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The world is getting wetter, yet water may become less available for North America and Eurasia

Drips from faucet in dry environment

With climate change, plants of the future will consume more water than in the present day, leading to less water available for people living in North America and Eurasia, according to a Dartmouth-led study in Nature Geoscience. The research suggests a drier future despite anticipated precipitation increases for places like the United States and Europe, populous regions already facing water stresses.

The study challenges an expectation in climate science that plants will make the world wetter in the future. Scientists have long thought that as carbon dioxide concentrations increase in the atmosphere, plants will reduce their water consumption, leaving more freshwater available in our soils and streams. This is because as more carbon dioxide accumulates in our atmosphere plants can photosynthesize the same amount while partly closing the pores (stomata) on their leaves. Closed stomata means less plant water loss to the atmosphere, increasing water in the land. The new findings reveal that this story of plants making the land wetter is limited to the tropics and the extremely high latitudes, where freshwater availability is already high and competing demands on it are low. For much of the mid-latitudes, the study finds, projected plant responses to climate change will not make the land wetter but drier, which has massive implications for millions of people.

"Approximately 60 percent of the global water flux from the land to the atmosphere goes through plants, called transpiration. Plants are like the atmosphere's straw, dominating how water flows from the land to the atmosphere. So vegetation is a massive determinant of what water is left on land for people," explained lead author Justin S. Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth and adjunct research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. "The question we're asking here is, how do the combined effects of carbon dioxide and warming change the size of that straw?"

Using climate models, the study examines how freshwater availability may be affected by projected changes in the way precipitation is divided among plants, rivers and soils. For the study, the research team used a novel accounting of this precipitation partitioning, developed earlier by Mankin and colleagues to calculate the future runoff loss to future vegetation in a warmer, carbon dioxide-enriched climate.

The new study's findings revealed how the interaction of three key effects of climate change's impacts on plants will reduce regional freshwater availability. First, as carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, plants require less water to photosynthesize, wetting the land. Yet, second, as the planet warms, growing seasons become longer and warmer: plants have more time to grow and consume water, drying the land. Finally, as carbon dioxide concentrations increase, plants are likely to grow more, as photosynthesis becomes amplified. For some regions, these latter two impacts, extended growing seasons and amplified photosynthesis, will outpace the closing stomata, meaning more vegetation will consume more water for a longer amount of time, drying the land. As a result, for much of the mid-latitudes, plants will leave less water in soils and streams, even if there is additional rainfall and vegetation is more efficient with its water usage. The result also underscores the importance of improving how climate models represent ecosystems and their response to climate change.

The world relies on freshwater for human consumption, agriculture, hydropower, and industry. Yet, for many places, there's a fundamental disconnect between when precipitation falls and when people use this water, as is the case with California, which gets more than half of its precipitation in the winter, but peak demands are in the summer. "Throughout the world, we engineer solutions to move water from point A to point B to overcome this spatiotemporal disconnect between water supply and its demand. Allocating water is politically contentious, capital-intensive and requires really long-term planning, all of which affects some of the most vulnerable populations. Our research shows that we can't expect plants to be a universal panacea for future water availability. So, being able to assess clearly where and why we should anticipate water availability changes to occur in the future is crucial to ensuring that we can be prepared," added Mankin.

Researchers from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Richard Seager, Jason E. Smerdon, Benjamin I. Cook, who is also affiliated with NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and A. Park Williams, contributed to this study.

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Materials provided by Dartmouth College. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Laser printing tech produces waterproof e-textiles in minutes

The next generation of waterproof smart fabrics will be laser printed and made in minutes. That's the future imagined by the researchers behind new e-textile technology.

Scientists from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a cost-efficient and scaleable method for rapidly fabricating textiles that are embedded with energy storage devices.

In just three minutes, the method can produce a 10x10cm smart textile patch that's waterproof, stretchable and readily integrated with energy harvesting technologies.

The technology enables graphene supercapacitors -- powerful and long-lasting energy storage devices that are easily combined with solar or other sources of power -- to be laser printed directly onto textiles.

In a proof-of-concept, the researchers connected the supercapacitor with a solar cell, delivering an efficient, washable and self-powering smart fabric that overcomes the key drawbacks of existing e-textile energy storage technologies.

The growing smart fabrics industry has diverse applications in wearable devices for the consumer, health care and defence sectors -- from monitoring vital signs of patients, to tracking the location and health status of soldiers in the field, and monitoring pilots or drivers for fatigue.

Dr Litty Thekkakara, a researcher in RMIT's School of Science, said smart textiles with built-in sensing, wireless communication or health monitoring technology called for robust and reliable energy solutions.

"Current approaches to smart textile energy storage, like stitching batteries into garments or using e-fibres, can be cumbersome and heavy, and can also have capacity issues," Thekkakara said.

"These electronic components can also suffer short-circuits and mechanical failure when they come into contact with sweat or with moisture from the environment.

"Our graphene-based supercapacitor is not only fully washable, it can store the energy needed to power an intelligent garment -- and it can be made in minutes at large scale.

"By solving the energy storage-related challenges of e-textiles, we hope to power the next generation of wearable technology and intelligent clothing."

