scitech News, Opinion and Issues | The Earth Times http://www.earthtimes.org the earth times is an environment specific news agency and news resource covering green news, environmental issues and opinion en-us PHP/5.2.17 earthtimes/technologyhttp://feedburner.google.com Chimpanzee Altruism
This guy can help. Chimpanzees only help each other on request, courtesy of Shutterstock


When we help each other, it's often voluntary and we can offer varying forms of understanding. Whether our closest relative can concur with his fellow chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) when aiming for a goal could be a crucial question.

Chimpanzees and tools



Helpers' first tool selection and offer to their con-specific partner. Each condition [(A) first "can see", (B) "cannot see", and (C) second "can see" condition] presented participants in the recipient booth with one of two tool-use situations ("stick" or "straw"). Graphs are based on the data from three participants (Ai, Cleo, and Pal) who completed all of the conditions based on an A-B-A design; Credit: Yamamoto et al / PNAS


Shinya Yamamoto et al at Kyoto University gave chimpanzees seven items to solve tool-use situations. Helping would be targeted at the function needed if a request for help was made. The whole meaning of society is cooperation, evident in social insects, fish, birds and mammals. The sharing of food without direct benefit to an individual has been studied recently in several primates. When empathy is brought into the situation, we begin to restrict the ability to very few species. Whale, elephant and ape examples exist.

Altruistic behaviour in chimpanzees has been seen to require the proffered hand (as a request for help). Their range of helping behaviours is limited when compared to our own. With a juice reward, a stick use and a straw use experiment were prepared. The result was 90.8% object offering from the helper, although not necessarily the correct object (tool). Almost all offerings were dependent upon the hand request. Only 5% offering was observed in the prequel, where the animals simply had tools but no reward available.

In the full experiment, the potentially correct tools were offered first by most participants. There were experiments where the animals responded targeted helping that was flexible, depending on whether a stick or a straw was required. Understanding how to achieve success in their partners' situation demonstrates empathy and of course true altruistic behaviour. The next step was to investigate "how" chimpanzees understood.





Inappropriate first tool offer in the "cannot see" condition. Cleo (chimpanzee on the left) first offered a straw to Chloe. As Chloe continued requesting, Cleo transferred a hose, a brush, and finally a stick, which Chloe actually required; Credit: Yamamoto et al / PNAS


The Kyoto experimenters placed an opaque wall to obstruct most of the helper's view. The chimp, Ayumi became the hero of the hour in this difficult situation as he stood up and checked the need before offering the correct tool. He really confounded the experiment at this point as he converted the unseen situation into another "seen" situation! Well done Ayumi, although his partner was his mother. We all know better than to incur the wrath of Mum. The proffered hand request from chimpanzees was also reduced in information possibilities. Obviously, it was a "Help!" signal that could have inferred very little, except within the two animals' earlier experience.

Motivation for chimpanzees to offer help in response to a request was obvious here. The puzzle is why an offer isn't forthcoming without the request. A strange experiment with 18 mo toddlers (human!) evoked little response to an unfamiliar adult needing help without a request. Perhaps they were going through their chimp phase? No need to worry. Apparently, at 30mo. The child had some developed empathy. Perhaps the supposedly intelligent bonobo (chimpanzee) could be used in a guided helping situation or chimpanzee sounds could provide guidance for con-specifics to help (communication by hand in the video does seem almost comic).



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

New Caledonian crows and their tools

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/chimpanzee-altruism/1815/ scitech Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:29:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/chimpanzee-altruism/1815/ Can you hear the Jurassic crickets?
Above: Fig. 1. A. musicus sp. nov. (A-D) photographs and line drawing of the RW and LW of holotype illustrating wing venation. Red arrows show the location of the stridulatory file (CuPb). (E) Detail of the LW file. (F) Detail of the RW file. Line drawings illustrate tooth morphology and spacing along the file; Credit: Gu et al/PNAS


Fascinating as it would be to sit in a conifer wood with tree ferns brushing against you and the sound of the insects (A.musicus!) stirring the emotions, Jun-Jie Gua (from CAPITAL Normal University, Beijing) and colleagues from the international background of Bristol and Kansas have just made it possible.

The north of China has some perfectly preserved forewings of Jurassic insects. What research has made possible is, by comparison with living Prophalangopsids (sort-of-crickets) and electron microscopy of the stridulation apparatus, a complete and convincing "reconstruction" of the pure tone at 6.4kHz. The male would have used its entire file of 100 teeth for 16 milliseconds, producing a low pitch differing from the broad band of/from modern katydids and the phalangopsids (a group of relatives of this Archaboilus musicus, which survive to this day). The extra significance of A. musicus is that it is presently 150 million years after its chirping that we find the next identified stridulator (in this case non-resonant and not pure tone as in A. musicus).

The early insect singers utilised high broadcasting power and spatial range, with two wings stridulating in concerto provide the large radiator needed for such low frequencies. The pure tone apparently also helps the signal to noise ratio so that the animal gets heard in mid-Jurassic conditions. We have only a little knowledge of rain, water or wind conditions in these forests, but this is a long-range transmission from close to the earth.

Even the BBC never had such awful problems. Despite the evolution of music from many sources since, the A. musicus relatives still employ pure tones and similar stridulations to reach their female audience. Modern crickets must have developed their broader band calls from the symmetrical wings and different file structure they use. This one is the Great Green Bush Cricket, which is a descendant of A. musicus' group.

Great Green Bush Cricket, a katydid

A modern katydid, the Great Green Bush Cricket, courtesy of Shutterstock


Some of the large insects (eg the Titanoptera) around in the Jurassic had impressively large wings with stridulation capability to create one hell of a noise. Dinosaurs could have been frightened away in that case, but the researchers believe the single tone chirrup is adaptive for nocturnal singing, hence avoiding such daytime predators. So picture that unique time-travelling moment, in the woods with only the music of the night!



