Strong Earth Quake Hit Italy

A powerful earthquake has struck central Italy, collapsing buildings in the same area where nearly 300 people died in a quake two months ago.

The quake is larger than August 24's deadly quake nearby, but many people had since fled the region, helping avoid a devastating death toll on Sunday.

The quake caused shaking in the capital Rome, where there were reports of cracks being seen in St Paul's basilica.

Authorities were checking for casualties among the fallen buildings in Norcia, famed for its Benedictine monastery and its cured meats. 

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The transition from daylight saving time to standard time leads to depressions

The number of people diagnosed with depression at psychiatric hospitals increases immediately after the transition from daylight saving time to standard time, concludes new research.

"The year has 16 months: November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, November, November, November," writes the Danish poet Henrik Nordbrandt in a disheartening comment on the month we are about to enter.

And Nordbrandt is not the only one suffering in November. A recently published study documents that the number of people who are diagnosed with depression at psychiatric hospitals in Denmark increases immediately after the transition from daylight saving time to standard time. More specifically, the number of depression diagnoses during the month after the transition from daylight saving time is approximately eight per cent higher than expected based on the development in the number of diagnoses up to the transition.

The study is based on analysis of 185,419 depression diagnoses registered in The Central Psychiatric Research Register between 1995 and 2012.

According to Associate Professor Søren D. Østergaard from Aarhus University Hospital in Risskov, which is part of The Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University, the increase in depression rates is too pronounced to be coincidental.

Søren D. Østergaard is one of the five researchers behind the study, which is the result of a collaboration between departments of psychiatry and political science at the universities of Aarhus, Copenhagen and Stanford.

"We are relatively certain that it is the transition from daylight saving time to standard time that causes the increase in the number of depression diagnoses and not, for example, the change in the length of the day or bad weather. In fact, we take these phenomena into account in our analyses," says Søren D. Østergaard.

He also points out that even though the study is based on analysis of relatively severe depressions diagnosed at psychiatric hospitals, there is no reason to believe that the time transition only affects the propensity to develop more severe forms of depression.

"We expect that the entire spectrum of severity is affected by the transition from daylight saving time to standard time, and since depression is a highly prevalent illness, an increase of eight per cent corresponds to many cases," says Søren D. Østergaard.

The study does not identify the underlying mechanism triggering the marked increase, but the researchers point to some possible causes. In Denmark, the transition from daylight saving time to standard time 'moves' one hour of daylight from the afternoon between 5:00 pm -- 6:00 pm to the morning between 7:00 am -- 8:00 am.

"We probably benefit less from the daylight in the morning between seven and eight, because many of us are either in the shower, eating breakfast or sitting in a car or bus on the way to work or school. When we get home and have spare time in the afternoon, it is already dark," explains Søren D. Østergaard.

"Furthermore, the transition to standard time is likely to be associated with a negative psychological effect as it very clearly marks the coming of a period of long, dark and cold days," says Søren D. Østergaard.

Why are the results of the study important? The researcher from Aarhus University is not in doubt:

"Our results should give rise to increased awareness of depression in the weeks following the transition to standard time. This is especially true for people with a tendency towards depression -- as well as their relatives. Furthermore the healthcare professionals who diagnose and treat depression should also take our results into consideration," says Søren D. Østergaard.

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Brain surface stimulation provides 'touch' feedback to direct movement

Grasping a cup or brushing hair or cooking a meal requires feedback that has been lost in amputees and individuals with paralysis -- a sense of touch. Researchers have now used direct stimulation of the human brain surface to provide this basic sensory feedback through artificial electrical signals, enabling a person to control movement while performing a simple task: opening and closing his hand.

For the first time in humans, researchers use brain surface stimulation to provide 'touch' feedback to direct movement

In the quest to restore movement to people with spinal cord injuries, researchers have focused on getting brain signals to disconnected nerves and muscles that no longer receive messages that would spur them to move.

But grasping a cup or brushing hair or cooking a meal requires other feedback that has been lost in amputees and individuals with paralysis -- a sense of touch. The brain needs information from a fingertip or limb or external device to understand how firmly a person is gripping or how much pressure is needed to perform everyday tasks.

Now, University of Washington researchers at the National Science Foundation Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE) have used direct stimulation of the human brain surface to provide basic sensory feedback through artificial electrical signals, enabling a patient to control movement while performing a simple task: opening and closing his hand.

It's a first step towards developing "closed loop," bi-directional brain-computer interfaces (BBCIs) that enable two-way communication between parts of the nervous system. They would also allow the brain to directly control external prosthetics or other devices that can enhance movement -- or even reanimate a paralyzed limb -- while getting sensory feedback.

The results of this research will be published in the Oct.-Dec. 2016 issue of IEEE Transactions on Haptics.

"We were able to provide a baseline degree of sensory feedback by direct cortical stimulation of the brain," said lead author and UW bioengineering doctoral student Jeneva Cronin. "To our knowledge this is the first time it's been done in a human patient who was awake and performing a motor task that depended on that feedback."

The team of bioengineers, computer scientists and medical researchers from the CSNE and UW's GRIDLab used electrical signals of different current intensities, dictated by the position of the patient's hand measured by a glove he wore, to stimulate the patient's brain that had been implanted with electrocorticographic (ECoG) electrodes. The patient then used those artificial signals delivered to the brain to "sense" how the researchers wanted him to move his hand.

"The question is: Can humans use novel electrical sensations that they've never felt before, perceive them at different levels and use this to do a task? And the answer seems to be yes," said co-author and UW bioengineering doctoral student James Wu. "Whether this type of sensation can be as diverse as the textures and feelings that we can sense tactilely is an open question."

