Herpes virus genome traces the ancient path of human migration

To confirm the theory that humans spread out from Africa tens of thousands of years ago, all you have to do is follow the cold sores. Or, to be more precise, follow the mutation patterns encoded in the genome of the virus that causes those cold sores.

That's what researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison did: In the journal PLOS ONE, they describe how they sequenced the genomes of 31 samples of herpes simplex virus type-1 to reconstruct how it hitchhiked on humans as they dispersed around the world.

The results match the pattern proposed by the "Out of Africa" theory, which has become the most widely accepted scenario for ancient human migration. The analysis showed that African strains of the virus contained the most genetic diversity — suggesting that they had the oldest roots.

“The viral strains sort exactly as you would predict based on sequencing of human genomes. We found that all of the African isolates cluster together, all the virus from the Far East, Korea, Japan, China clustered together, all the viruses in Europe and America, with one exception, clustered together,” senior author Curtis Brandt, a professor of medical microbiology and opthalmology, said in a UW-Madison news release.

“What we found follows exactly what the anthropologists have told us, and the molecular geneticists who have analyzed the human genome have told us, about where humans originated and how they spread across the planet,” he said.

The findings reflect the view that a small human population passed through a "bottleneck" to get from Africa to the Middle East, then went their separate ways to Europe and Asia, and eventually to the Americas.

Almost all of the samples from the United States were linked to European strains, but one sample from Texas was more closely linked to Asia. Brandt and his colleagues said that particular sample may have come from someone who picked up the virus during a trip to the Far East, or perhaps from someone with Native American heritage whose ancestors passed over a "land bridge" between Asia and North America.

“We found support for the land bridge hypothesis, because the date of divergence from its most recent Asian ancestor was about 15,000 years ago," Brandt said. “The dates match, so we postulate that this was an Amerindian virus.”

The researchers said HSV-1 strains are ideal for tracking long-term migration patterns because they're easy to collect, usually not lethal, and capable of forming lifelong latent infections. Because the virus is spread by close contact, through kissing or exposure to saliva, it tends to run in families. And because the viral genome is so much simpler than the human genome, it's cheaper to sequence.

"While preliminary, our data raise the possibility that HSV-1 sequences could serve as a surrogate marker to analyze human migration and population structures," the researchers say.

Why We Don’t Care About Saving Our Grandchildren From Climate Change

A new study shows that human beings are too selfish to endure present pain to avert future climate change. That's why we need win-win solutions now

You want to know what the biggest obstacle to dealing with climate change is? Simple: time. It will take decades before the carbon dioxide we emit now begins to have its full effect on the planet’s climate. And by the same token, it will take decades before we are able to enjoy the positive climate effects of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions now. (Even if we could stop emitting all CO₂ today, there’s already future warming that’s been baked into the system, thanks to past emission.) But we will feel the economic effects of either emitting or restricting CO₂ right now, in real time. While we can argue about the relative cost of reducing CO₂ emissions now — just as we can argue about the economic effects of climate change in the future — it should be clear that any attempt to restrict CO₂ emissions enough to make a dent in future climate change will cause some present-day economic pain. The global economy is still so dependent on relatively inexpensive fossil fuels that a quick transition to renewable sources would likely be costly in the short term. (See Naomi Klein’s 2011 piece in The Nation for a fairly clear-eyed view of what truly radical climate policy would mean.)

What that means, in effect, is that climate policy asks the present to sacrifice for the future. Human beings tend not to be very good at that kind of planning, even when their own future selves stand to benefit — a study this year found that just 10% of Americans have saved enough in a 401(k) or individual retirement account to put themselves on a track to retire. When it comes to climate change, the worst effects will be felt years after many people today are long gone. From a self-centered perspective, that makes strict climate policy like saving for a retirement you know you’ll never live to see.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that a new study in Nature Climate Change confirms the fact that the kind of long-term cooperation demanded by effective climate policy is going to be even more challenging than we thought.

American and German researchers led by Jennifer Jacquet of New York University put together a collective-risk group experiment that is centered around climate change. Here’s how it worked. Each subject in groups with six participants was given a $55 operating fund. The experiment went 10 rounds, and during each round, they were allowed to choose one of three options: invest $0, $2.75 or $5.50 into a climate account. The participants were told that the total amount contributed would go to fund an advertisement on climate change in a German newspaper. If at the end of the 10 rounds, the group reached a target of $165 — or about $27 per person — they were considered to have successfully averted climate change, and each participant was given an additional $60 dollars. (If the numbers seem rough, it’s because I’m converting from euros — the currency used in the experiment — and rounding off.) If the group failed to reach the $165 target, there was a 90% probability that they wouldn’t get the additional payout. As a group, members would be better off if they collectively invested enough to reach that $165 target — otherwise they wouldn’t get the payout — but individually, members could benefit by keeping their money to themselves while hoping the rest of the group would pay enough to reach the target. (That’s the so-called free-rider phenomenon, and it’s a major challenge for climate policy.)

Here’s the twist, though: that $60 dollar endowment was paid out on three different time horizons. In one treatment, the cash was given to the groups the next day. In the second treatment, it was given seven weeks later. And in the third treatment, the cash was instead invested in planting oak trees that would sequester carbon — but since those trees wouldn’t be fully grown for years, all the benefit would accrue to future generations, not the current players in the experiment. The difference between that third treatment and the first and second is what’s known as “intergenerational discounting,” which happens when the benefits of an action in the present are highly diluted and mostly spread among many people in the future. Which, as it happens, is pretty much how climate policy would work.

