Watson and Crick. In what became a huge controversy, Wilkins gave Watson and Crick access to Franklin's x-ray work without her knowledge. Sadly, Franklin died in 1958 and was ineligible for the Nobel, which is not awarded posthumously.
In a story that screams movie, ragtag Operation Migration fliers lead the endangered Whooping crane's migration.
Svante Paabo and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute have completed a rough draft of the Neanderthal genome. It's an extraordinary accomplishment and will yield insights into our mysterious brethren. Genomic studies will also tell a great deal about our common ancestor Homo erectus. It's always worth remembering that we are the last of the great and varied Homo genus.
Using biological distribution theories and satellite imaging, U.C.L.A. geographers have suggested likely locations for Osama bin Laden, focusing on the Pakistan mountain town of Parachinar.
Scientists, including well known physicist Paul Davies, are pursuing the possibility that life happened twice on Earth and that strange, hidden forms of life may exist alongside us. This "shadow life" would be biochemically distinct - fundamentally different than what we consider life. Such life might be sought in places like Mono Lake in California (pictured) where arsenic-dependent microbes have been found.
Fermilab outside of Chicago may beat CERN and the LHC to the elusive God particle, the Higgs boson. The long sought Higgs theoretically accounts for particle mass. The documentary The Atom Smashers details Fermilab's Higgs quest.
C-SPAN surveys historians and releases a new ranking of Presidents. William Henry Harrison, who served 32 days in office, dropped from 37th in 2000 in 39th in 2009. He was moved down one by new arrival George W. Bush (#36) and flipped places with Warren Harding. Guess the Teapot Dome scandal isn't what it used to be. Bill Clinton enjoyed an apparent W bump up 6 places to #15. Ulysses S. Grant jumped 10 places to #23 after his "Performance within Context of Times" improved drastically this year.
Michael Lewis on Shane Battier, maybe my favorite Duke basketball player ever. And a nice conversation on the unique tensions of basketball teams.
Another study on primate morality. I'm always surprised how controversial this subject is.
British researchers are using particle accelerators to possibly diagnose Parkinson's disease earlier. Energy from a synchrotron is used to scrutinize metal ions at the individual brain cell level. This could allow detection of early brain changes in Parkinson's disease and a chance at early intervention.
Researchers have completed genome sequences for all known serotypes of human rhinovirus, the most common cause of the common cold (h/t Scientific American). The sequencing will provide important insights into the evolution of the virus and mechanisms of infection. It may lead to new vaccines and treatments for the common cold.
Matthew Chalmers in New Scientist on the history of timekeeping and its new accuracy champion - optical atomic clocks. Optical clocks have replaced cesium atomic clocks as the world's best timekeeper. Precise timekeeping is important for a variety of technologies including GPS and will be more important in the future with increasingly complex and automated machines.
After more delays, the Large Hadron Collider will likely be restarted in September. The LHC was shut down last September just when it was warming up. Here's some of our coverage of the largest science experiment in history.
Amazon unveiled its new electronic book reader, Kindle 2.0, today. The original Kindle was a surprise hit. The update is smaller, lighter, faster, more refined and it can read to you. This all sounds great and I would like to get one. Still, I do wonder about the viability of dedicated electronic book readers in the long run. It's easy to imagine new generations of readers not caring about text approximating the look and feel of a book.
Dublin and London researchers are using super-fast lasers to clarify the intricacies of photosynthesis and energy transfer. The laser pulses allow extraordinary refinement - electron-level detail of photosynthetic processes. The research could lead to improved solar cell efficiency. It also offers the thrilling prospect of better understanding photosynthesis, the process that animates the world (see image of global photosynthesis).
New Hampshire firm Ice Engineering, LLC has developed electro-pulse deicing that uses a controlled electrical current to quickly melt ice. The electric pulse melts ice at its attachment to the object allowing the ice to fall off. Right now the technology is being used on bridges and buildings but it could be coming to your windshield soon.
