- Savannah Chrisley ‘dating’ Robert Shiver – the former college football player whose cheerleader ex-wife ‘tried to KILL him in murder-for-hire plot after he uncovered affair’ Daily Mail
- Savannah Chrisley Is Dating Robert Shiver, Ex-Football Player Who Survived Beauty Queen Murder Plot (Exclusive) PEOPLE
- Savannah Chrisley Is Dating Robert Shiver, Former Football Player Who Survived Murder Plot (Report) Yahoo Entertainment
- Savannah Chrisley Reveals She Went on a Date with Armie Hammer E! NEWS
- Savannah Chrisley Reveals She Went on a Dinner Date with Armie Hammer: ‘He and I Connected’ PEOPLE
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: uncovered
What the newly uncovered group chat in the Gwyneth Paltrow ski collision trial reveals – The Independent
- What the newly uncovered group chat in the Gwyneth Paltrow ski collision trial reveals The Independent
- TikTokers are reacting to Gwyneth Paltrow’s viral ski trial clips Insider
- Plaintiff in Gwyneth Paltrow ski crash blames actress for three ‘near-death experiences’ post-collision Fox News
- Gwyneth Paltrow ski collision trial: Terry Sanderson apologizes for calling actress ‘King Kong,’ says trial shows the ‘pain of trying to sue a celebrity’ Yahoo! Voices
- Gwyneth Paltrow’s Courtroom Glasses Have Already Taken Off With Gen X The Wall Street Journal
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Donald Trump news today: White House visitor logs uncovered in Jan 6 probe as Trump dismisses DeSantis
‘Meet the Press’ anchor reveals the ‘most powerful person’ shaping the 2024 election
Donald Trump has issued a warning to Ron DeSantis if the Florida Governor decides to run against him in the 2024 presidential race.
Speaking on conservative podcast “The Water Cooler” on Monday, Mr Trump said he had heard Mr DeSantis “might want to run” against him.
“We’ll handle that the way I handle things,” he said, without divulging what exactly he meant.
The former president also continued to sound off on his Truth Social platform on Monday about the parallel investigations into the discovery of a large trove classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago home and the discovery of a small number of classified documents from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president at his home and an office he once used.
In his latest rant, he hit out at what he called the “BOXES HOAX” and described the probe into him holding onto classified documents – as well as a probe into his role in the January 6 Capitol riot – a “Gestapo type operation”.
Meanwhile, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has spoken out to reveal that Mr Trump once advised him to take secret documents home with him.
Trump admin visitor logs show who was at White House in run-up to Jan 6
White House visitor logs from the Trump administration were purposely hidden from view by the former president while in office. However, now a selection covering key dates leading up to the Capitol riot has come to light among the supporting documents relating to the House select committee’s investigation of January 6.
The spreadsheet of entries covers seven full days of White House visitor manifests — 12,14, 18, 21 December 2020, and 3, 4, 5 January 2021.
While not exhaustive, the logs reveal who visited 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where they went in the building (the West Wing, Oval Office, the residence), and whether they met with then-president Donald Trump.
It’s an eclectic mix of political and non-political figures, Fox New personalities, donors, governors, and people familiar from the probe into the Capitol riot.
Oliver O’Connell17 January 2023 16:00
Newly revealed visitor logs show who was visiting Trump ahead before Capitol riot
John Bowden reports from Washington, DC.
Oliver O’Connell18 January 2023 08:45
Trump to be joined by Graham, McMaster at first public campaign event
Former President Donald Trump will be joined by two of his highest-profile South Carolina supporters — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Henry McMaster — at the first public campaign event of his 2024 White House bid later this month in the early voting state.
Oliver O’Connell18 January 2023 06:45
Boebert and Greene got into heated fight in the bathroom during speaker vote
Representatives Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly feuded in the restroom during the protracted speaker vote earlier this month.
The Republican congresswomen were on opposite ends of the GOP fight over the speakership. Ms Greene steadfastly supported Kevin McCarthy, who ultimately won the gavel, while Ms Boebert opposed him.
