- CBS Fall Schedule 2024: Tracker, Young Sheldon Spinoff, NCIS: Origins TVLine
- CBS 2024-25 Schedule: ‘Tracker’ Shifts, ‘NCIS: Origins’ & ‘Georgie & Mandy’ Succeed ‘Hawai’i’ & ‘Young Sheldon’, ‘The Amazing Race’ Held Deadline
- Drew Barrymore-Led ‘Hollywood Squares’ Reboot to Air on CBS in January Variety
- CBS Sets Fall (and Spring) Schedule Hollywood Reporter
- ‘NCIS: Origins’ to air on CBS Mondays, ‘Hollywood Squares’ to return USA TODAY
Tag Archives: Origins
CBS Teases New Series ‘Matlock,’ ‘NCIS: Origins’ & ‘Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage’ – Deadline
- CBS Teases New Series ‘Matlock,’ ‘NCIS: Origins’ & ‘Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage’ Deadline
- CBS’ Amy Reisenbach On New Long-Term Development Strategy: “Pilot Season Is Probably Dead For Us” Deadline
- CBS Sets Fall (and Spring) Schedule Hollywood Reporter
- ‘NCIS: Origins’ to air on CBS Mondays, ‘Hollywood Squares’ to return USA TODAY
- CBS 2024-2025 Schedule: ‘Young Sheldon’ Spinoff Opens Thursday Night Lineup, ‘Tracker’ Gets Earlier Timeslot on Sundays Variety
Shock Discovery – Humans First Interbred with Neanderthals 250000 Years Ago – Ancient Origins
- Shock Discovery – Humans First Interbred with Neanderthals 250000 Years Ago Ancient Origins
- Neanderthals Interbred With An Unknown Lineage Of Modern Humans Long Ago IFLScience
- Neanderthals built their own fireplaces where they used to cook food on a regular basis, similar to modern hum Business Insider India
- Human interbreeding contributed 6% to Neanderthal genome, finds study Interesting Engineering
- Neanderthals Were As Smart As Modern Humans and Used Fire to Cook Food on Hearths! | Weather.com The Weather Channel
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Humanity’s Quest To Discover the Origins of Life in the Universe – “We Are Living in an Extraordinary Moment in History” – SciTechDaily
- Humanity’s Quest To Discover the Origins of Life in the Universe – “We Are Living in an Extraordinary Moment in History” SciTechDaily
- Scientists launch new initiative to look for extraterrestrial life Financial Times
- Scientists believe they will be able spot of life on ‘thousands’ of planets within the next 20 years Daily Mail
- New telescopes could soon be powerful enough to see ‘alien life on other planets’ Express
- Scientists believe they will find alien life on thousands of planets in next 20 years… The Sun
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Origins of plague could have emerged centuries before outbreaks, study suggests
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN
—
In the largest DNA analysis of its kind, scientists have found evidence to suggest that historic plague pandemics, such as the Black Death, were not caused by newly evolved strains of bacteria but ones that could have emerged up to centuries before their outbreaks.
The plague-causing bacterium Yersinia pestis is dated to have first emerged in humans about 5,000 years ago. Through animals and trade routes, Y. pestis spread globally over time on multiple occasions, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology.
It caused the first plague pandemic in the sixth to eighth centuries and the second one in the 14th to 19th centuries. The latter pandemic is thought to have started with the medieval Black Death outbreak, which is estimated to have killed more than half of Europe’s population. The bacterium also caused the third plague pandemic between the 19th and 20th centuries.
By amassing 601 Y. pestis genome sequences, including modern and ancient strains, researchers from Canada and Australia were able to calculate the time when the bacterial strains likely emerged as a threat. They divided the different strains of the plague bacterium and analyzed each strain population individually.
The strain responsible for the Black Death, which the study says is thought to have begun in 1346, was newly estimated to have diverged from an ancestral strain between 1214 and 1315 — up to 132 years earlier.
The strain of Y. pestis associated with the first plague pandemic was previously recorded as first appearing during the Plague of Justinian, which began in 541. However, the researchers estimated that the strain was already present between 272 and 465 — up to almost 270 years before the outbreak.
“It shows that each major plague pandemic has likely emerged many decades to centuries earlier than what the historical record suggests,” study coauthor and evolutionary geneticist Hendrik Poinar, director of McMaster University’s Ancient DNA Centre in Canada, told CNN via email Thursday.
He added that the bacterium emerged, created small epidemics and then “for reasons we don’t quite understand,” such as famine or war, “it takes off.”