The research analysed the performance of the proof-of-concept smart textile across a range of mechanical, temperature and washability tests and found it remained stable and efficient.

RMIT Honorary Professor and Distinguished Professor at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Min Gu, said the technology could enable real-time storage of renewable energies for e-textiles.

"It also opens the possibility for faster roll-to-roll fabrication, with the use of advanced laser printing based on multifocal fabrication and machine learning techniques," Gu said.

The researchers have applied for a patent for the new technology, which was developed with support from RMIT Seed Fund and Design Hub project grants.

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Materials provided by RMIT University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A swifter way towards 3D-printed organs

3D-printed organ

20 people die every day waiting for an organ transplant in the United States, and while more than 30,000 transplants are now performed annually, there are over 113,000 patients currently on organ waitlists. Artificially grown human organs are seen by many as the "holy grail" for resolving this organ shortage, and advances in 3D printing have led to a boom in using that technique to build living tissue constructs in the shape of human organs. However, all 3D-printed human tissues to date lack the cellular density and organ-level functions required for them to be used in organ repair and replacement.

Now, a new technique called SWIFT (sacrificial writing into functional tissue) created by researchers from Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), overcomes that major hurdle by 3D printing vascular channels into living matrices composed of stem-cell-derived organ building blocks (OBBs), yielding viable, organ-specific tissues with high cell density and function. The research is reported in Science Advances.

"This is an entirely new paradigm for tissue fabrication," said co-first author Mark Skylar-Scott, Ph.D., a Research Associate at the Wyss Institute. "Rather than trying to 3D-print an entire organ's worth of cells, SWIFT focuses on only printing the vessels necessary to support a living tissue construct that contains large quantities of OBBs, which may ultimately be used therapeutically to repair and replace human organs with lab-grown versions containing patients' own cells."

SWIFT involves a two-step process that begins with forming hundreds of thousands of stem-cell-derived aggregates into a dense, living matrix of OBBs that contains about 200 million cells per milliliter. Next, a vascular network through which oxygen and other nutrients can be delivered to the cells is embedded within the matrix by writing and removing a sacrificial ink. "Forming a dense matrix from these OBBs kills two birds with one stone: not only does it achieve a high cellular density akin to that of human organs, but the matrix's viscosity also enables printing of a pervasive network of perfusable channels within it to mimic the blood vessels that support human organs," said co-first author Sébastien Uzel, PhD., a Research Associate at the Wyss Institute and SEAS.

The cellular aggregates used in the SWIFT method are derived from adult induced pluripotent stem cells, which are mixed with a tailored extracellular matrix (ECM) solution to make a living matrix that is compacted via centrifugation. At cold temperatures (0-4oC), the dense matrix has the consistency of mayonnaise - soft enough to manipulate without damaging the cells, but thick enough to hold its shape - making it the perfect medium for sacrificial 3D printing. In this technique, a thin nozzle moves through this matrix depositing a strand of gelatin "ink" that pushes cells out of the way without damaging them.

When the cold matrix is heated to 37 oC, it stiffens to become more solid (like an omelet being cooked) while the gelatin ink melts and can be washed out, leaving behind a network of channels embedded within the tissue construct that can be perfused with oxygenated media to nourish the cells. The researchers were able to vary the diameter of the channels from 400 micrometers to 1 millimeter, and seamlessly connected them to form branching vascular networks within the tissues.

Organ-specific tissues that were printed with embedded vascular channels using SWIFT and perfused in this manner remained viable, while tissues grown without these channels experienced cell death in their cores within 12 hours. To see whether the tissues displayed organ-specific functions, the team printed, evacuated, and perfused a branching channel architecture into a matrix consisting of heart-derived cells and flowed media through the channels for over a week. During that time, the cardiac OBBs fused together to form a more solid cardiac tissue whose contractions became more synchronous and over 20 times stronger, mimicking key features of a human heart.

"Our SWIFT biomanufacturing method is highly effective at creating organ-specific tissues at scale from OBBs ranging from aggregates of primary cells to stem-cell-derived organoids," said corresponding author Jennifer Lewis, Sc.D., who is a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute as well as the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at SEAS. "By integrating recent advances from stem-cell researchers with the bioprinting methods developed by my lab, we believe SWIFT will greatly advance the field of organ engineering around the world."

Collaborations are underway with Wyss Institute faculty members Chris Chen, M.D., Ph.D. at Boston University and Sangeeta Bhatia, M.D., Ph.D., at MIT to implant these tissues into animal models and explore their host integration, as part of the 3D Organ Engineering Initiative co-led by Lewis and Chris Chen.

"The ability to support living human tissues with vascular channels is a huge step toward the goal of creating functional human organs outside of the body," said Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at HMS, the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children's Hospital, and Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS. "We continue to be impressed by the achievements in Jennifer's lab including this research, which ultimately has the potential to dramatically improve both organ engineering and the lifespans of patients whose own organs are failing,"

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Materials provided by Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard. Original written by Lindsay Brownell. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Amber-tinted glasses may provide relief for insomnia

Amber tinted glasses

How do you unwind before bedtime? If your answer involves Facebook and Netflix, you are actively reducing your chance of a good night's sleep. And you are not alone: 90 percent of Americans use light-emitting electronic devices, such as smartphones and laptops, in the hour before bed, despite the fact that such behavior is associated with symptoms of insomnia. The obvious solution is to ditch the technology, but people rarely heed this advice.

