Mysterious Winged Structure from Ancient Rome

A recently discovered mysterious "winged" structure in England, which in the Roman period may have been used as a temple, presents a puzzle for archaeologists, who say the building has no known parallels.

The structure has been said to had been build around 1,800 years ago. The structure was discovered in Norfolk, in eastern England, just to the south of the ancient town of Venta Icenorum.

The structure has two wings radiating out from a rectangular room that in turn leads to a central room.

"Generally speaking, (during) the Roman Empire people built within a fixed repertoire of architectural forms," said Professor William Bowden, a professor at the University of Nottingham, who reported the find in the most recent edition of the Journal of Roman Archaeology. The investigation was carried out in conjunction with the Norfolk Archaeological and Historical Research Group.

The winged shape of the building appears to be unique in the Roman Empire, with no other example known. "It's very unusual to find a building like this where you have no known parallels for it," Bowden told LiveScience. "What they were trying to achieve by using this design is really very difficult to say."

The building appears to have been part of a complex that includes a villa to the north and at least two other structures to the northeast and northwest. An aerial photograph suggests the existence of an oval or polygonal building with an apse located to the east.

The winged building

The foundation of the two wings and the rectangular room was made of a thin layer of rammed clay and chalk. "This suggests that the superstructure of much of the building was quite light, probably timber and clay-lump walls with a thatched roof," writes Bowden. This raises the possibility that the building was not intended to be used long term.

The central room, on the other hand, was made of stronger stuff, with its foundations crafted from lime mortar mixed with clay and small pieces of flint and brick. That section likely had a tiled roof.. "Roman tiles are very large things, they're very heavy," Bowden said.

Sometime after the demise of this wing-shaped structure, another building, this one decorated, was built over it. Archaeologists found post holes from it with painted wall plaster inside.

Bowden said few artifacts were found at the site and none that could be linked to the winged structure with certainty. A plough had ripped through the site at some point, scattering debris. Also, metal detecting is a major problem in the Norfolk area, with people using metal detectors to locate and confiscate materials, something that may have happened at this site.

Still, even when the team found undisturbed layers, there was little in the way of artifacts. "This could suggest that it (the winged building) wasn't used for a very particularly long time," Bowden said.

The land of the Iceni

The researchers were not certain what the building was used for. While its elevated position made it visible from the town of Venta Icenorum, the foundations of the radiating wings are weak. "It's possible that this was a temporary building constructed for a single event or ceremony, which might account for its insubstantial construction," writes Bowden in the journal article.

"Alternatively, the building may represent a shrine or temple on a hilltop close to a Roman road, visible from the road as well as from the town."

Adding another layer to this mystery is the ancient history of Norfolk, where the structure was found.

The local people in the area, who lived here before the Roman conquest, were known as the Iceni. It may have been their descendants who lived at the site and constructed the winged building.

Iceni architecture was quite simple and, as Bowden explained, not as elaborate as this. On the other hand, their religion was intertwined with nature, something which may help explain the wind-blown location of the site. "Iceni gods, pre-Roman gods, tend to be associated with the natural sites: the springs, trees, sacred groves, this kind of thing," said Bowden.

The history between the Iceni and the Romans is a violent one. In A.D. 43 (CE 43), when the Romans, under Emperor Claudius, invaded Britain, they encountered fierce resistance from them. After a failed revolt in A.D. (CE) 47, they became a client kingdom of the empire, with Prasutagus as their leader. When he died, around A.D. (CE) 60, the Romans tried to finish the subjugation, in brutal fashion.

"First, his (Prasutagus') wife Boudicea was scourged, and his daughters outraged. All the chief men of the Iceni, as if Rome had received the whole country as a gift, were stripped of their ancestral possessions, and the king's relatives were made slaves," wrote Tacitus, a Roman writer in The Annals. (From the book, "Complete Works of Tacitus," 1942, edited for the Perseus Digital Library.)

This led Boudicea (more commonly spelled Boudicca) to form an army and lead a revolt against the Romans. At first she was successful, defeating Roman military units and even sacking Londinium. In the end, the Romans rallied and defeated her at the Battle of Watling Street. With the Roman victory, the rebellion came to an end, and a town named Venta Icenorum was eventually set up on their land.

"The Iceni vanish from history effectively after the Boudicca revolt in (CE) 60-61," said Bowden.

But while they vanished from written history, archaeological clues hint that their spirit remained very much alive. Bowden and David Mattingly, an archaeologist at the University of Leicester, both point out that the area has a low number of villas compared with elsewhere in Britain, suggesting the people continued to resist Roman culture long after Boudicca's failed revolt.

This lack of villas, along with problems attracting people to Roman settlements in the area, "can be read as a transcript of resistant adaption and rejection of Roman norms," writes Mattingly in his book "An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire" (Penguin Books, 2007).

There is "still a fairly strong local identity," said Bowden, who cautioned that while local people may have lived at the complex, the winged building is out of character for both Roman and Iceni architectural styles, a fact that leaves his team with a mystery.

Are Religious People better adjusted Psychologically?

Psychological research has found that religious people feel great about themselves, with a tendency toward higher social self-esteem and better psychological adjustment than non-believers. But a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this is only true in countries that put a high value on religion.

The researchers got their data from eDarling, a European dating site that is affiliated with eHarmony. Similar to eHarmony, eDarling uses a long questionnaire to match clients with potential dates. It includes a question about how important your personal religious beliefs are and questions that get at social self-esteem and how psychologically well-adjusted people are. Jochen Gebauer of the Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, Constantine Sedikides of the University of Southampton, and Wiebke Neberich of Affinitas GmbH in Berlin, the company behind eDarling, used 187,957 people's answers to do their analyses.

As in other studies, the researchers found that more religious people had higher social self-esteem and where psychologically better adjusted. But they suspected that the reason for this was that religious people are better in living up to their societal values in religious societies, which in turn should lead to higher social self-esteem and better psychological adjustment. The people in the study lived in 11 different European countries, ranging from Sweden, the least religious country on the planet, to devoutly Catholic Poland. They used people's answers to figure out how religious the different countries were and then compared the countries.

On average, believers only got the psychological benefits of being religious if they lived in a country that values religiosity. In countries where most people aren't religious, religious people didn't have higher self-esteem.

"We think you only pat yourself on the back for being religious if you live in a social system that values religiosity," Gebauer says. So a very religious person might have high social self-esteem in religious Poland, but not in non-religious Sweden.

In this study, the researchers made comparisons between different countries, but another study found a similar effect within one country, between students at religious and non-religious universities. "The same might be true when you compare different states in the U.S. or different cities," Gebauer says. "Probably you could mimic the same result in Germany, if you compare Bavaria where many people are religious and Berlin where very few people are religious."


Source aps

UK scientists find Darwin's lost fossils

According to AP, British scientists have found scores of fossils the great evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 150 years.

Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said on Tuesday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a "gloomy corner" of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey.

Using a flashlight to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labeled 'C. Darwin Esq."

"It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin's signature on the slide," the paleontologist said, adding that he soon realized it was a "quite important and overlooked" specimen.

He described the feeling of seeing that famous signature as "a heart in your mouth situation," saying he wondering "Goodness, what have I discovered!"

