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Genetic Testing Finds Rat and Human DNA in Burgers

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Wow, that ham-rat-long pig burger looks delicious!

In this day and age we tend to be very sensitive in regards to pretty insignificant matters. Sadly, when it comes to matters that are actually important, we tend to either overlook them or to have a huge chunk of the population utterly misinformed. If we cared more about what actually matters, we’d be far better off.

Food, for instance, should definitely be something we really care about. And some people, in fact, do care about what they are eating. The problem is with how the food industry lies about what ingredients and percentages of ingredients they use. It not even necessarily on purpose, it’s just more convenient this way.

According to a new study from Clear Labs, the company which revealed some pretty disturbing things about hot dogs last year, genetic testing finds rat and human DNA in burgers. And while that might seem like the worst news, far more unpleasant things were discovered during the testing.

The laboratory looked at 258 different samples of frozen patties, ground meat, veggie burger products, and fast food burgers from 79 different brands and 22 different retailers. The food was tested for substituted ingredients, toxic fungi and plants, gluten, contamination, missing ingredients, and allergens.

Products were also tested to see whether the amount of nutrients and the ingredients were the same as on the labels. According to the researchers, as many as 23.6 percent of the tested products showed at least some discrepancies between the label and the actual product.

Some of the worst-sounding problems encounters that were not really as bad they sounded were that in two cases meat was found in vegetarian products, that no black beans were found in one black bean burger, and that three products contained rat DNA and one contained human DNA.

Actually, the worst findings were that Yersinia pseudotuberculosis was found in four of the analyzed products (it causes symptoms similar to tuberculosis), as well as five other very dangerous contaminants – Clostridium perfringens, Aeromonas hydrophila, Yersinia enterocolitica, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Escherichia coli.

In terms of nutritional variation, all the samples fared horribly. Almost fifty percent of all products contained more calories or more carbohydrates than listed on the packaging. Still, according to FDA, things are just par for the course. As Clear Labs said in the report:

The low incidence of hygienic issues surfaced by our study is a testament to the burger industry as a whole and the stringent protocols for safe food handling. As noted by the FDA, certain low levels of contamination are acceptable.

Image source: Wikimedia

Babies May Get a Learning Boost from Music

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Perhaps a different style? Something more… upbeat?

We all know that children are extremely influential and that the youngest they are the more easily to influence they are. But we have no idea exactly how easy to influence these future adults actually are despite whatever we might think we know. It’s all a lot more complicated than previously believed.

Why is that, you ask? For the most part, it’s because babies are apparently influential enough to have their entire development affected by music by the time they are nine months old. At least that’s what a study from the University of Washington in Seattle says, as researchers discovered that babies may get a learning boost from music.

But what does that even mean – a learning boost? And what type of music did the researchers refer to? Let’s dig into the study and find out more about the relationship between infantile cognitive skills and listening to music.

For the experiment, the scientists picked a sample of 39 babies. All of them were nine months old, and the first stage of the study lasted for a month, while the second for a single session with each baby. For better accuracy, the babies were divided into two groups – the control group and the subjects.

While the members of the control group had daily 15-minute-long sessions over the course of a month during which they played with different toys, the actual study participants listened to recordings of children’s music while the experimenter led the parents and babies by tapping to the beats in time with the music.

Interestingly, the team decided that the music should be in triple meter, like in waltz. This was chosen because waltzes are generally more difficult for babies to learn, but still easier than other options that were suggested, like classical music, particularly Mozart.

A week after the play/music sessions were finished, the second part of the experiment began. The babies came in for a series of brain scans, but got a lot more to do than just that. While in the scanner, the infants listened to an array of music and speech sounds, all played out in an occasionally disrupted rhythm.

The idea was to see if the babies’ brains would show any sort of response when or if they identified the disruption in the sounds. As it turns out, the brains of the babies in the music group were far better able to identify the disruptions and to respond to them than the playing group.

While not all that much could be inferred from the study other than the fact that babies may get a learning boost from music, scientists are pretty confident to recommend that children should be taken to music classes as soon as possible. Further studies have to be performed if the team wants to find out anything more on the subject.

