People with spinal cord injuries in the future could be healing their nerve connections with a device that uses red light and near-infrared light pointed at the exact source of damage. The novel therapeutic approach, invented by scientists at the University of Birmingham, involves delivering light directly to the site of the injury through an […] The post Red Light Therapy for Repairing Spinal Cord Injury Reaches Milestone With New Implant appeared first on Good News Network.

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Biden campaign co-chair claims the American people democratically electing a "convicted felon" for president in November would somehow "destroy democracy."

NAB Rescinds Prestigious Award to Robert De Niro after Anti-Trump Freak-Out

Our family dog used to have a rather noticeable extra eyelid that became especially apparent when he dozed off, usually upturned on the rug. This is the fleshy curtain seen at the corner of each eye, closest to the nose. It’s also commonly called the nictitating (literally “blinking”) membrane.You may have noticed these “third” eyelids on your pets appear occasionally, perhaps during their sleepy moments, or when they’re enjoying a bit of affection. But what does this unusual structure actually do? And why don’t we have one as well?Third eyelids sweep in a generally horizontal direction across the eye, instead of vertically as the upper and lower lids do. They’re actually a specialised fold of the conjunctiva – the thin, moist membrane that coats the other lids and the exposed white of your eye (the sclera). They’re found in many mammalian species, but are not unique to them. Birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish can also have a third eyelid.The structure varies too; in many species a cartilage skeleton provides support, while others contain glands that secrete tears. This variation is probably to help animals adapt to multiple different environments – to the sea, the air and even arboreal habitats in trees.Several different studies have examined third eyelids to help understand their role in hedgehogs, kangaroos and brown bears.And research has shown the third eyelid functions much as the upper and lower lids do. It protects the eye, and sweeps away any invading debris. It also distributes tears across the eye’s surface, keeping it moist and preventing ulcers forming. This is particularly important in brachycephalic (flat-faced) dogs, like pugs and King Charles spaniels, whose protruding eyes are not as well protected compared to other breeds.In the wildBoth domestic and wild animals (including species from canine, feline and equine families) need eye shielding and protection from foreign bodies. Wild animals may need them even more, since they might be exploring grasslands, or contending with bites and scratches from prey or rival animals.Preventing, trapping and removing debris is crucial for desert animals like camels, where sand and dirt might damage the eye. Their third eyelid is partially transparent and this helps camels retain some vision in the middle of a sandstorm, while covering their eyes.In bushlands, aardvarks also have third eyelids, perhaps to protect their eyes as they root around for insects.The third eyelid may offer protection from water, and a translucent membrane can aid underwater vision of aquatic animals, including manatees (curiously, manatees come from the order Afrotheria, which also includes aardvarks). Larger species of sharks (blues for instance) typically protect their eyes with their third eyelid when hunting and feeding.For birds, fast air currents can prove equally damaging. So, in birds of prey like falcons, the eyelid is used during rapid flight in hunting. Often air gusts will set off third eyelid blinking in these birds (including owls) as a natural protective reflex.This crow’s third eyelid is visible in this photo. Fotograf Julian/ShutterstockIn other avian species, it might protect against damage from sharp-beaked offspring. Imagine a bird returning with a prize of food to a nestful of voraciously hungry chicks, all pecking and scrabbling to get their share.Studies suggest third eyelids play a unique role in woodpeckers, whose skulls undergo vibration trauma when drilling a tree trunk with their beak. Two problems arise as a result of this forceful head banging – damage to the softer eye tissue, and sawdust being thrown into them. In this case, the third eyelid may act as both a seatbelt and a visor.In polar regions, where the white landscape reflects sunlight, ultraviolet rays can damage the eye. This can lead to temporary loss of vision – a condition known as snow blindness. So it’s possible that some arctic animals like polar bears have third eyelids that absorb UV light. There’s no established evidence of this yet, but their third eyelids are clear, assisting them in being skilled marine hunters.Evolutionary lossHumans and most primates (except lemurs and the calabar angwantibo, from the Lorisidae family) have evolved to the point where a proper third eyelid is no longer needed. Human and primate eyes are less likely to be damaged by hunting, rivalry and the environment. Plus, human eyes are highly sensitive and able to recognise and respond to danger by closing more quickly.   