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

For baboons it pays to be sociable
Why did the dragonfly cross the road?
Lunch with a crunch - eco-friendly edible insects

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/jurassic-crickets/1814/ scitech Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:38:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/jurassic-crickets/1814/ New clues to animal climate change adaption
Thirty-thousand-year-old permafrost bison bones from the Yukon region of Canada; Credit: The University of Adelaide


Ancient bison bones may help scientists discover how animals adapt to rapid climate change. For the first time, researchers have been able to measure genetic modifications in the 30,000-year-old mummified bison bones.

The study, led by researchers from Australia's University of Adelaide with assistance from Sydney's Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, analysed 'epigenetic' modifications that turn genes on and off without changing the DNA sequence.

The researchers compared the bones from six bison bones discovered in permafrost in a Yukon goldmine with a 30-year-old mummified cow from New Zealand.

They found that 'epigenetic' changes can happen rapidly between generations without needing time for standard evolutionary processes.

Professor Alan Cooper, Leader of the project and Director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, says: "Epigenetics is challenging some of our standard views of evolutionary adaptation, and the way we think about how animals use and inherit their DNA.

"In theory, such systems would be invaluable for a wide range of rapid evolutionary adaptation but it has not been possible to measure how or whether they are used in nature, or over evolutionary timescales.

"The climate record shows that very rapid change has been a persistent feature of the recent past, and organisms would need to adapt to these changes in their environment equally quickly. Standard mutation and selection processes are likely to be too slow in many of these situations."

Epigenetics specialist and report co-author, Dr Catherine Suter, of the Victor Chang Institute, says, "This is the first step towards testing the idea that epigenetics has driven evolution in natural populations."

Lead author, ACAD senior researcher, Bastien Llamas, who is an Australian Research Council Fellow, explains, "Standard genetic tests do not detect epigenetic changes, because the actual DNA sequence is the same.

"However, we were able to use special methods to show that epigenetic sites in this extinct species were comparable to modern cattle.

"There is growing interest in the potential evolutionary role of epigenetic changes, but to truly demonstrate this will require studies of past populations as they experience major environmental changes."

The bison bones were carbon dated and DNA was extracted from bone marrow tissue. Samples from modern cattle were used as control samples.

The study has been published in the online journal PLoS One, an inclusive, peer-reviewed, open-access resource from the non-profit publishing project, the Public Library of Science.



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

WSJ letter downplaying global warming is a call to play with fire
Andean species threatened
Release of the first UK government report on Climate Change
Doomsday Clock moves closer to midnight
Climate change and the USA

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/new-clues-animal-climate-change-adaption/1800/ scitech Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:41:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/new-clues-animal-climate-change-adaption/1800/ Mammal Evolution: Mouse to elephant-size in 24 million generations
Size transformations can happen much faster in animals that live in the water. An increase from rabbit-sized to elephant-sized would take at least five million generations, but the equivalent change in whales takes half as many generations. Becoming smaller is also easier: dwarfing in elephants occurred 10 times faster than the equivalent increase to evolve large elephants; Credit: Alistair Evans


The jumbo evolution from a mouse-sized mammal to the size of elephant takes around 24 million generations, scientists calculate. But the reverse process is much quicker just with large size decreases seen after just 100,000 generations, ultimately leading to extreme dwarfism, says the international research team.

The pioneeing research examines how fast the size of mammals increased and decreased after the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The study is unique, as previous research has concentrated on microevolution - smaller changes within species - the team believes.

Lead author, Dr Alistair Evans from Monash University's School of Biological Sciences, says, "We concentrated on large-scale changes in body size. We can now show that it took at least 24 million generations to make the proverbial mouse-to-elephant size change - a massive change, but also a very long time.

"A less dramatic change, such as rabbit-sized to elephant-sized, takes 10 million generations."

Co-author, Dr. Jessica Theodor, from the University of Calgary, explains "Our research demonstrates, for the first time, a large-scale history of mammal life in terms of the pace of growth. This is significant because most research focuses on microevolution, which are changes that occur within a specific species."

Dr Evans, an evolutionary biologist was surprised that a reduction in body size was more than ten times faster than an increase. "The huge difference in rates for getting smaller and getting bigger is really astounding - we certainly never expected it could happen so fast!"

Miniature animals were often found on islands, says Dr Evans, who is an Australian Research Fellow. "When you do get smaller, you need less food and can reproduce faster, which are real advantages on small islands."

Dr Theodor says, "Many of the species which shrunk, such as the dwarf mammoth, dwarf hippo and dwarf hominids, found in the Indonesian island of Flores, became extinct.

"What caused their dwarfism? They may have needed to be small to survive in their environment or perhaps food was scarce and a small stature would require less nutrients."

A mouse-to-elephant size change would take at least 24 million generations based on the maximum speed of evolution in the fossil record. Becoming smaller can happen much faster than becoming bigger: the evolution of pygmy elephants took 10 times fewer generations than the equivalent sheep-to-elephant size change

A mouse-to-elephant size change would take at least 24 million generations based on the maximum speed of evolution in the fossil record. Becoming smaller can happen much faster than becoming bigger: the evolution of pygmy elephants took 10 times fewer generations than the equivalent sheep-to-elephant size change; Credit: Alistair Evans, David Jones


The research, involving 20 palaeontologists and biologists studying 28 mammal groups, has just been published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The mammals, including elephants, primates and whales lived during the past 70 million years. Size change was measured in generations rather than yerars to help compare species with different life spans. The results showed it took at least 1.6 million generations for terrestrial mammal mass to increase 100-fold, 5.1 million generations to increase 1,000-fold and 10 million generations to increase 5,000-fold.