Multiple sources told The Daily Beast that on 3 January, the first day of the new Congress, Ms Greene and Ms Boebert engaged in a screaming match in the ladies’ bathroom in the Speaker’s lobby.
Eric Garcia has the story.
Oliver O’Connell18 January 2023 04:45
Ivana Trump gifted former nanny $1m condo in her will
Ivana Trump, the former wife of Donald Trump, left behind an estate worth an estimated $34m when she died last July, willing her children Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Trump, Jr, a $26.5m townhouse in New York City, and giving a Florida condo worth over $1m to her former nanny.
The former president, meanwhile, got nothing, according to Forbes, which reported on the contents of the probate documents.
The reported snub is not entirely a surprise.
Oliver O’Connell18 January 2023 03:45
Hacker Guccifer who infiltrated Clinton and Bush emails slams DC ‘hypocrisy’
The infamous Romanian hacker known as Guccifer, who managed to break into the online correspondence of the Bush and Clinton political dynasties, fueling years of right-wing conspiracies, declared his project a “failure,” according to his first US interview since getting out of prison in 2021.
Oliver O’Connell18 January 2023 02:45
Sarah Huckabee Sanders dodges Trump 2024 endorsement
In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Ms Sanders was questioned by Shannon Bream on whether she plans to support Mr Trump, who she served as White House Press Secretary before 2020.
Stuti Mishra has the story.
Oliver O’Connell18 January 2023 01:45
Schiff calls for threat assessment of Biden’s handling of classified papers
Longtime Trump foe Adam Schiff says that the handling of classified documents discovered at President Joe Biden’s home and former office must be assessed to see if it endangered US national security.
Oliver O’Connell18 January 2023 00:45
Who is the most powerful person going into 2024 election cycle?
Both the political fate of President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump depend on special counsel investigations headed by people appointed by Mr Garland.
Oliver O’Connell17 January 2023 23:45
Graham and McMaster to join Trump at first public campaign event
Former President Donald Trump will be joined by two of his highest-profile South Carolina supporters — US Senator Lindsey Graham and Governor Henry McMaster — at the first public campaign event of his 2024 White House bid later this month in the early-voting state.
Oliver O’Connell17 January 2023 22:45
Scientists Just Uncovered A Whole New Layer of Brain Anatomy : ScienceAlert
The human brain is a ridiculously complex organ that doesn’t give up its secrets easily. Thanks to advances in imaging technology, hidden forms and functions of neurological anatomy continue to emerge, from novel kinds of nerve cells to entirely new nubs of tissue.
Now researchers from the University of Copenhagen and University
of Rochester have identified a layer of tissue that helps protect our gray and white matter, one that hasn’t been distinguished before.
Only a few cells thick, this membrane seems to play a role in mediating the exchange of small, dissolved substances between compartments in the brain. It also appears to be the home base of brain-specific immune cells, not to mention assisting in the brain’s waste-removal (glymphatic) system.
University of Copenhagen molecular biologist Kjeld Møllgård and colleagues have called their discovery the Subarachnoid LYmphatic-like Membrane (SLYM). While much of their research on this structure is so far from mice, using two-photon microscopy and dissections, they have confirmed the SLYM’s presence in an adult human brain too.
The SLYM lies between two other membranes protecting the brain. It divides our brain fluid space in two, bringing the total number of known membranes encasing our brain up to four. It appears to act as a barrier for molecules in our brain fluid that are larger than around 3 kilodaltons; comparable to an extremely small protein.
Unlike the rest of our body, our central nervous system does not have lymphatic (immune) vessels and is considered immune privileged – a term that refers to sites in our bodies where immune responses are highly controlled, such as our eyes and testes.
So the team suspects cerebrospinal fluid may pick up some of the immune system’s role in the brain. The presence of the SLYM could explain how this works.
“The discovery of a new anatomic structure that segregates and helps control the flow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in and around the brain now provides us much greater appreciation of the sophisticated role that CSF plays not only in transporting and removing waste from the brain, but also in supporting its immune defenses,” says University of Rochester neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard.
Møllgård and team found several types of immune cells – including myeloid cells and macrophages – camping out in the SLYM, keeping surveillance over the brain. In mice, the types of cells changed in response to swelling and natural aging, suggesting this site may play an important part in disease pathologies.
