Researchers Find And Film World’s Deepest Fish In The Mariana Trench

By Darcy Rowland

An underwater voyage, into the Mariana Trench, has found an unidentified species of fish more than 5 miles deep, which is a new record for the deepest fish ever discovered and filmed.

The Mariana Trench is the deepest point on Earth, which is located in the Western Pacific near Guam. It is made up of some of the oldest seabed in the world — over 180 million years old. It was formed by lava from underwater volcanic action. As lava cooled, aged and spread it became increasingly dense and settled. Many attempts have been made to reach to its deepest point, the Challenger Deep. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the water pressure at this deepest part of the trench is equivalent to the collective weight of 50 jumbo jets.

Marine biologists and scientists recently descended towards the Mariana Trench that gave up a creature living in this deepest point on Earth – a snail-fish. The discovery was made during a marine voyage on board the research vessel Falkor of the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

This Hadal Ecosystem Studies (HADES) expedition was led by co-chief scientists Jeff Drazen and Patty Fryer of the University of Hawaii. The researchers sent five deep sea vehicle systems called the Hadal landers for a total of 92 times at specifically targeted depths from 5000 meters to 10,600 meters. The Hadal lander is equipped with a variety of scientific instruments, high resolution cameras and array of small baited funnel traps, which are used to lure and trap small animals.

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For Christmas, Neil deGrasse Tyson sets Twittersphere in motion

By Emanuella Grinberg

It’s a number that even astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is having a hard time wrapping his brilliant mind around.

His Christmas Day tweet commemorating the birthday of Isaac Newton was retweeted more than 69,000 times as of this writing, making it the most popular of his Twitter career so far — and, arguably, his most controversial.

“On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642,” the StarTalk host tweeted.

On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 25, 2014

He followed it up with a nod to the commercialization of Christmas: “Merry Christmas to all. A Pagan holiday (BC) becomes a Religious holiday (AD). Which then becomes a Shopping holiday (USA).” By then, he was on a roll. Earlier in the day, he tweeted, “QUESTION: This year, what do all the world’s Muslims and Jews call December 25th? ANSWER: Thursday.”

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Whooping cough proteins evolving ‘unusually’ fast

By Emma Wilkinson

Whooping cough may be evolving to outsmart the currently used vaccine, say researchers.

Analysis of strains from 2012 shows the parts of the pertussis bacterium that the vaccine primes the immune system to recognise are changing.

It may have “serious consequences” in future outbreaks, UK researchers state in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

But experts stressed the vaccine remains highly effective in protecting the most vulnerable young babies.

There has been a global resurgence of whooping cough in recent years.

In 2012, there were almost 10,000 confirmed cases in England and Wales – a dramatic increase from the last “peak” of 900 cases in 2008.

The outbreak led to 14 deaths in babies under three months of age – the group who are most vulnerable to infection.

Rising figures prompted health officials to recommend vaccination of pregnant women so immunity could be passed to their newborns – a strategy that a recent study showed was working well.

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Wishing my readers and their families a peaceful Holiday Season, and prosperous New Year.

 

Scientists challenge ‘Abominable Snowman DNA’ results

By Steven McKenzie

A theory that the mythical yeti is a rare polar bear-brown bear hybrid animal has been challenged.

Last year, Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes revealed the results of DNA tests on hairs said to be from the Abominable Snowman.

The tests matched the samples with the DNA of an ancient polar bear.

But two other scientists have said re-analysis of the same data shows the hairs belong to the Himalayan bear, a sub-species of the brown bear.

The results of the new research by Ceiridwen Edwards and Ross Barnett have been published in the Royal Society journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Among Dr Edwards’ previous work was an attempt to carry out DNA analysis of a sample taken from bones of a polar bear washed into caves in north west Scotland 18,000 years ago.

According to legend, the yeti is a large and elusive ape-like beast.

For many years experts have been seeking a scientific explanation for the Abominable Snowman.

Prof Sykes, along with other genetics experts, conducted DNA tests on hairs from two unidentified animals, one from Ladakh – in northern India on the west of the Himalayas – and the other from Bhutan, 800 miles (1,285km) further east.

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Judge dismisses lawsuit over Kansas science standards

The Associated Press

A federal judge Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit alleging that science standards for Kansas public schools promote atheism and violate the religious freedoms of students and parents.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree ruled that a nonprofit group, parents and taxpayers challenging the standards did not claim specific enough injuries from adoption of the guidelines to allow the case to go forward.

