Scientific investigation into the mysterious holes of the largest T. rex fossil has yet to yield answers.

 On September 30, 2022, palaeontologist Jingmai O'Connor studied Sue's skull at the Field Museum in Chicago, U.S. Field Museum/Reuters.

Sue, the largest and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex yet found, was a terrible beast 67 million years ago in what is now South Dakota. Even this vast dinosaur, whose bones are in Chicago's Field Museum, was vulnerable. The set of round holes in Sue's jawbone is a perfect illustration of this phenomenon. Recent research has disproven a critical explanation about these holes, but a definitive answer remains elusive.

After examining Sue's left lower jawbone (mandible) in great detail, researchers concluded that the eight holes there (some the size of golf balls) were not caused by a microbial infection, as had been hypothesised by some specialists.

According to the study's principal author, Dr Bruce Rothschild, a research associate at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, the holes are distinct from bone damage caused by such an infection. This week's Cretaceous Research published the findings.

Sue is one of the most famous dinosaur specimens, and she measures a whopping 12.3 metres (40-1/2 feet) in length. At the close of the Cretaceous Period, western North America was home to Tyrannosaurus rex, one of the largest terrestrial carnivores in history.

Field Museum palaeontologist Jingmai O'Connor says 15% of T. rex fossils have holes like Sue's.

The researchers looked into the possibility that protozoan infection caused the holes. Trichomoniasis is a protozoan infection that can infect humans and birds (evolved from dinosaurs with feathers) and is considered quite common. Trichomoniasis is sexually transmitted among humans but not among birds.

O'Connor said he saw damage in the jaw of one falcon with trichomoniasis, but it was different from the holes in Sue's teeth.

There was evidence of mending in the bone around Sue's wounds, suggesting that whatever caused them did not kill her. Sue's recovery mirrored that of other fossilised bones that had been broken and mended, as well as the bone mending around holes discovered in the skulls of ancient Inca people in Peru.

Sue's holes have yet to be explained.

The likelihood of claw damage during mating was first hypothesised by Rothschild, who described it as "mounting from back or top with claws striking the posterior mandible." Despite being given a female name in honour of the 1990s palaeontologist who uncovered the dinosaur's remains, Sue might have been either a male or a female.

"I honestly have no clue what formed them," O'Connor admitted. Those are not, in my opinion, bite or claw marks.

O'Connor remarked, "It's interesting that T. rex were susceptible to a disease that caused enormous holes to open up in the jawbone but just in the back of the jawbone, but didn't kill the T. rex because the holes started to heal, at least in Sue." "There have been numerous theories proposed that have been disproved. This is the type of palaeontology mystery that I enjoy the most."

Sue, a dinosaur who lived for roughly 33 years, wasn't just damaged by the holes; she also had a broken leg and tail.

O'Connor noted that Sue "shows multiple injuries and diseases," indicating that she was pretty old. "Its hands were aching from gout. Its ribs had been broken when it fell on its right side, but they eventually recovered. Ligament damage in the right arm was mending. A severe bone infection crippled the animal's left leg. Its tail was aching from arthritis. The animal probably wasn't too content in its final year."

Extensive new data sets extend the boundaries of neuroscience.

Approximately 300,000 mouse neurons were recorded during this Allen Institute release. The difficulty now lies in deducing what actionable insights may be drawn from this mountain of information.

IN MOST INTRODUCTORY NEUROLOGY CLASSES, STUDENTS WATCH THE SAME VIDEO. It doesn't look like much, just a bar of light revolving and moving over an otherwise dark screen, with some distant fireworks noises in the background. Uninteresting until you find out that each pop is the activity of a single neuron in a cat's brain as it watches the bar on the screen move. The popping culminates in a flurry of activity when the bar reaches a certain point and orientation. This neuron has made its feelings on the bar abundantly apparent.

In the 1960s, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel conducted the experiment depicted in the movie, allowing researchers to draw meaningful conclusions regarding the visual system. Neuroscientists have been inserting thin metal electrodes into mice, finches, and monkeys' brains for decades to observe individual neurons and discover their triggers. Some neurons are activated in response to particular colours or forms or the position of an object in space, the orientation of a person's head, the entirety of a face, or a specific feature within a face.

Anne Churchland, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles, remarked that "everyone constantly wanted more neurons," even though single-cell analysis has demonstrated the brain to be a potent engine. More data can be gathered from an experiment is a contributing factor. However, researchers also hit analytical roadblocks while attempting to study individual neurons. Prefrontal cortex neurons respond to a wide array of stimuli (visual characteristics, tasks, decisions) that scientists can't identify their function, at least on an individual level. However, Hubel and Wiesel recorded activity in the primary visual cortex, a region located at the very rear of the brain; only a small percentage of neurons fire when the animal views oriented bars.