Knowing that individuals with insomnia are also unlikely to change their ways, researchers from Columbia University Medical Center tested a method to reduce the adverse effects of evening ambient light exposure, while still allowing use of blue light-emitting devices. Their findings will be published in the January issue of Journal of Psychiatric Research.

Smartphones, tablets and other light-emitting devices are lit by LEDs, which have a peak wavelength in the blue portion of the spectrum. Blue light at night suppresses melatonin and increases alertness; the use of amber-tinted lenses that block blue light mitigates these effects.

The Columbia team, led by Ari Shechter, PhD, assistant professor of medical sciences, reasoned that selectively blocking blue light in the hours before bedtime would lead to improved sleep in individuals with insomnia.

To test their theory, the researchers recruited 14 individuals with an insomnia diagnosis to take part in a small study. For seven consecutive nights, participants wore wrap-around frames with amber-tinted lenses that blocked blue light or with clear placebo lenses for two hours before bedtime. Four weeks later, participants repeated the protocol with the other set of glasses.

The researchers found that participants got around 30 minutes extra sleep when they wore the amber lenses compared to the clear lenses. In self-reported sleep surveys, participants also reported greater duration, quality, and soundness of sleep, and an overall reduction in insomnia severity.

These findings are consistent with prior studies showing a benefit of blue-light-blocking lenses in improving sleep, but should be replicated in larger controlled studies, Shechter said.

"Now more than ever we are exposing ourselves to high amounts of blue light before bedtime, which may contribute to or exacerbate sleep problems," Shechter said. "Amber lenses are affordable and they can easily be combined with other established cognitive and behavioral techniques for insomnia management."

Many smartphones screens can now be adjusted to emit amber instead of blue light, and Shechter said these settings should help to improve sleep. "I do recommend using the amber setting on smartphones at night, in addition to manually reducing the brightness levels. But blue light does not only come from our phones. It is emitted from televisions, computers, and importantly, from many light bulbs and other LED light sources that are increasingly used in our homes because they are energy-efficient and cost-effective," he said.

"The glasses approach allows us to filter out blue-wavelength light from all these sources, which might be particularly useful for individuals with sleep difficulties."

The use of amber lenses also appeared to reduce blood pressure in the study's participants (these data are published in the September issue of Sleep Medicine). "Insomnia is often characterized by physiologic hyperarousal, which may account for the relationship between poor sleep and cardiovascular risk," Dr Shechter explained. "Going forward, it will be interesting to examine whether this blue-light blocking approach can be useful for improving cardiovascular outcomes like hypertension in individuals with poor sleep."

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Materials provided by Columbia University Medical Center. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Mirror

What you see in the mirror
is the other person looking
at you, from the other parallel
world.

                                                   Mirror

This mirror, which made metal 
reflective layer and one or 
more dielectric coatings—as 
protective layers over the metal 
one.
So this mixture that's made to see 
your image, is the other person from 
parallel world.

Daily exposure to blue light may accelerate aging, even if it doesn't reach your eyes

Woman looking at blue light from at computer screen 

Prolonged exposure to blue light, such as that which emanates from your phone, computer and household fixtures, could be affecting your longevity, even if it's not shining in your eyes.

New research at Oregon State University suggests that the blue wavelengths produced by light-emitting diodes damage cells in the brain as well as retinas.

The study, published today in Aging and Mechanisms of Disease, involved a widely used organism, Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, an important model organism because of the cellular and developmental mechanisms it shares with other animals and humans.

Jaga Giebultowicz, a researcher in the OSU College of Science who studies biological clocks, led a research collaboration that examined how flies responded to daily 12-hour exposures to blue LED light -- similar to the prevalent blue wavelength in devices like phones and tablets -- and found that the light accelerated aging.

Flies subjected to daily cycles of 12 hours in light and 12 hours in darkness had shorter lives compared to flies kept in total darkness or those kept in light with the blue wavelengths filtered out. The flies exposed to blue light showed damage to their retinal cells and brain neurons and had impaired locomotion -- the flies' ability to climb the walls of their enclosures, a common behavior, was diminished.

Some of the flies in the experiment were mutants that do not develop eyes, and even those eyeless flies displayed brain damage and locomotion impairments, suggesting flies didn't have to see the light to be harmed by it.

"The fact that the light was accelerating aging in the flies was very surprising to us at first," said Giebultowicz, a professor of integrative biology. "We'd measured expression of some genes in old flies, and found that stress-response, protective genes were expressed if flies were kept in light. We hypothesized that light was regulating those genes. Then we started asking, what is it in the light that is harmful to them, and we looked at the spectrum of light. It was very clear cut that although light without blue slightly shortened their lifespan, just blue light alone shortened their lifespan very dramatically."

