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 Giant Easter Island 'Hats' Rolled Into Place, Study Says The distinctive headgear worn by some of the famous Easter Island statues may have been rolled up ramps to reach those high perches, a new study suggests. A simple analysis of the physics suggests that rolling the headwear — bulky cylindrical shapes that look like Russian fur hats — would have been a relatively easy matter, said study co-author Sean Hixon, an undergraduate student in archaeology and geology at the University of Oregon, who presented his findings here on April 16 at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archeology. Since Europeans arrived at the location in the 1700s, people have wondered how the residents of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, off the coast of Chile, raised their majestic statues. Others have argued that the native islanders chopped down the island's forests to roll the stone behemoths across the landscape, leading to environmental devastation and the collapse of the Easter Island civilization. Read More »Moon and Jupiter Rendezvous This Weekend: How to See Them Read More » Mysterious X-37B Military Space Plane to Fly Again Next Month Read More » This Country Is the Happiest in the World, United Nations Finds The happiest country in the world isn't in the tropics, as you might expect, but is known for its snow-covered peaks and delicious chocolate: Switzerland took the top spot in the 2015 World Happiness Report, a United Nations ranking of 158 countries. The U.N. happiness report, published every year since 2012, shows that happiness and well-being are critical indicators of a country's economic and social development, according to a statement from the United Nations. What's more, the 2015 report, released Thursday (April 23), serves as a guide and reminder that world leaders should consider the happiness of their citizens whenever they make policy decisions, the U.N. statement said. Read More »Human Embryo Editing Is Incredibly Risky, Experts Say With the news that Chinese scientists have attempted to modify the genes of human embryos, many scientists have called for a halt to such technology, saying the techniques are too risky to use in human embryos. In a study published Saturday (April 18) in the journal Protein & Cell, Chinese scientists reported that they had used a genetic engineering technique called CRISPR to cut out a faulty gene and replace it with a healthy one in human embryos. "This paper is a complete confirmation of the issues that were raised about the readiness of the CRISPR platform to be applied in therapeutic genome editing," said Edward Lanphier, president and CEO of Sangamo BioSciences, a company that works on genome editing in adult cells but not embryonic cells. Lanphier, along with other scientists, published a commentary in March in the journal Nature, calling for a moratorium on such research. Read More »Genetically Modified Humans? How Genome Editing Works Chinese scientists have edited the genomes of human embryos for the first time, confirming a storm of rumors and igniting an ethical debate. Researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, used an experimental gene-editing technique to modify a gene in human embryos that causes a fatal blood disorder. "Their study should be a stern warning to any practitioner who thinks the technology is ready for testing to eradicate disease genes," George Daley, a stem-cell biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, told Nature News. First, the CRISPR/Cas9 complex searches through the cell's DNA until it finds and binds to a sequence that matches the CRISPR, said John Reidhaar-Olson, a biochemist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, who was not involved in the study. Read More »Awesome Hubble Telescope Pics Pop on Times Square Screens in NYC Read More » Hubble at 25: Space Telescope's Views Have Changed How We See Earth Read More » | ||||
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Saturday, April 25, 2015
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