Culture

Decades of research has revealed the remarkable morphological adaptations of sea snakes to aquatic life, which include paddle-shaped tails, salt-excreting glands, and the ability to breathe through their skin.

In a new study published in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, researchers at the University of Adelaide detail the enlarged touch receptors that evolved in male turtle-headed sea snakes (Emydocephalus annulatus), to help them locate and court females in aquatic environments.

Lead author, Jenna Crowe-Riddell, PhD graduate at the University of Adelaide's School of Biological Sciences, says on land, snakes use tongue-flicking to sense and follow sex pheromones left by other snakes, but in the water these chemicals are diluted.

"What's more, turtle-headed sea snakes can't see very clearly underwater; they've been known to court anything long and dark, including sea cucumbers. To make matters worse, once a female is found the male must overcome buoyancy force so he doesn't float away from his potential mate.

"Most snakes have thousands of touch receptors all over their face that look like a dusting of freckles. These touch receptors have become much larger in sea snakes, potentially to sense vibrations made by swimming mates, prey or predators.

"When we took a closer look at museum specimens, we discovered male turtle-headed sea snakes have larger touch receptors overall than females. We also found mature males have enlarged scale structures on their snout and chin, and their cloaca - an all-purpose hole used for reproduction and excretion."

Crowe-Riddell and colleagues used a range of microscopy techniques to characterise the ultrastructure of enlarged scale structures. They found that the structures on the chin and cloaca have specialised cells indicative of touch receptors - which suggests they provide sensory feedback for the male.

The researchers suggest that chin receptors may help males orient towards the direction of the female's swimming, whereas the cloacal receptors may help the male to align himself for successful reproduction.

"We think these receptors evolved to help males maintain the correct points of contact with the female during mating, which is a tricky task when you're a tube-shaped limbless snake," said Crowe-Riddell.

Males also have a spine-like structure on the snout known as a 'rostral spine' that is used to prod the back of females during courtship.

"The rostral spine may be used to stimulate the female, such types of tactile foreplay are thought to be important for mating in snakes because they can cause beneficial hormonal changes and receptive behaviours in females," said Crowe-Riddell.

"Reptiles are not typically appreciated for their intimate interactions, but our research is revealing that sea snakes have fascinating tactile adaptations for intra-species communication."

The evolutionary transition from terrestrial to aquatic life has influenced the signaling systems of many secondarily aquatic animals.

"As we build a more complete picture of underwater perception, sea snakes are becoming a fantastic example of how evolution creates opportunity from constraints," said Crowe-Riddell.

Further research could examine the role that tactile sensory modalities play in mate selection, an often overlooked aspect of snake social behaviour.

There are at least three species of turtle-headed sea snakes. These species occur in shallow-water habitats in Australia, south-east Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

In the study, researchers examined 59 specimens collected from offshore reefs in the Timor Sea, and accessed from the Australian Museum, the Art Gallery of Northern Territory, and the Western Australian Museum. The study was co-authored by researchers at the University of Melbourne and the University of New Caledonia.

Older people need digital skills training to learn to use digital technology more independently, but they also seek digital training opportunities because of the social benefits they offer, according to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland. Published in International Journal of Lifelong Education, the study examined perceived benefits of digital skills training among older adult learners, their teachers and peer tutors. Data for the study were collected in liberal adult education organisations, such as community colleges, as well as in peer tutoring sessions organised by third sector actors.

New skills and friendships

The coronavirus pandemic has, for its part, highlighted inequalities in the availability and use of digital technology. People in different life situations have different opportunities to practise and develop their digital skills, which are rather essential in today's world.

Older people participating in the survey study wanted to attend digital skills training primarily in order to learn digital skills. Digital skills enabled them to solve technical problems and to use digital technology more independently.

"The perceived benefits of digital skills were often related to the ease of everyday life, such as being able to use electronic services, leisure time, or staying in touch with friends and family," Postdoctoral Researcher Kaisa Pihlainen from the University of Eastern Finland says.

However, digital skills training sessions are also beneficial in terms of social relations. According to the study, the training sessions were a good opportunity to meet other people and to establish friendships. That, in turn, was a source of more inner motivation and activity in older people's lives, which supported their personal development.

"For older people, participation in digital skills training is often a combination of individual and social reasons."

Meaningful experiences and promotion of well-being

According to the survey study, social benefits were highlighted especially by peer tutors.

"They valued a sense of community and togetherness with other older people. Peer tutoring was compared to the workplace: it provided peer tutors with a network of experts which respected and offered help to others."

Interdependence and reciprocity proved to be meaningful experiences in digital skills training sessions organised for older people. In addition, participation in new learning communities can boost older people's learning and enhance their well-being.

Digital skills training sessions were a source of joy, satisfaction and success for learners, teachers and peer tutors alike. Peer tutors reported that they had a stronger sense of belonging to society when teaching digital skills to other older people. Providing digital skills training was seen as a new alternative to civic participation and active citizenship, and it also enabled them to find their place in digital society.

"For some peer tutors, it was also a meaningful route to transition from working life to retirement," Pihlainen says.

According to the study, participation in digital skills training sessions supported the well-being of older adult learners as well as the well-being of their teachers and peer tutors. The majority of peer tutors reported an increase in their well-being when providing digital skills training. Digital skills learners who responded to the survey also described that their attitude towards digital devices had become more positive.

Research can support recruitment

Research-based knowledge can be used to strengthen peer tutors' and digital skills teachers' internal motivation in digital skills training situations. The recruitment of new digital skills tutors and teachers can also be supported by drawing attention to the perceived benefits. Emphasising these benefits can also encourage older people to learn how to use digital technology.

"Supporting older people's digital skills is also important at the level of society because other civic skills are usually learned at earlier stages of life. Digital skills are learned through experience, and this is why we need action to ensure that also older people have opportunities to experiment with digital technology and to learn digital skills in ways that interest them."

At the same time, more support for learning and personal growth should be targeted at older people.

The data included 226 respondents, 136 of whom were women and 90 men. The mean age the respondents was 71 years. The study constitutes part of the international and interdisciplinary project ACCESS - Supporting Digital Literacy and Appropriation of ICT by Older People.