It's difficult for a person to mimic natural movements -- whether using a prosthetic device or a limb that has become disconnected from the brain by neurological injury -- without sensation. Though there are devices to assist patients with paralysis or who have undergone amputations with basic function, being able to feel again ranks highly on their priorities, researchers said.

Restoring this sensory feedback requires developing an "artificial" language of electrical signals that the brain can interpret as sensation and incorporate as useful feedback when performing a task.

The UW CSNE team frequently works with patients about to undergo epilepsy surgery who have recently had an ECoG electrode grid implanted on the surface of their brain. For several days or weeks, doctors constantly monitor their brain activity to pinpoint the origin of their seizures before operating.

By consenting to participate in research studies during this period when their brain is "wired," these patients enable researchers to answer basic neurological questions. They can test which parts of the brain are activated during different behaviors, what happens when a certain region of the brain's cortex is stimulated and even how to induce brain plasticity to promote rehabilitation and healing across damaged areas.

The potential to use ECoG electrodes implanted on the surface of the brain in future prosthetic or rehabilitative applications offers several advantages -- the signals are stronger and more accurate than sensors placed on the scalp, but less invasive than ones that penetrate the brain, as in a recent study by University of Pittsburgh researchers.

In the UW study, three patients wore a glove embedded with sensors that provided data about where their fingers and joints were positioned. They were asked to stay within a target position somewhere between having their hands open and closed without being able to see what that target position was. The only feedback they received about the target hand position was artificial electrical data delivered by the research team.

When their hands opened too far, they received no electrical stimulus to the brain. When their hand was too closed -- similar to squeezing something too hard -- the electrical stimuli was provided at a higher intensity.

One patient was able to achieve accuracies in reaching the target position well above chance when receiving the electrical feedback. Performance dropped when the patient received random signals regardless of hand position, suggesting that the subject had been using the artificial sensory feedback to control hand movement.

Providing that artificial sensory feedback in a way that the brain can understand is key to developing prosthetics, implants or other neural devices that could restore a sense of position, touch or feeling in patients where that connection has been severed.

"Right now we're using very primitive kinds of codes where we're changing only frequency or intensity of the stimulation, but eventually it might be more like a symphony," said co-author Rajesh Rao, CSNE director and UW professor of computer science & engineering.

"That's what you'd need to do to have a very natural grip for tasks such as preparing a dish in the kitchen. When you want to pick up the salt shaker and all your ingredients, you need to exert just the right amount of pressure. Any day-to-day task like opening a cupboard or lifting a plate or breaking an egg requires this complex sensory feedback."

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Restoring the sense of touch in amputees using natural signals of nervous system

Scientists have found a way to produce realistic sensations of touch in two human amputees by directly stimulating the nervous system.

Scientists at the University of Chicago and Case Western Reserve University have found a way to produce realistic sensations of touch in two human amputees by directly stimulating the nervous system.

The study, published Oct. 26 in Science Translational Medicine(STM), confirms earlier research on how the nervous system encodes the intensity, or magnitude, of sensations. It is the second of two groundbreaking publications this month by University of Chicago neuroscientist Sliman Bensmaia, PhD, using neuroprosthetic devices to recreate the sense of touch for amputee or quadriplegic patients with a "biomimetic" approach that approximates the natural, intact nervous system.

On Oct. 13, in a separate publication from STM, Bensmaia and a team led by Robert Gaunt, PhD, from the University of Pittsburgh, announced that for the first time, a paralyzed human patient was able to experience the sense of touch through a robotic arm that he controls with his brain. In that study, researchers interfaced directly with the patient's brain, through an electrode array implanted in the areas of the brain responsible for hand movements and for touch, which allowed the man to both move the robotic arm and feel objects through it.

The new study takes a similar approach in amputees, working with two male subjects who each lost an arm after traumatic injuries. In this case, both subjects were implanted with neural interfaces, devices embedded with electrodes that were attached to the median, ulnar and radial nerves of the arm. Those are the same nerves that would carry signals from the hand were it still intact.

"If you want to create a dexterous hand for use in an amputee or a quadriplegic patient, you need to not only be able to move it, but have sensory feedback from it," said Bensmaia, who is an associate professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago. "To do this, we first need to look at how the intact hand and the intact nervous system encodes this information, and then, to the extent that we can, try to mimic that in a neuroprosthesis."

Recreating different sensations of intensity

The latest research is a joint effort by Bensmaia and Dustin Tyler, PhD, the Kent H. Smith Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, who works with a large team trying to make bionic hands clinically viable. Tyler's team, led by doctoral student Emily Graczyk, systematically tested the subjects' ability to distinguish the magnitude of the sensations evoked when their nerves were stimulated through the interface. They varied aspects of the signals, such as frequency and intensity of each electrical pulse. The goal was to understand if there was a systematic way to manipulate the sensory magnitude.

Earlier research from Bensmaia's lab predicted how the nervous system discerns intensity of touch, for example, how hard an object is pressing against the skin. That work suggested that the number of times certain nerve fibers fire in response to a given stimulus, known as the population spike rate, determines the perceived intensity of a given stimulus.

Results from the new study verify this hypothesis: A single feature of electrical stimulation -- dubbed the activation charge rate -- was found to determine the strength of the sensation. By changing the activation charge rate, the team could change sensory magnitude in a highly predictable way. The team then showed that the activation charge rate was also closely related to the evoked population spike rate.

Building neuroprosthetics that approximate the natural nervous system

While the new study furthers the development of neural interfaces for neuroprosthetics, artificial touch will only be as good as the devices providing input. In a separate paper published earlier this year in IEEE Transactions on Haptics, Bensmaia and his team tested the sensory abilities of a robotic fingertip equipped with touch sensors.

