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)
Saturday, February 17, 2024
Cardiff University collaborates with Professor Brian Cox to educate school students on artificial intelligence
16 February 2024
Cardiff University has teamed up with The Royal Society and Professor Brian Cox in the next instalment of Brian Cox School Experiment videos.
As well as helping teachers bring exciting, creative, practical science to the classroom, the latest films will equip students with skills and information on emerging jobs and industries being reshaped by scientific advances.
Professor Brian Cox, physicist, and Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement in Science said: “The next generation of scientists will lead the way on finding new ways to tackle climate change, improve food security, and shape the evolution of artificial intelligence as it transforms society."
Professor Pete Burnap, Director of the Cardiff Centre for Cyber Security Research and Cyber Innovation Hub, and Co-Director of the Digital Transformation Innovation Institute, shared his research on machine learning and cybersecurity, and showcased the university’s research into technologies designed to understand threats to our public spaces and how to make them safer.
Professor Burnap said: “It was a pleasure to be involved in telling exciting and inspirational stories about real world uses of machine learning and cybersecurity."
He continued: "I hope the Royal Society videos are seen by young people whose first instinct is – “I want to do that!””
Aimed at students aged 11-14, the resources span topics at the forefront of global scientific research, including genome editing for sustainable crop production; ocean acidification, carbon capture and the loss of biodiversity; and machine learning and its use in cybersecurity.
Wittenham Clumps artefacts on display for the first time
By Katie Waple
BBC News
Earth Trust CentreArchaeologists Ginny and Ben with a type of nozzle called a tuyere that was found
Artefacts from a 2,700-year-old Iron Age settlement are going on display this weekend.
The exhibition at the Earth Trust Centre, Little Wittenham, explores the hidden history of Wittenham Clumps in Oxfordshire.
The Festival of Discovery includes 15,000 artefacts, including all the components of a blacksmith's workshop.
Jayne Manley, at Earth Trust, said: "It's our time now to share and bring this knowledge to life."
DigVenturesExcavation work began at the site in 2018
Archaeologists from DigVentures carried out the excavation between 2018 and 2020.
Radiocarbon dating revealed the smithy dated from 771-515 BC, soon after ironworking first arrived in Britain around 800 BC.
The team found the blacksmith's building, internal structures, hearth lining, a type of nozzle called a tuyere, and even tiny bits of metal that flew off when a hammer was used.
Nat Jackson, DigVentures site director, led the excavation and said: "It's always exciting to uncover the remains of ancient buildings that were occupied thousands of years ago."
Sustainable intensification of climate-resilient maize–chickpea system in semi-arid tropics through assessing factor productivity
Global trends show that the rapid increase in maize production is associated more with the expansion of maize growing areas than with rapid increases in yield. This is possible through achieving possible higher productivity through maize production practices intensification to meet the sustainable production. Therefore, a field experiment on “Ecological intensification of climate-resilient maize–chickpea cropping system” was conducted during consecutive three years from 2017–2018 to 2019–2020 at Main Agricultural Research Station, Dharwad, Karnataka, India. Results of three years pooled data revealed that ecological intensification (EI) treatment which comprises of all best management practices resulted in higher grain yield (7560 kg/ha) and stover yield compared to farmers’ practice (FP) and all other treatments which were deficit in one or other crop management practices. Similarly, in the succeeding winter season, significantly higher chickpea yield (797 kg/ha) was recorded in EI. Further EI practice recorded significant amount of soil organic carbon, available nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, and iron after completion of third cycle of experimentation (0.60%, 235.3 kg/ha,21.0 kg/ha,363.2 kg/ha,0.52 ppm and 5.2 ppm respectively). Soil enzymatic activity was also improved in EI practice over the years and improvement in each year was significant. Lower input energy use was in FP (17,855.2 MJ/ha). Whereas total output energy produced was the highest in EI practice (220,590 MJ ha−1) and lower output energy was recorded in EI–integrated nutrient management (INM) (149,255 MJ/ha). Lower energy productivity was noticed in EI-INM. Lower specific energy was recorded in FP and was followed by EI practice. Whereas higher specific energy was noticed is EI–INM. Each individual year and pooled data showed that EI practice recorded higher net return and benefit–cost ratio. The lower net returns were obtained in EI-integrated weed management (Rs. 51354.7/ha), EI-recommended irrigation management (Rs. 56,015.3/ha), integrated pest management (Rs. 59,569.7/ha) and farmers’ practice (Rs. 67,357.7/ha) which were on par with others.
A secret war between cane toads and parasitic lungworms is raging across Australia
By Greg Brown, Macquarie University; Lee A Rollins, UNSW Sydney, Rick Shine, Macquarie University•February 17, 2024
A cane toad (Rhinella marina).Image credit: Shutterstock.