Natural light, Giebultowicz notes, is crucial for the body's circadian rhythm -- the 24-hour cycle of physiological processes such as brain wave activity, hormone production and cell regeneration that are important factors in feeding and sleeping patterns.

"But there is evidence suggesting that increased exposure to artificial light is a risk factor for sleep and circadian disorders," she said. "And with the prevalent use of LED lighting and device displays, humans are subjected to increasing amounts of light in the blue spectrum since commonly used LEDs emit a high fraction of blue light. But this technology, LED lighting, even in most developed countries, has not been used long enough to know its effects across the human lifespan."

Giebultowicz says that the flies, if given a choice, avoid blue light.

"We're going to test if the same signaling that causes them to escape blue light is involved in longevity," she said.

Eileen Chow, faculty research assistant in Giebultowicz's lab and co-first author of the study, notes that advances in technology and medicine could work together to address the damaging effects of light if this research eventually proves applicable to humans.

"Human lifespan has increased dramatically over the past century as we've found ways to treat diseases, and at the same time we have been spending more and more time with artificial light," she said. "As science looks for ways to help people be healthier as they live longer, designing a healthier spectrum of light might be a possibility, not just in terms of sleeping better but in terms of overall health."

In the meantime, there are a few things people can do to help themselves that don't involve sitting for hours in darkness, the researchers say. Eyeglasses with amber lenses will filter out the blue light and protect your retinas. And phones, laptops and other devices can be set to block blue emissions.

"In the future, there may be phones that auto-adjust their display based on the length of usage the phone perceives," said lead author Trevor Nash, a 2019 OSU Honors College graduate who was a first-year undergraduate when the research began. "That kind of phone might be difficult to make, but it would probably have a big impact on health."

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Materials provided by Oregon State University. Original written by Steve Lundeberg. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Smart people may learn music faster

Different brain regions

Why do some people learn music more quickly than others?

Intelligence could play a role, according to a Michigan State University study that investigated the early stages of learning to play piano.

Published in the journal Intelligence, the study may be the first to examine the relationship between intelligence, music aptitude and growth mindset in beginner pianists.

Growth mindset refers to whether students believe they can improve basic abilities, like piano ability.

"The strongest predictor of skill acquisition was intelligence, followed by music aptitude," said Alexander Burgoyne, a doctoral candidate in cognition and cognitive neuroscience. "By contrast, the correlation between growth mindset and piano performance was about as close to zero as possible."

In the study, 161 undergraduates were taught how to play "Happy Birthday" on the piano with the help of a video guide. After practice, the students performed the 25-note song multiple times. Three MSU graduate students judged the performances based on their melodic and rhythmic accuracy.

There were striking differences in the students' skill acquisition trajectories. Some learned quickly, earning perfect marks within six minutes of practice. Others performed poorly at first but improved substantially later. By comparison, some seemed to fade as if they had lost their motivation and others never figured it out, performing poorly throughout the study.

So why did some students fail while others succeeded?

To find out, the researchers gave the students tests of cognitive ability that measured things like problem-solving skills and processing speed, and tests of music aptitude that measured, for example, the ability to differentiate between similar rhythms. They also surveyed their growth mindset.

"The results were surprising, because people have claimed that mindset plays an important role when students are confronted with challenges, like trying to learn a new musical instrument," Burgoyne said. "And yet, it didn't predict skill acquisition."

That said, results will likely differ for those with greater skill.

"Our study examined one of the earliest stages of skill acquisition," Burgoyne said. "Early experiences can be formative, but I would caution against drawing conclusions about skilled musicians based on our study of beginners."

But applied generally, the study's findings may be helpful in education.

It follows a recent review of mindset research that found a weak relationship between growth mindset and academic achievement. Perhaps more concerning, that study found interventions designed to boost achievement by encouraging children to believe they can improve their basic abilities may be fruitless.

That is, when those interventions successfully altered students' mindsets, there wasn't a significant effect on academic achievement.

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Materials provided by Michigan State University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Personality traits affect retirement spending

How quickly you spend your savings in retirement may have as much or more to do with your personality than whether you have a lot of debt or want to leave an inheritance.

A new study published by the American Psychological Association found that people who are more agreeable or more open to new experiences -- or those who are more neurotic or negative -- might spend their retirement savings at a faster rate than those who are more extroverted or have a positive attitude.

"Little is known about what personally motivates retirees to withdraw money from their investment portfolios as most studies on portfolio withdrawal rates address technical issues, such as minimizing risk of financial shortfall or making spending adjustments based on perceived life expectancy," said Sarah Asebedo, PhD, of Texas Tech University and lead author on the study. "The purpose of this study was to investigate how personality traits are related to portfolio withdrawal decisions of retirees."

The research was published in the journal Psychology and Aging.

Asebedo and her coauthor, Christopher Browning, PhD, also of Texas Tech, analyzed personality and psychological data from more than 3,600 people in the United States age 50 or older (the average age was 70) in the 2012 and 2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. This is a nationally representative survey sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and conducted by the University of Michigan. The data were paired with tax data from the same participants to account for withdrawals from individual retirement accounts. The researchers only used participants who made withdrawals from their retirement accounts and other saving accounts.

