#mind.blown.

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Researchers claim they have uncovered evidence of ancient hominin-like creatures comparable to Australopithecus. Even more intriguingly, they were discovered not in East Africa as would be expected, but in Germany instead. The two teeth discovered date to 9.7 million years ago – which, if proved correct, would rewrite our origins, although there are some serious doubts that need to be cleared first.

If these fossils are proven to be that of animals similar to the famous bipedal Australopithecus from East Africa – and that is a big if – then it could have some seriously profound implications for the story of human evolution.

“I don’t want to over-dramatize it, but I would hypothesize that we shall have to start rewriting the history of mankind after today,” Herbert Lutz, director of the Natural History Museum in Mainz, told local media this week as he revealed the discovery. The paper is currently in pre-print. “This is a tremendous stroke of luck, but also a great mystery.”

This would be an astonishing find not only because there have never been any comparable early hominins like this found in Europe before, but also because if the dating is correct, then the species was knocking around some 6 million years before the famous Lucy was laid to rest in Ethiopia. The current estimate for the last common ancestor between chimps and humans ranges from around 10 million to 7 million years ago, although one recent study suggests that it might have been as long at 13 million years ago.

The researchers have found two teeth to date. Lutz et al. 2017

If this older figure is correct, then the dating of these hominin-like teeth would fit in with that. Yet there are other factors to take into consideration. Only earlier this year, researchers announced they had discovered what they believed to be fossil evidence of the last common ancestor between chimps and humans, which put the divergence at around 7.2 million years ago.

What is more interesting in this scenario, however, is that these fossils were discovered in Eastern Europe. This lines up nicely with the recent findings from Germany date-wise, but only if they are not hominin in origin. It is not unusual to find evidence of primates across Europe, and the author’s even note in their paper that while the size and dimensions of the newly discovered teeth are within those known for various Australopithecus species, they also fall within the range for female chimps, too.

If this is the case, then the 9.7-million-year-old teeth could simply be an as-yet unknown species of ape that was once living in the forests of ancient Germany. Of course, it could also turn out that the researchers are indeed correct with their initial understandings and this discovery instead completely rewrites what we thought we knew about human evolution. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Found at: http://ift.tt/2y0HZvu

[joi-in-the-tardis]

@jem-scribbles

You know things are getting serious when the Savings Jar gets started.

(And, yes, I bought stickers for the occasion.  They’re sparkly.)

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One day, you might look back at the moment when AlphaGo trounced the world’s best Go player and feel an acute sense of guilt. Guilt that you failed to see the warnings signs and stop the robot uprising that’s soon to come.

Now, a new AI by Google’s DeepMind research group has taught itself, using only the basic rules of the game, to beat AlphaGo at its own game. While we wouldn’t go as far as calling this a “god-like” AI, we would say that it’s a seriously impressive, and perhaps daunting, milestone.

AlphaGo learned how to play the 3,000-year-old board game by analyzing matches played between humans in the past. The latest incarnation is essentially self-taught, and no human data or input was necessary after its initial construction. That’s why it’s been dubbed “AlphaGo Zero” – it uses no human knowledge at all.

Yes, AlphaGo was impressive. AlphaGo Zero, however, spent just three days training itself to become a world-beater; it then pitted itself against its predecessor and won 100 games to nil. In just 40 days, AlphaGo Zero surpasses all other versions of the AI, and arguably becomes the best Go player in history. It took this AI just 72 hours to transcend three millennia of human knowledge in this respect.

This may now make it sound like humans are obsolete in this regard, but in a blog post, and in an accompanying Nature article, the designers explain why this was never just about playing an ancient game.

This technique, of teaching itself how to handle a new situation, is for some purposes better than anything any of the previous incarnations managed, because “it is no longer constrained by the limits of human knowledge.”

“If similar techniques can be applied to other structured problems, such as protein folding, reducing energy consumption or searching for revolutionary new materials, the resulting breakthroughs have the potential to positively impact society,” they add.

This shines a light on what most are considering to be the near-future fate of AI; programs that augment and amplify human roles, rather than replace them, for the most part. From helping to confirm diagnoses of diseases to corroborating or disagreeing with the latest climate model, this type of pattern-recognition AI is going to be the next big thing.

If you’re a pessimist, you’ll see this latest development as another step towards our machine overlords. If you’re an optimist, this marks an exhilarating leap forward for humankind.

Found at: http://ift.tt/2iO1ooT

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From René Descartes to the Wachowskis (directors of the Matrix trilogy, amongst others) to Elon Musk, many have envisioned that our existence is just part of the scheme of a superior intelligence and our lives are merely part of a simulated reality. There’s obviously no evidence for it and there are actually many arguments against it, and now researchers think they have found a physical property that occurs in metals that cannot be simulated, telling us once and for all that our lives, good or bad, are actually real.

Researchers Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhin, both from Oxford University, studied the computational methods to describe complex quantum systems. The study, published in Science Advances, did not set out to prove that reality is not a simulation. But it found that there are some quantum mechanics problems that cannot be simulated, as far as we know.

