The Wolverine Wake-Up Issue 79
3-17-23
Scientists Complete First Map of an Insect Brain
Researchers have completed the most advanced brain map to date, that of an insect, a landmark achievement in neuroscience that brings scientists closer to true understanding of the mechanism of thought.The international team led by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Cambridge produced a breathtakingly detailed diagram tracing every neural connection in the brain of a larval fruit fly, an archetypal scientific model with brains comparable to humans. The work, likely to underpin future brain research and to inspire new machine learning architectures, appears today in the journal Science. "If we want to understand who we are and how we think, part of that is understanding the mechanism of thought," said senior author Joshua T. Vogelstein, a Johns Hopkins biomedical engineer who specializes in data-driven projects including connectomics, the study of nervous system connections. "And the key to that is knowing how neurons connect with each other." The first attempt at mapping a brain -- a 14-year study of the roundworm begun in the 1970s, resulted in a partial map and a Nobel Prize. Since then, partial connectomes have been mapped in many systems, including flies, mice, and even humans, but these reconstructions typically only represent only a tiny fraction of the total brain. Comprehensive connectomes have only been generated for several small species with a few hundred to a few thousand neurons in their bodies-a roundworm, a larval sea squirt, and a larval marine annelid worm.
-Oliver McKeon
'Spring-Mass' Technology Heralds the Future of Walking Robots
As such, this approach to robots that can walk and run like humans opens the door to entire new industries, jobs and mechanized systems that do not today exist.The technologies developed at OSU have evolved from intense studies of both human and animal walking and running, to learn how animals achieve a fluidity of motion with a high degree of energy efficiency.Animals combine a sensory input from nerves, vision, muscles and tendons to create locomotion that researchers have now translated into a working robotic system."I'm confident that this is the future of legged robotic locomotion," said Jonathan Hurst, an OSU professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Dynamic Robotics Laboratory in the OSU College of Engineering."It will be some time, but we think legged robots will enable integration of robots into our daily lives," Hurst said.ATRIAS, the human-sized robot most recently created at OSU, has six electric motors powered by a lithium polymer battery about the size of a half-gallon of milk, which is substantially smaller than the power packs of some other mobile robots.Researchers said in their new study that this technology "has the potential to enhance legged robots to ultimately match the efficiency, agility and robustness of animals over a wide variety of terrain."
-Nathan Dewald
Surprising Similarities in Stone Tools of Early Humans and Monkeys
Monkeys use stone tools to crack open hard-shelled nuts. The monkeys often break their hammerstones and anvils. The resulting assemblage of broken stones is substantial and widespread across the landscape. Moreover, many of these artefacts bear all of the same characteristics that are commonly used to identify intentionally made stone tools in some of the earliest archaeological sites in East Africa. The ability to intentionally make sharp stone flakes is seen as a crucial point in the evolution of hominins, and understanding how and when this occurred is a huge question that is typically investigated through the study of past artefacts and fossils. Our study shows that stone tool production is not unique to humans and our ancestors, says lead author Tomos Proffitt, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The fact that these macaques use stone tools to process nuts is not surprising, as they also use tools to gain access to various shellfish as well. What is interesting is that, in doing so they accidently produce a substantial archaeological record of their own that is partly indistinguishable from some hominin artefacts. New insights into the evolution of stone tool technology By comparing the accidentally produced stone fragments made by the macaques with those from some of the earliest archaeological sites, the researchers were able to show that many of the artefacts produced by monkeys fall within the range of those commonly associated with early hominins. Co-lead author Jonathan Reeves highlights The fact that these artifacts can be produced through nut cracking has implications for the range of behaviours we associate with sharp edged flakes in the archaeological record. The newly discovered macaque stone tools offer new insights into how the first technology might have started in our earliest ancestors and that its origin may have been linked to similar nut cracking behaviour which could be substantially older than the current earliest archaeological record. Cracking nuts using stone hammers and anvils, similar to what some primates do today, has been suggested by some as a possible precursor to intentional stone tool production.
-Carson Ososki
Spring Forward' to Daylight Saving Time Brings Surge in Fatal Car Crashes
Also found that the farther west a person lives in his or her time zone, the higher their risk of a deadly crash that week. These effects on fatal traffic accidents are real, and these deaths can be prevented. Mounting research is showing spikes in heart attacks, strokes, workplace injuries and other problems in the days following the time change. The largest and most detailed to date to assess the relationship between the time change and fatal motor vehicle accidents.732,835 accidents recorded through the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System from 1996 to 2017. With the arrival March 9 of daylight saving time, clocks shift forward by one hour, and many people will miss out on sleep and drive to work in darkness. Both factors that can contribute to crashes. Amarillo, Texas, and St. George, Utah, already get less sleep on average than their counterparts in the east. About 19 minutes less per day, research shows because the sun rises and sets later but they still have to be at work when everyone else does. Changes in accident patterns also occur after the "fall back" time change, the study showed, with a decline in morning accidents and a spike in the evening, when darkness comes sooner.
-Leatta McKeon