Using the same behavioral techniques that are used to test human sensory abilities, Bensmaia's team, led by Benoit Delhaye and Erik Schluter, tested the finger's ability to distinguish different touch locations, different pressure levels, the direction and speed of surfaces moving across it and the identity of textures scanned across it. The robotic finger (with the help of machine learning algorithms) proved to be almost as good as a human at most of these sensory tasks. By combining such high-quality input with the algorithms and data Bensmaia and Tyler produced in the other study, researchers can begin building neuroprosthetics that approximate natural sensations of touch.

Without realistic, natural-feeling sensations, neuroprosthetics will never come close to achieving the dexterity of our native hands. To illustrate the importance of touch, Bensmaia referred to a piano. Playing the piano requires a delicate touch, and an accomplished pianist knows how softly or forcefully to strike the keys based on sensory signals from the fingertips. Without these signals, the sounds the piano would make would not be very musical.

"The idea is that if we can reproduce those signals exactly, the amputee won't have to think about it, he can just interact with objects naturally and automatically. Results from this study constitute a first step towards conveying finely graded information about contact pressure," Bensmaia said.

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Astrophysicists map the Milky Way

Hydrogen. Atomic number 1. It is the simplest and lightest element on the periodic table, but don't be fooled by its humble appearance. With just a single proton and a single electron, it is the most abundant element in the universe and has fueled star formation for the past 13 billion years. Now scientists have mapped the key ingredient's distribution across the Milky Way, revealing details about our galaxy that have never been seen before.

Now scientists -- including an astrophysicist from West Virginia University -- have mapped the key ingredient's distribution across the Milky Way, revealing details about our galaxy that have never been seen before.

The new map is the result of work by a team of scientists from around the world, including D.J. Pisano, associate professor of physics and astronomy in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. The research was published today in the journalAstronomy and Astrophysics.

The HI4PI survey collected data on clouds of hydrogen gas at full resolution, allowing scientists to learn more about the physics of what is going on in those areas, where the structures are coming from and more.

Pronounced "hi four pie," referring to the astrophysical abbreviation for neutral hydrogen (HI) and the geometrical reference to the whole sky (4*PI), the survey allows scientists to study all directions of the sky.

The team used two of the world's largest fully steerable radio telescopes -- Parkes Observatory in Australia and the Effelsberg 100m Radio Telescope in Germany.

Due to their sheer size and other technical characteristics these scientific instruments are highly sensitive. They can see deep into space, allowing scientists to study parts of the universe that are often invisible or hidden.

The team used the two telescopes to survey from both the northern and southern hemispheres. Because scientists collected the data from two different telescopes, astronomers in Germany did additional data processing to produce a combined, consistent map.

"The scope of the survey -- the entire sky -- couldn't have been done without collaboration with scientists from around the world," said Pisano.

The study required more than a million individual observations and about 10 billion individual data points. Pisano and his collaborators in the Galactic All Sky Survey in Australia spent more than 2,000 hours over two years using the Parkes telescope to map the sky south of the equator.

The previous survey, the Leiden-Argentine-Bonn or LAB, used a smaller telescope and was published 11 years ago. The new study uses modern technology with twice the sensitivity and four times the resolution, revealing a variety of structures -- both large and small -- that had never been seen before.

Imagine the difference between a blurry or pixelated photograph versus a high resolution, detailed picture.

"The result of this research is a much more comprehensive map of our galaxy that will allow scientists to better understand the Milky Way and our galactic neighbors," said Pisano. "This is a landmark for the field of astrophysics that will bring new insights for decades to come."

Pisano's research interests focus on how galaxies form and evolve. He says one of the things that HI4PI shows is how the cold gas in the halo at the edge of the Milky Way interacts with hot gas. He also said that the new survey helps fill in gaps from the previous survey for a more complete and accurate map.

HI4PI data is available to scientists through the Strasbourg astronomical data centre.

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Early humans used innovative heating techniques to make stone blades

Humans living in South Africa in the Middle Stone Age used advanced heating techniques that vastly improved living conditions during the era.

According to a new study published in the open-access journalPLOS ONE, humans living in South Africa in the Middle Stone Age after 65,000 years ago deliberately heated silcrete, a hard, fine-grained, local rock used in stone tool manufacture, so that they could more easily obtain blades from the core material.

A major effect on hunting

These blades were then crescent shaped and glued into arrow heads. This era, known as the Howiesons Poort, has produced the first known evidence for the use of the bow and arrow.

“This is the first time anywhere that bows and arrows were used. This would have had a major effect on hunting practices as both spears and bow and arrow could be used to hunt animals,” says Professor Christopher Henshilwood.

He and Postdoctoral Fellow Karen van Niekerk, from the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen (UiB) in Norway, are among the co-authors of the study.

Creating early transformative technology

The heat treatment enabled early humans to produce tougher, harder tools – the first evidence of a transformative technology. However, the exact role of this important development in the Middle Stone Age technological repertoire was not previously clear.

Novel analytical research approach

Delagnes, Henshilwood, van Niekerk and the rest of the research team, from South Africa and Germany, used a novel non-destructive approach to analyse the heating technique used in the production of silcrete artefacts at the Klipdrift Shelter, a recently discovered Middle Stone Age site located on the southern Cape of South Africa, including unheated and heat-treated comparable silcrete samples from 31 locations around the site. The site was discovered by Henshilwood and van Niekerk and first excavated in 2011.

“Based on the development of a non-destructive method using geological heated and unheated comparative reference samples, we have shown that more than 90 per cent of the silcrete used for the production of blades has been intentionally heated,” says Henshilwood.

“Heating was applied, non-randomly, at an early stage of core exploitation and was sometimes preceded by an initial knapping stage. As a consequence, the whole operational chain, from core preparation to blade production and tool manufacturing, benefited from the advantages of the heating process,” explains van Niekerk.

