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Submission + - Raging fires, high temps kept big dinosaurs out of North America for years (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: The earliest definitive dinosaurs arose sometime between 245 million and 230 million years ago at high latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, yet none appeared in North America and other then-tropical regions for another 30 million years. What kept them out? Now, an interdisciplinary team of paleontologists, geologists, and other scientists suggests a dramatic answer: During the Late Triassic period between about 215 million and 205 million years ago, Ghost Ranch and other dinosaur-rich locations in North America were subject to carbon dioxide levels many times higher than today’s. These regions, which were much closer to the equator back then, at about the latitude of today’s southern India, were subject to raging wildfires and extreme fluctuations in temperature and vegetation growth. All of this made life inhospitable for larger, energy-hungry dinosaurs, the team argues .

Submission + - Nuclear blasts shed light on how animals recover from annihilation (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, France detonated four nuclear bombs on the Fangataufa atoll—a ring-shaped island of coral in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The detonations—the largest, a hundred times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki—destroyed just about all life in the region, setting up an “unthinkable” ecological experiment: If life had to start fresh, would it develop the same way again? A new study of the aftermath of the blasts suggests it would not.

Submission + - Chimps drink 'palm wine' with gusto (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Alcoholic beverages are imbibed in nearly every human society across the world—sometimes, alas, to excess. Although recent evidence suggests that tippling might have deep roots in our primate past, nonhuman primates are only rarely spotted in the act of indulgence. A new study of chimpanzees with easy access to palm wine shows that some drink it enthusiastically, fashioning leaves as makeshift cups with which to lap it up. The findings could provide new insights into why humans evolved a craving for alcohol, with all its pleasures and pains.

Submission + - Signs of ancient cells and proteins found in dinosaur fossils (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: The cupboards of the Natural History Museum in London hold spectacular dinosaur fossils, from 15-centimeter, serrated Tyrannosaurus rex teeth to a 4-meter-long hadrosaur tail. Now, researchers are reporting another spectacular find, buried in eight nondescript fossils from the same collection: what appear to be ancient red blood cells and fibers of ancient protein. Using new methods to peer deep inside fossils, the study in this week’s issue of Nature Communications backs up previous, controversial reports of such structures in dinosaur bones. It also suggests that soft tissue preservation may be more common than anyone had guessed.

Submission + - Astronomers find 11.6-billion-year-old star nursery in ancient galaxy (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Some galaxies are so distant, they appear only as featureless points of light to observers on Earth. But thanks to another closer galaxy acting as a magnifying lens, astronomers have been able to see star-forming regions in one such distant galaxy—known as SDP.81—dating to 2.4 billion years after the big bang. This is the most detailed image obtained of a galaxy that far back in the universe’s history.

Submission + - New test could reveal every virus that's ever infected you (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Can’t remember every viral infection you’ve ever had? Don’t worry, your blood can. A new test surveys the antibodies present in a person’s bloodstream to reveal a history of the viruses they’ve been infected with throughout their life. The method could be useful not only for diagnosing current and past illnesses, but for developing vaccines and studying links between viruses and chronic disease.

Submission + - Comet impacts may explain mysterious swirls on moon (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Comets striking the moon may have left more than craters: Their tenuous atmospheres may have scoured away loose soil, thus brightening the lunar surface when viewed from certain angles, a new study suggests. So-called “lunar swirls” of lighter-than-average terrain, some of them thousands of kilometers long, have mystified astronomers for decades. Many of these sinuous swaths don't seem to be linked to craters or other obvious features of the moon’s landscape, but in the 1970s, some were found to be associated with unusually strong spots in the moon’s magnetic field. Some researchers at the time proposed that those fields somehow protected the surface from the solar wind (the influx of charged particles streaming from the sun), rendering it brighter. But now, an analysis suggests that the pale swirls result when the gaseous shroud of a comet washes across the lunar surface. While the nucleus of the comet leaves a crater, the atmosphere that surrounds it blasts—and, in essence, airbrushes—fine dust away. This process may even help explain the oddities in the moon's magnetic field associated with the swirls.

