This giant salamanderlike creature lived 40 million years before dinosaurs - The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists have revealed fossils of a giant salamanderlike beast with sharp fangs that ruled waters before the first dinosaurs arrived.

The predator, which was larger than a person, likely used its wide, flat head and front teeth to suck in and chomp unsuspecting prey, researchers said. Its skull was about 2 feet (60 centimeters) long.

“It’s acting like an aggressive stapler,” said Michael Coates, a biologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved with the work.

Fossil remnants of four creatures collected about a decade ago were analyzed, including a partial skull and backbone. The findings on Gaiasia jennyae were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The creature existed some 40 million years before dinosaurs evolved.

Researchers have long examined such ancient predators to uncover the origins of tetrapods: four-legged animals that clambered onto land with fingers instead of fins and evolved to amphibians, birds and mammals including humans.

Most early tetrapod fossils hail from hot, prehistoric coal swamps along the equator in what’s now North America and Europe. But these latest remnants, dating back to about 280 million years ago, were found in modern-day Namibia, an area in Africa that was once encrusted with glaciers and ice.

That means tetrapods may have thrived in colder climates earlier than scientists expected, prompting more questions about how and when they took over the Earth.

“The early story of the first tetrapods is much more complex than we thought,” said co-author Claudia Marsicano at the University of Buenos Aires, who was part of the research.

The creature’s name comes from the Gai-As rock formation in Namibia where the fossils were found and for the late paleontologist Jennifer Clack, who studied how tetrapods evolved.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Ants can perform life-saving amputations on their wounded, study says - The Washington Post

Until the discovery of antibiotic medicine last century, doctors frequently performed amputations to save the life of a patient with an infected wound.

But humans aren’t the only animal to perform this type of surgery on one another.

Scientists have discovered that a species of ant found in the southeastern United States also perform amputations when their nestmates are perilously injured on the leg, staving off the spread of infection from an open wound and effectively saving their comrades’ life.

“The level of sophistication with which they have evolved to care for their injured is unrivaled in the animal kingdom. Our human medical system would be the closest match,” said Erik Frank, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Würzburg who led the study, in an interview Wednesday. “These amputations stopped infections from spreading into the body … the same way medieval amputations worked in humans,” he said, adding that the findings mark the first recorded example of a nonhuman animal performing an amputation on a fellow member of its species to save its life.

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Current Biology, suggests that Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) are able to differentiate between types of wounds and adapt their healing responses accordingly. It adds to our growing understanding of the sophisticated strategies ants deploy to care for one another when injured, including by triaging the wounded and treating the infected with microbial substances.

The scientists observed the amputations in laboratory conditions as performed by the Florida carpenter ants, a reddish, black, or brown ant which typically measure under 1/2 an inch in length. Unlike some other ants, Florida carpenter ants do not have the ability to produce antimicrobial secretions from their glands to combat pathogens in wounds. “We wanted to see how a species that lost this gland would still care for their injured,” said Frank.

The scientists set out by deliberately injuring around 100 ants on the leg: either the femur (closer to the body) or the tibia (farther down the leg), to compare how fellow ants in their colony responded. They found that the ants effectively performed amputations when their nestmates had sustained femur injuries, but never performed amputations when an equivalent injury was sustained on the tibia.

In the former, a helper nestmate performed an amputation on the injured insect’s entire leg in over three-quarters of cases.

Ants were seen attempting to stave off the spread of infection from an open wound and amputate their comrades' leg. (Video: Dany Buffat)

The ant amputation procedure lasted around 40 minutes and followed the same pattern each time: “They start licking the wound with their mouth parts and then they move up the leg with their mouth until they reach the shoulder. There, they will start to bite quite ferociously for many minutes at a time,” said Frank. “The injured ant will sit their calmly, allowing the procedure to occur and not complaining until the leg is cut off.”

Among the ants with a femur injury, 95 percent of those that received an amputation survived, while only 45 percent of those who did not receive an amputation survived, Frank said.

