Tag Archives: LiveScience

September 29, 2013 · 10:35 am

Thousands of dino tracks found along Alaska’s Yukon river

Thousands of dino tracks found along Alaska’s Yukon river

By Megan Gannon

Published September 26, 2013

LiveScience
  • yukon-dino-print 660.jpg

    A dinosaur track exposed along the rocky shoreline of Yukon River. Finding the fossils involved walking along the riverâs banks and turning over rocks. (PAT DRUCKENMILLER)

  • yukon-dino-print

    A dinosaur track exposed along the rocky shoreline of Yukon River. Finding the fossils involved walking along the river’s banks and turning over rocks. (PAT DRUCKENMILLER)

Researchers may have just scratched the surface of a major new dinosaur site nearly inside the Arctic Circle. 

This past summer, they discovered thousands of fossilized dinosaur footprints, large and small, along the rocky banks of Alaska’s Yukon River.

In July, the scientists from the University of Alaska Museum of the North embarked on a 500-mile journey down the Tanana and Yukon rivers; they brought back 2,000 pounds of dinosaur footprint fossils. 

‘We found dinosaur footprints by the scores on literally every outcrop we stopped at.’

– Expedition researcher Paul McCarthy 

“We found dinosaur footprints by the scores on literally every outcrop we stopped at,” expedition researcher Paul McCarthy, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said in a statement. “I’ve seen dinosaur footprints in Alaska now in rocks from southwest Alaska, the North Slope and Denali National Park in the Interior, but there aren’t many places where footprints occur in such abundance.” [See Photos of the Dinosaur Tracks Along the Yukon River]

In the last decade, dinosaur footprints have been found in Alaska’s Denali National Park, left in rocks that formed 65 million to 80 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. The new prints along the Yukon River might date back 25 million to 30 million years earlier, McCarthy said.

“It took several years of dedicated looking before the first footprint was discovered in Denali in 2005, but since that time hundreds of tracks of dinosaurs and birds have been found,” McCarthy explained in a statement. “In contrast, the tracks were so abundant along the Yukon River that we could find and collectas many as 50 specimens in as little as 10 minutes.”

Pat Druckenmiller, the museum’s earth sciences curator, added that a find of this magnitude is rare today.

“This is the kind of discovery you would have expected in the Lower 48 a hundred years ago,” Druckenmiller said in a statement. “We found a great diversity of dinosaur types, evidence of an extinct ecosystem we never knew existed.”

The dino tracks were preserved in “natural casts” formed after the creatures stepped in mud, and sand filled in their footprints. The result? Fossils that look like “blobs with toes,” Druckenmiller said.

The researchers say they have much more work ahead of them to understand and describe their findings. They are working with local villages and Native groups to coordinate future expeditions in the region.

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September 18, 2013 · 11:19 am

Dalmanutha, Biblical Town Mentioned In Gospel Of Mark, Possibly Discovered Archaeologists Claim

Dalmanutha, Biblical Town Mentioned In Gospel Of Mark, Possibly Discovered Archaeologists Claim

The Huffington Post  |  By Posted: 09/17/2013 2:47 pm EDT  |  Updated: 09/17/2013 4:51 pm EDT

Dalmanutha, a Biblical town described in the Gospel of Mark as the place where Jesus sailed after miraculously multiplying a few loaves and fish to feed 4,000 people, may have just been discovered by archaeologists, reports LiveScience.

So they did eat, and were filled: and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets.And they that had eaten were about four thousand: and he sent them away.

And straightway he entered into a ship with his disciples, and came into the parts of Dalmanutha.

-Mark 8:8-8:10, King James Version 

Dalmanutha is only mentioned in Mark’s Gospel, but the corresponding passage inMatthew 15:39 says, “And he sent away the multitude, and took ship, and came into the coasts of Magdala,” which has been identified with some certainty as the modern-day town of Migdal, located slightly inland near Israel’s Ginosar Valley. Magdala is perhaps most well-known for its association with Mary Magdalene, or Mary of Magdala, who may have been born in the town.

Fields between today’s Migdal and the coast are rich with archaeological discoveries, reports Ken Dark of the U.K.’s University of Reading, whose team discovered the town they are proposing is Dalmanutha while conducting a field survey. They have linked it with the 1986 discovery of a 2,000-year-old boat which was found on the shoreline, and to date is the most famous artifact associated with the specific area.

boat

“Vessel glass and amphora hint at wealth,” wrote Dark in the most recent edition of Palestine Exploration Quarterly, and “eights and stone anchors, along with the access to beaches suitable for landing boats — and, of course, the first-century boat … all imply an involvement with fishing.”

The findings indicate that the town was prosperous and likely survived for centuries, as the pottery pieces date from as early as the second or first century BCE to around fifth century CE, the time of the Byzantine Empire. A Jewish community likely lived alongside a polytheistic one as tesserae cubes and limestone vessel fragments, “associated with Jewish purity practices in the early Roman period” have been found,Dark told LiveScience.

Modern-day Migdal has also been a cornucopia of ancient finds, some of which were discovered out in the open, repurposed by the current residents. Some architectural remains had been turned into seats or garden ornaments, and over 40 basalt ashlar blocks were found in a single garden.