The SLYM shares molecular markers with the mesothelial membrane that lines the rest of our organs, encasing their blood vessels and storing immune cells. So the researchers propose that the SLYM is the brain’s mesothelium, lining the blood vessels in the cavity between the brain and skull.
Mesothelium also plays a role of lubricant between organs that slide against each other.
“Physiological pulsations induced by the cardiovascular system, respiration, and positional changes of the head are constantly shifting the brain within the cranial cavity,” the researchers explain in their paper. “SLYM may, like other mesothelial membranes, reduce friction between the brain and skull during such movements.”
Tears in the SLYM may explain some of the long term symptoms of traumatic brain injury, Møllgård and team speculate. Disruption of this barrier would allow immune cells from the skull direct access into the brain, cells that are not calibrated for brain conditions. This could explain ongoing inflammation.
The flow of waste out of the brain can also continue to be suppressed for a long period after brain injury, and altered flow patterns of the cerebrospinal fluid because of the membrane’s rupture may explain this.
As this extra layer of brain armor has only just been discovered, there’s still a lot to work out. The researchers question if this tissue may also be involved in a more general immunity of the central nervous system and therefore play a role in associated diseases like multiple sclerosis.
“We conclude that SLYM fulfills the characteristics of a mesothelium by acting as an immune barrier that prevents exchange of small solutes between the outer and inner subarachnoid space compartments and by covering blood vessels in the subarachnoid space,” write Møllgård and colleagues.
This research was published in Science.
Rare evidence that dinosaurs feasted on mammals uncovered
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CNN
—
Sometime during the Cretaceous Period, 120 million years ago, a dinosaur wolfed down its last meal — a small mammal the size of a mouse. And it’s still there.
A researcher with a sharp eye spotted the mammal’s foot preserved inside the guts of a fossilized Microraptor zhaoianus, a feathered therapod less than a meter (3 feet) long.
“At first, I couldn’t believe it. There was a tiny rodent-like mammal foot about a centimeter (0.4 inch) long perfectly preserved inside a Microraptor skeleton,” said Hans Larsson, a professor of biology at McGill University’s Redpath Museum in Montreal. Larsson came across the fossil while visiting museum collections in China.
“These finds are the only solid evidence we have about the food consumption of these long extinct animals — and they are exceptionally rare,” Larsson said in a news release.
The research, which was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology on December 20, said this was only the 21st known example of a fossilized dinosaur with its last meal preserved.
It’s rarer still to find that a mammal was on the menu; there’s only one other such example currently in the fossil record.
“We already know of Microraptor specimens preserved with parts of fish, a bird, and a lizard in their bellies. This new find adds a small mammal to their diet, suggesting these dinosaurs were opportunistic and not picky eaters,” Larsson, a coauthor of the study, said in a statement.
“Knowing that Microraptor was a generalist carnivore puts a new perspective on how ancient ecosystems may have worked and a possible insight into the success of these small, feathered dinosaurs,” he explained.
Generalist predators, like foxes and crows, are important stabilizers in today’s ecosystems because they can feed on several species, the news release said. According to the research, the Microraptor is the first known example of a generalist carnivore in a dinosaur era.
It was possible that other dinosaurs from the therapod family, which included the Tyrannosaurus rex, might also have shared a similarly unfussy diet, the study said.
The Microraptor fossil was discovered in the rich fossil deposits in Liaoning in northeastern China in the early 2000s. The specimen, which features plumage on its arm wings and legs, was one of the first feathered dinosaurs to be unearthed.
“While this mammal would absolutely not have been a human ancestor, we can look back at some of our ancient relatives being a meal for hungry dinosaurs,” said study coauthor Dr. David Hone, a reader in zoology at Queen Mary University of London, in a statement.
“This study paints a picture of a fascinating moment in time — one of the first record(s) of a dinosaur eating a mammal — even if it isn’t quite as frightening as anything in ‘Jurassic Park.’”