“The ants — in their world, in their context — have found a strategy that is highly efficient and has a very, very high level of success,” concluded Frank.

Laurent Keller, an evolutionary biologist who also worked on the study, said the amputations were performed very effectively. “It means that when they do the amputation they must do it in a very clean way to prevent bacteria from entering the wound,” he said.

The study found that ants that sustained a tibia injury never received an amputation from fellow nestmates, but rather an extended wound care session. (Video: Dany Buffat)

In contrast to the treatment received by ants that sustained a femur injury, ants that sustained a tibia injury (further down the leg) were never observed receiving an amputation from fellow nestmates. “In this case, they only clean the wound,” said Keller, who said the nestmates instead provided an extended wound care session involving lots of licking.

The wound cleaning method also proved effective. While around 70-75 percent of those who received wound cleaning from fellow ants survived, only 15 percent of the ants with tibia injuries survived when they were isolated from their fellow ants and left unattended, Frank said.

One possible explanation offered by the scientists for the decision on when to perform an amputation has to do with how hemolymph — a fluid equivalent to blood — flows within invertebrates.

The theory has not been tested yet, but scans show that the tibia area of the leg has greater hemolymph flow than the femur area, meaning that pathogens that enter through the tibia will spread more quickly to the rest of the body. This, in turn, significantly shortens the window of opportunity for an amputation to stave off an infection from spreading. “If the wound is at the level of the tibia then they don’t do an amputation. This is because normally the blood — or hemolymph for insects — circulates quite rapidly. So within 40 minutes the blood will already carry the bacteria into the body of the ant,” explained Keller.

The painstaking efforts adopted by ants to care for each others’ wounds illustrates how social insects reap benefits from behaving altruistically, said Keller. “By helping each other, they are indirectly helping themselves,” he said.

“Evolutionarily speaking, the colony saves a massive amount of energy by making sure their injured keep well, rather than just throwing them away and replacing them with a new worker,” he said. Previous studies show that ants that have lost one or even two legs can still be productive members of their colony, returning to their normal running speed in as soon as one day — and are often deployed to perform the most dangerous tasks. He added: “Even in ant societies, the individual holds value.”

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How to watch Firefly Aerospace's ‘Noise of Summer' rocket launch from the California coast - NBC Los Angeles

Update (8:31 p.m.): Tuesday’s planned launch has been postponed. Original story appears below.

Southern Californians and other sky-watchers in the U.S. West might get a glimpse of Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket Tuesday night when it launches from the Santa Barbara County coast.

The window for the launch, part of the "Noise of Summer" mission initially scheduled for Monday, will open at 9:03 p.m. PT at Vandenberg Space Force Base about 160 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The rocket's exhaust plume might be illuminated by the setting sun against the backdrop of a darkening sky, possibly providing a viewing opportunity for a large swath of the U.S. West as the rocket soars over the Pacific Ocean.

This map depicts visibility for the Noise of Summer mission launch of a Firefly Alpha rocket form Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Rockets launched from the base and their exhaust plumes are sometimes visible for hundreds of miles as they soar along the coast, if skies are clear. Launches just after sunset and before sunrise usually provide the best views as the rocket reflects the sun's rays against the dark sky backdrop.

Sunset is scheduled for 8:08 p.m. Tuesday in Los Angeles.

Click here for live coverage with Firefly and NASASpaceflight.com.

The launch will be the Alpha rocket's fifth mission and comes six months after its last flight. Monday's scheduled launch was scrubbed due to a ground release equipment issue.

The Noise of Summer Earth science mission will launch eight cubesats -- small box-shaped mini-satellites -- from the 95-foot-tall Alpha rocket, which made its debut test flight in September 2021. The cubesats were selected as part of NASA's Cubesat Launch Initiative, which was created to help provide a path into space for satellites developed at U.S. colleges, universities and nonprofit organizations.

Two of the satellites were built to work as a pair and improve relative navigation between spacecraft in orbit. The goal is to address the problem of increasing satellite congestion in orbit.

Click here to read more about the eight satellites.