Unsurprisingly, the more delayed the payout was, the less likely the experimental groups would put enough money away to meet the goal to stop climate change. Even among those who knew they’d get the payout the next day, only seven of 10 groups invested sufficient funds, while none of the 11 groups who knew their endowment would be invested in planting trees gave enough money to “stop” climate change. While this is just one experiment, the results do not bode well for humanity’s ability to come together to stop climate change. As the authors write:

Applying our results to international climate-change negotiations paints a sobering picture. Owing to intergenerational discounting, cooperation will be greatly undermined if, as in our setting, short-term gains can arise only from defection. This suggests the necessity of introducing powerful short-term incentives to cooperate, such as punishment, reward or reputation, in experimental research as well as in international endeavors to mitigate climate change.

Fortunately, short-term incentives for fighting climate change do exist. It takes decades to benefit from reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions, but phasing out fossil fuels like coal and oil can bring immediate improvements in air pollution. And air pollution has turned out to be even more dangerous than experts thought, with the World Health Organization last week declaring that bad air is a leading environmental cause of cancer, comparable to secondhand smoke.

The Nature Climate Change study also underscores why “win-win” climate policies — like innovation investments that can lead directly to cheap clean energy, rather than policies that make dirty energy more expensive — are likely to be the most effective ones. Barring a species-wide personality change, few of us will be willing to endure present pain so that our grandchildren won’t have to endure an unlivable climate. We’re likely better off tailoring solutions that work with our selfishness and brief attention span, rather than hoping we suddenly become better, more farsighted people.

NASA: Asteroid coming close in 2032 no concern

WASHINGTON (AP) -- NASA says a big asteroid that whizzed by Earth last month unnoticed is probably nothing to worry about when it returns much closer in 19 years.

NASA Near-Earth Object program manager Donald Yeomans said there is a 1 in 48,000 chance that the 1,300-foot asteroid will hit Earth when it comes back on Aug. 26, 2032.

The asteroid called 2013 TV135 was discovered Oct. 8, nearly a month after it came within 4.2 million miles of Earth. Yeomans said as astronomers observe and track it better, they will likely calculate that it has no chance of hitting Earth.

Although big, the asteroid is considerably smaller than the type that caused the dinosaur extinction.

NASA posted a "reality check" about the asteroid in response to some media reports.

Second Sea Serpent Washes up in California

(OCEANSIDE HARBOR, Calif.) -- If good things come in pairs, the discovery of another giant, nearly mystical sea creature should portend positive things for a bunch of bewildered beachgoers who early Friday evening happened across the second so-called "discovery of a lifetime" in less than a week.

The 13-and-a half-foot-long oarfish, which washed up on a beach in Oceanside Harbor, Calif., is the second of the rarely seen creatures to be found in a matter of days.

"It's so rare to find in Southern California, especially in surface water," Suzanne Kohin, of the National Marine Fisheries Service said. "They thought it was a very rare event the first time, so these two events that we heard of in the last few weeks are the only ones I've ever heard of."

The first discovery was made by a snorkeling marine scientist who wrestled the dead 18-foot monster (with help) to shore near Catalina last Sunday.

"I was thinking I have no idea what that is and like it looks like a snake but it kind of looks like a giant eel," said onlooker Alexandria Boyle, who was one of a class of third-graders on a beach trip when the newest oarfish was found.

Boyle was among a crowd of about 75 who crowded around the creature as police were called, and waited around for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to come and collect the carcass.

Oarfish can grow up to 50 feet in length and live in depths of up to 3,000 feet. Little is known about their habits and life cycles, but the NOAA writes on their website they "probably only come to the surface when injured or dying."

When the first oarfish was found last week, the Catalina Island Marine Institute hailed it in a news release as a "discovery of a lifetime."

Mark Waddington, a school training guide with the Insitute told ABC News he spotted another instructor, Jasmine Santana, trying to bring the fish to shore, and immediately jumped in to help, along with 15 to 20 others.

"I had heard of it in studies, but never thought I would see one in person," said Waddington, who was "beside himself" when he saw the size of the fish.

Divers inspecting a navy buoy in the Bahamas were the first known to videotape a five-foot long oarfish in 2001, claims the NOAA.

The terrifying-looking and toothless oarfish is also known as a ribbon fish, possessing bony, silvery bodies and bright red-crested heads. They are thought to have spawned ancient folk tales about sea serpents.

Orionid Meteor Shower Peak 2013: Forecast Good, Moon Bad

The 2013 Orionid meteor shower peaks on Monday. The weather's supposed to be good, but a pesky bright moon may get in the way.

There's good news and bad news for Salem and the dates for the Orionid meteor shower 2013 peak.

The good news: The forecast for Sunday and Monday, when the Orionid meteor shower peaks, is great. Clear skies and no rain.

The bad news: The moon will be bright, which will obscure many of the Orionids meteors in what is typically one of the busier showers of the year.

Already, the meteor shower is underway, just not with the same numbers as the peak, and it'll continue until about Nov. 7.

From NASA on the Orionids:

The Orionids, which peak during mid-October each year, are considered to be one of the most beautiful showers of the year. Orionid meteors are known for their brightness and for their speed. These meteors are fast -- they travel at about 148,000 mph (66 km/s) into the Earth's atmosphere. Fast meteors can leave glowing "trains" (incandescent bits of debris in the wake of the meteor) that last for several seconds to minutes. Fast meteors can also sometimes become fireballs: Look for prolonged explosions of light when viewing the Orionid meteor shower.

Remnants from this shower, as well as the Eta Aquarids in May, come from Halley's Comet. 

Fast Facts on the Orionids from Earthsky.org:

Comet of Origin: 1P/Halley

Radiant: Just to the north of constellation Orion's bright star Betelgeuse

Active: 2 Oct. - 7 Nov. 2013

Peak Activity: 20-21 Oct. 2013

Peak Activity Meteor Count: Approximately 20 meteors per hour in moonless skies.