Co-author, Dr Erich Fitzgerald, Senior Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology, at Museum Victoria, Australia, says changes in whale size happens twice as fast as land animals. "This is probably because it's easier to be big in the water - it helps support your weight."

The study helps identify conditions that enable some mammals to thrive and increase in size and those that slow growth and may increase the risk of extinction.



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

Andean species threatened
87 marine mammal species eaten in 114 countries since 1990
A whale of a time
Mammals' heart disease risk may be a quirk of evolution
Elephants can take the heat

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/mammal-evolution-mouse-size-elephant-24million-generations/1797/ scitech Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:47:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/mammal-evolution-mouse-size-elephant-24million-generations/1797/ Tropical volcanoes caused Little Ice Age claim
Gifford Miller collects vegetation samples on Baffin Island; Photo Credit: University of Colorado Boulder


The 13th-century Little Ice Age was caused by four huge tropical volcanic eruptions, scientists believe. The Little Ice Age, which may have began as early as 1275AD, caused cooling that lasted five hundred years.

An international team of researchers, headed by the University of Colorado Boulder, USA, have used computer modelling along with radiocarbon dating of 150 samples of dead vegetation from under the edge of ice caps on Baffin Island, Canada, ice and sediment data, to investigate the incident.

They found most of the plants died from 1275-1300AD when they were frozen in ice and the cooling was sustained in the long run by sea-ice and ocean feedback.

Lead author Gifford Miller says, "This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age.

"We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time. If the climate system is hit again and again by cold conditions over a relatively short period--in this case, from volcanic eruptions--there appears to be a cumulative cooling effect."

The repeated cold summers that followed the eruptions were caused by an expansion of sea ice and weakened Atlantic currents, the research suggests.

Among previous theories about the cause of the Little Ice Age is a reduction in solar radiation in summer and volcanic eruptions that sent sulphates into the atmosphere and reflect the sunlight into space.

Co-author Bette Otto-Bliesner, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says, "Our simulations showed that the volcanic eruptions may have had a profound cooling effect. The eruptions could have triggered a chain reaction, affecting sea ice and ocean currents in a way that lowered temperatures for centuries."

Some scientists put the start of the Little Ice Age as late as the 16th century. Cold temperatures were most evident in Northern Europe where moving mountain glaciers destroyed towns and residents were able to skate on the Thames in London and the canals in Holland.

Gifford Miller, a fellow of Columbia University's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, says, "The dominant way scientists have defined the Little Ice Age is by the expansion of big valley glaciers in the Alps and in Norway. But the time in which European glaciers advanced far enough to demolish villages would have been long after the onset of the cold period."

Following the Baffin Island research, the team analysed sediment from an Icelandic glacier. The core sample became thicker in the late 13th century, which indicates increased erosion following the growth of the ice cap from the cooling.

Gifford Miller says, "That showed us the signal we got from Baffin Island was not just a local signal, it was a North Atlantic signal. This gave us a great deal more confidence that there was a major perturbation to the Northern Hemisphere climate near the end of the thirteen century."

The researchers then used the Community Climate System model to see the likely effects of volcanic cooling on Arctic sea ice and found that several large eruptions, within a relatively short space of time, could have cooled the Northern Hemisphere enough to begin the Arctic sea ice expansion.

Some of the sea ice would have melted in the North Atlantic. As it has little salt, the surface water would become less dense, stopping it mixing with deeper water. This will have been transported back to the Artic and the process could have continued for a long time after the effects of the volcanic eruptions finished, the simulations revealed.

The solar radiation was fixed at a constant level in the climate models, suggesting the Little Ice Age occurred without a reduction in summer solar radiation.

The study, which featured co-authors from the University of Iceland, the University of California Irvine and the University of Edinburgh, is published in Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union. It was partly financed by the Icelandic Science Foundation and the National Science Foundation.



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

Examining Ice Age Hominins' adaptability to Climate Change
Bees Please
What was responsible for the end of the last ice age?
Gray whales cruised through Ice Age on krill and herring

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/tropical-volcanos-caused-little-ice-age-claim/1795/ scitech Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:58:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/tropical-volcanos-caused-little-ice-age-claim/1795/ Green light for jumping spiders
This cute H. adonsoni jumping spider shows four of his eight eyes via Shutterstock


The zebra spiders and their allies (the Salticidae group) are jumping spiders that catch their prey without a web. In order to jump accurately on flies or other prey and fine-tune their capture technique, their 3D vision has to be perfect. Unlike the binocular approach of humans (stereopsis) or the insect method which moves the head from side to side to achieve a parallax by means of motion, these spiders use an image defocusing system to judge the relative distances involved.

Hasarius adansoni has eight eyes, with the outer two used for movement detection. Two central, "primary" eyes have four layers of photoreceptors. Two layers detect green light, one receiving focused images and the other receiving fuzzy (out-of-focus) images; with the two layers closest to the surface sensitive to ultraviolet light.

Osaka and other universities have been investigating the opsins(colour chemicals) of Arthropods and the colour vision of spiders for many years. This Japanese research showed that green light was necessary for accuracy since the spiders were able to judge their jumps successfully in green light. Presumably, they used the two layers closest to the retinal surface. In red light (which does not contain the shorter wavelength green light) many spiders could not jump accurately. The researchers then created a mathematical model to predict how inaccurate the jumps would be under different wavelengths of light. The model did predict the spiders' performance exactly as foreseen. These animals are therefore unique in using this depth perception technique.