Falcon-Lang's find was a collection of 314 slides of specimens collected by Darwin and other members of his inner circle, including John Hooker who was a botanist and dear friend of Darwin, and Rev. John Henslow, Darwin's mentor at Cambridge, whose daughter later married Hooker.

The first slide pulled out of the dusty corner at the British Geological Survey turned out to be one of the specimens collected by Darwin during his famous expedition on the HMS Beagle, which changed the young Cambridge graduate's career and laid the foundation for his subsequent work on evolution.

Falcon-Lang said the unearthed fossils which was lost for 165 years, show there is more to learn from a period of history scientists thought they knew well.

"To find a treasure trove of lost Darwin specimens from the Beagle voyage is just extraordinary," Falcon-Lang added. "We can see there's more to learn. There are a lot of very, very significant fossils in there that we didn't know existed."

He said one of the most "bizarre" slides came from Hooker's collection — a specimen of prototaxites, a 400 million-year-old tree-sized fungi.

Hooker had assembled the collection of slides while briefly working for the British Geological Survey in 1846, according to Royal Holloway, University of London.

The slides are "stunning works of art," according to Falcon Lang. It contains bits of fossil wood and plants ground into thin sheets and affixed to glass in order to be studied under microscopes. Some of the slides are half a foot long (15 centimeters), "great big chunks of glass," Falcon-Lang said.

"How these things got overlooked for so long is a bit of a mystery itself," he mused, speculating that perhaps it was because Darwin was not widely known in 1846 so the collection might not have been given "the proper curatorial care."

Royal Holloway, University of London said the fossils were 'lost' because Hooker failed to number them in the formal "specimen register" before setting out on an expedition to the Himalayas. In 1851, the "unregistered" fossils were moved to the Museum of Practical Geology in Piccadilly before being transferred to the South Kensington's Geological Museum in 1935 and then to the British Geological Survey's headquarters near Nottingham 50 years later, the university said.

The discovery was made in April, but it has taken "a long time" to figure out the provenance of the slides and photograph all of them, Falcon-Lang said. The slides have now been photographed and will be made available to the public through a new online museum exhibit opening on Tuesday.

Falcon-Lang expects great scientific papers to emerge from the discovery.

"There are some real gems in this collection that are going to contribute to ongoing science."

Dr. John Ludden, executive director of the Geological Survey, called the find a "remarkable" discovery.

"It really makes one wonder what else might be hiding in our collections," he said.

Parasite turns honey bees into zombies

A fly parasite may be responsible for wiping out half the
world's honey bees.

A fly parasite is being blamed for an epidemic that has struck the honey bee population around the world. The parasite nests in the stomach of the bees and causes them to walk in circles, sometimes pursuing bright lights, before eventually dying.

The Parasitic Phorid Fly Apocephalus borealis is responsible for the zombie transformation, laying its eggs inside the abdomen of the honey bee.

"When we observed the bees for some time, the ones that were alive, we found that they walked around in circles, often with no sense of direction," said San Francisco State University's Andrew Core, who is the lead author on the bee parasite study in the journal Plos One.

Bees usually just sit in one place, sometimes curling up before they die, said Core. But the parasitized bees were still alive, unable to stand up on their legs.

"They kept stretching them out and then falling over," he said. "It really painted a picture of something like a zombie."

And while the parasite may be causing immense damage to the honey bees population, there is an upside to their discovery, according to the Mirror, "Scientists discovered the parasite by accident but they believe it may help them discover what is causing colony collapse disorder which is devastating honey bees in Europe and America cutting some populations in half."

The parasite is believed to be new and similar to one currently affecting the bumblebee population. Scientists are still figuring out exactly how the parasite works, but an early theory by San Francisco State Professor John Hafernik holds that the parasite changes the bees' "body clocks," which causes their erratic behavior and deaths.

British Physicist Stephen Hawking hailed as modern-day Einstein

Stephen Hawking

When New Scientist magazine asked "Brief History of Time" author Stephen Hawking what he thinks about most, the Cambridge University professor renowned for unraveling some of the most complex questions in modern physics answered: "Women. They are a complete mystery."

The wheelchair-bound Hawking, who only recently retired from a post once held by Isaac Newton, had previously talked to the magazine in the run-up to celebrations for his 70th birthday.

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to come to the celebration on Sunday because he was too ill to attend. He was known as the world's most widely recognized living scientist, and was hailed by colleagues as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Einstein.

Hawking, the author of the international bestseller "A Brief History of Time" in 1988, was honored for his breakthroughs into theories of time and relativity, but also for his ability to make complex science accessible.

At a birthday symposium for the scientist, who was diagnosed with motor neuron disease in 1963 and told he had barely two years to live, Britain's astronomer royal said Hawking had defied medical and scientific odds. The head of his elite Cambridge University said he had "changed our perception of the universe."

"It's wonderful that we are celebrating Stephen's 70th birthday. It's a chance to thank him for the many insights he's given us about the universe, and ... for the inspiration he's offered to millions by achieving so much against all the odds," Astronomer Royal Martin Rees told an audience of scientists, students and reporters.

Hawking had been due to speak on Sunday at Cambridge, where as an undergraduate he first became fascinated with cosmology and the state of the universe, but colleagues said he was too poorly to attend. Hawking had recently been in hospital and was discharged on January 6, Cambridge's Vice-Chancellor Leszek Borysiewicz said.

"Unfortunately ... his recovery has not been fast enough for him to be with us today," Borysiewicz said. Hawking chose to call his speech at the State of the Universe symposium "A Brief History of Mine." A spokeswoman for the university said the speech would still be delivered and Hawking would be watching the symposium from his home in Cambridge, where he is recovering.

Almost completely paralyzed by a form of motor neuron disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which attacks the nerves that control muscles and gradually stops them from functioning, Hawking is wheelchair-bound and uses a computerized voice synthesizer to speak.

When as a bright and enthusiastic 21-year-old PhD student he was diagnosed with the disease, doctors told him he would probably not make it much beyond the age of 23.

Yet in the almost half a century since, Hawking has broken new frontiers with research into theories of time, space, relativity and black holes. Rees and others have hailed him as a modern-day Einstein and said his work has shed light on the origin of the cosmos, the nature of time, and the ultimate fate of the universe.

Currently the director of research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, Hawking also founded the university's Center for Theoretical Cosmology and only recently retired from a post known as the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, a title once held by Isaac Newton.

Bringing Science to the Masses

Despite having a mind that appears to work on a far higher level than most other human beings', Hawking has always made an effort to bring science to the masses.

He has featured on the hit U.S. cartoon show The Simpsons several times, and in Star Trek as a hologram of himself. His voice, famous across the world, also featured in Pink Floyd's 1994 album Division Bell.

"His ability to engage people in the process of scientific discovery through his books, lectures, and television programs has opened countless inquisitive minds to a universe full of possibilities," said Justin Rattner, chief technology officer at Intel, which provides Hawking's voice synthesizer.

Hawking's health has deteriorated over the years and he now uses twitches in the muscles in his cheek to choose letters or words on his voice computer to allow him to communicate. This means his speech has slowed dramatically, to a current rate of around one word per minute.