Image source: Pixabay

Seeds Saved Birds from the Dinosaur Extinction

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The fossils of several feathered non-avian Maniraptoran dinosaurs

While the reason behind the extinction of the dinosaurs is a generally known fact, it was only in a recent study that we found out that the giant reptiles that ruled out planet in the past had been on the decline for some fifty million years before they went extinct.

This had to do with more than a single factor, as volcanic eruptions, the separation of the continents, and on-going climate change caused by billions of tons of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere all contributed to the dinosaurs’ slow but certain decline. But that’s not to say that had the asteroid not hit the dinosaurs would have still been extinct.

Oh no, they would likely have still been around today, only in a much different form than the one to which we are used. This is even proven by the fact that there are still members of the theropod class of dinosaurs still alive today. And yes, I am talking about birds.

But seeing as they evolved from dinosaurs that were alive sixty-six million years ago, how exactly did they manage to evolve? Well, according to a recent study from the Universities of Toronto and Alberta, seeds saved birds from the dinosaur extinction. Well, not birds as we know them today, but maniraptoran dinosaurs, a clave of small carnivorous theropods that largely resembled today’s birds.

So if the modern day birds’ ancestors were carnivorous and they were alive when the asteroid hit, how is it that we still have birds, and what did seeds have to do with anything? Well, as the climate was changing, as the dinosaurs were dying off, and as the sunlight was covered by a cloud of ash, food was beginning to be very scarce.

While meat was getting rarer and rarer, and plants couldn’t really photosynthesize with no sunlight, one of the very few sources of food remaining were seeds. Buried in the ground and viable for consumption for up to five decades, the dinosaurs that wanted to survive had to adapt to their new conditions.

Of course, larger dinosaurs couldn’t really survive on just seeds, so the smaller, carnivorous, toothed maniraptorans had to combine their meaty diet with plenty of seeds. Over time, they evolved so that they lost their teeth and started eating mostly seeds and other creatures smaller than them, eventually reaching the form of today’s birds.

One of the biggest problems with identifying that particular class of dinosaurs was that their bones were very fragile. So, it’s a very common occurrence for the only fossils encountered by scientists to be the teeth, as they tended to be stronger than the regular bones. This made it quite hard for the team to actually find out when maniraptorans evolved into birds, even if they tried to reverse engineer the process by following the birds’ ancestors instead of the dinosaurs’ descendants.

Image source: Wikimedia

Magic Mushrooms’ Psilocybin Reduces Social Exclusion Pain

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We do not promote drug use, unless you really know what you’re getting yourself into

Even in the progressive and mostly open-minded society we live in, drugs are a subject of controversy and arguments. This is mostly caused by people clumping them all together under the moniker “drugs”, but also by continuous insistence of the United States government to keep them as illegal as possible.

And while marijuana might have won some traction in the past few years, with its recreational use becoming legal in a few states and its medicinal use in even more of them, other drugs that are just as useful and have as much potential are still universally banned.

And this is a shame, because if researchers were allowed to study those drugs even half as intensely as some people smoke tobacco or drink alcohol, we would have had the cures to many more mental diseases and issues than we do now. But finally, it seems like some researchers are given a green light to do some light experiments on these “dangerous narcotics”, and they discovered some pretty interesting things.

After last week a team of researchers discovered why LSD makes you feel one with the universe, this week we a have a different team that shows that the magic mushrooms’ psilocybin reduces social exclusion pain. In case you haven’t caught on, psilocybin is the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms, which are also colloquially known as magic mushrooms.

The study, led by postdoctoral researcher Katrin Preller from the University of Zurich, shows that the psilocybin in magic mushrooms greatly reduces the emotional response associated with being socially excluded. This works by attenuating the activity in the associated areas of the brain.

For the research, 21 participants had to play video games and take magic mushrooms. Of course, there’s more to it than that, but it just goes to show that you can still be paid for doing what you love. Anyway, the participants had to play a video game with what they assumed were two people but were actually two separate AIs.