Participants were scored on what psychologists call the big five personality traits: Openness to experience (i.e., they are creative, imaginative, adventurous and curious), conscientiousness (i.e., they are organized, thorough, hardworking and cautious), extroversion, agreeableness (i.e., they are sympathetic, caring, warm and helpful) and neuroticism (i.e., they are nervous, worrying, moody and not calm). The researchers also looked at data about the amount of control participants perceived they had over their financial situation and to what extent they felt a variety of positive and negative emotions over the previous 30 days.

"We found that those with greater conscientiousness, extroversion, positive emotions and feelings of control over their finances withdrew from their retirement portfolios at a lower rate than those with greater openness, agreeableness, neuroticism and negative emotions," Asebedo said.

The results remained even after accounting for many of the technical factors that are known to affect portfolio withdrawal decisions, such as the expectation of leaving an inheritance, age, marital status and mortgage debt.

Asebedo believes this may be the first study to look at the role personality traits play in how quickly individuals spend their retirement portfolio and is an important contribution to a field of study that has historically focused on technical rather than human factors.

The findings suggest that financial professionals should take the personality traits of their clients into account when developing retirement strategies instead of focusing entirely on their clients' financial situations, according to Asebedo.

A higher withdrawal rate is not necessarily a bad thing nor is a lower withdrawal rate always good, she warned.

"A higher portfolio withdrawal rate is concerning if it places the individual on a path to run out of money too early. However, if the higher portfolio withdrawal rate does not run the risk of running out of money, then it may very well be facilitating a life well-lived," Asebedo said. "Similarly, a lower withdrawal rate is a good thing if it facilitates controlled spending from the portfolio at a level that protects it from early depletion. If the individual is under-spending and forgoing experiences that they would enjoy because of a saving habit they are unable to break, then the low withdrawal rate is a missed opportunity to maximize the life that they have saved for."

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Materials provided by American Psychological Association. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Any amount of running linked to significantly lower risk of early death

Woman running

Any amount of running is linked to a significantly lower risk of death from any cause, finds a pooled analysis of the available evidence, published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

If more people took up running -- and they wouldn't have to run far or fast -- there would likely be substantial improvements in population health and longevity, conclude the researchers.

It's not clear how good running is for staving off the risk of death from any cause and particularly from cardiovascular disease and cancer, say the researchers.

Nor is it clear how much running a person needs to do to reap these potential benefits, nor whether upping the frequency, duration, and pace -- in other words, increasing the 'dose' -- might be even more advantageous.

To try and find out, the researchers systematically reviewed relevant published research, conference presentations, and doctoral theses and dissertations in a broad range of academic databases.

They looked for studies on the association between running/jogging and the risk of death from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

They found 14 suitable studies, involving 232,149 people, whose health had been tracked for between 5.5 and 35 years. During this time, 25,951 of the study participants died.

When the study data were pooled, any amount of running was associated with a 27% lower risk of death from all causes for both sexes, compared with no running.

And it was associated with a 30% lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease, and a 23% lower risk of death from cancer.

Even small 'doses' -- for example, once weekly or less, lasting less than 50 minutes each time, and at a speed below 6 miles (8 km) an hour, still seemed to be associated with significant health/longevity benefits.

So running for 25 minutes less than the recommended weekly duration of vigorous physical activity could reduce the risk of death. This makes running a potentially good option for those whose main obstacle to doing enough exercise is lack of time, suggest the researchers.

But upping 'the dose' wasn't associated with a further lowering of the risk of death from any cause, the analysis showed.

This is an observational study, and as such, can't establish cause. And the researchers caution that the number of included studies was small and their methods varied considerably, which may have influenced the results.

Nevertheless, they suggest that any amount of running is better than none, concluding: "Increased rates of participation in running, regardless of its dose, would probably lead to substantial improvements in population health and longevity."

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Materials provided by BMJ. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Extinct giant ape directly linked to the living orangutan

Modern day orangutan

By using ancient protein sequencing, researchers have retrieved genetic information from a 1.9 million year old extinct, giant primate that used to live in a subtropical area in southern China. The genetic information allows the researchers to uncover the evolutionary position of Gigantopithecus blacki, a three-meter tall and may be up to 600 kg heavy primate, revealing the orangutan as its closest, living relative.

It is the first time that genetic material this old has been retrieved from a warm, humid environment. The study is published in the scientific journal Nature, and the results are groundbreaking within the field of evolutionary biology, according to Frido Welker, Postdoc at the Globe Institute at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences and first author of the study.

'Primates are relatively close to humans, evolutionary speaking. With this study, we show that we can use protein sequencing to retrieve ancient genetic information from primates living in subtropical areas even when the fossil is two million years old. Until now, it has only been possible to retrieve genetic information from up to 10,000-year-old fossils in warm, humid areas. This is interesting, because ancient remains of the supposed ancestors of our species, Homo sapiens, are also mainly found in subtropical areas, particularly for the early part of human evolution. This means that we can potentially retrieve similar information on the evolutionary line leading to humans', says Frido Welker.