The State Board of Education last year adopted standards developed by Kansas, 25 other states and the National Research Council. The guidelines treat both evolution and climate change as key scientific concepts to be taught from kindergarten through 12th grade.

The guidelines replaced evolution-friendly standards that had been in place since 2007, and most board members believed they will improve science education by shifting the emphasis in classes to hands-on projects and experiments. The board sought the lawsuit’s dismissal.

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Kenya: Al Shabaab Promoting Atheism – Wabukala

By Brian Otieno

The Anglican Church of Kenya yesterday said the terrorist attacks in the country are part of a global war against organised religion.

ACK Archbishop Eliud Wabukala said the attacks are carried out by people who want to promote atheism.

“They want to remove religion from the society,” he said.

Wabukala spoke during the opening of the provincial Kenya Anglican Men’s Association conference at Shanzu Teachers Training College, Mombasa.

He said the first target is Christianity, but it will soon spread to other faiths including Islam.

“Islam will eventually be affected as it would be portrayed as a religion that supports terror,” the archbishop said.

Wabukala said religious leaders from all faiths need to come together and condemn the acts.

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NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds Clues to How Water Helped Shape Martian Landscape

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

By NASA

Observations by NASA’s Curiosity Rover indicate Mars’ Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years.

This interpretation of Curiosity’s finds in Gale Crater suggests ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes at many locations on the Red Planet.

“If our hypothesis for Mount Sharp holds up, it challenges the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local, or only underground on Mars,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “A more radical explanation is that Mars’ ancient, thicker atmosphere raised temperatures above freezing globally, but so far we don’t know how the atmosphere did that.”

Why this layered mountain sits in a crater has been a challenging question for researchers. Mount Sharp stands about 3 miles (5 kilometers) tall, its lower flanks exposing hundreds of rock layers. The rock layers – alternating between lake, river and wind deposits — bear witness to the repeated filling and evaporation of a Martian lake much larger and longer-lasting than any previously examined close-up.

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Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind

By Rory Cellan-Jones

Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain’s pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence.

He told the BBC:”The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of AI.

But others are less gloomy about AI’s prospects.

The theoretical physicist, who has the motor neurone disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is using a new system developed by Intel to speak.

Machine learning experts from the British company Swiftkey were also involved in its creation. Their technology, already employed as a smartphone keyboard app, learns how the professor thinks and suggests the words he might want to use next.

Prof Hawking says the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have already proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans.

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Star Trek-like invisible shield found thousands of miles above Earth

Image courtesy Andy Kale, University of Alberta

By Space Daily

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered an invisible shield some 7,200 miles above Earth that blocks so-called “killer electrons,” which whip around the planet at near-light speed and have been known to threaten astronauts, fry satellites and degrade space systems during intense solar storms.

The barrier to the particle motion was discovered in the Van Allen radiation belts, two doughnut-shaped rings above Earth that are filled with high-energy electrons and protons, said Distinguished Professor Daniel Baker, director of CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

Held in place by Earth’s magnetic field, the Van Allen radiation belts periodically swell and shrink in response to incoming energy disturbances from the sun.

As the first significant discovery of the space age, the Van Allen radiation belts were detected in 1958 by Professor James Van Allen and his team at the University of Iowa and were found to be comprised of an inner and outer belt extending up to 25,000 miles above Earth’s surface.

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Ofsted reveals “serious risk” to students’ physical and educational welfare in faith schools

By National Secular Society

A series of Ofsted investigations have exposed serious failings in six Islamic schools. The head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw has warned the Education Secretary that pupils “may be vulnerable to extremist influences and radicalisation.”

According to Sir Michael Wilshaw: “All schools focused intensively on developing Islamic knowledge and understanding at the expense of other important areas of the curriculum.” Ofsted found that “pupils’ physical and educational welfare is at serious risk.”

At Mazahirul Uloom School inspectors found pupils were unable to tell the difference between sharia law and English law.

The six independent Muslim Schools, all in Tower Hamlets, are failing to provide pupils with “an appropriately broad and balanced curriculum.” In one school the curriculum was focused “entirely on Islamic themes.”

Commenting on the findings, Stephen Evans, National Secular Society campaigns manager, said: “For too long the rights of young people have been neglected by the willingness to allow religious communities to use schools to impose their own values and traditions on children.

