Sea otters ahead of dolphins in using tools

Sea otters may have been using stone tools for thousands or even millions of years, according to scientists.

It appears otters learned how to use tools long before other marine mammals.

Sea otters are often seen floating on their backs, using rocks to break open shellfish for food.

A genetic study of more than 100 wild sea otters living off the Californian coast suggests their ancestors living millions of years ago showed this behaviour.

Dolphins in Australia have been seen to use sponges to protect their noses when scouting for fish on the sea floor.

However, this seems to be a relatively new invention, happening less than 200 years ago.

Dr Katherine Ralls of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, US, said they were surprised to find sea otters using tools were not from the same family group, suggesting the behaviour originated in the ancestors of modern sea otters.

"It's older in sea otters," she told BBC News. "They're very smart; they'll use rocks as anvils and as hammers."

Unlike dolphins, using tools seems to be innate in all young sea otters, said the researchers.

"Orphaned otter pups raised in captivity exhibit rudimentary pounding behaviour without training or previous experience, and wild pups develop tool-use behaviour before weaning regardless of their mother's diet type," they wrote in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

The sea otter is found along the coasts of the Pacific Ocean in North America and Asia.

They were once hunted for their fur almost to extinction.

Early in the 20th Century only 1,000 to 2,000 animals remained. Sea otters are now protected by law.

The researchers plan to study fossil remains of sea otters to confirm when the behaviour emerged.

They think depressions in the chests of some modern otters - thought to be from holding rocks on their chests - might be present in fossil specimens.

Tool use has been observed in a range of animals, including crows and primates.

"Sea otters provide a fascinating opportunity to investigate how genetic predispositions, learning, and environmental conditions contribute to a species' capacity to use foraging tools," said Dr Christian Rutz, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of St Andrews, who studies tool use in Hawaiian crows and New Caledonian crows.

"It is particularly exciting that otter pups express rudimentary tool behaviour in captivity without any demonstration or training. We have seen similar developmental patterns in our experiments with young crows."

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Rosetta saw cliffs collapse on comet

The comet visited by the Rosetta spacecraft is constantly being re-shaped, sometimes in dramatic fashion.

It witnessed the collapse of entire cliffs at two locations on Comet 67P, events that were probably driven by exposure to sunlight.

The European probe documented the widespread breakdown of materials on the surface during nearly two years orbiting the 4km-wide body.

Details were presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC).

 Rosetta entered orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, to give its full name, in September 2014.

The mission enabled researchers to capture multiple images of the comet's surface features over time, to study how it changed.

"This is the first mission where we've been able to have such a huge dataset of high-resolution images, but at the same time had a long mission to a comet to study it and see how it evolves through more than two years as it journeyed through the inner Solar System," said lead author Mohamed El-Maarry, from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Repeated heating and cooling can tease the surface materials apart, leading to erosion, say the researchers.

Dr El-Maarry and colleagues observed cliff collapses at two regions on the comet called Ash and Seth. These collapses occurred as pre-existing fractures gave way, causing sections of material tens of metres long to crumble.

In 67P's Khonsu region, a massive boulder was seen to move a distance of 140m. This could have been caused by erosion of the sloped surface the boulder was sitting on, causing it to roll. But the hefty rock could also have been moved by an outburst of dust and gas from within the comet, says the team.

At another location in the Anubis region, a steep slope retreated at a rate of 5.4m each day.

The authors note that most changes - including the erosion and the movement of boulders - occurred around perihelion, when Comet 67P was at the point in its orbital path closest to the Sun.

This suggests the events were driven by shifting patterns of exposure to sunlight.

However, some of the changes were unrelated to this. In the "neck" region, which connects the two large lobes of the duck-shaped comet, a huge fracture, estimated to be more than 500m in length, extended by at least another 30m. This change is thought to be connected to an increase in the comet's spinning rate.

"We see a lot of changes, but most of those are localised," said Dr El-Maarry. "We didn't get fireworks and comets splitting and massive depressions being created. We didn't see major changes in the comet's landscape. It means we had more activity earlier in the comet's lifetime."

Comet 67P was discovered in 1969 by the Soviet astronomers Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko, after whom it is named.

Rosetta was dumped on the surface of the icy dirt-ball in September last year and deactivated.

The LPSC runs from 20-24 March in the Woodlands, Texas. As well as reporting the 67P observations at the meeting, Mohamed El-Marry and colleagues have written up a report for the journal Science.

A companion paper on surface changes was timed for simultaneous release in the journal Nature Astronomy. Authored by Maurizio Pajola and colleagues, this study concentrated on the circumstances surrounding the collapse of a cliff called Aswan.

