The Shape of a Bird’s Egg Can Tell You Something Totally Unexpected. Some of life’s simplest questions get swept under the rug for a long time—after all, the most widespread phenomena often require the most data to understand. Take the shape of the boring egg, for example. You probably thought eggs are was shaped the way they are so they won’t roll out of the nest or something. But a huge analysis shows the real reason eggs have their characteristic shapes may be completely surprising. A new study from an international team of researchers reviewed a collection of nearly 5. Their analysis seems to refute more popular ideas about why eggs are shaped the way they are, which invoke the number of eggs laid in a brood, or the location of the nest, as the main factor. Instead, the researchers favor a fairly surprising explanation for egg shape.“Good strong fliers tend to lay eggs that are more asymmetric and more elliptical,” study author Mary Stoddard from Princeton told Gizmodo. Reaching this conclusion was truly a lot of work. Stoddard and her team began by creating two metrics for egg shape, including ellipticity (was the egg more circle or more oval shaped) and asymmetry (was the egg symmetrical, or did it have a pointy side). They wrote a data analysis package (called the Eggxtractor, lol) to analyze the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California Berkeley’s enormous egg collection. They were left with flying abilities as the strongest predictor of egg shape. This led them to hypothesize the internal anatomy of birds that allows them to fly well may also influence the shape of their eggs. Flight ability, as Stoddard’s team measured it, is calculated by a metric called hand- wing index, which is really a measure of a wing’s pointedness. This means that some birds who glide, like owls, might fly a lot but still have round eggs, which would indicate poorer overall flying ability. But Stoddard was very careful to point out the limitations of this study, the main one being the ubiquitous correlation does not imply causation. Sure, the finding is really interesting, and researchers now have a well- informed hypothesis about egg shape to drive research forward.
But “this is a correlation,” she said. But he told me not to take this remark as a criticism—he too said the paper was “so far above previous publications in bird egg shape,” which has previously been “uncool science” relegated to “the most obscure journals.”Prum and others fields were excited by the direction this new paper can take research in the future. He’d like to see the team look at egg color next. And Martin Sander, paleontologist from the University of Bonn in Germany, told Gizmodo that this work could help us understand dinosaur egg shape too. Dinos are birds’ ancestors, after all, and were evolving things like changes in the way they walked and reproduced or flight. That’s what . Stoddard, too is excited about the prospect of looking at dinosaur eggs. She said, “we would like to understand better how eggs change shape at the dinosaur- to- bird- transition. Ancient Manufacturing Technique Exposed Indigenous Peoples to Dangerous Toxins. Thousands of years ago, indigenous people living in the California Channel Islands relied on a manufacturing process that exposed them to dangerous chemicals that likely compromised their health. The discovery shows that toxic substances of our own making have been around for a lot longer than we realized. By replicating a traditional method used to create water bottles and other items, a research team from the University of California, with the help of researchers from Stockholm University, has shown that native Californians inadvertently and unknowingly exposed themselves to dangerous chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These compounds, which has been linked to a wide range of health problems, are a noxious byproduct of warming bitumen, a petroleum- based substance that can be used as a sealant. The details of this discovery can now be found in the science journal Environmental Health. The California Channel Islands are unique in that they’re one of the few places in North America where archaeologists can find traces of continuous human occupation dating back to when the peopling of the Americas began, up until the Industrial Age. Extensive work on the islands has produced a rich and deep record of human occupation in the New World, including skeletal remains that date back over 1. Scientists have been able to trace signs of disease and stress in these skeletons over time, as populations grew in size, as their diets changed, and as societies evolved. But as the new research shows, certain declines in the health of these ancient people can likely be traced back to the introduction of bitumen- lined water bottles at least 5,0. In order to find out if the level of exposure was unsafe (according to modern dose limits established by the EPA), we had to replicate processes by which bitumen was used—in this case, the manufacture and use of bitumen- coated water bottles—and test the resulting PAH concentrations in the air, water, and food.”To that end, Sholts’ team engaged in a bit of experimental archaeology. By Neil Bauman, Ph.D. A man asked, How do I know if I have Tonic Tensor Tympani Syndrome? Tonic Tensor Tympani Syndrome (TTTS) is probably not a familiar condition to. It has been generally accepted that eutherians and metatherian mammals evolved from the Order Pantotheria - profile of the ventral border of the dentary bone is. Coccinellidae (/ . They are commonly. A sugar rich diet may be fuelling various forms of cancer, as new research confirms a long suspected belief. Previous studies have suggested that tumours thrive off. Using the exact processes and tools used by the indigenous Californians, the researchers produced two different version of the ancient water bottles. The first was lined with soft bitumen known as “malak,” which is known to wash ashore after seeping up from the ocean floor, and the second bottle was lined with hard bitumen called “woqo,” which is found in oily land deposits. Following oral tradition, the researchers used stone tools and a bird bone awl to weave baskets from soft rush plants found in California. Abalone shells were used as mixing dish, and the bitumen was heated with metavolcanic pebbles before applying the substance to the basket by hand using the bone of a sea mammal. During the process, the researchers sampled the air using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. They isolated, identified, and measured levels of PAHs, finding concentrations equal to or greater than those found in cigarette smoke. But while the fumes from the bitumen were at dangerous levels, the water stored in the in the bitumen- lined bottles did not contain toxic amounts. Consequently, Sholts says, the amounts of PAHs found in the water wouldn’t have been enough to induce health problems.“If someone regularly breathed fumes from melted bitumen—not just for making bottles, but possibly also for making boats, tools, objects for cooking/storing food, . Dermal exposure could have occurred when bitumen was applied directly to the body for ritual or medicinal purposes.” Sholts says that bitumen was readily available and a highly versatile substance for the people who lived on the Channel Islands, and that further research may provide more information about possible health effects. Importantly, this particular risk assessment was only focused on adult exposure. The researchers also learned through this experiment that the kind of bitumen that washes up on the Channel Islands (from subterranean seeps) was suitable for making these bottles. Previously, it was suggested that the quality was too poor, forcing people on the islands to be more dependent on bitumen from the terrestrial seeps on the mainland. In terms of next steps, Sholts’ team plans to continue to use experimental archaeology, toxicology, and other methods to better understand the health of indigenous Americans. A fascinating takeaway from this study is the realization that manufacturing techniques have been exposing people to toxins for thousands of years. Call it the dark side of ingenuity. We pride ourselves in that we give customers another choice, a safer alternative, rather than one with long term risks in comparison to systemic risky topical flea. Examples of Materials That Can Be Adapted For Therapy a collection of resources by Judith Maginnis Kuster. The following is one section of Judith Kuster's Net.
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