Snakes evolved from burrowing ancestor, new data suggest

The mother of all snakes got its start underground.
X-ray images of snake and lizard skulls suggest that modern snakes’ ancestors burrowed rather than swam, scientists report November 27 in Science Advances.
The study is the latest to suggest that snakes evolved from land lizards that lost their limbs while adapting to a slithery, subterranean lifestyle
Another theory posits that today’s snakes descended from marine reptiles — with a svelte body and lack of legs serving as adaptations to move through a watery home.
Paleontologists Hongyu Yi of the University of Edinburgh and Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City used X-ray scans to build 3-D virtual models of the inner ears of 44 fossil and modern reptile species.

Snakes use the inner ear, a tiny structure within the skull, for balance and hearing. The inner ears of snakes living in different environments have telltale shapes, the researchers found. Burrowers’ inner ears appear more inflated than those of other reptiles — like a balloon wrapped with a piece of cord. Such a structure has been linked with low-frequency hearing, and would have helped underground snakes detect the rumbling vibrations of predators or prey.
Dinilysia patagonica, a Late Cretaceous relative of modern snakes that lived roughly 90 million years ago, also had the balloon-shaped inner ear cavity of a burrower, Yi and Norell report. And an analysis of the snake family tree suggests that modern snakes’ early ancestors did too.

How to see with eyes made of rock

Certain species of the crawling lumps of mollusk called chitons polka-dot their armor-plated backs with hundreds of tiny black eyes. But mixing protection and vision can come at a price.
The lenses are rocky nuggets formed mostly of aragonite, the same mineral that pearls and abalone shells are made of. New analyses of these eyes support previous evidence that they form rough images instead of just

sensing overall lightness or darkness, says materials scientist Ling Li of Harvard University.
Adding eyes to armor does introduce weak spots in the shell. Yet the positioning of the eyes and their growth habits show how chitons compensate for that, Li and his colleagues report in the November 20 Science.

Mummified boy’s DNA unveils new but ancient maternal lineage

DNA from an Incan boy’s mummified body indicates he came from a previously unknown line of maternal ancestors that originated about 14,300 years ago in Peru.

A group led by geneticist Antonio Salas of Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, deciphered the mitochondrial genome of the ritually sacrificed child, who lived about 500 years ago during the Inca’s heyday. Mitochondrial DNA is almost always inherited from the mother.
Salas and his colleagues probed DNA from the Incan mummy and from modern populations, looking for sets of variations that tend to be inherited together. The analysis revealed that the ancient boy belonged to a maternal line also found among a few living Peruvians and Bolivians, as well as in a member of Peru’s Wari empire, Salas and his colleagues report November 12 in Scientific Reports. Wari society flourished between 600 and 1000.

SOURCE:https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/mummified-boy%E2%80%99s-dna-unveils-new-ancient-maternal-lineage?tgt=nr

Climate change is moving mountains

For millions of years global climate change has altered the structure and internal movement of mountain ranges, but the resulting glacial development and erosion can in turn change a mountain's local climate. The degree of this cause-and-effect relationship has never been clearly observed, until now.

Based on research led by University of Cincinnati geologist Eva Enkelmann in the St. Elias Mountain Range -- located along the Pacific coastal region of North America -- the way a mountain range moves and behaves topographically can also change and create its local climate by redirecting wind and precipitation. The repercussions of these changes can in turn, accelerate the erosion and tectonic seismic activity of that mountain range.

Based on her findings, Enkelmann shows clear evidence for a strong relationship between global and local climate change and a mountain's internal tectonic plate shifts and topographic changes.

Enkelmann, an assistant professor in the University of Cincinnati Department of Geology, was among several UC researchers and thousands of geoscientists from around the globe presenting their findings at the 2015 Annual Geological Society of America Meeting, Nov.1-4, in Baltimore.

BABY BEATS CANCER THROUGH GENE EDITING

Doctors are executing a peculiar kind of surgery to save patients with maladies ranging from HIV to cancer. They’re using molecular scalpels to slice genes.
This gene editing helped push a 1-year-old girl’s leukemia into remission.

Baby Layla’s medical team treated her with immune cells altered by one type of the molecular surgical instruments called TALENs. It’s the first time TALENs have been successfully used to treat a person.
gene editing has become extremely popular in research and clinical trails. 
Scientists can select from a variety of scalpels, including zinc finger nucleases, TALENs and CRISPR/Cas9. The tools all do the same thing: cut DNA at specific locations.

FOR MORE DETAILS VISIT https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gene-editing-helps-baby-battle-cancer

EARTH TO LIKELY TO GO ON A MINI ICE AGE.

A team of European researchers divulged a scientific model showing that the Earth is likely to
experience a “mini ice age” from 2030 to 2040 as
a result of decreased solar activity.
Their findings will infuriate environmental
campaigners who argue by 2030 we could be
facing increased sea levels and flooding due to
glacial melt at the poles.

WIFI CREATES PROBLEM IN WEATHER FORCAST

The airwaves that meteorologists rely on to monitor thunderstorms, hurricanes and tornadoes, blacking out large swaths of weather radar maps are cluttered dangerously by the wireless technologies.
Wi-Fi, remote surveillance cameras and other wireless tech emit radio waves that can disrupt those from weather radars