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Bionic legs plugged directly into nervous system enable unprecedented 'level of brain control' - Livescience.com

Helping people with amputation walk naturally - YouTube

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A pioneering surgical procedure provides amputees with bionic limbs that are directly controlled by the nervous system, enabling patients to sense the limb's position in space. 

Scientists demonstrated the success of this technique in a new study of seven people who received bionic legs, which was published Monday (July 1) in the journal Nature Medicine. Including these seven, about 60 people worldwide have undergone this type of procedure, which can be used to install either bionic legs or arms. 

"This is the first prosthetic study in history that shows a leg prosthesis under full neural modulation, where a biomimetic gait emerges," Hugh Herr, co-senior study author and a professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, said in a statement. In other words, the synthetic prosthesis is able to fill in for the lost function of the missing limb and thus produce a natural gait.

"No one has been able to show this level of brain control that produces a natural gait, where the human's nervous system is controlling the movement, not a robotic control algorithm," Herr said.

Related: 'You can get the feeling that you are touching another human': New prosthetic device detects temperature

The surgery itself, known as agonist-antagonist myoneural interface (AMI), involves reconnecting muscles in a patient's residual limb after a below-the-knee amputation, in the case that the patient is getting a bionic leg. 

Electrical signals from the central nervous system, which relay instructions for movement, can then pass between these muscles, and be detected by electrodes in a newly installed prosthetic limb. The signals are picked up by a robotic controller in the prosthesis that enables it to control a patient's gait, or way of walking. Signals about the position and movement of a patient's prosthesis are then fed back to the nervous system. 

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In a series of experiments described in the new paper, the seven patients who received AMI surgery were able to walk faster than people who received the same type of prosthetic limb, but who had traditional amputations. Some of the patients could even walk at the same rate as people without amputations. They could also avoid obstacles and climb stairs more naturally than patients who underwent traditional amputations. 

Current technology for prosthetic limbs already enables amputees to achieve a natural walking gait, according to the team who conducted the surgery. However, these prosthetic limbs rely on robotic sensors and controllers to actually move in a predefined, algorithmic pattern, the team said. AMI, in contrast, enables the limb to dynamically respond to signals from the body.

"The approach we're taking is trying to comprehensively connect the brain of the human to the electromechanics," Herr said.

The patients who underwent AMI also experienced less pain and muscle atrophy, the scientists reported. 

AMI can also be used for people who have arm amputations, the team said, and the surgery can be done either during a patient's original amputation or at a later date. 

"This work represents yet another step in us demonstrating what is possible in terms of restoring function in patients who suffer from severe limb injury," Dr. Matthew Carty, co-senior study author and an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, said in the statement.

Ever wonder why some people build muscle more easily than others or why freckles come out in the sun? Send us your questions about how the human body works to community@livescience.com with the subject line "Health Desk Q," and you may see your question answered on the website!

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Researchers develop a brain-driven prosthesis for people with leg amputations - The Washington Post

People with leg amputations were able to control their prosthetic limbs with their brains in a significant scientific advance that allows for a smoother gait and enhanced ability to navigate obstacles, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.

By creating a connection between a person’s nervous system and their prosthetic leg, researchers at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital paved the way for the next generation of prostheses.

“We were able to show the first full neural control of bionic walking,” said Hyungeun Song, first author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at MIT.

Most state-of-the-art bionic prostheses rely on preprogrammed robotic commands instead of the user’s brain signals. Advanced robotic technologies can sense the environment and repeatedly activate a predefined leg motion to help a person navigate that kind of terrain.

But many of these robotics work best on level ground and struggle to navigate common obstacles such as bumps or puddles. The person wearing the prosthesis often has little say in adjusting the prosthetic limb once it is in motion, especially in response to sudden terrain changes.

“When I walk, it feels like I’m being walked because an algorithm is sending commands to a motor, and I’m not,” said Hugh Herr, principal investigator of the study, a professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, and a pioneer in biomechatronics, a field that melds biology with electronics and mechanics. Herr’s legs were amputated below the knee several years ago because of frostbite, and he uses advanced robotic prostheses.