The hardening, toughening effect of the heating step would therefore have impacted all subsequent stages of silcrete tool production and use.

Heat treatment: a major asset

The authors suggest that silcrete heat treatment at the Klipdrift Shelter may provide the first direct evidence of the intentional and extensive use of fire applied to a whole lithic chain of production. Along with other fire-based activities, intentional heat treatment was a major asset for Middle Stone Age humans in southern Africa, and has no known contemporaneous equivalent elsewhere.

“The advantages of the heating process are multiple: by reducing the material’s fracture toughness and increasing its hardness, less force was needed to detach blades after heat treatment, resulting in better control and precision during percussion,” explains Henshilwood.

“An additional advantage relates to the heat-induced fracturing of the silcrete blocks at an early stage of core exploitation,” adds van Niekerk.

Three main benefits

According to the researchers this resulted in three main benefits:

1 The elimination of internal heterogeneities (iron oxide inclusions), which could have caused the incidental breakage of the core at an advanced stage of reduction.

2 The production of angular fragments with suitable angles and surfaces that can be directly exploited for knapping without further preparation.

3 Fewer constraints on the selection of the volumes to be heat-treated.

“The heat-induced fractures we observed are indicative of a fast heating process using open fires, an hypothesis which is strengthened by the presence of tempering residues, deposited through direct contact of the heated material with glowing embers,” says van Niekerk.

“This heating process marks the emergence of fire engineering as a response to a variety of needs that largely transcend hominin basic subsistence requirements, although it did not require highly specialized technical skills and was likely performed as part of on-site domestic activities,” says Henshilwood.

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Quantum computers: 10-fold boost in stability achieved

Engineers have created a new quantum bit that remains in a stable superposition for 10 times longer than previously achieved, dramatically expanding the number of calculations that could be performed in a future silicon quantum computer.

Engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have created a new quantum bit that remains in a stable superposition for 10 times longer than previously achieved, dramatically expanding the time during which calculations could be performed in a future silicon quantum computer.

The new quantum bit, made up of the spin of a single atom in silicon and merged with an electromagnetic field -- known as 'dressed qubit' -- retains quantum information for much longer that an 'undressed' atom, opening up new avenues to build and operate the superpowerful quantum computers of the future.

The results are published today in the international journal,Nature Nanotechnology.

"We have created a new quantum bit where the spin of a single electron is merged together with a strong electromagnetic field," said Arne Laucht, a Research Fellow at the School of Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications at UNSW, and lead author of the paper. "This quantum bit is more versatile and more long-lived than the electron alone, and will allow us to build more reliable quantum computers."

Building a quantum computer has been called the 'space race of the 21st century' -- a difficult and ambitious challenge with the potential to deliver revolutionary tools for tackling otherwise impossible calculations, such as the design of complex drugs and advanced materials, or the rapid search of massive, unsorted databases.

Its speed and power lie in the fact that quantum systems can host multiple 'superpositions' of different initial states, which in a computer are treated as inputs which, in turn, all get processed at the same time.

"The greatest hurdle in using quantum objects for computing is to preserve their delicate superpositions long enough to allow us to perform useful calculations," said Andrea Morello, leader of the research team and a Program Manager in the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation & Communication Technology (CQC2T) at UNSW. "Our decade-long research program had already established the most long-lived quantum bit in the solid state, by encoding quantum information in the spin of a single phosphorus atom inside a silicon chip, placed in a static magnetic field."

What Laucht and colleagues did was push this further: "We have now implemented a new way to encode the information: we have subjected the atom to a very strong, continuously oscillating electromagnetic field at microwave frequencies, and thus we have 'redefined' the quantum bit as the orientation of the spin with respect to the microwave field."

The results are striking: since the electromagnetic field steadily oscillates at a very high frequency, any noise or disturbance at a different frequency results in a zero net effect. The researchers achieved an improvement by a factor of 10 in the time span during which a quantum superposition can be preserved.

Specifically, they measured a dephasing time of T2*=2.4 milliseconds -- a result that is 10-fold better than the standard qubit, allowing many more operations to be performed within the time span during which the delicate quantum information is safely preserved.

"This new 'dressed qubit' can be controlled in a variety of ways that would be impractical with an 'undressed qubit'," added Morello. "For example, it can be controlled by simply modulating the frequency of the microwave field, just like in an FM radio. The 'undressed qubit' instead requires turning the amplitude of the control fields on and off, like an AM radio.

"In some sense, this is why the dressed qubit is more immune to noise: the quantum information is controlled by the frequency, which is rock-solid, whereas the amplitude can be more easily affected by external noise."

Since the device is built upon standard silicon technology, this result paves the way to the construction of powerful and reliable quantum processors based upon the same fabrication process already used for today's computers.

The UNSW team has taken the first step in building the world's first quantum computer in silicon.

"Quantum computing is one of the great challenges of the 21st century, manipulating nature at a subatomic level and pushing into the very edge of what is possible," said Mark Hoffman, UNSW's Dean of Engineering. "To have a team that leads the world in this field, and consistently delivers firsts, is a testament to the extraordinary talent we have assembled in Australia at UNSW."

A functional quantum computer would allow massive increases in speed and efficiency for certain computing tasks -- even when compared with today's fastest silicon-based 'classical' computers. In a number of key areas -- such as searching large databases, solving complicated sets of equations, and modelling atomic systems such as biological molecules and drugs -- they would far surpass today's computers. They would also be enormously useful in the finance and healthcare industries, and for government, security and defence organisations.

