It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
The extinction of the giant ape: a long-standing mystery solved
Giants once roamed the karst plains of southern China, three-metre tall apes weighing in at 250 kilograms. These very distant human ancestors – Gigantopithcus blacki – went extinct before humans arrived in the region, with few clues to why, and so far leaving around 2000 fossilised teeth and four jawbones as the only signs of their existence.
New evidence from this region published in Nature, uncovered by a team of Chinese, Australian and US researchers, demonstrates beyond doubt that the largest primate to walk the earth went extinct between 295,000 and 215,000 years ago, unable to adapt its food preferences and behaviours, and vulnerable to the changing climates which sealed its fate.
“The IVPP has been excavating for G. blacki evidence in this region for over 10 years but without solid dating and a consistent environmental analysis, the cause of its extinction had eluded us.”
Definitive evidence revealing the story of the giant ape’s extinction has come from a large-scale project collecting evidence from 22 cave sites spread across a wide region of Guangxi Province in southern China. The foundation of this study was the dating.
“It’s a major feat to present a defined cause for the extinction of a species, but establishing the exact time when a species disappears from the fossil record gives us a target timeframe for an environmental reconstruction and behaviour assessment,” says co-lead author, Macquarie University geochronologist Associate Professor Kira Westaway.
“Without robust dating, you are simply looking for clues in the wrong places.”
Six Australian universities contributed to the project. Macquarie University, Southern Cross University, Wollongong University and the University of Queensland used multiple techniques to date samples. Southern Cross also mapped G. blacki teeth to extract information on the apes’ behaviours. ANU and Flinders University studied the pollen and fossil bearing sediments in the cave respectively, to reconstruct the environments in which G. blacki thrived and then disappeared.
Luminescence dating, which measures a light-sensitive signal found in the burial sediments that encased the G. blacki fossils, was the primary technique, supported by uranium series (US) and electron-spin resonance (US-ESR) dating of the G. blacki teeth themselves.
“By direct-dating the fossil remains, we confirmed their age aligns with the luminescence sequence in the sediments where they were found, giving us a comprehensive and reliable chronology for the extinction of G. blacki,” says Southern Cross University geochronologist Associate Professor Renaud Joannes-Boyau.
Using detailed pollen analysis, fauna reconstructions, stable isotope analysis of the teeth and a detailed analysis of the cave sediments at a micro level, the team established the environmental conditions leading up to when G blacki went extinct. Then, using trace element and dental microwear textural analysis (DMTA) of the apes’ teeth, the team modelled G. blacki’s behaviour while it was flourishing, compared to during the species’ demise.
“Teeth provide a staggering insight into the behaviour of the species indicating stress, diversity of food sources, and repeated behaviours,” says Associate Professor Joannes-Boyau
By 700,000 to 600,000 years ago, the environment became more variable due to the increase in the strength of the seasons, causing a change in the structure of the forest communities.
“G. blacki was the ultimate specialist, compared to the more agile adapters like orangutans, and this ultimately led to its demise,” says Professor Zhang.
Associate Professor Westaway says: “With the threat of a sixth mass extinction event looming over us, there is an urgent need to understand why species go extinct.
“Exploring the reasons for past unresolved extinctions gives us a good starting point to understand primate resilience and the fate of other large animals, in the past and future.”
