Africa •

Greenhouse Gases Will Affect Africa’s Future Climate, History Reveals

December 5, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 2 Comments

The increased level of greenhouse concentrations thousands of years ago was a critical factor in huge amounts of precipitation in two key regions of Africa, as per the researchers.

The researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colo conducted the study and published the findings in the Science journal.

The lead author of the study, Bette Otto-Bliesner and NCAR climate scientist said, “The future impact of greenhouse gases on rainfall in Africa is a vital socioeconomic issue. Africa’s atmosphere seems bound to change, with broad ramifications for water resources and farming.”

Since the ice sheets that encased huge parts of North America and northern Europe, withdrew from their top degree around 21000 years back, atmosphere of Africa reacted in a way that headed the researchers in scratching their heads.

After a long dry amid the glacial extreme, the precipitation level in Africa increased to a large degree, beginning around 14700 years back and continued going until around 5000 years back.

The level of precipitation was high that the desert was changed over into savanna and meadow, consequently the researchers named the period as the African Humid Period or AHP.

The confounding part was why the same rainfall event happened in the meantime in two overall divided areas, one north of the equator and one to the south.

It was the most recent time during which the natural global warming had associations with the increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases.

“This study is a venture to settling the riddle of what activated sharp changes in precipitation over southeastern central and northern Africa amid right on time deglaciation,” said Anjuli Bamzai, program chief in NSF’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which supported the study.

“Through an investigation of intermediary records and atmosphere model imitations, the group exhibited that the recuperation of what’s known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, assumed a part as a starting trigger to wetter conditions.”

To settle the riddle, the fossil pollen was drawn by the specialists, confirmation of previous lake levels and other intermediary records demonstrating the past dampness conditions.

Through correlation of the intermediary records with the computer imitations, the researchers demonstrated that the climate model had the AHP right.

This helps in accepting the part in anticipating about the increasing greenhouse gas focuses may modify the precipitation patterns in an exceptionally populated part of the world.

“Typically atmosphere imitations cover maybe a century, or take a preview of past conditions,” Otto-Bliesner said. “A study like this, dismembering why atmosphere, advanced as it did over this 10,000-year period, was more than I suspected I would see in my profession.”

The study drew on exceptional computer imitation and accumulation and perception of dregs and other records of the past atmosphere. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation or NSF, patron of NCAR, and the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Preterm Complications, Major Cause of Death In Infants: Study Reveals

November 17, 2014 By Germaine Hicks Leave a Comment

The preterm birth complications now outrank all other reasons of death for infants. Out of more than 6.3 million deaths of infants under age five in 2013, about 1 million occurred because of preterm issues. The study was published on 17^th Nov, the World’s Prematurity Day.

The recent study shows up in the Lancet medical journal. It’s a synergistic collaboration of scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the World Health Organization (WHO)..

The major part of the deaths constitutes direct preterm births complications happened in the initial 28-days of life – with another 125,000 deaths happening between one month and five years.

“Throughout the last few years the extent of deaths because of preterm births has been expanding. The purpose behind this is that we don’t generally have significant intercessions set up to evade preterm births – and second, to oversee them in most groups where they happen, Dr. Andres de Francisco, interval official executive of the Geneva-based Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, said.

Preterm birth complications are a global issue, he added.

“We have countries in Africa, for instance – Nigeria – or in Asia – India and Pakistan – that have tremendously high numbers of children that are dying due to preterm births. Anyhow, this is not just an issue in developing nations. This is additionally an issue that affects developed nations, too.”

India really beat the rundown, emulated by Nigeria, Pakistan, the DRC, China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Angola and Kenya. Specialists caution the Ebola flare-up in West Africa raises the danger of preterm complications in the affected countries.

The ascent in deaths from preterm birth complications really harmonizes with a staged decrease in the overall death rate of kids under five.

“Mortality is declining by around 3.9% every year, which is an extremely noteworthy decline of mortality – and it’s because of a ton of interventions that we have in stock, including reducing the mortality because of contagious ailments, for example, pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria, among others,” he said.

A portion of the intercessions credited for the death rate decrease include vaccines, bed nets, antibiotics, anti-malarial and HIV treatments.

Yet Dr. de Francisco said the death rate for preterm children has declined by a much diminutive rate of 2% a year. The major reason, he says, is an absence of sufficient intercessions. Furthermore, at this moment, it’s not clear what the best intercessions are, besides addressing obesity, HBP and hypertension.

Moreover, the study said generally its not fully recognized what triggers preterm labor – and about 50% of preterm births happen impulsively.

“This is why, reason for mortality needs to be contemplated significantly and in much more concentrated way. Since if we don’t know the reasons – if we don’t know the factors – pregnancy is going to end in a preterm birth. Furthermore this needs to be the center of escalated research,” de Francisco said.

An intensive research amounting $250-million is getting underway through four noteworthy activities: the Global Coalition to Advance Preterm Birth Research; the March of Dimes; the University of California at San Francisco’s Preterm Birth Initiative; and the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth.