After 25 years of wrongful imprisonment, 2 Georgia men set free after newly uncovered evidence exonerates them of murder charges
CNN
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After spending 25 years in prison on murder convictions related to the 1996 shooting death of their friend, two Georgia men were exonerated this week, after new evidence uncovered in a true-crime podcast last year proved their innocence, their lawyers said.
Darrell Lee Clark and his co-defendant Cain Joshua Storey were 17 years old when they were arrested for their alleged involvement in the death of 15-year-old Brian Bowling.
He died from a gunshot wound to the head in his family’s mobile home on October 18, 1996, according to Clark’s lawyers, Christina Cribbs and Meagan Hurley, with the nonprofit Georgia Innocence Project.
Moments before the gun was fired, Bowling was on the phone with his girlfriend and told her he was playing a game of Russian roulette with a gun, which was brought to his home by Storey, who was in the room at the time of the shooting, according to a news release from the Georgia Innocence Project.
Storey was charged with involuntary manslaughter, but months later, police began investigating the death as a homicide, and interviewed two witnesses whose statements led authorities to tie Clark to Bowling’s death, the Georgia Innocence Project said.
“Despite the circumstances, which strongly indicated that Bowling accidentally shot himself in the head, at the urging of Bowling’s family members, police later began investigating the death as a homicide,” according to a motion filed by Clark’s attorneys, requesting a new trial.
The two teenagers were sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder, following a weeklong trial in 1998.
Clark’s exoneration came a year and a half after investigative podcasters Susan Simpson and Jacinda Davis began scrutinizing his case in their Proof true-crime podcast in 2021, and interviewed two of the state’s key witnesses.
Through their investigation, new evidence emerged which “shattered the state’s theory of Clark’s involvement” in Bowling’s death and the podcasters flagged his case to the Georgia Innocence Project, according to its news release.
The first witness, a woman who lived near Bowling’s home was interviewed by police, who claimed she alleged the teens confessed they had “planned the murder of Bowling because he knew too much about a prior theft Storey and Clark had committed,” according to the Georgia Innocence Project.
Based on her testimony, Storey was charged with murder and Clark was arrested as a co-conspirator despite having a corroborated alibi, stating he was home on the night of the shooting, which was supported by two witnesses, according to Clark’s motion for a new trial.
But the woman revealed in the podcast, police coerced her into giving false statements and threatened to take her children away from her if she failed to comply, according to the Georgia Innocence Project.
Police claimed the other witness, a man who was in a different room of the Bowlings’ home at the time of the shooting, identified Clark from a photo lineup as the person he saw running through the yard on the night Bowling was shot, the news release said.
It was uncovered in the podcast the man’s testimony was based on an “unrelated, factually similar shooting” which he witnessed in 1976, and he never identified Clark as the individual in the yard, nor did he ever witness anyone in the yard on the night of the shooting, according to the Georgia Innocence Project.
Davis told CNN in an interview when she and Simpson started their investigation, they weren’t expecting anything to come of it, but as they interviewed more people, it was “clear that it just wasn’t adding up.”
“It took us a long time to talk to both of those witnesses. The podcast was happening in almost real time as an investigation. When we finally found and were able to talk to those two witnesses, it really solidified that both of these guys had been wrongly convicted,” Davis said.
Clark’s attorneys filed pleadings in September to challenge a wrongful conviction and ask for a new trial, citing new information which proved his conviction was based on false evidence and coercion, Hurley told CNN.
Clark, now 43, was released from the Floyd County Jail Thursday after the Rome Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office and Floyd County Superior Court Judge John Neidrach agreed the conviction should be overturned and all underlying charges against him dismissed, after evidence in the case was reexamined.
Storey, who admitted to bringing the gun to Bowling’s home, was also released after accepting a plea deal for involuntary manslaughter, and a 10-year sentence with time served, after spending 25 years in prison. He was also exonerated of murder charges.
Storey told CNN in an interview he was afraid to go to sleep the first night after he was released in case he would wake up and “realize it was all a dream.”
“It’s been surreal to say the least,” he added. “I believe it’s going to be great. One step at a time. I never allowed my mind to get locked up all those years, anyhow.”