Kip Thorne, an acclaimed American theoretical physicist and long-standing Hawking collaborator who was also due to speak at the symposium, said Hawking's illness had both hampered him and pushed him to new limits.

"When Stephen lost the use of his hands and could no longer manipulate equations on paper, he compensated by training himself to manipulate complex shapes and topologies in his mind at great speed," Thorne said.

"That ability has enabled him to see the solutions to deep physics problems that nobody else could solve, and that he probably would not have been able to solve, himself, without his newfound skill."

140 New Species described by California Academy of Sciences in 2011

Ranging from goblin spiders to glow-in-the-dark
sharks, spanning six continents and three oceans,
new discoveries add to the family tree of life on
Earth. Credit:  California Academy of Sciences.

This is probably a late post but it's worth reposting. In December 15, 2011, ScienceDaily release an article about 140 new species described by California Academy of Sciences. We do know that there are still plenty of places to explore and things to discover on Earth, and that's what kept scientists searching for new discoveries, spanning 6 continents (all except Antarctica) and three oceans (the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean). They climbed mountain tops and descended to the bottom of the sea, looked in their own backyards in California and on the other side of the world (Cameroon).

Their results, published in 33 different scientific papers, add to the record of life on Earth and help advance the Academy's research into two of the most important scientific questions of our time: "How did life evolve?" and "How will it persist?"

Discovering new species, formally describing them, and determining their evolutionary relationships to other organisms provide the crucial foundation for making informed conservation decisions at a national level. For example, earlier this year, Academy scientists embarked on the largest expedition in the institution's recent history - a 42-day journey to the Philippines to survey the shallow water, deep sea, and mountain habitats of Luzon island. Early estimates indicate that they may have discovered as many as 500 new species. While it takes months and even years to formally describe and publish a new species in a peer-reviewed scientific journal (the reason they are not included in the 2011 total). Academy scientists had enough initial data to provide a formal recommendation to Conservation International and the Philippine government outlining the most important locations for establishing or expanding marine protected areas. Formal species descriptions in the coming years should help the scientists bolster and refine their initial recommendations.

Below are a few highlights among the 140 species described by the Academy this year. To see the entire list of species including geographic information, visit California Academy of Sciences.

Four New Sharks

Academy research associate David Ebert and his colleagues described four new species of deep-sea sharks this year. The African dwarf sawshark (Pristiophorus nancyae) was collected via a bottom trawl at a depth of 1,600 feet, off the coast of Mozambique. It is notable for its elongated blade-like snout, or "rostrum," which is studded with sharp teeth and used as a weapon. The sawshark will swim through a school of fish swinging its rostrum back and forth, stunning and injuring prey, and then swim back to consume the casualties. Ebert and his colleagues also described two species of lanternshark: Etmopterus joungi from a fish market in Taiwan, and Etmopterus sculptus from trawling at depths of 1,500 - 3,000 feet off the coast of southern Africa. Like their name suggests, lanternsharks emit light on various parts of their body - probably a strategy to camouflage themselves from upward-looking predators and also to interact with others of their own species. Finally, a new species of angel shark (Squatina caillieti) was described from a single specimen collected in 1,200 feet of water off the Philippine island of Luzon. Angel sharks have flattened bodies and large pectoral fins resembling wings.

Angel Shark

African dwark sawshark

Lanternshark (Etmopterus joungi)

Lanternshark (Etmopterus sculptus)

A lot of New Arthropods

There are more species of arthropods - insects, spiders, crustaceans, and other joint-legged creatures - than any other group of animals on Earth, and more are being discovered every day, and it's no surprise that over half of the new species on this year's list consists of arthropods. There are about 43 ants, 20 goblin spiders, six barnacles, and three beetles. In addition, Academy scientists took it to the next level, literally speaking, by describing six new genera ("genus" being one classification level higher than "species"). These include three new genera of goblin spiders from Africa (Malagiella, Dalmasula, Molotra) and three new genera of barnacles (Minyaspis, Pycnaspis, and the fossil Archoxynaspis).

Gorgeous New Sea Slugs

Despite being slimy, nudibranchs are breathtaking in their beauty and diversity. Every color of the rainbow is represented among nudibranchs, in a wide variety of patterns, making them a favorite for underwater photographers. These animals use color as a warning sign - predators learn to associate their vivid colors with their toxic or unpalatable nature, and so they avoid earting them.

More than 3,000 nudibranch species have been discovered and described to date, and scientists estimate that another 3,000 species are yet to be named. Academy Dean of Science Terry Gosliner and his colleagues did their part to increase our knowledge of nudibranch diversity by describing 31 new species this year, from places as close as Florida to faraway countries like Papua New Guinea.

A Tale of two Tortoises

In a Zookeys article published this year, Academy curator emeritus Alan Leviton and colleagues, collaborating with Dr. Robert Murphy of the Royal Ontario Museum, solved the identity crisis of the desert tortoises Gopherus agassizii - a saga almost as old as the Academy itself. First, by sifting through the original species description in The Proceedings of the California Academy of Natural Sciences (as the Academy used to be called), they determined that the species was first described in 1861, not 1863 as had long been thought. Next, they deduced that one of the three original specimens used to describe the species was likely lost during the most devastating event in the Academy's history - the 1906 earthquake and fire. (A second specimen is currently housed at the Smithsonian, while the whereabouts of the third remain unknown.) Third, they reviewed the tumultuous taxonomic history of the species, which has changed its genus name five times in the past 150 years. Finally, using DNA analysis, they concluded that G. agassizii is not one, but at least two distinct species - one that lives to the northwest of the Colorado River in California and Nevada (G. agassizii), and one that lives to the southeast of the river in Arizona and Mexico (a new species, which they named Gopherus morafkai).

This new found clarity has important implications for conservation, because the geographic range of G. agassizii is now only 30% of its former range. Having significantly declined in numbers over the past three decades, it may warrant a higher level of protection than its current "threatened" status. And now that G. morafkai has a distinct name and its own identity, its conservation status can be evaluated as well.

Gopherus Morafkai

Additional Photos

Birds caught in the act of becoming a New Species

Male variable seedeater (Sporophila corvina).

"One of Darwin's accomplishments was to show that species could change, that they were not the unaltered, immutable products of creation," says Leonardo Campagna, a PhD biology student at the Argentine Museum of Natural History in Buenos Aires, who studied at Queen's as part of his thesis. "However it is only now, some 150 years after the publication of his most important work, On the Origin of Species, that we have the tools to begin to truly understand all of the stages that might lead to speciation which is the process by which an ancestral species divides into two or more new species."

For decades scientists have struggled to understand all of the varied forces that give rise to distinct species. Mr. Campagna and his research team studied a group of nine species of South American seedeaters (finches) to understand when and how they evolved.

The study found differences in male reproductive plumage and in some key aspects of the songs that they use to court females. Now, the group is looking to find the genes that underlie these differences, as these so-called candidate genes may well prove to be responsible for the evolution of a new species. This will allow researchers to gain insights into evolution.

"Studies like ours teach us something about what species really are, what processes are involved and what might be lost if these and other species disappear."