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Tiny genetic change lets bird flu leap to humans

A change in just a single genetic "letter" of the flu virus allows bird flu to pass to humans, according to scientists.

Monitoring birds for viruses that carry the change could provide early warning of risk to people, they say.

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong studied a strain of bird flu that has caused human cases in China for several years.

Birds carry many flu viruses, but only a few strains can cause human disease.

H7N9 is a strain of bird flu that has caused more than 1,000 infections in people in China, according to the World Health Organization.

Most cases are linked to contact with infected poultry or live poultry markets.

The change in a single nucleotide (a building block of RNA) allows the H7N9 virus to infect human cells as well as birds, say Prof Honglin Chen and colleagues.

They say there is "strong interest in understanding the mechanism underpinning the ability of this virus to cause human infections and identification of residues that support replication in mammalians cells is important for surveillance of circulating strains."

Flare-up

Dr Derek Gatherer, an expert on viruses at Lancaster University, UK, says more surveillance of bird flu viruses is needed.

"The recent flare-up of H7N9 bird flu in China has been the cause of some concern this winter, and the demonstration that the new replicative efficiency mutation is present in this strain is not good news," he told BBC News.

"Also, the observation that this mutation has been present in other bird flu subtypes like H9N2 and spreading slowly for over 15 years shows that H7N9 isn't the only kind of bird flu that is potentially a pandemic risk for humans.

"We need to maintain a broader surveillance of bird flu to identify which strains have this mutation."

The research, published in the journal, Nature Communications, will help scientists understand more about how bird flu viruses adapt to infect humans.

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Nasa 'smallsats' open up new planetary frontier

Nasa is planning a series of small satellite missions that could open up new ways of exploring the Solar System.

James Green, head of planetary science at Nasa, told BBC News that the agency was investing in the technology and looking at how best it could be used.

Scientists studying these "smallsats" believe they have now proven their utility for cutting edge science.

They could be deployed from larger spacecraft to carry out targeted investigations, Dr Green explained.

These would complement the objectives of the main mission. Indeed, the Insight mission to Mars will test this approach, despatching two small satellites to collect data as the main lander descends to the Red Planet's surface.

But smallsats could also operate in constellations of 10 or many more.

"We're thinking about some other cubesat concepts, not only at Mars, but at the Moon, at asteroids, at Venus," the director of Nasa's planetary science division told me here at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Texas.

Dr Green said: "There's an array of ideas that we're kicking around right now. So I think what we'll see in the next 10 or 15 years is that the smaller satellites will have their own way to be implemented in planetary science that will be very complementary and we'll get some exciting science from them."

These spacecraft typically weigh less than 180kg compared with several tonnes for the satellites commonly used for bigger, costlier planetary missions.

 "What we're seeing is a capability that we haven't really seen before in terms of small satellites that can do pretty good science at a much reduced cost compared to the big missions," Dr Steve Mackwell from the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) in Maryland told BBC News.

"The miniaturisation and new capabilities means that we can open up science to places that we would have had to send a larger mission, and as a result it may never have flown."

"We're really opening up the opportunity to look at the inner Solar System, to places like Venus and the Moon."

At a Nasa briefing here at the LPSC, Dr Green said sending miniature satellites to other planetary bodies had previously presented challenges: "The further you are away, you get power difficulties, communication difficulties. There's a number of problems that arise from that. But we shouldn't be afraid... we need to figure out what are the technologies we need to make them a viable set of missions."

Dr Mackwell cites a few advances that are already helping bridge the gap. "The propulsion systems are compact enough now to put them in places where they can get a ride and then manoeuvre to their ultimate destination," he explained.

Engineers are also demonstrating innovative ways to fold up solar panels into smallsats, in order to boost their capabilities.

He added: "These [spacecraft] aren't limited to orbital components, some of these smallsats could go down to the surface of a planet potentially. We've talked about Venus for smallsats to do exploration.

"It's difficult to do anything at Venus… it has a surface temperature of 470C and a surface pressure of 90 bars. So the risk associated with a large mission may be too high to absorb that, whereas with a small mission you can send them very capably."

Progress is being made on the technology required to achieve this. Engineers at Nasa's Glenn Research Center recently demonstrated printed electronics that could operate for prolonged periods in the harsh conditions found on Venus.

Nasa's announcement on smallsats follows a 2016 report by the US National Academies that concluded that the technology platforms had demonstrated their ability to provide high value science.

