Fossils tell us a lot about extinct animals from millions of years ago, but DNA sequencing can tell us a lot more, especially when the fossils they come from are only tiny fragments of the original animal. But DNA begins to degrade as soon as a creature dies. There is no readable DNA from dinosaurs, despite what Jurassic Park would have you believe. But a discovery of some teeth from steppe mammoths (an elephant that lived before the wooly mammoth) is setting records for readable DNA.

The clues come from some incredibly old DNA extracted from a trio of molars uncovered in northeastern Siberia. The oldest is nicknamed the Krestovka mammoth, dated to about 1.2 million years ago. The other two molars are nicknamed the Adycha and Chukochya mammoths, dated to 1 million and 500,000 to 800,000 years old, respectively. The fact that the researchers were able to extract and analyze the DNA from these fossils at all is a landmark. Up until now, the oldest look at ancient genes came from an Ice Age horse that lived over 560,000 years ago. The new mammoth samples double that, taking the title for the oldest DNA yet recovered from fossil remains. “We had to deal with DNA that was significantly more degraded compared to the horse,” says Swedish Museum of Natural History paleogeneticist Love Dalén, an author of the new study.

At any rate, the extracted DNA from the step mammoths revealed some surprising findings, such as their long hair (which makes the illustration above obsolete) and their relationship to other mammoths. Read about the mammoth findings and the feat of extracting million-year-old DNA at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Dmitry Bogdanov)

The US government, in setting standards for food quality based on appearance, also shaped our perception of what is acceptable to eat. This does not always line up with reality. But having set the standards, the government then had to deal with food producers who took shortcuts to make food appear better to the consumer. What kind of added food coloring is acceptable or necessary? The first three minutes of this video is about the margarine wars, which you may remember from a previous post. But regulating the color of food goes way beyond that. While food safety is of paramount importance, it might be better for the public to get used to the way food looks before it is converted to Instagram quality in order to attract our eyes at the grocery store. -via Digg

Instructables member Jade Pullen made this amazing globe that turns on and off live radio broadcasts around the world based on how the globe is physically oriented. It's a whole world filled with many different voices available with the flick of a finger. Sometimes, Pullen writes, the experience of using RadioGlobe is quite jarring:

Part of the magic is the the tension between familiarity and the unfamiliarity: It's both shocking how many radio stations play Western pop music, but then with a turn of the jog wheel, you find an alternatives (in the same location) - and you navigate from Boosh FM's Drum & Bass, to listening to a native dialect of New Zealand. [...]

News is another revelation - it's all too easy to lapse into thinking my 'international' news is 'the benchmark'. I found myself listening to the same global updates on COVID-19, but rather than my usual BBC News, I heard a local DJ discussing it in a chat radio station in South Africa - framing things in, frankly, a more gritty take... It's certainly different to what I'm used to, and that's the point. 

-via Laughing Squid

There is snow on the ground here in Texas. But, I have heard, it also snows elsewhere. So it is hard to know precisely where this video was recorded. The man featured acts very Texan, so we shall claim him as our own.

True story: a few nights ago, when the heaviest of the snowfall was upon us, my wife commented that it was odd that one of our neighbors, who is prone to shoot off fireworks at seemingly random moments, had not decided that a record-braking blizzard was not the perfect moment for a fireworks show. 30 seconds later, the fireworks started. Because Texas.

-via Born in Space

Venice is one of the world’s premiere places to be for Carnival, the two-week period leading up to Lent. The city goes all out with elaborate costumes, entertainment, and celebrations for the thousands of tourists want to experience a one-of-a-kind Carnival. But this year is different. Italy was hit pretty hard by the coronavirus last year, and no one wants to see a repeat of that.   

The Venetian Carnival in the time of COVID is decidedly different, not least because all public celebrations have been cancelled and are instead being streamed online. Restaurants are closed at 6 p.m. and the city must button up at 10 p.m. by law due to a nationwide curfew thanks to the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Normally, Carnival is a time when many Venetians head out of town due to the influx of tourists, but with travel between Italian regions prohibited and tourism from abroad at a standstill, Carnival this year is very local indeed and for some Venetians, it is the first time in years they have not skipped town. On the last Sunday of the Carnival season, St. Mark’s Square was full of locals. “It’s so odd to only hear Italian being spoken here,” a masked Venetian woman dressed as a courtesan told The Daily Beast. “I don’t know if I like it this way. It just doesn’t seem like Carnival.”

It is a rare privilege to see Venetians celebrate this year’s Carnival alone due to COVID restrictions, and one that—as amazing as it is—no one really wants to see ever happen again. “Of course we can’t deny how magical it is to see Venice like this without the usual onslaught of foreign tourists,” a shop owner who sells hand-pressed paper off St. Mark’s Square told The Daily Beast. “But once in a lifetime is enough.”