Digging into the hard cemented cave sediments containing a wealth of fossils and evidence of G. blacki
The G. blacki bearing cave of Zhang Wang lies 150 m above the valley floor making for a tough climb every day to conduct excavations
CREDIT
Kira Westaway (Macquarie University)
Karst landscape panorama in southern China
Cone and towering karst forms a dense network of mountains riddled with caves containing G. blacki evidence
CREDIT
Joannes-Boyau (Southern Cross University)
A drones-eye view of Mulan Mountain
The location of many caves including two G. blacki bearing caves
The long climb up
Climbing up the steep karst mountains to the G. blacki cave
The demise of the giant ape Gigantopithecus blacki
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
10-Jan-2024
COI STATEMENT
The authors declare no conflicts. This research was funded by the Australian Research Council with a Discovery grant to KEW, YZ, SH, RC (DP170101597), Future Fellowship (FT180100309) to MWM, LIEF (LE130100115) to GG and GP, and by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Priority Research grant to YZ, KEW and RJB (XDB26030303). Aspects of the ESR dating study on quartz have been covered by the Ramón y Cajal Fellowship RYC2018-025221-I granted to MD and funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and “ESF Investing in your future”. PR would like to thank the Max Planck Society for funding and support. The DMTA and microstratigraphical analyses was supported by W. V. Scott Estate Charitable Trust Fund (123402902) and a Ruggles-Gates Scholarship (125201851) by the Royal Anthropological Institute (UK) grants to JKL. The research in the BB Basin was funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China (20&ZD246) and the BaGui Scholars Project of the Guangxi.
Glow sticks – Not just for parties anymore
University of Houston researcher using popular party favor to detect biothreats for US Navy
RICHARD WILLSON, HUFFINGTON-WOESTEMEYER PROFESSOR OF CHEMICAL AND BIOMOLECULAR ENGINEERING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON, IS ADAPTING TECHNOLOGY OF GLOW STICKS TO EXCITE FLUORESCENT PARTICLES TO INCREASE THEIR DETECTABILITY.
Remember that party where you were swinging glow sticks above your head or wearing them as necklaces? Fun times, right? Science times, too. Turns out those fun party favors are now being used by a University of Houston researcher to identify emerging biothreats for the United States Navy.
It’s not the odd combination it may seem at first glance. Largely due to climate change, the environmental niches that can be occupied by threat-producing species are expanding. As environmental biothreats increase, so does their accessibility and potential concern from a biodefense perspective. Currently, there is a need to detect and diagnose certain emerging biothreats, especially in far-forward settings.
“We are for the first time applying the shelf-stable, low-toxicity, low-cost chemistry of common glow sticks to develop bright and rapid diagnostic tests called lateral flow immunoassays (LFIs) like fluorescent-dyed nanoparticles that, when exposed to glow stick activation chemicals, emit bright visible light that can be readily imaged using a smartphone or simple camera,” said Richard Willson, Huffington-Woestemeyer Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston. “We will adapt the technology of glow sticks widely used in military signaling applications to excite fluorescent LFI particles to increase their detectability.”
The humble glow stick
Here’s how they work: When you bend a common glow stick, it breaks a small glass container inside holding a mix of 3% hydrogen peroxide and another substance. This mix reacts with a chemical stored outside the glass, creating a new substance that is quite reactive. When it collides with special colorful dyes, it gives them energy and makes them light up.
That’s usually the time you lose interest in them and toss them away – but not so for Willson, who has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Navy, with the future potential to receive task orders of $1.3 million, to develop improved rapid detection technology for emerging biothreats to support forward deployable testing efforts and develop high affinity reagents for the new technology. High affinity reagents are substances or molecules that exhibit a strong and specific attraction or binding to a particular target
Accessibility of technology
The COVID-19 pandemic emphasized the need for rapid, inexpensive and ultrasensitive immunoassays for point-of-care diagnostic applications. Lateral flow immunoassays such as the home pregnancy test and COVID-19 rapid antigen test are successfully used by untrained persons to detect medically important chemicals but have limited analytical sensitivity and typically detect only a single chemical.
“Our novel Glow LFIs are very sensitive; preliminary results for Glow LFI detection of SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein spiked in nasal swab extract show an unoptimized limit of detection of 100 picograms per milliliter, already better than typical LFIs,” said Willson, whose research with the glow stick method also shows detection of other known biothreats.
As part of the ongoing research Willson will also develop a pipeline to produce new high-affinity reagents to be employed in these new detection assays.