Meteor Velocity: 66 km (41 miles) per second

Gravitational Waves Reveal How Supermassive Black Holes Gain Weight

Supermassive black holes are located in the centers of large galaxies. For years, though, astronomers have wondered exactly how these black holes grow to be so big. Now, scientists may have discovered the answer behind their astounding size by using CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia.

"This is the first time we've been able to use information about gravitational waves to study another aspect of the Universe--the growth of massive black holes," said Ramesh Bhat, co-author of the new study, in a news release. "Black holes are almost impossible to observe directly, but armed with this powerful new tool we're in from some exciting times in astronomy. One model for how black holes grow has already been discounted, and now we're going to start looking at others."

Gravitational waves, which are ripples in space-time that are generated by massive bodies changing speed or direction, can be cause by pairs of black holes orbiting each other. When galaxies merge, their central black holes are doomed to meet; first they swirl around one another before merging, emitting gravitational waves at a frequency that astronomers should be able to detect. This particular phenomenon plays out again and again across the universe.

In this case, though, astronomers have been searching for gravitational waves by examining a set of 20 small, spinning stars called pulsars. Pulsars act as extremely precise clocks in space. The arrival time of their pulses on Earth are measured with exquisite precision, to within a tenth of a microsecond. When gravitational waves roll through an area of space-time, they temporarily swell or shrink the distances within that region, altering the arrival time of the pulses on Earth.

So what did the scientists find? They've been able to discover how low the background rate of gravitational waves is. In fact, they were able to test four models of black hole growth. In the end, they ruled out that black holes gained mass only through mergers; however, the other three models are still a possibility.

The findings reveal a little bit more about black hole growth. More specifically, they provide another step toward understanding exactly how these supermassive black holes grow so large.

Tilted Solar System Detected Using NASA’s Kepler Spacecraft

Astronomers have recently discovered a tilted solar system, comprising of two planets that are orbiting their host star at an unusual angle to its equator. The observations were retrieved from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, surprising an international team of scientists.

During a recent press statement, posted on the Iowa State University website, one of the institution’s professors of physics and astronomy, and a co-author of the research study, Steve Kawaler, discussed the importance of their efforts:

“This is a new level of detail about the architecture of a planetary system outside our solar system. These studies allow us to draw a detailed picture of a distant system that provides a new and critical test of our understanding of how these very alien solar systems are structured.”

Solar System Formation & Tilted Planets

In many parts of the Milky Way, as well as other distant regions of space, enormous clouds of swirling dust and gas are present. These clouds are classified as nebulae and are the location at which stars are born. Our Solar System was formed from gases and dust that were swirling around the equator of the Sun, with electrostatic forces thought to be responsible for dust particles coalescing to form larger clusters; during this accretion process, clusters then go on to develop into rock formations, which ultimately combine to form massive planetary bodies.

Since they circled the Sun as a single, flat disc, these gases began life in the same plane. With Earth making an orbit of a mere 7.2 degrees relative to the plane of the Sun’s equator, astronomers were astonished to find that some of the planets of distant solar systems orbited at far steeper angles.

A study that was published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, in 2008, led by Guillaume Hébrard, described this unusual phenomenon in extrasolar planet XO-3b. XO-3b is an extrasolar planet that transits its F5V parent star, with an orbital period of just over three days. Similar observations have also been made, by fellow astronomers, when investigating exoplanets HD147506b, HD 17156b and GJ 436b, to name a few examples.

Nonetheless, a group of researchers have, for the first time, discovered a multi-planet system that is tilted out of alignment, but also lacks an interloping “hot Jupiter.” The study was led by Daniel Huber of the NASA’s Ames Research Center, situated at Moffett Federal Airfield in California, with the findings published in the Oct. 18 issue of the journal Science.

Kepler-56 & Transiting Exoplanets

Huber and his colleagues specifically looked at the Kepler-56 star, situated some 3,000 light years from Earth, with a size four times that of the Sun and a mass that is 30 percent greater. This solar system features two confirmed planets – one that is slightly smaller than Jupiter in size and another that is slightly smaller than Saturn. Both of these exoplanets orbit Kepler-56 in the same plane, at a distance from the host star that is smaller than the distance of Mercury from our Sun.

The now defunct Kepler spacecraft collected information as the exoplanets transited across Kepler-56, which impeded emission of some of the star’s light towards Earth.

Kepler was launched by the space agency in 2009 to identify other Earth-like planets, in what astronomers refer to as the habitable zone (a.k.a. the Goldilocks zone). This habitable zone represents the region around a host star where planetary bodies can support liquid water.

Kepler encompasses a photometer, tasked with continuously measuring the brightness of in excess of 140,000 main sequence stars. The information is periodically fed back to ground control teams on Earth, where astronomers attempt to detect transient dimming of individual host stars, resulting from exoplanets moving in front of them.

By observing the change in brightness of Kepler-56 over time, the group were able to determine the precise orbits of the exoplanets.

According to Nature News, Kepler-56 is estimated to emit around nine times more light than the Sun. In attempting to establish the star’s orientation, the Kepler satellite was used to investigate fluctuations in its brightness, which had resulted from its vibrations; the star’s appearance altered, depending upon whether it was witnessed “… equator-on, pole-on or somewhere in between.”

Keck I Discovers a Third, Massive Planet

Ultimately, the work revealed, quite startlingly, that the slant of the rotation axis of Kepler-56 was 45 degrees to the orbit of the exoplanets. In fathoming this extraordinary observation, the astronomers elected to perform follow up studies around Kepler-56. To do this, they used the Keck I telescope, located in Hawaii.

This led to the breakthrough that explained why the solar system was tilted. They found an additional, massive outer planet, whose gravitational pull hauls the orbit of the other two planets away from Kepler-56′s equator.