Last year, Nasa put out a call for smallsat ideas, which drew 102 proposals from the planetary science community. The space agency considered missions costing up to $100m (£80m).

From this longlist, an initial 10 missions have been selected, two each for Venus, the Moon, asteroids, Mars and outer planets and icy bodies. But several more that didn't quite make the cut this time could be funded in the near future as Nasa expands its mission roster of smallsats.

Nasa largely escaped the large cuts made to other federal agencies for 2018 in President Trump's budget request announced late last week. Its budget was reduced by only 1% to $19.1 billion.

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Genetically-modified crops have benefits - Princess Anne

Princess Anne has said genetically-modified crops have important benefits for providing food and she would be open to growing them on her own land.

She told BBC Radio 4's Farming Today "we have to accept" the process could help production and livestock health.

Her brother, the Prince of Wales, has previously warned GM crops could cause an environmental disaster.

But Princess Anne said: "To say we mustn't go there 'just in case' is probably not a practical argument."

In an interview with the rural affairs programme to be broadcast on Thursday, the 66-year-old Princess Royal said she saw no problem with modifying crops if it improved their ability to grow.

"Gene technology has got real benefits to offer," said Princess Anne, who is a working farmer and patron of nearly 50 countryside organisations.

She said gene technology would "maybe have an occasional downside but I suspect not very many".

She added that she would be happy to use GM for crops and livestock on her own farming estate, Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire.

'A bonus'

"We grow some very good plants here remarkably easily," she said. "I don't see the problem in saying 'is there something we could do to improve their abilities?'"

Princess Anne talked about the difficulties she has experienced developing rare-breed cattle, adding long-term investment to develop suitable genetic modification to help improve their health would be a "bonus".

Farming Today has been speaking to a number of leading figures about the future of the environment and farming post-Brexit.

Deep-seated opposition has seen just one GM crop commercially cultivated in the EU over the past 20 years.

In the UK, as in many other countries, there have been several trials, including GM wheat, but nothing has ever been licensed.

However, that could all change as in the House of Commons last autumn, farming minister George Eustice indicated the government was open to re-examiningits position with GM crops after the UK leaves the EU.

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What animal has the biggest sperm in the world? The answer might be surprising

The answer might surprise you, because the sperm of this animal is about 20 times bigger than the animal itself.

Well the answer to whom has the largest sperm in the animal kingdom is the fruit fly! This creature’s sperm is nearly 6 centimetres (2,5 inches) long and is about 20 times the size of the insect itself. It’s a quite unexpected candidate for having the longest sperm, because in human terms this would mean that a guy would have a single sperm as tall as a 12-story building! Damn.

The sperm of a fruit fly is knotted up into a ball and takes up a lot of real estate inside of the female

But how could this by functional and evolutionary advantage? The fruit fly’s sperm is actually knotted up into a ball and they form inside the female’s reproductive tract in which it reaches the massive length. This is all due to the sperms dilution hypotheses, which states that smaller animals have larger sperm and bigger animals have smaller sperm. The bigger the female reproductive organ is the more evolutionarily beneficial it is for the male to produce larger quantities of smaller sperm – like in our case.

In the case of fruit fly sperm, it will take up a lot of real estate when it is inside of the female. This is due to the fact that female fruit flies mate with multiple males, so this will give certain male fruit flies a noticeable advantage over others. The one with the sperm that takes up the most space wins. From this perspective it might be obvious why humans won’t produce the largest sperm in the animal kingdom – human sperm would have to enormous and it would not give us any evolutionary advantage.

SOURCE: OMG facts

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G6

What would happen if you put these cute balloon animals into liquid nitrogen?

The first thing you might expect is a big KABOOM, but instead something unexpected happens.

          When you place balloon animals into a beaker of liquid nitrogen something very strange happens. In this MIT physics lab experiment these cute unfortunately won’t go out with a bang, but when they reemerge from the liquid nitrogen something amazing happens with each of the air-filled balloon animals.

     But how is this possible? Well this perfectly demonstrates the so-called ideal gas law that states that a drop in temperature with a fixed mass and external pressure will result in a smaller volume, and vice versa. In short this boils down to the fact that the volume of the balloon decreases by the low temperature due to the fact that the gas inside is cooled down.

Atoms and molecules are being slowed down which is causing the balloon to deflate

In this case the atoms and molecules that move and collide with the walls of the balloon are being slowed down and causing it to shrink. Furthermore, you can cause a similar effect the other way around by laying a balloon into the sun, this will speed op the atoms and molecules causing it to increase the pressure inside. Pretty amazing right?!

SOURCE: 

MIT techtv

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