How did vertebrates first evolve jaws?

A zebrafish showing the skeleton and jaw (magenta), the eye (green circle on the left), and gill-like pseudobranch and gills (green structures on the right).
Image resized using AI by SFLORG
Credit: Mathi Thiruppathy/Crump Lab

Five-hundred million years ago, it was relatively safe to go back in the water. That’s because creatures of the deep had not yet evolved jaws. In a new pair of studies in the journals eLife and Development, scientists reveal clues about the origin of this thrilling evolutionary innovation in vertebrates.

In the studies, Mathi Thiruppathy from Gage Crump’s laboratory at USC, and collaborator J. Andrew Gillis from the University of Cambridge and the Marine Biological Laboratory, looked to embryonic development as way to gain insight into evolution—an approach known as “evo-devo.”

In fishes, jaws share a common developmental origin with gills. During development, jaws and gills both arise from embryonic structures called “pharyngeal arches.” The first of these arches is called the mandibular arch because it gives rise to jaws, while additional arches develop into gills. There are also anatomical similarities: the gills are supported by upper and lower bones, which could be thought of as analogous to the upper and lower jaws.

“These developmental and anatomical observations led to the theory that the jaw evolved by modification of an ancestral gill,” said Thiruppathy, who is the eLife study’s first author and a PhD student in the Crump Lab. “While this theory has been around since the late 1800s, it remains controversial to this day.”

Highly antibiotic-resistant strain of MRSA that arose in pigs can jump to humans

Pig farm 
Credit: Mark Holmes

The strain, called CC398, has become the dominant type of MRSA in European livestock in the past fifty years. It is also a growing cause of human MRSA infections.

The study found that CC398 has maintained its antibiotic resistance over decades in pigs and other livestock. And it is capable of rapidly adapting to human hosts while maintaining this antibiotic resistance.

The results highlight the potential threat that this strain of MRSA poses to public health. It has been associated with increasing numbers of human infections, in people who have and have not had direct contact with livestock.

“Historically high levels of antibiotic use may have led to the evolution of this highly antibiotic resistant strain of MRSA on pig farms,” said Dr Gemma Murray, a lead author of the study, previously in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine and now at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

She added: “We found that the antibiotic resistance in this livestock-associated MRSA is extremely stable – it has persisted over several decades, and also as the bacteria has spread across different livestock species.”

Rock art detection via machine learning model a breakthrough

A hypothetical example of possible rock art image detection on an image from Kakadu National Park.
 Source: Griffith University

Researchers have developed a way to detect the presence of rock art in remote, hard-to-reach areas in Australia’s rugged landscapes using Machine Learning (ML) methods.

Co-led by Dr Andrea Jalandoni, a digital archaeologist from Griffith University’s Centre for Social and Cultural Research, the study used hundreds of images of rock art found within Kakadu National Park to train a ML model to detect whether painted rock art was present within the image.

The model achieved an 89% success rate, meaning it determined which images contained rock art the vast majority of times.

“Some of these sites are not easily accessible, so alleviating some of the time, effort and expense to mount some explorative missions is of huge value to this type of archaeological research in some of the most remote areas of Australia,” Dr Jalandoni said.

“Once our ML model picks up whether an area photographed potentially contains previously undiscovered rock art, scientists can then go in and ground-truth the site to verify if there is rock art present and report on it further.”

Magnetic resonance in tabletop format revolutionizes diagnostics and material analysis

Magnetic resonance in table device format revolutionizes diagnostics and material analysis
 Credit: Amadeus Bramsiepe, KIT

In the SFB HyPERion, which is coordinated by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), researchers from KIT and the universities of Kaiserslautern, Konstanz and Stuttgart are jointly developing a technology for compact, high-performance magnetic resonance. In the future, this could be used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, in medical practices or at border crossings. The German Research Foundation (DFG) will support the interdisciplinary network from the 1st. July 2022 over four years with more than 10.6 million euros.

Magnetic resonance is the most chemically specific and at the same time the most versatile measurement method for detailed information on the structure and function of molecular matter. Therefore, it is the basic technique for chemical, biological or material science characterizations. The low sensitivity and the relatively high degree of specialization stand in the way of nationwide use. The Collaborative Research Center "Compact high-performance magnetic resonance systems - HyPERiON" (High Performance Compact Magnetic Resonance) wants to change this by questioning conventional concepts along the entire signal processing chain. The aim is to improve the sensitivity, resilience and applicability of magnetic resonance in equal measure. The team led by SFB spokesman Professor Jan G. Korvink from the KIT Institute for Microstructure Technology (IMT) wants to reduce the volume of high-performance magnetic resonance systems from two cubic meters to the size of a 10-liter bucket - more than a factor of 200. This would enable them to be used from the laboratory in chemical and pharmaceutical factories, medical practices or at border crossings, making the technology universally usable. "Ultimately, it is about researching new and exciting applications in the field of chemistry, biology and chemical process engineering," says Korvink.