The methods developed by Hubel and Wiesel did not simultaneously allow for examining more than a few neurons. However, engineers have continued to push that limit, and in 2017 they created Neuropixels probes. A single probe, measuring only one centimetre in length and composed of silicon, can listen to hundreds of neurons simultaneously and is small enough that neuroscientists can insert multiple probes into an animal's brain. To record simultaneously from eight separate parts of the mouse visual system, researchers at the Allen Center, a nonprofit research institute founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, used six Neuropixels probes. The institute published its findings in August, covering the behaviour of over 300,000 neurons in 81 mice. Those who wish to use the data are welcome to do so at no cost.

The publication of the data collection, which is three times the size of the previous record holder, will allow scientists to study the coordinated behaviour of massive networks of neurons for the first time. Because of its unparalleled scale, this study may provide insights into hitherto inaccessible facets of the human mind. Shawn Olsen, a key investigator on the Allen Institute project, said, "We want to understand how we think and see and make decisions." "This just does not occur at the level of individual neurons."

Exactly how to process all that information is the current obstacle. Massive data sets challenge even the simplest tasks, like sharing or downloading. However challenging the analysis may be, many researchers find it well worth working with large data sets to learn about the brain in its natural environment.

When Hubel and Wiesel looked at the brain, they saw a factory with rows and columns of specialized neurons working together to complete a task. A red balloon will elicit different responses from neurons that detect red and those that detect circles when you show it to someone. However, the brain is so intricately connected that no one neuron acts alone. Therefore this method never worked. Scientist and Columbia University professor Stefano Fusi claims the brain does not examine individual neurons. In a single brain cell, thousands of neurons might gaze at each other. And thus, let's share the same point of view."

Some brain parts, like the prefrontal cortex, function like a workshop with experienced artisans. When potters with different skills unite, they can produce complicated and beautiful objects. We benefit from this variety, and it's probably crucial to the sophisticated reasoning and problem-solving abilities that set us apart. (Fusi showed that when neuronal populations display a rich diversity of responses to varied conditions, monkeys tend to perform better on a memory task; this was verified in research of the prefrontal cortex.) Conversely, highly specialized neuron populations are rigid and limited in what they can accomplish, much like a factory's assembly line.

However, assembly lines can be understood by everyone. Individual process steps can be analyzed for their specific contributions to the final result. Prefrontal cortex neurons can't be understood without the rest of the brain. Humans need sophisticated mathematical skills to make sense of these group activities. It's not something you can picture, Fusi explains.

To provide this kind of visualization, neuroscientists employ a method called "dimensionality reduction," in which they take data from hundreds of neurons and, using ingenious linear algebraic techniques, characterize their activity using just a few variables. In the 1990s, psychologists categorized people into five distinct personality traits: openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, and neuroticism. They found that knowing how someone fared on those five characteristics could effectively predict how that person would fare on hundreds of questions on their personality.

However, the factors derived from brain data cannot be reduced to a single adjective, such as "openness." Similar to motifs, these patterns of brain activity can be found across entire networks of neurons. The axes of a graph can be defined by a small number of these motifs, with each point representing a distinct set of circumstances based on the combination of these motifs.

There are drawbacks to simplifying information from thousands of neurons into a few variables. Like how certain buildings disappear from a 2D photograph of a 3D cityscape, so too can compressing a complex set of neuronal data into only a few dimensions lose a tremendous deal of complexity. To examine hundreds of individual neurons would be an overwhelming task, but working in a few dimensions is far more doable. Researchers can observe the neurons' changing behaviour over time by plotting their activity evolution against axes defined by the motifs. The motor cortex, where researchers had long been baffled by the perplexing and unexpected responses of single neurons, has significantly benefited from this method. However, when the neurons are observed as a group, they follow predictable patterns that are frequently cyclical. Different facets of motion are reflected in different characteristics of these trajectories; for instance, the location of these trajectories is correlated with their velocities.

Olsen claims that scientists will utilize dimensionality reduction to decipher meaningful patterns in the data. We can't examine each neuron individually," he explains. We need statistical and machine learning techniques to help us make sense of massive datasets.

It's true that this line of inquiry is in its infancy and that experts have a hard time agreeing on what the patterns and trajectories indicate. John Krakauer, a professor of neurology and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, adds, "People dispute all the time about whether these phenomena are factual." Can we believe them?" How quickly do they translate [into single-neuron responses]? Not as solid and real, if that makes sense.