Dr. Takashi Nagata of Osaka City University and several of his colleagues have published this research in the current Science journal. Japanese scientists and others have been investigating spider vision because of its unique mechanisms. The suitability of this system for robotic vision in the future seems high.



Jumping spiders shown under green and red light; Credit: © Science/AAAS


Computers or simple robots could more easily observe motion if they were able to simply focus on objects and, at the same time, detect the unfocussed image for this motion parallax to be achieved. Rapid detection of motion in an area or in a specific object could be used in surveillance, or as a vision system in new types of camera.



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

Spider 'Repell-Ant'
The curious world of the spider in the bubble

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/green-light-jumping-spiders/1789/ scitech Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:01:57 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/green-light-jumping-spiders/1789/ Satellite mapping could help prevent coral reef decline
Belize barrier reef via Shutterstock


A marine ecologist says new satellite mapping should be introduced to help identify and halt the rapid decline of coral reefs. Phil Dustan has been investigating coral reefs for almost 40 years, since famous marine ecologist Jacques Cousteau warned him in 1974 that humans were destroying reefs.

Dr Dustan, now a University of Charleston biology professor, in the United States, believes that by using Landsat satellite mapping the declining reefs, hotspots can be identified and conservation measures put in place.

He says, "There is no reason that a form of temporal texture monitoring could not be implemented with current satellites in orbit."

Most coral reefs are located in shallow water and can be seen by satellites through passive remote sensing. However, coral, sand and water all reflect light and satellites do not provide the level of spatial or spectral resolution required to separately identify them.

Rather than trying to classify the complex ecosystems, Dr Dustan studies the changes and variations in reflectance levels.

Left: A Landsat pixel-based map showing where the most change has been detected on Caryfort Reef between 1984 and 1996. Right: The spine of elevation shows where the most change has occurred, for Carysfort this change has been correlated with coral decline



He uses a timed series of data from Landsat images to work out the temporal texture - a map that identified changes based on analysing statistics from the reflectance data. Although the type of change cannot be identified, Dr Dustan can locate where major changes have taken place and these often indicate reef decline.

Dr Dustan says temporal texture maps provide scientists with a new method of examining coral reefs.

One example is at Carysfort Reef, in Florida Keys. From 1974 to 1999, research from Dr Dustan and colleagues showed the coral had declined a massive 92%, due to fatal diseases and other factors.

Using 30 Landsat images from 1982-1996, Dr Dustan created temporal texture maps, which identified areas that were known to have suffered major coral loss and that the seaward shallow areas fared worst. The repeated calibration of Landsat images ensures consistency.

At least eight Landsat images are needed for a reliable temporal texture map, but the more used, the better.

rainforest deforestation.

There was a 92 percent loss of living coral on Carysfort between 1975 and 2000. Credit: Dustan and Halas; FKNMS Coral Reef Evaluation and Monitoring Project


The launch of Landsat 7 in 1999 allowed images of coral reefs to be regularly captured and the first survey of worldwide reefs was completed by the Millennium Global Coral Reef Mapping Project. In future, it is hoped that more historic images of reefs can be added, as countries outside America may have more Landsat images of their reefs on record.

The Landsat Program includes various satellite missions, managed by the North American Space Agency and the US Geological Survey, that observe the Earth. Landsat satellites were first launched in 1972.



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

Let's save the corals
Coral reefs more vulnerable than they appear
The world's dying oceans
600 new species discovered in Madagascar over the past decade
Ocean acidification threatens coral reefs

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/satellite-mapping-coral-reef-decline/1787/ scitech Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:43:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/satellite-mapping-coral-reef-decline/1787/ Ubehebe holds fire (in Death Valley)
Death Valley's half-mile-wide Ubehebe Crater turns out to have been created 800 years ago - more recently than generally thought; Credit: Brent Goehring/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory


Holding out for 6000 years, scientists had believed that California's 600 feet deep Ubehebe Crater was an ancient volcanic creation, verified by the age of Native American artefacts beneath it. Forget that! Only 800 years ago, in 1300 AD, all hell reigned in Death Valley, meaning there is life likely below, in the tectonics. That is, the ground water below the surface can interact with nearby magma chambers to repeat the (relatively) recent blow out.

Geochemists from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory dated the rocks blown out of the crater of Ubehebe by superheated steam, ash and deadly gases. Lead author Peri Sasnett is shown below contemplating a sample of these small rocks:

ubehebe crater

Credit: Brent Goehring/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory


Brent Goering (now at Purdue University) and Nicholas Christy-Blick (two of the other authors) were on a student field-trip, investigating the sandstone and quartzite thrown from the crater Studying the beryllium isotopes and their decay by means of cosmic rays, the time of their exposure to the rays was an estimated 2100 to 800 years.

Smaller explosions (2100 years ago) would have culminated in, "the big one," in 1300AD. Other, numerous craters in the area are likely to have been produced by similar explosions. Every thousand years or less, the area is subject to this kind of deadly activity. Animal life within two miles or more would be flung around, suffocated, burned and bombarded! Dr. Goehring says, "It would be fun to witness - but I'd want to be 10 miles away," but a better personal preference is to stay home.

The hydrology might have been thought to indicate other scenarios. Wet places are indicated for phreatomagmatic events. Death Valley is so dry that the geologists could be thought wrong. Inevitably, the data agrees with the geology. If 1300 saw the explosion, it was even hotter and drier then than the present.

Stephanie Kyriazis, a park education specialist in geology, takes it on the chin. "This certainly adds another dimension to what we tell the public." (About a million people visit the park each year.) Don't ask what she says after the next explosion. Here is a map showing death valley between Las Vegas and Bakersfield. The fault lines that run through LA and the San Joaquin valley and several others indicate how close tectonic activity can occur -

rainforest deforestation.