“You never think something like that is going to happen to you,” said Lee Clark in a statement released by the Georgia Innocence Project. “Never would I have thought I would spend more than half my life in prison, especially for something I didn’t do.”
Clark’s father, Glen Clark, told CNN in an interview, “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long, long time. 25 years. My son was wrongly accused, and I knew it all these years. It’s hard for me to live with that.”
“I watched my son go into prison as a kid, I watched him go through prison, I watched him come out as a man. He became a man in prison,” he added.
Clark is living with his family in their home in Floyd County for the foreseeable future as he focuses on readjusting to life outside prison and rebuilding his life, he told CNN. Storey said he also moved back to Floyd County, with plans to go back to school and get a job.
Clark said Judge Neidrach apologized on behalf of the state of Georgia and Floyd County this week during the court hearing this week, which was an important step toward healing.
“That really touched my heart, because I had been living in corruption for so long, and it meant a lot to have someone acknowledge that wrong,” he told CNN.
The Georgia Innocence Project will work to support Clark during his transition and connect him to resources, and a personal fundraiser has been organized on the MightyCause platform, open to the public for donations to Clark and his family, Hurley said.
“It’s probably going to take some time to like truly process that he is free and doesn’t have to go back behind prison walls, because he spent most of his life behind them,” Hurley said.
“More than anything, he’s looking forward to getting to spend time with his family and rebuilding some of those relationships that he was, frankly, ripped away from at the age of 17,” she added.
The exonerations of both men were the culmination of a collaboration between Clark, Storey and his defense team, as well as the Bowling family, which was willing to take an “objective look at this case and reevaluate some of the things they have been told in the past,” Hurley said.
Davis was in the courtroom during Clark and Storey’s hearing this week and said she’s still “in shock” and feels a huge amount of relief for both men.
“In the end, I also feel for Brian Bowling’s family who have been incredibly gracious and supportive as well. It’s really rare when you have the victim’s family support the convictions being overturned,” Davis said.
Rare Boot Up Sequence for Nintendo Switch Prototype NX Uncovered
It looks like an internal logo for Nintendo Switch’s codename, “NX,” has been discovered and leaked online.
The NX logo was found through a prototype build of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe dated October 18, 2016, two days before Nintendo officially revealed the name of the Switch.
The logo itself features a circle with a blue dot that rolls counter-clockwise and features the letters “NX” right next to it. It also sports a similar light blue color as the Wii U’s logo did rather than the Switch’s red color.
The Nintendo Switches Codename was the NX and this was an early Logo / Boot Up animation used during development of the Console ( It was found in the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Prototype ) This was never seen outside Nintendo pic.twitter.com/B1bS5zCKOu
— Paul Kelly (@PaulFelixKelly) November 20, 2022
While we can’t fully verify the legitimacy of the boot up sequence, and given that it’s Nintendo we will likely not get an official confirmation. But this is a rare glimpse of an early prototype from Nintendo.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was a Switch port of the Wii U’s Mario Kart 8 but with all of the latest DLC included. The game even got more DLC courses this year as well, in the form of the Booster Course Pass. It has become so successful that it has surpassed those of Mario Kart Wii, making it the best-selling game in the franchise, but it has also become the best-selling racing game in US history.
It seems like Nintendo is in no rush to create Mario Kart 9 since Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is doing so incredibly well. However, a successor is reportedly in active development with some sort of “new twist” on the series formula.
The Switch is nearing its sixth birthday, so a successor to the device could be coming soon. So far, there aren’t any details or codenames, but Nintendo said that it is working on not repeating the same mistakes as it did with the transition from the Wii to Wii U.
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
Secrets to The Moon’s Slow Escape Have Been Uncovered in Earth’s Crust : ScienceAlert
Looking up at the Moon in the night sky, you would never imagine that it is slowly moving away from Earth. But we know otherwise. In 1969, NASA’s Apollo missions installed reflective panels on the Moon. These have shown that the Moon is currently moving 3.8 centimeters away from the Earth every year.
If we take the Moon’s current rate of recession and project it back in time, we end up with a collision between the Earth and Moon around 1.5 billion years ago. However, the Moon was formed around 4.5 billion years ago, meaning that the current recession rate is a poor guide for the past.