When the first cane toads were brought from South America to Queensland in 1935, many of the parasites that troubled them were left behind.
But deep inside the lungs of at least one of those pioneer toads lurked small nematode lungworms.
Almost a century later, the toads are evolving and spreading across the Australian continent. In new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, we show that the lungworms too are evolving: for reasons we do not yet understand, worms taken from the toad invasion front in Western Australia are better at infecting toads than their Queensland cousins.
Nematode lungworms are tiny threadlike creatures that live in the lining of a toad’s lung, suck its blood, and release their eggs through the host’s digestive tract. The larva that hatch in the toad’s droppings lie in wait for a new host to pass by, then penetrate through its skin and migrate through the amphibian’s body to find the lungs and settle into a comfortable life, and begin the cycle anew.
Parasites and their hosts are locked into an eternal arms race. Any characteristic that makes a parasite better at finding a new host, setting up an infection, and defeating the host’s attempts to destroy it, will be favoured by natural selection.
Over generations, parasites get better and better at infecting their hosts. But at the same time, any new trick that enables a host to detect, avoid or repel the parasites is favoured as well.
So it’s a case of parasites evolving to infect, and hosts evolving to defeat that new tactic. Mostly, parasites win because they have so many offspring and each generation is very short. As a result, they can evolve new tricks faster than the host can evolve to fight them.
The march of the toads
The co-evolution between hosts and parasites is most in sync among the ones in the same location, because they encounter each other most regularly. A parasite is usually better able to infect hosts from the local population it encounters regularly than those from a distant population.
But when hosts invade new territory, it can play havoc with the evolutionary matching between local hosts and parasites.
Since cane toads were released into the fields around Cairns in 1935, the toxic amphibians have hopped some 2,500 kilometres westwards and are currently on the doorstep of Broome. And they have changed dramatically along the way.
The Queensland toads are homebodies and spend their lives in a small area, often reusing the same shelter night after night. As a result, their populations can build up to high densities.
For a lungworm larva, having lots of toads in a small area, reusing and sharing shelter sites, makes it simple to find a new host. But at the invasion front (currently in Western Australia), toads are highly mobile, moving over a kilometre per night when conditions permit, and rarely spending two nights in the same place.
At the forefront of the invasion, toads are few and far between. A lungworm larva at the invasion front, waiting in the soil for a toad to pass by, will have few opportunities to encounter and infect a new host.
Lungworms from the invasion front
When hosts are rare, we expect the parasite will evolve to get better at infecting the ones it does encounter, because it is unlikely to get a second chance.
To understand how this co-evolution is playing out between cane toads and their lungworms, we did some experiments pairing hosts and parasites from different locations in Australia. What would happen when toad and lungworm strains that had been separated by 90 years of invasion were reintroduced to each other?
To study this we collected toads from different locations, bred them in captivity and reared the offspring in the lab under common conditions. We then exposed them to 50 lungworm larvae from a different area of the range, waited four months for infections to develop, then killed the toads and counted how many adult worms had successfully established in their lungs.
As expected, worms from the invasion front were best at infecting toads, not just their local ones. Behind the invasion front, in intermediate and old populations we found that hosts were able to fight their local parasites better than those from distant populations.
While we saw dramatic differences in infection outcomes, we have yet to determine what biochemical mechanisms caused the differences and how changes in genetic variation of host and parasite populations might have shaped them.
This article presents a study, intending to design a model with 90% reliability, which helps in the prediction of school dropouts in higher and secondary education institutions, implementing machine learning techniques. The collection of information was carried out with open data from the 2015 Intercensal Survey and the 2010 and 2020 Population and Housing censuses carried out by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, which contain information about the inhabitants and homes. in the 32 federal entities of Mexico. The data were homologated and twenty variables were selected, based on the correlation. After cleaning the data, there was a sample of 1,080,782 records in total. Supervised learning was used to create the model, automating data processing with training and testing, applying the following techniques, Artificial Neural Networks, Support Vector Machines, Linear Ridge and Lasso Regression, Bayesian Optimization, Random Forest, the first two with a reliability greater than 99% and the last with 91%.
A new genus and five new species of ‘alien-faced’ multi-legged forest dwellers discovered
These new species did not appear in earlier collecting of millipedes from the same area.
By Pranjal Mehar 17 Feb, 2024 Preserved heads of two new millipede species, Lophostreptus magombera and Udzungwastreptus marianae. Credit: University of the Sunshine Coast
University of the Sunshine Coast scientists have recently discovered a new genus of ‘alien-faced’ multi-legged forest dwellers in remote African jungles. They have uncovered a new genus and five new species of millipedes- many-legged creatures.