In spite of this, the two planets are in stable orbit, and remain aligned with each other, due to the difference in the time it takes each planet to make its orbit; as one of the planets orbits the host star at double the time of its sibling, they intermittently nudge one another back in line, as explained by Kawaler:

“It issues a continuous tug on the orbit of the smaller ones, pulling them into their inclined orbits.”

NASA’s Kepler space telescope has managed to, for the very first time, prove that tilted solar systems can exist, even in the absence of hot Jupiters.

Fossil may rewrite human evolutionary history

After eight years spent studying a 1.8-million-year-old skull uncovered in the republic of Georgia, scientists have made a discovery that may rewrite the evolutionary history of our human genus Homo.

It would be a simpler story with fewer ancestral species. Early, diverse fossils — those currently recognised as coming from distinct species like Homo habilis, Homo erectus and others — may represent variation among members of a single, evolving lineage. In other words: Just as people look different from one another today, so did early hominids look different from one another, and the dissimilarity of the bones they left behind may have fooled scientists into thinking that they came from different species.

This was the conclusion reached by an international team of scientists led by David Lordkipanidze, a paleoanthropologist at the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi, as reported on Thursday in the journal Science.

The key to this revelation was a cranium excavated in 2005 and known as Skull 5, which scientists described as “the world’s first completely preserved adult hominid skull” of such antiquity. Unlike other Homo fossils, it had a number of primitive features: a long apelike face, large teeth and a tiny braincase, about one-third the size of that of a modern human being. This confirmed that, contrary to some conjecture, early hominids did not need big brains to make their way out of Africa.

The discovery of Skull 5 alongside the remains of four other hominids at Dmanisi, a site in Georgia rich in material of the earliest hominid travels into Eurasia, gave the scientists an opportunity to compare and contrast the physical traits of ancestors that apparently lived at the same location and around the same time.

Mr. Lordkipanidze and his colleagues said the differences between these fossils were no more pronounced than those between any given five modern humans or five chimpanzees. The hominids who left the fossils, they noted, were quite different from one another but still members of one species.

“Had the braincase and the face of Skull 5 been found as separate fossils at different sites in Africa, they might have been attributed to different species,” a co-author of the journal report, Christoph Zollikofer of the University of Zurich, said in a statement. Such was often the practice of researchers, using variations in traits to define new species.

“Since we see a similar pattern and range of variation in the African fossil record,” Mr. Zollikofer said, “it is sensible to assume that there was a single Homo species at that time in Africa.” Moreover, he added, “Since the Dmanisi hominids are so similar to the African ones, we further assume that they both represent the same species.”

In their report, the Dmanisi researchers said the Skull 5 individual provided “the first evidence that early Homo comprised adult individuals with small brains but body mass, stature and limb proportions reaching the lower range limit of modern variation.”

Skeletal bones associated with the five Dmanisi skulls show that these hominids were short in stature, but their limbs enabled them to walk long distances as fully upright bipeds. The shape of the braincase distinguished them from the more primitive Australopithecus genus, which preceded Homo and lived for many centuries with Homo in Africa.

Lunar eclipse! Comet! Meteors! See this weekend's sky highlights online

Little things do add up: As separate events, a penumbral lunar eclipse, a comet-viewing opportunity and the Orionid meteor shower aren't exactly extravaganzas — but when you put those three phenomena together, the combination verges on must-see astronomy.

The moon goes (slightly) dim

Putting them together is exactly what the Slooh virtual observatory is doing this weekend, starting at 5:45 p.m. ET Friday with pictures of the moon.

Slooh will be broadcasting imagery from its remote-controlled Half Meter Telescope in the Canary Islands. The show really gets going at 7:30 p.m. ET, when Slooh's Paul Cox and astronomer Bob Berman begin their live commentary.

It helps to have the commentary, because Friday's eclipse is really subtle. During a penumbral eclipse, the moon passes only through Earth's faint outer shadow, called the penumbra. This Flash interactive graphic shows you how it works.

"Although a penumbral lunar eclipse might go unnoticed by someone casually glancing at the moon, we will be able to observe the gradual shading of the moon in the live images Slooh will broadcast throughout the eclipse," Cox said in a news release. "The shading becomes far more apparent when viewed as a time-lapse [video], and we'll show viewers that during the live segment of the show."

The eclipse peaks at 7:50 p.m. ET, and brightens up into your typical full moon — known as the "Hunter's Moon" this month — about 45 minutes after that. Slooh plans to end its live-streaming moon views at 9:55 p.m. ET.

Comet ISON and Mars

Just a few hours later, starting at 1:30 a.m. ET Saturday, Slooh will broadcast images of Comet ISON, a visitor from the solar system's hinterlands that skywatchers hope will turn into the "comet of the century." It's still hard to predict just how bright ISON will get, but this week, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute said it's looking as if the comet is holding together for a crucial swing around the sun next month.

If ISON survives that encounter, it should put on a good show in early December. Saturday's viewing opportunity isn't nearly as spectacular. The comet is still to faint to see with the naked eye; however, it's well within the capability of Slooh's telescopes on the Canary Islands — or backyard telescopes, for that matter. ISON is shining in the night sky just 1 degree to the left of Mars, about a thumb's width away, as Colorado Mountain College's Jimmy Westlake explains.

Slooh's Half Meter Telescope will be trained on ISON, while its T2 Wide Field Telescope will show Mars and ISON in the same field of view. Cox will provide expert commentary and take questions via Twitter (just use the hashtag #ISON). He'll be joined by Christina Feliciano, a Slooh member who's heading up an ISON observing team.

Observing the Orionids

This weekend is also prime time for the Orionid meteor shower, which flares up every October when Earth passes through the stream of cosmic grit left behind by Halley's Comet. This isn't the best year for the Orionids, due to the glare of that just-past-full moon, but there's still a chance of seeing shooting stars. The best views are expected between midnight and dawn on Sunday and Monday.

