71730073
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sciencehabit writes:
Famed for their large hooked beaks and a presumed taste for meat, flightless phorusrhacids, also known as “terror birds,” were among South America’s top predators before going extinct about 2.5 million years ago. Now paleontologists have unearthed one of the most complete fossils of a phorusrhacid to date. The skeleton of the new species, dubbed Llallawavis scagliai, is approximately 95% complete, giving scientists the ability to study a terror bird’s anatomy in unprecedented detail. Analyses of the well-preserved remains are already providing insights into the bird’s hearing ability, scientists say.
71717623
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sciencehabit writes:
The group of ferocious meat-eating dinosaurs known as tyrannosaurs—of which the most famous member is Tyrannosaurus rex—may have sometimes turned their sharp teeth on each other. A distinctive pattern of tooth marks on the skull and jaw of a tyrannosaur discovered at Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada, offers the best evidence of that yet, scientists say. The dinosaur, known as Daspletosaurus, was not fully adult when it died, but still weighed about 500 kilograms and was almost 6 meters long. Researchers conclude from both the spacing and shape of the puncture marks on its skull that it was bitten by another tyrannosaur—quite possibly another Daspletosaurus—while it was still alive, probably as the result of a dino-on-dino fight. Those wounds healed, but tooth marks on its jaw suggest that the meat eater was chomped on by yet another tyrannosaur after it died.
71691669
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sciencehabit writes:
Astronomers have detected chemical precursors of building blocks of life in the large disk of dust and gas whirling around a young nearby star. These complex organic molecules, two forms of cyanide and one chemically related compound, likely formed after the protoplanetary disk collapsed, the researchers say. The same chemicals are found in roughly similar proportions in comets circling our sun, which may have brought them to Earth billions of years ago. “We know that the solar system isn’t unique in its number of planets or abundance of water,” says Karin Öberg, an astrochemist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Now we know that we’re not unique in organic chemistry. From a life in the universe point of view, this is great news.”
71665483
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sciencehabit writes:
The Dutch population has gained an impressive 20 centimeters in the past 150 years and is now officially the tallest on the planet. Scientists chalk up most of that increase to rising wealth, a rich diet, and good health care, but a new study suggests something else is going on as well: The Dutch growth spurt may be an example of human evolution in action. The study shows that tall Dutch men on average have more children than their shorter counterparts, and that more of their children survive. That suggests genes that help make people tall are becoming more frequent among the Dutch. "This study drives home the message that the human population is still subject to natural selection," says Stephen Stearns, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University who wasn't involved in the work. "It strikes at the core of our understanding of human nature, and how malleable it is."
71660471
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sciencehabit writes:
Anesthetics may make that tooth surgery bearable, but they are also contributing—at least somewhat—to climate change, a new study reveals. The gases act in much the same way as carbon dioxide (CO2), trapping energy from the sun in the atmosphere and warming the planet. Over the past decade, atmospheric concentrations of the commonly used anesthetics desflurane, isoflurane, and sevoflurane have risen globally to 0.30 parts per trillion (ppt), 0.097 ppt, and 0.13 ppt, respectively, scientists report in Geophysical Research Letters. Although those numbers may not seem like much—especially compared with CO2, which reached concentrations of 400 parts per million in 2014—the higher global warming potential of the anesthetics has some scientists worried. Also, the study’s researchers point out, no mandate exists that requires used anesthetic be captured and disposed of, and as a result, almost all of it is released directly into the atmosphere.
71659753
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sciencehabit writes:
In a scientific ghost story, a U.S. atom smasher has made an important scientific contribution 3.5 years after it shut down. Scientists are reporting that the Tevatron collider in Batavia, Illinois, has provided new details about the nature of the famed Higgs boson—the particle that’s key to physicists’ explanation of how other fundamental particles get their mass and the piece in a theory called the standard model. The new result bolsters the case that the Higgs, which was discovered at a different atom smasher, exactly fits the standard model predictions.
71649285
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sciencehabit writes:
In, the U.S. Postal Service issued colorful dinosaur stamps, including one for Brontosaurus. Paleontologists and educators loudly protested that the correct scientific name for the iconic beast was Apatosaurus—a fact that even lay dino aficionados and many 8-year-olds took pride in knowing. But now, a dinosaur-sized study of the family tree of the Diplodocidae, the group that includes such monstrous beasts as Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, and Barosaurus, finds that USPS got it right: The fossils originally called Brontosaurus show enough skeletal differences from other specimens of Apatosaurus that they rightfully belong to a different genus. The study, published online this week in the journal PeerJ, brings the long-banished name back into scientific respectability as a genus coequal with Apatosaurus.