It all depends on how the problem can be worked out by computers. If the problem is linear, the computational resources need to scale up as the number of particles in the system increase. This can be very difficult but the bigger the computer, the more complex the system it can deal with. But problems can exist where the scale between particles and processors increases exponentially and soon it becomes impossible to simulate.

The research proves that a quantum mechanics phenomenon is definitely in the latter category. The gravitational anomaly known as the thermal Hall conductance happens when systems are exposed to incredibly high magnetic fields or extremely low temperatures. Its effects appear as electric currents related to the temperature gradient of the system or as a twist in the geometry of space-time.

The researchers tried to simulate this effect but found that the system became far more complex and that the simulation was ultimately impossible due to a matter of principle. Just to store the information of a few hundred electrons one might need more atoms than exist in the visible universe.

“Our work provides an intriguing link between two seemingly unrelated topics: gravitational anomalies and computational complexity. It also shows that the thermal Hall conductance is a genuine quantum effect: one for which no local classical analogue exists,” said co-author Professor Zohar Ringel, from Hebrew University, in a statement.

So to simulate these quantum effects, we’d need a computing method like we’ve never seen before. And by extension, the complexity of a system to simulate our entire reality is far beyond the realm of possibilities.

Found at: http://ift.tt/2zzjItJ

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Blunt force injuries on human remains recently discovered in Peru provide the earliest evidence for ritualistic violence in the Americas to date, reports The Asahi Shimbun. The fact that the trauma was low level and showed signs of healing leads scholars to believe that the injuries weren’t designed to kill.  Their findings were published earlier this month in the journal PLOS One.

The discovery was made by a Peruvian-Japanese excavation team, who weredigging in Pacopampa in the northern highlands of Peru. Thousands of years ago, the site was home to an ancient Andean civilization built on ritualistic practice and socioeconomic inequality.

The archeologists unearthed a total of 104 bodies from the 13th to 6th centuries BCE. Of these, seven displayed traces of low-level trauma, such as fractures to the skull, facial features, and limbs. One skeleton, belonging to a 35- to 54-year-old woman, also showed signs of a dislocated elbow joint.

Nagaoka T, Uzawa K, Seki Y, Morales Chocano D (2017)/PLOS ONE

The individuals would have been attacked repeatedly with blunt tools and fists, the researchers say, as part of a ritualistic practice.

“Given the archaeological context (the remains were recovered from sites of ceremonial practices), as well as the equal distribution of trauma among both sexes and a lack of defensive architecture [in Pacopampa], it is plausible that rituals, rather than organized warfare or raids, caused most of the exhibited trauma,” the researchers explained.

Interestingly, all the injuries show signs of healing, which suggests that the violence wasn’t intended to be lethal and the victims did not die as a result. Instead, it was only meant to harm the individual. This is unusual because we expect ritualistic sacrifice to end in death – as was certainly the case in later eras.

“The elites’ role may not yet have been established in the nascent hierarchical society at Pacopampa and that violence in a ritual context may therefore not necessarily have produced the same results,” said the researchers.

The paper also refers to the civilization’s “affinity with the cult of predatory animals”. During this period, predators – and big cats, in particular – were a key religious icon, and anthropomorphized images were incorporated into pottery and sculptures.

“[W]e can suspect that these figures may have exercised fierce forces on victims in ritual practices,” the researchers explained. “If we apply this explanation, we see that violence in a ritual context may have contributed to the dominance over the people by an elite class. Violence may have become an element of ritual activity and the basis for social development, particularly where it was incorporated into rituals by taking on a new meaning of sacredness in ritual places.”

Found at: http://ift.tt/2medzjO

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I know, I promised we would never talk about The Dress again. I’m sorry. I lied. Because there’s a new optical illusion in town, and this time it’s a shoe.

Yes, The Shoe has been making the rounds on the internet, ever since someone called Nicole Coulthard published it on a Facebook group called Girlsmouth this week.

She said she saw the shoe as pale pink and white, but her friend said it was pale blue and grey. And thus, here we are.

“Ok girls so my friend has just sent me this asking what colour the shoe is, I would say pale pink and white, but she insists its pale blue and grey,” Coulthard posted on Facebook. “What do you girls see? Please tell me pink and white!”

In the IFLScience office, the majority of us see the shoe as pale blue and grey, but plenty of people online have been reporting both colors. And several pointed out that it was likely actually pink and white, as Vans – who made the shoe – didn’t have a grey and blue version.

 Follow

heidi @lovingmaynards

pink n white

 Follow

Tom Giles 

@TomGilesNBCS

Ok. The shoe was most definitely grey/teal… and then I stared at it for a minute trying to convince myself otherwise… now its pink/white

 Follow

Jono Pech @ #PAXAus 

@JonoHimself

It’s the same shoe. I was sure it was blue and grey but after colour balancing it, I’m blown away.

 Follow

Chelsea Traynor @ChelTraynor

SCOOP: the shoe is a pink and white Vans Old Skool. They don’t make a grey and teal version. You’re welcome.#pinkandwhiteshoes

  Speaking to the Metro, Coulthard said her friend had bought the shoes a few weeks ago and sent a picture to her mom, who said the blue color suited her.

