DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ Brain Implants Helped 5 People Toward Recovery After Traumatic Injuries
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-04 | by ( Carl Zimmer | More About Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Gina Arata, one of the volunteers who received the implant, was 22 when a car crash left her with fatigue, memory problems and uncontrollable emotions. She abandoned her plans for law school and lived with her parents in Modesto, Calif., unable to keep down a job. “It’s kind of amazing how I’ve seen myself improve.”Dr. Schiff and his colleagues designed the trial based on years of research on the structure of the brain. Those studies suggested that our ability to focus on tasks depends on a network of brain regions that are linked to each other by long branches of neurons. Dr. Schiff and his colleagues pinpointed a structure deep inside the brain as a crucial hub in the network.

Persons: Gina Arata, Arata, “, ”, Dr, Schiff, . Schiff Locations: Modesto , Calif

☆ Penguins Take Thousands of Naps Every Day
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-30 | by ( Carl Zimmer | More About Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Penguins are champion power nappers. Over the course of a single day, they fall asleep thousands of times, each bout a few seconds long, a new study has found. Although animals have a wide range of sleeping styles, penguins easily take the record for fragmented sleeping. “It’s really unusual,” said Paul-Antoine Libourel, a neuroscientist at the Neuroscience Research Center of Lyon in France who helped make the discovery. The science of sleep got its start in the early 1900s when researchers used scalp electrodes to discover that people produce slow brain waves when dozing.

Persons: “, ”, Paul, Antoine Libourel Organizations: Penguins, Neuroscience Research, of Lyon Locations: France

☆ Omicron, Now 2 Years Old, Is Not Done With Us Yet
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-21 | by ( Carl Zimmer | More About Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

By November 2021, nearly two years after the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan and spread across the world, the surprises seemed to be over. Researchers in Botswana and South Africa alerted the world that a highly mutated version of the virus had emerged and was spreading fast. Omicron, as the World Health Organization called the variant, swiftly overtook other forms of the virus. In the two years since its emergence, Omicron has proved to be not only staggeringly infectious, but an evolutionary marvel, challenging many assumptions virologists had before the pandemic. “It was almost like there was another pandemic,” said Adam Lauring, a virologist at the University of Michigan.

Persons: virologists, ”, Adam Lauring Organizations: Alpha, World Health Organization, University of Michigan Locations: Wuhan, Botswana, South Africa

☆ Chimpanzees Go Through Menopause, Too
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-26 | by ( Carl Zimmer | More About Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For biologists, menopause is baffling. If natural selection favors genes that produce more descendants, why don’t women remain fertile their entire lives? The mystery has only deepened as scientists have looked for menopause in mammals in the wild and found clear evidence of it only in a few species of whales. That rarity has led some researchers to argue that menopause played a crucial part in the evolution of humans. After decades of observations in a rainforest in Uganda, they discovered that some chimpanzees go through menopause, too.

Persons: ”, Kevin Langergraber, Langergraber Organizations: Arizona State University Locations: Uganda

☆ Mammals’ Time on Earth Is Half Over, Scientists Predict
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-25 | by ( Carl Zimmer | More About Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It’s been about 250 million years since reptile-like animals evolved into mammals. Now a team of scientists is predicting that mammals may have only another 250 million years left. The researchers built a virtual simulation of our future world, similar to the models that have projected human-caused global warming over the next century. Using data on the movement of the continents across the planet, as well as fluctuations in the chemical makeup of atmosphere, the new study projected much further into the future. Alexander Farnsworth, a paleoclimate scientist at the University of Bristol who led the team, said that the planet might become too hot for any mammals — ourselves included — to survive on land.

Persons: It’s, Alexander Farnsworth, —, Dr, Farnsworth Organizations: University of Bristol, Nature

☆ Ancient Logs Offer Earliest Example of Human Woodworking
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-20 | by ( Carl Zimmer | More About Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Nearly half a million years ago, humans in Africa were assembling wood into large structures, according to a study published Thursday that describes notched and tapered logs buried under sand in Zambia. The discovery drastically pushes back the historical record of structural woodworking. Before, the oldest known examples of this craft were 9,000-year-old platforms on the edge of a British lake. It’s not clear what early humans were building in Africa. Dr. Milks said that the new discovery suggested that they used wood not just for spears or digging sticks, but also for far more ambitious creations such as platforms or walkways.