The study authors estimated that individually assessed bacterial strains from the third plague pandemic diverged from an ancestral strain between 1806 and 1901, with highly localized plague cases beginning to appear in southern China between 1772 and 1880 and later diverging into various strains that spread globally out of Hong Kong between 1894 and 1901.
The study also found evidence to support recent academic research suggesting that the third and second plague pandemics were not mutually exclusive events, but that the third was partly the continuation or tail end of the second. Despite the pandemics having their own diverse genetic lineages that evolved differently, the third descended directly from the 14th century strain that caused the second.
Poinar called this finding significant because “it takes into account that most of the history of this bacterium has been a Eurocentric view, so while plague supposedly disappeared from Europe in the 18th (century), it continued to rage in the Ottoman Empire and throughout the Middle East and likely North Africa.”
However, even with so many sequences of the plague bacterium, researchers were not able to determine the path of the global spread of the plague.
A lot of the genetic samples come from Europe. For example, the emergence of the bacterium in Africa has led to 90% of all modern plague cases occurring on the continent, yet there are no ancient sequences from the region, which is represented by just 1.5% of all genome samples — making it difficult to date the appearance of Y. pestis in Africa.
There is also far less surviving historical evidence from the second plague pandemic to help estimate its geographic origins compared with the third, with the earliest textual evidence of the pandemic in Europe coming from the Black Death in 1346, the study authors said. The researchers estimated that the second pandemic originated in Russia.
A study published in the journal Nature in June used DNA analysis to find the plague bacterium in three individuals who are dated to have died in 1338 in what’s now Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. It provided evidence that the Black Death came from a strain originating in the area near Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan in the early 14th century.
The latest study concluded that more ancient DNA will be needed to refine current estimates on the early events of the second pandemic.
Via email, Poinar described the strain from Kyrgyzstan as “really fascinating” but said that it “still doesn’t sit at the root. So I would guess we’re still looking for something a good 20-50 years earlier.”
He and the other authors noted that the only way to estimate the evolution of the plague bacterium strains precisely “is with well dated sequences, such as those from skeletal remains at Lake Issyk-Kul.”
The Origins of Binary Black Holes May Be Hidden in Their Spins, Study Suggests : ScienceAlert
In a recent study published in Astronomy and Astrophysical Letters, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used various computer models to examine 69 confirmed binary black holes to help determine their origin and found their data results changed based on the model’s configurations.
Essentially, the input consistently altered the output, and the researchers wish to better understand both how and why this occurs and what steps can be taken to have more consistent results.
“When you change the model and make it more flexible or make different assumptions, you get a different answer about how black holes formed in the universe,” Sylvia Biscoveanu, an MIT graduate student working in the LIGO Laboratory, and a co-author on the study, said in a statement.
“We show that people need to be careful because we are not yet at the stage with our data where we can believe what the model tells us.”
Like binary stars, binary black holes are two massive objects orbiting each other, with both having the ability to potentially collide – or merge – together, with another shared characteristic being black holes are sometimes born from the collapse of dying massive stars, also known as a supernova.
But how binary black holes originated remains a mystery, as there are two current hypotheses regarding their formation: “field binary evolution” and “dynamical assembly”.
Field binary evolution involves when a pair of binary stars explode, resulting in two black holes in their place, which continue orbiting each other the same as before.
Since they initially orbited each other as binary stars, it is believed their spins and tilts should be aligned, as well.
Scientists also hypothesize that their aligned spins indicate they originated from a galactic disk, given its relatively peaceful environment.
Dynamical assembly involves when two individual black holes, each with their own unique tilt and spin, are eventually brought together by extreme astrophysical processes, to form their own binary black hole system.
It is currently hypothesized that this pairing would likely happen in a dense environment such as a globular cluster, where thousands of stars in close proximity could force two black holes together.
The real question is: What fraction of binary black holes originate from each respective method? Astronomers believe this answer lies in the data, specifically black hole spin measurements.
Using the 69 confirmed binary black holes, astronomers have determined these massive objects could originate from both globular clusters and galactic disks.
The LIGO Laboratory in the United States has worked with its Italian counterpart, Virgo, to ascertain the spins (rotational periods) of the 69 confirmed binary black holes.
“But we wanted to know, do we have enough data to make this distinction?” said Biscoveanu. “And it turns out, things are messy and uncertain, and it’s harder than it looks.”
For the study, the researchers continuously tweaked a series of computer models to ascertain whether their results agreed with each model’s predictions.
One such model was configured to assume only a fraction of binary black holes were produced with aligned spins, where the remainder have random spins. Another model was configured to predict a moderately contrasting spin orientation.