Though Dark is not certain that the newly uncovered town is the Biblical Dalmanutha, the size of the town supports that identification. Dalmanutha is one of a few place-names known by researchers to relate to the Ginosar Valley shore, that is not already linked to an archaeological site.

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September 14, 2013 · 2:45 pm

Brain Surgery To Remove Amygdala Leads To Woman’s ‘Hyper Empathy’

Brain Surgery To Remove Amygdala Leads To Woman’s ‘Hyper Empathy’

Posted: 09/13/2013 10:39 am EDT

brain surgery hyper empathy

By Bahar Gholipour, Staff Writer
Published: 09/13/2013 07:47 AM EDT on LiveScience

In a strange case, a woman developed “hyper empathy” after having a part of her brain called the amygdala removed in an effort to treat her severe epilepsy, according to a report of her case. Empathy is the ability to recognize another person’s emotions.

The case was especially unusual because the amygdala is involved in recognizing emotions, and removing it would be expected to make it harder rather than easier for a person to read others’ emotions, according to the researchers involved in her case.

During the woman’s surgery, doctors removed parts of her temporal lobe, including the amygdala, from one side of the brain. The surgery is a common treatment for people with severe forms of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) who don’t respond to medication.

After the surgery, the seizures she had suffered multiple times a day stopped. But the woman reported a “new, spectacular emotional arousal,” that has persisted for 13 years to this date, the researchers said. [9 Oddest Medical Cases]

Although patients with epilepsy treated with surgery have been known to experience new psychological issues afterward, such as depression or anxiety, “the case of this patient is surprising because her complaint is uncommon, and fascinating: hyper empathy,” said Dr. Aurélie Richard-Mornas, a neurologist at University Hospital of Saint-Étienne in France, who reported the case.

Her empathy seemed to transcend her body — the woman reported feeling physical effects along with her emotions, such as a “spin at the heart” or an “esophageal unpleasant feeling” when experiencing empathic sadness or anger. She reported these feelings when seeing people on TV, meeting people in person, or reading about characters in novels, the researchers said.

She also described an increased ability to decode others’ mental states, including their emotions, the researchers said. Her newly acquired ability to empathize was confirmed by her family, and she performed exceptionally well in psychological tests of empathy, the researchers said.

The case, published Aug. 14 in the journal Neurocase, is the first in the scientific literature describing this kind of emotional change after removing parts of the temporal lobe, Richard-Mornas said. [Image: Patient’s MRI Scan after Surgery]

Kinds of empathy

Psychologists define two major forms of empathy: emotional and cognitive.

“Emotional empathy refers to feeling another person’s emotion,” Richard-Mornas said. “While cognitive empathy is the ability to adopt the other person’s point of view, or ‘put oneself in his/her shoes,’ without necessarily experiencing any emotion.”

It’s not exactly clear how the human brain is able to understand and re-create the mental and emotional state of another person, but it appears that not everyone is equally good at it. For example, people with autism are thought to have difficulty understanding other people’s intentions, and psychopaths are thought to show a lack of empathy, being unable to experience the emotional reaction people usually have when seeing another person in distress.

In studying the woman with hyper empathy, the researchers evaluated her psychological condition with a series of standard tests, and found that her mental health appeared normal.

The researchers also analyzed how the woman responded to a questionnaire aimed at measuring empathy, made of items such as “I am good at predicting how someone will feel” and “I get upset if I see people suffering on news programmes.” She also completed a test of recognizing the emotions in 36 photographs of only people’s eyes, and her scores were compared to those of 10 women who served as controls.

Her performance in empathy tests was above average, and her score on the eye test was significantly higher than that of the controls, according to the researchers.

The missing amygdala

The amygdala is a small almond-shaped structure, sitting deep in the temporal lobe. It appears to be involved in social interaction, and is thought critical for quickly evaluating and responding to emotional stimuli, such as a frightening predator or a sad face.

The new case comes in contrast to previous observations of people who endured damage to the amygdala and suffered emotional deficits. In a 2001 study involving 22 people who had parts of their temporal lobe removed, researchers found that people with more extensive damage to the amygdala performed worse in learningemotional facial expressions.

However, in the absence of the amygdala, other brain regions, and perhaps newly organized connections among them, may be responsible for driving stronger empathy, the researchers of the new case report said.

“Neural substrates of complex emotions such as empathy are poorly understood,” said Dr. Joseph Sirven, a neurologist at Mayo Clinic in Arizona, who was not involved with the case.

“What we are finding is that there is not just one anatomical correlate of emotion. Rather, complex emotions like empathy, hope, etc., are likely to occur as a complex interplay from a number of areas in the brain and the amygdala is one,” Sirven said.

The woman’s case suggests it is possible to have unexpectedly re-organized neural networks after this kind of surgery, the researchers said, and may have lessons for a better understanding of the brain.

“Most of modern neuroscience has its basis on observations of individual cases such as this one, that help to illuminate the complex working of the brain,” Sirven said.

