Philippa Kaur

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    in Humans

    Bone fragment reveals humans wore leather clothes 39,000 years ago

    This piece of bone from 39,600 years ago has multiple puncture marks on it that seem to have been made by puncturing leatherF. d'Errico and L. Doyon
    An analysis of a 39,600-year-old bone containing strange indentations claims it was used as a punch board for making holes in leather, revealing how Homo sapiens in Europe made clothes to help them survive cold climates at that time.
    “We do not have much information about clothes because they’re perishable,” says Luc Doyon at the University of Bordeaux, France, who led the study. “They are an early technology we’re in the dark about.”
    The bone, from the hip of a large mammal such as a horse or bison, was discovered at a site called Terrasses de la Riera dels Canyars near Barcelona, Spain. It has 28 puncture marks on its flat surface, including a linear sequence of 10 holes about 5 millimetres apart from each other, as well as other holes in more random positions.Advertisement

    This pattern was “highly intriguing”, says Doyon, because it didn’t appear to be a decoration or to represent a counting tally – the usual explanations for deliberate patterns of lines or dots on prehistoric objects. Microscopic analysis revealed that the line of 10 indents was made by one tool and the other dots were made at different times by five different tools. “Why do we have different types of arrangements on the same bone?” says Doyon.
    The researchers used an approach called experimental archaeology, in which you try out different ancient tools to see how marks were made. “We’re attempting to replicate the gestures that were used by prehistoric people to produce a specific modification on the bone,” says Doyon.
    They found that the only way to recreate the type of indents on the Canyars bone was to knock a chisel-like stone tool called a burin through a thick hide, a technique called indirect percussion. The same method is still used by modern-day cobblers and in traditional societies to pierce leather.
    The most likely explanation for the indents is that they were made during the manufacture or repair of leather items, say the researchers. After punching a hole in the animal hide, a thread could be pushed through the material with a pointed tool to make a tight seam, says Doyon.
    “It’s a very significant discovery,” says Ian Gilligan at the University of Sydney, Australia. “We have no direct evidence for clothes in the Pleistocene, so finding any indirect evidence is valuable. The oldest surviving fragments of cloth in the world date from around 10,000 years ago.”
    This discovery helps solve a mystery about the emergence of fitted clothing. Homo sapiens reached Europe around 42,000 years ago, yet eyed needles haven’t been found in this region from earlier than around 26,000 years ago and these aren’t strong enough to repeatedly puncture thick leather – raising the question of how these ancient people managed to make garments to fit them.

    “The knowledge about making fitting clothing without bone needles is something we didn’t have access to before,” says Doyon.
    “The location and date are interesting: southern Europe nearly 40,000 years ago,” says Gilligan. “That’s quite soon after the arrival of Homo sapiens, during some rapid cold swings in the climate. It’s when and where we’d expect our ancestors to need good clothes for protection.”
    Doyon and his colleagues argue that this punch board marks a crucial cultural adaptation to climate change that helped modern humans expand to new regions.
    The punch board was one of six artefacts found at the Canyars site, they say, and could have been part of a repair kit.

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    in Space & Astronomy

    The Smithsonian’s ‘Lights Out’ inspires visitors to save the fading night sky

    Bright, artificial lights are drowning out the night sky’s natural glow. Now, an exhibition is highlighting some of the consequences of a fading starry night — and how people can help restore it.

    “Lights Out,” open through 2025 at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., illuminates how light pollution is affecting astronomy, natural ecosystems and human cultures around the world. “We want people to understand that it’s a global problem, and it’s having broad impact,” says Jill Johnson, an exhibit developer at the museum.

    Upon entering the exhibition, the dimly lit space resets the mood for nighttime exploration. The exhibition spans a long hallway that can be entered from either end. One entrance quickly draws in visitors with a personal connection. An interactive display invites you to experience your own night sky, whether in a city, suburb or remote location. Three tactile panels feature raised elements, including dots representing light pollution and crosses indicating visible stars. The more populated a place, the more dots are smattered across the panel.

    Visitors can also listen to the artificial light and starlight in each sky through data that have been translated into sound. The multisensory experience is especially engaging for visitors who may not be able to experience the exhibition visually.

    The other entrance offers a more didactic introduction to the exhibition. A timeline presents a brief history of human-made light, from fire-lit torches to today’s LEDs, and then segues to astronomy (SN: 1/19/23). Space scientists rely on light, both visible and not, to understand celestial bodies. And their views of the universe have become increasingly obstructed by artificial light.

    “Astronomers were some of the first folks to sound the alarm on light pollution,” says Ryan Lavery, a public affairs specialist at the museum.