The availability of large-scale data sets like the Allen Institute's will undoubtedly make it easier to bring these trajectories down to earth, as stated by Churchland. The institute's resources and sizeable research team are ideal for generating the volumes of data needed to put these instruments through their paces. Olsen compares the institute to an astronomical observatory, noting that while no single lab could afford its cutting-edge technology, the whole scientific community benefits from and contributes to the center's extensive experimental facilities.

He adds the Allen Institute is currently piloting a system where scientists from the scientific community can advise what stimuli animals should be presented with and what tasks they should be completing. At the same time, thousands of their neurons are recorded. As the ability to record brain activity improves, scientists are developing increasingly complex and lifelike experimental paradigms to study how neurons react to complex challenges that truly test their skills. Fusi argues that presenting the cortex-oriented bars is insufficient if we want to learn about the brain. We have to go through this.

Chinese fish fossils help researchers understand human evolution

According to a series of investigations published in Nature on September 28, 2022, scientists in southern China have uncovered fossil fish dating back more than 400 million years. This graphic, provided by Heming Zhang, portrays Xiushanosteus mirabilis. Photographed by Heming Zhang and released by the Associated Press.

Scientists say that new information provided by 440 million-year-old fish fossils discovered in China is "filling some of the crucial gaps" in understanding how humans evolved from fish.

In 2019, researchers unearthed two fossil fish beds in Guizhou, in southern China, and Chongqing, in the southwest.

The fossils "assist to trace many human body structures back to ancient fishes, some 440 million years ago, and fill some crucial gaps in the evolution of 'from fish to human,'" according to experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP).

Fish fossils dating back more than 400 million years have been discovered in southern China, as depicted in this picture by Heming Zhang and published in a series of articles in Nature on September 28, 2022. Photos by Heming Zhang for the Associated Press.

As they put it, their findings "give further solid proof to the evolutionary path," and four publications detailing their research were published in Nature on Wednesday.

Acanthodians, a type of fish found in the Chongqing fossil deposit, are thought to be the origin of all animals with jaws and a backbone, including humans.

In 2013, researchers claimed to have discovered a fish fossil in China that dated back 419 million years, casting doubt on the hypothesis that modern animals with bony skeletons (osteichthyans) originated from shark-like creatures with a cartilage frame.

The scientists concluded that the newly discovered organism, Fanjingshania, lived roughly 15 million years before this ancient fish fossil.

"This is the oldest jawed fish with known anatomy," said Zhu Min, the study's principal researcher.

According to the authors, "the new data allowed us to... acquire much-needed information regarding the evolutionary pathways leading to the origin of crucial vertebrate adaptations like jaws, sensory systems, and paired appendages (limbs)."

Fish fossils dating back more than 400 million years have been discovered in southern China, as seen in this picture by Heming Zhang for the September 2022 issue of Nature. (H. Zhang via AP)

The statement added that the Chongqing fossils are the only ones in the world that date back about 440 million years and "preserves whole, head-to-tail jawed fishes," providing an extremely rare glimpse into a period considered the "birth of fishes."

"It's truly an extraordinary, game-changing combination of fossil findings," said John Long, the former president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and a professor at Australia's Flinders University.

It completely rewrites the textbook on the origins of jawed animals.

NASA Spots New Island As Underwater Volcano Erupts

According to NASA, islands formed by undersea volcanoes are often "short-lived,"; therefore, the newly formed island may not be here to stay.

The Home Reef volcano was still active and spewing lava as of Monday.

Hours after an undersea volcano erupted not far from Australia; a new baby island appeared in the southwest Pacific Ocean.

The Home Reef volcano in the Central Tonga Islands has recently begun erupting, discolouring the surrounding sea with its lava, steam, and ash. According to NASA Earth Observatory, which obtained satellite imagery of the island, it erupted above the water's surface just eleven hours after the eruption.

According to a NASA press release, the infant island expanded rapidly. Scientists from Tonga Geological Services determined the island's dimensions on September 14. They determined that it covered an area of 4,000 square metres (1 acre) and rose 10 metres (33 feet) above sea level. The researchers reported the island's expansion to a total area of 24,000 square metres on September 20. (6 acres).

According to the US space agency, the new island can be found on the seamount of Home Reef in the Central Tonga Islands, which is southwest of Late Island. However, it also mentioned that the infant island might disappear in the future.

NASA said that submarine volcanoes "typically result in short-lived islands, though they occasionally survive for years," NASA said.