The best way to experience any meteor shower is to get outside and see it for yourself. You'll want to get away from city lights, find a place where there's a wide-angle perspective on the sky, get comfortable and give your eyes time to adjust to the darkness. Check out these additional suggestions for making the most of the meteors.

If you're clouded out, or not inclined to shiver in the October chill, you can huddle around a computer screen and watch Slooh's coverage of the Orionids. The video starts up around 5 p.m. ET Sunday, and Slooh President Patrick Paolucci says there'll be live commentary at 8 p.m. ET. The audience can send in Twitter questions for Cox and Berman using the hashtag #Orionid.

"Slooh has mixed feelings about 'hyping' relatively minor showers," Paolucci told NBC News in an email. He said the only meteor showers that produce a reliably good show for casual observers are the Perseids in August, the Geminids in December, and occasionally the Leonids in November.

"Nonetheless, of the dozens of minor showers, the Orionids rank among the best," Paolucci said. "Moreover, having the distinguished pedigree of being progeny of the most famous comet in history entitles them to be showcased. Slooh hopes to capture enough to make this 15-minute real-time program worthwhile."

Young Bonobos Under Parental Care Manage Emotions Like Humans, Comfort Others In Distress: Study

Young bonobos and children share remarkable similarities in emotional development suggesting that apes can control their emotions like humans do, according to researchers studying young bonobos in an African sanctuary.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, suggests the socio-emotional framework that plays a crucial role in the development of children also works equally well for apes. Researchers believe that they can use this framework to predict ape behavior.

“This makes the species an ideal candidate for psychological comparisons,” Frans de Waal, of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, said in a statement. “Any fundamental similarity between humans and bonobos probably traces back to their last common ancestor, which lived around six million years ago.”

Waal, along with Zanna Clay of Emory University, conducted the study at a bonobo sanctuary near Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The researchers examined videos of the apes’ daily social life at the sanctuary to measure how bonobos control their own emotions as well as how they react to the emotions of others.

The analysis revealed that the young bonobos that recovered quickly and easily from their emotional disturbances showed more empathy for their fellow apes in distress with comforting actions such as kissing, embracing and touching.

According to researchers, socially competent children within the care of their parents keep the ups and downs of their emotions within bounds while orphans typically have trouble managing their emotions. The same behavioral trait, researchers said, is seen among orphan bonobos as well.

“Compared to peers reared by their own mothers, the orphans have difficulty managing emotional arousal,” Clay said in the statement. “They would be very upset, screaming for minutes after a fight compared to mother-reared juveniles, who would snap out of it in seconds.”

The bonobo sanctuary in this study is home to many apes that were victims of the bushmeat hunting trade. At the facility, human substitute mothers care for juvenile bonobos that were forcefully removed from their mothers at an early age. This care continues for years until the bonobos are transferred to a forested enclosure with bonobos of all ages.

"Animal emotions have long been scientifically taboo,” Waal said. “Empathy allows great apes and humans to absorb the distress of others without getting overly distressed themselves.”

The bonobo, which is widely considered the most empathetic among all apes, is also one of our closest primate relatives and are as genetically similar to humans as the chimpanzee.

Prosthetic hand paired with brain stimulation gives monkey an artificial sense of touch

SUMMARY:

Researchers were able to replicate sensations of pressure and grabbing an object by delivering electrical signals to different parts of the brain.

Each year prosthetic limbs become more incredible, whether they allow a wearer to run at Olympic speeds or are controlled by thought alone. But most still lack a sense of touch, which would give the wearer greater control and connection to their prosthetic limb.

University of Chicago researchers have published a paper detailing how stimulating a prosthetic limb wearer’s brain with electrical signals could replicate feelings of touch. They worked with monkeys, which they outfitted with electrodes connected to different areas of the brain associated with touch. The researchers studied their brain’s response to different types of touch to pinpoint the type and amount of electrical signal that would best replicate the sensation.

The monkeys went through several touch exercises with their normal hand and an unstimulated brain. The same exercises were conducted with a prosthetic hand, which was equipped with pressure sensors to register instances of touch. Pressure registered by the hand was converted into electrical signals, which the electrodes delivered to the monkeys’ brains.

The researchers found that the monkeys responded the same in both situations. This includes when the monkeys first touched or released an object, sensing pressure and identifying where on their finger they touched an object — all important facets of touch.

The researchers hold that touch is an essential addition to prosthetic limbs. While some limbs can take in signals from the brain to control movement, they aren’t really complete until they can also send signals back to the brain.

“The algorithms to decipher motor signals have come quite a long way, where you can now control arms with seven degrees of freedom. It’s very sophisticated. But I think there’s a strong argument to be made that they will not be clinically viable until the sensory feedback is incorporated,” assistant professor Sliman Bensmaia said in a release. “When it is, the functionality of these limbs will increase substantially.”

The researchers have yet to test the system in humans. The system would also need to become more sophisticated before a person could incorporate it into their daily life, when it would have to judge and replicate sensations of touch for a much wider range of activities.

Discovery Enlarges Amazon Fish Family

Scientists have come across a new species of fish in the Amazon River, and the discovery marks the first of its kind in more than 100 years.

The beautiful swimmer is in the arapaima family, and is an unusually large freshwater fish. For the past century, researchers have known of the existence of a single species in the family.

The new find has conservationists voicing concerns about overfishing and fish farms.

"Everybody for 160 years had been saying there's only one kind of arapaima," Donald Stewart, of the State University of New York at Syracuse, told NBC News. "But we know now there are various species, including some not previously recognized. Each of these unstudied giant fishes needs conservation assessment."

Important to commercial anglers in the region, arapaima gigas was believed to be the only species in existence today.