In the end, their findings indicated the results consistently changed in accordance with the tweaked models.
Essentially, results were consistently altered based on the model’s tweaks, meaning more data than the 69 confirmed binary black holes is likely needed to have more consistent results.
“Our paper shows that your result depends entirely on how you model your astrophysics, rather than the data itself,” said Biscoveanu.
“We need more data than we thought, if we want to make a claim that is independent of the astrophysical assumptions we make,” said Salvatore Vitale, who is an associate professor of physics, a member of the Kavli Institute of Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT, and lead author of the study.
But how much more data will the astronomers require? Vitale estimates the LIGO network will be able to detect one new binary black hole every few days, once the network returns to service in early 2023.
“The measurements of the spins we have now are very uncertain,” said Vitale.
“But as we build up a lot of them, we can gain better information. Then we can say, no matter the detail of my model, the data always tells me the same story – a story that we could then believe.”
This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.
COVID origins ‘may have been tied’ to China’s bioweapons program: GOP report
FIRST ON FOX: Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee are alleging in a newly released report that there are “indications” that COVID-19 could be tied to China’s biological weapons research program and “spilled over” to the general human population during an incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The information was released in a minority staff report by members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday night.
“Contrary to the implication of the [Intelligence Community’s] declassified report, based on our investigation involving a variety of public and non-public information, we conclude that there are indications that SARS-CoV-2 may have been tied to China’s biological weapons research program and spilled over to the human population during a lab-related incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” a summary of the report states. “The IC failed to adequately address this information in its classified Updated Assessment. When we attempted to raise the issues with the IC, it failed to respond.”
In a declassified assessment on the origins of COVID-19 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in October 2021, the report states that SARS-CoV-2 was “probably not a biological weapon,” adding, “We remain skeptical of allegations that SARS-CoV-2 was a biological weapon because they are supported by scientifically invalid claims.”
CHINA’S COVID-19 SURGE: LEADERS PLOT ECONOMIC RECOVERY AS CASES SPIKE DUE TO POLICY ROLLBACK AFTER PROTESTS
Members of the World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease are seen.
(Reuters/Thomas Peter)
Wednesday’s report released by House Republicans also alleges that its investigation “revealed serious shortcomings with both the classified and declassified versions of the Intelligence Community’s,” and states that the omissions “likely skewed the public’s understanding of key issues and deepened mistrust.”
“The Committee believes the IC downplayed important information relating to the possible links between COVID-19 and China’s bioweapons research based in part on input from outside experts,” the report states, adding that the intelligence community “refuses to be transparent with the Committee regarding which experts it relied on.”
CHINA STRUGGLES TO DISMANTLE CONTROVERSIAL ‘ZERO COVID’ POLICIES
A security person moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
While alleging that COVID’s origins were likely tied to China’s biological weapons research program, the report states, “We have not seen any credible indication that the virus was intentionally, rather than accidentally, released.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Security personnel gather near the entrance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology during a visit by the World Health Organization team in Wuhan in China’s Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021.
(AP)
“Nor do we claim the information we have found is a smoking gun that definitively resolves the question of the origins of COVID-19 beyond all doubt. However, the information is important to furthering the public’s understanding, and we will seek to declassify the classified version of our report in the next Congress to further the conversation,” the report states.
The Mysterious Origins of The Great Barrier Reef May Finally Be Explained : ScienceAlert
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef might never have come to be were it not for the formation of a vast island based mostly on sand.
K’gari, also known as Fraser Island, has the honor of being the world’s largest sand island, covering around 640 square miles (nearly 1,700 square kilometers) just off the southeastern coast of Queensland.
Along with the nearby Cooloola Sand Mass, the mass of forested dunes and beaches forms an unofficial base to the vast reef that sits to its north.
If this terrestrial ‘launching pad’ had never formed, researchers think the masses of sand carried northwards along the coast by ocean currents would have landed right where the reef now sits.
Quartz-rich sands have a way of smothering carbonate-rich sediments, which are necessary for coral development.
Without K’gari in the way to guide sediment off the continental shelf and into the deep, conditions would not have suited the formation of the world’s largest coral reef, experts argue.
The Great Barrier Reef has a confusing origin story. It only formed half a million years ago, long after conditions were appropriate for the growth of coral.
K’gari might be the lost puzzle piece researchers have been searching for. Analysis and dating of sand from the many dunes on the 123 kilometer (76 mile) long island suggest the land mass formed between 1.2 and 0.7 million years ago, just a few hundred thousand years before the Great Barrier Reef came to be.