Along with our fellow researchers from Utrecht University and the University of Geneva, we have been using a combination of techniques to try and gain information on our Solar System’s distant past.
We recently discovered the perfect place to uncover the long-term history of our receding Moon. And it’s not from studying the Moon itself, but from reading signals in ancient layers of rock on Earth.
Reading between the layers
In the beautiful Karijini National Park in Western Australia, some gorges cut through 2.5 billion year old, rhythmically layered sediments. These sediments are banded iron formations, comprising distinctive layers of iron and silica-rich minerals once widely deposited on the ocean floor and now found on the oldest parts of the Earth’s crust.
Cliff exposures at Joffre Falls show how layers of reddish-brown iron formation just under a meter thick are alternated, at regular intervals, by darker, thinner horizons.
The darker intervals are composed of a softer type of rock which is more susceptible to erosion. A closer look at the outcrops reveals the presence of an additionally regular, smaller-scale variation. Rock surfaces, which have been polished by seasonal river water running through the gorge, uncover a pattern of alternating white, reddish, and blueish-grey layers.
In 1972, Australian geologist A.F. Trendall raised the question about the origin of the different scales of cyclical, recurrent patterns visible in these ancient rock layers. He suggested that the patterns might be related to past variations in climate induced by the so-called “Milankovitch cycles.”
Cyclical climate changes
The Milankovitch cycles describe how small, periodic changes in the shape of the Earth’s orbit and the orientation of its axis influence the distribution of sunlight received by Earth over spans of years.
Right now, the dominant Milankovitch cycles change every 400,000 years, 100,000 years, 41,000 years, and 21,000 years. These variations exert a strong control on our climate over long time periods.
Key examples of the influence of Milankovitch climate forcing in the past are the occurrence of extreme cold or warm periods, as well as wetter or dryer regional climate conditions.
These climate changes have significantly altered the conditions at Earth’s surface, such as the size of lakes. They are the explanation for the periodic greening of the Saharan desert and low levels of oxygen in the deep ocean. Milankovitch cycles have also influenced the migration and evolution of flora and fauna including our own species.
And the signatures of these changes can be read through cyclical changes in sedimentary rocks.
Recorded wobbles
The distance between the Earth and the Moon is directly related to the frequency of one of the Milankovitch cycles – the climatic precession cycle. This cycle arises from the precessional motion (wobble) or changing orientation of the Earth’s spin axis over time. This cycle currently has a duration of ~21,000 years, but this period would have been shorter in the past when the Moon was closer to Earth.
This means that if we can first find Milankovitch cycles in old sediments and then find a signal of the Earth’s wobble and establish its period, we can estimate the distance between the Earth and the Moon at the time the sediments were deposited.
Our previous research showed that Milankovitch cycles may be preserved in an ancient banded iron formation in South Africa, thus supporting Trendall’s theory.
The banded iron formations in Australia were probably deposited in the same ocean as the South African rocks, around 2.5 billion years ago. However, the cyclic variations in the Australian rocks are better exposed, allowing us to study the variations at much higher resolution.
Our analysis of the Australian banded iron formation showed that the rocks contained multiple scales of cyclical variations which approximately repeat at 10 and 85 centimeter intervals. On combining these thicknesses with the rate at which the sediments were deposited, we found that these cyclical variations occurred approximately every 11,000 years and 100,000 years.
Therefore, our analysis suggested that the 11,000 cycle observed in the rocks is likely related to the climatic precession cycle, having a much shorter period than the current ~21,000 years. We then used this precession signal to calculate the distance between the Earth and the Moon 2.46 billion years ago.
We found that the Moon was around 60,000 kilometers closer to the Earth then (that distance is about 1.5 times the circumference of Earth). This would make the length of a day much shorter than it is now, at roughly 17 hours rather than the current 24 hours.
Understanding Solar System dynamics
Research in astronomy has provided models for the formation of our Solar System, and observations of current conditions.
Our study and some research by others represents one of the only methods to obtain real data on the evolution of our Solar System and will be crucial for future models of the Earth-Moon system.