Rallying for a better badminton birdie
Study examines aerodynamic performance of nylon shuttlecocks
PRESSURE DISTRIBUTION ON THE SURFACE OF THE SHUTTLECOCK MOVING AT 43 METERS PER SECOND CONSIDERING IT TO BE RIGID (LEFT) AND FLEXIBLE (RIGHT). NOTE THE LOWER SUCTION ON THE INNER SURFACE OF THE FLEXIBLE SHUTTLECOCK RESULTING IN LOWER AIR RESISTANCE.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 2024 – Badminton traces its roots back more than a millennium, but the modern version of the racket game originated in the late 19th century in England. Today, it is the second most popular sport in the world behind soccer, with an estimated 220 million people who enjoy playing. For the last three decades, badminton has been a competitive Olympic sport, and with “bird” speeds topping 300 mph in “smash” shots, it certainly makes for exciting spectator sport.
Shuttlecocks, also known as birdies or birds, are traditionally made from duck feathers, but nylon shuttlecocks have become more widely used because of their superior durability. Their flight behavior, however, is far different from that of traditional feather birdies.
In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, a trio of scientists in India explored the aerodynamic performance of nylon shuttlecocks at various flight speeds. Through computational analyses based on two-way fluid-structure interactions, the team coupled equations governing air flow with equations determining skirt deformation of a shuttlecock in flight.
“We studied the flow by examining aerodynamic forces on the shuttlecock as well as its deformations at each flight speed,” said author Sanjay Mittal. “The pressure on the skirt causes it to deform inwards and this deformation increases with speed.”
The team identified four distinct regimes of deformation. At speeds less than 40 meters per second (89 mph), the skirt maintains circularity despite cross-sectional deformation; at higher speeds, it buckles and deforms into a square before it then vibrates radially. Eventually, it undergoes a low frequency wavelike circumferential deformation.
“The cross-sectional area of the shuttlecock decreases with speed, which lowers the air flow rate through the shuttlecock,” said Mittal. “The vortex structures that form inside the shuttlecock weaken when it deforms. As a result of these effects, the deformed shuttlecock offers a much lower air resistance compared to its rigid counterpart.”
The study’s computational results confirm experimental measurements, explaining the phenomenology of why a duck feather shuttlecock does not deform as much as a nylon shuttlecock – and why the flight of each at high speed is quite different. From the perspective of a player on the receiving end of a smash shot, the nylon shuttlecock, which travels faster, is harder to return.
Ultimately, the research may represent a new arc in the history of the beloved sport.
“Our study opens up the possibility for improved designs that make the nylon shuttlecock structurally stiffer so that it more closely mimics the aerodynamic performance of feather shuttlecocks,” said Mittal. “This could be a game-changer, literally.”
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The article “Computational analysis of the fluid-structure interactions of a synthetic badminton shuttlecock” is authored by Darshankumar Zala, Harish Dechiraju, and Sanjay Mittal. The article will appear in Physics of Fluids on Jan. 9, 2024(DOI: 10.1063/5.0182411). After that date, it can be accessed at http://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0182411.
ABOUT THE JOURNAL
Physics of Fluids is devoted to the publication of original theoretical, computational, and experimental contributions to the dynamics of gases, liquids, and complex fluids. See https://aip.scitation.org/journal/phf.
Computational analysis of the fluid-structure interactions of a synthetic badminton shuttlecock
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
9-Jan-2024
PNNL kicks off multi-year energy storage, scientific discovery collaboration with Microsoft
The imperative to move faster from research to application of energy solutions gets a boost with AI trained to dramatically accelerate scientific discovery
CREDIT: CORTLAND JOHNSON | PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY
The urgent need to meet global clean energy goals has world leaders searching for faster solutions. To meet that call, the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has teamed with Microsoft to use high-performance computing in the cloud and advanced artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery on a scale not previously demonstrated. The initial focus of the partnership is chemistry and materials science—two scientific fields that underpin solutions to global energy challenges.