Campagna's research co-supervisor is Stephen Lougheed, who is an Acting Director of QUBS (Queen's University Biological Station) and an associate professor in the Department of Biology. QUBS has been a pivotal part of research and teaching at Queen's for more than six decades and hosts researchers from both Canada and international institutions. Research at QUBS has resulted in more than 800 publications in peer-reviewed journals and more than 200 graduate and undergraduate theses.

The findings were recently published in the Proceedings of The Royal Society.

Climate change models may vastly underestimate extinctions

Mark Urban under a sheet of aufeis in Alaska.

Mark Urban, an ecologist and the study lead author, says: "We have really sophisticated meteorological models for predicting climate change. But in real life, animals move around, they compete, they parasitize each other, and they eat each other. The majority of our predictions don't include these important interactions."

Plenty of experimental studies have shown that species are already moving in response to climate change, says Urban, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut. For example, as temperatures rise over time, animals and plants that can't take the heat are moving to higher altitudes where temperatures are cooler. But not all species can disperse fast enough to get to these more suitable places before they die off, Urban says. And if they do make it to these better habitats; they may be out-competed by the species that are already there - or the ones that got there first.

With coauthors Josh Tewksbury and Kimberly Sheldon of the University of Washington, Urban created a mathematical model that takes into account the varying rates of migration and the different intensities of competition seen in ecological communities. The goal was to predict just how successful species within these communities would be at shifting to completely new habitats.

Their results showed that animals and plants that can adjust to climate change will have a competitive advantage over those that don't.

Animals with small geographic ranges, specific habitat needs and difficulty dispersing are likely to go extinct under climate change, their model shows. Further, these animals are more likely to be overrun by other species that can tolerate a wider range of habitats.

"When a species has a small range, it's more likely to be out-competed by others," Urban says. "It's not about how fast you can move, but how fast you move relative to your competitors."

Urban likens this scenario to a train traveling up a mountain on a track. If each boxcar - representing a species - travels at the same speed, they will likely all reach the top eventually. But in reality, each car can move at a different speed, creating a collision course.

"There's always a car in front of you and a car behind," explains Urban. "When you introduce the ability to move at different speeds, they're constantly bumping into one another, even running each other over. It's a recipe for disaster."

Importantly, the authors speculate that current predictions of biodiversity loss under climate change - many of which are used by conservation organizations and governments - could be vastly underestimating species extinctions.

Tropical communities, for example, which often have many species living in small areas, could be among the hardest hit by climate change. Urban says this is a first step toward making  climate change predictions of biodiversity more sophisticated.

"This is a first step - to include in our models; things that we know are true, like competition and dispersal," says Urban. "Knowing these things, can we predict which species might be most at risk."

Urban's paper was published in the Jan. 4 online edition of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

World's first hybrid shark found off Australia

Hybrid Shark

Scientists said on Tuesday that they had discovered the world's first hybrid sharks in Australian waters, a potential sign the predators were adapting to cope with climate change.

Apparently, the mating of the local Australian black-tip shark with its global counterpart, the common black-tip, was an unprecedented discovery with implications for the entire shark world, said lead researcher Jess Morgan.

"It's very surprising because no one's ever seen shark hybrids before, this is not a common occurrence by any stretch of the imagination," Morgan, from the University of Queensland, told AFP.

"This is evolution in action."

Colin Simpfendorfer, a partner in Morgan's research from James Cook University, said initial studies suggested the hybrid species was relatively robust, with a number of generations discovered across 57 specimens.

The find was made during cataloguing work off Australia's east coast when Morgan said genetic testing showed certain sharks to be one species when physically they looked to be another.

The Australian black-tip is slightly smaller than its common cousin and can only live in tropical waters, but its hybrid offspring have been found 2,000 kilometers down the coast, in cooler seas.

It means the Australian black-tip could be adapting to ensure its survival as sea temperatures change because of global warming.

"If it hybridizes with the common species it can effectively shift its range further south into cooler waters, so the effect of this hybridizing is a range expansion," Morgan said.

"It's enabled a species restricted to the tropics to move into temperate waters."

Climate change and human fishing are some of the potential triggers being investigated by the team, with further genetic mapping also planned to examine whether it was an ancient process just discovered or a more recent phenomenon.

If the hybrid was found to be stronger than its parent species - a literal survival of the fittest - Simpfendorfer said it may eventually outlast its so-called pure-bred predecessors.

"We don't know whether that's the case here, but certainly we know that they are viable, they reproduce and that there are multiple generations of hybrids now that we can see from the genetic roadmap that we've generated from these animals," he said.

"Certainly it appears that they are fairly fit individuals."

The hybrids were extraordinarily abundant, accounting for up to 20 percent of black-tip populations in some areas, but Morgan said that didn't appear to be at the expense of their single-breed parents, adding to the mystery.

Simpfendorfer said the study, published late last month in Conservation Genetics, could challenge traditional ideas of how sharks had and were continuing to evolve.

"We thought we understood how species of sharks have separated, but what this is telling us is that in reality we probably don't fully understand the mechanisms that keep species of shark separate," he said.

"And in fact, this may be happening in more species than these two."

Drought led to demise of Ancient City of Angkor says Scientists

Angkor Wat ruins.

The ancient city of Angkor — the most famous monument of which is the breathtaking ruined temple of Angkor Wat — might have collapsed due to valiant but ultimately failed efforts to battle drought, according to Scientists.

The great city of Angkor can be found in Cambodia. It was first established in the ninth century, and it served as the capital of the Khmer Empire — the major player in southeast Asia for nearly five centuries. It stretched over more than 385 square miles (1,000 square kilometers), making it the most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world.

Suggested causes for the fall of the Khmer Empire in the late 14th to early 15th centuries have included war and land overexploitation. However, recent evidence suggests that prolonged droughts might have been linked to the decline of Angkor — for instance, tree rings from Vietnam suggest the region experienced long spans of drought interspersed with unusually heavy rainfall.

Angkor possessed a complex network of channels, moats, and embankments and reservoirs known as barays to collect and store water from the summer monsoons for use in rice paddy fields in case of drought. To learn more about how the Khmer managed their water, scientists analyzed a 6-foot (2-meter)-long core sample of sediment taken from the southwest corner of the largest Khmer reservoir, the West Baray, which could hold 1.87 billion cubic feet (53 million cubic meters) of water, more than 20 times the amount of stone making up the Great Pyramid at Giza.

Also, to collect samples from across the greater Angkor region, researcher Mary Beth Day, a paleolimnologist at the University of Cambridge in England, hired a "tuk-tuk" (motorized rickshaw) driver, and was able to convince him to drive her around the countryside, "often on tracks that tuk-tuks probably aren't designed to travel on," she recalled. "We nearly got stuck in the sand a couple of times, but my driver was remarkably accommodating given that he probably thought I was crazy."

The researchers deduced a 1,000-year-long climate history of Angkor from the baray. They found at around the time Angkor collapsed the rate at which sediment was deposited in the baray dropped to one-tenth of what it was before, suggesting that water levels fell dramatically as well. The discovery "really emphasizes how significant the events during this period must have been," Day said.