“There’s a growing body of evidence [showing] that when you link the brain to a mechatronic prosthesis, there’s an embodiment that occurs where the individual views the synthetic limb as a natural extension of their body,” Herr said.

The authors worked with 14 study participants, half of whom had received below-knee amputations through an approach known as the Agonist-antagonist Myoneural Interface — AMI — while the other half underwent traditional amputations.

“What’s super cool about this is how it’s leveraging surgical innovation along with technological innovation,” said Conor Walsh, a professor at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences who specializes in the development of wearable assistive robots and was not involved in the study.

The AMI amputation was developed to address the limitations of traditional leg amputation surgery, which severs important muscle connections at the amputation site.

Movements are made possible by the way muscles work in pairs. One muscle — known as the agonist — contracts to move a limb and another — known as the antagonist — will lengthen in response. For example, during a biceps curl, the biceps muscle is the agonist because it contracts to lift the forearm up, while the triceps muscle is the antagonist because it lengthens to enable the motion.

When surgical amputation severs muscle pairs, a patient’s ability to feel muscle contractions post-surgery is impaired, and this compromises their ability to accurately and finely sense where their prosthetic limb is in space.

In contrast, the AMI procedure reconnects muscles in the remaining limb to replicate the valuable muscular feedback a person gets from an intact limb.

The study “is part of a movement of the next generation of prosthetic technologies that address sensation and not just movement,” said Eric Rombokas, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study.

The AMI procedure for below-knee amputation was named the Ewing amputation after Jim Ewing, the first person to receive the procedure, in 2016.

Patients who underwent the Ewing amputation experienced less muscle atrophy in their residual limb and less phantom pain — the sensation of discomfort in a limb that no longer exists.

The researchers fit all participants with a novel bionic limb, which consisted of a prosthetic ankle, a device that measures electrical activity from muscle movement and electrodes placed on the surface of the skin.

The brain sends electrical pulses to the muscles, causing them to contract. The contractions produce their own electrical signals, which are detected by the electrodes and sent to small computers on the prosthesis. The computers then convert those electrical signals into force and movement for the prosthesis.

Amy Pietrafitta, a participant in the study who received the Ewing amputation after severe burn injuries, said the bionic limb gave her the ability to point both of her feet and perform dance moves again.

“Being able to have that type of flexion made it so much more real,” Pietrafitta said. “It felt like everything was there.”

With their enhanced muscle sensations, participants who underwent the Ewing amputation were able to use their bionic limb to walk faster and with a more natural gait than those who underwent traditional amputations.

When a person has to deviate from normal walking patterns, they typically have to work harder to get around.

“That energy expenditure … causes our heart to work harder and our lungs to work harder … and it can lead to gradual destruction of our hip joints or our lower spine,” said Matthew J. Carty, a reconstructive plastic surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the first doctor to perform the AMI procedure.

Patients who received the Ewing amputation and the new prosthetic limb were also able to easily navigate ramps and stairs. They smoothly adjusted their footing to push themselves up the stairs and absorb shock as they went down.

The researchers hope the novel prosthesis will be commercially available in the next five years.

“We’re starting to get a glimpse of this glorious future wherein a person can lose a major part of their body, and there’s technology available to reconstruct that aspect of their body to full functionality,” Herr said.

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Researchers develop a brain-driven prosthesis for people with leg amputations - The Washington Post

People with leg amputations were able to control their prosthetic limbs with their brains in a significant scientific advance that allows for a smoother gait and enhanced ability to navigate obstacles, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.

By creating a connection between a person’s nervous system and their prosthetic leg, researchers at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women’s Hospital paved the way for the next generation of prostheses.

“We were able to show the first full neural control of bionic walking,” said Hyungeun Song, first author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at MIT.

Most state-of-the art bionic prostheses rely on preprogrammed robotic commands instead of the user’s brain signals. Advanced robotic technologies can sense the environment and repeatedly activate a predefined leg motion to help a person navigate that kind of terrain.

