Massive Turquoise Trade Network of Ancient Pueblos Revealed
Posted on October 30, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 863 words
| Patria Henriques
About a millennium ago, the ancestral Pueblo Indians in the Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico obtained their precious turquoise using a large trade network spanning several states, new research reveals.
In the new study, researchers traced Chaco Canyon turquoise artifacts back to resource areas in Colorado, Nevada and southeastern California. The results definitively show, for the first time, that the ancestral Puebloans — best known for their multistoried adobe houses — in the San Juan Basin area of New Mexico did not get all of their turquoise from a nearby mining site, as was previously believed.
[Read More]Mysterious Cheetah Disease Explained
Posted on October 30, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 486 words
| Trudie Dory
Cheetahs may get a lethal disease by eating the poop of their brethren.
This deadly ailment is similar to mad cow disease and Alzheimer's — its cause is malformed proteins.
Keeping these felines from consuming their own droppings might help keep these rare cats alive in captivity.
Cheetahs are in danger of extinction. One of the principal causes of death of these felines in zoos and sanctuaries is a disease known as AA amyloidosis — it has been found in as much as 70 percent of autopsied cheetahs in captivity.
[Read More]Runners' Back Pain Starts Deep, 3D Models Show
Posted on October 30, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 696 words
| Trudie Dory
Motion-capture technology has revealed that the source of runners' back pain lies deeper than expected, according to a new study.
Scientists collected data using a motion-capture system and pressure-sensitive plates as participants ran around a track; the researchers then used the findings to 3D-model bones and muscles in a moving human body.
The models showed the different muscle groups at work during endurance running. The scientists learned that much of the back-supporting burden was carried by muscles in the body's deep core, rather than by the surface abdominal muscles that core-strengthening workouts typically target, according to the study.
[Read More]Scientists Have Created a Sound So Loud It Can Vaporize Water on Contact
Posted on October 30, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 503 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
It's not the sound of a massive underwater earthquake, nor is it the sound of a pistol shrimp snapping its claws louder than a Pink Floyd concert. It is, in fact, the sound of a tiny water jet — about half the width of a human hair — being hit by an even thinner X-ray laser.
You can't actually hear this sound, because it was created in a vacuum chamber. That's probably for the best, considering that, at around 270 decibels, these rumbling pressure waves are even louder than NASA's loudest-ever rocket launch (which measured about 205 decibels).
[Read More]The Fascinating Story Behind the Oldest Message in a Bottle
Posted on October 30, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 701 words
| Fernande Dalal
Update: March 10 @ 8:11 a.m. EST
Several news sources in Australia have cast doubt on the authenticity of the 131-year-old message in a bottle. WAtoday reported that Kym Illman, the husband of Tonya Illman, who found the bottle, is a known ambush marketer, and that the bottle might be an elaborate scheme to draw attention to Wedge Island, where the bottle was discovered. In addition, Perth Now noted that Kym Illman "accepts most people would expect such old objects to be in worse condition.
[Read More]Tortoise hunts baby bird in slow-motion, crushes its skull in shocking video
Posted on October 30, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 867 words
| Arica Deslauriers
In shocking new video footage, a giant tortoise creeps toward a baby bird perched on a log, slowly and steadily cornering the chick before chomping down on its tiny skull.
The footage ends after the lifeless bird tumbles to the ground, but the researcher who captured the video reported that the tortoise swallowed the chick whole moments later. The chilling video is the first documented case of "deliberate hunting" in any tortoise species, the researchers wrote in a report published Monday (Aug.
[Read More]Will we ever know exactly how the universe ballooned into existence?
Posted on October 30, 2022
| 6 minutes
| 1175 words
| Trudie Dory
Physicists have long been unable to crack the mystery of what happened in the moments when a vanishingly small seed ballooned into the universe. Now, one scientist thinks he knows why they can't come up with a physical description of this phenomenon called inflation: The universe won't let us.
Specifically, the scientist describes a new conjecture that states, regarding the young universe, "the observer should be shielded" from directly observing the smallest structures in the cosmos.
[Read More]1st instance of microevolution in early human relative discovered
Posted on October 29, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 809 words
| Fernande Dalal
The recently discovered skull of an ancient human relative reveals that the species underwent dramatic changes in a short period of time, a phenomenon known as microevolution, a new study finds.
Previously, males of Paranthropus robustus, an extinct australopithecine species (relatives of Lucy), were thought to be substantially larger than females. This dichotomy is well known among some modern-day primates, including gorillas, orangutans and baboons. However, a new fossil unearthed in South Africa indicates that differences attributed to sex are actually due to microevolution, as the species rapidly evolved during a turbulent period of local climate change about 2 million years ago.
[Read More]4.5-Billion-Year-Old Meteorite Yields New Mineral
Posted on October 29, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 383 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
A 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite from northwest Africa has yielded one of the earliest minerals of the solar system.
Officially called krotite, the mineral had never been found in nature before, though it is a man-made constituent of some high-temperature concrete, according to study researcher Anthony Kampf, curator of Mineral Sciences at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM). [Image of new mineral]
"This is one that simply was not known in nature until we found it here,"
[Read More]An Apple a Day Keeps Women's Cholesterol at Bay
Posted on October 29, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 424 words
| Arica Deslauriers
An apple a day may do more than keep the doctor away it can lower levels of bad cholesterol and improve levels of good cholesterol without causing weight gain in women, according to a new study.
Women who ate 75 grams of dried apples every day for six months had a 23 percent decrease in bad LDL cholesterol , said study researcher Bahram H. Arjmandi, professor and chair of the department of nutrition at the Florida State University.
[Read More]