As they were playing, the AIs were also including the participants in their conversation, but they gradually started ignoring them and only talking among themselves. The test was taken twice by each participant, once as they were given a low dose of psilocybin, and once more as they were given a placebo.

Expectedly, even if they remained aware during both circumstances that the two AIs (whom they thought to be people) were ignoring them, the participants reported far fewer feelings of exclusion when they were given the psychoactive substance.

Of course, the volunteers were also looked at in an MRI machine in order to have their brain activity studied.  Three major conclusions were drawn from the brain scans, each related to how the substance affected the brain and how its regions communicated with each other.

First and foremost, there was far less activity in the areas of the brain that had to do with anxiety, stress, and depression. Next, instead of focusing on those areas, the brain instead made connections between areas that don’t normally communicate with each other, thus bringing forth some hallucinations and reducing negative feelings.

Last but not least, just like LSD and some other psychoactive substances, psilocybin was shown to increase subjective feelings of connection to the environment and to other people, something that leads to stronger empathetic connections between people and reduction of the egocentric bias. This allows you to better understand your peers, making it nearly impossible to get upset with them, and allowing you to feel a connection with everyone and everything.

Image source: Wikimedia

What Really Happens To The Missing Asteroids Up There

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Asteroids are spectacularly destroyed before reaching the sun.

Asteroids are spectacularly destroyed before reaching the Sun.

New study reveals what really happens to the missing asteroids up there, in our Solar System. An international team of scientists have debunked the theory that asteroids and comets end their existence with a final plunge into the sun. It turns out, they disintegrate long before that.

Asteroids are nothing but small, airless rocky worlds revolving around the sun, that are too small to be called planets. They are also known as planetoids or minor planets. In total, the mass of all the asteroids is less than that of Earth’s moon. But despite their size, asteroids can be dangerous. Many have hit Earth in the past, and more will crash into our planet in the future.

That’s one reason scientists study asteroids and are eager to learn more about their numbers, orbits and physical characteristics. This is how they came up with this new finding regarding the death of these ‘minor planets’. The study may bring us closer to understanding how to protect the Earth from an asteroid strike.

Until recently, scientists believed that the demise of asteroids close to Earth happen in a fiery collision with the sun. But by examining nearly 9,000 near-Earth objects, or NEOs, an international team of researchers have recently found that asteroids and comets crumble long before they reach the surface of the blazing star.

So, it turns out that the asteroids are actually dying a slow death, not unlike humans in their later stages of life, they are simply breaking down.

The team’s work also helps explain several discrepancies between observations and predictions of the distribution of small objects in our Solar System. Meteors are such an object. These are effectively tiny bits of dust and rock dislodged from the surfaces of asteroids and comets that then end their lives burning up as they enter our atmosphere.

Observations and studies have established that meteors often travel in ‘streams’ that follow the path of their parent object. However, in almost all cases astronomers have been unable to match most of the meteor streams on orbits closely approaching the Sun with known parent objects.

What the latest study suggests is that the parent objects were completely destroyed when they came too close to the Sun, leaving behind streams of meteors but no parent NEOs. They also found that darker asteroids are destroyed farther from the Sun than brighter ones.

This case is explained by an earlier discovery that NEOs that approach closer to the Sun are brighter than those that keep their distance from the Sun. The fact that dark objects are more easily destroyed implies that dark and bright asteroids have a different internal composition and structure.

So, brighter asteroids, survive longer than dark asteroids, which absorb more light. And smaller asteroids disintegrate faster than bigger ones.

According to Mikael Granvik, a research scientist at the University of Helsinki and lead author of the study, their new finding allows planetary scientists to understand a variety of recent observations from a new perspective. It also leads to a more profound advance in asteroid science.

Perhaps the most intriguing outcome of this study is that it is now possible to test models of asteroid interiors simply by keeping track of their orbits and sizes.

Granvik stated.

However, the strange case of the missing asteroids is now solved. Perhaps our world would be far different today if it weren’t for the Sun destroying vast numbers of these space-borne objects.

