Archaeologists discovered fossils belonging to a long-necked dinosaur which could be the missing link in African dinosaur evolution.

Scientists dug up the remains of a herbivorous dinosaur called Mansourasaurus shahinae, a gigantic creature thought to have weighed almost as much as a bull African elephant and was 33 feet long. The dinosaurs belonged to the titanosaur group, which included the Earth’s largest-ever land animals.

„Mansourasaurus though a big animal by today’s standards, was a pipsqueak compared to some other titanosaurs,” said paleontologist Matt Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The giant reptile is believed to have roamed Africa during the Late Cretaceous period, between 66 and 100 million years ago. Not much is known about this period when it comes to the African dinosaur.

During the Late Cretaceous, many scientists thought that Africa had already separated from other landmasses and became an „isolated continent”. The study detailing the discovery claims that the Mansourasaurus shahinae is very similar to other sauropods found in both Asia and Europe. This link would suggest that the species interacted with each other much later than previously believed.

The remains included fragments of the dinosaur’s skull, lower jaw, vertebrae, ribs, shoulder, forelimb and back foot. All these remains were enough to label the discovery as the most complete dinosaur skeleton yet discovered in Africa from the late Cretaceous. All these parts allowed scientists to analyze the dinosaur’s anatomy, and to compare it to other dinosaurs that inhabited Europe and Asia during that time.

The discovery throws a wrench into the long-standing theory that Africa was a land full of mysterious dinosaurs that were exclusive to the continent. This theory gained weight once scientists found a 66-million-year-old Chenanisaurus barbaricus. It’s unique features prompted researchers to conclude that African dinosaurs must have been isolated from the rest of the world.

The study was published in the journal, Nature Ecology and Evolution.

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If anyone has ever wondered what’s it like to live aboard a space station, then now’s your chance to make your dreams partially come true. Japanese space agency, JAXA, is looking for volunteers for a simulated space station experiment. If that’s not enticing enough, here’s more. JAXA will pay about $3.500 for a mere two weeks of living in the faux station.

Eight volunteers will reportedly have to spend 14 days and 13 nights in isolation at a “closed environment adaptation training facility”. The goal of the experiment is to assess stress patterns that astronauts may encounter during extended space missions. The agency is looking for “healthy male and female subjects aged 20 to 55” years for the experiments.

JAXA’s website states that this would be the sixth experiment of its kind and will be conducted alongside the Japan Clinical Volunteer Network (JCVN). According to JCVN, the test will be carried out at the JAXA Tsukuba Space Center.

JAXA said that registrations for the experiment are open until January 31 and the chosen volunteers will receive a “cooperation fee” of 380 thousand yen. The payment will go through approximately one month after the experiments are over. The agency has yet to announce when the space station experiment will commence.

While JAXA’s application form did not explicitly exclude non-Japanese individuals from applying, it was later made apparent that the application was open only to Japanese nationals.

The agency finished its fifth experiment on December 12, during which eight volunteers spent 15 days and 14 nights in an isolated environment.

JAXA said that participants’ psychosomatic stress states will be assessed throughout the experiment.

Tests such as this are essential to understanding the potential physical and mental health hazards astronauts will face once they will voyage to Mars and beyond.

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The Glacial Archaeology Program is rushing to preserve melting artifacts found in Oppland County, Norway. These were first discovered amongst the ice in the fall of 2006.

Since 2011, the collaboration between the Oppland County Council and University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History has uncovered 2000 ancient artifacts. These were recovered from 51 sites along the receding glacial ice. The artifacts could help reveal new information about the way of life of Norway’s early residents.

How melting glaciers reveal ancient artifacts in Norway

Like the freezing water saving Florida citrus, ice encapsulates and preserves organic materials. However, the generalized global warming is steadily melting earth’s ice.

As Norway’s glacial ice layers dissolve, items that have been captured for centuries in this natural freezer are starting to be exposed. However, this exposure to the air, sun, wind, and rain is causing the preserved materials to wither and crumble. For researchers, the hunt for ancient information became a race against time and the weather.

Amongst the different dig sites, researchers gathered around 2000 ancient artifacts, including bones, arrows, and bows. The ice also held horse tack, tunics, and sleds.

These are helping offer give a glimpse into how ancient communities dealt with the changing weather, food shortages, and trading. Little is currently known about these areas because artifacts of this nature typically deteriorate.

By using radiocarbon dating, glacial archaeologists have traced the artifacts to over a 6000-year time span. This includes an arrow shaft from 3900BC, an Iron Age tunic from 300AD, and hunting equipment from the Late Antique Little Ice Age (536-600CE).

The amount and type of artifacts found during specific time periods have surprised researchers. There are currently time spans for which there are few or no artifacts. More may be hidden amongst the layers of ice that remain in Oppland’s melting glaciers. Still, it will be an ongoing race to find them before they too melt away.