The heads of these creatures look like Star Wars characters. Scientists found them among forest litter and loose soil while researching tree and vine growth in Tanzania’s remote Udzungwa Mountains.
The discovery has the potential to shed light on two contrasting theories regarding the role of vines in forest recovery. One theory likens vines to bandages that protect the forest like a wound, while the other views them as ‘parasitoids’ that choke the forest.
The scientists named one of the newly discovered species, Lophostreptus magombera, in honor of the Magombera Nature Reserve. This reserve is a biologically unique forest that Professor Marshall has been working to conserve since the turn of the millennium.
The new genus is Udzungwastreptus. The five new species are Lophostreptus magombera, Attemsostreptus cataractae, Attemsostreptus leptoptilos, Attemsostreptus julostriatus and Udzungwastreptus marianae.
University of the Sunshine Coast Professor Andy Marshall said, “We record millipedes of all sizes during our fieldwork to measure forest recovery because they are great indicators of forest health, but we didn’t realize the significance of these species until the myriapodologists had assessed our specimens.”
Box of sample millipedes collected by UniSC FoRCE project researchers in Tanzania. [Photo credit: A.R. Marshall]
The project, supported by the Australian Research Council, seeks to explore global forest recovery following significant disturbances.
Recent research conducted as part of a worldwide collaboration indicates that higher temperatures play a crucial role in the proliferation of woody vines in forests already impacted by activities like logging.
A notable feature of the largest African millipedes is their numerous legs, with some species growing up to 35 centimeters in length.
Professor Marshall, from UniSC’s Forest Research Institute, said while the millipedes they found were only a few centimeters long – they still had around 200 legs each.
“Unearthing the new genus and species of millipedes highlighted the huge amount of discovery remaining in tropical forests.” Journal Reference:Enghoff, H., Ngute, A. S., Kwezaura, R. L., Laizzer, R. L., Lyatuu, H. M., Mhagawale, W., Mnendendo, H. R., & Marshall, A. R. (2024). A mountain of millipedes XI. The trachystreptoform spirostreptids of the Udzungwa Mountains, Tanzania (Diplopoda, Spirostreptida, Spirostreptidae). European Journal of Taxonomy, 918(1), 1–50. DOI: 10.5852/ejt.2024.918.2405
Why the Top Cause of Death for Women Has Been Ignored
Cardiovascular Disease Kills 1 in 5 Women, but Has Not Received the Attention It Needs, Cedars-Sinai Experts Say
Newswise — LOS ANGELES (Feb. 16, 2024) -- Experts at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai who have studied progress made over decades of research say there’s still a long way to go before medical science fully understands how heart disease is different in women than men.
But there is hope, according to Natalie Bello, MD, MPH, director of Hypertension Research in the Department of Cardiology, and colleague Susan Cheng, MD, MPH, the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Cardiovascular Health and Population Science, who recently authored a perspective article in the journal Circulation Research.
The paper reflects on women’s cardiovascular health during the past century and looks ahead to the many advances happening in the field. Bello spoke with the Cedars-Sinai Newsroom to share more.
What do women need to know about their cardiovascular health?
Heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death in women, but surveys show women tend to think they are more likely to die of cancer, particularly breast cancer. The most important thing to remember is that heart disease kills more women than all types of cancer combined.
Are some women at greater risk than others?
Almost 20% of women who get pregnant experience complications, such as high blood pressure, preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, that have important implications for their future heart health. These conditions are associated with a higher incidence of heart disease that often happens early in the lifespan.
What progress has been made?
Thanks to pioneers like C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, director of the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center in the Smidt Heart Institute, the medical community is now actively involved in the advancement of women’s heart disease research and care. Her leadership in this area has broadened visibility to gender differences in things like heart attack symptoms and the diagnosis of small vessel heart disease.
Could you give an example of how increased research into women's cardiovascular health has led to better treatment for women?
There is a now a blood test approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, developed by Cedars-Sinai investigators, that we can use to understand a woman's risk for preeclampsia. It helps tell us when a pregnant woman is safe to go home, or if she needs to stay in the hospital for closer monitoring, treatment or early delivery. We use it very frequently.
This is just one of many examples of how Cedars-Sinai has led in women’s heart health.
When should women think about their cardiovascular health?
At age 20, women should establish care with a primary care physician and have their cardiovascular risk assessed. At minimum, all women should visit a primary care provider annually for a blood pressure check.
What are the best ways to prevent cardiovascular disease?
Learn about your personal risk and ways you can modify the disease. That advice is based on the knowledge that 80% of cardiovascular disease is preventable. By doing things like stopping smoking, eating healthy, maintaining a healthy body weight, exercising and sleeping well, we can prevent or delay the progression of heart disease.