Submission + - Mystery company blazes a trail in fusion energy (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Of the handful of startup companies trying to achieve fusion energy via nontraditional methods, Tri Alpha Energy Inc. has always been the enigma. Publishing little and with no website, but apparently sitting on a cash pile in the hundreds of millions, the Foothill Ranch, California-based company has been the subject of intense curiosity and speculation. But last month Tri Alpha lifted the veil slightly with two papers revealing that its device, dubbed the colliding beam fusion reactor, has shown a 10-fold improvement in its ability to contain the hot particles needed for fusion over earlier devices at U.S. universities and national labs. “They’ve improved things greatly and are moving in a direction that is quite promising,” says plasma physicist John Santarius of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Submission + - Science still seen as male profession, according to international study of gende (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Close your eyes and imagine a scientist: peering into a telescope, flicking a glass vial in a lab, or sitting at a computer typing out a grant proposal. Did you picture a man or a woman? The answer depends on where you live, according to a new study. Researchers have found that people in some countries are much more likely to view science as a male profession, with the Netherlands coming in at the top of the list. Regardless of location, though, the stereotype persists that science is for men.

Submission + - 'Prisonized' neighborhoods make ex-cons more likely to return to the slammer (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: The gates at American prisons can seem like revolving doors. People come in, do their time, and—within 3 years—half are back behind bars, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics. Now, a scientist says he has nailed down one potential risk factor. An intriguing natural experiment that followed ex-cons displaced by Hurricane Katrina suggests that when former prisoners wind up moving to the same neighborhood, they are more likely to return to a life of crime.

Submission + - Arctic find confirms ancient origin of dogs (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: A small piece of wolf bone found on a remote Siberian peninsula is helping to confirm the idea that dogs have been with us a long, long time. When researchers dated the bone, they found that it belonged to a male wolf that lived 35,000 years ago. Genetic analysis reveals that the wolf existed at a critical time in canine history: when the ancestors of modern dogs and wolves split off from an ancient wolf population. The find suggests that dogs may have been domesticated as long as 40,000 years ago. If that's true, it means dogs would have lived with us for almost 30,000 years before we gave up our hunter-gatherer ways and began to settle down and take up farming.

Submission + - Yeast can live with human genes (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Yeast and humans have been evolving along separate paths for 1 billion years, but there’s still a strong family resemblance, a new study demonstrates. After inserting more than 400 human genes into yeast cells one at a time, researchers found that almost 50% of the genes functioned and enabled the fungi to survive. “It’s quite amazing,” says evolutionary biologist Matthew Hahn of Indiana University, Bloomington, who wasn’t connected to the study. “It means that the same genes can carry out the same functions after 1 billion years of divergence.”

Submission + - Gene turns female mosquitoes into males (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Researchers have identified a gene that turns female mosquitoes into males. That's important, because female mosquitoes are the primary carriers of diseases like yellow fever. So the approach could lead to a new way to combat tropical diseases.

Submission + - Coffin remains tell life story of ancient sun-worshiping priestess (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Once upon a time in the Bronze Age, a girl was born to a family of sun worshipers living in the Black Forest of what is today Germany. When she was young she became a priestess in the local sun cult, and soon attracted the eye of a tribal chief who lived far to the north. The girl’s family married her off, and she went to live with the chief in what is now Denmark. She often traveled back and forth between Denmark and her ancestral home and eventually gave birth to a child while she was away. Sometime before her 18th birthday, she and the child died. They were buried together in an oak coffin, the young woman wearing a bronze belt buckle in the shape of the sun.

How do we know? A new study of the 3400-year-old girl’s chemical isotopes, along with more conventional archaeological evidence, tells us so. At least, these are the conclusions of scientists who recently analyzed the teeth, fingernails, hair, and clothes of the Egtved Girl, so named for the Danish village where archaeologists first discovered her in 1921.

Submission + - Martian moons may have formed like Earth's (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Astronomers have long believed that Mars snatched its two moons--Phobos and Deimos--from the asteroid belt. That would explain why the objects look like asteroids—dark, crater-pocked, and potato-shaped. But computer simulations by two independent teams of astronomers indicated that Mars's moons formed much like ours did, after a giant space rock smashed into the planet and kicked up debris.

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