The recent attacks against Asian Americans have put Asians in the U.S. in the spotlight. Many of the victims are first-generation immigrants in ethnic communities, while those rallying for the victims are second-generation Asian Americans. A new Dartmouth study explores who Asian Americans are today and the range of identities this category encompasses.

The study, by Sunmin Kim, an assistant professor of sociology at Dartmouth, is based on 2016 pre-election survey data and found that Asian Americans tend to have progressive opinions about public policy, including on healthcare, education, climate change, and racial justice, but diverge on views toward Muslim immigration.

As previous research has reported, in 1968, the pan-ethnic category, “Asian American” was born, as Chinese students and Japanese students at University of California, Berkeley, wanted a collective term to refer to both their student associations that could be used to help mobilize their political action. As a result, they established the Asian American Political Alliance, for which a chapter was also created at San Francisco State College.

“With the rise of radical social movements in the 1960s, the term ‘Asian Americans’ gained further traction as Asians protested domestic racism and the Vietnam War, often viewing both racism and U.S. intervention in Vietnam as originating from imperialism,” says Kim. “If the category Asian American can be created, then a logical extension of that argument is that it can also be broken down, reversed or remade in a different context.”

To determine whether Asian Americans still rally behind a common cause, the study drew on data from the 2016 pre-election National Asian American Survey (NAAS). With over 3,100 respondents representing nine national origin and ethnic groups in the U.S. (Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Hmong, Cambodian, and Native Hawaiian-Pacific Islander), and interviews conducted in English and 10 other languages, as well as comparison data on whites, Blacks, and Latinos, the survey is one of the most comprehensive of its kind. Kim’s research focused on the data from the nine Asian groups.

Participants in the NAAS survey were asked seven questions on public policy. Did they support or oppose: the healthcare law passed by Barack Obama and Congress in 2010; federal government spending to make public colleges tuition-free; accepting Syrian refugees into the U.S.; legal possession of small amounts of marijuana; banning Muslim immigrants from entering the U.S.; establishing stricter emissions limits for power plants; and government initiatives to give Blacks equal rights with whites?

The study’s findings are published in RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences in the issue “Asian Americans and the Immigrant Integration Agenda.”

The results showed that Asian Americans support the Affordable Care Act, free college tuition, emissions limits for power plants, and racial equality initiatives for Blacks. However, 18% supported the Muslim travel ban, 31% opposed accepting Syrian refugees into the U.S. and 49% opposed the legalization of marijuana.

“Although Asian Americans are often Democrat-leaning, their liberal views are somewhat dampened when it comes to questions on Muslim immigration and Syrian refugees as compared to their opinions on other liberal public policies,” says Kim.

The results indicated that Asian Americans with reservations about immigration are more likely to be foreign born than native born and less educated, as opposed to progressives, who are more likely to be born in the U.S.

“There’s a considerable number of Asian Americans who are leaning towards these ideas of anti-immigrant sentiment even though they are immigrants themselves,” says Kim. “This divergence is one that political candidates may be inclined to tap into in the future, as they work to build a larger coalition. This was the case with Sery Kim, a Korean-American Republican, who delivered anti-Chinese remarks in March during her campaign for Texas’ 6th Congressional District.”

The research by Sunmin Kim also found that Asian Americans were more liberal than native whites, just as liberal as Latinos, and less liberal than Blacks.

As part of the analysis, the study applied a statistical technique designed to develop a typology, which is similar to the way that we perceive different types of people in various contexts. The analysis revealed two distinct subgroups of Asian Americans:

There are the second- or third-generation Asian Americans who are young, liberal, college educated, middle class, and racially conscious. These individuals may be of East Asian and Indian descent. Kim speculates that this group includes professionals such as lawyers and doctors, who live in the big cities such San Francisco or New York City and are integrated physically into white residential areas and working spaces.

There is also an older, first-generation of Asian American immigrants who were born outside the U.S. and are relatively more conservative. They are more likely to be men than women and are of Southeast Asian heritage, such as Cambodian or Vietnamese. Kim speculates that members of this group may not be proficient in English.

“While many second-generation immigrants today may identify with the Asian American label, if you ask a first- generation immigrant what they think of the term, they probably will be more inclined to identify with their national origin, rather than being associated with such a commonality,” says Kim.

“There’s a generational divide among Asian Americans, which is ironically present in the recent attacks on Asian Americans: the older, more conservative first-generation immigrants have often been the victims of these attacks rather than the younger, more liberal and highly educated second-generation,” adds Kim.

The study reports that, according to The Making of Asian America by Erika Lee at the University of Minnesota, the Asian American category comprises 24 ethnic groups, each with a distinct culture. As Kim explains in the conclusion of his paper, understanding division within Asian Americans is essential to sustaining the politics of this category and to addressing differences and inequality among Asian Americans today.

Osaka, Japan - In a new study, researchers from Osaka University discovered a novel molecular mechanism by which immune cells migrate to fight off infections. These findings may help in understanding the development of certain immune deficiency disorders and establish novel therapies against them.

Immune cells represent a diverse group of cells. Some circulate in the blood stream and migrate to infected tissues after receiving signals from damaged tissues. Others reside in tissues to take up the invading microbe, migrate to lymph nodes and activate an immune response. Therefore, to function effectively, the immune system's activities rely on motile cells. Immune cells move around the body via a process of repeated contraction and expansion, called actomyosin movement, involving myosin proteins. However, how this process of immune cell motility is governed remains unknown.

"As simple as it sounds, cell migration is a highly regulated and complex process," says first author of the study Takeshi Nakatani. "A lot of individual pieces of the cell have to come together to allow immune cells to move forward and travel to infected sites of the body. Lysosomes are compartments within cells that are connected to nutrient sensing and metabolism, and they have also been shown to be involved in cell motility. We wanted to understand how lysosomes regulate the process of immune cell migration."

The researchers focused on a protein complex on lysosomes, called the Ragulator complex. To understand how the Ragulator complex regulates immune cell motility, the researchers used isolated dendritic cells. These cells take up microbial invaders and bring them to other immune cells in lymph nodes to activate an immune response. The researchers found that when the Ragulator complex interacts with a protein called MPRIP (myosin phosphatase Rho-interacting protein), it prevents the protein MLCP (myosin light chain phosphatase) from blocking the phosphorylation of myosin proteins, resulting in cell contraction. In doing so, the action of the Ragulator complex can be seen as a 'brake-release'.