Image Source: wallpaper4me.com.

Scientists Unravel 1.1-Million-Year-Old Stegodon Tusk

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This is how a stegodon looked like.

This is how a stegodon looked like.

The pakistani scientists unravel 1.1-million-year-old stegodon tusk in the province of Punjab, potentially shedding new light on the mammal’s evolutionary journey.

It is known that stegodonts are distant cousins of modern elephants. They are thought to have been present on earth from around 11 million years ago until the late Pleistocene period, which lasted until the end of the last Ice Age around 11,700 years ago.

According to the team, the tusk that has been recently unearthed measures eight feet (2.44 metres) in length and is around eight inches (20.3 cm) in diameter, making it the the largest ever discovered in the country. The stegodon tusk was discovered by scientists from the University of the Punjab’s zoology department during an expedition in the Padri district.

This discovery adds to our knowledge about the evolution of the stegodon, particularly in this region.

stated  Professor Muhammad Akhtar, lead researcher of the excavation. He also added that the discovery sheds light on what the mammal’s environment was like when it was alive.

So far, the age of the stegodon tusk was determined through a radioactive dating technique that involved uranium and lead, researchers declared. However, the dating of the tusk needs further verification.

An interesting fact about stegodonts is that they were known for their long, nearly straight tusks and low-crowned teeth with peaked ridges. This indicated they were browsers or mixed feeders in a forested environment, in contrast to the high-crowned plated molars of elephants, which allowed them to graze.

On the other hand, stegodons were good swimmers. They were thought to have come from Africa and then quickly spread to Asia, where most fossils of the mammal were found.

Dr. Gerrit Van Den Bergh is a paleontologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia, who has done extensive research on the ancient mammals of several countries, including Pakistan. He noted that stegodons became extinct around the time when modern humans emerged.

The same paleontologist added that around 1.2 million years ago the creatures were still thriving. In what concerns their species, they are mostly Asian, but remains have been found further afield. The expert also informs us that a molar fragment has recently been discovered in Greece.

However, this is not the first time when the excavation-site grabbed headlines for prehistoric fossils. Previously, researchers discovered ancient skulls and teeth of bovid from the Punjabi dig site. After analysis, it was found that the remains belong to subfamily Reduncinae.

Image Source:  photobucket.com.

The Story Of Wisdom, The 65-Year-Old Laysan Albatross

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Meet Wisdom. She’s a beautiful Laysan Albatross and a 65-year-old mother.

The story of Wisdom, the 65-year-old Laysan Albatross is the topic that defies the knowledge of scientists all around the world.

Meet Wisdom. She’s a beautiful Laysan Albatross, widely thought to be the world’s oldest bird currently roaming planet Earth. However, what made headlines back then was not the fact that she was 65-years-old. The report was instead about the fact that she had laid an egg at such an old age.

Back when the report was released, the Albatross had come back to U.S. soil, at the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge, located northwest of Hawaii, with a mate, after remaining incognito for over a year. She was back at the world’s largest nesting albatross colony to raise her new chick – also thought to be her 40th.

It seemed like age was nothing but a number for this rare albatross. And that turned out to be true. Two months later and in present time, it has been confirmed that the egg laid by Wisdom did hatch and that she has had her 40th chick. This is an impressive feat for a bird as old as her, says a report by The Christian Science Monitor.

Wisdom’s egg hatched earlier this month (February 1) and both the mother and the chick are doing well. The hatchling, named Baby Kūkini, is also being cared for by its father, identified as ‘Gooo’. The father is called by that name because the identification tag on his leg reads ‘6000.’

According to locals, Kūkini is Hawaiian for ‘messenger’ and the young bird is being mostly cared for by its father as Wisdom often leaves for long periods of time to bring back food that she regurgitates to Kūkini.

