Philippa Kaur

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    in Humans

    Huge spiral found in Indian desert may be largest drawing ever made

    By Michael Marshall

    Geoglyphs found in the desert near Boha, IndiaYohann Oetheimer
    A huge spiral carved into the ground in India covers almost 100,000 square metres, dwarfing other individual geoglyphs like those in the Nazca desert in Peru.
    The spiral is in a small cluster of geoglyphs discovered by father-and-son researchers Carlo and Yohann Oetheimer, who are based in Luriecq, France. Carlo searched Google Earth images of the Thar desert in India and identified eight sites with possible geoglyphs. In 2016, they flew a drone over them and found that four were furrows dug for failed tree plantations.
    One site …
    Article amended on
    26 May 2021

    We corrected the number of sites that were failed tree plantations More

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    in Humans

    Non-kosher fish eaten in Jerusalem during early days of Judaism

    By Krista Charles

    Catfish was being eaten in Jerusalem and surrounding areas even as Judaism was emerging thereIndradkristiono/Getty Images
    Non-kosher fish was on the menu in areas that are now part of Israel and Egypt while Judaism was developing in the region and the Hebrew Bible was being written there.
    The Torah – the first five books of the Hebrew Bible – states that certain foods, including pork and aquatic animals that lack fins and scales, shouldn’t be eaten. Modern, practising Jewish people are prohibited from eating these foods.

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    To explore the origin of the custom, Yonatan Adler at Ariel University in the West Bank and Omri Lernau at the University of Haifa in Israel examined ancient fish bones from 30 archaeological sites in Israel and Sinai dated from about 1550 BC to AD 640. They found that finless and scaleless fish were regularly eaten during that 2000-year period.
    “What people were doing in the past often leaves a footprint on the material record, just as we leave footprints today,” says Adler. “We are, as archaeologists, rifling through ancient people’s garbage, essentially, and learning about their actual behaviour. So, by looking at archaeological finds, we learn what ancient Jews were doing.”
    The research forms part of a larger project to determine the origins of Judaism, in this case looking at food laws.

    Lernau identified different fish species from about 20,000 bones and found that of the non-kosher fish, catfish was eaten the most. Other non-kosher fish that were eaten include rays and sharks.
    “If you have fish, especially in a place which is far from a water source, let’s say Jerusalem [where one of the 30 sites was located]. People were bringing these fish to Jerusalem, and if you brought a fish to Jerusalem, it was to eat it. You can’t really do anything with fish aside from eating it,” says Adler.
    Many scholars believe that the Jewish dietary laws came about because there wasn’t a precedent for eating these foods in the culture at the time, but the presence of non-kosher fish in these ancient diets suggests otherwise.
    “We can see that things developed very slowly, and the interpretation of these laws were not as fixed as people might think,” says James Aitken at the University of Cambridge. “Jewish identity was a slow process and not immediately apparent. Jews did not look different from their neighbours. They did not behave differently or eat differently.”
    Journal reference: Tel Aviv, DOI: 10.1080/03344355.2021.1904675
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    Stone Age South Africans built huge rock funnels to trap animals

    By Michael Marshall

    A site near Keimoes, South Africa, where Stone Age rock walls were foundProfessor Marlize Lombard
    Stone Age hunters living in what is now South Africa built long rock walls that acted as traps, funnelling fleeing prey animals into kill zones where they could be easily dispatched.
    While these “desert kites” are common in the Middle East, it was thought that southern African hunter-gatherers didn’t build them and instead left little or no mark on the landscape.
    “I predict that there may be many more kite sites in southern Africa,” says Marlize Lombard at the University of Johannesburg in South … More

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    in Space & Astronomy

    Record-breaking light has more than a quadrillion electron volts of energy

    The cosmos keeps outdoing itself.

    Extremely energetic light from space is an unexplained wonder of astrophysics, and now scientists have spotted this light, called gamma rays, at higher energies than ever before.

    The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory, LHAASO, spotted more than 530 gamma rays with energies above 0.1 quadrillion electron volts, researchers report online May 17 in Nature. The highest-energy gamma ray detected was about 1.4 quadrillion electron volts. For comparison, protons in the largest accelerator on Earth, the Large Hadron Collider, reach mere trillions of electron volts. Previously, the most energetic gamma ray known had just under a quadrillion electron volts (SN: 2/2/21).