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Cancer in its various forms may soon be detected by analyzing a single blood sample, thanks to a new test developed by an international team of scientists.

According to a recent study, published in the journal, Science, the CancerSEEK test was designed to detect eight different types of the disease, including lung, breast, and colorectal cancers. These diseases make up for 60 percent of cancer deaths in the US.

In the study, researchers took blood samples from over one thousand people who were diagnosed with one of the eight cancer types. CancerSEEK was able to accurately detect tumors in 70 percent of cases. The test had a 98 percent success rate in people with ovarian tumors and 33 percent in people with breast tumors. All the tumors detected were caught before they could cause symptoms, effectively improving survival rates.

The researchers also focused on a control group to see if the test could detect the disease in 812 people with no history of cancer. Seven of the 812 participants were flagged as positive, however, the researchers couldn’t be sure if the individuals were true false positives or had early-stage cancer with no symptoms.

The proposed cost of the CancerSEEK test will reportedly be $500, cheaper than most currently available screens for single cancer types.

However, the researchers acknowledged that the test is not 100 percent accurate.

“If we are going to make progress in early cancer detection, we have to begin looking at it in a more realistic way, recognizing that no test will detect all cancers,” said Bert Vogelstein, M.D., Professor of Oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

To improve the test’s accuracy, the researchers sequenced specific portions of 16 genes which were known to mutate into various forms of cancer. In addition, they added eight known protein biomarkers associated with specific kinds of cancer, increasing sensitivity and thus allowing the team to better classify the tumors.

Researchers have discovered an anti-aging protein which may be the key to treating a series of diseases including cancer and diabetes.

A family of molecules called Klotho proteins ( named after the Greek goddess who weaved the thread of life) are mostly known for their ability to prolong human life.

Studies conducted in 1990 revealed that mice with mutated Klotho genes suffered from a condition which rendered them with shorter lifespans. More so, the rodents became infertile and, in some cases, developed arteriosclerosis, osteoporosis, and emphysema. However, the study did discover that overexpression of Klotho genes could extend the lifespan of mice by changing insulin and signaling growth factor 1 akin to insulin.

Scientists from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, focused on the structure of these proteins to better understand their role in the human body. The recent findings suggest Klotho proteins to be key in treating many life-threatening conditions.

The Klotho family consists of two receptor proteins, named alfa and beta. They are located on the membranes of certain tissues and work in conjunction with endocrine FGF molecules. These molecules are responsible for regulating metabolic processes in tissues and organs, including the brain, liver, and kidneys.

Researchers first discovered that beta-Klotho is the primary receptor for FGF21, a hormone produced by the body when it’s starving. FGF21 was found to increase insulin sensitivity and enhances glucose metabolism to trigger weight loss.

“Like insulin, FGF21 stimulates metabolism including glucose uptake,” said Joseph Schlessinger, lead author of the study and a professor at Yale School of Medicine.

Professor Schlessinger claims that the hormone can increase the burning of calories without changing food intake.

According to the study, published in the journal, Nature, if the hormone can be simulated pharmacologically, it could help treat conditions such as obesity and diabetes.

More so, researchers found an enzyme resembling the FGF21 hormone, which is able to break down sugars, effectively lowering blood glucose levels.

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Talking to your dog may soon become a two-way conversation as a remarkable new breakthrough may soon allow for people to talk to their pets and vice versa. Scientists are currently working on “pet translator” that could convert dog barks and growls into human language.

Con Slobodchickoff, a Northern Arizona University professor emeritus of biology, has been studying the communication patterns of prairie dogs for over thirty years.  After all those years of intense study, he believes the animals have their own form of language.  Professor Slobodchickoff coupled his experience of studying prairie dogs with that of a computer scientist to come up with an algorithm to could convert the rodent’s sounds into English.

Slobodchickoff later founded a company called Zoolingua, with the main goal of developing a “pet translator” that could turn animal sounds, facial expressions, and gestures into human language.

“I thought, if we can do this with prairie dogs, we can certainly do it with dogs and cats,” said Slobodchickoff.

However, the professor is currently interested in dogs and how they “talk”. He wants the new device to translate a dog’s bark into simple English words and sentences such as “I want to go for a walk”.

Slobodchickoff believes humans will be able to communicate to animals within 10 years. In addition, an Amazon researchers, William Higham, also estimated the appearance of a pet translator, however, it may take an extra decade for it to reach the market. Higham said last year that such a device would be met by high consumer demand.

The potential pet translator, however, is still in its early stages, as Slobodchickoff is currently amassing “thousands” of videos depicting dogs which are barking, growling, or showing off specific gestures. This data will then be converted into an artificial intelligence algorithm which will be able to recognize the animal’s means of communication. Slobodchickoff hopes the data will allow them to develop a pet translator that delivers results accurately and not based on guesswork.

