Instead, when he analyzed the sample, he was amazed to see that primers could pull out the DNA of ancient mammoths, bison, horses and a variety of plants. Sometimes the scientists use universal primers, which recognize small sequences of DNA from all the organisms in one species or family; these molecules can then identify all the plant DNA or animal DNA to be amplified, or replicated, through the polymerase chain reaction. Jamie Wood, a paleoecologist at Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research who studies ecosystem function and composition in New Zealand over the past 50,000 years, explains that painstaking measures also have to be taken to ensure modern DNA doesn’t get mixed up in the ancient sample.

According to new research published May 27 in the journal Nature Geoscience, this boundary protects the ice shelf’s grounding line, the point at which it is thick enough to extend all the way to the sea floor. “We could see that the geological boundary was making the seafloor on the East Antarctic side much deeper than the West, and that affects the way the ocean water circulates under the ice shelf,” study leader Kirsty Tinto, a research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, said in a statement. [Antarctica: The Ice-Covered Bottom of the World (Photos)]

The Ross ice shelf is an expanse of ice 185,000 square miles (480,000) square kilometers) in area and hundreds of feet thick.

But physicists have spotted hints of similar radiation from analogs of black holes created in the lab (SN: 12/18/10, p. 28). In the new study, the sonic black hole’s temperature agrees with that predicted by Hawking’s theory, the team reports in the May 30 Nature. After Hawking proposed his theory, this predicted thermal property of the radiation led to a conundrum known as the black hole information paradox.

Image: Mizumoto et al./Proceedings of the Royal Society B
An exquisite fossil of photographic-like quality shows nearly 260 tiny fish swimming together in what appears to be coordinated group action. A new study published this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B showcases a stunning new fossil in which one such rapid burial locked an entire school of fish, or a shoal, in place. Image: Mizumoto et al./Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Mizumoto, the lead author of the new study, embarked on an analysis to see if coordinated group behavior could be inferred from the fossil.

What finally tipped Crutzen over the edge was a presentation by a group of scientists that focused on the Holocene, the geological epoch that began around 11,700 years ago and continues to the present day. To many geologists, accustomed to working with rocks that are hundreds of millions of years old, the notion that a species that has been around for the blink of an eye was now a genuine geological force seemed absurd. “All the things the Anthropocene implies that are beyond geology, particularly the social-political stuff, is new terrain for many geologists,” Zalasiewicz told me.

A strong jet stream fuels strong thunderstorms, which spawn strong tornadoes

A tornado is a rapidly rotating air column that reaches from clouds on down to the ground. This scientist saw this spate of tornadoes coming

Hints that huge numbers of tornadoes would crop up this week started to emerge more than a month ago, according to Victor Gensini, a professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University. In a paper published in the journal Nature last year, Gensini showed that the United States’ Tornado Alley — the region spanning South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas notorious for tornadoes — is shifting east.

For that angle, the models differ only slightly, because eliminating tunneling in the fully aligned regions doesn’t have a big impact: The TKV version of the story predicts 1.09 degrees for the magic angle versus 1.05 in MacDonald’s. MacDonald and Vishwanath peg the next-largest magic angle at 0.5 and less than 0.3 degrees, respectively; as experimenters refine their techniques, they’ll be able to pit the models against each other. What’s more, Vishwanath added, the stresses and distortions introduced by experimenters’ efforts to clamp graphene sheets together at particular angles tend to reduce the half-aligned area, a factor that the TKV model ignores.

Those aren’t an intelligent extraterrestrial army moving in to take over planet Earth — they’re just SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, designed to provide broadband services across the globe. Astronomers already wrangle with the problems posed by space robots and satellites circling the Earth whenever they turn their ground-based telescopes toward the stars. With a number of satellite constellations on the way, it will be critical for regulatory bodies and satellite providers to adequately manage the space debris and satellite problem, lest all of our space robots collide and lock us on Earth forever (yes, that’s a faint but possible catastrophic scenario)

Originally published May 27 at 11:07  p.m. PT.

But despite petitions from several advocacy groups – some dating back decades – the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still considers these to be Gras or “generally recognized as safe” to eat, though plenty of experts disagree. The Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the FDA to ban potassium bromate two decades ago due to cancer concerns, but the FDA’s response, according to a letter from the agency, was that it couldn’t examine the issue due to “limited availability of resources and other agency priorities”. “In EWG’s view, it is important for companies to start removing chemicals associated with health risks, so that shoppers don’t have to have a chemistry degree in order to decipher food labels,” said Naidenko.

But Xing, like a few other Chinese paleontologists, is also lionized for the extraordinary discoveries he has made in this amber: the hatchlings of primitive birds, the feathered tail of a dinosaur, lizards, frogs, snakes, snails, a host of insects. Much as 19th century naturalists collected species from teeming rainforests in far-flung locales, these scientists are building a detailed chronicle of life in a tropical forest 100 million years ago, all from amber mined across the border in Myanmar. Hundreds of scientific papers have emerged from the amber finds, and Chinese scientists hint that many specimens have yet to be published, including birds, insect species by the thousands, and even aquatic animals such as crabs or salamanders.