But the third eyelid isn’t entirely gone. Humans have a remnant of it called the plica semilunaris. This crescent-moon fold can be seen at the corner of our eyes too. Have a look yourself in the mirror.Some scientists have argued the plica can still help drain tears. There are two small ducts at the angle of our eyelids, which allow excess and old tears to escape into the nasal cavity. That explains why you get a runny nose when you cry.But would getting our true third eyelid back be of any use to us? Maybe the alien in Men in Black could offer an opinion. Perhaps it could allow us to naturally keep our eyes cleaner, less irritated, or dislodge that contact lens that won’t come out.We’ll just have to accept we don’t share the clever nature of our pets’ third eyelids. But then we also can’t compete with their night vision, acute hearing or sense of smell. It’s a long list.Dan Baumgardt, Senior Lecturer, School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, University of BristolThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) fascinate researchers and the general public alike. They remain central to debates about the nature of the genus Homo (the broad biological classification that humans and their relatives fall into). Neanderthals are also vital for understanding the uniqueness or otherwise of our species, Homo sapiens.We shared an ancestor with the Neanderthals around 600,000 years ago. They evolved in Europe while we did so in Africa, before dispersing multiple times into Eurasia. The Neanderthals became extinct around 40,000 years ago. We populated the world and continue to flourish. Whether that different outcome is a consequence of differences in language and thought has been long debated.But the evidence points to key differences in the brains of our species and those of Neanderthals that allowed modern humans (H. sapiens) to come up with abstract and complex ideas through metaphor – the ability to compare two unrelated things. For this to happen, our species had to diverge from the Neanderthals in our brain architecture.Some experts interpret the skeletal and archaeological evidence as indicating profound differences. Others believe there were none. And some take the middle ground.Disagreement is not surprising when trying to infer such intangibles from material remains such as bones and artefacts. The evidence is piecemeal and ambiguous, providing us with a complex puzzle for how, when and why language evolved. Fortunately, recent discoveries in archaeology and other disciplines have added several new pieces to this language puzzle, enabling a viable picture of the Neanderthal mind to emerge.New anatomical evidence indicates the Neanderthals had vocal tracts and auditory pathways not significantly different to our own, indicating that, from an anatomical perspective, they were as capable as us at communicating through speech. The discovery of Neanderthal genes in our own species indicates multiple episodes of interbreeding, which implies effective inter-species communication and social relationships.The discovery of Neanderthal wooden spears, and the use of resins for making tools from separate components, have also enhanced our views of their technical skills. Pendants made from bird talons and the likely use of feathers as body adornments are claimed as examples of symbolism, along with geometric engravings on stone and bone.Cave painters?The most striking claim is that Neanderthals made art, painting red pigment on cave walls in Spain. But several of these cave art claims remain problematic. The evidence for Neanderthal cave art is compromised by unresolved methodological issues and is unlikely to be correct, in my view.Rapidly accumulating evidence for the pre-40,000-year presence of modern humans in Europe challenges the idea that Neanderthals made these geometric designs, or at least that they did so prior to the influence of the symbol-using modern humans. However well-crafted, a wooden spear is little more than a pointed stick, and evidence of technological progress is absent throughout the entirety of Neanderthal existence.While the archaeological evidence remains contested, that from neuroscience and genetics provides a compelling case for linguistic and cognitive differences between H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens.Neanderthals appear to have used feathers as body adornments. Bokeh Blur Background / ShutterstockA 3D digital reconstruction of the Neanderthal brain, created by deforming that of H. sapiens and fitting it into a cast of the brain (endocast) from a Neanderthal, indicates significant differences in structure. The Neanderthals had a relatively large occipital lobe, devoting more brain matter to visual processing and making less available for other tasks such as language.They also had a relatively small and differently shaped cerebellum. This sub-cortical structure, which is packed with neurons, contributes to many tasks including language processing, speaking and fluency. The uniquely spherical shape of the modern human brain evolved after the first Homo sapiens had appeared at 300,000 years ago.Some of the genetic mutations associated with that development are associated with neuronal development and how neurons are connected in the brain. The authors of a comprehensive study of all mutations known to be unique to H. sapiens (as of 2019) concluded that “modifications of a complex network in cognition or learning took place in modern human evolution”.Iconic wordsWhile such