Read how the city dealt with restrictions and a lack of tourists this year at The Daily Beast.  -via Digg

While this looping animation by Lord Victor Haegelin shows half a dozen Leonardo DiCaprio movies, it’s far from all of them. He’s acted in 30 feature films! However, you should be able to name all of these, despite the cool but vertigo-inducing transitions. -via Digg

British Antarctic Survey scientist Huw Griffiths explained how a team of geologists drilling through the ice to collect sediment samples found something quite unexpected half a mile under the Antarctic ice shelf:

“We were expecting to retrieve a sediment core from under the ice shelf, so it came as a bit of a surprise when we hit the boulder and saw from the video footage that there were animals living on it.”

There are many kinds of walls, and even among those built on a country estate, designs vary according to their purpose. One rather ingenious wall design is the ha-ha, possibly called that because that’s what people said when they saw how it worked. From the grounds of well-kept estate, it was barely visible, and what you saw was not only minimal, but aesthetically pleasing. What you didn’t see was a barrier that kept animals out of the yard.  

In those early days, before mechanical lawn mowers, sheep and cattle were often allowed to graze on the ground to keep the grassland trimmed. A ha-ha was typically constructed between the estate's gardens and grounds to prevent grazing animals from crossing over to the manicured lawn and gardens adjoining the house, while generating a continuous vista of the garden and landscape beyond. Unlike an ordinary trench, which may turn into a moat or become overgrown with vegetation, a ha-ha keeps the estate ground in an impeccable state by allowing livestock to graze right up to the stonewall.

Find out how a ha-ha works, and see examples of its use at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Flickr user Tim Dawson)

The playground staple known as the giant stride rose in popularity with playgrounds themselves around the turn of the 20th century. It was simply a sturdy pole with a wheel on top, from which hung ropes or chains for children to grab and ride. It was called the giant stride because the centripetal force of the circle allowed a child to take giant strides in their steps.   

It was the most thrilling thing that had ever existed on a playground, before or since. In the words of Canadian history writer Anita May Draper, “those who’ve taken a spin on this ride agree it’s the most exciting one of all.” Denver Post columnist Jack Kisling once eulogized the apparatus as “mad fun.” When Iowa’s Quad-City Times canvassed its older readers for memories of the thing in 1991, they received a torrent of positive mail, with one woman even citing it as evidence that growing up during the Great Depression was “more fun.”

But it came at a ghastly cost: cracked skulls, shattered limbs, horrific lacerations and dead or permanently maimed children. In an age of radium toothpaste, lead-paint baby toys and decorating Christmas trees with asbestos, even this pleasure was deemed too dangerous for the world’s children. This is the forgotten story of the giant stride, the most notorious piece of playground equipment in history.

The effort to remove giant strides from playgrounds began in the 1920s, but the structures lingered on for decades here and there. Read about the hazardous giant stride at the National Post. -via Fark

(Image source: Library of Congress)

It has been unexpectedly rough this week here in Texas. We're not set up with the infrastructure necessary to easily endure sub-freezing temperatures for several consecutive days.

It has been especially difficult for the sea turtles who live off the south Texas coast. But Sea Turtle, Inc., a conservation organization, along with many volunteers, nonetheless managed to pull 3,500 turtles out of freezing waters off South Padre Island. KXAN News reports on how the rescuers have been trying to find suitable space anywhere for the turtles:

Sea Turtle Inc. was using the South Padre Island Convention Center to shelter the turtles as they work to rescue as many as possible.

The Beach Resort at South Padre Island will be taking in some of the turtles, due to space issues at the Convention Center.

“We will house the turtles in our indoor water park and the conference room.” said Natin Kasan, owner of Beach Resort.

My mom is retired, & she spends her winters volunteering at a sea turtle rescue center in south Texas. The cold snap is stunning the local turtles & they’re doing a lot of rescues. She sent me this photo today of the back of her Subaru. It’s *literally* turtles all the way down. pic.twitter.com/xaDRNjLDoQ

— Lara (@lara_hand) February 15, 2021

On a temporary basis, the human heroes are putting the turtles anywhere that isn't filled with freezing water.

-via Marilyn Terrell | Photo (top): Sea Turtle, Inc.

Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Richard Ramirez/public domain

The serial killers you know are those you either remember or have seen a movie about: Richard Ramirez, David Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer. There were others, most of them operating between the late 1960s and the turn of the century. Then the era of serial killers petered out. Why?  

Criminal justice expert Peter Vronksy, whose new book American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years looks to answer just that question, says that more than 80 percent of known American serial killers operated between 1970 and 1999. “It’s an era that was coined as the ‘golden age of serial murder‘ by Harold Schechter, who was a crime historian,” Vronsky tells Rolling Stone. The reason behind this is manyfold — encompassing everything from sociological changes, to biology, to technology, to linguistics.