Email Bahar Gholipouror follow her @alterwired. Follow LiveScience @livescience,Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

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September 6, 2013 · 6:26 am

New explanation for mysterious ‘fairy circles’ in African desert

New explanation for mysterious ‘fairy circles’ in African desert

By Joseph Castro

Published September 05, 2013

LiveScience
  • fairy-circles-1

    Fairy circles are circular patches of perennial grasses with a barren center that emerge in the deserts along the southwest coast of Africa. Here, numerous tracks of Oryx antelopes crossing fairy circles in an interdune pan, shown in this aeria (Image courtesy of N. Juergens)

The bizarre circular patches of bare land called “fairy circles” in the grasslands of Africa’s Namib Desert have defied explanation, with hypotheses ranging from ants to termites to grass-killing gas that seeps out of the soil. But the patches may be the natural result of the subsurface competition for resources among plants, new research suggests.

Grasslands in the Namib Desert start off homogenous, but sparse rainfall and nutrient-poor soil spark intense competition between the grasses, according to the new theory. Strong grasses sap all of the water and nutrients from the soil, causing their weaker neighbors to die and a barren gap to form in the landscape.

The vegetation gap expands as the competition ensues, and the grass-free zone becomes a reservoir for nutrients and water. With the additional resources, larger grass species are then able to take root at the periphery of the gap, and a stable fairy circle develops. [See Photos of Mysterious Fairy Circles of the Namib Desert]

“It’s a really good theory because it accounts for all the characteristics of fairy circles,” including the presence of tall grass species, Florida State University biologist Walter Tschinkel, who was not involved in the study, told LiveScience. “No other proposed cause for fairy circles has ever done that.”

A lingering mystery
Fairy circles have been a mystery to scientists for decades. Last year, Tschinkel discovered that small fairy circles last for an average of 24 years, whereas larger circles can stick around for up to 75 years. However, his research didn’t determine why the circles form in the first place, or why they disappear.

‘It accounts for all the characteristics of fairy circles.’

– Florida State University biologist Walter Tschinkel 

Earlier this year, University of Hamburg biologist Norbert Juergens claimed to have found evidence for a termite theory of fairy circles. Essentially, he discovered colonies of the sand termite, Psammotermes allocerus, were nearly always found in the centers of fairy circles, where he also found increased soil moisture. He reasoned that the termites feed on the grasses’ roots, killing the plants, which usually use up the soil’s water, and then slurp up the water in the resulting circular patches to survive during the dry season.

But Tschinkel is critical of the work, stressing that Juergens confused correlation with causation.

Michael Cramer, a biologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and lead researcher of the current study, which was published recently in the journal PLOS ONE, also thinks the termite theory falls short.

“I think the major hurdle that explanations have to overcome is explaining the regular spacing of the circles, their approximate circularity and their size,” Cramer told LiveScience. “There’s no real reason why termites would produce such large circles that are so evenly spaced.”

Scientists have also previously proposed that fairy circles are an example of a “self-organizing vegetation pattern,” which arises from plant interactions. In 2008, researchers developed a mathematical model showing the vegetation patterning of fairy circles could depend on water availability.

A fierce competition
To test this theory, Cramer and his colleague Nichole Barger from the University of Colorado at Boulder first measured the size, density and landscape occupancy of fairy circle sites across Namibia, using both Google Earth and ground surveys. They then collected soil samples at various depths from inside and outside the circles, and analyzed them for water and nutrient content. Finally, they plugged the information, along with climate data such as seasonal precipitation and temperatures, into their computer models. [Images: The 10 Strangest Sights on Google Earth]

“We found that the size of the circle, the density and degree to which they occupy the landscape are all associated with the amount of resources available,” Cramer said. Specifically, fairy circles are smaller if they have more resources, such as soil nitrogen and rainfall.

This makes sense, Cramer explained, because the taller grasses won’t need a large reservoir of resourcesto get started and survive if water and nutrients are already available in the environment. On the other hand, the grasses require a large reservoir to sustain themselves if the soil is poor in water and nutrients.

The researchers also discovered that rainfall strongly determines the distribution of the fairy circles across Namibia, with circles only appearing in areas where there is just the right amount of rain (not too little, but not too much). If there’s too much rain, the bountiful resources would “relax” the competition for resources and the circles would close up; but if there’s too little rain, the competition would become too severe and the circles would again disappear, Cramer said. Because the circles can only occur in this narrow moisture range, differences in rainfall from year to year may cause them to suddenly disappear and reappear in an area over time. With this information, they found that they could predict the distribution of the fairy circles with 95 percent accuracy.

Additionally, the regular spacing between fairy circles may be the result of inter-circle competition, with grasses from each circle “battling” with other circle grasses for resources, Cramer said.

Experimental tests
Cramer notes that termites may still be involved in fairy circles. “What sets up the circles is the competition between plants,” he said. “Termites are a secondary phenomenon, and their role is to serve as a maintenance for the circles by killing off the grasses that spring up in the center of the circles.”

Yvette Naud, a chemist at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, who was not involved in the study, thinks it’s refreshing to see a noninsect hypothesis for fairy circles, though she expressed some doubts about its validity.