    In all, the scientists spotted 12 gamma ray hot spots, hinting that the Milky Way harbors powerful cosmic particle accelerators. In order for gamma rays to reach such energies, electromagnetic fields must first rev up charged particles, namely protons or electrons, to immense speeds. Those particles can then produce energetic gamma rays, for example, when protons interact with other matter in space.

    Scientists aren’t yet sure what environments are powerful enough to produce light with energies reaching more than a quadrillion electron volts. But the new observations point to two possibilities. One hot spot was associated with the Crab Nebula, the turbulent remains of an exploded star (SN: 6/24/19). Another potential source was the Cygnus Cocoon, a region where massive stars are forming, blasting out intense winds in the process.

    LHAASO, located on Haizi Mountain in China’s Sichuan province, is not yet fully operational. When it is completed later this year, it is expected to find even more energetic gamma rays. More

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    in Space & Astronomy

    Watch this beautiful, high-resolution simulation of how stars are born

    The most realistic computer simulation of star formation yet offers stunning views of what the inside of a stellar nursery might look like.

    In the Star Formation in Gaseous Environments simulation, or STARFORGE, a giant virtual cloud of gas collapses into a nest of new stars. Unlike other simulations, which could render only a small clump of gas within a larger cloud, STARFORGE simulates an entire star-forming cloud. It’s also the first simulation to account for the whole medley of physical phenomena thought to influence star formation, researchers report online May 17 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

    “We sort of know the basic story of star formation … but the devil is in the details,” says Mike Grudić, a theoretical astrophysicist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. (SN: 4/21/20). Astronomers still don’t fully understand, for instance, why stars have different masses. “If you really want to get the full picture, then you really have to just simulate the whole thing.”

    [embedded content]
    In the computer simulation STARFORGE, a massive cloud of cosmic gas — roughly 20 parsecs, or 65 light-years, across — collapses to form new stars. White areas indicate denser regions of gas, including baby stars. Orange highlights places where there’s lots of variation in the gas motion, such as in powerful jets launched by new stars. Gas shown in purple is more tranquil. After 4.3 million years (Myr) have passed, the simulation pauses so the virtual camera can swoop around the cloud, revealing its 3-D structure.

    STARFORGE starts with a blob of gas that can be tens to hundreds of light-years across and up to millions of times the mass of the sun. Turbulence inside the cloud creates dense pockets that collapse to forge new stars. Those stars then launch powerful jets, give off radiation, shed stellar winds and explode in supernovas. Eventually, these phenomena blow the last vestiges of the cloud away and leave behind a hive of young stars. The whole process takes millions of years — or months of computing time, even running on supercomputers.

    Using STARFORGE, Grudić and colleagues have confirmed that jets launched by new stars help regulate how much material a star amasses. In simulations without jets, typical stars were about 10 times the mass of the sun — way bigger than the actual average star. “As soon as you add this jet feedback to your simulation,” Grudić says, “stellar masses start coming out more or less right on the dot for what they’re observed to be.”

    The STARFORGE simulation has helped confirm that jets launched by newborn stars (simulated one shown) determine how much mass stars can accrete.Northwestern University, University of Texas at Austin

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    in Humans

    Don't Miss: Netflix original anime Eden is a sci-fantasy with robots

    CBBC Don’t Blame Me, Blame My Brain
    Watch
    Don’t Blame Me, Blame My Brain is a children’s show on CBBC, fuelled by unusual, out-there questions. Is it possible to catapult yourself to the moon? Or talk to dogs? Comedians Ken Cheng and Leila Navabi have answers – maybe.

    Read
    Shape: The hidden geometry of absolutely everything helps explain important ideas and problems, according to its author, maths whizz Jordan Ellenberg. These include everything from the spread of the coronavirus to the rise of machine learning.
    Netflix
    Watch
    Eden is the name of a city built by machines after humanity’s fall in Netflix’s new anime series. When two robots discover a human girl while on a routine assignment, they decide to bring her up in secret. Released on 27 May. More

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    in Humans

    In Silico review: The ambitious project to recreate the human brain

    By Simon Ings

    A virtual model of a mouse neocortex seen in In SilicoCourtesy of Sandbox Films
    In Silico
    Noah Hutton