Interestingly, the researchers found that cells migrate by repeated cycles of protrusions of their front and contraction of their rear, leading to a forward movement. However, in the absence of the Ragulator complex, cell contraction did not occur. In experiments with animals, the researchers found that without the Ragulator complex, dendritic cells cannot travel from peripheral tissue to lymph nodes, which results in an impaired immune response.

"These are striking results that show how the lysosomal Ragulator complex is involved in the migration of immune cells in addition to its functions in cellular metabolism. Our study revealed a novel molecular mechanism by which immune cells migrate and elicit a proper immune response. These findings could help develop novel therapies against autoimmune diseases as well as better vaccines and anti-cancer drugs," says senior author of the study Hyota Takamatsu.

June 7, 2021 - Nyon, Switzerland -- A new report by the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) draws attention to the burden of osteoporosis and the gaps and inequalities in the provision of primary and secondary prevention of fractures due to osteoporosis across Europe. 'SCOPE 2021: a new scorecard for osteoporosis in Europe' provides detailed findings for the 27 countries of the European Union as well as Switzerland and the United Kingdom (referred to as 'EU27+2'), covering key indicators for four domains: burden of disease, policy framework, service provision and service uptake.

Professor John A. Kanis, IOF Honorary President and lead author of SCOPE, stated:

"Osteoporosis is a major concern in Europe as it results in 4.3 million fragility fractures and health care costs in excess of €56 billion annually. Seeking to prioritize osteoporosis prevention in the EU27+2 countries, the SCOPE 2021 report has tracked key indicators of burden and service uptake which will help Europeans measure how well their country is able to provide quality care, including access to risk assessment and medications. It also provides a new benchmark to follow trends in osteoporosis management, and to measure future progress."

Osteoporosis is a progressive chronic disease that causes bones to become fragile and weak, leaving individuals at high risk of fragility fractures. Such fractures can have a serious impact on the sufferer, leading to pain, long-term disability and even premature death. In the EU27+2, there were estimated to be more than a quarter of a million fragility fracture-related deaths in 2019. This number is comparable to, or exceeds, other common causes of death such as lung cancer, diabetes, or chronic lower respiratory diseases.

Osteoporosis and fragility fractures place a heavy burden on Europe's population

SCOPE 2021 examined the burden of osteoporosis and fragility fractures in the EU27+2 countries, finding:

The total direct cost of fragility fractures was immense at €56.9 billion in 2019. This comprises €36.3 billion for direct costs of incident fractures, €19.0 billion for ongoing long-term disability costs (from fractures that occurred before 2019), and €1.6 billion for assessment and pharmacological treatment.

The average direct cost of osteoporotic fractures was €109.1 for each individual - in comparison, in 2010 the average for the EU27 was €85 (after adjusting for inflation).

Based on the WHO / bone mineral density criteria, there were approximately 32.0 million individuals with osteoporosis, of which 6.5 million were men and 25.5 million were women (2019).

An estimated 4.3 million new fragility fractures occurred in 2019--equivalent to 11,705 fractures/day (or 487 per hour).

Based on ten-year probability of a major fracture, 23.8 million Europeans had a probability of major fracture above the thresholds for high risk.

There was a marked difference in fracture risk among the countries. The probability of future hip fracture in men and women at the age of 50 years varied from 3.8-10.9% in men and 7.0-25.1% in women.

Given the projected increase in the aged population, the annual number of osteoporotic fractures in the EU27+2 is projected to rise by +24.8%; from 4.28 million in 2019 to 5.34 million in 2034.

Service provision lags in many countries

SCOPE 2021 also found notable inadequacies in service provision that hinder many Europeans from getting the care they need to prevent osteoporosis and fragility fractures:

In many countries there is suboptimal availability of DXA scanners, which are used to diagnose and monitor osteoporosis. Ten countries reported having less than the estimated minimum DXA units required, and only 15 of the 29 countries provide full reimbursement.

A wide variety of approved medications is available for the management of osteoporosis. Less than half of the countries offered full reimbursement for these medications.

Post-Fracture Care Coordination Programs (or Fracture Liaison Services) in hospitals were lacking in eight countries. Based on expert opinion, approximately half of the remaining countries reported that less than 10% of hospitals had such vital programs in place.

Large treatment gap indicates need for strategies to improve service uptake

Among the most startling findings of SCOPE 2021 is the enormous 'treatment gap' which is leaving the most high risk individuals unprotected against fragility fractures. Other measures of service uptake were also found to be suboptimal:

In 2019 an average of 71% of women at high fracture risk did not receive therapy for osteoporosis, ranging from 32% (Ireland) to 87% (Bulgaria).

In 2010 the gap was estimated at 55% (or 10.6 million women) who were eligible for treatment but were untreated - this number has risen to 14.8 million in 2019.

FRAX, the most commonly used risk assessment tool, is available for 24 of the 29 countries. However, its web-based usage varied widely from 49 to 41,874 sessions per million population. This indicates that the tool is underutilized in most countries.

Waiting times between admission to hospital and surgical intervention were on average greater than 48 hours in five of the 29 countries. Early surgery within 48 hours of a hip fracture has been shown to significantly reduce mortality and increase the proportion of patients returning to their original residence.

Professor Cyrus Cooper, President of IOF, welcomed the publication of SCOPE 2021 and urged European health authorities to prioritize osteoporosis and fracture prevention:

"This important publication clearly shows that osteoporosis is a major health care burden in Europe, resulting in enormous, and growing, costs to national health care systems. As well as revealing wide discrepancies in service provision and uptake within the EU, SCOPE has exposed an unacceptable treatment gap and poor provision of post-fracture care programs to prevent secondary fractures. Despite the wide availability of treatments to prevent fractures, only a minority of patients at high risk receive treatment even after their first fracture."