Wisdom was first banded way back in 1956 by then 40-year-old biologist Chandler Robbins. The man who first saw her is now 97. She was ‘rediscovered’ by him after four decades. Another piece of amazing statistic released by officials is the fact that Wisdom might have in her lifetime, flown more than 3 million miles since she was first tagged. That is the equivalent of six trips from the Earth to the Moon and back!

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, albatrosses usually live up to 60 years. These birds attain sexual maturity at about 5 years old, but usually breed when they are 7 to 10 years old. Laysan albatrosses (Phoebastria immutabilis) face several threats to their survival. In 2001, an analysis estimated that about 5,000 to 18,000 Laysan albatrosses are killed because of pelagic longliners in the North Pacific.

To sum up, the story of Wisdom is quite heroic. Like humans, older birds experience weakness and they do not have the same endurance as when they were younger. It is only admirable that the 65-year-old mother hunts food for her hatchling with the risk that in the process, she might face tremendous threats in the environment.

Image Source: static.us.

Ancient Cemeteries Reveal Clues To Human Migration In Imperial Rome

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Ancient Roman skeletons reveal human migration pattern.

Ancient Roman skeletons reveal human migration pattern.

Scientists are amazed by recent unearthed skeletons, as ancient cemeteries reveal clues to human migration in Imperial Rome.

We are all familiar to the saying ‘all roads lead to Rome’. It can be translated as ‘all paths or activities lead to the center of things’. This was literally true in the days of the Roman Empire, when all the empire’s roads radiated outfrom the capital city: Rome. Today, the story of the hopeful people living the backwaters of the ancient world is a story that hardly seems to change.

According to the close observation of 2,000-year-old skeletons in two Roman cemeteries, researchers state that some migrants were likely from outside Roman Empire, possibly from North Africa and the Alps. Kristina Killgrove from University of West Florida, in the US, and Janet Montgomery from Britain’s Durham University did isotope analyses of 105 skeletons buried at the necropolises during the first through the third centuries AD.

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The investigation took place in two Imperial-era cemeteries and showed that several individuals, mostly men and children, migrated to Rome, changing significantly their diet after their move. Four of the individuals were born outside Rome: three male adults, including one over age 50, and a teen between 11 and 15. Another four showed signs of possible migration: two children under 12, a teen boy, and an older teenage girl.

So, the question still remains: ‘Where did they come from?’ According to the researchers, two of the migrants came from old-mountain areas like the Alps or islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, while a third apparently came from Italy’s Apennine mountains. The last immigrant may have been born in Northern Africa, or else he just ate a lot of grain imported from there, as was common in Rome.

No matter where they came from, though, once they got to the imperial city, these immigrants ate like other Romans, declare the researchers. The diet change consisted of wheat, beans, meat and fish. This is the living proof that when in Rome (or its empire), you really had to do as the Romans did.

A recent press release claims that further DNA analysis is needed to expose further genetic origins of the individuals. However, the analysis of their teeth is enough to tell Killgrove and Montgomery the general and initial origin of the people buried there. Genetic data couldn’t confirm what the teeth analysis says, but it could tell us the ethnic origin of the immigrants.

This case study demonstrates the importance of employing bioarchaeology to generate a deeper understanding of a complex ancient urban center.

Killgrove and Montgomery wrote.

All in all, the recent discovery is definitely an exciting step in uncovering secrets about the ancient city and its immigrants.

Image Source: mentalfloss.com.

Unique Ancient Fossils Of A ‘Wildebeest’ Unearthed In Kenya

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Diagram of a Rusingoryx skull.

Diagram of a Rusingoryx skull.

The paleontologists are discussing about the unique ancient fossils of a ‘Wildebeest’ unearthed in Kenya. The creature named Rusingoryx has left researchers speechless, as its nasal structure is more like of a dinosaur than that of a mammal.

At first glance, it seems unlikely that a shaggy-maned antelope from the Ice Age could have anything in common with a group a dinosaurs that roamed during the Cretaceous period 145 to 66 million years ago. However, science can be full of surprises.