Miniaturization also makes magnetic resonance usable for smaller budgets

In order to achieve its goals, the SFB focuses on the miniaturization of all components involved in magnetic resonance technology. These are superconducting magnets, cooling systems, high-speed electronics, magnetic resonance sensors, devices for ultra-fast data transmission as well as devices for hyperpolarizing the nuclear spin of materials and biological samples. "The integration of all these technologies into a modern, portable platform will mean that we can advance applications of social relevance, such as in the diagnosis of diseases, the use of medical implants or the discovery of medication," explains SFB spokesman Korvink . The participants in the SFB assume that their research results will make the fast and high-resolution characterization of materials available for smaller budgets by means of magnetic resonance and will drive developments in chemistry and materials science as a whole.

Quick search for the best materials

In many ways, social well-being depends crucially on access to optimal materials. But the requirements are complex and include not only the function of the material, but also its effects on our biology, on the environment and on how the material can be recovered or broken down. “If the material characterization can be carried out quickly and in high resolution for a very large number of variants with only tiny samples and we can also carry out the tests under operating conditions and examine degradation processes, then we have the chance to find the best starting materials that meet our expectations correspond. This applies in particular to a minimal carbon footprint."Jan Korvink is convinced:" HyPERiON will fundamentally change the possibilities of material characterization and train a new generation of young researchers and engineers in their application for social challenges."

In addition to HyPERiON, KIT is also involved in another new collaborative research center, which will also be. July 2022 starts: SFB 1537 "ECOSENSE" under the leadership of the University of Freiburg wants to identify and predict more precisely and quickly critical changes in the forest ecosystem that arise from climate change.

Source/Credit: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

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United States Army And Sikorsky Strengthen Army Aviation Fleet With 10th H-60 Black Hawk Helicopters

Lockheed-Martin-Sikorsky-HH60M-Black-Hawk-June-2022 An HH-60M MEDEVAC takes flight at Sikorsky’s headquarters in Stratford, Connecticut. Sikorsky continues to modernize and enhance the Black Hawk thanks to a hot production line, mature well-established supply chain and digital factory.
 Photo courtesy Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company.

The United States government and Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company (NYSE: LMT), signed a five-year contract for a baseline of 120 H-60M Black Hawk helicopters, with options to reach a total of 255 aircraft to be delivered to the U.S. Army and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customers. Sikorsky continues to modernize and enhance the Black Hawk to meet the Army's challenging and evolving missions by continuously delivering aircraft thanks to a hot production line, mature well-established supply chain and digital factory.

The "Multi-Year X" contract for UH-60M Black Hawk and HH-60M MEDEVAC aircraft marks the 10th multiple-year contract for Sikorsky and the U.S. government for H-60 helicopters. With more than 2,100 H-60 variants in the U.S. Army's inventory, the Black Hawk continues to be the workhorse and backbone of U.S. Army Aviation. As the Army continues to develop its Future Vertical Lift (FVL) capabilities, they will continue to operate the H-60M for the next several decades and alongside the future fleet.

Fossils in the ‘Cradle of Humankind’ may be more than a million years older than previously thought

Darryl Granger of Purdue University developed the technology that updated the age of an Australopithecus found in Sterkfontein Cave. New data pushes its age back more than a million years, to 3.67 million years old.
Purdue University photo/Lena Kovalenko

The earth doesn’t give up its secrets easily – not even in the “Cradle of Humankind” in South Africa, where a wealth of fossils relating to human evolution have been found.

For decades, scientists have studied these fossils of early human ancestors and their long-lost relatives. Now, a dating method developed by a Purdue University geologist just pushed the age of some of these fossils found at the site of Sterkfontein Caves back more than a million years. This would make them older than Dinkinesh, also called Lucy, the world’s most famous Australopithecus fossil.

The “Cradle of Humankind” is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in South Africa that comprises a variety of fossil-bearing cave deposits, including at Sterkfontein Caves. Sterkfontein was made famous by the discovery of the first adult Australopithecus, an ancient hominin, in 1936. Hominins includes humans and our ancestral relatives, but not the other great apes. Since then, hundreds of Australopithecus fossils have been found there, including the well-known Mrs. Ples, and the nearly complete skeleton known as Little Foot. Paleoanthropologists and other scientists have studied Sterkfontein and other cave sites in the Cradle of Humankind for decades to shed light on human and environmental evolution over the past 4 million years.

Darryl Granger, a professor of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences in Purdue University’s College of Science, is one of those scientists, working as part of an international team. Granger specializes in dating geologic deposits, including those in caves. As a doctoral student, he devised a method for dating buried cave sediments that is now used by researchers all over the world. His previous work at Sterkfontein dated the Little Foot skeleton to about 3.7 million years old, but scientists are still debating the age of other fossils at the site.