"IOF joins national osteoporosis societies in Europe in calling for a Europe-wide strategy and parallel national strategies to provide coordinated osteoporosis care and to reduce debilitating fractures and their impact on individual lives and health care systems. Given the projected increase in fracture burden, urgent action must be taken."

New research identified a novel interaction between the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and the galectin-3-binding protein (LGALS3BP) which could be a new therapeutic anti-viral target. The research also found the presence of detectable viral RNA in blood in COVID-19 patients is a strong predictor of mortality.

The paper, published today in Nature Communications, was led by a group of researchers from King's College London, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and King's British Heart Foundation Centre. The research was funded by the NIHR Guy's and St Thomas' Biomedical Research Centre and supported by grants from BHF.

In the study, authors analysed close to 500 blood samples from patients admitted to Guy's and St Thomas' and King's College Hospitals. The authors compared plasma and serum samples between patients admitted to intensive care units (ICU) with COVID-19 and hospitalised non-ICU COVID-19 patients and non-COVID-19 patients in ICU.

Almost a quarter of COVID-19 ICU patients had detectable RNAemia - severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 RNA - within the first six days of admission to ICU. The presence of RNAemia was a strong predictor of 28-day mortality. RNAemia was detectable in 56% of deceased patients but in only 13% of survivors.

Researchers also identified LGALS3BP as a binding protein to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein

Rising levels of LGALS3BP in the lungs offered protection to cells from the harmful effects of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

The identification of LGALS3BP as a potential antiviral protein is encouraging as the UK government launched an Antivirals Taskforce in April 2021 to find effective treatments that could prevent future waves of infections and limit the effect of new variants.

Professor Manu Shankar Hari, a NIHR Clinician Scientist based at King's College London and a Consultant in Critical Care Medicine at Guy's and St Thomas', said: "We report that presence of detectable viral RNA in plasma or serum of COVID-19 patients is associated with increased risk of severe illness. We also highlight a novel interaction with potential antiviral effect between the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and a protein called galectin-3-binding protein. Our research findings have two main implications. First, there is an unmet diagnostic technology need for near patient tests to identify presence of viral RNA in blood in COVID-19 patients. Second, our research potentially highlights an antiviral drug target, which is a priority area highlighted within the UK government's launch of a COVID-19 antivirals Taskforce."

Professor Manuel Mayr, British Heart Foundation Professor at King's College London, said: "As British Heart Foundation Professor I am delighted that we could join forces with our clinical colleagues to contribute to a better understanding of COVID-19. This is the first time blood proteins with the ability to bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein have been analysed thanks to the specialised equipment available in King's British Heart Foundation Centre."

Cows can pass on the hypoglycin A toxin through their milk, a study by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB) in Toxins shows. The substance can cause severe symptoms in humans and animals. Small amounts of the toxin were detected in the raw milk of cows that grazed in a pasture exposed to sycamore maple. The team calls for further investigations to realistically assess the potential dangers.

High concentrations of hypoglycin A can be found in unripe akee and lychee fruit and in the seeds and seedlings of various maple trees. These include, for example, the sycamore maple, which is common throughout Europe. The toxin can cause severe illness in humans. In 2017, a team of researchers in India was able to prove that the toxin was responsible for the sudden death of several hundred children in the country who had previously eaten large quantities of lychee. "The substance interferes with the body's energy metabolism. One typical symptom in humans is very low blood sugar levels," says Professor Annette Zeyner from the Institute of Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences at MLU. In 2013, hypoglycin A from maple trees was also found to cause atypical myopathy in horses - a puzzling disease that is often fatal for animals kept on a pasture.

Zeyner and her team joined forces with Dr Jörg Ziegler from IPB to discover whether hypoglycin A could also be detected in the raw milk of cows. "Maple trees are widespread and grazing cows is a common practice. Thus, it seemed logical that cows - like horses - would eat the seeds or seedlings of maple trees, thereby ingesting the toxins," explains Zeyner. For the new study, the team examined samples from dairy farmers in northern Germany. Only milk provided directly from the farms was analysed. "We did not analyse samples from individual cows; instead, we sampled the milk from several cows which was stored in collection tanks," says Zeyner.

The samples were analysed using a special form of mass spectrometry which can detect even tiny amounts of a substance. The result: "We detected hypoglycin A only in two samples of raw milk from the one of the farms whose pasture contained a single maple tree," says Zeyner. The concentration of the substance was 17 and 69 micrograms per litre of milk. "These are low and widely varying concentrations. But considering that there was only one tree in the pasture and the sample came from a collection tank, it was surprising that we were able to detect anything at all," explains Zeyner. The toxin could not be detected in any of the other samples.

"Our study is the first to show that cows appear to ingest parts of the sycamore maple containing the toxin, which is then transferred to their milk. Many other questions arise from this finding," says the researcher in summary. It is still unclear, for example, how much toxin the cows have to ingest for there to be detectable traces in their milk. Follow-up studies will be needed to determine whether the substance is destroyed when the milk is processed or even whether this low concentration is a cause for concern, and how it can be prevented.

Russian paleontologists discovered the skull of a Pleistocene small cave bear with artificial damage in the Imanay Cave (Bashkiria, Russia). A bear aged 9-10 years was killed with a spear during hibernation about 35 thousand years ago. If the assumptions of scientists are confirmed, the find will become the world's first direct evidence of a Paleolithic man hunting for a small cave bear. The description of the skull was published in the Vestnik Archeologii, Anthropologii I Ethnographii.

"The hole in the skull could be either natural or artificial," said senior researcher of the laboratories at the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Ural Federal University Dmitry Gimranov. "In the first case, for example, a stone could fall on the bear's head, or water dripped onto the skull during thousands of years. But this is highly unlikely. Most likely the animal was killed by ancient people."

To establish whether the bear was killed or not, scientists have to find out when the hole was made - during life or after the death of the animal. In the second case, the hole can be evidence of a ritual.

"In the Paleolithic, ritual, sacred practices were widespread," said Dmitry Gimranov. "These are handicrafts made of bones, and drawings on the walls of caves not only mammoths' and much more. Therefore, a hole in the skull could have been made after the death of the bear as a ritual practice. The facts of hunting for bears in general at that time are extremely rare. For example, in Europe, many cave bears' bones of were found. But for millions of finds, only 20-30 bones have traces of felling, which means that the meat was removed from the animal for eating. And there is only one fact of the hunt. European researchers have found a stone tip in the vertebra of a bear. There have been no such finds in Russia before. Moreover, all found with traces of human hands belong to large cave bears."