Rusingoryx atopocranion is the name of the spcies that is related to the modern wildebeest. Below, you can see an image with the wildebeest in its natural habitat:

Blue_Wildebeest,_Ngorongoro

And here is an artist’s interpretation of Rusingoryx atopocranion:

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The experts’ observation is that the newly discovered ‘beast’ shares a bizarre adaptation with a group of hadrosaurs: a hollow, domed ridge of bone along the front of its face called a nasal crest.

This structure was incredibly surprising. To see a hollow nasal crest outside of dinosaurs and in a mammal that lived so recently is very bizarre.

– Ohio University paleontologist Haley O’Brien said.

These fossils of Rusingoryx, about the size of its close cousin the wildebeest, date from about 55,000 to 75,000 years ago. Hadrosaurs with similar nasal structures, Lambeosaurus and Corythosaurus, lived about 75 million years ago.

O’Brien said the structure was an example of ‘convergent evolution‘ in which disparate organisms independently evolve similar features, like the wings of birds, bats and the extinct flying reptiles called pterosaurs, to adapt to similar environments or ecological niches.

About Rusingoryx’s lifestyle, the researchers say that they led a lifestyle similar to hadrosaurs: herbivores both likely traveling in herds. Many scientists think hadrosaurs also used their crests to communicate vocally with one another.

Moreover, the experts say that Rusingoryx’s nasal apparatus may have allowed it to deepen its normal vocal calls into ‘infrasound’ levels other species may not have been able to hear.

In order to come to a conclusion, the researchers examined six adult and juvenile Rusingoryx skulls. The bony crest, laying on the top and front of the skull, was mostly hollow inside. It contained nasal passages that followed the outside of the structure then took an S-shaped pathway down into the soft tissue part of the airway. The nasal passage then sat atop of a pair of large sinuses.

At least 24 Rusingoryx individuals were found at the site. University of Minnesota paleoanthropologist Kirsten Jenkins said butchered bones and stone tools there indicated humans may have caused their deaths. Jenkins said hunters may have driven a herd into the stream for an ambush.

This research was published in the journal Current Biology.

Image Sources: abc.net.au; wikimedia.org; guim.co.uk.

International Space Station Needs A Laser Cannon, Scientists Say

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The International Space Station could be armed with a laser to shoot down debris, researchers say, adding that the project is not of immediate importance.

This concept might eventually point to a laser-firing satellite which could eliminate of a large percentage of the most problematic space junk that is orbiting Earth, researchers explained.

NASA scientists suggest that almost 3,000 tons of space debris are present in low-Earth orbit, among them being derelict satellites, rocket bodies and also parts resulted after the impacts involving larger objects. Collisions from pieces of junk which are only the size of a small screw can still cause catastrophic damage on satellites. Some of these projectiles are traveling at speeds of more than 22,000 mph.

The issue of space debris is gaining importance as more spacecraft and satellites are sent into space. Large pieces of junk can be the source of lots of small fragments if they collide, and those pieces can then strike other objects in orbit, generating a chain reaction of damage.

Most spacecraft, like the International Space Station, can take the hits from debris smaller than approximately 0.4 inches with adequate shielding. Unfortunately, ground-based radar and computer programs point to the fact that more than 700,000 pieces of space junk larger than 0.4 inches are now orbiting Earth. Although pieces larger than 4 inches have the sufficient size for astronomers to spot them, debris smaller than 4 inches are significantly more difficult to detect and avoid.

Now scientists suggest the Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO), which will be installed on Japan’s module on the International Space Station in 2017, could aid the orbiting complex identify dangerous debris. They explained that a powerful laser which is under development might then help take down this space garbage.

“The EUSO telescope, which was originally designed to detect cosmic rays, could also be put to use for this useful project,” said study lead author Toshikazu Ebisuzaki, an astrophysicist and chief scientist at the RIKEN Computational Astrophysics Laboratory in Wako, Japan.

EUSO was originally created to spot ultraviolet light that is produced by ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays as they penetrate the atmosphere at night. The researchers think that its powerful optics and wide range of view could also be very useful in its efforts to detect high-speed debris close to the International Space Station.

Image Source: Engadget

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