Today, scientists know that the human and the chimpanzee lineages split around seven or eight million years ago. With the previous methodologies though, they could only retrieve human genetic information not older than 400,000 years. The new results show the possibility to extend the genetic reconstruction of the evolutionary relationships between our species and extinct ones further back in time, at least up to two million years -- covering a much larger portion of the entire human evolution.

Analyzing ancient dental enamel proteins using mass spectrometry-based proteomics

In a recent study, also published on Nature, Enrico Cappellini, Associate Professor at the Globe Institute and senior author on this study, initially demonstrated, together with an international team of colleagues, the massive potential of ancient protein sequencing.

'By sequencing proteins retrieved from dental enamel about two million years old, we showed it is possible to confidently reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of animal species that went extinct too far away in time for their DNA to survive till now. In this study, we can even conclude that the lineages of orangutan and Gigantopithecus split up about 12 million years ago', says Enrico Cappellini.

Sequencing protein remains two million years old was made possible by stretching to its limits the technology at the base of proteomic discovery: mass spectrometry. State of the art mass spectrometers and the top palaeoproteomics expertise needed to get the best out of such sophisticated instrumentation are key resources deriving from the decade-long strategic collaboration with Jesper Velgaard Olsen, Professor at Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research and co-author on this study.

The mystery of Gigantopithecus

The fossil evidence attributed to Gigantopithecus was initially discovered in southern China in 1935, and it is currently limited to just a few lower jaws and lots of teeth. No complete skull and no other bone from the rest of the skeleton has been found so far. As a result, there has been a lot of speculation about the physical appearance of this mysterious animal.

'Previous attempts to understand which could be the living organism most similar to Gigantopithecus could only be based on the comparison of the shape of the fossils with skeletal reference material from living great apes. Ancient DNA analysis was not an option, because Gigantopithecus went extinct approximately 300,000 years ago, and in the geographic area Gigantopithecus occupied no DNA older than approximately 10,000 years has been retrieved so far. Accordingly, we decided to sequence dental enamel proteins to reconstruct its evolutionary relation with living great apes, and we found that orangutan is Gigantopithecus' closest living relative', says Enrico Cappellini.

The study of human evolution by palaeoproteomics will continue in the next years through the recently established "Palaeoproteomics to Unleash Studies on Human History (PUSHH)" Marie Sk?odowska Curie European Training Network (ETN) Programme.

The research is funded mainly by VILLUM FONDEN, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, and the Marie Sklowowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship and International Training Network programmes.

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Materials provided by University of Copenhagen The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Experts unlock key to photosynthesis, a find that could help us meet food security demands

Green leaf in sunlight

Scientists have solved the structure of one of the key components of photosynthesis, a discovery that could lead to photosynthesis being 'redesigned' to achieve higher yields and meet urgent food security needs.

The study, led by the University of Sheffield and published today in the journal Nature, reveals the structure of cytochrome b6f -- the protein complex that significantly influences plant growth via photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis is the foundation of life on Earth providing the food, oxygen and energy that sustains the biosphere and human civilisation.

Using a high-resolution structural model, the team found that the protein complex provides the electrical connection between the two light-powered chlorophyll-proteins (Photosystems I and II) found in the plant cell chloroplast that convert sunlight into chemical energy.

Lorna Malone, the first author of the study and a PhD student in the University of Sheffield's Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, said: "Our study provides important new insights into how cytochrome b6f utilises the electrical current passing through it to power up a 'proton battery'. This stored energy can then be then used to make ATP, the energy currency of living cells. Ultimately this reaction provides the energy that plants need to turn carbon dioxide into the carbohydrates and biomass that sustain the global food chain."

The high-resolution structural model, determined using single-particle cryo-electron microscopy, reveals new details of the additional role of cytochrome b6f as a sensor to tune photosynthetic efficiency in response to ever-changing environmental conditions. This response mechanism protects the plant from damage during exposure to harsh conditions such as drought or excess light.

Dr Matt Johnson, reader in Biochemistry at the University of Sheffield and one of the supervisors of the study added: "Cytochrome b6f is the beating heart of photosynthesis which plays a crucial role in regulating photosynthetic efficiency.

"Previous studies have shown that by manipulating the levels of this complex we can grow bigger and better plants. With the new insights we have obtained from our structure we can hope to rationally redesign photosynthesis in crop plants to achieve the higher yields we urgently need to sustain a projected global population of 9-10 billion by 2050."

The research was conducted in collaboration with the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology at the University of Leeds.

Researchers now aim to establish how cytochrome b6f is controlled by a myriad of regulatory proteins and how these regulators affect the function of this complex.

Make Money Online

How To Make Money Online

If you are looking for ways to make money online then you have come to the right place. This particular page as well as this entire site is dedicated to that very subject.

In 2003, I walked away from my day job(J.O.B. = Just Over Broke) and as a direct result of my success with internet marketing.

Like any successful entrepreneur, my journey has been filled with ups and downs, however it amazes me what I have been able to accomplish online with some effort and elbow grease.

Fast forward eight years later and I am still earning great sums of money as a direct result of the various make money methods which I implement daily.