“It is unclear how peripheral grass resource-competition could induce such abrupt and synchronized plant mortality over an entire patch,” Naud, who has previously studied fairy circles, told LiveScience in an email. (Cramer actually thinks the plant mortality starts off small, and the patch grows as the competition continues.) “The answer to the enigma [of fairy circles] remains elsewhere.”

To examine whether the theory is correct, Cramer plans to conduct experimental tests, as his study only provides correlative evidence for the competition theory.

“If fairy circles really do develop from a shortage of water and nutrients, then simply watering and fertilizing the circles should cause them to close up with vegetation,” Tschinkel said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/09/05/mysterious-fairy-circles-in-african-desert-get-new-explanation/?intcmp=features#ixzz2e417iQkL

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August 28, 2013 · 12:25 pm

Wormhole best time-travel option

Wormhole best time-travel option, astrophysicist says

By Jillian Scharr

Published August 27, 2013

LiveScience
  • Back to the Future

    In the movie “Back to the Future,” Doc Brown builds a time machine into a Delorean. (Universal)

The concept of a time machine typically conjures up images of an implausible plot device used in a few too many science-fiction storylines. But according to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which explains how gravity operates in the universe, real-life time travel isn’t just a vague fantasy.

Traveling forward in time is an uncontroversial possibility, according to Einstein’s theory. In fact, physicists have been able to send tiny particles called muons, which are similar to electrons, forward in time by manipulating the gravity around them. That’s not to say the technology for sending humans 100 years into the future will be available anytime soon, though.

Time travel to the past, however, is even less understood. Still, astrophysicist Eric W. Davis, of the EarthTech International Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, argues that it’s possible. All you need, he says, is a wormhole, which is a theoretical passageway through space-time that is predicted by relativity. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

“You can go into the future or into the past using traversable wormholes,” Davis told LiveScience.

Where’s my wormhole?
Wormholes have never been proven to exist, and if they are ever found, they are likely to be so tiny that a person couldn’t fit inside, never mind a spaceship.

‘There are numerous space-time geometry solutions that exhibit time travel.’

– Astrophysicist Eric W. Davis 

Even so, Davis’ paper, published in July in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ journal, addresses time machines and the possibility that a wormhole could become, or be used as, a means for traveling backward in time.

Both general-relativity theory and quantum theory appear to offer several possibilities for traveling along what physicists call a “closed, timelike curve,” or a path that cuts through time and space essentially, a time machine.

In fact, Davis said, scientists’ current understanding of the laws of physics “are infested with time machines whereby there are numerous space-time geometry solutions that exhibit time travel and/or have the properties of time machines.”

A wormhole would allow a ship, for instance, to travel from one point to another faster than the speed of light sort of. That’s because the ship would arrive at its destination sooner than a beam of light would, by taking a shortcut through space-time via the wormhole. That way, the vehicle doesn’t actually break the rule of the so-called universal speed limit the speed of light because the ship never actually travels at a speed faster than light. [Warped Physics: 10 Effects of Traveling Faster Than Light]

Theoretically, a wormhole could be used to cut not just through space, but through time as well.

“Time machines are unavoidable in our physical dimensional space-time,” David wrote in his paper. “Traversable wormholes imply time machines, and [the prediction of wormholes] spawned a number of follow-on research efforts on time machines.”

However, Davis added, turning a wormhole into a time machine won’t be easy. “It would take a Herculean effort to turn a wormhole into a time machine. It’s going to be tough enough to pull off a wormhole,” he told LiveScience.

That’s because once a wormhole is created, one or both ends of it would need to be accelerated through time to the desired position, according to general relativity theory.

Challenges ahead
There are several theories for how the laws of physics might work to prevent time travel through wormholes.

“Not only do we assume [time travel into the past] will not be possible in our lifetime, but we assume that the laws of physics, when fully understood, will rule it out entirely,” said Robert Owen, an astrophysicist at Oberlin College in Ohio who specializes in black holes and gravitation theory.

According to scientists’ current understanding, keeping a wormhole stable enough to traverse requires large amounts of exotic matter, a substance that is still very poorly understood.

General relativity can’t account for exotic matter according to general relativity, exotic matter can’t exist. But exotic matter does exist. That’s where quantum theory comes in. Like general relativity, quantum theory is a system for explaining the universe, kind of like a lens through which scientists observe the universe. [Video How to Time Travel]

However, exotic matter has only been observed in very small amounts not nearly enough to hold open a wormhole. Physicists would have to find a way to generate and harness large amounts of exotic matter if they hope to achieve this quasi-faster-than-light travel and, by extension, time travel.

Furthermore, other physicists have used quantum mechanics to posit that trying to travel through a wormhole would create something called a quantum back reaction.

In a quantum back reaction, the act of turning a wormhole into a time machine would cause a massive buildup of energy, ultimately destroying the wormhole just before it could be used as a time machine.

However, the mathematical model used to calculate quantum back reaction only takes into account one dimension of space-time.

