Skip to main content

Home/ Groups/ SciByte
Rss Feed
Sort By: Most Recent | Popular Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Mars Base

Young Mammoth Likely Butchered by Humans : Discovery News - 0 views

news.discovery.com/...oolly-mammoth-yuka-120404.html

scibyte41 mammoth

shared by Mars Base on 05 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • possible that a ritual may have taken place involving the bones.
Mars Base

Young Mammoth Likely Butchered by Humans | Ice Age Beasts | LiveScience - 0 views

www.livescience.com/-mammoth-butchered-humans.html

scibyte41 mammoth

shared by Mars Base on 05 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • wouldn't a single mammoth be lonely and sad?" he asked. "They were, after all, communal animals."
Mars Base

BBC Nature - Woolly mammoth carcass may have been cut into by humans - 1 views

www.bbc.co.uk/17525070

scibyte41 WollyMammoth

shared by Mars Base on 04 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Woolly mammoth carcass
  • The discovery of a well-preserved juvenile woolly mammoth suggests that ancient humans "stole" mammoths from hunting lions, scientists say.
  • hints that humans may have taken over the kill at an early stage."
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • By analysing the teeth and tusks, the team estimate Yuka was about two and a half years old when it died.
  • Teeth, tusks and bone are the most common ways extinct animals such as mammoths are studied
  • these parts of the body take a relatively long time to decompose.
  • Soft tissues such as muscle, skin and internal organs decompose far quicker, and are very rarely found on old carcasses. This means that vital information is usually lost.
  • much of Yuka's soft tissue as well as its woolly coat has remained intact
  • Yuka provides direct evidence that mammoths did have lighter-coloured coats.
  • possibility of mammoths having lighter coat colours was proposed in 2006 after scientists studied the genes extracted solely from a mammoth bone.
  • One of the most striking things about Yuka is its strawberry-blonde hair,
  • Healed scratches found on the skin indicate a lion attack that Yuka survived earlier in its relatively short life
  • lions in question (Panthera leo spelea) are an extinct subspecies of the African lion, known commonly as Eurasian cave lions but were present at the same time as the mammoths.
  • Did we know lions hunted mammoths? Well, we guessed they did. But could we ever have expected to see such graphic evidence? No - but here it is,"
  • skull, spine, ribs and pelvis were all removed from Yuka's body
  • skull and pelvis were found nearby
  • most of the spine and three-quarters of the ribs are missing.
  • scalloped mark on the skin is made up by 15-30 small, serrations that "could be the saw-like motion of a human tool
  • Were humans using the lions to catch mammoths and then moving the lions off their kill
  • wouldn't have thought about it without seeing it [the evidence]."
  • Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice is on BBC Two at 21:00 BST on Wednesday 4 April and will be shown on the Discovery Channel in the US at a future date.
  • Mars Base on 04 Apr 12
     
    Perigrine Falcon
Mars Base

Well-preserved strawberry-blond mammoth discovered in Siberia | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...-mammoth-discovered-in-siberia

