Orangutan’s spontaneous whistling opens new chapter in study of evolution of speech

Throughout history, human beings have used the whistle for everything from hailing a cab to carrying a tune. Now, an orangutan’s spontaneous whistling is providing scientists at Great Ape Trust of Iowa new insights into the evolution of speech and learning.

In a paper published this month in Primates, an international journal of primatology that provides a forum on all aspects of primates in relation to humans and other animals, Great Ape Trust scientist Dr. Serge Wich and his colleagues provide the first-ever documentation of a primate mimicking a sound from another species without being specifically trained to do so. Bonnie, a 30-year-old female orangutan living at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., began whistling – a sound that is in a human’s, but not an orangutan’s, repertoire – after hearing an animal caretaker make the sound.

“This is important because it provides a mechanism to explain documented between-population variation in sounds for wild orangutans,” Wich said. “In addition, it counters a long-held assumption that non-human primates have fairly fixed sound repertoires that are not under voluntary control. Being able to learn new sounds and use these voluntarily are also two important aspects of human speech and these findings open up new avenues to study certain aspects of human speech evolution in our closest relatives.”

Previous studies have indicated that orangutans and chimpanzees are capable of species-atypical sounds and vocalizations, but only under the strong influence of human training. Bonnie, however, was not explicitly trained to whistle, according to Wich and his co-authors – Great Ape Trust scientists Dr. Karyl Swartz and Dr. Rob Shumaker; Madeleine E. Hardus and Adriano R. Lameira, doctoral candidates at the Utrecht University in The Netherlands assigned to the Ketambe Research Center in Sumatra, where Wich is research co-manager; and Erin Stromberg, an animal caretaker at the National Zoo.

Scientists have long known that orangutans copy physical movements of humans, but Bonnie’s whistling indicates that the learning capacities of orangutans and other great apes in the auditory domain might be more flexible than previously believed, Wich said. The behavior goes against the argument that orangutans have no control over their vocalizations and the sounds are purely emotional – that is, an involuntary response to stimuli such as predators.

Bonnie appears to whistle for the sake of making a sound rather than to receive a food reward or some other incentive. If asked to whistle, she is likely to oblige, another indication to scientists that she makes the sound voluntarily. … – physorg

PS. If you care about these animals, stop using products with Palm Oil.

Injectable artificial bone developed

Artificial ‘injectable bone’ that flows like toothpaste, and hardens in the body, has been invented by British scientists.

This new regenerative medicine technology provides a scaffold for the formation of blood vessels and bone tissue, and can also deliver stem cells directly to the site of bone repair, say the researchers.

“Injectable bone is the first delivery system for stem cells and growth factors that forms a material with the strength of a bone,” said Robin Quirk, a pharmacist and co-founder of RegenTec – the University of Nottingham, In England, spin-off company commercialising the technology.

No more surgery

Quirk said he hopes that injectable bone might one day reduce or eliminate the need for bone-grafts to repair skeletal defects and fractures – which often require painful invasive surgery.

Not only does the technique reduce the need for dangerous surgery, it also avoids damaging neighbouring areas, said Kevin Shakesheff, a tissue engineer and drug delivery pharmacist at Nottingham who masterminded the breakthrough.

The technology’s superiority over existing alternatives is the novel hardening process and strength of the bond, said Quirk. Older products heat-up as they harden, killing surrounding cells, whereas ‘injectable bone’ hardens at body temperature – without generating heat – making a very porous, biodegradable structure.

“Because the material does not heat-up, surrounding bone cells can survive and grow,” added Shakesheff.

The invention emerged from a combination of research into implant able scaffolds that encourage new bone to grow and new techniques to deliver stem cells and drugs to specific sites. These studies spawned the new concept of an injectable matrix as the building block for tissue regeneration, said the researchers. – cosmos

Awesome.

Behold, the real face of Cleopatra

Pieced together from images on ancient artefacts, including a ring dating from Cleopatra’s reign 2,000 years ago, it is the culmination of more than a year of painstaking research. The result is a beautiful young woman of mixed ethnicity  -  very different to the porcelain-skinned Westernised version portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1961 movie Cleopatra. - mailonsunday

Interesting, but something is missing. Where is the typical Egyptian protective eye makeup?

The favorite eye shadows were green powdered malachite and black crushed lead ore for kohl. Kohl eyeliner was invented to help protect the eyes against infection. – jasmin

Birth of the Moon: a runaway nuclear reaction?