“I am confident that, since [general relativity] theory has not failed yet, that its predictions for time machines, warp drives and wormholes remain valid and testable, regardless of what quantum theory has to say about those subjects,” Davis added.

This illustrates one of the key problems in theories of time travel: physicists have to ground their arguments in either general relativity or quantum theory, both of which are incomplete and unable to encompass the entirety of our complex, mysterious universe.

Before they can figure out time travel, physicists need to find a way to reconcile general relativity and quantum theory into a quantum theory of gravity. That theory will then serve as the basis for further study of time travel.

Therefore, Owen argues that it’s impossible to be certain of whether time travel is possible yet. “The wormhole-based time-machine idea takes into account general relativity, but it leaves out quantum mechanics,” Owen added. “But including quantum mechanics in the calculations seems to show us that the time machine couldn’t actually work the way we hope.”

Davis, however, believes scientists have discovered all they can about time machines from theory alone, and calls on physicists to focus first on faster-than-light travel.

“Until someone makes a wormhole or a warp drive, there’s no use getting hyped up about a time machine,” Davis told LiveScience.

Accomplishing this will require a universally accepted quantum gravity theory an immense challenge so don’t go booking those time-travel plans just yet.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/08/27/wormhole-best-bet-for-time-machine/?intcmp=obinsite#ixzz2dIFw73ID

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August 16, 2013 · 1:02 pm

Badger unearths medieval grave

Dig this: Badger unearths medieval grave

By Marc Lallanilla

Published August 16, 2013

LiveScience
  • Badger medieval grave 1.jpg

    The grave of a medieval Slavic warlord, with a bronze bowl at his feet, was uncovered in Germany by a digging badger. (Felix Biermann, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

  • Badger medieval grave.jpg

    The grave of a medieval Slavic warlord, with a bronze bowl at his feet, was uncovered in Germany by a digging badger. (Felix Biermann, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

Some archaeologists pore over old maps and manuscripts to make historical discoveries. Others rely on pick axes, trowels and other tools.

But archaeologists in Germany simply turned to badgers, the digging mammals that are the bane of gardeners everywhere. A badger living in the countryside near the town of Stolpe recently uncovered a remarkable site: the 12th-century burial ground of eight people, two of whom were apparently Slavic warlords.

Two sculptors who live in the area had been watching a badger digging a large sett (den). Upon closer examination, they noticed a pelvic bone inside the sett. “We pushed a camera into the badger’s sett and took photos by remote control,” Hendrikje Ring, one of the sculptors, told Der Spiegel. “We found pieces of jewelry, retrieved them and contacted the authorities.”

‘He had been hit by lances and swords, and had also fallen from a horse.’

– Archaeologist Felix Biermann 

One warlord was buried with a two-edged sword and a large bronze bowl at his feet, The Local, an English-language news site, reports. “At the time, such bowls were used to wash the hands before eating,” archaeologist Felix Biermann of Georg-August University in Gttingen told The Local. “The bowls would be a sign that a man belonged to the upper classes.”

The same warrior also wore an elegant bronze belt buckle in the shape of an omega, with the head of a stylized snake at each end. “He was a well-equipped warrior,” said Biermann, who is leading the team excavating the site. “Scars and bone breaks show that he had been hit by lances and swords, and had also fallen from a horse.”

Another grave held the skeleton of a woman with a coin in her mouth. According to ancient religious beliefs, people were often buried with coins to pay a ferryman to transport them across the river that separated the living world from the realm of the dead.

This badger-assisted archaeological find isn’t the first time historical artifacts have been discovered in unusual ways. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd boy who was searching for a sheep that had strayed from his flock. He threw a rock into a cave and, instead of a bleating lamb, heard the sound of pottery breaking, leading to the scrolls’ discovery.

And earlier this month, the buried remains of the residents from Bedlam, Europe’s oldest insane asylum, were uncovered during the construction of the Crossrail subway line in London.

The archaeological finding in Germany is significant because it occurred at a place and time of conflict between heathen Slavic tribes and Christians, said Thomas Kersting, an archaeologist at the Brandenburg Department for Monument Protection.

One of the warriors’ graves appears to have been robbed of its sword, Kersting explained. “If someone went to this grave and opened it in full view of the local castle and took out the sword, that’s a sign that something’s not working anymore,” Kersting told Der Spiegel. “It highlights the time of upheaval when the rule of the Slavic tribes was coming to an end.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/08/16/dig-this-badger-unearths-medieval-treasure/?intcmp=features#ixzz2cAERDyqu

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August 7, 2013 · 12:29 pm

Genetic ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ uncovered

I want to say that people often mistakenly think the Bible says that Adam and Eve were the first humans.  It does not.  In fact, when Cain, their son, kills another son, Abel, he is banished.  He is in fear that other people will kill him, so a mark of protection is placed on him.  He goes out to another land and marries.  Where did the other people come from?  To me, Adam and Eve were created and placed in a protected refuge – the Garden of Eden, protected from outside impacts.  Creating Adam and Eve and animal life could be considered today as genetic engineering or an experiment in a lab.  God created them, gave them free will and a few rules and saw what happened.  The entire Bible is pretty much like that.  From the chosen people of the Jews to the Christians of today, we are created by God but given free will, a set of standards to live by, and we get to choose.

