Penguins’ Flying Ability Lost As Birds Became Better Swimmers, Study Of Murres Suggests

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Humans spent centuries conspiring to fly, so it might be hard to imagine that any creature would give up the skill, and yet penguins waddle among us. A new study helps confirm that these seabirds traded flight to become better swimmers.

Penguins have a litany of physical features that make them energy-efficient underwater. For instance, their shortened wingspans lessen drag; their dense wing bones make them less buoyant; and their bulky bodies help them stay insulated and dive deeper. Unlike other aquatic birds that paddle underwater with their webbed feet, penguins beat their wings to propel themselves far below the surface. Emperor penguins can even go to depths greater than 1,500 feet (450 meters), lasting 20 minutes on a single breath.

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Murres, which resemble flying penguins, have the highest wing-loading of any bird, which results in exceptionally high flight costs and could explain why Antarctic penguins have evolved flightlessness.

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Limb Regeneration In Salamanders Depends On Key Immune Cells, Axolotl Study Shows

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Salamanders can regrow entire limbs and regenerate parts of major organs, an ability that relies on their immune systems, research now shows.

A study of the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), an aquatic salamander, reveals that immune cells called macrophages are critical in the early stages of regenerating lost limbs. Wiping out these cells permanently prevented regeneration and led to tissue scarring. The findings hint at possible strategies for tissue repair in humans.

“We can look to salamanders as a template of what perfect regeneration looks like,” lead study author James Godwin said in a statement. “We need to know exactly what salamanders do and how they do it well, so we can reverse-engineer that into human therapies,” added Goodwin, of the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University in Melbourne. [Ready for Med School? Test Your Body Smarts]

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The axolotl, an aquatic salamander, can regenerate lost limbs.

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Dark Matter Found? Underground Detector Finds Hints Of Elusive Particle, Physicists Say

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Hints of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up perhaps 85 percent of the matter in the universe, may have been observed by scientists.

But researchers are far from saying they’ve discovered the source of dark matter.

“We’re not claiming anything,” warned Blas Cabrera, a Stanford University physicist speaking here today (April 15) at a meeting of the American Physical Society. [Explaining Dark Matter (Infographic)]

The new results come from the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS), which takes place deep underground in the Soudan mine in northern Minnesota.

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The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment (SuperCDMS) uses five towers of dark matter detectors like the ones shown here.

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Judas Gospel Authentication Relied On Ink Of Ancient Egyptian Documents, Scientists Say

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A long-lost gospel that casts Judas as a co-conspirator of Jesus, rather than a betrayer, was ruled most likely authentic in 2006. Now, scientists reveal they couldn’t have made the call without a series of far more mundane documents, including Ancient Egyptian marriage licenses and property contracts.

The Gospel of Judas is a fragmented Coptic (Egyptian)-language text that portrays Judas in a far more sympathetic light than did the gospels that made it into the Bible. In this version of the story, Judas turns Jesus over to the authorities for execution upon Jesus’ request, as part of a plan to release his spirit from his body. In the accepted biblical version of the tale, Judas betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

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Dinosaur Egg Fossils Found In Spain Suggest Several Sauropods Nested In Area

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Researchers in northeastern Spain say they’ve uncovered hundreds of dinosaur egg fossils, including four kinds that had never been found before in the region. The eggs likely were left behind by sauropods millions of years ago.

Eggs, eggshell fragments and dozens of clutches were nestled in the stratigraphic layers of the Tremp geological formation at the site of Coll de Nargó in the Spanish province of Lleida, which was a marshy region during the Late Cretaceous Period, the researchers said.

“Eggshells, eggs and nests were found in abundance and they all belong to dinosaurs, sauropods in particular,” the study’s leader, Albert García Sellés from the Miquel Crusafont Catalan Palaeontology Institute, told Spanish news agency SINC this week.

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Star-Shaped Gravity Waves Discovered By Physicists In France

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Star-shaped waves can form in vibrating tanks of liquid oil, researchers say.

Learning more about such bizarre waves could shed light on counterparts that may exist elsewhere in nature, researchers added.

Waves of all kinds often behave in an intuitively linear manner. For instance, a weight on a spring will bob up and down in a manner directly proportional to the force that the weight exerts on the spring.

However, a number of strange waves can also form. They come from what is called nonlinearity, in which a small or simple change results in a disproportionately large or complex effect. For instance, aspects of weather behave chaotically, in a nonlinear manner.

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Researchers have discovered a new type of gravity wave, one that is shaped like a star. Such bizarre waves result from a property called nonlinearity, in which a small or simple change results in a disproportionately large or complex effect. For instance, aspects of weather behave chaotically, in a nonlinear manner.

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Largest Prime Number Known Is 17-Million Digits Long, Mathematician Says

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The largest prime number yet has been discovered — and it’s 17,425,170 digits long. The new prime number crushes the last one discovered in 2008, which was a paltry 12,978,189 digits long.

The number — 2 raised to the 57,885,161 power minus 1 — was discovered by University of Central Missouri mathematician Curtis Cooper as part of a giant network of volunteer computers devoted to finding primes, similar to projects like SETI@Home, which downloads and analyzes radio telescope data in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The network, called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) harnesses about 360,000 processors operating at 150 trillion calculations per second. This is the third prime number discovered by Cooper.

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Roman Shipwreck Off Greek Island Antikythera May Actually Hold Two Ships

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A dive to the undersea cliff where a famous Roman shipwreck rests has turned up either evidence that the wreck is enormous — or a suggestion that, not one, but two sunken ships are resting off the Greek island of Antikythera.

“Either way, it’s an exciting result,” said study researcher Brendan Foley, an archaeologist at Woods Hold Oceanographic Institution who presented the findings here today (Jan. 4) at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.

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The Antikythera wreck is famed for the massive number of artifacts pulled from

the site overthe past century. Here divers explore the site.

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Merneptah’s Sarcophagus: Biggest Ancient Egyptian Burial Box Identified Near ‘Valley Of The Kings’ (PHOTOS)

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The largest ancient Egyptian sarcophagus has been identified in a tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, say archaeologists who are re-assembling the giant box that was reduced to fragments more than 3,000 years ago.

Made of red granite, the royal sarcophagus was built for Merneptah, an Egyptian pharaoh who lived more than 3,200 years ago. A warrior king, he defeated the Libyans and a group called the “Sea Peoples” in a great battle.

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The mummy of Merneptah was encased in a series of four sarcophagi,

set one within the other. After his tomb was robbed, more than 3,000

years ago, he was reburied elsewhere and his two outer sarcophagi

boxes were broken up.

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Most Distant Object? Ancient Galaxy Discovered 13.3 Billion Light-Years From Earth

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A new celestial wonder has stolen the title of most distant object ever seen in the universe, astronomers report.

The new record holder is the galaxy MACS0647-JD, which is about 13.3 billion light-years away. The universe itself is only 13.7 billion years old, so this galaxy’s light has been traveling toward us for almost the whole history of space and time.

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