Persons: Annemieke Milks, It’s, Milks Organizations: University of Reading Locations: Africa, Zambia, British

☆ Humanity’s Ancestors Nearly Died Out, Genetic Study Suggests
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-31 | by ( Carl Zimmer | More About Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“About 98.7 percent of human ancestors were lost at the beginning of the bottleneck, thus threatening our ancestors with extinction,” the scientists wrote. But outside experts said they were skeptical of the novel statistical methods that the researchers used for the study. The studies all take advantage of the same basic facts of our biology: every baby is born with dozens of new genetic mutations, and some of those mutations can be handed down over thousands or even millions of years. By comparing genetic variations in DNA, scientists can trace people’s ancestry to ancient populations that lived in different parts of the world, moved around and interbred. They can even infer the size of those populations at different times in history.

Persons: ”, Stephan Schiffels Organizations: Max Planck Institute Locations: Leipzig, Germany

☆ Enslaved African Americans in Maryland Linked to 42,000 Living Relatives
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-03 | by ( Carl Zimmer | More About Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

A construction team working on a highway expansion in Maryland in 1979 discovered human remains on the grounds of an 18th-century ironworks. Eventually, archaeologists uncovered 35 graves in a cemetery where enslaved people had been buried. In the first effort of its kind, researchers now have linked DNA from 27 African Americans buried in the cemetery to nearly 42,000 living relatives. Henry Louis Gates Jr., a historian at Harvard University and an author of the study, published on Thursday in the journal Science, said that the project marked the first time that historical DNA had been used to connect enslaved African Americans to living people. “The history of Black people was intended to be a dark, unlit cave,” Dr. Gates said.

Persons: Henry Louis Gates Jr, Gates Organizations: Harvard University Locations: Maryland

☆ This Ancient Whale May Have Been the Heaviest Animal Ever
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-02 | by ( Carl Zimmer | More About Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Paleontologists on Wednesday unveiled the fossilized bones of one of the strangest whales in history. The 39-million-year-old leviathan, called Perucetus, may have weighed about 200 tons, as much as a blue whale — by far the heaviest animal known, until now. While blue whales are sleek, fast-swimming divers, Perucetus was a very different beast. Some experts cautioned that more bones would have to be discovered before a firm estimate of Perucetus’s weight could be made. “It’s clear from this discovery that there are so many other ways of being a whale that we have not yet discovered.”

Persons: Perucetus, ”, Nicholas Pyenson Organizations: Wednesday, Smithsonian National Museum of

☆ A Theory of Childbirth’s Evolution May Not Be What You’re Expecting
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-30 | by ( Carl Zimmer | More About Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

What’s more, the scientist said, the idea sends a pernicious message to women that pregnancy is inherently dangerous. “It perpetuates a narrative of bodily incompetence,” Dr. Warrener said. In graduate school, Dr. Warrener did not see any reason to doubt the obstetrical dilemma. But in 2015, after studying volunteers walking on treadmills, Dr. Warrener found that having a wider pelvis did not create a bigger demand for oxygen. Holly Dunsworth, a biological anthropologist now at the University of Rhode Island, also became disenchanted with the obstetrical dilemma when she took a close look at the evidence.

Persons: Anna Warrener, ”, Warrener, Holly Dunsworth, “ Organizations: University of Colorado, University of Rhode Locations: University of Colorado Denver, University of Rhode Island

☆ Blood of Young Mice Extends Life in the Old
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-27 | by ( Carl Zimmer | More About Carl Zimmer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the 1950s, Clive McCay of Cornell University and his colleagues used parabiosis to explore aging. They joined young and old rats, stitching together their flanks so that the capillaries in their skin merged. Later, Dr. McCay and his colleagues examined the cartilage in the old rats and concluded it looked younger. They found the muscles and brains of old mice were rejuvenated, while younger mice showed signs of accelerated aging. The researchers not only found that the old mice lived longer, but also that the course of their aging appeared to change.

Persons: Clive McCay, McCay, parabiosis, . White Organizations: Cornell University, Drug Administration

Search resuls for: "More About Carl Zimmer"

11 mentions found