As both water levels and sediment deposits ebbed, the ecology of the baray changed as well, with more bottom-dwelling algae and floating plants coming into existence.

"The ecological shift primarily serves to underline how environmental conditions in the West Baray have been fundamentally different since the 17th century, post-collapse, as compared to what the baray was like during Angkorian times," Day said.

In the end, the water management systems of the Khmer might have been insufficient to cope with sudden and intense variations in climate.

"Angkor can be an example of how technology isn't always sufficient to prevent major collapse during times of severe instability," Day said. "Angkor had a highly sophisticated water management infrastructure, but this technologic advantage was not enough to prevent its collapse in the face of extreme environmental conditions."

"It's important to understand, however, that failure of the water management network was not the sole reason for the downfall of the Khmer Empire," Day added. "The collapse of Angkor was a complex process brought about by several different factors — social, political and environmental."

The scientists detailed their findings online on Jan. 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

LHC discovers new particle

The LHC has been built to investigate the fundamental
building blocks of nature.

The Large Hadron Collider or LHC on the Franco-Swiss border has made its first clear observation of a new particle since opening in 2009.

The new particle was called Chi_b (3P) and it will help scientists understand better the forces that hold matter together.

The LHC is exploring some of the fundamental questions in "big physics" by colliding proton particles together in a huge underground facility.

Detail in the sub-atomic wreckage from these impacts is expected to yield new information about the way the Universe is constructed.

The Chi_b (3P) is a more excited state of Chi particles already seen in previous collision experiments, explained Prof. Roger Jones, who works on the Atlas detector at the LHC.

"The new particle is made up of a 'beauty quark' and a 'beauty anti-quark', which are then bound together," he told BBC News.

"People have thought this more excited state should exist for years but nobody has managed to see it until now.

"It's also interesting for what it tells us about the forces that hold the quark and the anti-quark together - the strong nuclear force. And that's the same force that holds, for instance, the atomic nucleus together with its protons and the neutrons."

The LHC is designed to fill in gaps in the Standard Model - the current framework devised to explain the interactions of sub-atomic particles - and also to look for any new physics beyond it.

In particular, it is using the collisions to try to pin down the famous Higgs boson particle, which physicists hypothesize can explain why matter has mass.

Discoveries such as Chi_b (3P) are an important part of this quest because they add to the wider background knowledge, says Prof. Jones, from Lancaster University, UK.

"The better we understand the strong force, the more we understand a large part of the data that we see, which is quite often the background to the more exciting things we are looking for, like the Higgs.

"So, it's helping put together that basic understanding that we have and need to do the new physics."

Prof. Paul Newman, from the University of Birmingham, added: "This is the first time such a new particle has been found at the LHC. Its discovery is a testament to the very successful running of the collider in 2011 and to the superb understanding of our detector which has been achieved by the Atlas collaboration already."

Andy Chisholm, a PhD student from Birmingham who worked on the analysis, said: "Analyzing the billions of particle collisions at the LHC is fascinating. There are potentially all kinds of interesting things buried in the data, and we were lucky to look in the right place at the right time."

Comet Lovejoy survives fiery plunge through Sun

A newfound comet, named comet Lovejoy, defied long odds on Thursday (Dec. 15), surviving a suicidal dive through the sun's hellishly hot atmosphere, according to NASA scientists.

Comet Lovejoy plunged through the sun's corona at about 7 p.m. EST (midnight GMT on Dec. 16), coming within 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) of our star's surface. Temperatures in the corona can reach 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 million degrees Celsius), so most researchers expected the icy wanderer to be completely destroyed.

This movie was taken from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO). It provides the first space-based views of Comet Lovejoy on December 11. This comet moves in from the bottom right. (The moving red line is an artifact caused by the planet Mercury, which is off camera.)
Credit: NASA/NRL/STEREO


Comet Lovejoy blazes toward the sun and its tail wiggles as it interacts with the solar wind. By the end of the day on December 15, 2011, the comet will graze some 75,000 miles above the sun's surface through the several million degree solar corona. Five different satellites, including the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), Hinode, and Proba, are trying to watch its final approach to the sun. This movie was recorded by STEREO using the Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) instrument.
Credit: NASA/STEREO/NRL


Another instrument watching the comet was the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which adjusted its cameras in order to watch the trajectory. Not only does this help with comet research—such as how big the comet is and what it's made of—but it may also help orient instruments on SDO. Since the scientists know where the comet is based on other spacecraft, they can finely determine the position of SDO's mirrors. This movie was taken from SDO on the evening of Dec. 15, 2011. It shows Comet Lovejoy moving in toward the sun. This video will loop 3 times to show the details. Credit: NASA/SDO


Comet Lovejoy survives its encounter with the sun. The comet is seen here exiting from behind the right side of the sun, after an hour of travel through its closest approach to the sun. By tracking how the comet interacts with the sun's atmosphere, the corona, and how material from the tail moves along the sun's magnetic field lines, solar scientists hope to learn more about the corona. This movie was filmed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in 171 Angstrom wavelength, which is typically shown in yellow. The video loops 3 times to show the footage. Credit: NASA/SDO

However, Lovejoy proved to be made of tough stuff. A video taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft (shown above) showed the icy object emerging from behind the sun and zipping back off into space.

SDO is one of many instruments that scientists—eager to record and study the comet's presumed demise—trained on Lovejoy as it streaked toward the sun.

"We have here an exceptionally rare opportunity to observe the complete vaporization of a relatively large comet, and we have approximately 18 instruments on five different satellites that are trying to do just that," Karl Battams, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., wrote on the Sungrazing Comets website, before Lovejoy's closest solar approach.

Battams runs the website, which is devoted to comets discovered by two different spacecraft: NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), which is operated jointly by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Battams greeted news of Lovejoy's improbable escape with surprise and delight.

"I expected a diffuse dust tail to survive (for several hours) before fading away but NOT any kind of nucleus!" he tweeted. "I've worked with sungrazers for 8yrs; today was the most amazing day I've ever had with them!"

Lovejoy has a core about 660 feet (200 meters) wide. It belongs to a class of comets known as Kreutz sungrazers, whose orbits bring them very close to the sun.

All Kreutz sungrazers are thought to be the remnants of a single giant comet that broke apart several centuries ago. They're named after the 19th-century German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who first showed that such comets are related.

Comets plunge into the sun on a regular basis, but they rarely give much advance notice of their suicidal intentions. That's why scientists were so excited about Lovejoy. Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy discovered the icy wanderer on Nov. 27, giving researchers plenty of time to map out their observation campaign.

And that campaign has been intense, involving five different spacecraft. In addition to SDO, SOHO, and STEREO, scientists planned to use Japan's Hinode satellite and ESA's Proba spacecraft to track Lovejoy's movements, Battams wrote.

NASA also created a website providing updates about the comet's pass through the corona, as well as images of the event beamed down by SDO. It can be found here: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/lovejoy.php

For his part, Terry Lovejoy said he was happy to have made a contribution, and he marveled a bit at all the attention the comet has been getting.

"It's been tremendous," Lovejoy told SPACE.com. "Apparently it's all over Facebook, and I don't use Facebook. But there's a lot of interest. I think a lot of people like the name—the Lovejoy name seems to strike a chord with people."