Map of Los Angeles region via Shutterstock


The warning signs are to be shallow earthquakes, and steam venting from the ground for several years. Stephanie could try offering that as a tourist special for Dr Goehring. Already, Yellowstone to the east has boiled people alive, so a little competition is to be encouraged here. In 130 years, Yellowstone has had 20 small blowouts, while the intrepid Ms. Kyriazis pours cold water on the whole discussion." "Right now, we're not planning to issue an orange alert or anything like that," she said.



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

Whither biodiversity in climatic uncertainty?

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/ubehebe-holds-fire-death-valley/1777/ scitech Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:14:33 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/ubehebe-holds-fire-death-valley/1777/ Gregarious Cambrians (Siphusauctum gregarium) discovered
This is the culprit. A small holdfast clasps the substrate to hold the filters in a water current; Credit: © M. Collins


Lorna O'Brien always wanted to be a doctor. The gregarious "tulip creatures" (Siphusauctum gregarium) of Mount Stephen's Burgess Shale are hopefully granting her wish at the University of Toronto. The fossils have just been discovered near the town of Field, in large colonies from 500 million years ago. The Cambrian was the first flowering of complex animal life and the soft shales of Canada's World Heritage Site have perplexed and bewildered palaeontologists about their relationships to modern phyla.

These creatures solve the puzzle in one question. No, they are not related to anything else at all. They might as well be the much hoped for life on a distant earth-like planet. "Our description is based on more than 1,100 fossil specimens from a new Burgess Shale locality that has been nicknamed the Tulip Beds," said lead author, O'Brien. She produced the paper with her supervisor, Jean-Bernard Caron, curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum.

The tulip like appearance of these four animals shows up well in this fossil

The tulip like appearance of these four animals shows up well in this fossil. © Royal Ontario Museum


Siphusauctum gregarium looked like a tulip, about 20cm (or 8ins) long, filter feeding from the floor of the sea. The body or "calyx" is enclosed by a sheath, with six small filtering holes and a terminal anus. It has a large stomach, followed by a conical gut and straight section of intestine. Six radially-symmetrical sections contain the filtering combs. A rapid movement of mud is likely to have covered the groups and created the fossils and the shale. Only the stomach, and anus of the digestive tract show any phylogenetic relationships, but exactly which relationship is up in the air. Hence the new family, new genus, new species, in fact, new everything.

Paratype of Siphusauctum gregarium n. gen. and n. sp. (ROM 61413) and explanatory camera lucida drawing

Paratype of Siphusauctum gregarium n. gen. and n. sp. (ROM 61413) and explanatory camera lucida drawing. Scale bar = 5 mm. Abbreviations: A - Anus, Con - Conical structure, CS - Comb Segments, ES - External Sheath, H - Holdfast, IS - Inner Stem, LD - Lower Digestive tract, OS - Outer Stem, Sed - Sediment, TG - Transverse Groove, UD - Upper Digestive tract; Credit PLoS ONE (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029233.g002)


The Burgess Shales contain many primitive organisms with quite complex structure. Just above the Trilobite beds are these mudstone Tulip beds. The animals were deformed when dead, indicating the body was non-mineralised and compressed into a filmy carbonaceous form in the dark mudstone. Only one rare individual was compressed vertically to show the radial axis. The calyx decayed much more slowly than its enclosing sheath, and the conical gut structure was the most resistant part of the body.

How did Tulip live? Its ecology can only be derived from its morphology. We are left musing about a pumping mechanism and the use of cilia for internal transport of food. They were not colonial in the sense that they connected up and may have been only semi-sessile (ie. they could move a little) because the holdfast seems to have held a position in a soft sediment, deep in the ocean where few currents would affect the groups of creatures.

Closest to the Tulip animal in structure, some other stalked animals which are solitary, are a couple of species of Dinomischus. They share that odd tough conical gut structure, which indicates that there could be some connection. However, as many of the Burgess Shale animals are stalked and are vaguely similar, it's unlikely that we can find ancestors or descendents any time soon. The Tulip creatures have established themselves as a fine bunch of well-described Cambrians, thanks to Lorna and Jean-Bernard. I take my hat off to both of them, and their precious work.


© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

Release the 'Kraken', well the Artistic Triassic Cephalopod
Looking for the climate's future in the distant past
Soft-bodied giants roamed oceans longer than thought
Research casts light on planet's future

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/gregarious-cambrians/1774/ scitech Sat, 21 Jan 2012 13:35:01 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/gregarious-cambrians/1774/ Hubble discovers new galaxy cluster
Hubble BoRG 58 Survey Field. The composite image at left, taken in visible and near-infrared light, reveals the location of five tiny galaxies clustered together 13.1 billion light-years away. The circles pinpoint the galaxies; Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Trenti (University of Colorado, Boulder, and Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK), L. Bradley (STScI), and the BoRG team




An exciting discovery has been made of a cluster of galaxies that are in the very first stages of formation. This is the first grouping ever seen so far away in the early universe.
It was found using the Hubble Space Telescope during a random survey so was a complete chance discovery. They are in the very early stages and have existed since just 600 million years after the big bang.

There are no larger structures than galaxy clusters. They are made up of literally hundreds, or sometimes even thousands of different galaxies that are all held together by the force of gravity. Due to the time it takes for light to travel, the cluster is being seen as it appeared over 13 billion years ago, which is a staggering thought in itself.

Michelle Trenti, one of the researchers, said, "The result confirms our theoretical understanding of the build up of galaxy clusters and Hubble is just powerful enough to find the first examples of them at this distance."