“If we support these research programs, in the following five years or so, we will be able to have intercessions that are going to help the lessening of mortality in these little children,” he said.

Africa’s Lions May Be Deemed Threatened in the U.S

October 28, 2014 By Jason Leathers 1 Comment

An endangered species Act listing would prevent US and other citizens from selling Lions across US States or other international borders.

According to the proposed new rule Lions would be listed as endangered species but it would not apply to zoos. If this happens then it would become illegal to kill or hunt captive lions in the US without a permit or for a US citizen to sell lions or their parts across state or international borders. however, the sale of lions or their parts within a state would remain under state jurisdiction.

US sportsmen and women kill the most lions on the African continent as depicted by an agency yet this is not the primary reason to dwindling lion populations since 1980. 30,000 lions remain now as opposed to 76,000 in the year 1980 which shows a drop of about two thirds. Instead loss of Habitat, lack of prey and increased conflict with humans are to blame for such an aggravating decline in the lion population.

“Lions are declining in numbers rapidly unless we do something about it” said Dean Ashe , Director of the US Fish and Wildlife service. This designation would ultimately aid in helping the Lions by building existing Lion conservation programs in Africa by adding motivation and incentive to cooperate and galvanize opinions that Lions are in trouble.

Scientists Sequenced A 45000-Year-Old Man’s Genome

October 23, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

The DNA of a 45000 year old bone of a Siberian man has been recently examined by the researchers to find out when human and Neanderthals first interbred. On record, this is an oldest genome sequence of Homo sapiens exposing a mysterious population that may once have spanned northern Asia. The study is published in the Nature journal.

The oldest human genome also revealed that the closest extinct relatives of the modern humans were the Neanderthals who lived in Europe and Asia and vanished around 40,000 years ago. The Neanderthals interbred with ancestors of modern humans when modern humans began spreading out of Africa and today 1.5 to 2.1 percent of the DNA of anyone living outside Africa is Neanderthal in origin, study reveals.

“It remains vague when interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans happened. But it probably ranged between 37000 to 86000 years ago,” researchers stated.

The researchers examined the bone (human left femur), discovered by Nikolai Peristov, an artist and mammoth ivory collector on the left bank of the river Irtysh near the settlement of Ust’-Ishim in western Siberia in 2008. The age of the man’s bone to be is about 45,000 years old, researchers stated.

Janet Kelso, co-author of the study and a computational biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told Live Science, “This is the earliest directly dated modern human outside of Africa and the Middle East, and the oldest modern human [genome] to have been sequenced.”

Formerly, the researchers had proposed modern humans firstly populated Asia by traveling towards southern, coastal route that gave rise to the present-day people of Oceania, while a later, more northern migration, gave rise to mainland Asians. Kelson stated, “the researchers’ evidence for the modern human presence in Siberia 45,000 years ago specifies that the early modern humans were not just migrated to Eurasia through a southern route as previously suggested.”

The researchers further examined the carbon and nitrogen isotopes present in the man’s bone proposes that he ate C3 plants, which rule cooler, wetter, cloudier regions such as garlic, eggplants, pears, beans and wheat as well as animals that also dined on C3 plants. Though, the study analysis reveals that he might have eaten aquatic foods like fresh water fish.

The DNA analysis of mans’s bone revealed that the he was closely related to present-day Asians and to early Europeans. “From this we conclude that the population to which the Ust’-Ishim individual belonged diverged from the ancestors of present-day Europeans and Asians before, or at around the same time as, these groups diverged from one another,” Kelso said.

The researchers believed that 45,000 years old man carried a similar level of Neanderthal ancestry as present-day Eurasians and the Neanderthal genes moved into the ancestors of this man 7,000 to 13,000 years before he lived.

The results of the study propose that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, “which is close to the time of the major expansion of modern humans out of Africa and the Middle East,” Kelso added.

DNA Reveals, Neanderthals & Modern Humans First Mated 50000 years ago

October 22, 2014 By Germaine Hicks 3 Comments

Recently, the researchers examined the DNA of a 45000 year old bone of a Siberian man in order to find out when human and Neanderthals first mated.

Though, the modern humans are the only humans surviving human ancestry, others once lived on Earth. The closest extinct relatives of the modern humans were the Neanderthals who lived in Europe and Asia and vanished around 40,000 years ago. According to the recent study, the Neanderthals mated with ancestors of modern humans when modern humans began spreading out of Africa and today 1.5% to 2.1% of the DNA of anyone living outside Africa is Neanderthal in origin.

The researchers said, “it remains vague when interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans happened. But it probably ranged between 37000 to 86000 years ago.”

In order to resolve this mystery, the researchers examined the shaft of a thighbone, which is discovered by Nikolai Peristov, an artist and mammoth ivory collector on the left bank of the river Irtysh near the settlement of Ust’-Ishim in western Siberia in 2008. The age of the man’s bone to be is about 45,000 years old, researchers stated.

