A new study proposes that Lucy, our famous Australopithecus ancestor, could have spent most of her time in trees, according to a report published in the journal, PLOS One. Although Lucy—her fossil known as AL 288-1—only stood roughly three-and-a-half feet tall, her arm bones exhibit remarkable strength.

The discovery of Lucy half a century ago changed our perspective of human evolution. Of the earliest hominids discovered, her skeleton was the most in tact. But scientists have struggled with a definitive identity for Lucy because although evidence confirms she walked on two feet, she also climbed trees to avoid predators and to sleep, so the question remains how long she spent in them.

For the analysis, researchers examined the physiology of bones in how they can grow weaker or stronger depending on how often they’re used. They compared Lucy’s skeletal structure to the bones of about 100 chimpanzees and 1,000 modern humans and found that climbing trees required terrific brawn. And the ratio of strength between her arms and legs suggests that she was more chimpish than bipedal.

“That doesn’t mean she was acting like a chimp, just that she was stressing her limbs more like a chimpanzee than a modern human,” said lead study author, Christopher Ruff, a paleoanthropologist at Johns Hopkins University.

To draw conclusions on how Lucy interacted with her environment, scientists analyzed 3-D digital markups of bones digitized from scans of the originals. They discovered Lucy’s bones were quite robust.

“She’s tiny, but for her size, she’s coming in very strong,” said John Kappelman, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin who was also involved in the study.

Lucy’s bones don’t suggest much tool use, which could have also led to the same bone thickness. Researchers concluded that she climbed trees more than initially surmised.

But the scientific community isn’t unanimous on the study. Paleoanthropologist, Donald Johanson, still believes Lucy and A. afarensis primarily stood upright.

“They would have had to spend a considerable amount of time in the trees for this to happen, and I think the overwhelming anatomical evidence is that they were terrestrial in their preferred locomotion,” Johanson said, thinking that food gathering and digging up roots could have led to the density of Lucy’s bones.

The study leaves the question as to whether A. afarensis’ skeletal remains are just remnant adaptations from earlier ancestors. Lucy’s long arms, curved fingers and toes and shoulder blades that curve toward the head than the side of the body are clues that she was more chimp-like. Her big toe, however, is like ours, indicating she was bipedal according to Dr. Johanson.

Source: The New York Times

Image credit: Wikipedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

The nomination of Donald Trump as the next commander-in-chief is causing chaos in the scientific community. His anti-scientific political views towards progressive research are leaving many experts wondering if he will reverse current policies.

“Trump will be the first anti-science president we have ever had,” said Michael Lubell, director of public affairs for the American Physical Society, published in Nature on Wednesday. “The consequences are going to be very, very severe.”

Trump’s stance on climate change is of primary concern for scientists. While campaigning, the president-elect pledged to “cancel” the Paris climate change agreement endorsed earlier in the year and promised to wipe out environmental regulations.

Lecturers such as Joshua Drew with the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University, are concerned. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to be great,” he said. “The class I’m teaching right now is coastal and estuarine ecology, and we cover a lot of topics including global climate change, sea level rise, ocean acidification. The fact that Trump doesn’t believe in that does not bode well toward having a U.S. policy that addresses those issues.”

There’s also skepticism that Trump will slash federal spending towards scientific research. Scholars rely on grants from government agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. As a guest on Michael Savage’s conservative radio talk show, he said, “I hear so much about the NIH, and it’s terrible.”

Historically, however, these agencies have received more subsidy under Republican administrations. But Democrats increased spending towards NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation while they reduced spending on the NIH, NSF and the U.S. Department of Agriculture according to a study conducted by the Journal of Science Policy and Governance conducted a study in 2015.

Yet Trump is unpredictable and hard to define leaving much uncertainty.

“I have tenure, so if I have a gap between grants, it wouldn’t be disastrous. But I know a lot of people who are earlier in their careers and are really worried about what it means for funding right now . . . about what a reduction in funding would mean for their ability to have a career as a scientist,” said Meghan Duffy, a disease ecologist at the University of Michigan.

He has, however, vowed to support NASA exploration. “Observation from space and exploring beyond our own space neighborhood should be priorities,” he said in a retort to ScienceDebate.org and expressed that space research will encourage studies in STEM and lead to investment in our nation and job creation.

How health policy and management will be governed is also a mystery, though. Howard Kurtzman, acting executive director for science at the American Psychological Association, voiced the organization’s willingness to work with the new administration despite Trump’s assertions that vaccines cause autism.

But his immigration policies might preclude influential scientists from coming to the country.

Source: The Washington Post

Spending to much time in space causes muscles in the spine to atrophy leading it to straighten out and tighten over time a new study confirms. This degeneration explains why astronauts suffer back problems when they return to Earth after an extended mission.

Scientists believed until now that astronauts’ back pain was caused by fluids gathering in spinal discs, cartilage joints of which absorb shock in the spine. But a NASA-subsidized research published in the journal Spine found this wasn’t the case.