But many of these robotics work best on level ground and struggle to navigate common obstacles such as bumps or puddles. The person wearing the prosthesis often has little say in adjusting the prosthetic limb once it is in motion, especially in response to sudden terrain changes.

“When I walk, it feels like I’m being walked because an algorithm is sending commands to a motor, and I’m not,” said Hugh Herr, principal investigator of the study and professor of media arts and sciences at MIT and a pioneer in the field of biomechatronics, a field that melds biology with electronics and mechanics. Herr’s legs were amputated below the knee several years ago because of frostbite, and he uses advanced robotic prostheses.

“There’s a growing body of evidence [showing] that when you link the brain to a mechatronic prosthesis, there’s an embodiment that occurs where the individual views the synthetic limb as a natural extension of their body,” Herr said.

The authors worked with 14 study participants, half of whom received below-knee amputations through an approach known as the Agonist-antagonist Myoneural Interface — AMI — while the other half underwent traditional amputations.

“What’s super cool about this is how it’s leveraging surgical innovation along with technological innovation,” said Conor Walsh, professor at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences who specializes in the development of wearable assistive robots and was not involved in the study.

The AMI amputation was developed to address the limitations of traditional leg amputation surgery, which severs important muscle connections at the amputation site.

Movements are made possible by the way muscles move in pairs. One muscle — known as the agonist — contracts to move a limb and another — known as the antagonist — will lengthen in response. For example, during a biceps curl, the biceps muscle is the agonist because it contracts to lift the forearm up, while the triceps muscle is the antagonist because it lengthens to enable the motion.

When surgical amputation severs muscle pairs, a patient’s ability to feel muscle contractions post-surgery is impaired, and as a result, compromises their ability to accurately and finely sense where their prosthetic limb is in space.

In contrast, the AMI procedure reconnects muscles in the remaining limb to replicate the valuable muscular feedback a person gets from an intact limb.

The study “is part of a movement of the next generation of prosthetic technologies that address sensation and not just movement,” said Eric Rombokas, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study.

The AMI procedure for below-knee amputation was named the Ewing Amputation after Jim Ewing, the first person to receive the procedure in 2016.

Patients who underwent the Ewing Amputation experienced less muscle atrophy in their residual limb and less phantom pain, the sensation of experiencing discomfort in a limb that no longer exists.

The researchers fit all participants with a novel bionic limb, which consisted of a prosthetic ankle, a device that measures electrical activity from muscle movement and electrodes placed on the surface of the skin.

The brain sends electrical pulses to the muscles, causing them to contract. The contractions produce their own electrical signals, which are detected by the electrodes and sent to small computers on the prosthesis. The computers then convert those electrical signals into force and movement for the prosthesis.

Amy Pietrafitta, a participant in the study who received the Ewing Amputation after severe burn injuries, said the bionic limb gave her the ability to point both of her feet and perform dance moves again.

“Being able to have that type of flexion made it so much more real,” Pietrafitta said. “It felt like everything was there.”

With their enhanced muscle sensations, participants who underwent the Ewing Amputation were able to use their bionic limb to walk faster and with a more natural gait than those who underwent traditional amputations.

When a person has to deviate from normal walking patterns, they typically have to work harder to get around.

“That energy expenditure … causes our heart to work harder and our lungs to work harder … and it can lead to gradual destruction of our hip joints or our lower spine,” said Matthew J. Carty, a reconstructive plastic surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the first doctor to perform the AMI procedure.

Patients who received the Ewing Amputation and the new prosthetic limb were also able to easily navigate ramps and stairs. They smoothly adjusted their footing to push themselves up the stairs and absorb shock as they went down.

The researchers hope the novel prosthesis will be commercially available in the next five years.

“We’re starting to get a glimpse of this glorious future wherein a person can lose a major part of their body, and there’s technology available to reconstruct that aspect of their body to full functionality,” Herr said.

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Europe's newest rocket puts bloc's space ambitions to the test - Financial Times

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