New optical device could help solar arrays focus light, even under clouds

Different stages of the graded index glass pyramid fabrication: when in optical contact with a solar cell, the pyramid at the final step (bottom right corner) absorbs and concentrates most of the incident light and appears dark.
Image credit: Nina Vaidya

Stanford engineers’ optical concentrator could help solar arrays capture more light even on a cloudy day without tracking the sun

Researchers imagined, designed, and tested an elegant lens device that can efficiently gather light from all angles and concentrate it at a fixed output position. These graded index optics also have applications in areas such as light management in solid-state lighting, laser couplers, and display technology to improve coupling and resolution.

Even with the impressive and continuous advances in solar technologies, the question remains: How can we efficiently collect energy from sunlight coming from varying angles from sunrise to sunset?

Solar panels work best when sunlight hits them directly. To capture as much energy as possible, many solar arrays actively rotate towards the sun as it moves across the sky. This makes them more efficient, but also more expensive and complicated to build and maintain than a stationary system.

Light during sleep in older adults linked to obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure

In a sample of older men and women ages 63 to 84, those who were exposed to any amount of light while sleeping at night were significantly more likely to be obese, and have high blood pressure and diabetes compared to adults who were not exposed to any light during the night, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.

Light exposure was measured with a wrist-worn device and tracked over seven days.

This is a real world (not experimental) study demonstrating the prevalence of any light exposure at night being linked to higher obesity, high blood pressure (known as hypertension) and diabetes among older adults.

“Whether it be from one’s smartphone, leaving a TV on overnight or light pollution in a big city, we live among an abundant number of artificial sources of light that are available 24 hours of a day,” said study corresponding author Dr. Minjee Kim, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine physician. “Older adults already are at higher risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, so we wanted to see if there was a difference in frequencies of these diseases related to light exposure at night.”

Study researchers were surprised to find that less than half of the 552 study participants consistently had a five-hour period of complete darkness per day. The rest of participants were exposed to some light even during their darkest five-hour periods of the day, which were usually in the middle of their sleep at night.

Oil and Gas Activity Linked to Most Recent Earthquakes in West Texas

The Yates Oil Field in the Delaware Basin.
Credit: Jan Buchholtz.

Since 2009, earthquakes have been rapidly rising in the Delaware Basin – a prolific oil-producing region in West Texas and New Mexico. According to a study led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, the majority of them can be linked to oil and gas production.

The researchers looked back on data that tracked seismicity and oil and gas production in the region from 2017 to 2020 and found that 68% of earthquakes above magnitude 1.5 were highly associated with one or more of the following oil and gas production activities: hydraulic fracturing or the disposal of produced formation water into either shallow or deep geologic formations. Formation water is found in all subsurface reservoirs and produced with oil and gas. Companies dispose of produced water by injecting it into geologic formations that are separate from oil and gas reservoirs.

All of these production activities are known to increase subsurface pore pressure, which is a mechanism for triggering earthquakes, said the study’s co-author, Alexandros Savvaidis, a researcher at the UT Bureau of Economic Geology and the principal investigator of Texas’ state seismic monitoring network and seismicity research TexNet, which is overseen by the bureau. By using a combination of statistical analysis and physics-based modeling, the study was able to disentangle which activities have a connection to past earthquakes.

“This paper shows that we now know a lot about how oil and gas activities and seismic activity are connected,” Savvaidis said. “The modeling techniques could help oil and gas producers and regulators identify potential risks and adjust production and disposal activity to decrease them.”

The study was published in Seismological Research Letters.

Southern resident killer whales not getting enough to eat since 2018

A southern resident killer whale.
Credit: NOAA, Ocean Wise

The endangered southern resident killer whale population isn’t getting enough to eat, and hasn’t been since 2018, a new UBC study has determined.

The animals have been in an energy deficit, averaging across spring, summer and fall, for six of the last 40 years—meaning the energy they get from food is less than what they expend. Three of those six years came in the most recent years of the study, 2018 to 2020. The average difference in energy is 28,716 calories, or about 17 per cent of the daily required energy for an average adult killer whale, the authors say.

“With the southern resident population at such a low level, there’s a sense of urgency to this kind of research,” says lead author Fanny Couture, a doctoral student at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) and Ocean Wise. “Both killer whales and Chinook salmon, the southern resident’s main prey, are important, iconic species for the west coast of Canada. Studying what is happening to the population may help offer solutions, both for the southern residents and potentially other killer whale populations in the future.”

The southern resident population, which feeds mainly on Chinook salmon, numbered 73 individuals as of October 2021, compared with the increasing northern resident population of about 300. Studies have posited that the growth of the southern resident population may be impeded by a lack of food.