Pretty much every galaxy in the known universe is part of a group or cluster. It is very hard to find a cluster in the early stages of development as they could be absolutely anywhere in the sky and are much dimmer than their more developed counterparts. Therefore this discovery is big news in the industry and has given an exciting insight into a previously unseen phenomenon.

Trenti continued, "We need to look in many different areas because the odds of finding something this rare are very small. It's like playing a game of Battleship : the search is hit and miss. Typically, a region has nothing, but if we hit the right spot, we can find multiple galaxies."

The easiest way to find these clusters is to instead hunt for the brightest galaxies that shine bright. These can then be a way of pinpointing where clusters may lay and it is this procedure that led to this discovery. How bright a galaxy is is dictated by mass. The more mass, the brighter it glows. The 5 bright galaxies that the NASA Hubble Telescope happened to see are only about 50% of our Milky Way or possibly even as little as 10% of the size. However, they are bright because they are feeding on huge amounts of gas through mergers with other galaxies. The research team have run simulations which show that eventually they will all merge together.

What the observations show is that the hierarchical model of galaxy assembly seems correct. This says that the small objects build up mass and merge to form increasingly bigger objects.

This is not the first observation of its type. Previously, a galaxy approximately 12.6 billion light years from Earth had been observed by a team of astronomers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Continued projects are now pushing the Hubble telescope to the very limit and the observations and research will continue. However, it is hoped that the next generation of telescopes will push limits even further and help to discover a galaxy at an even earlier stage of development. The goal at the moment is to find a galaxy that is at the stage of assembly that would be seen just 300 million years of the big bang. This could help to develop our understanding even further in this exciting field.



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

Big fat galaxy cluster discovered
New star clusters unveiled by ESO telescope

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/hubble-discovers-galaxy-cluster/1755/ scitech Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:52:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/hubble-discovers-galaxy-cluster/1755/ Black hole jets observed
Radio imaging by the Very Long Baseline Array (top row), combined with simultaneous X-ray observations by NASA's RXTE (middle), captured the transient ejection of massive gas "bullets" by the black hole binary H1743-322 during its 2009 outburst. By tracking the motion of these bullets with the VLBA, astronomers were able to link the ejection event to the disappearance of X-ray signals seen in RXTE data. These signals, called quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs), vanished two days earlier than the onset of the radio flare that astronomers previously had assumed signaled the ejection. (Credit: NRAO and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)




The NASA Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer satellite, which is known as RXTE for short and the NSF's Very Long Baseline Array radio telescope, or VLBA as it is more commonly known, helped a group of astronomers identify the moment when a black hole sent jets of superfast gaseous knots into space in our very own galaxy.

The gases were pumped out at 25% of the speed of light from just outside of the black hole's event horizon. Anything at the event horizon or beyond has no chance of escaping and therefore it could not have been from past this point.

Gregory Sivakoff was the person who announced the findings. He said, "Like a referee at a sports game, we essentially rewound the footage on the bullets progress, pinpointing when they were launched. With the unique capabilities of RXTE and the VLBA, we can associate their ejection with changes that likely signalled the start of the process."

The finding is incredibly exciting has stirred plenty of debate. The research all revolved around a binary system which is simply referred to as H1743-322, a not very elegant name, but functional nevertheless. It stands at over 28 thousand light years away from the Scorpius constellation and was discovered back in 1977. It is known to consist of a normal star as well as a black hole of an unknown size. Matter circles in towards the black hole which causes it to be heated to temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees. When mass gets heated to such temperatures it then emits X-rays and some of the matter gets hurled outwards at unbelievable speeds, in this case at 25% of the speed of light.

This action has all been picked up as X-ray and radio emissions which suddenly stopped. Then, the radio emission increased and a detailed image showed a bullet of gas moving outwards from the system. This was seen a second time. Chris Done who is an astrophysicist at the University of Durham was not involved in any of the research but did have something to say on the matter; "This research provides new clues about the conditions needed to initiate a jet and can guide our thinking about how it happens".

Very little is known about black holes. They are a phenomenon that have plenty of proof pointing towards their existence but as nobody has ever been able to peer into one, it is hard to say what truly happens when matter enters them. They do however seem to suck in literally anything that comes near to them and have even been seen to suck in light itself. Many believe that they could even suck in time and space and when calculations have been done black holes appear to have some extremely strange properties indeed.

The same phenomenon has now been seen in another galaxy where there is a black hole that weights literally millions or possibly even billion times the mass of our sun which makes for a mind-boggling thought. It is believed that this could drive outflows by millions of light-years.

"Black hole jets in binary start systems act as fast-forwarded versions of their galactic-scale cousins, giving us insights into how they work and how their enormous energy output can influence the growth of galaxies and clusters of galaxies." Said James Miller-Jones who is the head of research at Curtin University in Perth, Australia.

The Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer ran up until January 2012 and first started its job of observation back in December of 1995. It was run and used by NASA. The VLBA is the largest astronomical tool in the entire world and also stands as the highest resolution instrument as well.

It is hoped that these new observations and data can help to increase the understanding that we have of black holes as well as the jets that are given off. In some of the cases, the size, data and speed of everything involved stretches the human imagination are hard to imagine as possible, however, these actions and phenomenon are being observed and recorded and are showing us just how amazing the expanses of space really are.