The island’s presence probably deflected northward currents, researchers explain, providing the southern and central parts of the great barrier reef the reprieve they needed to start growing thousands of kilometers of coral.
K’gari and Cooloola themselves arose from the accumulation of sand and sediment from the south.
Amid periods of ice formation and fluctuating sea levels, researchers suspect sediment around the world ‘suddenly’ became exposed. In successive periods of ice melt and rising oceans, that sediment then got caught up in the currents.
Along the east coast of Australia this probably meant a long northward treadmill of soil and sand tracing the continental shelf.
A slope off the southern coast of Queensland, however, makes the perfect place for sediment to accumulate, and this is right where K’gari and Cooloola are found.
Just south of the sand masses, coral reefs are conspicuously missing.
If researchers are right, that’s probably because the northward currents here are too strong. K’gari and Cooloola break up the long distance dispersal, stopping quartz-rich sands from smothering developing reefs.
“Before Fraser Island developed, northward longshore transport would have interfered with coral reef development in the southern and central [Great Barrier Reef],” researchers write.
Sediment records from the southern Great Barrier Reef support this idea. About 700,000 years ago, there appears to have been an uptick in carbonate content in sediment in this region.
Research on reefs further north is now needed as well, but at least two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef seems to owe its existence to a wall of sand to the south.
“The development of Fraser Island dramatically reduced sediment supply to the continental shelf north of the island,” the authors argue.
“This facilitated widespread coral reef formation in the southern and central Great Barrier Reef and was a necessary precondition for its development.”
The study was published in Nature Geoscience.
Oldest Human DNA Found in the UK Reveals Origins of Early Britons
Researchers investigating ancient remains found in England and Wales have determined that they contain some of the oldest human DNA ever obtained in the United Kingdom. The DNA indicates Britain was occupied by two unrelated groups, which the scientists believe migrated to the island at the end of the last ice age.
“Finding the two ancestries so close in time in Britain, only a millennium or so apart, is adding to the emerging picture of [Paleolithic] Europe, which is one of a changing and dynamic population,” said Mateja Hajdinjak, a geneticist specializing in ancient DNA at the Francis Crick Institute, in a University College London release. The research is published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The team looked at DNA from the remains of two individuals, found in caves in England and Wales. The English remains date to about 15,000 years ago, while the Welsh remains date to about 13,500 years ago. The older remains were found in Gough’s Cave, Somerset, and the more recent remains were found in Wales’ Kendrick’s Cave.
When these people were alive, Britain was attached to continental Europe by a now-submerged land bridge called Doggerland. As the climate warmed and glaciers thawed, the sea level rose, cutting off the island.
Both remains are from the late Pleistocene, the epoch characterized by Neanderthals and wooly mammoths and ended with the conclusion of the most recent ice age about 12,000 years ago.
Sequencing the DNA and comparing it to previously analyzed DNA from West Eurasia and North Africa revealed the individuals’ histories. The ancestors of the Gough’s Cave individual arrived from northwestern Europe in a migration about 16,000 years ago, while the Kendrick’s Cave individual appeared to have descended from a western hunter-gatherer group that arrived in Britain about 14,000 years ago, with origins in the near East.
Besides sequencing the DNA of two people, the researchers also conducted chemical analyses of other bones and teeth found at the sites. Those who lived near Kendrick’s Cave likely ate marine and freshwater foods, while those in Gough’s Cave survived on terrestrial mammals like aurochs and red deer.
Gough’s Cave is also where the remains of Cheddar Man were found. Cheddar Man was a lactose-intolerant person who died in his mid-20s about 10,000 years ago, whose remains were discovered in 1903.
“We knew from our previous work, including the study of Cheddar Man, that western hunter-gatherers were in Britain by around 10,500 years [before present], but we didn’t know when they first arrived in Britain, and whether this was the only population that was present,” said study co-author Selina Brace, a paleobiologist at Britain’s Natural History Museum, in the same release.
The groups in the two caves also had different cultural practices. Decorated animal bones—and no bones with signs of consumption—indicated that the cave in Wales was used primarily for burial, rather than occupation. Meanwhile, chewed bones and skulls fashioned into cups in Gough’s Cave indicate that its inhabitants were ritualistic cannibals.
There’s still plenty to decipher about when people arrived in Britain and how those ancient populations interacted, but the new research clues us in on the origins of two early groups.