As Gimranov said, hunting for large mammals was essential for life support of ancient humans. However, hunting for small cave bears was not a specialty of the ancient hunters who left traces of their stay in the Imanay cave. At the same time, Paleo human has such strength that he could pierce the bear skull with a spear at close range with relative ease.

Note

The excavations in the Imanay cave, which is located in the Bashkiria National Park, have been carried out by researchers for three years. During this time, paleontologists have collected more than 10 thousand remains of the Late Pleistocene period. Researchers from Yekaterinburg, Moscow, Ufa take part in this study.

Cave bears inhabited the territory of northern Eurasia in the Late Pleistocene (250-10 thousand years ago). These animals were often found in the faunas of Western Europe, the Russian Caucasus, and the Urals. Finds of cave bear bones are common in caves and sometimes form huge clusters. But the caves were inhabited not only by animals but also by ancient man. Therefore, the joint finding of the bones of a cave bear and artifacts is not uncommon. However, the Pleistocene small cave bear is not a very common type of cave bear. For the first time, its remains were found in Great Britain in 1922. Later, the Russian academician Aleksey Borisyak collected and described more voluminous material in Krasnodar (Russia). He named the new species the Russian cave bear. Subsequently, it became known as the "small cave bear". Both in Russia and the West, "traces" of this species are very rare.

Really large finds are associated with excavations in the 1970s - 1980s in the Kizel Cave in the Perm Region (the finds are stored in St. Petersburg). Ural paleontologists were fortunate enough to discover the Imanay cave, where the bones of a small cave bear turned out to be several times larger than in Kizel Cave. Today, Imanay Cave is the largest deposit of the remains of a small cave bear in the world.

Various forms of complex multicellular organisms have evolved on Earth, ranging from simple Volvox carterii which possess only 2 cell- types to us humans with more than 200 cell types. All originate from a single celled zygote, and their developmental processes depend on switch-like gene regulation. These processes have been studied in great detail within a few model organisms such as the worm C. elegans, and the fruit fly D. melanogaster. It is also known that the key molecules and mechanisms that are involved in the development of multicellular organisms are highly conserved across species.

What is also remarkable is that only a handful of molecules and mechanisms that go into the development of a multicellular organism can generate such a huge diversity of forms and complexity. Recently, researchers from the Center for Soft and Living Matter within the Institute for Basic Science investigated how this is possible using a simple mathematical model. Through this work, they sought to answer two seemingly opposite questions: what are the limits of diversity that can be generated through development, and what common features are shared among all multicellular organisms during their development.

Three processes are common to biological development in all multicellular organisms: cell division, cellular signaling, and gene regulation. As such, this study's model generated millions of these rules and explored them in an unbiased way. The mappings generated by the model represent how one cell type converts into another during the lifetime of the organism. Traditionally, previous cell type maps based on single-cell transcriptomics are biased to be tree-like, with stem cells sitting at the root of the tree, and increasingly more specialized cells appearing downstream along the branches of the tree. However, the cell-type maps produced by the new mathematical model were far from tree-like; it was found that there were many cross-links between different branches of the cell types. These resulted in directed acyclic graphs, and tree lineages were found to be the least prevalent. This means that it is possible for multiple developmental routes to converge on the terminal cell type in the maps generated by the model.

Surprisingly, it was also found that many organisms produced by the mathematical model were endowed with the ability to regenerate lost cells, without any selection imposed by the authors. When a single cell type is isolated from the adult organism, single cell could transform into and replenish all the other cell types. This ability to generate all the cells of the body is called pluripotency, and these cells granted the organisms in the model the ability of whole-body regeneration. Interestingly, most tree-type lineages contained few pluripotent cells, in comparison to other graph types.

While mammals, including humans, are especially bad at regenerating damaged parts, many animals such as worms and hydra, are exceptionally good at this ability. In fact, whole-body regeneration occurs widely across the multicellular animal tree of life, and therefore it has been hypothesized that whole-body regeneration could be an epiphenomenon of biological development itself. The fact that pluripotency occurred in this very simplified model suggests that this trait is indeed likely to emerge due to the process of development itself, and no special extra components are required to put it in place.

In addition to these results, it is anticipated that the framework of this model can be used to study many more aspects of development. This generative model is simple and modular, and it can be easily expanded to explore important processes which were not included in the present study, such as the effect of the spatial arrangement of cells and the effect of cell death. The researchers further described some possible real-life experiments to test some of the predictions made by their mathematical model. It is hoped that the framework of this model will prove useful for uncovering new features of development, which may have a wide range of implications in developmental biology and regenerative medicine.

During his time at EPFL under the Erasmus program, Romain van Wassenhove came up with an idea for a connector that could be used to make modular structures out of sustainable bamboo rather than wood, plastic or metal. "I wanted to focus my Master's on a topic that had meaning to me and that would lead to a concrete application," he says. "Working with bamboo was something I already had in mind while I was studying in Brussels." His connectors can be 3D-printed in biosourced plastic and are customizable to the type of material used for the structure.

Van Wassenhove got the idea for his connector during a class at EPFL on composite materials and developed the concept further through his Master's project, co-directed at EPFL by Senior Scientist Anastasios Vassilopoulos and by associate professor Lars De Laet at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). In September 2020, soon after graduating, he obtained research funds - through an EPFL Ignition Grant - to enhance the design and operation of his connector and test it on an initial application involving bamboo structures. Today van Wassenhove's invention is EU patent-protected, and his research has just been published in Composite Structures, a leading journal for composite materials and their applications.

In association with his project, called B'Novus, van Wassenhove has created an online program where users can design stylish, modular bamboo furniture assembled with the help of his connector. The program could be particularly useful to individuals and the organizers of events and temporary exhibitions, for example. After customers create their design and place their order, van Wassenhove generates cutting files for the bamboo sections. He then sends those files, along with the 3D printing plans for the connectors, to a local manufacturer - he uses manufacturers located as close as possible to his customers, so as to minimize the environmental impact.