Below I have posted a video that is based what I personally believe is the very best way to make money online in 2013.

And it’s also the very thing that I’m doing myself.

I’ve also created over 60 minutes of FREE training to help you move forward and get results which you can access when you sign up below.

This method does not require:

• Write content (in fact, I’m outsourcing all my content)
• Ability to create fancy graphics or art work.
• Dependent on previous sales or marketing experience.

Even better, this method does not require:

• Domain’s
• Web hosting
• Complex software

25 WAYS IN WHICH TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE

1. Make Money Online Filling Out Surveys

Fill Out Surveys: Sign up with one or more of the many survey companies easily found on the Internet and select the type of survey(s) which will suit you best. The forms of these surveys on products and/or are quite easy to fill out and they can earn you good extra money.

2. Make Money Online Selling on eBay

Sell on eBay: Tens of thousands of people are spending good amounts of cash on eBay each and every day of the year and sellers are making substantial amounts of money. There is no reason why you too should not take a bite out of this moneymaking online opportunity.

Obtaining a seller’s account at eBay is free, quick and easy and I suggest you practice their auction system by selling your own personal items which you no longer need or want.

3. Make Money Online Blogging

Blog: When they are set up effectively, monetized blogs can generate impressive incomes over time and to create them merely requires a minimal expense and some of your time and effort.

Serious bloggers who want to retain full control use their own domains but you can also utilize free hosting sites such as Blogger or WordPress.

4. Make Money Online Trading Binary Options

Trade Binary Options: Becoming a trader of binary options which are simply financial contracts requires no prior experience, just intuition to predict whether commodities such as gold, silver, international monetary exchange rates, etc. will go up or down in the immediate future.

Correct predictions in the trading binary options game can earn huge amounts of money very quickly.

5. Make Money Online with Websites

Create Websites: With rather small upfront investments for domain names and webhosting services, you can build and publish websites that can serve as your online storefronts for any number of great moneymaking techniques such as affiliate marketing, selling your own products, AdSense ads, etc.

Today’s Internet provides numerous easy and free platforms like WordPress for building, publishing and maintaining websites that rank well, drive search engine traffic that converts into sales that make good money.

6. Make Money Online with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing: As an affiliate marketer, you will direct buyers from your promotional website to vendors who will pay you commission for each completed sales transaction. It’s as simple as that and can be extremely lucrative.

All you need to do is join the right affiliate program, create your sales page and watch the money roll in.

7. Make Money Online with Facebook

Facebook: Being the most popular social media that’s becoming more and more fashionable all the time, tens or even hundreds of thousands of individuals from around the world are using Facebook each and every day. Thus it has become a very effective platform for making money online.

The process is quick, easy and fun. Simply sign up, create your Facebook page and start the networking process by branding yourself, your skills and your products / services.

8. Make Money Online by Website Flipping

Website Flipping: You can sharpen your skills and make good online money by building, developing and publishing websites and then selling them for profit. To ensure that the websites you intend to flip or sell have the following desirable attributes:

• High Google page rankings
• Attract substantial search engine traffic
• Visual appeal
• Consistently generate money via AdSense, affiliate links, paid memberships, paid ads, etc.

9. Make Money Online by Writing Content

Writing Content: Every website needs written content, informational or tutorial, and many site owners and/or webmasters either don’t know how to write or are afraid of the process. This opens up terrific opportunities for making money online by writing content for sites (websites and blogs) as well as eBooks, e-Magazines, e-Manuals, e-Newsletters, etc.

The downside to writing for the web is that it’s usually ghostwriting which means that credit will not be given. The upside, however, is that there is good money to be made directly or through classified ads and Craigslist as well as through services such as provided by vWorker and Elance.

10. How to Make Money Online with Google AdSense

Google AdSense: AdSense is an online money generating system that works on autopilot once it has been set up on a website or blog and has been known to bring in impressive profits.

It is a system whose membership is free and it pops in ads which are relevant to the content of the given site. Each time a visitor to your site clicks on one of the ads, you effortlessly earn some money.

11. Make Money Online by Promoting & Selling eBooks

Promoting & Selling eBooks: Today’s Internet is filled with countless eBooks on every topic imaginable and in every niche market. Since creators / writers of these eBooks are continually looking for help promoting and selling them, you can make terrific online money by becoming their affiliate marketer.

Of course, you can also write your own informational or tutorial eBooks and proceed to promote and sell them yourself. In this case the profits will be all yours as a posed to merely settling for commission.

12. Make Money Online with ClickBank

ClickBank: Having been named as America’s No. 1 affiliate network, ClickBank is the largest and most comprehensive online marketplace through which affiliate marketers can promote other developers’ digital products and vendors can sell digital information products that they’ve created themselves.

Listing tens of thousands of products, serving more than 200 countries around the world and providing incredible administrative services; ClickBank is the perfect venue for making money online.

13. Make Money Online via CPA Offers

CPA Offers: Gaining popularity all the time, CPA (Cost Per Action) is a way of making money online without actually selling anything. Add a CPA offer on you website and each time a visitor clicks on its link and proceeds by following directions to enter their name, email address, zip code, etc. you get paid.

