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Category: evolution – Page 17

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new study has rewritten the conventionally understood evolutionary history of certain proteins critical for electrical signaling in the nervous system. The study, led by Penn State researchers, shows that the well-studied family of proteins — potassium ion channels in the Shaker family — were present in microscopic single cell organisms well before the common ancestor of all animals. This suggests that, rather than evolving alongside the nervous system as previously thought, these ion channels were present before the origin of the nervous system.

The study appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We tend to think of evolution as a one-way march toward greater and greater complexity, but that often isn’t what occurs in the natural world,” said Timothy Jegla, associate professor of biology in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and leader of the research team. “For example, it was thought that as different kinds of animals evolved and the nervous system became more complex, ion channels arose and diversified to match that complexity. But our research suggests that this is not the case. We have previously shown that the oldest living animals, those with simple nerve nets, have the highest ion channel diversity. This new finding adds to growing evidence that many of the building blocks for the nervous system were already in place in our protozoan ancestors — before the nervous system even existed.”

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Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (Japan) and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (Germany) have published new findings on how social norms evolve over time. They simulated how norms promote different social behavior, and how the norms themselves come and go. Because of the enormous number of possible norms, these simulations were run on RIKEN’s Fugaku, one of the fastest supercomputers worldwide.

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Images that NASA’s DART spacecraft captured of an asteroid moments before it intentionally collided with the object in 2022 have now allowed researchers to gain fresh insights into the celestial bodies.

The slew of studies published this week using data gathered from the asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos are an indication, researchers say, that the DART mission accomplished far more than just proving that potentially dangerous asteroids can be redirected from a trajectory toward Earth.

The findings published Tuesday across five research papers help to characterize the origin, evolution and physical characteristics of the two asteroids, located within 7 million miles of Earth. What the researchers discovered could help scientists better understand binary asteroids, such as Didymos and Dimorphos, in which the smaller body orbits the other.

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A groundbreaking study using sub-daily GPS has improved our understanding of early afterslip following earthquakes, offering a more accurate assessment of seismic hazards and enhancing emergency response and preparedness strategies.

A groundbreaking study has revealed new insights into the Earth’s crust’s immediate behavior following earthquakes. Researchers have utilized sub-daily Global Positioning System (GPS) solutions to accurately measure the spatial and temporal evolution of early afterslip following the 2010 Mw 8.8 Maule earthquake. This innovative approach marks a significant advancement in seismic analysis, offering a more precise and rapid depiction of ground deformations, which is essential for assessing seismic hazards and understanding fault line activities.

The aftermath of an earthquake is marked by intricate postseismic adjustments, particularly the elusive early afterslip. Daily seismic monitoring has struggled to capture the rapid and complex ground movements occurring in the critical hours post-quake. The intricacies of these initial activities and their profound implications for seismic hazard assessment highlight an urgent need for more refined and immediate monitoring techniques.

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“This study has changed the picture of the environments around stars less massive than our Sun, which emit very little UV light outside of flares,” said Jason Hinkle.

How can red dwarf stars, which are both smaller and cooler than our Sun, influence the habitability potential for exoplanets orbiting them? This is what a recent study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society hopes to address as a team of international researchers led by the University of Hawai’i investigated how stellar flares emanating from red dwarf stars could help ascertain the habitability potential for exoplanetary systems. This study holds the potential to help astronomers better understand the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems throughout the cosmos and the conditions necessary for life to exist on these worlds.

For the study, the researchers analyzed near-ultraviolet (near-UV) and far-ultraviolet (far-UV) data obtained from the now-retired NASA GALEX space telescope of 182 stellar flares emitting from 158 stars within 100 parsecs (326 light-years) from Earth. The goal of the study was to ascertain how UV emissions influence whether a planet can host life.

In the end, the researchers found that UV radiation can either contribute to or dampen the possibility of life forming on such worlds, and specifically challenges previous hypotheses pertaining to far-UV radiation, which the researchers estimate can range between 3–12 times the energy levels compared to previously assertions. However, the team notes the processes responsible for the stronger far-UV radiation remains a mystery.