Many hurdles to overcome

Quite a few hurdles still lie on van Wassenhove's path. First of all, Europe's bamboo industry is in its infancy. "Bamboo is still seen as 'poor man's wood,' associated with patio furniture, exotic vacations and eco-friendly lifestyles," says van Wassenhove. He also points out that Europe lacks the manufacturing know-how to cut bamboo properly. But bamboo has many sustainability advantages over wood, its direct competitor: because bamboo grows so quickly, it's up to four times more productive than trees; it can fixate up to 30% more CO2 than leafy trees; its mechanical properties make it surprisingly solid; and, thanks to van Wassenhove's connectors, it can be used without too much fabrication work required.

The remaining hurdles haven't discouraged the young entrepreneur. "My goal is to bring bamboo to European industry, as part of the transition to a more sustainable economy," he says. He already sees applications for bamboo in construction, such as by using concrete-filled bamboo stems in buildings' structural elements.

Space, the next frontier

In addition to potentially revolutionizing Europe's construction industry, Van Wassenhove's B'Novus connectors may be bound for space. Three Master's students at ENAC are using his parametric design to develop a five-meter-high meteorological tower as part of the Asclepios project, a student-run cross-disciplinary initiative to conduct experiments under the same conditions as on the Moon and Mars. It's modeled after a utility pole and consists of lightweight, composite materials - rather than bamboo - that can be easily assembled.

Scientists from the University of Graz (Austria), Skoltech and their colleagues from the US and Germany have developed a new neural network that can reliably detect coronal holes from space-based observations. This application paves the way for more reliable space weather predictions and provides valuable information for the study of the solar activity cycle. The paper was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Much like our life on Earth depends on the light of the Sun, our electronic "life" depends on the activity of our closest star and its interactions with Earth's magnetic field. For the human eye, the Sun appears almost constant, but the Sun is very active, frequently showing eruptions and causing geomagnetic storms on Earth. For this reason, the outer solar atmosphere, the solar corona, is constantly being monitored by satellite-based telescopes.

In these observations, one of the prominent features are extended dark regions called coronal holes. They appear dark because plasma particles can escape along the magnetic field from the solar surface into interplanetary space, leaving a 'hole' in the corona. The escaping particles form high-speed solar wind streams that can eventually hit Earth, causing geomagnetic storms. The appearance and location of these holes on the Sun varies in dependence of the solar activity, giving us also important information on the long-term evolution of the Sun.

"The detection of coronal holes is a difficult task for conventional algorithms and is also challenging for human observers, because there are also other dark regions in the solar atmosphere, like filaments, that can be easily confused with a coronal hole," says Robert Jarolim, a research scientist at the University of Graz and the lead author of the study.

In their paper, the authors describe a convolutional neural network called CHRONNOS (Coronal Hole RecOgnition Neural Network Over multi-Spectral-data) that they developed to detect coronal holes. "Artificial intelligence allows us to identify coronal holes based on their intensity, shape, and magnetic field properties, which are the same criteria as a human observer takes into account," Jarolim says.

"The solar atmosphere appears very different when observed at different wavelengths. We used images recorded at different extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths along with magnetic field maps as input to our neural network, which enables the network to find relations in the multi-channel representation," Astrid Veronig, professor at the University of Graz and co-author of the publication, adds.

The authors trained their model with about 1700 images in the 2010-2017 time range and showed that the method is consistent for all solar activity levels. The neural network was evaluated by comparing the results to 261 manually identified coronal holes, matching human labels in 98% of the cases. In addition, the authors examined the detection of coronal holes based on magnetic field maps, that appear vastly different than EUV observations. For a human, the coronal holes cannot be identified from these images alone, but the AI learned to perceive the images differently and was able to identify coronal holes.

"This is a promising result for future ground-based coronal hole detection, where we cannot directly observe coronal holes as dark regions as in space-based extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray observations, but where the solar magnetic field is measured on a regular basis," says Tatiana Podladchikova, assistant professor at the Skoltech Space Center and a co-author of the paper.

"And whatever storms may rage, we wish everyone a good weather in space", concluded Podladchikova.

What's as long a basketball court, taller than a b-double and has just stomped into the record books as Australia's largest dinosaur? It's time to meet Australotitan cooperensis - a new species of giant sauropod dinosaur from Eromanga, southwest Queensland.

Australotitan, "the southern titan", has been scientifically described and named by Queensland Museum and Eromanga Natural History Museum palaeontologists.

It is estimated to have reached a height of 5-6.5 metres at the hip and 25- 30 metres in length and sits within the top 10-15 largest dinosaurs world-wide, representing Australia's entry into the largest species to have ever walked the Earth.

The fossilised skeleton was originally nicknamed 'Cooper' after Cooper Creek, when first discovered in 2007 by the Eromanga Natural History Museum. It now represents the largest species of dinosaur ever found in Australia.

The scientific publication marks a seventeen-year long culmination of the joint effort between Queensland Museum and Eromanga Natural History Museum palaeontologists, fossil preparators, geologists, and countless volunteers.

"Australotitan adds to the growing list of uniquely Australian dinosaur species discovered in Outback Queensland, and just as importantly showcases a totally new area for dinosaur discovery in Australia," Dr Hocknull said.

"To make sure Australotitan was a different species, we needed to compare its bones to the bones of other species from Queensland and globally. This was a very long and painstaking task."

Dinosaur bones are enormous, heavy and fragile, and are kept in museums 100s-1000s of kilometres apart, making scientific study very difficult. For the first time, the team used new digital technology to 3-D scan each bone of Australotitan and compare them to the bones of its closest relatives. These scans will form part of the museum's digital collection that is powered by Project DIG, a partnership between Queensland Museum Network and BHP.

"The 3-D scans we created allowed me to carry around 1000s of kilos dinosaur bones in a 7kg laptop. Better yet, we can now share these scans and knowledge online with the world," Dr Hocknull said.

The study found that Australotitan was closely related to three other Australian sauropods that lived during the Cretaceous Period (92-96 million years ago).