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Were Neanderthals a sub-species of modern humans? New research says no

By Phys Org

In an extensive, multi-institution study led by SUNY Downstate Medical Center, researchers have identified new evidence supporting the growing belief that Neanderthals were a distinct species separate from modern humans (Homo sapiens), and not a subspecies of modern humans.

The study looked at the entire nasal complex of Neanderthals and involved researchers with diverse academic backgrounds. Supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, the research also indicates that the Neanderthal nasal complex was not adaptively inferior to that ofmodern humans, and that the Neanderthals’ extinction was likely due to competition from modern humans and not an inability of the Neanderthal nose to process a colder and drier climate.

Samuel Márquez, PhD, associate professor and co-discipline director of gross anatomy in SUNY Downstate’s Department of Cell Biology, and his team of specialists published their findings on the Neanderthal nasal complex in the November issue ofThe Anatomical Record, which is part of a special issue on The Vertebrate Nose: Evolution, Structure, and Function (now online).

They argue that studies of the Neanderthal nose, which have spanned over a century and a half, have been approaching this anatomical enigma from the wrong perspective. Previous work has compared Neanderthal nasal dimensions to modern human populations such as the Inuit and modern Europeans, whose nasal complexes are adapted to cold and temperate climates.

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IBM’s Watson Will Give You Health Advice Based On Your DNA

Image credit: Richard Wheeler via Wikimedia Commons

By Francie Diep

Maybe you have a fitness tracker. Maybe you’ve gotten your genome sequenced before. Probably your medical records are kept in electronic, instead of paper, form. Now some companies are seeking to combine all those things and more into a talking, personalized, health-advice app. Not sure when to give yourself your next insulin shot after having a croissant for breakfast? You can ask the app. How much exercise should someone with your genetic makeup be getting? The app will give you suggestions.

At least, that’s the goal of the app-makers, who include developers from IBM and a startup called Pathway Genomics. If the app, called Pathway Panorama, works as expected, it will be one of the most detailed and personalized health-advice apps we’ve ever heard of. It will bring an unprecedented amount of information to bear on the advice it gives you.

Pathway Genomics can sequence your DNA and provide an analysis as to what what those jumbled letters mean. Meanwhile, IBM’s artificial intelligence engine, Watson, will make it possible for the app to understand what users are asking it. Watson also is able to read and understand information online, so it will be able to do things like “read” published medical literature to help answer users’ questions. After all, that’s how Watson won Jeopardy, when IBM first introduced it.

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Egypt’s Muslim, Christian authorities unite against atheism

By World Bulletin

Senior Muslim and Christian authorities are cooperating to draft a “scholarly response” to what they say is a growing trend of atheism, especially among Egyptian youth.

Christian churches in Egypt say they are joining forces with Egypt’s Al-Azhar, a prominent center of Sunni Muslim learning, to fight the spread of atheism in the country.

“The Church and the Al-Azhar are drafting a constructive mechanism to address atheism,” Poules Halim, a spokesman for Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, told Anadolu Agency.

His statements came following a two-day conference, organized jointly between the Al-Azhar and the church, aimed at forging a “scholarly response” to atheism, which, Halim said, had been “spreading increasingly” in Egypt over the past three years.

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One More Poliovirus Strain Now Eradicated

Image credit: RIBI Image Library

By Bahar Gholipour

One strain of the virus that causes polio has likely been eradicated worldwide, according to a new report.

For two years now, there have been no new reports of polio caused by this strain, called poliovirus type 3, according to researchers from World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The possible eradication of the poliovirus type 3 would be a “historic milestone” for global polio eradication efforts, the researchers said in their report released today (Nov. 13).

The world is not yet rid of polio. There are three strains of the virus, and type 1 is still actively being transmitted in three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Transmission of poliovirus type 2 has been stopped since 1999.

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Secularists call for an inclusive national ceremony of remembrance

By The National Secular Society

The commemoration of Remembrance Day should be rethought and re-designed to make it a truly inclusive national event, and not one that is dominated by a single Christian denomination, say secularists.

The National Secular Society (NSS) has written to the Government asking it to review the dominant role of the Church of England at the national ceremony of remembrance, which it argues should be equally inclusive of all citizens, regardless of religion and belief.

In a letter to Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Sajid Javid, the NSS says it is important that we commemorate important dates such as Remembrance “as a nation” and points out that many people feel alienated by religious services.