You can explain things that they just happened, that ancient aliens experimented with us, or that a Creator made us.  My son told me that he could create certain basic amino acid reactions in the laboratory where he is studying to become a bio-chemical engineer.  Of course, it sometimes takes him many tries to get an experiment correct, even in laboratory conditions.  I personally don’t believe that every major “it just happened” event could occur at precisely the right time and place so many times to create what we are now.  I think just like my son doing a lab project, God created us in His lab of sorts.

So it is that information like the following fits in with my belief in God and my own personal theories of life on this planet and that it was created.  It is ok if you disagree.  That is your exercise of your own free will.  🙂

Genetic ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ uncovered

By Tia Ghose

Published August 02, 2013

LiveScience
  • X and Y chromosomes.jpg

    Human sex-determining chromosomes: X chromosome (left) and the much smaller Y chromosome. (University of Arizona)

Almost every man alive can trace his origins to one man who lived about 135,000 years ago, new research suggests. And that ancient man likely shared the planet with the mother of all women.

The findings, detailed Thursday, Aug. 1, in the journal Science, come from the most complete analysis of the male sex chromosome, or the Y chromosome, to date. The results overturn earlier research, which suggested that men’s most recent common ancestor lived just 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.

Despite their overlap in time, ancient “Adam” and ancient “Eve” probably didn’t even live near each other, let alone mate. [The 10 Biggest Mysteries of the First Humans]

“Those two people didn’t know each other,” said Melissa Wilson Sayres, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study.

Tracing history
Researchers believe that modern humans left Africa between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago, and that the mother of all women likely emerged from East Africa. But beyond that, the details get fuzzy.

The Y chromosome is passed down identically from father to son, so mutations, or point changes, in the male sex chromosome can trace the male line back to the father of all humans. By contrast, DNA from the mitochondria, the energy powerhouse of the cell, is carried inside the egg, so only women pass it on to their children. The DNA hidden inside mitochondria, therefore, can reveal the maternal lineage to an ancient Eve.

But over time, the male chromosome gets bloated with duplicated, jumbled-up stretches of DNA, said study co-author Carlos Bustamante, a geneticist at Stanford University in California. As a result, piecing together fragments of DNA from gene sequencing was like trying to assemble a puzzle without the image on the box top, making thorough analysis difficult.

Y chromosome
Bustamante and his colleagues assembled a much bigger piece of the puzzle by sequencing the entire genome of the Y chromosome for 69 men from seven global populations, from African San Bushmen to the Yakut of Siberia.

By assuming a mutation rate anchored to archaeological events (such as the migration of people across the Bering Strait), the team concluded that all males in their global sample shared a single male ancestor in Africa roughly 125,000 to 156,000 years ago.

In addition, mitochondrial DNA from the men, as well as similar samples from 24 women, revealed that all women on the planet trace back to a mitochondrial Eve, who lived in Africa between 99,000 and 148,000 years ago almost the same time period during which the Y-chromosome Adam lived.

More ancient Adam
But the results, though fascinating, are just part of the story, said Michael Hammer, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the study.

A separate study in the same issue of the journal Science found that men shared a common ancestor between 180,000 and 200,000 years ago.

And in a study detailed in March in the American Journal of Human Genetics, Hammer’s group showed that several men in Africa have unique, divergent Y chromosomes that trace back to an even more ancient man who lived between 237,000 and 581,000 years ago. [Unraveling the Human Genome: 6 Molecular Milestones]

“It doesn’t even fit on the family tree that the Bustamante lab has constructed. It’s older,” Hammer told LiveScience.

Gene studies always rely on a sample of DNA and, therefore, provide an incomplete picture of human history. For instance, Hammer’s group sampled a different group of men than Bustamante’s lab did, leading to different estimates of how old common ancestors really are.

Adam and Eve?
These primeval people aren’t parallel to the biblical Adam and Eve. They weren’t the first modern humans on the planet, but instead just the two out of thousands of people alive at the time with unbroken male or female lineages that continue on today.

The rest of the human genome contains tiny snippets of DNA from many other ancestors they just don’t show up in mitochondrial or Y-chromosome DNA, Hammer said. (For instance, if an ancient woman had only sons, then her mitochondrial DNA would disappear, even though the son would pass on a quarter of her DNA via the rest of his genome.)

As a follow-up, Bustamante’s lab is sequencing Y chromosomes from nearly 2,000 other men. Those data could help pinpoint precisely where in Africa these ancient humans lived.

“It’s very exciting,” Wilson Sayres told LiveScience. “As we get more populations across the world, we can start to understand exactly where we came from physically.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/08/02/genetic-adam-and-eve-uncovered/?intcmp=features#ixzz2bJRcOvJB

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August 5, 2013 · 10:59 am

Mysterious Hum Heard by 2 Percent of World Population

Hum Heard Around World Impacts 2 Percent Of People In Hum-Prone Areas, Study Suggests

LiveScience  |  By Marc LallanillaPosted: 07/27/2013 11:30 am EDT  |  Updated: 07/27/2013 11:37 am EDT

It creeps in slowly in the dark of night, and once inside, it almost never goes away.