In the 1800s, however, four species of arapaima were documented and studied, Stewart said.

He sifted through research and looked at preserved specimens at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, and told NBCNews that each of the four types was distinct. The fifth member of the family has the scientific name A. leptosome, and the news was published in the October issue of Copeia.

Identifying and understanding all of the arapaima's different features will aid in the health of the fish, the conservation of river ecology, and the balance of nature.

"There is a growing aquaculture industry for arapaima, so they are being moved about and stocked in ponds for rearing," Stewart said. "Eventually, pond-reared fishes escape and, once freed, the ecological effects are irreversible. A species that is endangered in its native habitat may become an invasive species in another habitat. 

"The bottom line is that we shouldn't be moving these large, predatory fishes around until the species and their natural distributions are better known. Given the uncertainties, precaution is needed."

2 win physics Nobel for Higgs theory

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Nearly 50 years after they came up with the theory, but little more than a year since the world's biggest atom smasher delivered the proof, Britain's Peter Higgs and Belgian colleague Francois Englert won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping to explain how matter formed after the Big Bang.

Working independently in the 1960s, they came up with a theory for how the fundamental building blocks of the universe clumped together, gained mass and formed everything we see around us today. The theory hinged on the existence of a subatomic particle that came to be called the Higgs boson — or the "God particle."

In one of the biggest breakthroughs in physics in decades, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced last year that they had finally found a Higgs boson using the $10 billion particle collider built in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel under the Swiss-French border.

In a statement issued by the University of Edinburgh, where he retired as a professor, the famously shy, 84-year-old Higgs said he hoped the prize would help people recognize "the value of blue-sky research."

Englert, 80, said the award pointed to the importance of scientific freedom and the need for scientists to be allowed to do fundamental research that doesn't have immediate practical applications.

"You don't work thinking to get the Nobel Prize," said Englert, a retired professor at the Free University of Brussels. Still, "we had the impression that we were doing something that was important, that would later on be used by other researchers."

The Nobel selection committees are notoriously cautious, often allowing decades to elapse before honoring a scientific breakthrough, and their choices are hard to predict. But this time, the prize went to people who were widely expected to get it.

"In CERN here, most all of the physicists I know, about 95 percent, expected those two would win it. The question was if there would be a third and who it would be," said Joe Incandela, a professor of physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara and leader of the CMS experiment, one of the two groups that discovered the Higgs particle.

Before the announcement, there had been questions over whether a group of American scientists who published a paper shortly after Higgs would also be honored, or whether any of the thousands of scientists at CERN would share in the prize, too.

But that would have been a tricky decision for the judges, since each Nobel Prize can go to only three winners.

Ulf Danielsson, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the physics prize, noted that the prize citation also honored the work done at CERN.

"This is a giant discovery. It means the final building block in the so-called Standard Model for particle physics has been put in place, so it marks a milestone in the history of physics," Danielsson said.

The two winners will share a prize worth 8 million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million). The Nobel Prizes, established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, have been given out since 1901.

CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said he was thrilled for Higgs and Englert, while many of the thousands of scientists who worked there broke into applause when the announcement was made after an unusual — and unexplained — one-hour delay. (It could be a while before the world finds out the reason for the delay, because the academy's deliberations are kept secret for 50 years.)

Englert and Higgs were trying to provide an answer to a riddle: How did matter form soon after the Big Bang?

They proposed the existence of an invisible field that sprawls through space like a net. The building blocks of matter, they suggested, acquired mass when this field trapped them. Much later, as the universe cooled, they formed atoms that eventually became stars and planets.

To detect the field, the scientists suggested looking for the Higgs boson, because all fields are associated with a particle. Decades would pass before scientists were able to confirm the existence of this particle.

Only about one collision per trillion will produce a Higgs boson in the giant atom collider, and it took CERN several months after the discovery of a new "Higgs-like" boson to conclude that the particle was, in fact, very much like the one expected in the original formulation.

The phrase "God particle" was coined by Nobel-winning physicist Leon Lederman, but it's disliked by most physicists because it connotes the supernatural. Lederman said later that the phrase — mostly used by laymen — was really meant to convey that he felt it was the "goddamn particle," because it proved so hard to find.

Michael Turner, president of the American Physical Society, an organization of physicists, said the Higgs particle captured the public's imagination.

"If you're a physicist, you can't get in a taxi anywhere in the world without having the driver ask you about the Higgs particle," said Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago.

Turner said the Higgs is the first in a class of particles that scientists think played a role in shaping the universe. That means it points the way to tackling mysteries such as the nature of dark energy and dark matter, he said.

The physics prize was the second of this year's Nobels to be announced. On Monday, the Nobel in medicine was given to U.S. scientists James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas Sudhof for discoveries about how key substances are moved around within cells. 

Stunning: Blood found in belly of 46-million-year-old mosquito

Next time you’re annoyed by a buzzing mosquito or scratching a mosquito bite, you perhaps can take a bit of comfort in the fact that these pests have been annoying our human ancestors long before our furry forbears ventured out of the treetops onto the savannah and tried a walking-upright lifestyle. Researchers now have the proof in a unique, recently discovered 46-million-year-old fossilized female mosquito with a visibly distended abdomen containing the components of red blood cells.

The researchers, led by Dale Greenwalt from the National Museum of Natural history, discovered the mosquito–only about two-tenths of an inch in size–trapped in oil shale from an ancient lakebed in northwestern Montana. They say the odds of finding one preserved in this way are astronomical.

“The insect had to take a blood meal, be blown to the water’s surface, and sink to the bottom of a pond or similar structure to be quickly embedded in fine anaerobic sediment, all without disruption of its fragile distended blood-filled abdomen,” the researchers said in their study published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences.