The letter urges the Government to bring forward proposals for a more secular and inclusive Ceremony of Remembrance, pointing out that ceremonies in other countries, such as France, are led by civic and national dignitaries without any religious element.

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Half Of Brits Say Religion Does More Harm Than Good, And Atheists Can Be Just As Moral

By Jessica Elgot

More than half of Britons believe that religion does more harm than good, with less than a quarter believing faith is a force for good, the Huffington Post UK can reveal today.

Even 20% of British people who described themselves as being ‘very religious’ said religion was harmful to society, and a quarter of said atheists were more likely to be moral individuals than religious people.

The exclusive poll for the HuffPost UK reveals that just 8% of Britons describe themselves as very religious, with more than 60% saying they were not religious at all.

The eye-opening survey, that will reopen debate over the role and worth of religion to British society, found of the ‘non-religious’ people polled, more than 60% said they thought religion caused more problems than it solved.

The poll shows that more people believe being an atheist is more likely to make you a good person than being religious. In fact, one in eight Britons said atheists tend to be more moral, compared to just 6% who say atheists are less moral, challenging widely held beliefs that religion is one of the last remaining bastions of British morality.

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Gulf Oil Spill Left Rhode Island-Sized Oily ‘Bathtub Ring’ On Seafloor, Study Finds

Photo: AP

By Seth Borenstein

The BP oil spill left an oily “bathub ring” on the sea floor that’s about the size of Rhode Island, new research shows.

The study by David Valentine, the chief scientist on the federal damage assessment research ships, estimates that about 10 million gallons of oil coagulated on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico around the damaged Deepwater Horizons oil rig.

Valentine, a geochemistry professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, said the spill from the Macondo well left other splotches containing even more oil. He said it is obvious where the oil is from, even though there were no chemical signature tests because over time the oil has degraded.

“There’s this sort of ring where you see around the Macondo well where the concentrations are elevated,” Valentine said. The study, published in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calls it a “bathtub ring.”

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NASA Seeks Proposals to Develop Capabilities for Deep Space Exploration, Journey to Mars

By NASA

NASA is soliciting proposals for concept studies or technology development projects that will be necessary to enable human pioneers to go to deep space destinations such as an asteroid and Mars.

Through a Broad Area Announcement (BAA) NASA released today, the agency seeks to use public-private partnerships to share funding to develop advanced propulsion, habitation and small satellite capabilities that will enable the pioneering of space. Public-private partnerships of this type help NASA stimulate the U.S. space industry while working to expand the frontiers of knowledge, capabilities and opportunities in space.

NASA intends to engage partners to help develop and build a set of sustainable, evolvable, multi-use space capabilities that will enable human pioneers to go to deep space destinations. Developing capabilities in three key areas – advanced propulsion, habitation, and small satellites deployed from the Space Launch System – is critical to enabling the next step for human spaceflight. This work will use the proving ground of space around the moon to develop technologies and advance knowledge to expand human exploration into the solar system.

State-of-the-art solar electric propulsion technology currently employed by NASA generates less than five kilowatts. The Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) BAA selected proposals for concepts developing systems in the 40-kilowatt range. NASA now is seeking to advance the technology to 50- to 300-kilowatt systems to meet the needs of a variety of mission concepts.

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NSS calls on Welsh Government to review compulsory collective worship

By The National Secular Society

The National Secular Society has called on the Welsh government to review the legal requirement on schools to provide worship after parents expressed concern about prayers being imposed on children in non-denominational schools.

A number of parents from Wales have contacted the National Secular Society (NSS) complaining of “excessive worship”, with reports of children being made to pray up to four times a day – without parents being informed.

Stephen Evans, NSS campaigns manager, said the imposition of worship in schools is causing a “moral dilemma” for many parents who don’t want a Christian upbringing for their child, but at the same time don’t find withdrawal an acceptable solution due to the emotional upset this causes for very young children.

Mr Evans said: “We are increasingly hearing from parents concerned about proselytising within their children’s schools, often in the form or excessive worship or assemblies being led by priests or evangelical groups. The obligation on all schools to provide a daily act of ‘broadly Christian’ worship is clearly providing a foot in the door for individuals and organisations with evangelistic intentions.

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Religion continues to cause disruption in ‘Trojan Horse’ schools

By National Secular Society

A school placed in special measures following the Birmingham ‘Trojan Horse’ affair has received 100 letters from parents requesting that their children be withdrawn from collective worship, it has emerged.