Quantum computers could identify and develop new medicines by greatly accelerating the computer-aided design of pharmaceutical compounds (and minimising lengthy trial and error testing), and develop new, lighter and stronger materials spanning consumer electronics to aircraft. They would also make possible new types of computational applications and solutions that are beyond our ability to foresee.

Other researchers who contributed to the work include members of Morello's CQC2T team at UNSW -- Rachpon Kalra, Stephanie Simmons, Juan Dehollain, Juha Muhonen, Fahd Mohiyaddin and Solomon Freer; Andrew Dzurak and Fay Hudson at the Australian National Fabrication Facility; David Jamieson and Jeffrey McCallum from the CQC2T University of Melbourne team; and Kohei Itoh of Japan's Keio University.

Watch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YftwdSss9b8

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Monkeys are seen making stone flakes so humans are 'not unique' after all

Researchers have observed wild-bearded capuchin monkeys in Brazil deliberately break stones, unintentionally creating flakes that share many of the characteristics of those produced by early Stone Age hominins. The difference is that the capuchins' flakes are not intentional tools for cutting and scraping, but seem to be the by-product of hammering or 'percussive behavior' that the monkeys engage in to extract minerals or lichen from the stones.

In a paper, published in Nature, the research team says this finding is significant because archaeologists had always understood that the production of multiple stone flakes with characteristics such as conchoidal fractures and sharp cutting edges was a behaviour unique to hominins. The paper suggests that scholars may have to refine their criteria for identifying intentionally produced early stone flakes made by hominins, given capuchins have been observed unintentionally making similar tools.

The research is authored by researchers from the University of Oxford, University College London and University of São Paulo in Brazil. The team observed individual monkeys in Serra da Capivara National Park unintentionally creating fractured flakes and cores. While hominins made stone flake tools for cutting and butchery tasks, the researchers admit that it is unclear why monkeys perform this behaviour. They suggest that the capuchins may be trying to extract powdered silicon (known to be an essential trace nutrient) or to remove lichen for some as yet unknown medicinal purpose. At no point did the monkeys try to cut or scrape using the flakes, says the study.

Lead author Dr Tomos Proffitt, from the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, comments: 'Within the last decade, studies have shown that the use and intentional production of sharp-edged flakes are not necessarily linked to early humans (the genus Homo) who are our direct relatives, but instead were used and produced by a wider range of hominins. However, this study goes one step further in showing that modern primates can produce archaeologically identifiable flakes and cores with features that we thought were unique to hominins.

'This does not mean that the earliest archaeological material in East Africa was not made by hominins. It does, however, raise interesting questions about the possible ways this stone tool technology developed before the earliest examples in the archaeological record appeared. It also tells us what this stone tool technology might look like. There are important questions too about the uniqueness of early hominin behaviour. These findings challenge previous ideas about the minimum level of cognitive and morphological complexity required to produce numerous conchoidal flakes.'

The monkeys were observed engaging in 'stone on stone percussion', whereby they individually selected rounded quartzite cobbles and then using one or two hands struck the 'hammer-stone' forcefully and repeatedly on quartzite cobbles embedded in a cliff face. This action crushed the surface and dislodged cobbled stones, and the hand-held 'hammer stones' became unintentionally fractured, leaving an identifiable primate archaeological record. As well as using the active hammer-stone to crush 'passive hammers' (stones embedded in the outcrop), the capuchins were also observed re-using broken hammer-stones as 'fresh' hammers.

The research team examined 111 fragmented stones collected from the ground immediately after the capuchins had dropped them, as well as from the surface and excavated areas in the site. They gathered complete and broken hammer-stones, complete and fragmented flakes and passive hammers. Around half of the fractured flakes exhibited conchoidal fracture, which is typically associated with the hominin production of flakes.

Bearded capuchins and some Japanese macaques are known to pound stones directly against each other, but the paper remarks that the capuchins in Serra da Capivara National Park are the only wild primates to be observed doing this for the purpose of damaging the stones.

Co-author and leader of the Primate Archaeology (Primarch) project Michael Haslam, from the University of Oxford, says: 'Our understanding of the new technologies adopted by our early ancestors helps shape our view of human evolution. The emergence of sharp-edged stone tools that were fashioned and hammered to create a cutting tool was a big part of that story. The fact that we have discovered monkeys can produce the same result does throw a bit of a spanner in the works in our thinking on evolutionary behaviour and how we attribute such artefacts. While humans are not unique in making this technology, the manner in which they used them is still very different to what the monkeys seem capable of.'

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Mystery species hidden in cave art appears to be unknown bison-cattle hybrid

Ancient DNA research has revealed that Ice Age cave artists recorded a previously unknown hybrid species of bison and cattle in great detail on cave walls more than 15,000 years ago.

The mystery species, known affectionately by the researchers as the Higgs Bison* because of its elusive nature, originated over 120,000 years ago through the hybridisation of the extinct Aurochs (the ancestor of modern cattle) and the Ice Age Steppe Bison, which ranged across the cold grasslands from Europe to Mexico.

Research led by the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) at the University of Adelaide, published today in Nature Communications, has revealed that the mystery hybrid species eventually became the ancestor of the modern European bison, or wisent, which survives in protected reserves such as the Białowieża forest between Poland and Belarus.

"Finding that a hybridisation event led to a completely new species was a real surprise -- as this isn't really meant to happen in mammals," says study leader Professor Alan Cooper, ACAD Director. "The genetic signals from the ancient bison bones were very odd, but we weren't quite sure a species really existed -- so we referred to it as the Higgs Bison."

The international team of researchers also included the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), Polish bison conservation researchers, and palaeontologists across Europe and Russia. They studied ancient DNA extracted from radiocarbon-dated bones and teeth found in caves across Europe, the Urals, and the Caucasus to trace the genetic history of the populations.