evidence has been accumulating, our understanding of language has also changed. Three developments are of particular significance. First is the 2016 discovery via brain scanning that we store words, or rather the concepts we associate with words, throughout both brain hemispheres and in clusters, or semantic groups, of similar concepts in the brain. This is significant because, as we’ll see, the way these clusters of ideas are connected – or not – was probably different between H. sapiens and Neanderthals.Second is the recognition that iconic sounds – those that provide a sensory impression of the thing they represent – had provided the evolutionary bridge between ape-like calls of our common ancestor of 6 million years ago and the first words spoken by Homo – though we’re not sure which species that was.Iconic words remain pervasive in languages today, capturing aspects of the sound, size, movement and texture of the concept the word represents. This contrasts with words that are only arbitrarily related to the thing they refer to. For example, a canine can equally be called a dog, chien or hund – none of which provide a sensory impression of the animal.Third, computer simulation models of language transmission between generations have shown that syntax – consistent rules for how words are ordered to generate meaning – can spontaneously emerge. This shift of emphasis from genetic encoding of syntax to spontaneous emergence suggests that both H.sapiens and Neanderthal language contained these rules.The key differenceWhile it may be possible to join the puzzle pieces in several different ways, my long wrestle with the multi-disciplinary evidence has found only one solution. This begins with iconic words being spoken by the ancient human species Homo erectus around 1.6 million years ago.As these types of words were transmitted from generation to generation, arbitrary words and rules of syntax emerged, providing the early Neanderthals and H. sapiens with equivalent linguistic and cognitive capacities.But these diverged as both species continued to evolve. The H. sapiens brain developed its spherical form with neural networks connecting what had been isolated semantic clusters of words. These remained isolated in the Neanderthal brain. So, while H. sapiens and Neanderthals had equivalent capacity for iconic words and syntax, they appear to have differed with respect to storing ideas in semantic clusters in the brain.By linking up different clusters in the brain that are responsible for storing groups of concepts, our species gained the capacity to think and communicate using metaphor. This allowed modern humans to draw a line between widely different concepts and ideas.This was arguably the most important of our cognitive tools, enabling us to come up with complex and abstract concepts. While iconic words and syntax were shared between H. sapiens and Neanderthals, metaphor transformed the language, thought and culture of our species, creating a deep divide with the Neanderthals. They went extinct, while we populated the world and continue to flourish.Steven Mithen, Professor of Early Prehistory, University of ReadingThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

One of the deepest metal mines in Europe – the Pyhäsalmi Mine in central Finland – is to be turned into an enormous gravity battery capable of storing 2 megawatts of energy.As the planet moves towards renewable energy, we are faced with the problem of storage. The problem is that the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine at precisely the time when people want to consume their power. On particularly windy or sunny days, too much electricity can be generated, leading to a situation where consumers are paid to consume electricity rather than overload the grid. But power that isn't used becomes lost.It would be better, of course, if we could store that energy away for later use. Gravity batteries are one way of doing that.Despite the cool name, the idea behind gravity batteries is really simple. During times when energy sources are producing more energy than the demand, the excess energy is used to move weights (in the form of water or sometimes sand) upwards, turning it into potential energy. When the power supply is low, these objects can then be released, powering turbines as our good friend (and deadly enemy) gravity sends them toward the Earth. Though generally, gravity batteries take the form of reservoirs, abandoned mines moving sand or other weights up when excess power is being produced have also been suggested. Scottish company Gravitricity created a system of winches and hoists that can be installed in such disused mineshafts. The company will install the system in the 1,400-meter-deep (4,600 feet) zinc and copper mine in Pyhäjärvi, Finland.“As the world generates more electricity from intermittent renewable energy sources, there is a growing need for technologies which can capture and store energy during periods of low demand and release it rapidly when required,” Gravitricity co-founder Martin Wright said of the technology late last year.“Our GraviStore underground gravity energy storage uses the force of gravity to offer some of the best characteristics of lithium-ion batteries and pumped hydro storage – at low cost, and without the need for any rare earth metals."An earlier version of this article was published in February 2024. 