The revelation came in a report from Ofsted following a special measures monitoring inspection of Oldknow Academy – one of the schools involved in the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal.

Nothing in the report suggests why the requests have been made, and the school itself has not revealed why. However, according to the report “plans have been started to ensure that assemblies and personal, social and health education (PSHE) create opportunities to foster an appreciation of, and respect for, different faiths and cultures”. It is believed that some parents are opposed to these new measures.

Two weeks ago, police had to be called to another school, after a head teacher was confronted by a group of parents who objected to elements of the PSHE syllabus.

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Genes Will Survive Even If Most Humans Do Not

Photo: Mopic / Alamy

By Donald A Collins

In our July 23, 2014 lunch at our home with the Darwinist/atheist, Richard Dawkins, and his colleague, Robyn Blumner, Executive Director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, my wife, Sally and I of course discussed many subjects, but perhaps the most illuminating for me was to refer to his long gestating book, “The Selfish Gene” which he initially joked about as “my best seller”, long before it became a real best seller which it did in 1976.

Just for clarity’s sake in that book, Dawkins describes our genes thusly: “The genes are the immortals….(they) have an expectation of life that must be measured not in decades but in thousands and millions of years.

“In sexually reproducing species, the individual is too large and too temporary a genetic unit to qualify as a significant unit of natural selection. The group of individuals is an even larger unit. Genetically speaking, individuals and groups are like clouds in the sky or dust storms in the desert. They are temporary aggregations or federations.” He notes such populations can last a long while but any “population is not a discrete enough entity to be a unit of natural selection, not stable and unitary enough to be “selected” in preference of another population”.

In this seminal volume, he makes the case for the survival of genes, not specific creatures, which of course include humans. In the process, he attacks prior theories of evolution which say that evolution always seeks to produce better results, better creatures!

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The Subpoena Saga: Houston Officials’ Misstep Feeds Religious Right Persecution Complex

By Rob Boston

Last week, a story began circulating in the media about five conservative churches that were subpoenaed in Houston and ordered to turn over any sermons they had delivered about gay rights (along with a lot of other material).

Religious Right groups went ballistic. It often turns out in cases like this that what’s really going is less horrifying than the far right would have you believe. In this case, it turns out they actually had a point.

Some background: Houston officials in May passed an ordinance protecting LGBT rights. The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) is controversial in part because it gives transgender individuals the right to use the restroom of their choice in public buildings and businesses. (Religious entities are exempt.)

Conservative Christians don’t like HERO and are seeking to overturn it via a ballot referendum. To get the matter on the ballot, opponents had to collect about 16,000 signatures. They collected 50,000, but there were problems with many of them. A huge number of signatures were rejected, and the measure failed to qualify for the city ballot.

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The God Who Wasn't There

Former fundamentalist Christian Brian Flemming places the core concepts of his former religion under the microscope in a documentary that attempts to do for religion what Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me did for the fast-food industry. In his bold quest to seek answers to the difficult questions that few are willing to pose,

Flemming is joined by Deconstructing Jesus author Robert M. Price, renowned historian Richard Carrier, and The End of Faith author Sam Harris. From the ignorance of many contemporary Christians as to the origin of their religion to the striking similarities between Jesus Christ and the deities worshipped by ancient pagan cults and the Christian obsession with blood and violence, this faith-shaking documentary explores the many mysteries of the Christian faith as never before.

This documentary argues the "mythicist" case in the historical Jesus debate. This position says that Jesus of Nazareth wasn't a real person but a fiction based on Jewish scriptures and mystery religions of the Roman Empire. It doesn't make sense to talk about a "real" Jesus -- there wasn't any.

 

Ape To Man - Evolution Documentary

Scientists from the mid-nineteenth century have searched for the fossil remains of the "missing link" in evolution - the half-man, half-ape that would explain where mankind came from. But over the last century and a half, it has been the idea of what a missing link is that has evolved. The history of this scientific quest - peopled with fanatics, frauds, amateurs, professionals, the lucky, the unlucky, the unfairly neglected and the undeservedly praised - is the subject of this documentary. Reenactments depict scientists making their discoveries and then stretch back hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years to depict the typical lives of our human and human-like ancestors. Interviews with leading scientists fill in the details.