How the Moon arose has long stumped scientists. Now Dutch geophysicists argue that it was created not by a massive collision 4.5 billion years ago, but by a runaway nuclear reaction deep inside the young Earth. …

Photo Caption: Spectacular force: A georeactor deep in the ancient Earth’s D”-layer (dark orange layer near core) goes supercritical – suddenly increasing temperatures to 13,000ºC. This turns rock into vapour, creating a rising bubble which pushes mantle, crust and atmosphere into space in a giant eruption.

IT HAPPENED 4.5 BILLION YEARS AGO, when the Earth was barely 50 million years old. Life didn’t exist; the planet was a violent, boiling fireball.

Then, without warning, the unimaginable happened. Deep within the core, a tremor started. The young Earth shuddered and erupted. From its bowels spewed a trillion-tonne column of molten and vaporised rock. On this day the Moon was born.

In his renovated Saxon farmhouse in Peize in the north of the Netherlands, retired nuclear geophysicist Rob de Meijer vividly paints a picture of the cataclysm: “The material in the Earth’s mantle heated up some 8,000ºC and was completely vaporised.

This huge bubble of gas forced itself up through the still liquid mantle,” he says. “As a result, part of the Earth’s mantle and crust were blown away, as well as the early atmosphere. From the debris, the Moon could have formed rather quickly.”

The Earth ejecting the Moon: isn’t that a rather fanciful scenario? Not according to de Meijer and his colleague, petrologist Wim van Westrenen from the Free University in Amsterdam. They argue that this hypothesis is the logical consequence of new data, and also that an erupting Earth solves a number of unsolved and profound astronomical mysteries…

Before man set foot on the Moon almost 40 years ago, there were still three theories to explain its origin. The first stated that the Moon, like the Earth, was the result of the accretion of cosmic dust into ever more massive chunks. The second argued that the Moon formed elsewhere in space and was later captured by Earth, without impact. Under the third hypothesis, the primordial Earth was spinning so fast that the matter that formed the Moon flew from Earth, by the apparent centrifugal force.

This last one, the ‘fission hypothesis’, was proposed as early as 1880 by George Darwin, son of the famous father of evolution, Charles Darwin. As evidence, he put forward the Pacific Ocean. This gaping hole, he suggested, was visible evidence that a large mass was missing from the Earth. It didn’t take Apollo missions to refute Darwin’s idea. The discovery of plate tectonics provided a more plausible explanation for the Pacific Ocean. Also, around 1930 other scientists calculated that although a day would have lasted just 2.5 hours, the early Earth was spinning too slowly to eject so much matter. “The centrifugal force was insufficient for a Moon to escape,” says de Meijer. …

“The density of the Moon turned out to be much lower than the Earth’s density,” says van Westrenen. “That excludes the accretion model, which says that the Earth and the Moon were formed from the same primordial material. [They] are simply too different.”

Paradoxically, the second hypothesis – that the Moon was formed elsewhere in the Solar System and later captured – was excluded for exactly the opposite reason.

“In that respect, the Earth and the Moon are too similar,” adds van Westrenen. “The ratio of isotopes oxygen-17 and oxygen-18 are identical in terrestrial and lunar rock, and deviates strongly from the isotope ratio in meteorites from Mars.” These isotopes carry information about the distance from the Sun the rock formed, and indicate that the Moon and Earth must have formed at roughly the same distance.  …

“At first, the impact hypothesis seemed to solve all our problems,” he says. “It gives you an Earth and Moon with the correct size, in the correct orbit.”

A quarter of a century later, though, things have changed. In particular, computer simulations of the impact have become more advanced and detailed. And in turn, they have generated new mysteries.  … the main puzzle that came from the simulations – detailed in the British journal Nature in 2003 – was that ‘successful’ impacts produce a Moon of about 80 per cent mantle material from the impactor.

“If the Moon is mainly made of impactor material, than it is much less likely that the ratio of oxygen isotopes for Moon and Earth would be the same,” says van Westrenen. “That is only possible if the Earth and Theia were formed at the same distance from the Sun, which means that they have been chasing each other in more or less the same orbit until they collided.” The problem is that we don’t see anything like that elsewhere in the entire Solar System.  … “We calculated the conditions for the impact velocity. This indicates that the impactor originated somewhere between the present orbits of Mars and Venus.” That is, somewhere near the orbit of the Earth. … ould something similar happen today? Researchers don’t think so; the Moon drew so much energy from the Earth in that blast that too little is left for an encore. However, de Meijer believes that the georeactors in the D”-layer remain active.