scibyte41 WollyMammoth

shared by Mars Base on 04 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • juvenile mammoth, nicknamed "Yuka,"
  • found entombed in Siberian ice near the shores of the Arctic Ocean and shows signs of being cut open by ancient people.
  • remarkably well preserved frozen carcass
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • part of a BBC/Discovery Channel-funded expedition and is believed to be at least 10,000 years old, if not older
  • If further study confirms the preliminary findings, it would be the first mammoth carcass revealing signs of human interaction in the region.
  • in such good shape that much of its flesh is still intact, retaining its pink color. The blonde-red hue of Yuka's woolly coat also remains.
  • first relatively complete mammoth carcass -- that is, a body with soft tissues preserved -- to show evidence of human association
  • carbon dating is still in the works, the researchers believe Yuka died at least 10,000 years ago, but may be much older
  • The animal was about 2 ½ years old when it died.
  • appears that Yuka was pursued by one or more lions or another large field, judging from deep, unhealed scratches in the hide and bite marks on the tail
  • Yuka then apparently fell, breaking one of the lower hind legs
  • humans may have moved in to control the carcass, butchering much of the animal and removing parts that they would use immediately.
  • may, in fact, have reburied the rest of the carcass to keep it in reserve for possible later use
  • removed parts include most of the main core mass of Yuka's body, including organs, vertebrae, ribs, associated musculature, and some of the meat from upper parts of the legs
  • Kevin Campbell of the University of Manitoba also studied Yuka
  • Campbell famously published the genetic code of mammoth hemoglobin a few years ago
  • Most permafrost-preserved mammoth specimens consist solely of bones or bone fragments that currently provide little new insight into the species' biology in life
  • This extremely rare finding of a near complete specimen, like the discovery of the baby mammoth Lyuba in 2007, will be a boon to researchers as it will help them link observed phenotypes (morphological features that we can see) with genotype (DNA sequences)."
  • Such information could help reveal whether or not mammoths had all of the same hair colors that humans do
  • An intriguing and controversial application would be to bring a mammoth back to life via cloning.
  • producer and director of a forthcoming BBC/Discovery Channel show called "Woolly Mammoth"
  • told Discovery News that cloning a mammoth could take years or even decades.
Mars Base

Google's self-driving car takes blind man on errands - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...-self-driving-car-errands.html

scibyte41 google car

shared by Mars Base on 04 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • A self-driving car being developed by Google Inc. took a blind man for a ride this week, driving him to a Taco Bell and then to a dry cleaner in San Jose, Calif.
  • Google posted a video of a modified Toyota Prius driving Steve Mahan, who is legally blind, saying it shows one of the possibilities and benefits that could come from the technology.
  • The self-driving car took Mahan to Taco Bell for a quick meal and a dry cleaner to pick up his clothes.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the drive took place on a carefully programmed route in San Jose and showed one of the possibilities that self-driving cars could offer.
  • we've now safely completed more than 200,000 miles of computer-led driving, gathering great experiences and an overwhelming number of enthusiastic supporters
Mars Base

NASA - Kepler Mission Manager Update - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...keplerm-20120401.html

scibyte43 Kepler aprilfool

shared by Mars Base on 04 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • For those inspired by Roger's look for the day, you can participate by adding a Johannes Kepler (the namesake of the mission) likeness to your personal photo and sharing with the NASA Kepler mission community on Facebook and Twitter.
  • identification of potentially habitable planets requires deep thought. To think deeply, we must dress as deep thinkers have dressed in the past. There is nothing that speaks of deep thought more plainly than a formal neck-ruff
Mars Base

Kepler Mission Extended to 2016 - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...epler-mission-extended-to-2016

scibyte41 Kepler

shared by Mars Base on 03 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Artist concept of Kepler in space. Credit: NASA/JPL
  • NASA’s tight budget
  • Anxieties were rampant about one mission in particular, the very fruitful exoplanet-hunting Kepler mission, as several years of observations are required in order for Kepler to confirm a repeated orbit as a planet transits its star
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Additionally, missions such as Hubble, Fermi and Swift will receive continued funding
  • only mission that took a hit was the Spitzer infrared telescope, which – as of now — will be closed out in 2015, which is sooner than requested.
  • Senior Review of missions takes place every two years
  • In the Review, missions are ranked as which are most successful
  • previous Senior Reviews led to the removal of funding for the weakest 10-20% of extended missions
  • Hubble Space Telescope will continue at the currently funded levels
  • Chandra will also continue at current levels, but its Guest Observer budget will actually be increased to account for decreases in Fiscal Year 2011
  • Fermi operations are extended through FY16, with a 10 percent per year reduction starting in FY14.
  • Swift and Kepler mission operations are extended through FY16, including funding for data analysis.
  • Planck will support one year extended operations of the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI).
  • Spitzer’s operations are extended through FY14 with closeout in FY15
  • U.S. science support of Suzaku is extended to March 2015.
  • Funding for U.S. support of XMM-Newton is extended through March 2015.
  • all FY15-FY16 decisions are for planning purposes and they will be revisited in the 2014 Senior Review
Mars Base

Tonight's Sky: April 2012 - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

scibyte41 scibyte42 scibyte43 tonightssky

shared by Mars Base on 04 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • April 2012
  • produced by HubbleSite.org
Mars Base