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A survey involving 909 planets orbiting 355 stars has revealed that most exoplanets within a system tend to have similar sizes and orbit their stars in an orderly fashion. Most of the planets were between 1 thousand and 4 thousand light-years from Earth.

This data obtained by the Kepler Space Telescope may suggest that many planetary systems have a different formation history than our solar system, scientists said.  The team managed to measure each planet’s size by tracking them when they passed in front of their host stars. Bodies passing in front of a star dim its light, which allows researchers to estimate the distance between the planet and its star.

Once they used a statistical analysis of these celestial bodies, researchers realized that the exoplanets tended to have the same sizes. If a planet was big then next planet was also about the same size and this applied to smaller planets as well.

“The planets in a system tend to be the same size and regularly spaced, like peas in a pod, said Lauren Weiss, an astrophysicist at the Université de Montréal and lead author of the study @ These patterns would not occur if the planet sizes were drawn at random”.

This would mean that knowing the size of one planet or establishing its orbital distance from its star would allow astronomers to accurately predict most of the sizes and other properties of their neighbors.

More so, the researchers discovered that planetary systems with some size variation have smaller planets closer to the star. This was especially true if the planet had a short orbital period, said the researchers.

According to the study, even orbital spacing and similar planet sizes could have implications to how most planetary system form. The most accepted theory states that young stars form a protoplanetary disk composed mainly of debris that coalesces and accretes into planets.

The study was published in The Astronomical Journal.

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A stone discovered in 1996 is puzzling researchers to this day. Named after the ancient female philosopher, Hypatia of Alexandria, the stone has been the subject of intense debate mainly because its composition is not of this world. A recent analysis of the Hypatia stone revealed that the alien rock did not originate from any known comet or meteorite. More so, the diamond stone contains certain compounds that predate even the Sun itself.

Researchers first discovered the Hypatia stone in the Libyan Desert Glass Field in Egypt, and previous analyses of the pebble showed micromineral compounds that aren’t present anywhere in the world. Not only that, but its composition could not be traced to any spot in the solar system as well.

According to a new study published in the journal, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, the cosmic rock doesn’t contain silicate minerals, the most common of Earth’s ingredients. The paper also discovered that the Hypatia stone contains silicon carbide, silver iodine phosphide, as well as a compound composed of nickel and phosphorous. This composition is so peculiar, that no other previously discovered alien materials were found to contain this mineral make-up.

While researchers believe the Hypatia stone to have formed after the solar system, its features were found to be older than the Sun.

The recent discovery adds a new layer of mystery to the formation of our solar as well as how the Hypatia stone came to be.

Jan Kramers, a professor at the University of Johannesburg and lead author of the study, pointed out the rock’s lack of silicate minerals, saying that silicates are predominantly found in chondritic meteorites. These compound are believed to be the oldest and most primitive materials in the solar system.

“A lack of silicate matter sets the stone apart from interplanetary dust particles and known cometary materials,” notes Professor Kramers.

The author and his team think that the cosmic pebble formed in a cold environment, at temperatures below that of liquid nitrogen. Thus, they believe that the Hypatia Stone was formed further out in space, between Mars and Jupiter. However, this is only an assumption as the stone still holds a lot more mysteries that could shed light on the formation of our solar system.

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Scientists announced in a recent study that humanity will bear witness to one of the most powerful and rare events in the Universe. Two supermassive black holes will collide with a force that will send ripples of gravitational waves throughout the cosmos.

For the study, researchers used existing data to predict the imminent merger will occur within ten years.

Supermassive black holes are generally located at the centers of galaxies and are said to be millions or even billions of times the mass of our sun. Even our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is host to a number of supermassive black holes.

Once they merge, the exotic behemoths will generate gravitational waves more powerful than anything else picked up so far. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) was the first instrument to pick up gravitational waves in 2016. Researchers of the study predict the upcoming merger will be on a bigger scale. More so, this time we will actually see how two supermassive black holes create this phenomenon.

For the calculations, researchers of the study used actual data from the LIGO instead of simulation techniques.

Chiara Mingarelli, a researcher at the Centre for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute in New York, and lead author of the study says that this event will be more powerful than any black hole mergers found by LIGO in the past. She also stresses the importance of the event as it will provide scientists with additional information about the development of black holes and massive galaxies.

Gravitational waves are currently detected and monitored by LIGO and the Virgo Interferometer.

Researchers believe that gravitational wave detection will instead use the unique ability of pulsar stars, which act as a mapping technique. Pulsars are rapidly spinning stars that emit a steady rhythm of radio wave pulses, Once a gravitational wave is generated from a black hole merger, it stretches and compresses space, something that affects the rhythm of a pulsar and allows Earth instruments to pick up the variations.

The study was published in the journal, Nature Astronomy.