X-ray and radio data let astronomers pinpoint when the black hole system H1743-322 ejected powerful gas 'bullets' during its mid-2009 outburst. In this animation, an X-ray hot spot in the gas around the black hole produced signals of rising frequency as the spot moved closer to the black hole. When the bullets were ejected June 3, the hot spot vanished; Credit: NASA




© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

Quasar disc seen around black hole

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/black-hole-jets-observed/1754/ scitech Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:39:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/black-hole-jets-observed/1754/ Big fat galaxy cluster discovered
El Gordo Galaxy Cluster; Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J. Hughes et al; Optical: ESO/VLT & SOAR/Rutgers/F. Menanteau; IR: NASA/JPL/Rutgers/F. Menanteau




The biggest and hottest galaxy cluster in the distant universe has been discovered. The huge galaxy cluster, ACT-CL J0102-4915, more than seven billion light years away, has been dubbed El Gordo (The Fat One) by Chilean researchers who located it.

It was discovered in Chile at the North American Space Agency's (NASA) Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ATC).

Study leader, Felipe Menanteau, of Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, says, "This cluster is the most massive, the hottest, and gives off the most X-rays of any known cluster at this distance or beyond."

Galaxy clusters are created when smaller groups of galaxies join and are held by gravity - the biggest objects to do so. Their creation is reliant on dark energy and dark matter. Dark energy is a theoretical form emitting negative pressure that leads to the increasing expansion of the universe. Dark matter is believed to exist because of its gravitational effects, even though any light it absorbs cannot be detected.

Researcher, Jack Hughes, also of Rutgers University, says, "Gigantic galaxy clusters like this are just what we were aiming to find. We want to see if we understand how these extreme objects form using the best models of cosmology that are currently available."

The fact that El Gordo is so far away means it can be seen at a young age. It was found because of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, where high-energy cluster electrons distort the cosmic microwave background radiation when colliding with low-energy photons.

X-ray data from Chanra and the aptly-named 8-metre Very Large Telescope in Chile, reveal that El Gordo is the scene of a high-speed collision between two galaxy clusters, similar to the Bullet Cluster, which is three billion light years away from Earth.

Cristobal Sifon, from Pontificia Universidad de Catolica de Chile (PUC), in Santiago, says, "This is the first time we've found a system like the Bullet Cluster at such a large distance. It's like the expression says: if you want to understand where you're going, you have to know where you've been."

The findings of the team are being revealed in more detail at the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, in Austin, Texas, USA, and will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

New star clusters unveiled by ESO telescope

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/big-fat-galaxy-cluster-discovered/1753/ scitech Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:16:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/big-fat-galaxy-cluster-discovered/1753/ Leaping Lizards and Self-righting Robots
Female Ground Agama (Agama aculeata) in the Kalahari Desert via Shutterstock




Combining the efforts of students and teachers in multiple disciplines can bring about advantageous consequences.

The separation between biology and engineering has been ignored in an interdisciplinary research project carried out at UC Berkeley. Led by Professor Robert J. Full, a team of biologists and engineers including students, both undergraduate and graduate, worked together to harmonise the approaches of both academic fields. They were investigating how a lizard utilised its tail to ensure success when jumping. Their goal was to use information from this project, and their differing perspectives on this problem, to inform future work into robotic motion.

This is not the first project in which Professor Full has connected the natural world and opportunities for engineering solutions. He has already looked into how the microscopic hairs of a gecko's foot enable its almost supernatural ability to climb smooth surfaces. More recently, he has investigated the role of a lizard's tail in the self-righting motion seen as it falls or slips.

The motion of an Agama lizard was captured and analysed using high-speed cameras and motion capture software. The experiment was done numerous times on surfaces with various levels of friction designed to create problems for the jumping reptile. From this, the team formulated a mathematical model that could simulate the motion and created a device to test the model. The team created 'Tailbot': a simple radio-controlled car with a tail, a gyroscope and an innovative 'inertial-assisted' feedback mechanism.

As shown in the video that accompanies this article, the model transformed the motion of the Tailbot. Without the benefit of the tail reacting to the form of the jump, the Tailbot would land nose-down, but with the model controlling the motion of the tail, a safer, nose-up landing was seen.

This work was intended to have practical uses and the implications for robotics are not insignificant. Maintaining balance and coping with difficult surfaces are big challenges for engineers working on autonomous robotic systems. Animals have had millions of years of evolution to overcome these hurdles and using the tried and tested methods that have resulted is an intelligent shortcut for researchers in this field.



Normal and slow-motion video of an Agama lizard after a leap from a surface with good traction versus a slippery surface, showing how the lizard uses its tail to prevent forward pitch. Tailbot, a wheeled robot with a tail, takes a nose-dive off a cliff with a passive tail, but is able to maintain its orientation with an actively controlled tail. Courtesy of CiBER/UC Berkeley.




© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

New species of lizard found being served up in a Vietnamese restaurant

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/leaping-lizards-self-righting-robots/1740/ scitech Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:22:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/leaping-lizards-self-righting-robots/1740/ An Ichthyosaur and other Tales
A very well preserved specimen of ichthyosaur called Stenopterygius, filling a dolphin-style niche, as well as being viviparous, described by Michael Maisch, from the Jurassic rocks of Lower Saxony via Shutterstock




Valentin Fischer of the University of Liege, with Michael W. Maisch and several others, including Darren Naisch of the School of Earth Sciences at Southampton University, have illuminated the dark recesses of ichthyosaur biology with the unveiling of a new species, having great bearing on the rise and fall of the group. Along with other animals such as ammonites, crocodiles and plesiosaurs, these marine animals seemed to lose out when the Jurassic gave way to the Cretaceous period 145.5 million years ago.

This divide between the two era is called the JCB (Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary). New European finds of plesiosaurs in North Yorkshire and Lower Saxony have caused the authors to name Acamptonectes densus as a new genus and species related to the Ophthalmosaurid group, found in the USA and in England. Since 2003, the number of Cretaceous ichthyosaurs known to science has risen above those known from the Jurassic.