They found a distinctive genetic signal from many fossil bison bones, which was quite different from the European bison or any other known species.

Radiocarbon dating showed that the mystery species dominated the European record for thousands of years at several points, but alternated over time with the Steppe bison, which had previously been considered the only bison species present in Late Ice Age Europe.

"The dated bones revealed that our new species and the Steppe Bison swapped dominance in Europe several times, in concert with major environmental changes caused by climate change," says lead author Dr Julien Soubrier, from the University of Adelaide. "When we asked, French cave researchers told us that there were indeed two distinct forms of bison art in Ice Age caves, and it turns out their ages match those of the different species. We'd never have guessed the cave artists had helpfully painted pictures of both species for us."

The cave paintings depict bison with either long horns and large forequarters (more like the American bison, which is descended from the Steppe bison) or with shorter horns and small humps, more similar to modern European bison.

"Once formed, the new hybrid species seems to have successfully carved out a niche on the landscape, and kept to itself genetically," says Professor Cooper. "It dominated during colder tundra-like periods, without warm summers, and was the largest European species to survive the megafaunal extinctions. However, the modern European bison looks genetically quite different as it went through a genetic bottleneck of only 12 individuals in the 1920s, when it almost became extinct. That's why the ancient form looked so much like a new species."

Professor Beth Shapiro, UCSC, first detected the mystery bison as part of her PhD research with Professor Cooper at the University of Oxford in 2001. "Fifteen years later it's great to finally get to the full story out. It's certainly been a long road, with a surprising number of twists," Professor Shapiro says.

*The Higgs Boson is a subatomic particle suspected to exist since the 1960s and only confirmed in 2012.

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Exposure to chemicals dangerous to hormone function burdens Americans with hundreds of billions in disease costs

Annual healthcare costs and lost earnings in the United States from low-level but daily exposure to hazardous chemicals commonly found in plastic bottles, metal food cans, detergents, flame retardants, toys, cosmetics, and pesticides, exceeds $340 billion, according to a detailed economic analysis.

The investigators who performed the calculations say the massive toll from everyday contact with endocrine-disrupting chemicals amounts to more than 2.3 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

Included in the team's analysis, described online October 17 inThe Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, are estimated costs from more than 15 medical conditions linked by previous research to toxic levels of these chemicals. Scientists say chemical exposure occurs through gradual ingestion and buildup of these toxins as consumer products are used and break down.

According to researchers, endocrine-disrupting chemicals have for decades been known to pose a danger to human health because the compounds can interfere with natural hormone function. Such chemicals include bisphenol A (BPA), commonly used to line tin food cans; phthalates, used in the manufacture of plastic food containers and many cosmetics; polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)-like polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, found in flame retardants in furniture and packaging; and pesticides, such as chlorpyrifos and organophosphates.

However, the researchers say their new analysis, which took three years to complete, is the first U.S. assessment of the costs associated with routine endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure and resulting increases not only in rates of neurological and behavioral disorders, but also in rates of male infertility, birth defects, endometriosis, obesity, diabetes, and some cancers, as well as diminished IQ scores.

"Our research adds to the growing evidence on the tremendous economic as well as human health costs of endocrine-disrupting chemicals," says study lead investigator and health epidemiologist Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP, an associate professor at NYU Langone.

For the new study, the NYU Langone team reviewed blood sample and urine analyses for documentation on the presence of endocrine disrupting chemicals in participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Since 1999, NHANES, as it is known, has gathered information about the prevalence of and risk factors for major diseases by annually surveying 5,000 volunteers. Advanced computer models were then used to project disease totals attributable to chemical exposure and to calculate the estimated health costs and lost income for each disease.

According to Trasande, their analysis shows that yearly exposure to highly toxic fire-resisting PBDE chemicals and pesticides accounted for nearly two-thirds of the total endocrine-disrupting chemical disease burden, and mostly from neurological damage these chemicals cause in the unborn. Specifically, he says, annual PBDE exposure was estimated to account for 11 million lost IQ points in children, an additional 43,000 cases of "intellectual disability," and an associated disease burden of some $266 billion. Meanwhile, pesticide exposure was estimated to cost 1.8 million lost IQ points and lead to 7,500 more disability cases each year, with total health costs of $44.7 billion.

Trasande says such PCB-like chemicals are more widely available in the U.S. than in Europe, where the chemicals are more tightly regulated, and whose data were studied by the same NYU Langone team last year. The team estimated the chemicals' disease impact there at more than $100 billion.

"Based on our analyses, stronger regulatory oversight of endocrine-disrupting chemicals is needed, not just in Europe, but in the U.S.," says Trasande. "This oversight should include not only safety tests on the chemicals' use in the manufacture of commercial products before the chemicals receive government approval, but also studies of their health impact over time once they are used in consumer products," he adds.

Among the other key diseases attributed to endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure and factored into the team's calculations were over 1,500 estimated cases of autism and more than 4,400 cases of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

More specifically, phthalate exposure was estimated to contribute to some 5,900 adults developing obesity; 1,300 cases of diabetes; 86,000 cases of endometriosis, which cost more than $47 billion; as well as 10,700 early deaths from heart and other vascular diseases, such as stroke.

Trasande cautions that the statistical modeling used in the analysis significantly discounted disease numbers to account for likely as opposed to actual people with any particular condition. He says his team's calculations are on the "low end of the scale" and that if total disease numbers were fully included, then cost estimates for the actual economic burden of endocrine-disrupting chemicals would be much higher.

Senior study investigator Teresa M. Attina, MD, PhD, also of NYU Langone, says there are "safe and simple" steps families can take to limit exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals. These include not microwaving food in plastic containers or covered by plastic wrap, and washing plastic food containers by hand instead of putting them in the dishwasher. She says people can also avoid using plastic containers labeled on the bottom with the numbers 3, 6, or 7 inside the recycle symbol, in which chemicals such as phthalates are used. Switching to all natural or fragrance-free cosmetics is also an option.