It’s known as the Hum, a steady, droning sound that’s heard in places as disparate as Taos, N.M.; Bristol, England; and Largs, Scotland.

But what causes the Hum, and why it only affects a small percentage of the population in certain areas, remain a mystery, despite a number of scientific investigations. [The Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena]

Reports started trickling in during the 1950s from people who had never heard anything unusual before; suddenly, they were bedeviled by an annoying, low-frequency humming, throbbing or rumbling sound.

The cases seem to have several factors in common: Generally, the Hum is only heard indoors, and it’s louder at night than during the day. It’s also more common in rural or suburban environments; reports of a hum are rare in urban areas, probably because of the steady background noise in crowded cities.

Only about 2 percent of the people living in any given Hum-prone area can hear the sound, and most of them are ages 55 to 70, according to a 2003 study by acoustical consultant Geoff Leventhall of Surrey, England.

Most of the people who hear the Hum (sometimes referred to as “hearers” or “hummers”) describe the sound as similar to a diesel engine idling nearby. And the Hum has driven virtually every one of them to the point of despair. [Video: Listen to 6 Spooky Sounds]

“It’s a kind of torture; sometimes, you just want to scream,” retiree Katie Jacques of Leeds, England, told theBBC. Leeds is one of several places in Great Britain where the Hum has recently appeared.

“It’s worst at night,” Jacques said. “It’s hard to get off to sleep because I hear this throbbing sound in the background … You’re tossing and turning, and you get more and more agitated about it.”

Being dismissed as crackpots or whiners only exacerbates the distress for these complainants, most of whom have perfectly normal hearing. Sufferers complain ofheadaches, nausea, dizziness, nosebleeds and sleep disturbances. At least one suicide in the United Kingdom has been blamed on the Hum, the BBC reports. [The Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders]

The Hum zones

Bristol, England, was one of the first places on Earth where the Hum was reported. In the 1970s, about 800 people in the coastal city reported hearing a steady thrumming sound, which was eventually blamed on vehicular traffic and local factories working 24-hour shifts.

Another famous hum occurs near Taos, N.M. Starting in spring 1991, residents of the area complained of a low-level rumbling noise. A team of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of New Mexico, Sandia National Laboratories and other regional experts were unable to identify the source of the sound.

Windsor, Ontario, is another Hum hotspot. Researchers from the University of Windsor and Western University in London, Ontario, were recently given a grant to analyze the Windsor Hum and determine its cause.

Researchers also have been investigating the Hum in Bondi, a seaside area of Sydney, Australia, for several years, to no avail. “It sends people around here crazy — all you can do is put music on to block it out. Some people leave fans on,” one resident told the Daily Telegraph.

Back in the United States, the Kokomo Hum was isolated in a 2003 study financed by the Indiana city’s municipal government. The investigation revealed that two industrial sites — one a Daimler Chrysler plant — were producing noise at specific frequencies. Despite noise-abatement measures, some residents continue to complain of the Hum.

What causes the Hum?

Most researchers investigating the Hum express some confidence that the phenomenon is real, and not the result of mass hysteria or hearers’ hypochondria (or extraterrestrials beaming signals to Earth from their spaceships).

As in the case of the Kokomo Hum, industrial equipment is usually the first suspected source of the Hum. In one instance, Leventhall was able to trace the noise to a neighboring building’s central heating unit.

Other suspected sources include high-pressure gas lines, electrical power lines, wireless communication devices or other sources. But only in a few cases has a Hum been linked to a mechanical or electrical source.

There’s some speculation that the Hum could be the result of low-frequency electromagnetic radiation, audible only to some people. And there are verified cases in which individuals have particular sensitivities to signals outside the normal range of human hearing.

Medical experts are quick to point out that tinnitus (the perception of sound when no external noise is present) is a likely cause, but repeated testing has found that many hearers have normal hearing and no occurrences of tinnitus.

Environmental factors have also been blamed, including seismic activity such as microseisms — very faint, low-frequency earth tremors that can be generated by the action of ocean waves.

Other hypotheses, including military experiments and submarine communications, have yet to bear any fruit. For now, hearers of the Hum have to resort to white-noise machines and other devices to reduce or eliminate the annoying noise.

Leventhall, who recommends that some hearers turn to cognitive-behavioral therapy to relieve the symptoms caused by the Hum, isn’t confident that the puzzle will be solved anytime soon.

“It’s been a mystery for 40 years, so it may well remain one for a lot longer,” Leventhall told the BBC.

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August 2, 2013 · 9:07 am

Pharaoh’s sphinx paws found in Israel

Pharaoh’s sphinx paws found in Israel

By by Megan Gannon

Published July 10, 2013

LiveScience
  • egyptian-sphinx

    This sphinx fragment was found by archaeologists with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem during excavations at Hazor. (Amnon Ben-Tor, Sharon Zuckerman / Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology)

Archaeologists digging in Israel say they have made an unexpected find: the feet of an Egyptian sphinx linked to a pyramid-building pharaoh.