    Astronomers aren’t the only scientists who have noticed the repercussions. Biologists have observed light pollution’s toll on plants and animals, whether harming corals’ moonlight-triggered reproduction or bats’ ability to pollinate flowers. Here, much of the evidence on display is visual. Photographs and specimens demonstrate the variety of critters that are active at night, while a glass case of preserved birds presents the grim consequences of light pollution. All of these birds died from striking buildings in Washington, D.C., or Baltimore after being disoriented by the bright cityscapes.

    Losing dark, starry nights also affects human cultures. Another area of the exhibition presents people’s ancient and modern-day connections to the night sky through photographs, stories and cultural items. A glistening beadwork depicting the Milky Way was crafted specially for “Lights Out” by Gwich’in artist Margaret Nazon, who grew up staring at the stars in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

    Our connections under a shared sky are emphasized in the exhibition’s small central theater. It replicates a starry night over Coudersport, Pa., through speckled lighting and walls bearing illustrations of trees and hills. A short film describes the star cluster Messier 45, also known as the Pleiades, and explains the stars’ origins according to tales from three cultures — the ancient Greeks, the Ainu in Japan and the Māori in New Zealand.

    “Cultures all over the world have a deep relationship to the night sky,” says Stephen Loring, cocurator of the exhibition and an archaeologist at the museum. “If we lose the night sky, we lose an avenue to our understanding of what it is to be a human being.”

    But the exhibition isn’t all bleak. Sprinkled throughout it are success stories of how people are reducing light pollution, from France’s outdoor lighting curfews to beach communities that have altered their lighting systems to avoid drawing hatchling sea turtles away from the ocean. And visitors may be heartened to learn about simple but meaningful actions that they can take, such as aiming outdoor lights downward and using the dimmest settings.

    Overall, “Lights Out” instills a sense of hope and a desire to reconnect with the night sky. “This is an optimistic exhibition,” Loring says. “We can solve this problem.” More

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    in Humans

    Famous Benin Bronzes from West Africa used metal sourced in Germany

    A detail of the Benin Bronzes displayed at the British Museum Shutterstock / Mltz
    The world-famous Benin Bronze artworks created by African metalsmiths between the 16th and 19th centuries were made of brass rings produced in Germany’s Rhineland region. These rings were used as currency in the transatlantic slave trade.
    The Edo people in what is now modern-day Nigeria created the Benin Bronzes in the shape of heads, plaques, figurines and other objects by combining metal components with carved ivory or wood. Researchers had previously suspected that Edo metalsmiths used metals from manillas – horseshoe-shaped brass rings produced by Europeans specifically for trade in Africa – but had no definitive proof until now.
    Tobias Skowronek at the Georg Agricola University of Applied Sciences in Germany and his colleagues performed a chemical analysis of 67 manillas discovered in five Atlantic shipwreck sites – including those off Cape Cod near Massachusetts and the English Channel – along with several land-based archaeological sources in Sweden, Ghana and Sierra Leona.Advertisement
    The researchers measured the amount of trace elements and the ratio of lead isotopes in the manillas and compared them with those of the Benin Bronzes and the ores used by the German Rhineland’s brass industry. They found a strong similarity between all the metals, indicating that African metalsmiths probably used manillas obtained from European traders as a key source of material for the Benin Bronzes.

    The findings align with historical sources, such as a 1548 contract between a German merchant family and the Portuguese king relating to the production of manillas for trade in West Africa. Other written sources have documented contracts between slave-trading countries of the time, including Portugal and the Netherlands, and the German brass industry located between the cities of Cologne and Aachen.
    This new evidence could reshape the story of Germany’s involvement with the Benin Bronzes, says Cresa Pugh at The New School in New York. Much of the focus has typically been on the later colonial period and the Berlin Conference in 1884-1885, when European powers convened to divide up Africa into so-called spheres of influence for colonisation and exploitation.
    Thousands of Benin Bronzes were looted by a British military expedition in 1897 and distributed or sold to various European museums, with many ending up in German museums.
    “We understand Germany’s role during the colonial period as these artifacts were being looted and circulated following the Berlin Conference, but we really didn’t have a sense of what was happening before the colonial period during the period of slavery,” says Pugh. “And so I think this really does provide a kind of missing link between those periods.”
    Starting in 2022, Germany began returning some of the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria as part of a broader international discussion about cultural restitution and decolonisation.

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    in Space & Astronomy

    A stream of cold gas is unexpectedly feeding the far-off Anthill Galaxy

    A long, cold stream of gas is feeding a very distant galaxy like a vast bendy straw. The finding suggests a new way for galaxies to grow in the early universe, researchers report in the March 31 Science.

    Computer simulations predicted that streams of gas should connect galaxies to the cosmic web (SN: 3/6/23). But astronomers expected that gas to be warm, making it unsuitable for star-forming fuel and galaxy growth.