Funding for the latest economic analysis was provided by National Institutes of Health grant R01ES022972, the Endocrine Society, and the Broad Reach Foundation.

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Knowingly taking placebo pills eases pain, study finds

A new study is the first to demonstrate beneficial placebo effect for lower back pain sufferers who knew they were taking 'fake pills.' Patients who knowingly took placebos reported 30 percent less pain and 29 percent reduction in disability compared to control group. 'Open-labeling' addresses longtime ethical dilemma, allowing patients to choose placebo treatments with informed consent.

"These findings turn our understanding of the placebo effect on its head," said joint senior author Ted Kaptchuk, director of the Program for Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "This new research demonstrates that the placebo effect is not necessarily elicited by patients' conscious expectation that they are getting an active medicine, as long thought. Taking a pill in the context of a patient-clinician relationship -- even if you know it's a placebo -- is a ritual that changes symptoms and probably activates regions of the brain that modulate symptoms."

Kaptchuk, with colleagues at Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada (ISPA) in Lisbon, Portugal, studied 97 patients with chronic lower back pain (cLBP), which causes more disability than any other medical condition worldwide. After all participants were screened and examined by a registered nurse practitioner and board certified pain specialist, the researchers gave all patients a 15-minute explanation of the placebo effect. Only then was the group randomized into one of two groups; the treatment-as-usual (TAU) group or the open-label placebo (OLP) group.

The vast majority of participants in both groups (between 85 and 88 percent) were already taking medications -- mostly non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDS) -- for their pain. (Patients taking opioid medications were excluded from the trial.) Participants in both the TAU and OLP groups were allowed to continue taking these drugs, but were required not to change dosages or make any other major lifestyle changes, such as starting an exercise plan or new medication, which could impact their pain.

In addition, patients in the OLP group were given a medicine bottle labeled "placebo pills" with directions to take two capsules containing only microcrystalline cellulose and no active medication twice daily.

At the end of their three-week course of pills, the OLP group overall reported 30 percent reductions in both usual pain and maximum pain, compared to 9 percent and 16 percent reductions, respectively, for the TAU group. The group taking placebo pills also saw a 29 percent drop in pain-related disability. Those receiving treatment as usual saw almost no improvement by that measure.

"It's the benefit of being immersed in treatment: interacting with a physician or nurse, taking pills, all the rituals and symbols of our healthcare system," Kaptchuk said. "The body responds to that."

"Our findings demonstrate the placebo effect can be elicited without deception," said lead author, Claudia Carvalho, PhD, of ISPA. "Patients were interested in what would happen and enjoyed this novel approach to their pain. They felt empowered." Kaptchuk speculates that other conditions with symptoms and complaints that are based on self-observation (like other kinds of pain, fatigue, depression, common digestive or urinary symptoms) may also be modulated by open-label treatment.

"You're never going to shrink a tumor or unclog an artery with placebo intervention," he said. "It's not a cure-all, but it makes people feel better, for sure. Our lab is saying you can't throw the placebo into the trash can. It has clinical meaning, it's statically significant, and it relieves patients. It's essential to what medicine means."

"Taking placebo pills to relieve symptoms without a warm and empathic relationship with a health-care provider relationship probably would not work," noted Carvalho.

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Scientific Discoveries That Happened by Accident

This is Exiting Discoveries That Happened By Accident

1. In the early 1990s, Pfizer was testing out a drug called UK92480, intended to treat patients with angina, a common precursor to heart attacks, involving the constriction of blood vessels that supply the heart. The company was hoping the drug would relax the blood vessels. Mm, it failed in that regard, but test subjects reported some fascinating developments below the belt, and so became the little blue pill known as Viagra, a side effect of which is—wait for it—heart attacks.

2. In 1907, Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland was trying to find a replacement for shellac—that's an expensive resin secreted by a South Asian beetle—when instead he produced the world's first plastic. By combining formaldehyde with phenol, which is a waste product of coal tar, and mixing in other materials, Baekeland accidentally created a non-conductive and heat-resistant polymer that is used in pretty much everything you see around me right now. A paragon of modesty, he named the plastic "Bakelite" in honor of himself. 

3. You know what else is a derivative of coal tar? Saccharin, of course. And the discovery of the world's first artificial sweetener happened because Russian chemist Constantin Fahlburg forgot to wash his hands. In 1879, after a day spent reacting coal tar with phosphorous, ammonia, and other chemicals, he realized at home that his hands tasted sweet. Sweet'N Low, that is. 

4. The microwave oven was invented in 1945, when a Raytheon engineer named Percy Spencer was fiddling with energy sources for radar equipment. Then, he realized that the chocolate bar in his pants was melting. He celebrated his discovery with pocket fondue. 

5. Now, speaking of radiation, it was German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen who discovered X-rays in 1895. But, not on purpose. He was experimenting with cathode ray tubes when he noticed a strange glow in his dark lab some distance away from the tube. Now Röntgen expected a new type of radiation was responsible, and so he called them "X-rays," X for unknown. They could pass through paper, wood, and yes, even skin, so Röntgen took the first medical X-ray—of his wife's hand. Now upon seeing the image, she said "I have seen my own death!" Happy anniversary, honey. 

6. Now, X-rays caused such a stir in the scientific community that another accidental radiation discovery soon followed. In France in 1896, Antoine Henri Becquerel was testing the hypothesis that sunlight could excite uranium to cause it to emit X-rays, and these X-rays would expose photographic film. But in this case of scientific serendipity, a few cloudy days forced Becquerel to leave his experiment inside in a closed drawer. Now developing the film anyway, Becquerel was startled to find the film had been exposed, and he realized that the uranium itself was emitting this invisible radiation. 