Lovejoy is quite large for a sungrazing comet, and experts expected it to die an impressive death. The website Spaceweather.com, for example, predicted Lovejoy would blaze as brightly as Jupiter or Venus in the sky as it neared the sun.

Battams also expected a good show, saying the comet might even be visible from the ground around sunset today in the Northern Hemisphere.

"I do think that it will put on a spectacular show for us and will be the brightest Kreutz-group comet that SOHO has ever observed," Battams wrote last week.

Though the early returns are still coming in, those forecasts appear to be on the money. Observations from various spacecraft do indeed show Lovejoy flaring up significantly as it neared our star.

Researchers will keep analyzing the images to better understand the comet's daring solar approach. And now, skywatchers apparently have another shot to catch a glimpse of the resilient Lovejoy on Friday morning (Dec. 16).

For observers in North America, the comet will rise approximately 5 to 10 minutes before dawn and will be situated to the upper right of the sun. If Lovejoy is still shining at least as brightly as Venus, it may be visible, experts say.

You could also try to spot Lovejoy after the sun comes up, if you're exceedingly careful. Block the rising sun behind a distant building and focus on the part of the sky 3 to 4 degrees above and to the right of the sun (your clenched fist held at arm's length is equal to rouughly 10 degrees). But a warning! Never point binoculars or a telescope at or near the sun, and never look directly at our star with the naked eye as serious eye damage can result.

Don't get your hopes up either. The comet may well be too faint to see, experts say.

Meteor Crater Helps Unlock Planetary History

Meteor Crater, Northern Arizona, USA

The Barringer meteorite crater, which is known popularly as "Meteorite Crater," found near Winslow, Arizona, was formed some 50,000 years ago in the flat-lying sedimentary rocks of the Southern Colorado Plateau in Arizona. Now, scientists are using the crater to study mysteries near and far.

This out-of-the-blue geographical feature is considered a prime example of a young, well-preserved and well-documented simple impact crater. That means it represents one of the most common morphological features on planetary surfaces, both on Earth, and elsewhere in our solar system. Scientists are using this crater to probe not just our own planetary history, but also the mechanics of space rock impacts throughout the universe.

Meteor Crater is one of the very few impact sites on our planet where the geologic details of crater excavation and ejecta emplacement are preserved. While the outline of most simple craters are circular, the shape of Arizona's Meteor Crater strongly deviates from a circle and resembles a quadrangle.

The Crater Hole

The bowl-shape crater is surprisingly well preserved by terrestrial standards. That makes it a "kiss and tell" terrestrial feature that is being plumbed by researchers far and wide.

The crater is roughly 0.75 miles (1.2 kilometers) in diameter. That giant hole in the ground sports a rim that rises up to 196 feet (60 meters) above the surrounding landscape. The crater floor falls to a depth of 590 feet (180 meters).

The upper crater walls have average slopes of 40 to 50 degrees, although they also include vertical to near-vertical cliffs. The rock ejected from the crater forms a debris blanket that slopes away from the crater rim out to a distance of 0.6 miles (1 km).

This impact crater is viewed as a treasured scientific site, not only here on Earth but in shaping future moon and Mars exploration plans. It has become a training ground for astronomers and robot hardware as well as a learning lab for planetary geologists who are investigating impact cratered terrains on other planets.

It resembles a Whole Earth catalog of processes that keeps on giving.

Honing exploration skills

When a cosmic interloper slammed into Earth tens of thousands of years ago, more than 175 million metric tons of rock were excavated and deposited on the crater rim and the surrounding terrain in a matter of a few seconds, said David Kring, a senior staff scientist and geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Kring has been engaged in studies of the crater for decades. He uses the site as a teaching tool for students, as well as a locale for honing the exploration skills to lunge beyond Earth.

"Those rocks and the processes they record remain the focus of our studies next year," Kring told SPACE.com. "At the same time, we will conduct training activities that are designed to enhance the success of exploration of the moon and planetary surfaces throughout the solar system."

There are a lot of activities at the crater, Kring said. He made two trips there in October alone, he added.

Training Ground

First of all, the crater is being used to instruct postdoctoral researchers in the field of lunar science, as well as educate graduate students who are studying impact craters on the moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

Furthermore, Kring added, Meteor Crater is being used to tutor astronauts for planetary surface operations, which require different talents than those needed for past space shuttle flights and work on the International Space Station.

In terms of active research, the crater is telling the story of how material is ejected and deposited after a space rock impact. Its revelations have implications for craters on all planetary surfaces.

Moreover, research at the site is being conducted to determine how water produces gullies and otherwise erodes the crater. This could help scientists interpret observations of Mars.

Research is also being conducted at Meteor Crater, Kring said, to refine the age of the impact event itself. This work will help calibrate isotopic systems to date geologic events that occur elsewhere in the world. Lastly, the crater is providing an on-the-spot opportunity for evaluating the design of traverses and geologic station activities on the moon, Mars, and other exploration destinations.

New questions develop

There are still many open scientific questions about the crater itself.

Kring said that an important remaining problem is that the trajectory of the impacting iron asteroid and the damage it caused to Earth's crust beneath the crater floor remain a mystery.

"Both might be solved with a shallow drilling campaign," Kring said.

"Overall, there is still much work to do," Kring said.

"As we push farther into the solar system, new questions are constantly being developed and require an assessment of new ideas at the world's best preserved impact crater," he said. "Thus, the crater is important for what it can tell us now, but is also important for what it will tell us as we continue to explore beyond low-Earth orbit."

According to Brad Andes, president of Meteor Crater Enterprises, Inc., this year the crater attracted roughly 225,000 visitors.

"We are excited about the fact that Meteor Crater has had a very important role as a science research laboratory in the past, but what is even more exciting is that almost every year, researchers request a visit to the crater because of a new question that has been asked," Andes told SPACE.com. "And the answer to that question may live in the crater. This has been happening for decades. I am sure it will continue to happen for many more decades and possibly even centuries."

There's also potential research at Meteor Crater investigating historical weather events. That information could even have a voice in the global warming debate, Andes said.

"It is humbling to consider the fact that every day, researchers get to work at a place that may be viewed as the Rosetta Stone for astrogeological research," he said. "This clearly illustrates the need to preserve it to the greatest degree possible while allowing legitimate research to happen here."

World's Largest Insect

Giant Weta

A week ago, a former park ranger traveling in New Zealand has stumbled across the world's largest insect, a Weta Bug, with a wing span of seven inches and the weight of three mice.

"Three of us walked the trails of this small island for two nights scanning the vegetation for a giant weta," said Mark Moffett, 55. "We spent many hours with no luck finding any at all, before we saw her up in a tree. The giant Weta is the largest insect in the world, and this is the biggest one ever found."

Most people would have recoiled at such a find - but Moffett held the giant insect in the palm of his hand and even fed it a carrot.

"She enjoyed the carrot so much she seemed to ignore the fact she was resting on our hands and carried on munching away," Moffett said. "she would have finished the carrot very quickly, but this is an extremely endangered species and we didn't want to risk indigestion. After she had chewed a little, I took this picture and we put her right back where we found her."