Greenwalt’s team used mass spectrometry to detect the presence of iron and porphyrin molecules, which are two components of heme, the protein that carries oxygen in red blood cells. This confirmed that the iron came from the mosquito’s last meal and was not an artifact of the fossilization process. Mass spectrometry can only be used on flat surfaces and so cannot be used to analyze insects trapped in amber, the material in which most fossilized bugs are found, researchers say.

The blood-engorged female specimen–only females drink blood–was one of 36 mosquitoes recovered from the Kishenehn Formation, fossil grounds located near the Flathead River along the western boundary of Montana’s Glacier National Park.

Although Greenwalt has been collecting pieces of shale from the area for years, the mosquito specimen described in the study did not come from one of his expeditions; instead it came from a collection of insects that had been gathering dust in the basement of former graduate student Kurt Constenius since the 1980s. When Constenius donated his collection to the Smithsonian, Greenwalt saw the mosquito and immediately knew it was different, as Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Because research has shown that DNA cannot survive for longer than about 6.8 million years, no genetic material could be extracted from the team’s ancient mosquito specimen. Greenwalt told AFP that it’s possible the blood came from a bird, as the insect resembles a modern-day mosquito from the genus Culicidae, which tends to feed on avifauna. “But that would be mere speculation,” Greenwalt said.

Watch the amazing video of SpaceX’s Grasshopper flying high and landing smoothly

SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket broke a new height record in a recent test flight last week and then returned to its launch pad ground in near-perfect landing form. It’s the second part that excites its engineers the most, since the rocket’s unique selling point is its reusability.

The test flight took place on Monday, October 7, in McGregor, Texas, and was captured in a video that the company posted to its YouTube channel. The video shows the rocket lifting 744 meters straight into the air and then falling back along the exact same trajectory it had come and touching down onto the launch pad.

An aerial drone “hexacopter” took the video of the flight test, which ran for about a minute and a half form launch to return, while hovering in the air nearby.

SpaceX has test-launched the Grasshopper previously in September, November, and December of 2012, followed by more test flights in March, April, and June of this year. Its flight trajectory steadily rose each time around, from 2.5 meters in the September flight to 80 meters in December, and finally, this month’s record high.

The long-term goal is a rocket that can fly into space and back, and do so multiple times. Conventional rockets, such as those that lifted NASA’s space shuttles into orbit, are only good for one-time use as the atmosphere reentry burns them up beyond the point of salvaging. They fall into the ocean and are never seen again.

Grasshopper has a long way to go, but its continuous improvements suggest that it is making headway. It would be a vastly more cost-effective space-shuttle substitute if it reaches its space-bound goal. The landing vehicle component, which extends 10 stories, is ample enough to carry a small payload.

In its current test flights, the landing vehicle stands atop a first-stage booster of the Falcon 9 rocket, the same rocket that SpaceX has used to launch another of its vehicles, the Dragon, to the International Space Station on multiple supply missions. In addition to this rocket tank, the vehicle is decked out with a Merlin 1D engine, four landing legs made of steel and aluminum with hydraulic dampers at their ends, and a steel support structure. Once it is ready for space flights, SpaceX will continue to pair it up with Falcon 9 rocket launchers and designate it as the Falcon 9’s reusable launch vehicle.

The company has a contract with NASA to fly 12 supply missions to the International Space Station from 2012 on. It fulfilled two of those missions already and has the next one coming up in early 2014.

NSA searches email, instant message contact lists to find links to terrorism, criminal activity: report

Secret documents provided by Edward Snowden show the spy agency intercepts hundreds of thousands of address books every day from email or instant messaging accounts in its effort to find possible links to terrorism or other criminal activity, it was reported Monday. During a typical day, the NSA collected more than 440,000 email address books, the report said.

WATCH OUT, the U.S. government could be tapping your instant message account for information.

Thanks to more revelations from leaker Edward Snowden, a new report shows the National Security Agency has been mining millions of personal email account and chat contact lists, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The spy agency has collected countless contacts from accounts on Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook and Hotmail, and scores of buddy lists from live chat services, in an attempt to thwart terrorism and other criminal activity.

The Big Brother tactics were revealed by secret documents provided by Snowden, the ex-NSA contractor who fled the U.S. and now lives in Russia, senior intelligence officials confirmed.

The agency analyzes the contacts to link digital connections among foreign intelligence targets, and is not interested in personal data dumps from ordinary Americans, a spokesman for the national intelligence director’s office told The Washington Post.

But while mapping information overseas, and compiling contacts at a rate of about 250 million a year, government workers got their hands on lists of Web accounts for millions of American users.

Spokesman Shawn Turner said the agency is supposed to “minimize the acquisition, use and dissemination” of info that identifies U.S. citizens or permanent residents. On a typical day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected over 440,000 email address books, according to The Washington Post.

With News Wire Services 

NASA to Proceed With Mars Mission

NASA’s next Mars mission is getting to the launching pad, government shutdown or not.

Launch preparations for the Maven spacecraft – short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution – had ground to a halt Tuesday along with almost all of NASA after Congress failed to provide money for the federal government to continue operating. The scientific mission – to study the planet’s thin atmosphere – was not among the few NASA activities deemed “essential.”

But a lengthy shutdown could have caused Maven to miss the launch window. Mars and Earth would not come into proper alignment again until 2016, so NASA officials changed their minds.

“We have already restarted spacecraft processing at Kennedy Space Center,” said Bruce Jakosky, the mission’s principal investigator.

While the science is still not considered essential, officials concluded that the launch delay could jeopardize the missions of the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers currently on Mars. The two rovers currently relay their data through two aging orbiting NASA spacecraft, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Mars Odyssey has been circling Mars for a dozen years; Reconnaissance Orbiter has been there since 2006. In 2016, the planetary alignment is not as good, so Maven would have to use up more of its fuel entering orbit. “This would have precluded having sufficient fuel for Maven to carry out its science mission and to operate as a relay for any significant time,” Dr. Jakosky said.