7. Okay, new category: how about vulcanized rubber? In 1839, none other than Charles Goodyear accidentally dropped a mixture of rubber, sulfur, and lead onto a hot stove. The mixture hardened, but was still usable, and the world finally had a durable rubber resistant to both heat and cold. 

8. Robert Chesebrough was looking to strike it rich in the oil fields, but in 1859 he noticed workers complaining about rod wax, an annoying, waxy substance that gummed up their drilling equipment. Chesebrough called it Vaseline, and he used it to treat cuts and burns. He even ate a spoonful of the stuff every day. 

9. Next up is the pacemaker, invented by Wilson Greatbatch, who was working on an oscillator to record heart sounds in the late 1950s. When he accidentally installed the wrong resistor, the device started giving off a rhythmic electrical pulse, and Greatbatch realized it could be used to regulate a human heart, and that's handy since pacemakers at the time were the size of a television set. 

10. In 1827, English pharmacist John Walker was stirring a pot of chemicals that included antimony sulfide and potassium chlorate, and then he noticed this dried lump at the end of his mixing stick. Now, he tried to scratch it off, but it burst into flames and the world had it's first prototype of the strikeable match. 

11. Despite what you may have heard, NASA did not invent Velcro. In 1941, a Swiss electrical engineer named George de Mestral noticed how easily cockle burs attached to his dog's fur. Now, he modeled the Velcro after the tiny hooks in the bur that so easily catch onto clothing and fur.

12. DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett was at work on a new chlorofluorocarbon refrigerant in 1938 when he changed the lives of cooks everywhere. Testing different chemical reactions, he accidentally discovered a new polymer called polytetrafluoroethylene, but you know it better as Teflon. 

13. Ninth-century Chinese alchemists made an explosive discovery in their quest to find an elixir for eternal life. They found out the hard way that mixing salt peter, sulfur, and charcoal is not a recipe for immortality; it makes gunpowder. 

14. And in keeping with this theme, Alfred Nobel's invention of dynamite was partially inspired by an accident while transporting nitroglycerin. A can broke open and leaked, but the liquid was absorbed by a rock mixture called kieselguhr—sounds like it could be a chair at IKEA. 

15. Now, I don't know if everything that explodes was discovered by accident, but it's sure starting to sound like it. You know, Enrico Fermi made an explosive discovery in the 1930s, although he didn't even realize it at first. He was trying to make super heavy atoms by bombarding uranium with neutrons. Now, he was successful at creating elements 93 and 94, but was at a loss to identify some of the other products that he produced. It was only later that scientists realized these daughter elements were not heavier than uranium, but actually had about half the mass. Fermi had unwittingly split the nucleus in half, discovering nuclear fission. 

16. In 1856, a teenage Chemistry student named William Perkins was attempting to create an artificial quinine to treat malaria. Now it was unsuccessful, but over the course of his experimenting with tree bark and coal tar, he discovered a new color in the residue and it was called Mauve. Perkins isolated the color and would go on to create the world's first synthetic dye. By the way, if you're counting at home, that's the third time coal tar has featured prominently in an accidental invention. 

17. It's nice to know, that if you're ever in a car accident, your windshield probably isn't going to shatter into a million lethal pieces. This is due to Safety Glass, accidentally discovered by French chemist Edouard Benedictus in the early 20th century. He dropped a glass flask, coated with plastic cellulose nitrate and it didn't shatter. 

18. While experimenting with cereal recipes in 1895, Will Keith Kellogg forgot about some boiled wheat he left sitting out. The wheat became flaky, but Kellogg and his brother cooked it anyway. The resulting crunchy and flaky material became a cereal you may have heard of, called Corn Flakes.

19. Now, in keeping with the food theme, Proctor & Gamble scientists, working on a nutritional supplement for premature infants in the 1960s, instead discovered Olestra, a fat substitute with zero calories. Three decades later, it showed up in grocery stores with some unfortunate side effects. But thankfully, we now have the handy phrase "anal leakage."

20. Kodak engineer Harry Coover was working with chemicals known as cyanoacrylates during World War II in an attempt to make clear plastic for gun sights, when his team instead discovered what today is known as super glue. 

21. Speaking of sticky stuff, in 1968 while Dr. Spencer Silver was trying to develop a strong adhesive, he accidentally ended up creating a weak, re-positionable adhesive instead. Now, he wasn't quite sure what to do with this discovery until 1974 when a fellow 3M scientist desired a lightly adhesive bookmark for his hymnal. That became the post-it note. 

22. There is dispute over who actually invented anesthesia, but there is little argument that its origins were accidental thanks to the popular recreational use of ether and nitrous oxide during the early 1800s. Gatherings were referred to as "ether frolics" and "laughing parties." But luckily someone—Horace Wells and Charles Jackson are commonly cited—realized both substances inhibited pain in people who used them. 

23. In 1943, naval engineer Richard James was working with tension springs to create a meter for the horsepower of naval vessels. When he accidentally knocked one of these springs over, he noticed that it kept moving after it hit the ground. And the idea for a new toy was born—the Slinky. But I doubt he would have guessed how a stretched slinky would fall.

24. How about we end with the most famous accidental discovery of all time, one that also now comes in pill form? Sir Alexander Fleming was experimenting with the influenza virus in 1928 when he left for a two-week vacation. He returned to find that a mold had contaminated his staphylococcus cultures.

But more importantly, he found that the bacteria was unable to grow anywhere near the mold, and that moment of sloppiness, which resulted in the invention of penicillin, would change medicine forever. 

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