The Weta Bug goes back 180 million years, predating the dinosaurs, but was thought to be extinct after European explorers had unwittingly brought rats with them to New Zealand's Little Barrier island.

Milky Way Radiation Reveals Itself to Distant NASA Probes

The Voyager 1 spacecraft

It has been decades since NASA's Voyager spacecraft began hurtling towards interstellar space, and the twin probes are still shedding light on the universe, now by offering an unprecedented view of our own galaxy.

As they roam ever outward to the edge of the solar system, the two Voyager spacecraft are providing the first glimpse of Milky Way radiation that scientists have already seen coming from other galaxies. The data could lead to a better understanding of star formation, including the mystery surrounding the earliest stars in the universe, researchers said.
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) launched the two Voyager spacecraft in 1977 to explore our solar system's giant planets and to study the electrical charged solar wind streaming from the sun. The probes far exceeded the expectations of mission planners, and to this day, they continue to beam back data.
The Voyagers are now providing us with the first glimpse of a critical type of ultraviolet (UV) radiation from our galaxy known as the Lyman-alpha line. This is the brightest band of light shed by hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe.

Click to enlarge

Studying the Lyman-alpha line can offer many insights into cosmic phenomena, such as star formation, the electrically charged environments in which the atmospheres of young planets evolve, and the shocked gas in interstellar space

Astronomers have seen Lyman-alpha rays from other galaxies, helping them peer into the universe's early history. However, we have never seen ones from our own galaxy, because our sun essentially blinds our view. Specifically, ultraviolet rays from our sun get scattered around by hydrogen entering our solar system from interstellar space. This leads to a haze that blinds us to Lyman-alpha rays from elsewhere in our galaxy. We can detect other galaxies' Lyman-alpha rays because they have shifted into longer optical and infrared wavelengths — which are no longer get scattered by this hydrogen — as their galaxies rush away from us. This is similar to how ambulance sirens grow lower in pitch as the vehicle drives farther away.

Now Voyager 1 and 2 are far enough away from this ultraviolet haze for them to get a clear view of the Milky Way's Lyman-alpha rays.

"It is like beginning to see small candles within a brightly lit room," study lead author Rosine Lallement, a space scientist and astronomer at the Paris Observatory in Meudon, France, told SPACE.com in an interview.

The spacecraft have confirmed that most of these newfound rays appear to come from star-forming regions, as astronomers expected. Future study of the Milky Way's Lyman-alpha rays could help us better understand those from other galaxies, researchers added.

"This radiation traces where young hot stars are being born — therefore, knowing the amount of emitted Lyman-alpha radiation from a galaxy corresponds to the rate at which stars are being born," Lallement said. "A major goal is to detect the first apparition of stars in the young universe, so detecting Lyman-alpha from the most-distant ones and correctly interpreting the signal is one of the major challenges."

Ironically, just as the Voyager probes are getting their best views of these Milky Way rays, their ability to see them is failing. Due to lack of power, the ultraviolet spectrometer on Voyager 2 has been switched off, and that same instrument on Voyager 1 could get turned off soon as well.

Still, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which is currently on its way to Pluto, might soon be able to monitor these rays as well.

Lallement and her colleagues detailed their findings online in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Science.

Mexico glyphs don't predict apocalypse

Mexico glyphs don't predict apocalypse, that's, at least, according to the German expert who says his decoding of a Mayan tablet with a reference to a 2012 date denotes a transition to a new era and not a possible end of the world as others have read it.

The interpretation of the hieroglyphs by Sven Gronemeyer of La Trobe University in Australia was presented for the first time Wednesday at the archaeological site of Palenque in southern Mexico.

His comments came less than a week after Mexico's archaeology institute acknowledged there was a second reference to the 2012 date in Mayan inscriptions, touching of another round of talk about whether it predicts the end of the world.

Sven Gronemeyer has been studying the stone tablet found years ago at the archaeological site of Tortuguero in Mexico's Gulf coast state of Tobasco.

Gronemeyer said the inscription describes the return of the mysterious Mayan god Bolon Yokte at the end of a 13th period of 400 years, known as Baktuns, on the equivalent of Dec. 21, 2012. Mayans considered 13 a sacred number. There's nothing apocalyptic in the date, he said.

The text was carved about 1,300 years ago. The stone has cracked, which has made the end of the passage almost illegible.

Gronemeyer said the inscription refers to the end of a cycle of 5,125 years since the beginning of the Mayan Long Count calendar in 3113 B.C. (BCE).

The fragment was a prophecy of then ruler Bahlam Ajaw, who wanted to plan the passage of the god, Gronemeyer said.

"For the elite of Tortuguero, it was clear they had to prepare the land for the return of the god and for Bahlam Ajaw to be the host of this initiation," he said.

Bolon Yokte, the Mayan god of creation and war, was to prevail that day in a sanctuary of Tortuguero.

"The date acquired a symbolic value because it is seen as a reflection of the day of creation," Gronemeyer said. "It is the passage of a god and not necessarily a great leap for humanity."

Last week, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology said a second inscription mentioning the 2012 date is on the carved or molded face of a brick found at the Comalcalco ruin, near the Tortuguero site. It is being kept at the institute and is not on display.

Many experts doubt the second inscription is a definite reference to the date cited as the possible end of the world, saying there is no future tense marking like there is in the Tortuguero tablet.

The institute has tried to dispel talk of a 2012 apocalypse, the subject of numerous postings and stories on the Internet. Its latest step was to arrange a special round table of Mayan experts this week at Palenque, which is where Gronemeyer made his comments.

Mutation can lead to psychiatric illness

In recent years, scientists have discovered several genetic mutations associated with greater risk of psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. One of such mutations, which is known as DISC1 — short for "Disrupted in Schizophrenia-1" — was first identified in a large Scottish family with high rates of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

Studies have since shown that DISC1 mutations can lead to altered brain structure and impaired cognition, but it was unknown exactly how this occurs. A new study from Li-Huei Tsai, director of MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, shows that DISC1 mutations impair a specific signalling pathway in neurons that is critical for normal brain development.

In a genetic screen of 750 people — some of whom were healthy and some of whom had psychiatric diseases — the researchers found several common variants of the DISC1 gene. However, even though these mutations disrupted normal brain development, they were not necessarily enough to cause disease on their own.

"A lot of the human population may carry this genetic defect, and they probably actually have some defects in their brain development. However, it's also pretty clear that by itself, it is not sufficient to cause psychiatric disorder," Tsai says. "That's very consistent with the notion that there probably has to be a combination of several different genetic variations to trigger a clinically measurable outcome."

The study will appear in the Nov. 17 issue of the journal Neuron. Lead author of the paper is Karun Singh, a postdoc at the Picower Institute.

Disrupted Development

In a study published in 2009, Tsai and her colleagues showed that the DISC1 gene regulates a cell signaling pathway known as Wnt. This pathway has been found to stimulate stem cell proliferation during embryonic development. Most importantly in terms of psychiatric disease, Wnt signaling promotes the proliferation of neuroprogenitor cells, immature cells that eventually become neurons.