It’s quite amazing that past Solar System dynamics can be determined from small variations in ancient sedimentary rocks. However, one important data point doesn’t give us a full understanding of the evolution of the Earth-Moon system.
We now need other reliable data and new modeling approaches to trace the evolution of the Moon through time. And our research team has already begun the hunt for the next suite of rocks that can help us uncover more clues about the history of the Solar System.
Joshua Davies, Professor, Sciences de la Terre et de l’atmosphère, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Margriet Lantink, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Psychologists have uncovered a key factor that helps to thwart romantic avoidance
New research provides evidence that positive relationship events play an important role in romantic attachment avoidance. The findings, which have been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, indicate that positive relationship events in everyday life predict decreases in romantic avoidance over time.
Attachment theory describes how people bond with others and maintain their relationships. People can be secure or insecure in their attachments, and insecure individuals can be either anxious or avoidant. Individuals with attachment anxiety frequently worry about being rejected or abandoned. In contrast, those with attachment avoidance tend to be independent and have difficulty trusting others. Research has demonstrated that both types of insecure attachment can lead to negative outcomes in relationships, such as communication problems and difficulties with intimacy.
“Social psychologists have long established that the quality of attachment bonds with our romantic partners are very important for healthy relational functioning. So, we were interested in understanding the role of day-to-day experiences in helping couples achieve greater attachment security over time,” explained study author Gul Gunaydin (@gulgunaydin), a professor of psychology at Sabanci University in Turkey.
In the study, the researchers had 151 dating couples (who had been in a relationship for 1 to 3 months) and 168 newlywed couples (who had been married for up to 6 months) complete daily surveys for three weeks. The surveys asked the participants to report whether they had experienced a variety of positive events involving their partner. The surveys also asked the participants to indicate whether they had experienced positive moods such as happiness or peacefulness.
The researchers found that positive relationship events predicted decreases in romantic avoidance. In other words, participants who reported more frequent positive relationship events became less likely to agree with statements such as “I find it difficult to allow myself to depend on my partner” after the three week period (compared to before). Gunaydino and her colleagues also found that positive relationship events were associated with experiencing positive moods, which, in turn, predicted decreases in romantic avoidance.
“Our findings indicate that positive relationship experiences contribute to feeling closer to and finding it easier to depend on one’s partner (that is, lower romantic avoidance) over time,” Gunaydino told PsyPost. “Based on these findings, we encourage couples to create opportunities to engage in pleasant relationship experiences in daily life — however small they might seem.”
To better understand the specific behaviors that predict lower romantic avoidance, the researchers invited more than 150 couples to visit their laboratory and discuss a positive relationship memory. The discussion was videotaped and reviewed by twelve independent coders. Gunaydino and her colleagues observed that behaviors validating the partner and the relationship predicted decreases in romantic avoidance over one month.
“When jointly reminiscing about these experiences, partners can try to validate one another and the relationship — for example, by telling how grateful they are for sharing the experience, disclosing positive emotions they felt during the experience or expressing how much they look forward to similar experiences in the future,” Gunaydino said. “As positive relationship experiences accumulate over time this will likely contribute to lower romantic avoidance, a key aspect of feeling secure in one’s relationship.”
Surprisingly, the researchers found no evidence that positive relationship events were associated with reductions in romantic anxiety.
“One should keep in mind that positive relationship experiences are not cure-alls for achieving attachment security,” Gunaydino told PsyPost. “In our research, positive relationship experiences contributed to lower romantic avoidance, but not lower romantic anxiety. Romantic anxiety is characterized by worrying that your partner might reject or abandon you. But experiencing positive things in your relationship doesn’t seem to significantly alleviate these worries.”
“According to recent theorizing (Attachment Security Enhancement Model by Ximena Arriaga and colleagues), anxious attachment is linked with having negative self-views. So, based on this framework, behaviors counteracting negative self-views (such as encouraging your partner to independently pursue their own goals) likely play a more pivotal role in reducing romantic anxiety.