Scientists at the University of Sand Diego administered MRIs and other tests on six NASA astronauts. They found that the astronauts’ spinal disks weren’t altered but the paraspinal muscles, which link the bones of the spine together, shrunk by 19 percent.

The results may influence aggressive exercise routines for crews while in space. Astronauts currently exercise around two hours a day to maintain muscle and bone mass, but they’re not working against gravity. Alan Hargens, one of the study’s authors and professor of orthopedic surgery at UC San Diego, says core strengthening and neck exercises would help keep the back to function normally.

“We think that the neck is a part of the spine that is particularly susceptible to this loss of gravity,” Hargens tells The Verge. “So there need to be better exercises for the astronaut’s necks. Right now they don’t have anything as far as we know.”

The spine’s structure has a natural curve as gravity pulls the bones down, so in space, there is no gravity causing the spine to elongate. When this happens, the supporting muscles weaken and the spinal disks stiffen resulting in a straightened vertebrae.

Two-thirds of astronauts that spend several months in space suffer back pain and have a four-fold risk of suffering from herniated disks when they return to Earth. They come back, in fact, two inches taller than before they launched. “And with a lot of muscle atrophy around the spine, that makes the spine susceptible to injury when the astronauts come back to Earth,” says Hargens.

This may be a disconcerting issue for NASA if they want to send willing recruits to Mars.

Source: The Verge

The publication, Outside Magazine, published a false report that the Great Barrier Reef was officially consumed by environmental abuse. It was written to draw attention to the climate change debate and was written as an obituary dating its lifespan from 25 million BC to 2016, saying, “The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It was 25 million years old.” The article detailed its crucial role in the ecological cycle, global fame, and its waning health because of coral bleaching.

The Great Barrier Reef is the most expansive coral reef ecosystem covering 300,000 square kilometers with over 3,000 reefs, 600 islands, and 300 coral cays. It’s designated as a UNESCO World Heritage landmark.

But scientists and social media users were appalled by the article’s ruse. Russell Brainard, chief of the Coral Reef Ecosystem Program at NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center informed HuffPost that audiences without context “are going to take it at face value that the Great Barrier Reef is dead.”

In fact, the writer of the obituary isn’t even a scientist—he’s a food and environment writer. But the article is believed to have credence, as other news outlets are sourcing its claim.

Concerned audiences are using Twitter to express the truth. Cornell Cooperative Extension at Rockland County, which focuses on environmental sustainability, tweeted that the “Great Barrier Reef is Dying NOT Dead! ‘The message should be that it isn’t too late… not we should all give up.'”

The Great Barrier Reef is indeed succumbing to hazards. The ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies reported 93% of the reef is damaged by coral bleaching to the point of possible extinction. Bleaching is a phenomenon caused by drastic changes in temperature, light, or nutrients. Under these conditions, the reef releases symbiotic algae from their tissues, turning them white.

Coral bleaching, mining, fossil fuels, and over-fishing have collectively over decades put the reef at risk. Governments, the scientific community, and charities are teaming up to sustain its lifespan.

Source: CNN 

A titanic comet that crashed into Earth 56 million years ago may have precipitated a sweeping global warming event known as Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York conducted the study published in the journal Science.

The impact is significant because it’s a precursor to modern climate change, scientists said. The occurrence released thousands of gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere causing the global temperature to elevate by 8 degrees Celsius (46.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

Simultaneously, the blanket of carbon dioxide released caused sweeping transformations of life. Billions of shelled organisms died, rocks absorbed spiked ratios of carbon isotopes, and the Arctic cores melted.

Scientists discovered the link between the prehistoric comet and global warming by analyzing tiny glass spheres seared into core rock samples from New Jersey and Bermuda called “microtektites.” These samples are speculated to be debris that dusted off when the comet collided into Earth.

Morgan Schaller, one of the study’s scientists and an assistant professor at Rensselaer, says the discovery reveals that a comet struck the ground around the timeframe of the rock residuals. “[A] space rock hit the planet,” he says.

Schaller and his team were scavenging for fossils of a minuscule organism, Foraminifera, when he spotted a microtektite in the surrounding sediment.  Thereafter, they searched for more and collected three microtektites per gram of sediment.

Scientists were stunned by the coincidence of a comet strike and a global warming phenomenon, but the physical evidence verifies the event. Schaller surmises the impact may have initiated severe earthquakes that released methane bottled up in the ocean into the atmosphere.

The collision could have precipitated hyperactive volcanoes that released more quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Yet Mark Boslough, a physicist from Sandia National Laboratories who did not participate in the study, says the PETM is a pivotal phenomenon and the discovery may be pioneering if it “holds up.” “It provides a big clue in the chain of discovery that we need to solve that mystery,” adds Boslough.