The two branches of these reptiles successfully persisted through the Cretaceous, adding to the growing evidence that ichthyosaurs were relatively unaffected by the late Jurassic extinctions that befell marine groups. At best, research now points to any such extinctions at the JCB as being poorly understood. Certainly, both of the major branches of the ichthyosaurs persisted. The "fish-lizards" (what an awfully inefficient description that was!) ultimately became extinct 90 million years ago, in the late Cretaceous.

And what on earth has all the fossil hunting to do with reality? We live now with accurate fossil dating of human and other evolutions, giving strong hints about cataclysmic disaster that often affects the whole planet. These events include, of course, huge meteor strikes, the largest being the 170km 2 Yucatan crater from 65.5million years ago*. Many events from our ancient history, not the more recent flaccid kings and aggressive wars, can educate our successors about their fate. If we can do that, using fossils like these as our indicators, and the tools of interplanetary sciences, they could be the only form of life to survive their projected demise At least the ichthyosaur has now managed an extra 50 million years:

This chart perhaps explains the usefulness of all such research:


CAMBRIAN BEGINS

542mya Major groups of animals appear on earth

443mya MASS EXTINCTION

374mya MASS EXTINCTION over 20m years

251mya MASS EXTINCTION(greatest known)

Doubted 480 km2 crater in Antarctica

214mya METEOR (QUEBEC) 100km2 crater

201mya MASS EXTINCTION

JURASSIC BEGINS

167mya METEOR(PUCHEZH-KATUNKI, RUSSIA) 80km2 crater

145mya METEOR(S.AFRICA) 70km2 crater

CRETACEOUS BEGINS (JCB)

133mya METEOR (AUSTRALIA) 55km2 crater

70 mya METEOR (KARA, RUSSIA) 65km2 crater

65.5mya THE HUGE YUCATAN METEOR* + MASS EXTINCTION [And the next meteor?]



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles

Did icy-methane bring on the age of the dinosaur?
Scientists' research sounds warning for our oceans
Mass extinction is here and we don't want to keep it waiting
Is the sixth mass extinction of life on earth already happening?
Did some dinosaurs survive the mass extinction?

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/mass-extinction-ichthyosaur-tales/1739/ scitech Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:05:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/mass-extinction-ichthyosaur-tales/1739/ Brucellosis is an ancient disease
This vertebra, about 1,000 years old, was ravaged by brucellosis. Photo by G.L. Kohuth




Once again, new technology and procedures have allowed modern science to unlock the secrets of the past and delve into areas that were previously unobtainable to us. This time, it has been regarding an ancient disease that is still with us today but was never known to have existed for so long.

In Michigan, two teams of University researchers have just confirmed the existence of brucellosis in some ancient skeletal remains that were found. Brucellosis is an infectious disease that still lives on in today's world but this new finding suggests that the disease has been with us since at least the Middle Ages, if not earlier. This has come to quite a shock to both researchers and the medical community who had never imagined that the disease had been with us for that long.

The research was conducted by a team working at a medieval burial site in Albania. They worked in conjunction with another team who were based at a DNA lab in East Lansing; it is their combined results that have confirmed the new findings which would not have been possible without the collaboration of the two teams and the advances in technology that have allowed this analysis of the DNA.

Brucellosis is a respiratory illness that causes severe fever. It is contracted by eating infected meat but can also be contracted through unpasteurised dairy products or direct contact with infected animals. Sometimes, simply touching an infected animal that is carrying the bacteria is enough to infect a person and although it is much rarer today than it was, there are still many cases reported each year.

A study co-led by Todd Fenton (above), associate professor of anthropology, is the first to confirm the existence of the infectious disease brucellosis in ancient skeletal remains

A study co-led by Todd Fenton (above), associate professor of anthropology, is the first to confirm the existence of the infectious disease brucellosis in ancient skeletal remains. Photo by G.L. Kohuth


Todd Fenton is the associate professor of anthropology. He said that the DNA testing confirmed that the disease had been contracted by the skeleton found that was around 1000 years old. He said, "For years, we had to hypothesize the cause of pathological conditions like this," Fenton said. "The era of DNA testing and the contributions that DNA can make to my work are really exciting."

Todd Fenton has a group of MSU graduate students who consisted of a mixture of bone specialists and bioarcheologists. They were excavating sites in Butrint which is an ancient city in Albania. It had been part of the Roman colony but had eventually been left in the Middle Ages due to flooding. However, human remains were found here, possibly of people who had been left behind, had no option to leave or maybe did not leave in time or had died before the floods had come. The tests were conducted to determine aspects such as age and sex. It was noticed that there were significant lesions on some of the remains that date back to the 10th to 13th century. The team had at first thought these could have been caused by tuberculosis which would have been very common at the time and often causes similar lesions on skeletal remains.

The team sent samples of the bone to the DNA lab in East Lansing in order to try and confirm this. David Foran is the director there and it was his team that then extracted DNA and tested it to see what pathogens still existed, however there was a negative result for tuberculosis. This was a big surprise to all of the team who had been sure that tuberculosis tests would have come back as positive.

It was known that brucellosis could have caused similar lesions on the remains so they retested for this disease with some trepidation. Their hunch was correct as he results came back as positive for brucellosis and the mystery was solved.

"In this case it was a combination of inquisitiveness, persistence and of course collaboration," Foran said. "It is amazing to find something brand new in something that is a thousand years old."



© The Earth Times. You must request expressed, written consent to copy, reprint, rewrite, republish or otherwise reproduce this material either in part or in full on any medium. If this notice is showing you do not have permission.


Published on The Earth Times


Related Articles


]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/brucellosis-ancient-disease/1734/ scitech Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:31:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/scitech/brucellosis-ancient-disease/1734/