Tools Indicate Early Visitors to Arctic Circle
Primitive stone tools and other artifacts discovered on the bank of the Usa River at the Arctic Circle in the desolate far north of European Russia indicate a band of hunters set up camp there almost 40,000 years ago--far earlier than previously thought, researchers reported in the Sept. 6 issue of Nature. The camp’s occupants may have been Neanderthals or modern humans. If they were Neanderthals, they had spread much farther north than previously thought. If they were modern humans, they had traveled from southern Europe to the Arctic in a very short time.
Survival in the harsh environment of the Arctic suggests a relatively high level of social development of the sort generally associated with modern humans, the researchers said.
Flu Can Turn Deadly Quickly, Researchers Say
The virus that caused the Hong Kong flu four years ago switched from a mild illness to a deadly disease when a single change occurred on one of its genes, researchers reported in the Sept. 7 issue of Science. That tiny change allowed the flu that had been concentrated in chickens to jump to people, killing six of the 18 people infected.
“What this tells you is that the avian influenza virus can become the virus that causes the disease in humans at any moment,” said Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the authors. Authorities were forced to kill more than a million chickens in Hong Kong to block the spread of the newly virulent flu. “We have found that a limited number of very tiny genetic changes in a specific gene, one called PB2, can have a big effect on how potent the influenza virus is,” said Kawaoka.
Spy Planes Could Track Forest Fires
Unmanned spy planes similar to those the military flies over Iraq could have a new civil use as high-flying fire towers.
NASA scientists put one of the remote-controlled planes through paces Thursday, fitting it with heat-sensing infrared cameras and lighting a small fire for it to track from 3,000 feet above the Mojave Desert.
The stream of images the Altus II beamed back clearly showed the scene and fire.
“It allows you to be an eye in the sky,” said Vince Ambrosia, a senior scientist on the First Response Experiment, or FiRE, project at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.
The planes, civilian versions of the military’s Predator spy plane, would cost about $2 million each. NASA officials envision deploying Altus II drones each summer, starting as early as next year, to help firefighters battle wildfires across the West. The drones are able to reach 57,500 feet and remain aloft for about a day.
Octopus Arms Have Minds of Their Own
The octopus, already considered among the smartest of all invertebrate animals, boasts complex nervous systems in each of its eight arms that act autonomously from the creature’s brain and control the movements of the extremities, Israeli researchers have found.
Writing in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, the scientists said the well-developed brain of the octopus decides whether an arm should move--to grasp food, for example--but leaves it up to these eight nervous systems to carry out the order as they see fit.
This is the first time that such a system has been found in the animal kingdom, said lead researcher Binyamin Hochner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Hochner and his colleagues have been studying octopuses for the last six years in an effort to gain insight into how to build better robotic arms.
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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II