“The intersection of AI, cloud and high-performance computing, along with human scientists, we believe is key to accelerating the path to meaningful scientific results,” said PNNL’s Deputy Director for Science and Technology Tony Peurrung. “Our collaboration with Microsoft is about making AI accessible to scientists. We see the potential for AI to surface a material or an approach that is unexpected or unconventional, yet worth investigating. This is a first step in what promises to be an interesting journey to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery.”
How is this AI development different?
The two organizations are laser-focused on leveraging what AI does best—synthesizing billions of information bits—more than any human could possibly absorb—and quickly presenting conclusions based on its analysis. Microsoft’s Azure Quantum Elements platform uses advanced AI models purpose-built to aid scientific discovery. PNNL researchers are now testing its ability to identify promising new materials for energy applications. The two organizations have committed to leveraging advanced AI models to find viable new materials and the chemistries needed to provide energy-on-demand while preserving the Earth’s resources for future generations.
“We are at the dawn of a new era of scientific discovery that can transform our world for the better. With novel AI and hyperscale capabilities, we can speed up research and unlock the discovery of new molecules that can address some of the most pressing issues of our time, from clean energy to eliminating toxic chemicals and beyond. We are honored to work with world-class scientific institutions like Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Our breakthrough in using AQE to find new battery materials is just one of the many examples of how our innovative approach to materials research can improve our daily lives,” said Jason Zander, Executive Vice President of Strategic Missions and Technologies at Microsoft.
Materials scientist Vijay Murugesan and his team are studying new battery electrolyte materials identified through a collaboration with Microsoft.
CREDIT
Andrea Starr | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Energy storage as a test case
The newly executed agreement between the two organizations formalizes the next phase of PNNL’s ongoing relationship with Microsoft. Over the next several years, the Microsoft-PNNL partnership envisions a transformative journey toward pioneering breakthroughs in scientific discovery and sustainable energy—leveraging cutting-edge computing and artificial intelligence technologies to address some of the world's most pressing challenges. The partnership will have an initial emphasis in computational chemistry and material science.
Read more about how PNNL created these new energy storage materials in PNNL’s Energy Sciences Center. There, materials scientists Vijay Murugesan, Shannon Lee, Dan Thien Nguyen and Ajay Karakoti synthesized and tested the new compound. The entire process, from receiving the simulated candidates through producing a functioning battery, took less than nine months, a blink of an eye compared with traditional methods. To make the compound competitive with published benchmarks, additional optimization is required and initial investigations suggest new pathways to further explore the functional properties of the new material.
“The new battery results are just one example—a proof point if you will,” said PNNL’s Chief Digital Officer Brian Abrahamson. “We recognized early on that the magic here is in the speed of AI assisting in the identification of promising materials, and our ability to immediately put those ideas into action in the laboratory. We are excited to take this to the next level in the partnership between Microsoft and PNNL. We plan to push the boundaries of what's possible through the fusion of cutting-edge technology and scientific expertise.”
Hospitalizations for scooter injuries nearly tripled in the US between 2016 and 2020, UCLA-led research finds
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES HEALTH SCIENCES
IMAGE:
SCOOTER INJURIES NEARLY TRIPLED ACROSS THE U.S. FROM 2016 TO 2020, WITH A CONCURRENT INCREASE IN SEVERE INJURIES REQUIRING ORTHOPEDIC AND PLASTIC SURGERY OVER THE SAME PERIOD.
UCLA-led research finds that scooter injuries nearly tripled across the U.S. from 2016 to 2020, with a concurrent increase in severe injuries requiring orthopedic and plastic surgery over the same period.
The study, which compared national trends in scooter and bicycle injuries during the period, also found that costs to treat those injuries rose five-fold, highlighting the financial strain these injuries pose to the healthcare system – a finding that “underscores a critical juncture for discerning the underlying causes of injuries and informing policies for injury prevention,” the researchers note.