A 12-day eruption of the adjacent Late'iki Volcano in 2020 formed an island that washed away two months later, although an earlier island built by the same volcano in 1995 lasted for 25 years.

Meanwhile, the Tonga Geological Services reported Monday that the Home Reef volcano continued to erupt. In a statement, officials noted that there had been 21 separate volcanic episodes at Home Reef Volcano in the last 24 hours, indicating that the volcanic activity is progressive. However, they noted that the Aviation Community and the people of central Tonga Vava'u and Ha'apai islands have only a "minimal risk" from the volcano's ongoing activity.

Scientists Discover Chromosome Fluidity

Outside of their replication and division phases, chromosomes were found to be pliable, if not liquid.

The ability to move chromosomes around inside living cells proves they are malleable.

Scientists from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), the Curie Institute, and the Sorbonne University have successfully performed the first direct physical manipulation of chromosomes in living cells. When they subjected chromosomes to varying stresses using magnets, they discovered that, outside of cell division phases, chromosomes are remarkably malleable, nearly liquid. This research was just released in the highly-regarded journal Science.

Chromosomes are pliable, albeit not liquid, substances when not undergoing cell division. The first time that chromosomes in a living cell's nucleus have been directly mechanically manipulated has allowed for this breakthrough finding.

Chromosomes, extremely long DNA molecules, were formerly depicted as tangled like loose balls of yarn, producing a gel-like substance. The findings of this new publication paint an entirely different image. A cell's chromosomes are mobile and can rearrange themselves without interference from the other components of the nucleus.

Scientists from the Nuclear Dynamics, Physical Chemistry and Cell Biology, and Cancer laboratories at CNRS, the Curie Institute, and Sorbonne University, in collaboration with scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, attached magnetic nanoparticles to a small portion of a chromosome in a living cell and published their findings in Science. The chromosome was then stretched using an external micro-magnet to apply varying tension. By taking this method, the groups could quantitatively evaluate how a chromosome reacts to external pressures for the first time in a living cell.

These studies demonstrated that the range of stresses exerted naturally in the nucleus, such as by enzymes copying DNA, is sufficient to alter a chromosome's conformation significantly. Located at the crossroads of physics and biology, this groundbreaking finding modifies the standard depiction of chromosomes. It also enriches our knowledge of biological mechanisms, chromosome biophysics, and genome structure.

The NASA spacecraft is closing in on the target of a crucial test to deflect asteroid collisions

On September 26th, NASA will attempt to do the impossible by intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid to alter its orbit slightly. (AFP)

• At around 23,000 kilometers per hour, on September 26th, the spaceship is scheduled to crash into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphous.
• The Dimorphos are not directly dangerous to Earth, but this research is necessary in case a similar situation arises.

WASHINGTON: Surely, the dinosaurs would have appreciated this idea.

As a crucial test of our ability to prevent cosmic objects from destroying life on Earth, NASA will attempt a task humanity has never before accomplished on Monday: purposefully smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid to divert its orbit gently.

The California-launched Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft is rapidly closing in on the asteroid. It will strike at an estimated 14,000 miles per hour (23,000 kph).

Neither the little asteroid Dimorphos nor the larger asteroid Didymos, which it circles, pose any danger to Earth as they travel around the Sun and zoom past at a distance of about seven million miles.

NASA, however, believes it is necessary to experiment regardless of whether or not a future need arises.

NASA planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson told reporters on Thursday, "This is an exciting time, not only for the agency but in the history of space and the history of humanity, quite frankly."

At 7:14 pm Eastern Time (23:14 GMT), if all goes according to plan, the car-sized spacecraft will collide with the 530-foot (160-meter, or two Statue of Liberty-tall) asteroid, and the whole thing will be broadcast live on NASA's website.

NASA expects that by crashing into Dimorphos head-on, it will be pushed into a more compact orbit, decreasing the time it takes to orbit Didymos from 11 hours and 55 minutes to 10 hours and 45 minutes. This will be observable by ground-based telescopes in the days following the impact.

The proof-of-concept experiment will bring to life an idea previously only explored in science fiction, most notably in films like "Armageddon" and "Don't Look Up."

The primary camera system, dubbed DRACO, will begin transmitting the first images of Dimorphos as the craft accelerates itself into space, flying autonomously for the final leg of the mission like a self-guided missile.

In a recent briefing, Nancy Chabot of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which hosts mission control, predicted that the object would appear as a "tiny point of light" before rapidly expanding to fill the entire field of view.

The planetary scientist continued, "These visions will persist until they don't."