71628023
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sciencehabit writes:
Weather could power the next generation of smart windows. Researchers have created glass that tints by harvesting energy from wind and precipitation. The approach offers an alternative to other smart windows powered by batteries, solar panels, and even standard power outlets. The new glass uses nanosized generators powered by triboelectrics—the static electricity produced by friction when two materials touch. When activated, the generators, which rest in two layers atop a single pane of glass, create an electric current that tints the clear window a dark shade of blue.
71626023
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sciencehabit writes:
Scientists have discovered the first "living crystal" formed by a microbe—the speedy Thiovulum majus, one of the fastest swimming species of bacteria known. These bacteria live in the muddy bottoms of salt marshes and produce energy by oxidizing sulfide. Researchers discovered that when the bacteria hit the edge of a container, they move along its surface and eventually aggregate into ordered, 2D formations. The microbes generate a tornadolike flow with their spinning flagella, which pull nearby bacteria toward them, causing them to arrange in crystalline clump. Whereas most crystals are inert structures, these crystals rearrange and rotate over time (video), thanks to the forces each bacterium exerts on its neighbors
71541815
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sciencehabit writes:
Most open-access (OA) journals make money by making authors pay an article processing charge to publish a paper. A small online malaria journal based in the Netherlands wants to turn that situation on its head. It is promising to pay authors €150 for every article it publishes from now on. The idea behind the move—possible thanks to a Dutch funding agency—is not only to lure authors to the journal, but also to drive home the message that academic publishing is way too expensive, says the journal's editor.
71539373
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sciencehabit writes:
Researchers report the creation of an ultrathin, fabric circuit that keeps high conductivity even while bending and stretching as much as yoga pants. The fiber’s core mimics spandex, consisting of an elastic synthetic thread—polyurethane—twinned by two cotton yarns. These stretchy strings were then dipped in silver nanoparticles to instill conductivity and then liquid silicone to encase everything. This silver nanoyarn could stretch as much as spandex—500% of its original length—and retain a high conductivity (688 siemens per centimeter), the team reports online this month in ACS Nano. That’s 34 times the conductivity and five times the flexibility seen with prior attempts at nanowires made from graphene. The fibers kept high conductivity after being bent 1000 times or wrapped around fingers. The team used their yarn to link light-emitting diodes within foldable plastic, meaning the fibers might serve as flexible wiring in new-age curved TVs, stretchable digital screens, or electronic clothing.
71537963
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sciencehabit writes:
When North Carolina was a wet, tropical swamp some 231 million years ago, the top of the food chain was occupied by a nearly 3-meter-tall crocodilian ancestor that walked on its hind legs and ate the relatives of early mammals, say paleontologists writing on 19 March in Scientific Reports. The newly analyzed fossil represents one of the earliest examples of crocodylomorphs, a group of crocodilelike animals who ruled Earth in the Late Triassic. This "Carolina Butcher" vied with theropod dinosaurs for top predator slots and succeeded—for a time. By the end-Triassic extinction event, some 201.3 million years ago, only their smaller cousins remained, allowing dinosaurs to take over as top predators for the next 135 million years.
71513131
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sciencehabit writes:
Blind rodents on the run from knife-wielding farmers’ wives may never need to ask for directions again. Scientists have gifted navigational skills to blind rats by wiring them with a compass that sends electric signals to their brain when they’re facing north or south. The advance helps shed light on how the brain processes sensory information and could lead to new technologies to help blind people navigate.
71482539
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sciencehabit writes:
Scientists have developed a simple, bootlike exoskeleton that can boost a walker's efficiency without any external power source. The gadget consists of a spring that runs up the back of the calf to a clutch, which releases when the foot lifts off the ground. The spring takes some of the work away from the calf muscles, and the clutch allows the leg to move freely when in the air. The contraption reduced the cost of walking by 7%, compared with walking without assistance. The device is lighter than powered devices, weighing about half a kilogram (1.1 pounds), and the performance boost is comparable.
71424365
submission
sciencehabit writes:
As Arctic sea ice melts earlier each year, polar bears in some parts of Norway and Greenland are abandoning ice floes for dry land and their favorite meal—seals—for seabird eggs. The shift in diet could sound a death knell for popular nesting grounds of barnacle geese, eider ducks, and glaucous gulls, researchers warn this month in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Calling the results the “cascading effects of climate change,” the team of European researchers found that over the course of the past 10 years, dramatic increases in summertime nest predation correlated with diminishing sea ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean. Their research combined NASA satellite imagery with on-the-ground observations at one seabird nesting site in northeast Greenland and four in the Svalbard archipelago of Norway. One scientist observed polar bears eating more than 200 eggs in 2 hours, and last year no chicks or eggs of any species—barnacle geese, eiders, and glaucous gulls—survived.