The study will be published January 9 in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
“Considering the rise in the number of hospitalizations and major operations for scooter-related injuries, it's crucial to elevate safety standards for riders,” said lead author Nam Yong Cho, a third-year medical student at UCLA and a research associate at the UCLA Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Laboratories. “Advocating for improved infrastructure, including enforced speed limits and dedicated lanes, is also vital to minimize risks for vehicles, scooter riders, and pedestrians alike.”
The researchers used the 2016-2020 National Inpatient Sample, a database maintained by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, to compare trends and outcomes for scooter-related and bicycle-related injuries. The database does not, however, differentiate between electric and non-electric scooters. Of nearly 93,000 patients who were hospitalized for injuries, about 6,100 (6.6%) resulted from scooter injuries.
Overall, about 27% of people in the scooter cohort were under age 18 compared with 16% for the bicycle group. In addition, injuries were most frequent in the winter months (24% vs 20%), patients were insured by Medicaid (27% vs 24%); and scooter injuries led to more major operative interventions (56% vs 48%), which mainly included orthopedic and plastic surgery (89% vs 85%) and operations to the head (5% vs 4%).
Scooter riders also had higher odds of experiencing long bone fractures and paralysis than their bicycle riding counterparts, though both groups were similarly likely to suffer traumatic brain injuries.
Finally, the annual healthcare burden of treating scooter-related injuries jumped from about $6.6 million in 2016 to $35.5 million in 2020. For bicycle injuries, the price tag increased from $307 million to $434 million.
The study has some limitations. They include a limited amount of granular data such as helmet use, presence of multiple riders on the vehicles, and use of intoxicants; and an inability to account for objects and other vehicles that might have been involved in the injury incidents, or to determine the kind of terrain where they happened, and speed, time of day and total distance traveled when they occurred. The researchers also could not ascertain the type of scooter or bicycle models involved in the injuries.
Still, the findings indicate a worrisome increase in patient injury, hospitalization and financial burden, the researchers note.
“The progressive exacerbation of injury severity in scooter-related incidents manifested in a substantial proportion of patients necessitating surgical intervention and potentially having long-term morbidity,” the researchers write. “Our findings are a call to action for healthcare leaders to empower themselves in promoting scooter-related injury prevention and greater safety in the community.”
Study co-authors are Shineui Kim, Dr. Zachary Tran, Dr. Joseph Hadaya; Konmal Ali, Elsa Kronen and Dr. Peyman Benharash of UCLA, and Dr. Sigrid Burruss of Loma Linda University Health. Tran is also affiliated with Loma Linda University Health.
SCOOTER-RELATED INJURIES ARE ON THE RISE AND CAN HAVE SEVERE CONSEQUENCES, ACCORDING TO NEW RESEARCH PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE OF SURGEONS.
The prevalence and severity of scooter-related injuries, as well as associated health care costs, have significantly increased in the U.S.
Compared to bicycle-related injuries, scooter-related injuries more often require surgical management and are associated with greater risks of long bone fractures and paralysis.
Scooter riders can protect themselves by wearing protective gear, such as helmets and knee pads, and by obeying traffic laws.
“As surgeons who work in an urban trauma center, we’ve seen an increase in scooter-related injuries in the emergency room and around the university campus,” said Peyman Benharash, MD, FACS, senior author of the study and an associate professor of surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Health. “The question is: How do we manage them and why is there such a surge?”
Injuries involving e-scooters—many of them classified as moderate or severe—have doubled in recent years, coinciding with the boom of shared e-scooter programs in urban areas and college campuses.1,2 Considering the exponential rise of scooter programs and scooter-related injuries, researchers at UCLA and Loma Linda University sought to delve into the nuances of these injuries and associated health care costs.
“This study is important because it describes both an increasing frequency of hospital admissions for scooter crash-related injuries, and it also demonstrates that the severity of these injuries is increasing over time,” said Brendan T. Campbell, MD, MPH, FACS, chair of the Injury Prevention and Control Committee of the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, which develops and implements programs that support injury prevention.