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    SHORTLY after gaining a neuroscience degree, young film-maker Noah Hutton fell into the orbit of Henry Markram, a neuroscientist based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
    Markram models brains in all their complexity. His working assumption is that since the brain is an organ, a sufficiently good computer model ought to reveal its workings, just as “in-silico” models of kidneys, livers and hearts enrich our under standing.
    The world is filled with people who seem to think in different ways. Much as we might want to understand this full diversity, no one is going to dig about in a living human. Markram hopes that a computer model will offer an ethically acceptable route.
    So far, so reasonable. Except that, in 2009, Markram said he would build a working computer model of the brain in 10 years. This was during a TED talk about his Blue Brain Project (BBP), set up in 2005 to model the mouse brain.
    Every year for well over a decade, Hutton interviewed Markram, his colleagues and his critics as the project expanded and the deadline shifted. Hutton’s film, In Silico, is the result.
    Markram’s vision transfixed purseholders across the European Union: in 2013, he won €1 billion of public cash to set up the Human Brain Project (HBP).
    “It is within our power to model some organs. But the brain isn’t an organ in the usual sense”
    Although his tenure at its Geneva headquarters didn’t last long, Markram is hardly the first founder to be wrested from the controls of their institute. His BBP endures: its in-silico model of the mouse neocortex is visually astounding.
    Perhaps that is the problem. In a voice-over, Hutton says the HBP has become a special-effects house, a shrine to touchscreens and VR headsets, but lacks meaning “outside this glass and steel building in Geneva”.
    We have heard such criticisms before. What about how the CERN particle physics lab sucks funds from the rest of physics? There is no shortage of disgruntled junior researchers blaming it for failed grant applications. CERN, however, gets results; HBP, not so much.
    The problem runs deep. It is within our power to model some organs, but the brain isn’t an organ in the usual sense. By any engineering measure, it looks inefficient. A spike in the neurons can trigger the release of this neurotransmitter, except when it releases another one – or does nothing. There is bound to be some commonality in brain anatomy, but so far research shows that every brain is like a beautiful, unique snowflake.
    The HBP’s models generate noise, just like real brains. In the film, there is a vague mention of “emergent properties”. Yet linking that noise to brain activity is an intellectual Get Out of Jail Free card if ever there was one: no one knows what this noise means, so there is no way to tell if the model is making the right noise.
    Deep learning guru Terrence Sejnowski, who is based at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, tells Hutton that the whole caper is a bad joke – if successful, Markram will only generate a simulation “every bit as mysterious as the brain itself”.
    Hutton accompanies us into the yawning gap between Markram’s reasonable ambitions and the promises he makes to attract funds. It is a film made on a budget of nothing, and it isn’t pretty. But Hutton makes up for all that with the sharpest of scripts.

    Sally also recommends…
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    The Idea of the Brain
    Matthew Cobb
    Profile Books
    In his dazzling history of neuroscience, zoologist Matthew Cobb explains why the metaphors we use to think about the brain stop us understanding it.
    Film
    Inception
    Christopher Nolan
    Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is out to steal from your mind in a groundbreaking sci-fi flick that gave Freudian psychoanalytic theory a jaw-dropping CGI makeover.

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    in Humans

    How the way you move can change the way you think and feel

    New research suggests the connection between exercise and the brain goes deeper than you might think. These six kinds of movement can help make you more creative, boost your self-esteem and reach altered states of consciousness

    Health

    19 May 2021

    By Caroline Williams

    Sergio Membrillas
    FILTER-FEEDERS aside, humans are the only creatures that can get away with sitting around all day. As a species, we have been remarkably successful at devising ways to feed, entertain ourselves and even find mates, all while barely lifting a finger.
    True, this is a sign of just how clever and adaptable we are. But there is a huge cost to our sedentary ways, not only to our bodies, but also our minds. Falling IQs and the rise in mental health conditions have both been linked to our lack of physical movement.
    But the connection between movement and the brain goes deeper than you might think. A revolutionary new understanding of the mind-body connection is revealing how our thoughts and emotions don’t just happen inside our heads, and that the way we move has a profound influence on how our minds operate. This opens up the possibility of using our bodies as tools to change the way we think and feel.
    Evidence is starting to stack up that this is indeed the case, and it isn’t all about doing more exercise. In my new book, Move! The new science of body over mind, I explore emerging research in evolutionary biology, physiology, neuroscience and cell biology to find out which body movements affect the mind and why.
    Whatever it is that you want from your mind – more creativity, improved resilience or higher self-esteem – the evidence shows that there is a way of moving the body that can help. Here is my pick of the best ways to use your body to achieve a healthier, better-functioning mind.
    Get on your … More