“Moreover, all participants in our studies experienced a relationship transition as they were in the initial months of either a new dating relationship or a marriage,” Gunaydino explained. “Starting a new relationship, getting married, becoming parents, or breaking up are often seen as key events that offer greater possibilities for changing attachment patterns. So, our participants were at an ideal time in their relationship to test the links between positive relationship events and romantic avoidance. However, further research is needed to see to whether our findings would hold for couples in more stable periods of their relationship.”
The study, “The Role of Positive Relationship Events in Romantic Attachment Avoidance“, was authored by Deniz Bayraktaroglu, Gul Gunaydin, Emre Selcuk, Miri Besken, and Zahide Karakitapoglu-Aygun.
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A quake may have uncovered 30 new dinosaur tracks in Alaska
They included two unique footprints: one made by an ankylosaur, an armored plant-eating dinosaur, and the other by a carnivorous theropod. Theropods are three-toed predators that include tyrannosaurs. Only two such tracks from a theropod have been recorded by Fiorillo’s team here.
“I’m very excited because it allows us to do a statistical analysis with the robust data,” said a member of Fiorillo’s team, Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, a paleontology professor at Japan’s Hokkaido University Museum. “With a few [prints], it’s like you’re sharing a whisper from dinosaurs, but if you have a huge number, it’s like screaming. The dinosaurs are telling us something.”
The team is collecting data to explain how enormous reptiles were able to survive 75 million years ago in a climate that more closely resembled present-day Seattle or Portland, Ore. A wet and rainy climate and relatively temperate weather doesn’t seem ideal for multi-ton reptiles, but dinosaurs thrived here, Fiorillo said.
Fiorillo, the executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, has spent 10 field seasons at Aniakchak. The area has intrigued him since he first discovered a dinosaur footprint here in 2002. “Walking these couple of miles, there’s just a truly remarkable frequency of tracks on the beach and in the cliffs,” Fiorillo said, “And I would be a little hard pressed to think of that kind of density in track abundance” elsewhere.
Most of the footprints from roughly 75 million years ago in the late Cretaceous were made by hadrosaurs, which were duck-billed herbivores. Dinosaur remains and ancient soil samples informed a study published in April in the journal Geosciences. It showed that mean annual precipitation had more to do with structuring habitat selection than mean annual temperature among dinosaurs that roamed in Alaska. The study compared the team’s findings not only from Aniakchak Bay but also from work on Alaska’s North Slope and in Denali National Park and Preserve.
During the late Cretaceous, Aniakchak wasn’t much farther south than it is today, so this team has returned here nearly every year since 2016 to piece together a more comprehensive picture of how dinosaurs were able to survive here.
“We don’t have a lot of high-resolution dating throughout this section” of rocks, said Paul McCarthy, head of the Geosciences Department at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, who specializes in ancient soils, or paleosols.
At Aniakchak, the geologist is focusing on a 300-meter-thick (328-yard-thick) section of layered sedimentary rock. “So we know the age of the 300-meter section,” he said, but what’s missing is a layer, or several, within that section that can help provide more details about how and when the climate changed here.
It “is really impossible without knowing exactly how much time each individual segment represents,” McCarthy said.
This outcrop, however, offers other details that allow the team to get specific about dinosaurs and their habitat preferences.
“As you go through time within this section, we can compare who’s walking around to the plants, the soils and whether they’re on a river flood plain or in an estuary” or some other place, McCarthy said.
One end of a roughly three-mile-long stretch of coastline is littered with tracks made by juvenile hadrosaurs. The rocks indicate that area was once an estuary, where a river dumped into a tidal flat. On the other end, the majority of tracks were laid down in an exposed intertidal zone by fully grown adult hadrosaurs.
Nicknamed “the cradle of storms,” Aniakchak Bay offers something new to Fiorillo on each visit. Where piles of kelp had washed up to rot on the beach last year, swaths of black sand took over this summer. Storms here are dramatic enough to move vehicle-size boulders, and the rocks seem to shape shift as thick sheets of rain give way to intermittent sunshine.
Fiorillo and his team will present some of their findings at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver. The four-day event begins Oct. 9.
“And then we’ll see what new questions come up as we really start to analyze the data and then think about next year,” Fiorillo said.