Dr. Campbell, a pediatric surgeon at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, Connecticut, was not involved with the JACS research study.
He added: “Future studies of scooter crashes should look for ways to lower injury risk, specifically what factors decrease crash risk and what incentivizes scooter riders to wear helmets.”
Study details
The team reviewed data on scooter-related injuries from 2016-2020 using the National Inpatient Sample (NIS), an administrative database maintained by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The team identified 92,815 patients who were admitted to hospitals on a non-elective basis with bicycle (86,690 patients) and scooter (6,125 patients) injuries using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revisions (ICD-10) codes. Before 2021, ICD-10 codes did not differentiate between electric and non-electric scooters, so the study focused on injuries related to all types of scooters.
Researchers reviewed several characteristics of the patients, including age, type of orthopedic injury, injury severity, length of stay in the hospital, and hospitalization costs.
Key study findings
Hospitalizations for scooter-related injuries increased by nearly three-fold from 2016 to 2020, and more than half of those injured patients underwent major operations.
Compared to bicycle injuries, patients who sustained injuries related to scooters were more likely to be under the age of 18 (26.7% vs. 16.4%), more frequently injured in winter months (24.2% vs. 20%), and more often insured by Medicaid (26.7% vs. 23.9%).
Patients hospitalized with scooter-related injuries more often underwent major surgeries (55.8 vs 48.1%), in particular orthoplastic procedures and operations on the head.
Scooter riders were more likely to sustain long bone fractures or paralysis compared to bicycle riders; risks associated with traumatic brain injury were similar among the two groups.
During the study period (2016-2020), total annual costs of hospitalizations in patients with bicycle and scooter-related injuries increased by nearly 5-fold, from $6.6 million in 2016 to $35.5 million in 2020.
“I think it’s important for the public to recognize the significance of scooter-related injuries and the financial outcomes associated with them,” said first author Nam Yong Cho, a third-year medical student at UCLA and a research associate at the UCLA Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Laboratories. “The public should also know that while caution must be taken among scooter riders, vehicle riders should also be cautious where shared scooter systems are prevalent.”
Injury patterns related to scooter injuries are also unique, sometimes impacting the chest wall or cardiothoracic area more frequently than bicycle injuries, which may warrant further investigation, the authors added.
Recognizing these concerning patterns, the authors are calling for health care leaders to promote scooter-related injury prevention efforts and greater safety in the community.
“Considering the increasing popularity of scooters and the rise of associated injuries, it is crucial to elevate safety standards for riders and advocate for improved infrastructure,” Cho said. “Things such as enforced speed limits and dedicated lanes for scooters are vital to minimize the risk of injuries to vehicles, scooter riders, and pedestrians alike. We believe our findings should urge health care leaders to take a stand and empower themselves in championing prevention strategies for scooter-related injuries and promoting a safer community.”
The study is limited by the use of the NIS, an administrative database that may not reflect granular data on injuries. The authors noted they could not account for helmet use, the presence of multiple riders, and the use of intoxicants during the time of the incident, among other factors. Objects or vehicles involved in collisions, as well as the details of terrain and speed of the scooter riders, could also not be delineated.
The study is published as an article in press on the JACS website.
Author Disclosures: Outside the scope of this research, Dr. Benharash received proctor fees from Atricure as a surgical proctor.
For journalists: Please contact pressinquiry@facs.org to access b-roll footage of the authors speaking about the study.
Farley KX, Aizpuru M, Wilson JM, et al. Estimated incidence of electric scooter injuries in the US from 2014 to 2019. JAMA network open. 2020 Aug 3;3(8):e2014500.
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About the American College of Surgeons
The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and improve the quality of care for all surgical patients. The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The College has approximately 90,000 members and is the largest organization of surgeons in the world. “FACS” designates that a surgeon is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