Comets Disintegrate Faster on Deeper Dives Into Sun | Sun-Diving Comets | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/iving-comets-solar-system.html

scibyte41

shared by Mars Base on 02 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Comets skimming past the sun may seem like ill-fated cosmic snowballs, and a team of scientists is trying to figure out what makes some fizzle and others explode as they make their solar death dives
  • may yield clues
  • origins of the solar system
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • shed light on the potential risks the comet deaths on the sun could pose for us on Earth
  • In recent decades, astronomers have witnessed even dramatic interactions between comets and the sun
  • researchers are analyzing how these so-called sun-diving comets lose their mass and energy depending on how close they get to the star.
  • Such data can show us for the first time what is inside a comet
  • All other data to date, apart from Jupiter impacts like Shoemaker-Levy 9, are only from the surface layers."
  • the sun's lower atmosphere. This lies about 4,350 miles (7,000 kilometers) above the top of the photosphere, the sun's brightest visible layer.
  • sunskimmer" comets — ones that dive toward the sun but not into its lower atmosphere — can slowly get vaporized by sunlight in deaths that last hundreds to thousands of seconds, depending on their mass
  • scientists calculated that the comets should emit weak but detectable extreme ultraviolet radiation.
  • sunplunger" comets that get even closer to the sun will meet their demise in only a few seconds, as they collide with the dense layers of the sun's lower atmosphere
  • most massive comets smashed into the sun, they would produce dramatic explosions just above the photosphere
  • To create their model, the scientists looked at the first direct observations of sunskimmer comets, captured last year by NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
  • comet, C/2011 N3, was completely destroyed after passing about 62,000 miles (100,000 km) above the photosphere
  • comet, Lovejoy (C/2011 W3), survived a close approach to a similar distance of 87,000 miles (140,000 km), although it lost a significant fraction of its mass in the process
  • Both events were in line with the predictions of the researchers' new model.
  • corona is hot, but its density is so small that the heat Lovejoy experienced "would be quite safe even on our skin
  • Comet Lovejoy did pass through the sun's million-degree corona
  • Comets might help serve as probes of the sun's atmosphere and magnetic field, helping to uncover its secrets
  • cometary flares that the very largest comets might release if they slammed into the sun can be 100 times more energetic than the largest solar flares ever observed
  • Such comets are, however, very, very rare today, though they may have been commoner in the early system
Mars Base

Psychedelics in the Sky: NASA Launches 5 Rockets in 5 Minutes - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...aunches-5-rockets-in-5-minutes

nasa rockets ATREX AprMedia

shared by Mars Base on 28 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • After several days of delays due to weather and technical issues, NASA has now successfully launched five suborbital sounding rockets in five minutes from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia as part of a study of the upper level jet stream.
  • first rocket was launched at 4:58 a.m. EDT and each subsequent rocket was launched 80 seconds apart.
  • rockets released a chemical tracer that created psychedelic-looking clouds at the edge of space, which were reported to be seen from as far south as Wilmington, N.C.; west to Charlestown, W. Va.; and north to Buffalo, N.Y.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment (ATREX) is a Heliophysics sounding rocket mission that gathered information to better understand the process responsible for the high-altitude jet stream located 95-105 km (60 to 65 miles) above the surface of the Earth.
  • map of the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. shows the projected area where the rockets may be visible while the motors are burning through flight
  • high-altitude jet stream is higher than the one commonly reported in weather forecasts
  • winds found in this upper jet stream typically have speeds of 320 to well over 480 km/hr (200 to over 300 mph)
  • two of the rockets had instrumented payloads to measure the pressure and temperature in the atmosphere at the height of the high-speed winds
  • NASA will release more information on the outcome of the experiment after scientists have had time to review the data
  • This jet stream is located in the same region where strong electrical currents occur in the ionosphere.
  • a region with a lot of electrical turbulence, of the type that can adversely affect satellite and radio communications.
  • Not only did the rockets release the chemical tracers to allow scientists and the public to “see” the winds in space
« First ‹ Previous 2181 - 2200 of 2611 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page