There are currently no other orbiters planned for Mars. If two existing orbiters failed, that would severely limit the science that Curiosity and Opportunity could perform. The Mars Express spacecraft, operated by the European Space Agency, could possibly be pressed into service as a communication relay.

“Launching Maven in 2013 protects the existing assets that are at Mars today,” Dr. Jakosky said.

Maven is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida between Nov. 18 and Dec. 17.

Elusive Giant Squid Washes Ashore Cantabria Beach in Spain [VIDEO]

A giant squid with oversized protruding eyes washed ashore on a beach in the northern Spanish community of Cantabria.

The 30 feet deep-sea monster weighing 400 pounds astonished beachgoers Tuesday, who stumbled upon the near intact remains of the monster that looked more like a mythical gargantuan creature.

Washed ashore the La Arena beach, the giant squid is currently held at the Maritime Museum of Cantabria, where experts will work toward preserving this specimen, according to El Diario Montanes. The museum currently holds two similar but smaller specimens, museum director Gerardo Garcia Castrillo told Montanes.

The deep sea denizen will be cleaned and frozen. The fate of this dead creature remains vague at the moment as museum scientists and the government will decide on the ownership and whether it will go on display at the museum or will be dissected in the name of  science, GrindTV reports.

The first footage of this elusive creature in its natural habitat was captured by a zoologist Tsunemi Kubodera, from Japan's National Science Museum, Tokyo. The video captured the sea monster off the Ogasawara Islands at a depth of 2,066 feet.

"It was shining and so beautiful," team leader Tsunemi Kubodera, a zoologist at Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science, told AFP at the time. "I was so thrilled when I saw it first hand, but I was confident we would because we rigorously researched the areas we might find it, based on past data."

Apart from their enormous size, these creatures have the largest eyes that are similar in size to a beachball. Due to their big eyes, they can peer through deep sea regions where light is non-existent. They mostly reside in cool waters, as the squids' blood does not carry sufficient oxygen in high temperatures. They are also known to have an extensive nervous system and a complex brain, reports NBC News.

In recent years, occasionally giant squids corpses have been discovered washed ashore, and scientists are spending great resources in studying these elusive creatures as they are the largest invertebrates on earth . However, these giant squids continue to remain a great mystery.

Warmer Oceans from Climate Change Impact Mercury Levels in Fish

A warming ocean could cause some serious issues for our environment. It can help melt ice near the poles and can also help shift deep sea ocean currents, which can impact weather patterns. Now, scientists have discovered something else that the warming oceans might affect. It turns out that rising ocean surface temperatures caused by climate change could make fish accumulate more mercury.

Mercury in fish is nothing new. In fact, fish higher up the food chain, such as sword fish, tuna and marlin, have greater concentrations of mercury. This is mainly due to the process of bioaccumulation. Put simply, predator fish eat many smaller fish which also have concentrations of mercury. The mercury from the smaller fish is then incorporated into the predator fish in greater concentrations.

How does the mercury get there in the first place? Mercury released into the air through industrial pollution can accumulate in streams and oceans. In the water, it turns into methylmercury.

Until now, though, little has been known about how global warming might affect mercury bioaccumulation in marine life. That's why researchers decided to examine killifish under varying temperatures in the lab and in salt marsh pools in Maine.

In the marshes, the killifish ate insects, worms and other natural food sources. In the lab, though, the fish were fed mercury-enriched food. This allowed the researchers to compare fish both in the wild and under lab conditions. In the end, the scientists discovered that fish in warmer waters actually ate more. However, the fish also grew less and had higher methylmercury levels in their tissues.

These findings are important for understanding how climate change might impact our food supplies. In particular, the research reveals that increases in metabolic rate in fish actually cause increased uptake of the toxic metals. This, in particular, could greatly influence how much mercury will be found in fish in the future as our climate continues to warm and change.

Researchers discover secret of Einstein’s brilliance

The researchers discovered that Einstein had more well-connected hemispheres compared to both younger and older sample groups.

According to a news release from Florida State University, researchers have discovered one of the secrets of Einstein’s brilliance: the left and right hemispheres of Einstein’s brain were exceptionally well connected to each other and may have been party responsible for his genius.

“This study, more than any other to date, really gets at the ‘inside’ of Einstein’s brain,” said Dean Falk, an anthropologist at Florida State University. “It provides new information that helps make sense of what is known about the surface of Einstein’s brain.”

According to the news release, lead author Weiwei Men of East China Normal University’s Department of Physics created a new method to conduct the research, which is the very first to describe Einstein’s corpus callosum, the brain’s biggest accumulation of fibers that links the two cerebral hemispheres and assists the progress of interhemispheric communication.

“This technique should be of interest to other researchers who study the brain’s all-important internal connectivity,” Falk noted.

The physicist’s method determines and color-codes the differing thicknesses of subdivisions of the corpus callosum along its length, where nerves navigate from one side of the brain to the other. These thicknesses signal the number of nerves that lie across and thus how “connected” the two sides of the brain are in specific regions, which aids varying functions based on where the fibers cross along the length. For instance, motion of the hands is accomplished toward the front and math along the back.

This new method allowed comparison of Einstein’s thicknesses with those of two samples — one of 15 older men and one of 52 men Einstein’s age in 1905. At 26 years old, Einstein published four papers that altered the world’s views about space, time, mass and energy.

The researchers discovered that Einstein had more well-connected hemispheres compared to both younger and older sample groups.

The study’s findings were recently published in the journal Brain.

What did you think of the study’s findings? Sound off in the comments section.