Over the course of his work, which began in 1979, Vronsky has deduced that serial killers generally develop the personality and compulsion befitting a killer when they’re young — by the time they’re 14, they’re basically fully formed; they generally start killing in their late twenties. As such, he looked back at what was happening in the world when murderers like John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Bundy were growing up, and discovered a link: They were all born during wartime. “In cases like, for example, the BTK killer [Dennis Rader], Richard Cottingham [the Torso Killer], their fathers were returning war veterans with PTSD, which [was not a diagnosable illness until] the Eighties,” he says. In short: These children who were already predisposed to violence were raised in potentially violent, likely broken homes.

Intriguing, but not the entire explanation. Not everyone in that situation turned out to be a serial killer. Society has changed in other ways, and the news media also contributed by focusing on sensational stories colored by the public’s perception of the crimes, the perpetrators, and the victims. Frankly, I’ve written too many articles about historical serial killers to believe the late 20th century was truly an anomaly. Read about the ‘golden age of serial murder‘ and the reasons behind it at Rolling Stone.  -via Damn Interesting

A manned mission to Mars entails plenty of challenges that don’t pertain to a trip to, say, the moon. How will we sustain astronauts for years at a time, both physically and mentally? It takes a lot of creativity to figure out these things, so NASA is holding a contest to produce innovative ideas for feeding astronauts during a deep space mission.

The Deep Space Food Challenge will identify food production technologies that can:

    Help fill food gaps for a three-year round-trip mission with no resupply

    Feed a crew of four (4) astronauts

    Improve the accessibility of food on Earth, in particular, via production directly in urban centers and in remote and harsh environments

    Achieve the greatest amount of food output with minimal inputs and minimal waste

    Create a variety of palatable, nutritious, and safe foods that requires little processing time for crew members

Yes, there’s money involved. NASA has budgeted $500,000 to split among the top 20 teams. Get an overview of the program at Popular Mechanics. To take part, you must sign up for the Deep Space Food Challenge by May 28.  -via Digg

All it takes is one small box to do some quality improvement on all the speakers or audio devices in your home. The Dense Home is a stereo amplifier that boosts the abilities of audio devices by taking their input and amplifying the audio signal going in. Designed by Brian Han & Aron Han, the gadget will transform the music you hear on your devices as if it were produced in a studio: 

The amp comes with a Corian surface on top that mimics marble or granite, and routes all the wires at the back. It works with wireless devices too, amplifying the signal to your headphones to make your music sound top notch. The Class D stereo amplifier on the inside helps effectively enrich and amplify your sounds while efficiently saving power, and the Corian plate on top supports touch interaction, allowing you to slide your finger up or down to control the volume, or select your input and output. The Dense Home supports analog as well as digital inputs and outputs, which means you could either replay your vinyl records at lossless quality, or listen to audio files from your computer or phone at the highest definition. Support for wireless output devices effectively means your regular headphones now become high-quality ones, and the Dense team is working on integrating Spotify too, so your entire playlist gets turbocharged to its highest quality!

Image via Yanko Design

The other day I had a brain cramp and Googled “Hawaiian Disney movie” and the results all came back as Moana. Which isn’t set in Hawaii. How can we possibly forget Lilo & Stitch? I, uh, just forgot the name for a minute. The movie is fairly recent, if you consider 19 years ago “recent,” as I do. Lilo & Stitch was a sweet family movie featuring a charmingly disgusting space alien that causes chaos everywhere. I loved it. The movie’s weirdness made it a hit. Still, Screen Junkies are able to pick it apart without ruining a bit of the charm in this Honest Trailer.   

Sadly, we can’t ride this one yet. Scientists were able to make two small plastic plates float using, not any type of special cloth, but light! Yes, as in transparent light alone! Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used the energy of bright LEDs in a vacuum chamber to make two Mylar plates hover: 

“When the two samples lifted, there was a gasp between all four of us,” UPenn engineering doctoral candidate Mohsen Azadi told the magazine.

If you’re hoping to pick up a light-powered magic carpet from Amazon anytime soon, you’ll have to keep waiting. Scientists are more interested in using this technology to research the mesosphere, a high-up region of the atmosphere that’s notoriously difficult to study.

“Sometimes it’s called ignorosphere, in joke,” Igor Bargatin, a mechanical engineering professor at UPenn, told Wired. “We just don’t have access to it. You can send a rocket for a few minutes at a time, but that’s very different from doing measurements using airplanes or balloons.” 

With the recent breakthrough, though, researchers hope to develop a flight system that can carry tiny sensors into the mesosphere using the light-powered hovering technology. 

Image via wikimedia commons