Signing up as a CPA marketer is extremely easy and setting up the system on your site is completely intuitive.

14. Make Money Online by Trading Forex

Trading Forex: Much like buying and selling of stocks and bonds in the stock market, trading Forex is buying and selling foreign currencies for profit.

Although prior experience in trading is a definite plus, trading Forex is not at all hard to learn and the earning can be tremendous. I would highly recommend for newbies to start out with fake demo accounts and practice, practice, practice.

15. Make Money Online with Twitter

Twitter: Second only to Facebook in its scope within the social media environment, Twitter is a venue through which tens of thousands of members “tweet” communities consisting of families, friends, neighbors, associates, colleagues, etc. And much like Facebook, Twitter offers terrific opportunities for earning money online.

The key to cashing in through this platform is to compile a large list of contacts with whom trustworthy relationships are formed and cultivated overtime.

16. Make Money Online through Network Marketing or MLM

Network Marketing or MLM: Marketing researchers predict that network marketing or multi-level marketing (MLM) will be the fastest growing industry of the foreseeable future and the possibilities are nearly limitless. As a matter of fact, that is how wealthy individuals like Donald Trump and Tony Robbins have started out and you could too.

However, network marketing or MLM will require that you take time to learn the ropes and then be willing to invest the energy and hard work that is required for success in this highly profitable arena.

17. Make Money Online through Informational Membership Sites.

Informational Membership Sites: Unlike most website that want to attract as many visitors as possible, membership sites allow access only to those individuals who have opted in or signed up to become paid members.

Select an interesting topic and provide worthwhile information, and your membership database will continue to grow and the proceeds will flow straight into your pockets.

18. Make Money Online by Writing for Other Bloggers

Writing for Other Bloggers: The Internet has many online companies which are constantly searching for writers for their blogs and a good example would be Creative Weblogging. Likewise, there are companies such as Pay U 2 Blog that would be willing to pay you for writing on your own blog.

Depending on how much time and effort you are willing and able to invest, you can opt for both options and you can sign up with multiple companies. How much online money you will be making is entirely up to you.

19. Make Money Online by Bringing Offline Products to the Web

Bring Offline Product to the Web: Becoming a sales agent for a company that sells products which have not yet been introduced to the net is a great way to make money online because the competition has not yet formed.

Perform your due diligence, launch a great promotional website around such products and sell to your heart’s content because you will have no rivals who might snatch your customers away.

20. How to Make Money Online by Becoming a Virtual Assistant

Become a Virtual Assistant: If you have marketable skills such as administrative, accounting, bookkeeping, editing, translating, proofreading, etc. and you own a computer that has a good Internet connection and a working telephone; there is no reason why you could not earn great online money by working from the comfort of your own home.

With telephone services, online and cell phone messaging and emails you could be communicating and transferring project back and forth with individuals and/or companies all over the world.

21. Make Money Online by Selling Custom Animal ID Tags

Sell Custom Animal ID Tags: As long as there will be pet ownership and there is no danger of that ever decreasing, ID tags for cats and dogs will continue to be in high demand.

Create a highly professional SEO website that effectively promotes animal ID tags, set up an online payments system, sign up with appropriate manufacturers and watch the money rolling in as the sales increase.

22. Make Money Online by Building Custom Search Engines

Build a Custom Search Engine: Google is known throughout the World Wide Web as being quite literally an untouchable search engine that is too big and powerful to compete against.

Today’s reality is that competing against Google is indeed futile. However, creating a search engine that delivers that which Google or the other large search engines such as Yahoo and Bing fail to deliver might carve a very profitable niche for a savvy Internet marketer.

23. How to Make Money Online by Establishing Virtual Forum Communities

Establish a Virtual Forum Community: Setting up online forums adds more value to existing websites to increase search engine page rankings, provides resourceful communities to increase traffic of visitors who are eager to return frequently and adds more options for monetizing.

The best news about establishing forum communities is the fact that it is a totally underutilized market and will, therefore, have little to no competition and audiences of Internet browsers will be flocking to it.

24. Make Money Online by Providing Wedding Services

Provide Wedding Services: Do your research, collect relevant resources and strike relationships with; flower shops, bakeries, wedding gown boutiques, catering services, makeup artists, banquet halls, printers, etc. With all that at your finger tips, you will then be able to provide wedding services and relieve the individuals who are directly involved in these happy occasions from having to distress over it.

There is loads of money to be earned online by creating website that provide these much desired services. Sites of this nature also land themselves beautifully to AdSense Ads which will generate even more income.

25. Make Money Online from Scrap Metal Services

Scrap Metal Services: Metals of various kinds have become valuable commodities. Therefore metallic stuff that is often considered rubbish or junk can be turned in for cash. Learn where the nearest scrap metal yards are, what kinds of metals they take and how much they pay. Establish a place for collecting these metals and be sure to have a truck onto which you can then load them.

Finally, create a website that provides scrap metal services for local individuals who don’t want to bother driving their metals to yards. You’ll be doing your neighbors a favor by relieving them of their otherwise useless metallic items and earning good money in the process.