Continue reading “Impact of Intense UV Radiation on Planet Habitability Around Red Dwarf Stars” | >

A new study finds clues lurking in the Red Planet’s soil. The question of whether Mars ever supported life has captivated the imagination of scientists and the public for decades. Central to the discovery is gaining insight into the past climate of Earth’s neighbor: was the planet warm and wet, with seas and rivers much like those found on our own planet? Or was it frigid and icy, and therefore potentially less prone to supporting life as we know it? A new study finds evidence to support the latter by identifying similarities between soils found on Mars and those of Canada’s Newfoundland, a cold subarctic climate.

The study, published July 7th in Communications Earth and Environment, looked for soils on Earth with comparable materials to Mars’ Gale Crater. Scientists often use soil to depict environmental history, as the minerals present can tell the story of landscape evolution through time. Understanding more about how these materials formed could help answer long-standing questions about historical conditions on the red planet. The soils and rocks of Gale Crater provide a record of Mars’ climate between 3 and 4 billion years ago, during a time of relatively abundant water on the planet — and the same time period that saw life first appear on Earth.

“Gale Crater is a paleo lakebed — there was obviously water present. But what were the environmental conditions when the water was there?” says Anthony Feldman, a soil scientist and geomorphologist now at DRI. “We’re never going to find a direct analog to the Martian surface, because conditions are so different between Mars and Earth. But we can look at trends under terrestrial conditions and use those to try to extrapolate to Martian questions.”

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Chromosomes are threadlike structures composed entirely of DNA that reside in the cells of all living things. Each one of these biological databanks contains a wealth of genetic information that scientists can use to glean insights into the history and evolution of life on Earth. Normally, the remains of dead creatures degrade over time, causing DNA to fragment. Most ancient animal DNA discovered to date has been incomplete, often comprised of fewer than 100 base pairs out of the billions that once made up the full sequence of the organism.

However, the 52,000-year-old skin sample at the heart of this research was taken from behind the ear of a mammoth discovered in Northern Siberia in 2018. An intensive analysis of the sample revealed the presence of complete fossil chromosomes. These chromosomes, each measuring billionths of a meter in length, had seemingly been frozen in a glass-like state for tens of thousands of years. Knowing the shape of an organism’s chromosomes can help researchers to assemble entire DNA sequences of extinct creatures, a task previously deemed nearly impossible due to DNA degradation over time.

“This is a new type of fossil, and its scale dwarfs that of individual ancient DNA fragments — a million times more sequence,” explained Erez Lieberman Aiden, a corresponding author on the study and director of the Center for Genome Architecture at the Baylor College of Medicine.

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Contrary to widespread belief, our Moon does have an atmosphere, albeit extremely thin and officially known as an “exosphere”. But what are the processes responsible for forming and maintaining this exosphere, which have eluded scientists for some time? This is what a recent study published in Science Advances hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how a phenomenon known as “impact vaporization” from the surface being hit my objects ranging from micrometeoroids to massive meteorites during its recent and ancient history, respectively. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of planetary bodies throughout the solar system and the processes that maintain them today.

For the study, the team analyzed 10 Apollo lunar samples (one volcanic and nine lunar regolith aka “lunar soil”) collected by astronauts over five landing sites with the goal of ascertaining how much space weathering they’ve endured over the Moon’s long history. This is because when an impact occurs, this causes the specific atoms to vaporize and kick up portions of this material into space while other portions remain trapped by lunar gravity, although now orbiting the Moon. In the end, the researchers discovered that impact vaporization is the main process responsible for the lunar exosphere over the several billion-year history of the Moon.

“We give a definitive answer that meteorite impact vaporization is the dominant process that creates the lunar atmosphere,” said Dr. Nicole Nie, who is an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and lead author of the study. “The moon is close to 4.5 billion years old, and through that time the surface has been continuously bombarded by meteorites. We show that eventually, a thin atmosphere reaches a steady state because it’s being continuously replenished by small impacts all over the moon.”

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The new groundbreaking Language Velocity Field (LVF) method is helping researchers trace dispersion patterns of languages, including Greek, across the world.

The spatial evolution of languages can help deepen our understanding of people diffusion and cultural spread. The language velocity field estimation is different from the frequently used phylogeographic approach which cannot fully explain the language evolution induced by the horizontal contact among languages, such as borrowing and areal diffusion.

The study of language evolution, particularly its spatial dispersion, offers valuable insights into our collective past. Traditional approaches, such as the phylogeographic approach, often miss the complexity of language evolution.

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