Why is it that women's cardiovascular health has been ignored?
In a paper published in 1912, a researcher named Dr. James Herrick and colleagues described heart disease as something that occurred in men. But they published another paper in 1928 showing that the same thing was happening in women. For whatever reason, the follow-up work never gained traction, and that set the stage for heart disease being seen as a man’s issue.
Early epidemiologic research also demonstrated a delay in the onset of heart disease in women compared with men. Noting that women’s risk seemed to increase after menopause, estrogen was believed to be protective and premenopausal women’s risk for heart disease was thought to be low. We now realize that societal issues and habits at the time also influenced risk: Men were more likely to smoke, and women didn’t start smoking socially until later in the last century. Unfortunately, when smoking became socially acceptable for women, there was an uptick in women's heart disease as a result.
I think one of the main reasons women’s cardiovascular health wasn't really investigated is that there was not as much diversity in science and medicine at the time. If you don't experience things, you don't know what questions to ask. I'm not saying it's impossible, but a bunch of men sitting around a table aren't necessarily going to ask each other, “I wonder how excessive menstrual bleeding impacts heart disease risk?” and decide to examine that in a research study.
What can women who aren’t scientists do to ensure the medical system addresses their needs?
It often takes people outside of the scientific community to remind us that we need to be examining certain issues in women’s health. A lot of times it comes from patients who experienced something in their own pregnancy or in their own heart health journey and either started a foundation or lobbied elected officials to increase funding for research related to women. It’s also important for women to feel empowered to discuss their concerns with their clinicians, and if they feel they aren’t being listened to, they should find another person to listen to their symptoms and work them up appropriately.
Alexander the Great’s father’s remains have been identified in a Greek tomb using X-ray analysis, a new study says.
The new international — yet controversial study — states that archaeologists previously had the wrong tomb identified in Vergina, Greece, as containing Alexander the Great’s father, Philip II of Macedon, according to Live Science.
The site contains three 4th century B.C.E. tombs.
The study was first published in the December issue of Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
Alexander Instructing his Soldiers, from The Deeds of Alexander the Great, 1608.
Artist Antonio Tempesta.
(Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)
Along with Alexander the Great’s father, Philip II of Macedon, the researchers said the three tombs also contain Alexander’s half-brother, King Philip III Arrhidaeus, and his teenage son, Alexander IV.
In ancient times, Vergina was Macedonia’s original capital, known as Aegae.
The archaeologists took x-rays of the skeletons in the tombs and compared them to detailed descriptions about the Macedonian royals, including height, weight, injuries and physical anomalies, according to Live Science.
Alexander’s father’s remains were identified by a knee injury that was "consistent with the historic evidence of the lameness of King Philip II," the study said, according to Live Science.
He was located in what is known as Tomb I rather than Tomb II, which he had previously thought to have been in, according to the study.
The Vergina site was first discovered in the 1970s, but debate has ensued about which royals were buried in each tomb.
Remnants from Greece's ancient Parthenon in Athens.
(AP Photo / Petros Giannakouris / File)
Antonios Bartsiokas, the study’s lead author, told Live Science the research "was like a fascinating detective's ancient story," Bartsiokas is an anthropology and paleoanthropology professor at Democritus University of Thrace in Komotini, Greece.
The researchers located King Philip III Arrhidaeus, Alexander the Great’s half-brother and successor, in Tomb II.
"His skeletal evidence and the pattern of his cremated bones have been shown to be consistent with the circumstances of the death of King Arrhidaeus and his wife," Bartsiokas said, according to Live Science. "Tomb I was a very small and poor tomb and Tomb II was very big and rich. This ties with the historical evidence that Macedonia was in a state of bankruptcy when Alexander started his campaign and very rich when he died. This is consistent with Tomb I belonging to Philip II and Tomb II belonging to his son Arrhidaeus."
Philip II is believed to be interred with his wife and baby.
A full moon rises in Greece. (AP Photo / Thanassis Stavrakis / File)
Bartsiokas added, "This was the only newborn in the Macedonian dynasty to have died shortly after it was born. The age of the female skeleton at 18 years old was determined based on the epiphyseal lines of her humerus. [This number] coincides with the age of [his wife Queen] Cleopatra from the ancient sources."
He explained that the remains in Tomb II were also not found to have an eye injury as previously believed. Tomb I's remains could not definitely determine if there was an eye injury due to its deterioration.
"Philip II is known from ancient sources to have suffered an eye injury that blinded him," Bartsiokas said, according to Live Science. "I was surprised to find [the] absence of such an eye injury in the male skeleton of Tomb II, which was initially widely described as a real injury that identified Philip II. In other words, this was a case of a description of a morphologic feature that did not exist."
Alexander IV was determined by the study to be in Tomb III.