“She texted back saying they are pink mum, but when she looked at the pic she saw blue too,” she said. “She sent it to me and I was convinced they are pink, we had a big argument as she said I only said pink because I knew she had bought pink shoes so that’s why I decided to put it up on Girlsmouth.”

Do we know what’s going on here? Well, sort of. You might remember last time we covered The Dress, a researcher called Pascal Wallisch from New York University said the time you woke up – and hence the amount of light you’d been exposed to – affected whether you saw the dress as black and blue or white and gold.

In his study, Wallisch showed that early risers were more likely to see white and gold, while people who stayed up late were more likely to see black and blue. Although not true for everyone, he said there was a pretty decent correlation.

“The same thing seems to be going on as with the dress,” he told IFLScience. “However, one key difference seems to be that people are much more easily able to toggle the percepts here.”

Sure, it’s a bit silly, but it’s a cool effect that is actually quite tough to explain. I’d like to say this is the end, but there will inevitably be more illusions inspired by The Dress. I can only apologize.

Found at: http://ift.tt/2ylOVPL

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Last month, French scientists released a widely-celebrated study showing they had partially restored consciousness in a man who had spent half of his life in a vegetative state. While the rest of the world assumed he was alive, it’s now been revealed that the man actually died months before their report was published.

The study, published last month in the journal Current Biology, involved vagal nerve stimulation to induce signs of consciousness in a 35-year-old man who had been in a vegetative state for 15 years after a car accident. Following this treatment, he was able to smile, move his eyes, turn his head, and respond to basic commands.

However, the study did not mention that the man had died in June 2017. His death was only publically admitted last week during an interview in the French newspaper Le Parisien, where researcher Professor Marc Guenot claimed his death was not connected to the treatment.

“Unfortunately, this man died this year, a pulmonary complication,” Professor Guenot told Le Parisien last week. “This has strictly no connection with electrical stimulation.”

When asked if he was concerned with fostering false hope for families in this situation, Professor Guenot responded: “There is no question of that. And the family of this 35-year-old man was warned… The brain injuries of these patients are irreversible.”

The researchers also gave statements to the press which suggested the man was still alive. Lead researcher Angela Sirigu told The Guardian in September: “He is still paralyzed, he cannot talk, but he can respond. Now he is more aware.” Although, since most of the scientists on the project are French, it’s entirely possible their statements were lost in translation.

Nevertheless, their failure to disclose the information has aroused questions about transparency and ethics in science. The researchers claim they made the decision to not reveal the death out of respect to the man’s family, as well as concerns that people might have wrongly blamed the therapy for his death.

Professor Jacques Luauté of the University of Lyon, another researcher from the study, told Le Monde: “We had discussed it with the family. Together, we wrongly thought that this would lead to people making a link between the stimulation and the death. We concluded that the death – unrelated to experimentation – was a private family event.”

“This was a mistake because it was obvious that we’d been asked what had become of the patient.”

Found at: http://ift.tt/2yH78eU

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When you think about race, you probably think about skin color. Although the shade of your skin might seem to be the most variable trait in regards to race, we know surprisingly little about it. That’s especially true when it comes to Africa and the wide variety of skin tones found there.

Now, a landmark new study has seen scientists investigate the genetics of skin color among people in Africa. Their study, published in the journal Science, gathered genetic information from over 1,500 people and data on skin color from over 2,000 people from some of the most diverse regions of the African continent, making it the largest study of its kind to date.

According to the researchers, their findings challenge the idea of a biological concept of race.

“When people think of skin color in Africa most would think of darker skin, but we show that within Africa there is a huge amount of variation, ranging from skin as light as some Asians to the darkest skin on a global level and everything in between,” said Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania, in a statement.

Their analysis found eight genetic variants within the human genome that are associated with skin pigmentation. They discovered that most variants associated with light skin (now most common in Europeans) and dark skin appear to have both originated in Africa. Furthermore, the oldest version of these variants in most cases was associated with lighter skin, suggesting that moderately pigmented skin evolved before darkly pigmented skin.

Most of these genetic variants associated with light and dark pigmentation appear to have emerged more than 300,000 years ago – a time before the origin of modern humans. Some variants even emerged up to 1 million years ago.

“If you were to shave a chimp, it has light pigmentation,” Tishkoff added, “so it makes sense that skin color in the ancestors of modern humans could have been relatively light. It is likely that when we lost the hair covering our bodies and moved from forests to the open savannah, we needed darker skin. Mutations influencing both light and dark skin have continued to evolve in humans, even within the past few thousand years.”

The region with the strongest ties to skin color was the area around the SLC24A5 gene, which arose more than 30,000 years ago. A variant of this is believed to play a role in lighter skin colors found in European and south Asian populations. It turns out that it’s also common in some populations in Ethiopia and Tanzania. Similar variants around MFSD12, OCA2, and HERC2 were shown to lighten the skin of the African San hunter-gatherer population as well as in Europeans.

In sum, the history of skin color is a lot more complex and muddled than we thought. This in itself challenges the centuries-old idea that race, skin color, and genetics are all neatly linked together.