More: Iron Age Settlement With Large Roundhouses and Roman Trinkets Found in the UK
Six Recent Discoveries That Have Changed How We Think About Human Origins
Scientific study of human evolution historically reassured us of a comforting order to things. It has painted humans as cleverer, more intellectual, and more caring than our ancestral predecessors.
From archaeological reconstructions of Neanderthals as stooped, hairy and brutish, to “cavemen” movies, our ancient ancestors got bad press.
Over the last five years discoveries have upended this unbalanced view. In my recent book, Hidden Depths: The Origins of Human Connection, I argue this matters for how we see ourselves today and imagine our futures, as much as for our understanding of our past.
Six revelations stand out.
1. There are more human species than we ever imagined
Species such as Homo Longi have only been identified as recently as 2018. There are now 21 known species of human.
In the last few years we have realized that our Homo sapiens ancestors may have met as many as eight of these different types of human, from robust and stocky species including Neanderthals and their close relatives Denisovans, to the short (less than five-feet tall) and small-brained humans such as Homo naledi.
But Homo sapiens weren’t the inevitable evolutionary destination. Nor do they fit into any simple linear progression or ladder of progress. Homo naledi’s brain may have been smaller than that of a chimpanzee, but there is evidence they were culturally complex and mourned their dead.
Neanderthals created symbolic art, but they weren’t the same as us. Neanderthals had many different biological adaptations, which may have included hibernation.
2. Hybrid humans are part of our history
Hybrid species of human, once seen by experts as science fiction, may have played a key role in our evolution. Evidence of the importance of hybrids comes from genetics. The trail is not only in the DNA of our own species (which often includes important genes inherited from Neanderthals) but also skeletons of hybrids.
One example is “Denny,” a girl with a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father. Her bones were found in a cave in Siberia.
3. We got lucky
Our evolutionary past is messier than scientists used to think. Have you ever been troubled with backache? Or stared jealously after your dog as it lolloped across an uneven landscape?
That should have been enough to show you we are far from perfectly adapted. We have known for some time that evolution cobbles together solutions in response to an ecosystem which may already have changed. However, many of the changes in our human evolutionary lineage maybe the result of chance.
For example, where isolated populations have a characteristic, such as some aspect of their appearance, which doesn’t make much difference to their survival and this form continues to change in descendants. Features of Neanderthals’ faces (such as their pronounced brows) or body (including large rib cages) might have resulted simply from genetic drift.
Epigenetics, which is where genes are only activated in specific environments, complicate things too. Genes might predispose someone to depression or schizophrenia for example. Yet they may only develop the condition if triggered by things that happen to them.
4. Our fate is intertwined with nature
We may like to imagine ourselves as masters of the environment. But it is
increasingly clear ecological changes molded us.
The origins of our own species coincided with major shifts in climate as we became more distinct from other species at these points in time. All other human species seem to have died out as a result of climate change.
Three major human species Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neanderthalensis died out with major shifts in climate such as the Adams event. This was a temporary breakdown of Earth’s magnetic field 42,000 years ago, which coincided with the extinction of the Neanderthals.
5. Kindness is an evolutionary advantage
Research has uncovered new reasons to feel hopeful about future human societies. Scientists used to believe the violent parts of human nature gave us a leg up the evolution ladder.
But evidence has emerged of the caring side of human nature and its contribution to our success. Ancient skeletons show remarkable signs of survival from illness and injuries, which would have been difficult if not impossible without help.
The trail of human compassion extends back one and a half million years ago. Scientist have traced medical knowledge to at least the time of the Neanderthals.
Altruism has many important survival benefits. It enabled older community members to pass on important knowledge. And medical care kept skilled hunters alive.
6. We’re a sensitive species
Evolution made us more emotionally exposed than we like to imagine. Like domestic dogs, with whom we share many genetic adaptations, such as greater tolerance for outsiders, and sensitivity to social cues, human hypersociability has come with a price: emotional vulnerabilities.
We are more sensitive to how people around us feel, and more vulnerable to social influences, we’re more prone to emotional disorders, to loneliness and to depression than our predecessors. Our complex feelings may not always be pleasant to live with, but they are part of key transformations which created large, connected communities. Our emotions are essential to human collaborations.
This is a far less reassuring view of our place in the world than the one we had even five years ago. But seeing ourselves as selfish, rational, and entitled to a privileged place in nature hasn’t worked out well. Just read the latest reports about the state of our planet.
If we accept that humans are not a pinnacle of progress, then we cannot just wait for things to turn out right. Our past suggests that our future won’t get better unless we do something about it.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Image Credit: Neanderthal-Museum, Mettmann / Wikimedia Commons