“There could still be places where fissile isotopes reach the critical concentration for forming a georeactor. Remember that georeactors are fast breeders that produce more fuel than they use,” he says.

He also knows how to find out. Both natural decay of uranium and thorium produce antineutrinos, tiny particles that can fly straight through the Earth and you and me. Considering the inaccessibility of the D”-layer, an antineutrino detector is the only way known to prove the existence of a georeactor. But such a detector must be able to detect the energy and direction of the antineutrinos, because artificial nuclear reactors produce them, too.

De Meijer has been working on precisely this type of direction – sensitive detector. “We made a design that looks feasible. The next step is building a prototype. We hope to start soon.” – cosmos

Read the entire article on Cosmos. Very interesting with lots of history and geochemistry.

First-Ever Photo of Liquid on Extraterrestrial World

The Huygens probe has captured an image of what may be the first drop of liquid ever observed on an extraterrestrial surface.

The photo is evidence that liquids may exist on the surface of other planets and moons, not just frozen lakes. And liquid is more likely habitat for extraterrestrial life.

Among the pictures snapped by the Huygens probe after landing on Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005, one appears to show a dewdrop made of methane that briefly formed on the edge of the probe itself (indicated by arrow at bottom of image on right). Scientists think heat from the probe caused humid air to rise and condense on the cold edge of the craft.

Though Huygens may have helped produce it, the methane drop is still the first liquid directly detected at a surface anywhere beyond Earth. …

The Cassini space probe, which took data from above the moon after separating from the Huygens lander, detected what scientists believe are lakes of liquid methane on Titan’s surface. Microbes that eat methane thrive on Earth, and scientists think pools of methane could be comfortable homes for similar organisms on Titan.

Because Titan’s current atmosphere is a lot like the early Earth’s, the lakes could be a lab for studying the origins and early evolution of life.

Astronomers have speculated since they found methane in the atmosphere in 1983 about whether the moon’s methane rain falls in violent thunderstorms, light drizzles or some other form. So far, no one has caught it on camera.

You have to look carefully at the bottom of the photo. The little white arrow shows where the drop of methane rain appears. Methane Rain. Good name for a band?

Enceladus has ‘spreading surface’

A US space agency (Nasa) probe has witnessed a moon of Saturn do something very unusual and Earth-like.

Pictures of the icy satellite Enceladus suggest its surface splits and spreads apart – just like the ocean floor on our planet splits to create new crust. …

The data from the Cassini spacecraft is said to strengthen the idea that Enceladus harbours a sub-surface sea.

“Bit by bit, we’re accumulating the evidence that there is liquid water on Enceladus,” said Carolyn Porco, team leader of the Cassini imaging group and one of the senior scientists on the mission.

The observation on Earth that the sea floor is splitting at mid-ocean ridges and moving apart was one of the great scientific discoveries of the 20th Century; and became a key feature in the theory of plate tectonics – the idea that massive slabs of the Earth’s surface move around and are recycled. … – bbc

BlackBerry: $20, McCain-Palin’s Contacts: Priceless

In order to get back some of the money spent on the McCain-Palin campaign, items from the campaign were sold today at a yard sale, including a $20 BlackBerry, fully loaded with confidential information.

When reporters from Fox 5 stopped by the McCain-Palin headquarters today, they were excited to find BlackBerry phones being sold for $20 each. Because the phones came with dead batteries and no chargers, it was only after the reporters had returned to their office and had charged the phones when they realized what $20 actually bought them.

Hundreds of e-mails from early September through early November, and more than 50 phone numbers—including private cell phone numbers belonging to politicians, campaign leaders and journalists—had been left on one of the BlackBerry phones. Whoops! Not to worry though—after the McCain-Palin campaign had been notified, they assured everyone that procedures were being carried out to fix the situation. [MyFox]

There was Palin’s Yahoo account getting hacked, then Palin taking a call from a fake French president, now this.  We need the people with their fingers on the buttons of the biggest nukes on the planet to have the best security minded team on the planet working for them.  Don’t let them near the White House four years from now.