 

Sex was invented by a 385million-year-old fish from Scotland

Two armoured-plated fish living in a lake in what is now Scotland hundreds of millions of years ago were the first vertebrates to ever have sexual intercourse. The extinct prehistoric fish in question is Microbrachius dicki, a 3in long placoderm and a very early ancestor of humans.

Australian scientists, publishing their findings in the Nature journal, revealed that not much has changed in the last 385million years: in order to transfer sperm, males had grooved L-shaped claspers held in place by small paired bones on females. “Placoderms were once thought to be a dead-end group with no live relatives, but recent studies show that our own evolution is deeply rooted in placoderms, and that many of the features we have, such as jaws, teeth and paired limbs, first originated with this group of fishes,” said Professor John Long, of Flinders University, Adelaide. “Now, we reveal they gave us the intimate act of sexual intercourse as well.”

Freethinkers take on religious far-right at secularism conference in Tower Hill

By Adam Barnett

Freethinkers from around the world gathered in Tower Hill for a secularism conference supported by famous atheist Richard Dawkins.

The two day conference on the weekend hosted speakers from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and America at the Tower Hotel in the shadow of Tower Bridge.

A spokesman for the hotel said they received several emails and phone calls of a “serious nature” over the event that saw police attend the venue, but it went ahead without incident.

It was convened by British-Iranian feminist Maryam Namazie and Algerian sociologist Marieme Helie Lucas, with funding from the Richard Dawkins Foundation, to discuss the global struggle against the religious far-right.

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Prehistoric Paintings in Indonesia May Be Oldest Cave Art Ever

Credit: Kinez Riza

By Megan Gannon

Paintings of miniature buffalos, warty pigs and human hands covering the walls and ceilings of caves in Indonesia could be among the oldest examples of cave art in the world, a new study finds.

The paintings — some of which might be more than 40,000 years old — challenge Europe’s standing as the birthplace of prehistoric art.

“It was previously thought that Western Europe was the centerpiece of a ‘symbolic explosion’ in early human artistic activity, such as cave painting and other forms of image making, including figurative art, around 40,000 years ago,” said study leader Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist at Australia’s Griffith University. “However, our findings show that cave art was made at opposite ends of the Pleistocene Eurasian world at about the same time, suggesting these practices have deeper origins — perhaps in Africa before our species left this continent and spread across the globe.”

Sulawesi caves

The paintings were found in the karst caves of Sulawesi, an island just east of Borneo with four long peninsulas that radiate like flower petals. Archaeologists have known about the cave art for decades. They’ve also found shellfish, animal bones, pigment-stained stone tools and even ochre “crayons” inside these caverns.

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Call to secularise NHS chaplaincy services

By National Secular Society

Secularists have criticised new draft NHS England chaplaincy guidelines for failing to adequately recognise the needs of patients who do not identify with a religious faith.

NHS England is consulting on new chaplaincy guidelines intended to update and improve the provision of chaplaincy and spiritual care across the NHS. The guidance includes an explicit recognition of the need to provide guidance “for the care of patients and service users who do not identify with a religious faith”.

However, in a joint submission to an NHS England consultation, the National Secular Society and the Secular Medical Forum criticised the guidelines for being too focussed on religious care rather than providing an inclusive service that benefits all patients and NHS staff.

Chaplaincy services are funded from NHS budgets. Despite purporting to provide ‘spiritual care’ to all, the role is only open to individuals who can obtain satisfactory recommendation and authorisation by their faith community.

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Chimpanzees develop cultures in the wild like humans

By Sarah Knapton

Chimpanzees develop cultures in the wild which distinguish them from other groups, scientists have found.

A community of Sonso chimpanzees living in Uganda’s Budongo Forest was filmed using crushed leaves and moss to collect water.

During six days of continuous observation, zoologists discovered that the group left their leaf-sponges at their watering hole and picked them up the following day – in the same way a human leaves a cup near a sink.

The Alpha Male ‘Nick’ was also seen to use moss to collect water, and the new technique was quickly adopted by many of the chimpanzees.

Mother with womb transplant says risk paid off

AP Photo/The Lancet

By Maria Cheng

For the world’s first baby born to a woman with a transplanted womb – a medical first – only a victorious name would do.

Which is why his parents named him “Vincent,” meaning “to conquer,” according to his mother.

The 36-year-old Swedish mother learned she had no womb when she was 15 and was devastated, she said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press.

“I was terribly sad when doctors told me I would never carry my own child,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified.

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