"What we found is that DISC1 actually maintains the integrity of Wnt signaling," Tsai says. "So if DISC1, for whatever reason, is lost, then Wnt signaling is impaired. This also resulted in impaired neuroprogenitor proliferation and brain development."

Tsai and her colleagues showed that DISC1 regulates Wnt signaling by shutting off an enzyme known as Gsk3-beta. Notably, Gsk3-beta is also the target of lithium, a common treatment for bipolar disease. "We proposed in that paper that DISC1 is basically endogenous lithium, to maintain the integrity of Wnt signaling," Tsai says.

In the new Neuron paper, Tsai's laboratory investigated the impact of DISC1 mutations in the human population. Together with researchers from the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute, they sequenced the DISC1 gene in more than 700 people — about half of them had schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, the rest were healthy — and identified several variants of the DISC1 gene.

However, none of those single mutations were significantly more common in the diseased population than the healthy population. "That suggests that DISC1 variants in humans, by themselves, do not cause disease," Tsai says.

The researchers picked out four of the most common DISC1 mutations and tested their effects in mice, zebrafish and human cells. It turned out that three of those variants do lead to impaired Wnt signaling. However, some of those mutations were found in healthy people, so they are not enough to cause disease on their own.

The fourth variant did not affect Wnt signaling but did impair neurons' ability to move to the proper location during brain development and form circuits with other cells.

Albert Wong, an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Toronto, says the findings represent "an important step forward" in understanding how DISC1 mutations can lead to abnormal brain structure and function. "This paper by Tsai's lab makes the crucial link between disease-associated human DISC1 variants and Wnt/Gsk3-beta signaling and brain development," says Wong, who was not involved in this research.

A remarkable organ

Tsai says it is not surprising that even though the genetic defects clearly cause some malfunctions at the cellular level, they do not always lead to disease. "The brain is really a remarkable organ. It's just so plastic and has this enormous capacity to compensate for any kinds of defects," she says.

She expects that future studies will reveal other genetic mutations that are also necessary to produce schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders.

In the Neuron paper, the researchers also examined Wnt signaling levels in people with bipolar disease and found that they were much lower than in healthy people, suggesting that bipolar disease and schizophrenia may share some of the same origins. "A lot of genes implicated in schizophrenia are also implicated in bipolar. Now, biochemically, it seems to be the case as well," Tsai says.

Psychopaths' brains show differences in structure and function

According to a recent study, images of prisoners' brains show important differences between those who are diagnosed as psychopaths and those who aren't. The study was led by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.

The result could help explain the callous and impulsive anti-social behavior exhibited by some psychopaths. The study showed that psychopaths have reduced connections between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), the part of the brain responsible for sentiments such as empathy and guilt, and the amygdala, which mediates fear and anxiety. Two types of brain images were collected. Diffusion tensor images (DTI) showed reduced structural integrity in the white matter fibers connecting the two areas, while a second type of image that maps brain activity, a functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI), showed less coordinated activity between the vmPFC and the amygdala.

"This is the first study to show both structural and functional differences in the brains of people diagnosed with psychopathy," says Michael Koenigs, assistant professor of psychiatry in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. "Those two structures in the brain, which are believed to regulate emotion and social behavior, seem to not be communicating as they should."

The study, which took place in a medium-security prison in Wisconsin, is a unique collaborative between three laboratories.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Psychology Professor Joseph Newman has had a long term interest in studying and diagnosing those with psychopathy and has worked extensively in the Wisconsin corrections system. Dr. Kent Kiehl, of the University of New Mexico and the MIND Research Network, has a mobile MRI scanner that he brought to the prison and used to scan the prisoners' brains. Koenigs and his graduate student, Julian Motzkin, led the analysis of the brain scans.

The study compared the brains of 20 prisoners with a diagnosis of psychopathy with the brains of 20 other prisoners who committed similar crimes but were not diagnosed with psychopathy.

"The combination of structural and functional abnormalities provides compelling evidence that the dysfunction observed in this crucial social-emotional circuitry is a stable characteristic of our psychopathic offenders," Prof. Newman says. "I am optimistic that our ongoing collaborative work will shed more light on the source of  this dysfunction and strategies for treating the problem."

Newman notes that none of this work would be possible without the extraordinary support provided by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, which he called "the silent partner in this research." He says the DOC has demonstrated an unprecedented commitment to supporting research designed to facilitate the differential diagnosis and treatment of prisoners.

The study, published in the most recent Journal of Neuroscience, builds on earlier work by Newman and Koenigs that showed that psychopaths' decision-making mirrors that of patients with known damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). This bolsters evidence that problems in that part of the brain are connected to the disorder.

"The decision-making study showed indirectly what this study shows directly - that there is a specific brain abnormality associated with criminal psychopathy," Koenigs adds.

15 Dinosaur Infants discovered crowded in nest

Fastovsky said the dinosaur infants may have been overrun
by migrating dunes during a sandstorm. Back when  the
dinosaurs lived, some 70 million years ago, the area would've
been a windblown dune field, where dunes may have reached
as tall as 80 feet.

A nest of 15 young dinosaurs has been recently uncovered in Mongolia. They are said to be cousins of Triceratops. The discovery suggests that these plant-eating beasts might have had cared for their young, scientists reveal.

The dinosaur is named Protoceratops andrewsi, a sheep-size herbivore that lived about 70 million years ago that's known for the frill at the back of its head. Within the nest were infants about 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 cm) long and probably no more than a year old.

"The evidence suggests they may have been overrun by migrating dunes during a sandstorm," researcher David Fastovsky, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Rhode Island, said.

The searing hot locale in the heart of the Gobi Desert where this nest was discovered, Tugrikin Shire, has proven rich in fossils in the past, including the "fighting dinosaurs," an entombed Velociraptor and Protoceratops seemingly locked in mortal combat. The site was harsh back when these dinosaurs were alive, too. The sandstones they were buried in suggest the region was an erg, a windblown dune field a bit like parts of the modern Sahara. The dunes here might once have reached as tall as 80 ft. (24 m).

Protoceratops Andrewsi

This is the first definitive Protoceratops nest uncovered to date, researchers said. Although scientists had discovered what they thought were Protoceratops nests since the 1920s, opening up the eggs revealed they actually belonged to another dinosaur — Oviraptor, a creature previously suspected to have lurked around these eggs to eat them.

The fact these infant dinosaurs were all found together suggests that Protoceratops parents might have cared for their young at nests during at least the early stages of childhood. In addition, Protoceratops was a relatively primitive member of its group of dinosaurs, the ceratopsians, so suggests that nesting and parental care might have been traits found within other ceratopsians as well, such as Triceratops.

"It's quite striking that there are 15 juvenile Protoceratops here, that seems like a lot to care for," Fastovsky said. "But they were living in a harsh environment, so perhaps mortality rates were high."

The scientists would like to reconstruct the ecosystem where Protoceratops dwelled to better understand the context in which it lived and why it might have adopted the familial strategy it did.

"We don't know what they fed on right now, we don't know what plant life there was," Fastovsky said. "But it was more productive than what we might expect of a dune field, given how many fossils we're found there."

The scientists detailed their findings in the November issue of the Journal of Paleontology.