Mario Modesto Mata, a researcher in the Dental Anthropology Group at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), is the lead author of a paper published in The Anatomical Record, on the use of artificial neural networks to reconstruct the number of perikymata, which are the growth lines in the enamel, but which are absent in worn teeth.
Astronomers are pretty sure they know where the moon came from. In the early solar system, a Mars-sized object dubbed Theia smashed into Earth. This cataclysmic collision knocked a huge mass of material into orbit, which coalesced and cooled into the moon. But establishing exactly when this occurred is a difficult task.
University of Otago researchers have formally identified and named a fossil dolphin which they discovered has a unique feeding method.
Three Black Brant IX sounding rockets for the Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) mission are scheduled to launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility launch range in Virginia. The launch window opens April 8, 2024, at 2:40 p.m. EDT.
In Earth science, small details can help explain massive events. Rita Parai, an assistant professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, uses precision equipment to measure trace levels of noble gases in rocks, samples that can provide key insights into planetary evolution.
The population of Africa, the second-largest continent in the world, currently sits at about 1.4 billion, but is set to exceed 2 billion by 2040. This means greater swaths of land than ever before are being used for agriculture, and livestock numbers are increasing. A new estimate of Africa's greenhouse gas budget between 2010 and 2019 quantifies just how much these changes in land use have affected Africa's role in the global carbon cycle. The research is published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.
Due to its economic growth and large population, the People's Republic of China is widely viewed as a rising economic and military superpower. But declining fertility rates and increased life expectancies over the last few decades have conspired to make China one of the more rapidly aging societies in the world.
Intuitive Machines recently had a major breakthrough, successfully becoming the first non-governmental entity to land on the moon in February. At least the landing was partially successful—the company's Odysseus lander ended up on its side, though its instruments and communication links remained at least partially functional. That mission, dubbed IM-1, was the first in a series of ambitious missions the company has planned. And they recently released a paper at the LPSC 2024 conference detailing... Читать дальше...
Sometimes, all you need for a new discovery is some creative math. That was the case for a new paper by Edward Williams and Laurent Montési of the University of Maryland's Department of Geology. They released a brief paper at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC 2024) last month that describes a mathematical way to estimate the size of a lava tube using only remote sensing techniques.
Marketers have found so-called "nudging" to be an effective way to influence consumer behavior—but new research suggests those who are prompted, either subtly or directly, to select a particular product or service may be quicker to abandon it.
On April 8, many of us will be huddling behind protective glasses and feasting our eyes on a rare solar stunner. But the sun's eye-catching performance won't be the only thing on display. You may also notice our animal friends behaving oddly.
Hundreds of millions of people will witness next week's total solar eclipse across North America, and solar physicists from around the globe are flocking to join them. Eclipses offer a brief glimpse of the sun's ghostly surrounding atmosphere—the solar corona—normally kept invisible by the sun's sheer glare. But the corona will soon be opened up for more sustained study: today in Belgium ESA has unveiled the pair of spacecraft making up its new Proba-3 mission, planned to produce orbital solar eclipse events on demand.
Young almond orchards face numerous biotic stressors during their early growth stages, particularly when replanted in areas where old stone fruit orchards once stood. Among these challenges is the almond/stone fruit replant disease (ARD), which can significantly hinder growth and yields and is caused, in part, by a soil microbial complex.
It may be possible to change the purchasing behavior of consumers noticeably using some simple strategies. At least this is what a study, carried out by the University of Bonn and the Technical University of Munich, indicates. The researchers investigated the effect of nudging on the sale of products produced with high animal welfare standards in a virtual supermarket.
A diverse group of computational chemists is encouraging the research community to embrace a sustainable software ecosystem. That's the message behind a perspective article published in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation. The authors discuss possible scenarios of how to develop software in the face of a changing computational landscape.
Alaskan waters are a critical fishery for salmon. Complex marine food webs underlie and sustain this fishery, and scientists want to know how climate change is reshaping them. But finding samples from the past isn't easy.
A massive new global study led by the University of Copenhagen and University of Hohenheim has examined the effects of diversified agriculture. The conclusion is abundantly clear—positive effects increase with every measure, while negative effects are hard to find.
Despite their ancient ages, some stars orbiting the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole appear deceptively youthful. But unlike humans, who might appear rejuvenated from a fresh round of collagen injections, these stars look young for a much darker reason.
Guessing your age might be a popular carnival game, but for astronomers it's a real challenge to determine the ages of stars. Once a star like our sun has settled into steady nuclear fusion, or the mature phase of its life, it changes little for billions of years. One exception to that rule is the star's rotation period—how quickly it spins. By measuring the rotation periods of hundreds of thousands of stars, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope promises to bring new understandings of stellar... Читать дальше...
A team of researchers has uncovered alarming trends in the first range-wide genetic study of an endangered bee species. The study, led by Colorado State University and published in the Journal of Insect Science, will inform conservation and recovery efforts for the rusty-patched bumblebee—a species that was once common in the United States but has declined from about 90% of its historic range.
The first study of toxic "forever chemicals" along the full length of Asia's longest river, the Yangtze, has found 13 different types of PFAS, nearly half of them coming from textile treatments and food packaging.
A 7.4 magnitude earthquake has rocked the east coast of Taiwan—the largest the island nation has seen in more than 25 years.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) chemists have created a new collection of molecular compounds and begun testing them as potential leads in the search for new drugs. Among these molecules, they found several that show promise for development as antibiotics and cancer therapies. Sounds like a eureka moment? Well, sort of. But it's more a case of hard chemistry made simple.
Frogs display a remarkable diversity of species as a whole, but does the same hold true for their visual abilities? A new study led by York University's Faculty of Science has sought to answer this question by collaborating with researchers in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, French Guiana, Gabon, Seychelles, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States, to get a sample of a diverse array of frogs to study the visual pigments found in their eyes.
Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—also known as "forever chemicals"—are everywhere. Created in the 1940s, these synthetic compounds are an unseen ingredient in many items that we use in our daily lives, like cleaning products, food packaging, nonstick cookware, cosmetics, personal care items like dental floss, water-repellent clothing, as well as stain-resistant carpets and upholstery. Since the 1970s, they have also been used in firefighting foams and by the military.