    So astronomer Bjorn Emonts and his colleagues were surprised to see a stream of cold, star-forming gas leading into the Anthill Galaxy, a massive galaxy whose light takes 12 billion years to reach Earth.

    The team spotted the stream while mapping cold gas in the galaxy’s neighborhood using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, in Chile. Emonts was particularly interested in radio wavelengths of light that carbon atoms emit when the temperature is between about -260° and -160° Celsius.

    “People didn’t think that these streams could get so cold,” says Emonts, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va.

    But there, in the data, a frigid stream stretched at least 325,000 light-years away from the galaxy. The stream carries the mass of 70 billion suns and deposits the equivalent of about 450 suns in cold gas onto the galaxy every year, the team calculated. That’s enough to double the galaxy’s mass within a billion years.

    Emonts thinks that no one had seen such a stream before because his team used ALMA in an unusual configuration, with its telescopes arranged as close together as possible. That gave the observatory lower resolution, but a wider field of view.

    “People don’t normally do that,” Emonts says. “We basically defocused ALMA to the worst possible extent.”

    If other galaxies are fed by similar structures, it could mean that early galaxies grew mostly by drinking directly from the cosmic streams, rather than by the leading hypothesis — violent galaxy mergers (SN: 6/28/19). More

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    in Humans

    AI that spots basketball players’ weaknesses could help underdogs win

    Analytics is widely used in basketball to inform team tacticsG Fiume/Getty Images
    An artificial intelligence can quickly assess basketball game data and extract information about the habits, strengths and weaknesses of players, which could prove valuable for coaches, particularly from smaller teams.
    Alejandro Rodríguez Pascual at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and his colleagues have used data compiled and publicly released by US company Second Spectrum to train an AI model. The data included the 3D location of players and the ball throughout games in the 2015/16 National Basketball Association (NBA) … More

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    in Humans

    Why we fall for wellness, even when the science says it doesn't work

    “We learn that to be good people and to be good citizens, we need to constantly be working on ourselves.”Getty Images
    From at-home stool tests to foot baths claiming to draw impurities from the body, the wellness industry is big business, worth $1.5 trillion and counting. As it has grown, so too have concerns that people are taking unproven therapies to treat serious medical conditions. Just this month, the US Food and Drug Administration recalled Natural Solutions Foundation’s “Nano Silver 10ppm dietary supplement” over its label’s “unsubstantiated health claims to prevent, treat, or cure COVID-19”.
    Colleen Derkatch, whose research at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada focuses on the rhetoric of science, medicine and health, has noticed a rise in unsubstantiated claims and celebrity hype in the unregulated wellness industry, whose products promise to increase energy, reduce stress, slow the ageing process and more. Rather than expose the claims, however, she wanted to find out why people are drawn to wellness therapies in the first place.
    In her latest book, Why Wellness Sells, Derkatch held in-depth interviews with 40 people who use supplements and other wellness therapies in their day-to-day lives. She also analysed the arguments and language used by members of online communities centred around “natural” healing. She found that the allure of the wellness industry has far less to do with individual gullibility and far more to do with societal failings.

    Wendy Glauser: Let’s start with the biggest question of the book – why … More

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    in Space & Astronomy

    The biggest planet orbiting TRAPPIST-1 doesn’t appear to have an atmosphere

    A rocky planet that circles a small star nearly 40 light-years from Earth is hot and has little or no atmosphere, a new study suggests. The finding raises questions about the possibility of atmospheres on the other orbs in the planetary system.

    At the center of the system is the red dwarf star dubbed TRAPPIST-1; it hosts seven known planets with masses ranging from 0.3 to 1.4 times Earth’s, a few of which could hold liquid water (SN: 2/22/17; 3/19/18). The largest, TRAPPIST-1b, is the closest to its parent star and receives about four times the radiation Earth receives from the sun, says Thomas Greene, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

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    Like all other planets in the system, TRAPPIST-1b is tidally locked, meaning that one side of the planet always faces the star, and one side looks away. Calculations suggest that if the stellar energy falling on TRAPPIST-1b were distributed around the planet — by an atmosphere, for example — and then reradiated equally in all directions, the planet’s surface temperature would be around 120° Celsius.

    But the dayside temperature of the planet is actually around 230° C, Greene and colleagues report online March 27 in Nature. That, in turn, suggests that there’s little or no atmosphere to carry heat from the perpetually sunlit side of the planet to the dark side, the team argues.

    To take TRAPPIST-1b’s temperature, Greene and his colleagues used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the planet in a narrow band of infrared wavelengths five times in 2022. Because the observations were made just before and after the planet dodged behind its parent star, astronomers could see the fully lit face of the planet, Greene says.

    The team’s results are “the first ‘deep dive’ look at this planet,” says Knicole Colon, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md, who was not involved with the study. “With every observation, we expect to learn something new,” she adds.