Source: Tech Times

The Pew Research Center released a new survey on Monday revealing a schism between Trump and Clinton voters on climate change concerns across every touchstone of the debate. The analysis begins with registered voters’ overarching opinions on climate change as an issue—56 percent of Clinton followers indicate that climate change is a threat compared to just 15 percent of Trump supporters.

The report then delves into specifics. Among Clinton supporters, 70 percent believe the Earth’s warming is due to human activity, while 77 percent of Trump voters think that’s it due to natural climatology or there is not enough evidence to confirm that the Earth is heating up. The opposing camps can’t even agree on necessary approaches.

Six various proposals were presented, and Trump voters could not find confidence in a single one, while the Clinton bloc expressed approval in all six. Clinton voters, for instance, feel restrictions on power plant emissions could improve the environment versus 39 percent of Trump followers.

The data is consistent with Trump’s opinion on climate change. He tweeted the entire phenomenon is a fraud, saying, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

Yet Brian Kennedy, the author of the survey, says that the analysis isn’t a display of Trump’s sentiments but rather an indicator of Republican versus Democrat ideology on the issue stretching back at least a decade.

“The one prominent factor that drives people’s answers about climate change is their political ideology,” he says. “If you go back a decade, we see a pretty intense divide on these questions. There’s been remarkable stability in public opinion, so it doesn’t seem like this particular campaign has changed that.”

The analysis does address, nonetheless, that the approach towards climate change could splinter off in different directions after November 8.

Source: Newsweek

New York could be battered by more hurricanes like Sandy because of climate change and rising sea levels according to a new study. A coordinated study among researchers with the University of Princeton, University of Rutgers, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that surge floods are likely to multiply by 17 times between 2000 and 2100 in the worst case scenario.

Scientists gathered historical data including tidal-gauge and geological records from New York since 1856 to assist with the study. The data was then used to develop computer simulations that projected the frequency of floods in the decades ahead, which included models of storm intensity, storm surges, and possible sea levels.

Results indicated the frequency of severe hurricanes increased nearly threefold between 1800 and 2000. In New York, particularly, the magnitude of Sandy-like storms has risen to once every 400 years in 2000 compared to once every 1,200 in 1800.

According to these estimates, by the year 2100, floods are anticipated to happen once every 90 years. The gradual rise is sea level is attributed to the progressive sinking of the mid-Atlantic region towards the end of the last ice age. Over the course of the late 20th century, however, human-influenced climate change accelerated the trend.

Ning Lin, lead author of the study and an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University, said the incidence of extreme storms has increased drastically over the last two decades. Alterations in storm climatology and elevated sea levels, Lin added, are expected to influence the rate of storms over the 21st century.

“The grand answer is that things are going to get worse by 2100. If nothing changes with hurricanes, sea-level rise alone will increase the frequency of Sandy-like events by 2100,” said Researcher Benjamin Horton with Rutgers University.

Lin believes that more refined technology will assist researchers in making more precise estimations and help civic planners design hurricane-defense infrastructure.

Source: TechTimes

Image credit: PBS.org News Hour

The geological synthesis of Mars’ surface is believed to have influenced the chemistry of the Red Planet’s entire atmosphere according to evidence collected by NASA’s Curiosity Rover, which has been studying the Gale Crater.

An earlier exploration, The Viking mission, conducted in 1983, provided scientists data on the climatic conditions including information on the endemic krypton and xenon gases on the planet’s surface. Researchers intend on studying the ratios of particular isotopes, the chemical structures of xenon and krypton. Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument was used to measure the gases.

“Previous knowledge of martian atmospheric krypton and xenon isotope ratios has been based upon a combination of the Viking mission’s krypton and xenon detections and measurements of noble gas isotope ratios in martian meteorites,”  said Pamela Conrad, SAM’s deputy principal investigator, the study of which was published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

“The xenon and krypton isotopic measurements reported here include the complete set of stable isotopes, unmeasured by Viking.”

The gases are chemically inert, so they can’t interact with other chemicals in the atmosphere or surface. This means they’re ideal artefacts of the atmospheric evolution. In particular, xenon is present in nine various isotopes that clue scientists into which layers of the atmosphere were stripped away.

Because these isotopes are more prevalent than expected, scientists now surmise the cosmic rays that strike Mars generate a chemical process called neutron capture. This leads to the transfer of neutrons from one chemical component to another within the surface.

Once the rays touch a barium atom, barium concedes neutrons that are consumed by xenon atoms creating increased levels of xenon-124 and 126. Bromine, simultaneously, may give up some its neutrons to krypton leading to the formation of elevated levels of krypton-80 and krypton-82.

“These isotopes can enter the atmosphere when the regolith is disturbed by impacts and abrasion, allowing gas to escape,” NASA said in a release.

Earth’s atmosphere also has traces of krypton and xenon isotopes but they vary from Mars, which has higher levels of xenon-129.

Source: TechTimes