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The climate is changing whether we want to admit it or not. While subtle signs have been appearing across the globe for decades, scientists think the biggest change will occur by 2030. According to a recent study, the Earth will be hit by a mini ice age so severe that it will freeze most major rivers.

In order to make this prediction, scientists based their calculations on a mathematical model of the Sun’s magnetic energy. The data obtained suggest that the Earth will experience severe climate changes starting with 2021. Temperatures will fall so dramatically that it will eventually lead to a phenomenon called the “Maunder minimum” which refers to a previous mini ice age that occurred between the 17^th and 19^th century. During that time, London’s Thames river was frozen solid, researchers claim.

The latest claim was made by maths professor, Valentina Zharkova, from Northumbria University. She based her findings on a previous research that predicts the movements of two magnetic waves generated by the Sun. The same research predicted that the Sun’s magnetic waves will decrease for three solar cycles, that will start from 2021 and last for about 33 years.

Based on Zharkova’s model, the two magnetic waves will become imbalanced during Cycler 25, which will peak in 2022. The two magnetic waves will be out of sync in the next cycle, which will occur between 2030 and 2040. There will be a decline in solar activity by 60 percent as a result.

According to a statement made by Zharkova in 2015, the two magnetic waves will peak at the same time in cycle 26, but in the opposite hemispheres of the Sun.

“Their interaction will be disruptive, or they will nearly cancel each other, We predict that this will lead to the properties of a ‘ Maunder minimum.’

While Zharkova said her prediction is 97 percent accurate, she did state that her model is not a reliable academic basis for a future mini ice age, mainly because of global warming. The findings were published in the journal, Astronomy & Geophysics.

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Part of being a traveler to a distant planet or even solar system is surviving the long journey, something which NASA has been thoroughly exploring as of late. NASA’s Human Research Program has announced that it would be receiving proposals from scientists throughout January of next year for possible ways of sustaining humans in deep space for long periods of time. This would entail the examination of both physical and mental reactions as to determine the risk factors that would arise from elongated space missions. The purpose for this is to accommodate future astronauts for a proposed 400-day deep space mission as well as round-trip missions to Mars, which are estimated to take about three years.

“…we need to observe more astronauts spending larger amounts of time in the space environment,” said John Charles, NASA’s Johnson Space Center’s associate director for Exploration Research Planning of the Human Research Program.

While previous studies have been conducted on the effects on the human body in space, these were limited to ISS’s missions which typically last for six months. The only unique data that exceeded the six-month mark was from a 2015 mission where American astronaut, Scott Kelly, and Russian Cosmonaut, Mikhail Kornienko, spent a year aboard the ISS.

However, NASA wants to dig deeper into the potential health reactions during longer missions in space. According to NASA’s press release, the research will focus on five specific dangers linked to human space missions. These include distance from Earth, space radiation, confinement and isolation, gravity fields, and closed or hostile environments.

As part of the future study, thirty astronauts will be chosen to conduct missions that would last for two months, six months and one year. Ten astronauts will be involved in each mission. Analog studies will be conducted on Earth where eighteen individuals will be selected for four months, eight months, and one year.

All of this new data will be assimilated and adapted for future voyages to Mars, and maybe even farther than that.

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Mental decline in HIV patients is a common side effect of the disease as it occurs in almost half of those infected. Researchers have published a new study in the journal, AIDS, which suggests that a chemical in marijuana, called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) can strengthen their mental stamina.

Norbert Kaminski, the director of the Institute for Integrative Toxicology at Michigan State University and lead author of the study, states that cognitive decline occurs in many HIV patients due to chronic inflammation in the brain. According to him, this happens because the immune system is constantly stimulated to fight off the disease.

Kaminski and his co-author, Mike Rizzo, a graduate student in toxicology, found that certain marijuana compounds were able to act as anti-inflammatory agents. These compounds reduced the number of monocytes, which are inflammatory white blood cells, and lowered the number of proteins they release in the body.

“This decrease of cells could slow down, or maybe even stop, the inflammatory process, potentially helping patients maintain their cognitive function longer,” notes Rizzo.

The study involved 40 HIV patients all of whom reported whether or not they used marijuana. After taking samples of their blood, Kaminsky and Rizzo isolated the white blood cells from each donor and studied inflammatory cell levels and the effect marijuana had on the cells.

Kaminski notes that the patients who didn’t smoke marijuana had very high levels of inflammatory cells whereas those who did use had levels almost similar to that of a healthy person.

A treatment for dealing with the potential mental decline in HIV patients include antiretroviral therapy, which involves a cocktail of drugs to stave off the virus. Scientists note that even with this kind of therapy, certain white cells can remain intact and still be stimulated to the point of becoming inflammatory.

Rizo states that they will continue investigating the cells and how they interact with the brain. He believes that their discovery can potentially help people who have Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s since the same inflammatory cells were responsible for the mental decline.

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