Alex Rodriguez was already the most scrutinized (and vilified) high profile sports star. What's going to happen now? He was supposed to save the record books from Barry Bonds. It's stunning that Jose Canseco's ridiculous book (shown) started this whole thing.
It's 1975 and you are dressed as a chicken attending Let's Make a Deal with Monty Hall. Monty picks you and offers you the choice of 3 doors - behind 1 door is a new car, behind the other 2 doors are goats. You choose your door and Monty, knowing what's behind the doors, opens a door you didn't choose revealing a goat (in the game, he always reveals a goat behind one of the unselected doors to raise suspense). He then asks you if you want to change your choice and switch to the other remaining door. He taunts you by calling you a chicken. Should you switch? Does it matter?
The Economist considers Darwin and evolution in anticipation of his 200th birthday. February 12, 1809 was a big day indeed - Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born that fateful day. The journalist Christopher Hitchens refers to them as "the great emancipators".
Turkmenistan's President, Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, recently ordered members of his government back to school with the threat that they must pass exams in order to keep their jobs. (I imagine that the Capitol Building would be unusually quiet if this standard was applied to our own government).
New fossil evidence has revealed a monstrous snake - nearly 45 feet long and weighing 2,500 pounds - that ruled Colombian rainforests 60 million years ago. Researcher P David Polly notes, "At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips...." The giant snake, named Titanoboa cerrejonensis, must have had a large prey list that probably included crocodiles. Somebody call Jon Voight.
Inventor/futurist Ray Kurzweil and X Prize CEO Peter Diamandis have founded a summer 10 week Singularity University for "Preparing Humanity for Accelerating Technological Change". The course, hosted by NASA and funded in part by NASA and Google, is set up as a survey of the future with 10 tracks: 1) future studies and forecasting, 2) networks and computing systems, 3) biotechnology and bioinformatics, 4) nanotechnology, 5) medicine, neuroscience and human enhancement, 6) AI, robotics and cognitive computing, 7) energy and ecological systems, 8) space and physical sciences, 9) policy, law and ethics and 10) finance and entrepreneurship. The goal is to have talented scientists and entrepreneurs learn from each other, to spark new big ideas and new companies, and perhaps to solve some of the world's big problems like energy, global warming and hunger. Faculty for the first Singularity U term include The Sims creator Will Wright and Nobel Prize winner George Smoot. Watch an introduction video here.
Orphaned baby chimpanzees that were given loving care from humans scored better on 9-month-old IQ tests than average human babies.
Wired considers the renaissance of the electric car. You can check out Chris Paine's Who Killed the Electric Car? here.
Very encouraging news from the provincial elections in Iraq.
Muammar al-Gaddafi, Libya's head of state for over thirty years and the longest serving Arab head of state now in power, has assumed the African Union's rotating presidency. It was North Africa's turn to hold it, and Gaddafi's turn to represent North Africa, so this shouldn't exactly come as a surprise. Nevertheless, with major humanitarian and political crises in Darfur, Zimbabwe, Congo and Somalia, all of which require a concerted diplomatic effort on the part of the African Union, the ascension of one of the world's loosest canons to the high visibility position is surely a cause for alarm.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded researchers have hooked remote controls to beetles. The giant flower beetle, equipped with a radio receiver and neuroelectric controls, could be fitted with cameras and heat sensors for a variety of military and civilian missions. With beetles accounting for about 1/4 of all known life, shouldn't we be more careful about giving them a leader?
Here is a list of the top 44 places to visit in 2009 from the New York Times. The formerly featured Kingdom of Happiness made the cut at #18.
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients who received treatment with their own bone marrow stem cells demonstrated disease stabilization and, in some cases, considerable improvement. Stem cells were harvested from the patients and transplanted back after the patients underwent intensive chemotherapy to destroy the damaging cells. This is encouraging news for treatment of a very difficult disease. Larger trials are now underway.