"We compared the three species found to the north, near Winton, to our new Eromanga giant and it looks like Australia's largest dinosaurs were all part of one big happy family.

"We found that Australotitan was the largest in the family, followed by Wintonotitan with big hips and long legs, whilst the two smaller sauropods, Diamantinasaurus and Savannasaurus were shorter in stature and heavily-set." Dr Hocknull said along with the description of Australotitan, the study has also revealed a swathe of new discoveries in the area awaiting full scientific study.

"Over the last 17-years numerous dinosaur, skeletons have been found, including one with an almost complete tail. The discovery of a rock-shelf, almost 100 metres long, represents a sauropod pathway, where the dinosaurs walked along trampling mud and bones into the soft ground," Dr Hocknull said.
"Discoveries like this are just the tip of the iceberg. Our ultimate goal is to find the evidence that tells the changing story of Queensland, hundreds of millions of years in the making. A grand story all scientists, museums and tourists can get behind."

Minister for Arts Leeanne Enoch said the exciting new discovery helps to cement Queensland as Australia's dinosaur capital.

"Discoveries like Australotitan tell the story of a time when dinosaurs roamed Queensland," Minister Enoch said.

"Queensland Museum experts have been on the ground, sharing their knowledge with regional museums and helping to preserve and better understand the diverse paleontological hi story of our state.

"These unique outback discoveries are supporting Queensland as we deliver our economic recovery plan creating local jobs in regional and cultural tourism."
Robyn Mackenzie, General Manager of Eromanga Natural History Museum said it's an exciting culmination of a major amount of work.

"Finding Cooper has changed the course of our lives and led to the establishment of the Eromanga Natural History Museum," Ms Mackenzie said.

"Working with Queensland Museum to formally describe Cooper has helped put our little town of Eromanga in Quilpie Shire South West Qld on the map. Australotitan is just the start, we have many more discoveries awaiting full scientific study.

"It's amazing to think from the first bones discovered by our son, the first digs with the Queensland Museum, through to the development of a not-for-profit museum that runs annual dinosaur digs, all have helped us to get to this point, it's a real privilege."

Queensland Museum Network CEO Dr Jim Thompson said this represented the first dinosaur discovery in this corner of south-west Queensland.

"In the early 2000s Australia was at the beginning of a dinosaur-rush,with a number of significant new species of dinosaurs and megafauna being discovered in the past 20 years. Australia is one of the last frontiers for dinosaur discovery and Queensland is quickly cementing itself as the palaeo- capital of the nation - there is still plenty more to discover," Dr Thompson said.

"I am proud that Queensland Museum palaeontologists have been part of many of these amazing discoveries and are leaders in their fields."

The new paper was published recently in PeerJ - the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences

An international team of scientists led from the Centre for Astrobiology (CAB, CSIC-INTA), with participation from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has used the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) to study a representative sample of galaxies, both disc and spheroidal, in a deep sky zone in the constellation of the Great Bear to characterize the properties of the stellar populations of galactic bulges. The researchers have been able to determine the mode of formation and development of these galactic structures. The results of this study were recently published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The researchers focused their study on massive disc and spheroidal galaxies, using imaging data from the Hubble Space Telescope and spectroscopic data from the SHARDS (Survey for High-z Absorption Red and Dead Sources) project, a programme of observations over the complete GOODS-N (Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey - North) region through 25 different filters taken with the OSIRIS instrument on the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), the largest optical and infrared telescope in the world, at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma, Canary Islands).

Analysis of the data allowed the researchers to discover something unexpected: the bulges of the disc galaxies were formed in two waves. One third of the bulges in disc galaxies were formed at redshift 6.2, which corresponds to an early epoch in the Universe, when it was only 5% of its present age, around 900 million years old. "These bulges are the relics of the first structures formed in the Universe, which we have found hidden in local disc galaxies", explains Luca Costantin, a researcher at the CAB within a programme of Attracting Talent of the Community of Madrid, and the first author on the paper.

But in contrast, almost two thirds of the bulges observed show a mean value of redshift of around 1.3, which means that they were formed much more recently, corresponding to an age of four thousand million years, or almost 35% of the age of the Universe.

A peculiar characteristic which permits the distinction between the two waves is that the central bulges of the first wave, the older bulges, are more compact and dense than those formed in the second, more recent wave. In addition, the data from the spheroidal galaxies in the sample show a mean redshift value of 1.1, which suggests that they formed in the same general time as the bulges of the second wave.

For Jairo Méndez Abreu, a researcher at the University of Granada (UGR) and a co-author of the article, who was formerly a Severo Ochoa postdoctoral researcher at the IAC, "the idea behind the technique used to observe the stars in the central bulge is fairly simple, but it has not been possible to apply it until the recent development of methods which have allowed us to separate the light from the stars in the central bulge from those in the disc, to be specific the GASP2D and C2D algorithms, which we have developed recently and which have enabled us to achieve unprecedented accuracy".

Another important result of the study is that the two waves of bulge formation differ not only in terms of the ages of their stars, but also in terms of their star formation rates. The data indicate that the stars in the bulges of the first wave formed quickly, on timescales of typically 200 million year. On the contrary, a significant fraction of the stars in the bulges of the second wave required formation times five times longer, some thousand million years.

"We have found that the Universe has two ways of forming the central zones of galaxies like our own: starting early and performing very quickly, or taking time to start, but finally forming a large number of stars in what we know as the bulge", comments Pablo G. Pérez González, a researcher at the CAB, and Principal Investigator of the SHARDS project, which gave essential data for this study. In the words of Antonio Cabrera, the Head of Science Operations at the GTC, "SHARDS is a perfect example of what is possible due to the combination of the huge collecting capacity of the GTC and the extraordinary conditions at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, to produce 180 hours of data with such excellent image quality, essential for the detection of the objects analysed here".

As described by Paola Dimauro, a researcher at the National Observatory of Brazil and a co-author of this article, "this study has allowed us to explore the morphological evolution and the history of the assembly of the structural components of the galaxies, analagous to archaeological studies, analysing the information encoded in the millions of stars of each galaxy. The interesting point was to find that not all the structures were formed at the same time, or in the same way".