“Medieval history” often brings up images of knights in shining armor, rampaging crusaders, and dying horribly from common and preventable causes. Far away from all those peculiarly disgusting Europeans, though, on what we now know as the Swahili Coast of Eastern Africa, there was something pretty amazing going on – as a study revealed back in 2023.“The findings were very eye-opening,” said Jeffrey Fleisher, professor of anthropology at Rice University and a senior author on the study, in a statement. “African traders were fostering different types of alliances with Persian merchants during the early second millennium, probably by marrying off daughters and building their family connections.”For a century now, various scholars have debated the extent to which Swahili culture has been influenced by outside sources – with evidence pointing in multiple different directions. Adding to this confusion was the influence of more than 500 years of colonization in the area – a “profoundly difficult history” that is still a major problem today, pointed out David Reich, professor of genetics in the Blatavnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University.“The story of Swahili origins has been molded almost entirely by non-Swahili people,” he added in a statement.So, at first, the accepted wisdom – at least outside of the Swahili Coast itself – was that such an impressive civilization, with its coral-stoned mosques and multicultural towns, must have been imported by some foreign ruling class. In the past few decades, though, the predominant view has shifted to one in which the local culture was mainly homegrown, with only shallower impacts from foreign cultures being imported over the centuries.Meanwhile, local oral tradition told yet another tale. According to the people of the Swahili Coast themselves, their culture originated with Persian princes, who, around the turn of the second millennium, sailed across the Indian Ocean to East Africa and firmly entrenched themselves into Swahili society, marrying local women and setting up families and communities that left their mark for centuries to come.The mentioned study sought to end this conflict of canon by brute force: it comprises the largest-yet analysis of ancient DNA in Africa and includes the first ancient DNA recovered from members of the Swahili civilization. As well as the ancient DNA, which dates from 1300 to 1900 CE, the team also included new genomic sequences from close to 100 present-day Swahili speakers and modern individuals from across East Africa and Eurasia. Comparing the two sets allowed them to pinpoint where the ancient individuals may have hailed from.And the results showed a clear winner: the traditional stories got it right.“The results provide unambiguous evidence of ongoing cultural mixing on the East African coast for more than a millennium,” said Reich. “African people interacted and had families with immigrants from other parts of Africa and the Indian Ocean world.”Indeed, a huge amount– more than half, in some cases – of the DNA recovered from centuries-old skeletons in local cemeteries traced back to Asia rather than Africa. Of that, the overwhelming majority came from Persia – the area we now know as Iran, Fleisher explained. Mitochondrial DNA, on the other hand – a genetic signature that can only be passed down through the maternal line – skewed heavily towards African ancestry, implying a situation in which Persian men married and produced offspring with African women all along the Swahili Coast.But while that picture may suggest a grisly story of exploitation and displacement, that view is likely “naïve,” Reich told the New York Times. Such an interpretation “[doesn’t] take into account the cultural context in this particular case,” he explained: while Persian customs and cultural features were certainly incorporated into the local society, the way of life along the Swahili Coast remained predominantly African.Rather than being replaced, the authors say, the Swahili culture simply absorbed foreign influences, with the Asian émigrés becoming Swahili rather than the other way around. “Archaeological excavations have revealed the African foundations of Swahili society, showing deep historical roots and African origins for coastal architecture and material culture, rather than Persian inspiration,” explained Fleisher. “And the individuals living here were speaking Swahili, a local Bantu language, and carrying on local traditions in their daily lives.”While the results may “contradict and complicate” the narratives advanced in traditional scholarly circles, for co-senior author Chapurukha Kusimba, professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida, it’s nevertheless a huge step forward in the relatively young field of African archaeogenetics.“Taking a genetics pathway to find the answers took courage,” he said. “[We have] opened doors beyond which lie answers that force us to think in new ways.” The study is published in Nature.An earlier version of this article was published in March 2023.

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