The fragment of the statue’s front legs was found in Hazor, a UNESCO World Heritage Site just north of the Sea of Galilee. Between the paws is a hieroglyphic inscription with the name of king Menkaure, sometimes called Mycerinus, who ruled Egypt during the Old Kingdom more than 4,000 years ago and built one of the great Giza pyramids.

Researchers don’t believe Egypt had a relationship with Israel during Menkaure’s reign. They think it’s more likely that the sphinx was brought to Israel later on, during the second millennium B.C. [Images: Glitzy Discovery at Giza Pyramids]

The inscription also includes the phrase, “Beloved by the divine manifestation that gave him eternal life.” Amnon Ben-Tor, one of the Hebrew University archaeologists leading the excavations at Hazor, thinks that descriptor could be a clue the sphinx originated in the ancient seat of sun worship, Heliopolis, which is today mostly destroyed and covered up by Cairo’s sprawl.

The part-lion, part-human sphinx was a mythical creature represented in art throughout the ancient Near East as well as India and Greece. Ben-Tor and colleagues say the artifact found at Hazor is the first-ever discovered sphinx fragment associated with king Menkaure. It’s also the only royal Egyptian sphinx ever to be unearthed in Israel, according to a statement from Hebrew University.

The statue fragment was exposed at the entrance to the city palace in an archaeological layer that dates to the mysterious destruction of Hazor when it was occupied by the Canaanites in the 13th century B.C.

The researchers think the sphinx could have been brought to Israel during the 17th to 16th centuries B.C., when part of Egypt was controlled by the Hyksos, a people believed to be originally from northern Canaan. Alternatively, the royal sculpture may have arrived in Hazor as a gift from an Egyptian king during the 15th to 13th centuries B.C., when Egypt controlled much of Canaan through a system of vassal states. At that time, Hazor was the most important city in the southern Levant, covering some 200 acres, with an estimated population of about 20,000.

Hazor was strategically located at a crossroads between Egypt and Babylon. Initially a Canaanite city, it had been fortified since the early second millennium B.C., conquered by the Israelites, rebuilt under King Solomon and ultimately destroyed by the Assyrians in 732 B.C.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/07/10/pharaoh-sphinx-paws-found-in-israel/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2amzYoC00

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July 25, 2013 · 8:45 pm

Stone coffin to be opened at Richard III grave site

Stone coffin to be opened at Richard III grave site

By Megan Gannon

Published July 24, 2013

LiveScience
  • Hunt for King Richard 4.jpg

    A stained glass window at Cardiff Castle depicts King Richard III and Queen Anne Neville. (University of Leicester)

  • richard-stone-coffin-2

    An intact stone coffin found in the ruins of Grey Friars, the monastery where Richard III was buried. (University of Leicester)

  • King Richard III remains 1.jpg

    Feb. 4 2013: Remains found underneath a parking lot last September at the Grey Friars excavation in Leicester, which have been declared “beyond reasonable doubt” to be the long lost remains of England’s King Richard III, missing for 500 years. (AP Photo/ University of Leicester)

Archaeologists are set to lift the lid on a stone coffin discovered at the site of the English friary where Richard III’s remains were found.

Excavators suspect the tomb billed as the only intact stone coffin found in Leicester may contain the skeleton of a medieval knight or one of the high-status friars thought to have been buried at the church.

Richard III, the last king of the House of York, ruled England from 1483 to 1485, when was killed in battle during the War of Roses, an English civil war. He received a hasty burial at the Grey Friars monastery in Leicester as his defeater, Henry Tudor, ascended to the throne. Grey Friars was destroyed in the 16th century during the Protestant Reformation, and its ruins became somewhat lost to history. [Photos: The Discovery of Richard III]

‘This is the first time we have found a fully intact stone coffin during all our excavations.’

– Mathew Morris, of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services

A dig beneath a parking lot in Leicester last summer revealed the remains of Grey Friars and a battle-ravaged skeleton later confirmed to be that of Richard III. Excavators also found a handful of other graves, including this coffin, which the researchers think was put in the ground more than 100 years before Richard’s burial.

This month, the team from the University of Leicester started a fresh excavation at the site. Now in their final week of digging, the researchers plan to open the coffin in the days ahead.

They think it might contain the remains of the knight Sir William de Moton of Peckleton, who died between 1356 and 1362, or one of two heads of the Grey Friars order in England, Peter Swynsfeld or William of Nottingham.

“Stone coffins are unusual in Leicester and this is the first time we have found a fully intact stone coffin during all our excavations of medieval sites in the city,” site director Mathew Morris, of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS), said in a statement. “I am excited that it appears to be intact.”

Morris and his team intend to measure and take photos of the coffin before they lift the lid, which they say they will do out of view of the media.

Meanwhile, Richard’s remains are set to be reinterred next year. Last week, the Leicester Cathedral announced its $1.5 million ($1 million U.S.) plans to rebury the king in a new raised tomb at the church.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/07/24/stone-coffin-to-be-opened-at-richard-iii-site/?intcmp=features#ixzz2a7Tv66R3

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