    Astronomers have long suggested that planets around red dwarf stars might not be able to hold onto their atmospheres, largely because such stars’ frequent and high-energy flares would blast away any gaseous shroud they might have during their early years (SN: 12/20/22). Yet there are some scenarios in which such flares could heat up a planet’s surface and drive volcanism that, in turn, yields gases that could help form a new atmosphere.

    “To be totally sure that this planet has no atmosphere, we need many more measurements,” says Michaël Gillon, an astrophysicist at the University of Liège in Belgium who was not part of the new study. It’s possible that when observed at a wider variety of wavelengths and from other angles, the planet could show signs of a gaseous shroud and thus possibly hints of volcanism.

    Either way, says Laura Kriedberg, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, who also did not participate in the study, the new result “definitely motivates detailed study of the cooler planets in the system, to see if the same is true of them.” More

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    in Space & Astronomy

    A neutron star collision may have emitted a fast radio burst

    A neutron star pileup may have emitted two different kinds of cosmic signals: ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves and a brief blip of energy called a fast radio burst.

    One of the three detectors that make up the gravitational wave observatory LIGO picked up a signal from a cosmic collision on April 25, 2019. About 2.5 hours later, a fast radio burst detector picked up a signal from the same region of sky, researchers report March 27 in Nature Astronomy.

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    If strengthened by further observations, the finding could bolster the theory that mysterious fast radio bursts have multiple origins — and neutron star mergers are one of them.

    “We’re 99.5 percent sure” the two signals came from the same event, says astrophysicist Alexandra Moroianu, who spotted the merger and its aftermath while at the University of Western Australia in Perth. “We want to be 99.999 percent sure.”

    Unfortunately, LIGO’s two other detectors didn’t catch the signal, so it’s impossible to precisely triangulate its location. “Even though it’s not a concrete, bang-on observation for something that’s been theorized for a decade, it’s the first evidence we’ve got,” Moroianu says. “If this is true … it’s going to be a big boom in fast radio burst science.”

    Mysterious radio bursts

    Astronomers have spotted more than 600 fast radio bursts, or FRBs, since 2007. Despite their frequency, the causes remain a mystery. One leading candidate is a highly magnetized neutron star called a magnetar, which could be left behind after a massive star explodes (SN: 6/4/20). But some FRBs appear to repeat, while others are apparent one-off events, suggesting that there’s more than one way to produce them (SN: 2/7/20).

    Theorists have wondered if a collision between two neutron stars could spark a singular FRB, before the wreckage from the collision produces a black hole. Such a smashup should emit gravitational waves, too (SN: 10/16/17).

    Moroianu and colleagues searched archived data from LIGO and the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, a fast radio burst detector in British Columbia, to see if any of their signals lined up. The team found one candidate pairing: GW190425 and FRB20190425A.

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    Even though the gravitational wave was picked up only by the LIGO detector in Livingston, La., the team spotted other suggestive signs that the signals were related. The FRB and the gravitational waves came from the same distance, about 370 million light-years from Earth. The gravitational waves were from the only neutron star merger LIGO spotted in that observing run, and the FRB was particularly bright. There may even have been a burst of gamma rays at the same time, according to satellite data — another aftereffect of a neutron star merger.

    “Everything points at this being a very interesting combination of signals,” Moroianu says. She says it’s like watching a crime drama on TV: “You have so much evidence that anyone watching the TV show would be like, ‘Oh, I think he did it.’ But it’s not enough to convince the court.”

    Neutron star secrets

    Despite the uncertainty, the finding has exciting implications, says astrophysicist Alessandra Corsi of Texas Tech University in Lubbock. One is the possibility that two neutron stars could merge into a single, extra-massive neutron star without immediately collapsing into a black hole. “There’s this fuzzy dividing line between what’s a neutron star and what’s a black hole,” says Corsi, who was not involved in the new work.

    In 2013, astrophysicist Bing Zhang of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas suggested that a neutron star smashup could create an extra-massive neutron star that wobbles on the edge of stability for a few hours before collapsing into a black hole. In that case, the resulting FRB would be delayed — just like in the 2019 case.

    The most massive neutron star yet observed is about 2.35 times the mass of the sun, but theorists think they could grow to be around three times the mass of the sun without collapsing (SN: 7/22/22). The neutron star that could have resulted from the collision in 2019 would have been 3.4 solar masses, Moroianu and colleagues calculate.

    “Something like this, especially if it’s confirmed with more observations, it would definitely tell us something about how neutron matter behaves,” Corsi says. “The nice thing about this is we have hopes of testing this in the future.”

    The next LIGO run is expected to start in May. Corsi is optimistic that more coincidences between gravitational waves and FRBs will show up, now that researchers know to look for them. “There should be a bright future ahead of us,” she says. More