The results of this study have allowed the observers to establish a curious parallel between the formation and the evolution through time of the disc galaxies studies and the creation and development of a large city during the centuries. Just as we find that some large cities have historic centres, which are older and house the oldest buildings in cluttered narrow streets, the results of this work suggest that some of the centres of massive disc galaxies harbour some of the oldest spheroids formed in the Universe, which have continued to acquire material, forming discs more slowly, the new city outskirts in our analogy.

Ancient chickens lived significantly longer than their modern equivalents because they were seen as sacred - not food - archaeologists have found.

Experts have developed the first reliable method of finding the age of fowl who lived thousands of years ago. Their research shows they lived to advanced ages, and were kept for ritual sacrifice or cockfighting rather than meat or egg production.

Chickens today live for a few weeks (in the UK poultry birds live for between 33 and 81 days), but during the Iron Age, Roman and Saxon period they lived up to the age of two, three or even four years old.

Calculating the age of bird remains is hard because techniques used for mammals, such as bone fusion and tooth wear, are not available. Researchers have devised a new method based on size of the tarsometatarsal spur which develops on the leg of adult cockerels.

The new method was tested on modern birds of known-age and then applied to ancient specimens. This has allowed the experts to reconstruct the demographics of domestic fowl from Iron Age to Early Modern sites in Britain to reveal changes in relationships between humans and fowl.

Of the 123 Iron Age, Roman and Saxon bones analysed, over 50 per cent were of chickens aged over two years, and around 25 per cent over three years.

Dr Sean Doherty, from the University of Exeter, who led the study, said: "Domestic fowl were introduced in the Iron Age and likely held a special status, where they were viewed as sacred rather than as food. Most chicken bones show no evidence for butchery, and were buried as complete skeletons rather than with other food waste"

"The study confirms the special status of these rare and highly prized birds, showing that from the Iron Age to Saxon period they were surviving well past sexual maturity. Most lived beyond a year, with many reaching the age of two, three and four years old. The age of which cockerels then started to die at becomes younger after this period."

Experts carried out analysis on modern leg bones from domestic fowl and red jungle fowl of known age and sex from multiple collections. This revealed that the bony spur only develops in older birds.

Of the 69 cockerels aged below 1 year, only 14 (20 per cent) had developed a spur. The only age in which all cockerels had a spur was those aged over 6 years. Consequently, there is the potential for archaeologists to misidentify young cockerels without a spur as hens.

Once fully developed, the spur increases in size and its length in relation to the length of the leg can be used to estimate age.

The researchers also took measurements from 1,368 domestic fowl leg bones from British sites dating from the Iron Age to modern period to reconstruct the age when they had died and their sex. This suggested during the Iron Age and Roman period there were significantly more cockerels than hens, likely due to the popularity of cockfighting in this period.

On Friday, 11 June, Europe's men's football teams will start the European Championship a year later than planned. The favourite this time is France with a probability of winning of 14.8 per cent. This is what an international team of researchers consisting of Andreas Groll and Franziska Popp (both TU Dortmund, Germany), Gunther Schauberger (TU Munich, Germany), Christophe Ley and Hans Van Eetvelde (both Ghent University, Belgium), Achim Zeileis (University of Innsbruck, Austria) and Lars Hvattum (Molde University College, Norway) has shown with the help of machine learning. Their forecast combines several statistical models for the teams' strengths with information about the team structure (such as market value, number of Champions League players, club match performance of individual players) as well as socio-economic factors of the country of origin (population and gross domestic product).

100,000 simulations

With the predicted values from the researchers' model, the entire European Championship was simulated 100,000 times: match by match, following the tournament draw and all UEFA rules. This results in probabilities of all teams advancing to the different tournament rounds and ultimately winning the European Championship. The favourite this time is France with a probability of winning of 14.8 per cent, followed by England (13.5) and Spain (12.3). Of course, the tournament is not over - this is also shown by the relatively narrow gaps in the win probabilities at the top, plus of course the already low probability even of the top nations. "It is in the nature of forecasts that they can also be wrong - otherwise football tournaments would be very boring. We provide probabilities, not certainties, and a probability of winning of 15 per cent also means a probability of 85 per cent of the team not winning the tournament," says Achim Zeileis. So far, however, the predictions have been quite successful: Achim Zeileis' Innsbruck model, which is based on adjusted odds from the betting providers, was able to correctly predict the EURO final in 2008, as well as the World and European Champions Spain in 2010 and 2012, among others. This year, it will be used as part of a more comprehensive combined model developed by the teams led by Andreas Groll (TU Dortmund), Gunther Schauberger (TU Munich) and Christophe Ley (Ghent University), which surpassed the forecasting quality of the betting providers at the 2018 World Cup.

Germany in the tournament

It is no secret that the German national team has been drawn into a particularly challenging group this year: "There are three very strong teams in Group F, including the current world champion France and the European Champion Portugal, both also finalists at EURO 2016, plus Germany," explains Andreas Groll: "Compared to the top teams in the other groups, the probability of making it to knockout stage is lower in this group. But those who do make it have a very good chance of advancing further." The forecast sees a probability of 85.3 per cent for both Germany and Portugal to make it to the round of 16; for France, the probability is slightly higher at 89.7 per cent. Germany's probability of becoming European Champion is 10.1 per cent, well below that of the favourites and exactly on a par with Portugal.

Machine learning

The researchers' calculation is based on four sources of information: A statistical model for the strength of each team based on all international matches of the past eight years (Ghent University), another statistical model for the strength of the teams based on the betting odds of 19 international bookmakers (University of Innsbruck), further information about the teams, for example market value, and their countries of origin, such as population size (TU Dortmund and TU Munich), as well as detailed ratings of the individual players and their individual performances both in their home clubs and national teams (Molde University College). The fifth source or "partner" is a machine learning model that combines the other four sources and optimises them step by step. The researchers trained the model on historical data, as Andreas Groll explains: "We fed the model with the current data for the past four European Championships, i.e., between 2004 and 2016, and compared it with the actual outcomes of all matches in the respective tournaments - so the weighting of the individual sources of information for the current tournament will ideally be very precise." In any case, we will find out how well the model performed by the evening of 11 July at the latest.