A toaster-sized satellite named LICIACube, which split out from DART a few weeks ago, will make a close flyby of the spot minutes later to take pictures of the collision and the ejecta, or the crushed rock thrown off by the impact.

LICIACube's image will be transmitted back in the coming weeks and months.

An assortment of Earth-based and space-based telescopes, including the newly operational James Webb, is keeping an eye on the event in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a brightening cloud of dust.

When a European Space Agency mission called Hera arrives in four years, we'll have a much clearer picture of the system's appearance than we do now. Hera will survey Dimorphos's surface and quantify its mass, which is presented simply as estimated.

Only a minuscule percentage of the solar system's billions of asteroids and comets threaten Earth, and none will for at least 150 years.

NASA's chief scientist, Thomas Zurbuchen, has remarked, "I guarantee you that if you wait long enough, there will be an object."

We know this because of evidence found in geological records, such as the six-mile-wide Chicxulub asteroid that crashed into Earth 66 million years ago, causing a global cooling that ultimately resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs and seventy-five percent of all other species.

In contrast, even if an asteroid the size of Dimorphos would have more destructive power than any nuclear bomb in history, its effect would be limited to a local area, such as the destruction of a city.

Researchers are also anticipating learning something new that will improve their understanding of asteroids in general.

What DART can do in terms of momentum transfer to Dimorphos depends on whether or not the asteroid is composed of solid rock or more like a "rubbish pile" of boulders bonded by mutual gravitation.

NASA engineers are optimistic that DART's SmartNav guidance system will successfully navigate to the target asteroid. However, they don't know whether the asteroid is shaped like a dog bone or a doughnut.

NASA has another chance in two years to try again; the spacecraft has just enough fuel for one more pass.

But if it works, Chabot says, it will be the first step toward a world that can protect itself from a potentially existential threat.

Undersea volcanic eruption in Tonga was a "once-in-a-lifetime event," scientists believe

Scientists are still trying to decipher the effects of January's underwater volcano eruption in Tonga.

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, the volcano responsible for the study published on Thursday in Science, is said to have released millions of tonnes of water vapor into the atmosphere.

Scientists believe the eruption, which was far more potent than the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, increased the amount of water in the stratosphere (the second layer of the atmosphere, high above the range where humans live and breathe) by about 5%.

Scientists are currently attempting to predict how much this water will affect the atmosphere and whether or not it will cause global warming in the coming years.

According to the primary author and climatologist at Colorado's National Center for Atmospheric Research, Holger Voemel: "This was a once-in-a-lifetime event."

Earth generally cools after significant eruptions. The majority of volcanoes spew massive quantities of sulfur into the sky, which blocks the sun's rays, according to Matthew Toohey, a climate researcher at the University of Saskatchewan who was not involved in the study.

The Tongan explosion was much wetter than average as it began its life beneath the sea and sent a plume of water into the air at a much higher concentration than usual. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas that traps heat, Toohey predicts that the eruption will have the opposite effect of what was hoped for: a rise in global temperatures.

The extent to which the climate may warm is unknown.

N.O.A.A. climate scientist Karen Rosenlof, who was not involved in the study, said she anticipates the effects to be minor and transient.

This increase "could warm the surface a modest bit for a short time," Rosenlof wrote in an email.

According to scientists who reported this in August, it injected enough water vapor to fill 58,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, setting a new "all-time record" since satellites began capturing such data.

Toohey predicted it would take several years for the water vapor to descend from the upper into the lower atmosphere. Meanwhile, Rosenlof added, the additional water may hasten ozone depletion in the atmosphere.

However, since experts have never witnessed an eruption quite like this one, it is difficult to determine for sure.

According to Voemel, the stratosphere is the region about 7.5 and 31 miles above Earth, where the air is typically relatively dry.

Voemel's group used a system of devices dangling from weather balloons to calculate the size of the volcano's plume. Voemel said that typically, such instruments are incapable of detecting even trace amounts of water in the stratosphere.

Scientists from another organization kept an eye on the explosion via a NASA satellite. Their analysis, released earlier this summer, suggested that the eruption was much more massive, adding roughly 150 million metric tonnes of water vapor to the stratosphere. This is three times as much as Voemel's study found.

Based on the research results, experts have concluded that the great plume may have a short-term impact on Earth's global average temperature.

Voemel conceded that the satellite imagery could have seen features of the plume that the balloon instruments missed, increasing the accuracy of its assessment.

As he put it, the Tongan blast was unlike anything witnessed in recent history, and researching its aftermath could reveal hitherto unknown aspects of our environment.