In the past, the researchers had proposed modern humans firstly populated Asia by traveling towards southern, coastal route that gave rise to the present-day people of Oceania, while a later, more northern migration, gave rise to mainland Asians. Kelson stated, “the researchers’ evidence for the modern human presence in Siberia 45,000 years ago specifies that the early modern humans were not just migrated to Eurasia through a southern route as previously suggested.”

The bone’s genetic analysis revealed that the man was closely related to present-day Asians and to early Europeans. “From this we conclude that the population to which the Ust’-Ishim individual belonged diverged from the ancestors of present-day Europeans and Asians before, or at around the same time as, these groups diverged from one another,” Kelso said.

The Siberian man carried a similar level of Neanderthal ancestry as present-day Eurasians and the Neanderthal genes moved into the ancestors of this man 7,000 to 13,000 years before he lived, researchers revealed.

The results of the study propose that modern humans and Neanderthals mated around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, “which is close to the time of the major expansion of modern humans out of Africa and the Middle East,” Kelso said.

The study is published in the Nature journal.

New Satellite Snapshots Exposed Thousands Of Underwater Volcanoes of Ocean

October 4, 2014 By Germaine Hicks Leave a Comment

According to the recent reports revealed, Scientists have developed a novel map of the entire world’s seafloor, displaying a brighter image of the compositions that actually formed the cordial, least explored parts of the ocean. The study was published in the ‘Science’ journal.

The achievement was based on accessing 2 intact streams of satellite data, researchers claimed.

Novel map shows hundreds of unexplored mountains that are growing from the seafloor, named as seamounts. These seamounts are eventually appeared in the map, along with the novel hints of continents formation. The scientists have merged the existing data with the enhanced remote sensing instruments, which helps them to explore ocean expanding centers and small studies remote ocean basins.

In the meantime, the researchers mapped the earthquakes too and found that the seamounts and the earthquakes are connected often. These seamounts are once volcanoes and that is why researchers generally discovered nearby tectonically active plate boundaries, mid-ocean ridges and sub-ducting zones.

The novel map is as authentic as the previous one developed 20 years ago, researchers from California’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) stated.

Don Rice, program director in the National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research, said that, “the team of researched have developed a powerful tool in order to explore the regional seafloor and geophysical processes.”

The map, which was developed by using a scientific model in order to capture the gravity measurements of the ocean seafloor, also extracts data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) CryoSat-2 satellite.

David Sandwell, lead author of the paper and geophysicist at SIO stated that, “Things you could see very clearly are the most common landform on the planet, named as abyssal hills.”

Furthermore the researchers said that, the map offers a window within the tectonics of deep oceans. Alternatively, this map also offers a base for the upcoming Google’s ocean maps version. Researchers believed that it would cover large voids between shipboard depth profiles.

In earlier times, undetected features include newly exposed continental connections across South America and Africa and new evidence for seafloor spreading ridges in the Gulf of Mexico. The ridges were active 150 million years ago and are now buried by mile-thick layers of sediment.

Local Innovation’ Drove Technology Advancement in Ancient Times

September 26, 2014 By Brian Galloway 3 Comments

A novel archaeological study, which was published in the journal, Science stated that, thousands of artifacts from the Paleolithic era recovered from a 325,000 years old place in Armenia. These artifacts enable the researchers to gather data regarding how ancient advancements developed and spread around the globe.

Our Ancestors didn’t rely on Technology Transfer

The researchers believed that ‘local innovation’ rather than ‘population expansion’ drove technological developments into the ancient times. Certainly, this means our ancestors didn’t need to wait for the technology transfer. Instead, they better develop new technologies on their own. This was the way how technologies emerged in Eurasia around 325,000 years ago.

Innovation in the Era of Stone Age

The team of researchers from all around the world, including a group Royal Holloway, University of London had basis to think that an ancient technique named as ‘Levallois’ was used to create hunting weapons. These weapons were actually originated in Africa and transmitted to the other continents. Moreover, this technology was in fact previously part of these earliest Armenian groups, who flourished 325,000-335,000 years ago.

Another technique used in this region is known as ‘Bi-face’ which could be believed as somewhat similar to Levallois. These instruments were firstly analyzed by the researchers and told that the volcanic material was used in them, which was discovered in Nor Geghi in Kotayk Province, Armenia.

With the invention of these ancient instruments, the researchers would be able to get into the fresh and novel insights that ancient groups were believed to be more innovative. These groups have adapted two diverse technologies in order to create instruments which were essential for their hunting culture.

With the expansion of population around the globe, Levallois and biface techniques rapidly extended across Africa to Eurasia. After studying the tools in Armenia, the researchers found that a ‘Bi-face’ technique was not actually derived from Levallois. Though, both techniques are somewhat similar to one another.

A mass of stone-shaped is used in both techniques into hunting tools, which looks like sharp and thin flakes. Though, the major difference is that, with the help of Levallois technique, you can shape tools by prominent flakes from a prepared core evocative of lithic reduction. In contrast, the Bi-face technique is basic. It will use two sides of stone in order to shape out flakes to make big tools such as axes.

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